So another week where I'm drastically behind on actually posting these things on the day I promise myself that I will. It's good to see that I'm just as ridiculously inept at posting for this blog as I am for my other one, because if there's anything that the blog-reading public like, it's consistency. I'm up in Scotland as I write this. So, on the iPlayer this week:
TOLSTOY. Now, I've never read War and Peace, I dislike pacificsm and my Russian history isn't that great. So I don't actually know a great deal about Tolstoy, but my mother recommended that I watch 'The Last Station' last year (a film about his final days) and I didn't get the chance to see it, which annoyed me. So the BBC showed a two-part Imagine about his life. And then The Last Staion.
I recall not being allowed to go and see The Last Station at the cinema because I tried to get into an over-50's only showing, and not realising this, I was essentially told to bugger off. But that's a different and mildly annoying story, as I've said.
But now things are different. Now I am all learned up on my Tolstoy, still without ever having read one of his books. I shall try to give War And Peace a go, but it'll probably have to be when I'm locked up without any distractions, like an internet connection.
Basically, my brother suggested that War and Peace can be summed up in 'People find that life is rubbish, then they discover God and all is well'.
However, given its context with the Napoleonic wars, I think I'll have to check it out at some point, if only to say that I have in fact read it.
Tolstoy's life seemed to be a completely at-odds one, with this dosucmentary and movie trying to prove just that. He said one thing and lived another in many ways, he was a keen hypocrite (just like myself) and is regarded as one of the most controversial figures in Russian history, which sounds like an almost enviable position. He both loved and loathed his wife, he adored and disowned his children, he couldn't stop writing and he hated every word he put to paper.
In the end, he said that the only thing that is important to humans is love, for only love can bring us out of the darkness that is the human condition.
In Tolstoyan fashion, I completely agree with every word he says and know that I will never attempt to practice this. We are what we are, us flawed humans.
And writers.
SILK.
Tuned into Silk a few weeks ago when it started and I was almost instantly put off by the overwhelming sense of female empowerment, slow story plotting and difficult to understand referances. However, after the first fifteen minutes I found myself actually riveted by the story, no matter how slow it was.
By the second episode I was pretty damn keen to get to watching it, I began to feel that I hadn't been this enthusiastic about a BBC show since Luther, and that's frickin' saying something. The setting grew on me, a sort of serene observer's world where the actual reality of crime doesn't matter. This is the QC's world.
As for the characters, Maxine Peake's Martha Costello is obviously the glue that holds the show together, and I felt it appropriate that she was left out of the main subplot, but at the same time I felt that the pregnancy story was out of place (simply adding to the undesireable female empowerment angle). Rupert Penry-Jones' Clive Reader was great, I felt quite warm to his character, who is basically the high-priced barrister equivelent of the snivelling gutter-rat. Add in the pupils, Tom Hughes and Natalie Dormer (beyond hot), and you've got a pretty well rounded cast going on. The only thing I didn't really like was Billy's ridiculous pink tie. But then I've never liked ties.
That's not to say that the first series of this promising show didn't have problems. It took an age to get anywhere, why did Mark Draper appear for two different crimes? There's enough bureacracy in the Criminal Court world to simply have it as a related event. The character of Gary Rush was also criminally underused (pun intended), since he was the only thing in the show which actually had a dangerous edge to it. The resolution of the show could have used some serious work, as well. Naturally we get a decision on Martha's Silk application, but we didn't get to know which student survived the process or anything beyond 'sit down and shut up' for the secondary story.
So yes, I eagerly await the second season, if there is one, and hope that Peter Moffat has taken this onboard. Y'know, as if someone of his stature actually reads my blog.
Mext time I shall talk about: GARROW'S LAW.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Saturday, 26 March 2011
C24
So in the world of television this week I have... actually, I haven't had much of a chance to watch much TV because I've been working too much on my own television drama script that was due to be handed in yesterday. I got it in and then had to catch a train, so the iPlayer and I haven't seen each other in a while.
However, there is comedy.
It's good to see RUSSELL HOWARD and his GOOD NEWS are back, they're a welcome return to the line-up for the next eight or so weeks. Russell has always been an odd one, his humour is somewhere between a political activist and a hyperactive ten-year-old, but it certainly works in its own context. Ever since he left Mock The Week (which has been somewhat up in the air ever since the departure of Frankie Boyle), I feel Russ has been in flux.
New BBC Four comedy with Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Hynes and the soothing tones of David Tennant, TWENTY TWELVE, deals with the semi-corporate semi-government office bollocks of the buildup to the 2012 London Olympics and I for one am watching avidly. Also new on BBC Three is WHITE VAN MAN. I initially thought this would be rubbish, but after having given the first episdoe a go... I'm sure I'll watch the next one when it's online.
