TV and Streaming

Consult this

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Oh, Auntie. After a year of bigger and smaller disappointments and only one moderate success, you’ve shown me you can pull it off. And how… 2010’s Sherlock was a great treat: funny, exciting, smart. But it was also only three episodes, one of which was decidedly weaker than the others. Would a 1 1/2 year hiatus help? Judging from the New Year’s Day episode and season starter “A Scandal in Belgravia”, the answer to that is a definite, loud, positively orgasmic “Yes!” Honestly, has there been witty dialogue, chemistry between the characters and stylish execution like this in any UK production in the last couple of years?

No, “Scandal” wasn’t perfect; it did have a couple of very cheesy moments, two of which weakened the female guest star in ways that are perhaps a bit iffy (mind you, I wouldn’t agree with the extent to which Jane Clare Jones criticises the episode), and it was perhaps too self-consciously cute with its references, punning and otherwise, to Doyle’s original stories (I groaned at the “Speckled Blonde”, though I loved the hat bit). Regardless, the episode was pretty much perfect in terms of being wonderfully entertaining – and just when you thought the humour might become self-congratulatory, Sherlock throws a scene at you that works as drama, showing that for all his brilliance, the main character is deeply flawed. The series is a fan of Sherlock-as-genius, but it doesn’t make the mistake of becoming fanboyish – or -girlish, although I gather that Benedict Cumberbatch does make for rather yummy eye candy. Then again, the testosterone brigade can hardly complain after a guest starring spot by Lara Pulver that would have made Mary Whitehouse’s head explode.

Oh, and the dialogues! If you were wondering where the sparkling repartee of a The Thin Man had gone, look no further: the Beeb’s been stockpiling it, refining it and quite possibly enriching it with steroids. This exclusive trailer from The Guardian website may be a bit weird, but it has a fantastic exchange between Holmes and Watson:

So, BBC, bring it on. Give me what you’ve got. And I’ll be willing to forgive you for the wasted potential of Exile.

The future’s so bright…

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There’s something ironic about watching three one-hour films about the influence of modern technology on our lives, recorded via digital TV, and then that old technology they call “Teletext” goes on the fritz, giving us one line of subtitles every 5-10 minutes… Where are modern TVs that use the YouTube algorithm to subtitle programmes on the fly?

Anyway, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. We already had the one where the pig, ahem, and the prime minister, erm, you know. The second episode was broader in choosing its satirical targets: gamification, avatars, Nintendo WiiFit and Miis, micro-transactions, casting shows, all of those were in there. There wasn’t anything terribly original about any of the individual elements – but Brooker and his co-writer and wife Konnie Huq turned “Fifteen Million Merits” into a strangely moving, discomfiting romance with a final twist that, though again not exactly new, worked very well… and Rupert Everett makes a wonderfully hateful mirror-universe Simon Cowell.

I was very much looking forward to the third and final episode, “The Entire History of You”, as I’d been surprised to enjoy the first two as much as I did. The episode was beautifully shot and edited, and the acting was strong as well, but in the end it disappointed, more so than any of the previous ones. My biggest quibble with it is that the central conceit – in the not-too-distant future, almost everyone has an implant, the Grain, that records what people experience and allows for instant playback on any AV setup, complete with zooms and, I’d imagine, instant uploads to YouTube for all of those cute-cat/fat-kid-making-an-arse-of-himself/America’s-funniest-maulings type experiences. So far, so okay… but the entire story, centred on an insecure husband who (rightly) suspects his wife had an affair, does not really depend on the Grain. While the tech, which Black Mirror purportedly is about, may change the exact expression of the protagonist’s anxieties, the story would not have differed in any major way without it. “The National Anthem” (now with more pig!) and “Fifteen Million Merits” were about human foibles, but they depended on technology to highlight how our understanding of public vs. private, self-image, entertainment etc. are shaped by the media we use to express them. Perhaps “History”‘s point was that technology doesn’t screw up people, people screw themselves up, but after the previous episodes had made a strong point that the tech, the media, the platforms do matter, that they do shape us, that would have been a strange point to make.

Still, having watched all of Black Mirror, I’m definitely curious now about Brooker’s Big Brother-inspired, zombie-infested satire Dead Set. Apparently Davina McCall gets munched on by the undead… not that I’d wish that on any TV personality. Except perhaps Ann Coulter, but let’s face it, those brains would be a tad on the nouvelle cuisine side.

Menaced by the pause

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In Swiss cinemas, there’s almost always an intermission roughly halfway during the film. Doesn’t matter if it’s a three-hour epic or a blink-and-it’s-over chit of a comedy. Doesn’t even matter if it’s the remastered 2001: A Space Odyssey and five minutes after the cinema’s intermission (2001 – now there’s a true popcorn flick!) there’s the roadshow version’s actual intermission.

Even though I would consider myself a cinephile, I don’t hate intermissions with a vengeance. Sometimes I like having a moment to pause and think about what I’ve just seen; sometimes my bladder is grateful for them.

And sometimes they break a movie’s back, much like this:

I greatly enjoyed the first 50-60 minutes of Roman Polanski’s Carnage. The film was expertly paced, the casting near perfect (although I would’ve loved to see James Gandolfini in it), the performances strong, with just the right lightness of touch. I’m notoriously tricky when it comes to comedy, but I was laughing along with the escalating situation. And then came the break.

For all I know, without the forced interruption I would have stayed in the film. I would have enjoyed it to the end. As it was, the impetus was gone, and what remained felt clichéd, trite, predictable. Oh ho, neuroses and hypocrisy under a thin veneer of civilisation! Tee hee, the lawyer collapses when his mobile phone ends up in the vase! Giggle, snort, the wife breaks down in a sobbing wreck when her beloved handbag is thrown across the room, spilling its innards all over the floor.

Thing is, all of this – the clichés, the lack of any depth – was there in the first half… but as the film built up momentum, it felt like all of this was exactly to the point. Having had five minutes of ice cream ad projected at the screen and then to pick up where we’d left, as if nothing had happened? Carnage had turned from witty, sharp, light-of-touch comedy to leaden sitcom. The remaining 25 minutes felt longer than the almost-hour we’d already seen. Yes, it was still expertly acted, but to such obvious, hackneyed effect. Perhaps an earlier break would’ve been better, giving the film more of a chance to build up momentum again. I don’t know, but as it was I had seen two thirds of a smart, funny film, only to turn against it in the remaining half hour.

It’s difficult not to think of this piece of Zen wisdom:

P.S.: It’s difficult not to love Christoph Waltz’ performance in this, though, while disagreeing with him 99.9%.

… with a pig?!

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So… Glad that’s over. I’m not going to spout overused terms such as Jumping the Shark, but if I hadn’t known that House M.D. was waaaaay past its prime before, I definitely would know after having watched the season 7 finale. One of the advantages of being 6-12 months behind the English speaking world due to watching series on Swiss TV is that I’d already heard all the clamouring, wailing, gnashing of teeth and general lamentations concerning the season ending, so I had lowered my expectations accordingly. Not quite enough, mind you – it’s painful watching the actors trying to make the material work. Lazy writing is one thing; lazy writing that spells all the show’s facile pop psychology out is just insulting to the intelligence of the audience.

From everything I’ve heard about the eighth (and final, right? Promise?) season, it sounds like the show remains moderately, patchily watchable, but at this point it’s difficult not to wish for the actors involved to find something better that isn’t written by an infinite number of computers programmed by monkeys (and shit-flinging ones at that) and possibly IT supported by outsourced Indian monkeys. (For the record: the computers work flawlessly, even if their output is dross.)