I also gave BECOMING HUMAN a go, and only got to watch the first 15 minutes before my connection screwed up. So is it just repeating Being Human, but with younger people? If so, I'm not sure what the point is...
SILK is still enjoyable to me. However, as promised:
OUTCASTS.
Oh, you could have been so much more. You definately should have been so much more. Now normally when something's good, praise goes to the Director, and when something's bad, hate gets levelled at the Writer. That's just the way of things, I don't much like it, since I'm a writer, but that's how it is. In this case, however, I'm all for following that example.
Ben Richards.
In the last few years, Richards has been working on stuff that has always dissapointed me. He headed up both this and an ITV show called THE FIXER, after his stint on SPOOKS. He continues to occasionally work on Spooks and that's probably his best work, even though I'm not an avid watcher, I probably should be at some point. The Fixer was based around a man released from prison in order to be a Government sanctioned Hitman that nobody talked about. I mean, how do you screw up a show about a Government sanctioned Hitman? Make it sodding boring, that's how. The show never captured its true potential, despite a great cast and a great premise, it was always lacking in the story department.
And now Outcasts. Humans are living on a 'Goldilocks' planet (somewhere that's 'just right' enough to support human life), and have set up what they hope to be an idyllic little colony, but naturally things are going awry. Why else would it be the focus of a television show. It's a very 'white/beige' show, with all the backdrops being set against quite pale landscape, which contrasts reasonably well with the dark greys and browns of the settlement of Forthaven and the drab, practical-looking costumes of our protagonists. The coloured sections on the guns are a bit weird, however. We start off with the arrival of a new transport ship from Earth who's captain is sending out the signal of:
'Is that a human voice out there?'
Well, that sounds like a decent way to open a science fiction series, but since there are no aliens in the sphere of human knowledge at the start of the series, it does make you wonder why the hell Richards thought that would be an unambiguous opening line. The first episode then goes on to introduce us to a slew of characters that we'll never see again, including the best actor they had, Battlestar Galactica's Jamie Bamber. I mean, what's the point of getting Apollo in, giving him the most interesting part in the whole series, then offing him at the end of the first episode? The rest of the cast are... adequate to poor in terms of performance, with points for Liam Cunningham.
The character of Julius Berger, played by the show's only American (Eric Mabius), was woefully poorly written, flitting between over-hammed up religious icon to ultra-cloak-and-dagger political damp cloth, all the while never quite escaping the shadow of Battlestar Galactica's Giaus Baltar, someone who pulled it off a great deal better.
Naturally, there's plenty of things in this series that made it feel like it was just trying to emulate BSG, as well as a host of other, more successful science-fiction dramas, but at the end of it, this show did nothing to break away from their shadow. Outcasts could have been good, but it simply wasn't, it just wasn't given the chance to be good.
And that bothers me. It's science-fiction, the most important of all genres. And more importantly it's British science-fiction that doesn't revolve around an eccentric vagabond in a time travelling blue box. Surely we should make an effort to establish British sci-fi that isn't Doctor Who? Surely we should try harder than this? But apparently not, not as long as Ben Richards has his way.
Next time I bitch about: SILK.
However, there is comedy.
It's good to see RUSSELL HOWARD and his GOOD NEWS are back, they're a welcome return to the line-up for the next eight or so weeks. Russell has always been an odd one, his humour is somewhere between a political activist and a hyperactive ten-year-old, but it certainly works in its own context. Ever since he left Mock The Week (which has been somewhat up in the air ever since the departure of Frankie Boyle), I feel Russ has been in flux.
New BBC Four comedy with Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Hynes and the soothing tones of David Tennant, TWENTY TWELVE, deals with the semi-corporate semi-government office bollocks of the buildup to the 2012 London Olympics and I for one am watching avidly. Also new on BBC Three is WHITE VAN MAN. I initially thought this would be rubbish, but after having given the first episdoe a go... I'm sure I'll watch the next one when it's online.
I also gave BECOMING HUMAN a go, and only got to watch the first 15 minutes before my connection screwed up. So is it just repeating Being Human, but with younger people? If so, I'm not sure what the point is...
SILK is still enjoyable to me. However, as promised:
OUTCASTS.
Oh, you could have been so much more. You definately should have been so much more. Now normally when something's good, praise goes to the Director, and when something's bad, hate gets levelled at the Writer. That's just the way of things, I don't much like it, since I'm a writer, but that's how it is. In this case, however, I'm all for following that example.
Ben Richards.