How do you follow up a depressingly shoddy episode of House? Why, with a Channel Four satire about the UK Prime Minister coerced into having sexual intercourse with a pig, that’s how! The first episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror sounded like crass satire in a one-sentence synopsis, and the reviews I’d read were tepid at best – so I was surprised to find “The National Anthem” well written, well acted and quite thought-provoking. While the premise is satirical, the episode plays it straight and with remarkable conviction at that – which made “The National Anthem” quite a bit more unsettling than a more leering, in-your-face approach would’ve achieved.

Though the entire media satire-meets-inappropriate sexual content thing did put me in mind of one of my favourite Monty Python sketches. So, to end this post on a more amusing note:

The President has left the building…

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Phew… A while ago we finished The West Wing. Seven seasons worth of politics, drama, screwball comedy, quickfire dialogue. Is it up there with Six Feet Under or The Wire in my appreciation? Not quite, but I definitely felt sad when it was over – 150+ episodes is quite the commitment, both on the part of the audience and the series’ cast and crew, and The West Wing managed remarkably well to remain relevant throughout its run, with the exception of its lowest period after the departure of Aaron Sorkin.

I wonder what it was like for Americans to follow the series as it was first aired. As much as I liked it, it’s difficult to fully relate to The West Wing‘s patriotism, its belief in the ongoing project that is America. As a European of reasonably left-wing persuasion, and with a bi-national background to boot, I find nationalism of any ilk utterly alien, yet these characters I’ve enjoyed watching and have been rooting for – right down to Toby Ziegler, possibly the one closest to me in his political outlook on things – have a fierce pride of their nation and, more importantly, what it can be that I cannot help but find fascinating.

Apart from this almost anthropological interest in the series, though, I defy anyone to watch The West Wing and not enjoy the series’ regular cast. There were a few missteps along the way, often when it came to characters on the other side of the political spectrum – until the last two seasons, The West Wing struggled to portray realistic, credible Republicans who weren’t moustache-twirling villains or vague concessions to alternative political persuasions – but the central cast was pitch-perfect pretty much from day 1. And anyone who doesn’t enjoy Allison Janney’s CJ Cregg is no friend of mine, simple as that.

What’s next for us, series-wise? Well, we’ve got started on a rather shorter presidential show, John Adams, and it’s a joy to watch Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney (whom I used to dislike intensely, mainly due to her character in The Truman Show – she was pretty much my female David Morse), but since we’re close to the end of House M.D. season 7 (and not a moment too soon!), it’s probably time to get started on another long ‘un. Mad Men? Or should we mop up some mini-series or one-season wonders, such as I Claudius (which, in this day and age, probably should be rebooted as iClaudius) or The Prisoner? And then there’s The Killing and Five Days and, and, and… Too many series, not enough evenings and weekends. Early retirement due to too many things to watch sounds just fine to me!

Housing crisis

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If it weren’t for that meddling Hugh Laurie… Seriously, I find few things in TV land as annoying as writerly laziness – and House, M.D. has become one of the laziest shows in that respect. We’re now almost at the end of season 7 in Switzerland, and when they’re not paying attention I’m sure I keep catching the series regulars avoid each others’ looks in embarrassment. Laurie still does a good (though no longer great) job, as does Robert Sean Leonard, but you have to feel sorry for the likes of Chase, Foreman, Taub and the other hapless sidekicks.

House has rarely been a terribly original show, and part of its appeal was its utterly formulaic structure. Once you’ve seen half a dozen of episodes, you know what expects you: weird symptoms manifest themselves, the team makes a first diagnosis and starts treatment, the patient gets worse, more treatment, more escalation, the apparent solution followed by a major crisis, then House – usually while talking to Wilson – has an epiphany based on some more or less feeble pun or metaphor emerging from the conversation he’s just had and solves the case. Patient saved, in 49 out of 50 cases, otherwise cue patient’s poignant death accompanied by some melancholy singer-songwriter droning on about love and loss and dead puppies.