In the last few years, Richards has been working on stuff that has always dissapointed me. He headed up both this and an ITV show called THE FIXER, after his stint on SPOOKS. He continues to occasionally work on Spooks and that's probably his best work, even though I'm not an avid watcher, I probably should be at some point. The Fixer was based around a man released from prison in order to be a Government sanctioned Hitman that nobody talked about. I mean, how do you screw up a show about a Government sanctioned Hitman? Make it sodding boring, that's how. The show never captured its true potential, despite a great cast and a great premise, it was always lacking in the story department.
And now Outcasts. Humans are living on a 'Goldilocks' planet (somewhere that's 'just right' enough to support human life), and have set up what they hope to be an idyllic little colony, but naturally things are going awry. Why else would it be the focus of a television show. It's a very 'white/beige' show, with all the backdrops being set against quite pale landscape, which contrasts reasonably well with the dark greys and browns of the settlement of Forthaven and the drab, practical-looking costumes of our protagonists. The coloured sections on the guns are a bit weird, however. We start off with the arrival of a new transport ship from Earth who's captain is sending out the signal of:
'Is that a human voice out there?'
Well, that sounds like a decent way to open a science fiction series, but since there are no aliens in the sphere of human knowledge at the start of the series, it does make you wonder why the hell Richards thought that would be an unambiguous opening line. The first episode then goes on to introduce us to a slew of characters that we'll never see again, including the best actor they had, Battlestar Galactica's Jamie Bamber. I mean, what's the point of getting Apollo in, giving him the most interesting part in the whole series, then offing him at the end of the first episode? The rest of the cast are... adequate to poor in terms of performance, with points for Liam Cunningham.
The character of Julius Berger, played by the show's only American (Eric Mabius), was woefully poorly written, flitting between over-hammed up religious icon to ultra-cloak-and-dagger political damp cloth, all the while never quite escaping the shadow of Battlestar Galactica's Giaus Baltar, someone who pulled it off a great deal better.
Naturally, there's plenty of things in this series that made it feel like it was just trying to emulate BSG, as well as a host of other, more successful science-fiction dramas, but at the end of it, this show did nothing to break away from their shadow. Outcasts could have been good, but it simply wasn't, it just wasn't given the chance to be good.
And that bothers me. It's science-fiction, the most important of all genres. And more importantly it's British science-fiction that doesn't revolve around an eccentric vagabond in a time travelling blue box. Surely we should make an effort to establish British sci-fi that isn't Doctor Who? Surely we should try harder than this? But apparently not, not as long as Ben Richards has his way.
Next time I bitch about: SILK.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Wolf-Shaped Bullet
So this is my second entry into the blogging world, sort of a companion blog to my first blog, although Christ alone knows why I thought I had the readership to justify this. So if anyone is paying attention, this blog will be about my love for television and more specifically the BBC iPlayer, which is something I value a bit more than oxygen these days.
In each post I will discuss things I've watched lately and what I thought about them, and with each post I'll talk about a series or season overall, probably one I've got on DVD or have seen recently or something. So, on with it.
Lately I've been quite impressed with SILK, that's been a slow-building but excellently written and beautifully characterful series about a Chamber of Barristers in London. It's a world that I don't know much about, in fact I could probably tell you more about American Trial Law than I could British, but that's just television for you.
For those that were unfortunate enough to watch OUTCASTS, I'll comment on that next time around, unless something more important crops up, but for this week, I'm gonna talk about that one particular little series that could, that has just come to the end of its third season.
BEING HUMAN.
So three years ago I heard vague mention of a series about a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost all living in a flat together and how everyone was saying that it was really funny and really good. I didn't see the first season at the time, but I caught it on the iPlayer later when they were gearing up for the second season and I can honestly say that I had some incredibly lukewarm feelings towards it.
Yes, the idea was good, the acting seemed to be pretty enjoyable and the basic stories were solid, but the problem to me was that they always felt like they were 40-minute stories stretched out to a 60-minute timeslot. This problem carried over into the second season but I was innured to it by the time that came around and I don't think it was an issue at all in the third season. I really felt like the show had got into its swing by season 3.
It felt as if the writers were also never quite sure how important to make Nina, since she was supporting at first, then massively important before suddenly disappearing and then being re-introduced Deus Ex Machina style for the end of the second season. Again, with the third, she'd settled into being the ferocious little house mother that we know she should have been all along, fitting in between George and Annie in that regard.
Mitchell had that weird conundrum of being sort of out of place with the other characters, but at the same time being the most interesting of them all, which is one of the things that has kept the show going this long.
The problem for me has always been the bad guys. Don't get me wrong, Herrick is brilliant. We love Herrick as a character, he works very, very well and he was the best thing about season 1. But was he the right choice for season 3?