It’s not that the show is samey; it’s that the bits where the show could at least be somewhat different from week to week, the soap opera/comedy bits, have become really, really inept. I’ve stopped counting the moments where House says something offensive, inappropriate or weird and we get reaction shots from the other characters that could be out of a cheapo ’80s sitcom. It doesn’t help that the episode “Bombshells”, which tries (though not all that successfully) to mix up the format, does a scene parodying sitcom clichés when the actual show in business-as-usual mode delivers lazy versions of those same clichés.

At this point, as much as it pains me to say it, I am seriously thinking that House, M.D. should’ve been put down like an old, sick dog. Let Laurie move on to something where he can make better use of his talents. I’m happy if Leonard tags along. But now, giving us Olivia Wilde to look at simply isn’t enough to keep things very interesting. Sorry, Gregory – I’m just not that into you anymore.

P.S.: Is it just me, or is this music video quite possibly one of the weirdest things to result from the series?

Farewell to Oz

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We managed to finish two long works recently – first Don Quixote (I’m convinced that most people didn’t read past page 150, since almost every single reference you read or hear is to what happens in the first fifth of the novel), and then Oz, the HBO prison (melo)drama.

The series is a prototype for so many later HBO gems, The Sopranos and The Wire just two of them. It pioneered the network’s trademark adult style, with lashings of violence and sex. Its characters were often nuanced, always ambiguous, its cast of characters portrayed by actors who give it their all. I don’t regret watching the whole series, and there were very strong moments throughout.

All of which is building up to faint praise, to be quite honest. The series’ grasp exceeded its reach – which in itself isn’t that much of a problem, but what really rankles is how Oz seems to think itself more astute, more perceptive on the evils of the American penal system than it really is. It is too infatuated with its own running commentary and social critique, and it displays the tendency towards hysteria in its storylines and presentation that Spike Lee is prone to. It’s easy enough to forgive this in Lee’s films of the late ’80s and early ’90s, but to find the same tricks used over and over in a series in the late ’90s and early 21st century… well, it makes the series look hokey.

More than that, though, Oz could have been much stronger and held up much better to its successors if it had been two or three seasons rather than the full six seasons it lasted. Its social critique started off as hit-and-miss, often facile rather than perceptive, and this only increased as the series went on. By the time we got to the last couple of seasons, many storylines were thin and fraying at the edges; what kept us watching wasn’t the commentary on prison and how it often achieves an effect that is the opposite of what is intended, but the soap opera. Would Beecher find happiness in his relationship with charming sociopath Keller? Would McManus finally manage to have an adult relationship and not turn into a dick towards a woman he clearly likes? Would Schillinger finally accept that no one knows how to pronounce his name correctly? And as with daytime soaps, the episodic plots were sordid, tacky, maudlin: Rebadow takes up playing the lottery because his son is dying of leucaemia! Alvarez’ wife is divorcing him and fucking his brother! Did I care? Yes – but in a distanced, not particularly involved way.

The final season was a mess of barely begun, half finished ideas and storylines. Dead characters from past seasons were brought back to add their voice to Augustus Hill’s – and then that idea was dropped. New characters were introduced for no apparent reason, almost as if the producers were pretending that Oz wasn’t coming to an end. There were powerful moments – Cyril’s almost-execution – but others were as silly as the series’ worst excesses. (Kirk and Hoyt believing they’re possessed by the devil – WTF?!) The prison production of Macbeth (and the running gag of replacing the actors because they keep dying off) was forgotten for most of the season, even if it was used effectively to stage one character’s death.

All things considered, though, this is one Oz I’m unlikely to revisit. I’ve seen Six Feet Under three times (and am gearing up for a fourth). Same with The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood – even Carnivale and Rome. I’m unlikely to go back to Oz Penitentiary any time soon, though. I guess what we had here was a failure to communicate, eh?

The past is a foreign country…

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… they do things better there.

Or at least Paul Abbott did. I’ve obliquely alluded to my dissatisfaction with his recent BBC miniseries Exile before – very obliquely, so much so that I was hardly able to find the reference – and out of the recent spate of BBC drama it was the weakest. In spite of a good cast and great first episode, it was predictable, lazily characterised and didn’t do anything we hadn’t seen before. This was especially disappointing because eight years ago Paul Abbott had written another BBC miniseries, also starring John Simm, and that one was smart, exciting and kept me guessing pretty much throughout. It was called State of Play, and yes, if that title rings a bell, it’s because Hollywood turned it into a movie remake.

I’m currently re-watching State of Play and can attest that it stands up well even at a second viewing, where Exile didn’t even survive a first viewing intact. It’s got a great, varied cast both of old hands and fresh faces (and bringing together John Simm and Philip Glenister years before Life on Mars), and it was directed with pace and style by a certain David Yates who would later bring out the gloomiest in the halls of Hogwarts.

The series isn’t perfect – I can’t remember how it ends, but I do remember that the ending fell somewhat flat when we first watched it a few years ago. (I also remember a number of episodes of Cracker that started much better than they ended, while I’m at it.) But in terms of zippy, clever entertainment produced UK talent at the top of their game, it’s well worth watching. And hey, it’s got Polly Walker, Kelly McDonald, James McAvoy, Bill Nighy… Definitely something for most tastes – plus, at least Amazon.co.uk is selling it for £4. At this rate you need a very good excuse not to give it a try, eh?

This advertising was brought to you by a guy who wants the Beeb to do as well as they’ve shown they can, over and over. Because, as much as I like HBO, every now and then I bet those Brit actors are quite happy to head home, visit their families, have a cuppa with their ageing mum and use their original accents.

P.S.: I can’t say anything about the film version’s quality, but at least they decided to stay stylish when they replaced the editor-in-chief played by Bill Nighy with the Queen of British acting herself, Helen Mirren. (Isn’t it time for her and Judi Dench to star in a buddy cop comedy or in anything, really, since their last co-operation seems to have been a Peter Hall Midsummer Night’s Dream?)

Visiting with my Auntie Beeb

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The casts the BBC gets for its dramas are amazing. Look at The Hour: Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai, Dominic West, Anna Chancellor, Juliet Stevenson. Look at Page Eight: Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz. It’s as if the good old British Broadcasting Company had some dirt on all of those people, saucy negatives from last year’s Christmas party when everyone got sloshed and made an ass of themselves.

The production values are equally great; especially in HD (yes, the city where we live finally seems to have updated its telecom cables to glass fibres!), these series look gorgeous and crisp. Perhaps not quite on par with the best that HBO has to offer, but that may be British understatement versus trans-American grandiosity. Also, look at the writers and directors: veterans of such quality drama as Cracker, State of Play, the guy who adapted The Hours and The Reader to the great pleasure of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Let me stress that I greatly enjoyed watching both The Hour and Page Eight. They’re quality entertainment, and you could do a lot worse than to check these out. It’s a shame, though, that compared to everything else about recent BBC drama, the acting, directing and production values, the writing is decidedly weaker. There are a lot of nice exchanges in The Hour, and I’ve liked Page Eight‘s dialogues more than some of the David Hare I’ve seen on stage, but apart from the dialogues the writing in both of these is relatively lazy. They rely on clichés (of plotting as well as characterisation) without twisting them into something more interesting, and in striving for relevance both dramas go for facile analogy. Obviously, in some ways the Suez crisis and Anthony Eden’s stance may lend itself to parallels to more recent adventures in the Arab world that Britain, in an effort to be (or at least appear) Great again, got involved in, but the parallels evoked by The Hour are hamfisted and not a little smug – and most definitely not as clever as the writers seem to think… and that is ignoring some of the more tin-eared anachronisms in the writing. (I am by no means a stickler for 100% historical accuracy, but some effort should be put in maintaining the illusion of past times.)