Of course, the less said about Kemp and Jaggart the better, I don't know who thought that storyline was going to be in any way cathartic or useful, but they were downright wrong. Think they needed a copy of Hunter: The Vigil in order to get their heads around their own characters, it probably would have come in useful. They felt very out of place and as soon as they were gone we had no more use for them and they disappeared from the plot all together, because they didn't belong there in the first place. While a human antagonist is certainly a good idea, it needed a hell of a lot of work.
Being Human's biggest crime has always been, however, its season finales. Season 1 finale got to the climax about 15 minutes early, then had to pad it out with 15 minutes of talking, saying the same thing three times, and then getting to the good stuff, which was about as rewarding as finally getting your piece of birthday cake after someone's thrown up on it. The season 2 finale might as well have been 8 weeks of the most intense sexual chemistry you've ever experianced and then being stood up at the last minute, resulting in the most painful blue-balling known to man.
But now...?
Season 3 finished and the ending... the ending was just right. Oh, there was a bit of monologuing at the end, but by that point we'd already had our payoff and we were ahead of the game. This season finale was exactly what the doctor ordered, it pretty much makes up for the entire collection of faults the show had accrued by that point and it didn't over-stretch itself. We finally have a conclusion to the Box-Tunnel 20 storyline, which in itself was probably the best story idea that they'd ever come up with. So, Toby Whithouse, you managed to pull it off. And I wasn't sure that you actually had it in you...
Next week we talk about OUTCASTS.
In each post I will discuss things I've watched lately and what I thought about them, and with each post I'll talk about a series or season overall, probably one I've got on DVD or have seen recently or something. So, on with it.
Lately I've been quite impressed with SILK, that's been a slow-building but excellently written and beautifully characterful series about a Chamber of Barristers in London. It's a world that I don't know much about, in fact I could probably tell you more about American Trial Law than I could British, but that's just television for you.
For those that were unfortunate enough to watch OUTCASTS, I'll comment on that next time around, unless something more important crops up, but for this week, I'm gonna talk about that one particular little series that could, that has just come to the end of its third season.
BEING HUMAN.
So three years ago I heard vague mention of a series about a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost all living in a flat together and how everyone was saying that it was really funny and really good. I didn't see the first season at the time, but I caught it on the iPlayer later when they were gearing up for the second season and I can honestly say that I had some incredibly lukewarm feelings towards it.
Yes, the idea was good, the acting seemed to be pretty enjoyable and the basic stories were solid, but the problem to me was that they always felt like they were 40-minute stories stretched out to a 60-minute timeslot. This problem carried over into the second season but I was innured to it by the time that came around and I don't think it was an issue at all in the third season. I really felt like the show had got into its swing by season 3.
It felt as if the writers were also never quite sure how important to make Nina, since she was supporting at first, then massively important before suddenly disappearing and then being re-introduced Deus Ex Machina style for the end of the second season. Again, with the third, she'd settled into being the ferocious little house mother that we know she should have been all along, fitting in between George and Annie in that regard.
Mitchell had that weird conundrum of being sort of out of place with the other characters, but at the same time being the most interesting of them all, which is one of the things that has kept the show going this long.
The problem for me has always been the bad guys. Don't get me wrong, Herrick is brilliant. We love Herrick as a character, he works very, very well and he was the best thing about season 1. But was he the right choice for season 3?
Of course, the less said about Kemp and Jaggart the better, I don't know who thought that storyline was going to be in any way cathartic or useful, but they were downright wrong. Think they needed a copy of Hunter: The Vigil in order to get their heads around their own characters, it probably would have come in useful. They felt very out of place and as soon as they were gone we had no more use for them and they disappeared from the plot all together, because they didn't belong there in the first place. While a human antagonist is certainly a good idea, it needed a hell of a lot of work.
Being Human's biggest crime has always been, however, its season finales. Season 1 finale got to the climax about 15 minutes early, then had to pad it out with 15 minutes of talking, saying the same thing three times, and then getting to the good stuff, which was about as rewarding as finally getting your piece of birthday cake after someone's thrown up on it. The season 2 finale might as well have been 8 weeks of the most intense sexual chemistry you've ever experianced and then being stood up at the last minute, resulting in the most painful blue-balling known to man.
But now...?
Season 3 finished and the ending... the ending was just right. Oh, there was a bit of monologuing at the end, but by that point we'd already had our payoff and we were ahead of the game. This season finale was exactly what the doctor ordered, it pretty much makes up for the entire collection of faults the show had accrued by that point and it didn't over-stretch itself. We finally have a conclusion to the Box-Tunnel 20 storyline, which in itself was probably the best story idea that they'd ever come up with. So, Toby Whithouse, you managed to pull it off. And I wasn't sure that you actually had it in you...
Next week we talk about OUTCASTS.
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