Page Eight was perhaps not as guilty of clumsy allegorisation, but that’s only because it wasn’t set in the past. Its parallels to recent and current events weren’t subtextual (albeit in 96-point, bolded, underlined and italicised font, as in The Hour), but they were no more incisive or illuminating for that. As soon as Hare strayed from character drama into politics, his script felt like so many Guardian editorials mashed up into a one-and-a-half hour statement on Britain’s behaviour during and after the WMD affair. Do I think they had a point in their indictment of how Blair and his government behaved? Absolutely. Do I think they added anything worthwhile to the discussion? Not really. Other cribbing from recent events (such as Rachel Weisz’s brother, a clear Rachel Corrie stand-in) were as blunt but unproductive – and that’s not even getting started on the ill-advised Spring-Autumn romance that the script develops between Weisz’ and Nighy’s characters, that the film only barely pulls off without major embarrassment because of the acting of its two leads.

So, Auntie Beeb, in case you’re reading this (yeah, right…): next time round, keep the great actors – but put some money aside for better scripts. Don’t be too self-congratulatory, don’t be too clumsily eager to go for relevance, if you risk ending up trite and obvious. Don’t think you’re smarter than you are, because you risk yourself looking dumb and your audience feeling patronised. Check out other recent British TV drama, such as Low Winter Sun. Tell your authors not to write opinion pieces on modern politics thinly veiled as drama. You’re there 90% of the way – now make the effort and get the plots and writing right as well.

(… writes the guy who doesn’t even pay a licence fee in the UK.)

Who are you “Oh aye, laddie”-ing, you ****ing ****?

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If The West Wing occupies one end of the galaxy of TV shows on politics, The Thick of It is pretty much at the opposite end. The two shows share a couple of things, not least of which their complete insistence on being about words first and foremost – but if The West Wing maintains a fundamental idealism about politics, The Thick of It is the horrific Mr Hyde to its Dr Jekyll.

It is also one of the most witheringly foul-mouthed, funniest comedies I’ve seen in a long time.

Watching an episode of each series side by side, it’s difficult not to come down with a case of TV whiplash: the BBC series practically squelches with cynicism towards British politics, the political establishment and the individuals who make it up. Whenever there is a moment where a character’s fundamental decency comes through for a moment, it’s soon covered with generous lashings of craven baseness, selfishness, cowardice and stupidity. I’ve rarely seen anything as misanthropic, and as sweary, as this series.

The strange thing is: usually I would avoid any such programme like the plague. I tend to find genuine cynicism facile and tedious, I’m way too much of a pinko liberal do-gooder wannabe, and swearing for the sake of it bores me. Yet The Thick of It‘s Malcolm Tucker, one of the most memorable television creations… well… ever – he elevates swearing to an art form. Watching him have a go at someone makes me dream of an operatic duet between Peter Capaldi’s Tucker and Ian McShane’s Al Swearengen. It’d be fucking Verdi. People used to say that David Mamet (God bless his little converted-to-the Tea Party socks…) uses swearing as if it were a jazz riff – well, working from that, Malcolm Tucker is Charlie Parker. He knows when to improvise like a nightingale on speed and when to go for the kick-in-the-nuts simplicity of the oldest put-down in the book.

In fact, I was so dazzled by his verbal-vulgar dexteriarrhea that it took me several episodes to realise that he isn’t smarter than everyone else in the series – he’s simply a potty-mouth virtuoso with the instincts of a shark.

Even with Malcolm Tucker as its main asset, the series is not flawless. Any individual episode is basically identical to any other episode – the plot details change, but they don’t matter. It wouldn’t work in 40-minute instalments – the episodes are short enough for the audience not to register that everything’s caught in an eternal loop. (Ironically, In the Loop is the title of the series’ movie spin-off, and that one works pretty well at way over 40 minutes.) The series knows, though, why it works and it plays to its strengths, at least for the first season. (I’ve yet to watch, or even obtain, any season beyond that. I saw and enjoyed one episode from season 3 on a long cross-Atlantic flight and vastly enjoyed it, almost choking on the god-awful British Airways food trying not to laugh too loudly.)

It’s best, though, to end this with a few choice words from the Master himself.