New Blood

We can't help thinking this was made for BBC3 and, now that the channel has gone online, has found an uncomfortable home at 9pm on BBC1.  Writer Anthony Horowitz was responsible for 'Foyle's War', but is best known as a children's author, and he has definitely pitched this at a young and liberal audience.  The heroes are twenty-something, ethnic minority, professional Brits battling evil Big Pharma and the powers that be who have invested in them.  There are weekly stories within a series narrative establishing a buddy-buddy relationship that generally feels like it's based on banter scripted by a middle-aged man, which of-course it is.

As a 7pm BBC3 offering it would pass muster, but the gimmicky filming and the making light of serious issues are a bad fit on the flagship channel at prime time.

Mapp & Lucia

Another drama that pretty much eschewed younger actors and characters (see earlier) was Steve Pemberton's adaptation of EF Benson's Mapp & Lucia.

Previously adapted in the 1980s with Prunella Scales, Geraldine McEwan & Nigel Hawthorne (which neither of us saw), the new version had Miranda Richardson, Anna Chancellor, and Pemberton as Mapp, Lucia, and Lucia's friend Georgie Pillson. 

Lucia and Georgie move to Tilling to spend the summer, Lucia renting a property from Mapp.  An undeclared war then breaks out between the Mapp & Lucia over social influence in the community, with each resorting to dirty tricks to get one up on the other.

In the age of Instagram and Facebook and the sort of social boasting that those two offer it feels very relevant, even through it's 1920s & 30s. 

The other great thing was that it gave meaty roles to a whole host of great actors, like Felicity Montagu, Poppy Miller, Paul Ritter, and Gemma Whelan.

Most credit must go to long-term EF Benson fan Steve Pemberton both for the idea to adapt the stories again, and for coming up with such a brilliant script.  It almost makes you wish that the powers that be give over a special part of the commissioning budget to former members of The League of Gentlemen, given the quality of work that has come from Pemberton, Mark Gatiss (though we remain skeptical of 'Sherlock)', Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson, and also seek out similarly talented bands of writer-performers to conceive new shows. 

We only got 3 episodes, but given the wealth of material in the original six books, and the flexibility of the concept, we hope that there will be many more to come (there were 10 episodes in the 80s)

Fleming

Fleming is the new 3 part dramatisation of Ian Fleming's life up to the writing of Casino Royale.  It opens with Fleming and his wife swimming in Jamaica, then returing to Goldeneye, for him to finish the manuscript.  In this first five minutes you had the two main problems: first it's showing off its big budget Bond-ness in a pointless (but beautiful) underwater scene, and then the final line, "The bitch is dead now" being typed out, clunk, clunk, clunk....

Ideally this would be like a 'wartime James Bond' - surely someone must have pitched this - but since Fleming wasn't Bond himself (Bond was more a composite of many agents that Fleming had met - Sydney Cotton, Fitzroy Maclean, Dusan Popov and others) instead we get a series that joins the major dramatic dots in Fleming's life, close to accounts like Andrew Lycett's Ian Fleming.

Acting and dialogue is fine within these parameters, and it's not for us to say TWNH, because these things did happen, but we can definitely say TWNH to scenes like Fleming walking into Admiral John Godfrey's office and giving an elevator pitch for two ideas in 30 seconds, one of which was Operation Mincemeat. 

Another problem is that Fleming wasn't likeable or even sympathetic, except maybe as an overshadowed younger brother.  The final problem is that it's just not very interesting or watchable. 

Fleming wasn't Bond, but was a genuine war hero, and there could have been a good, shorter drama if it had focussed on things like Mincemeat, but it's too concerned in showing the details of his personal life, while making visual nods to Bond at every opportunity.  We won't say  it's shaky and not stirring, we'll stick with it's a shame.

Hidden (episode two) *spoilers*

OK, not quite so chic....

Gripping.  Everyone’s grubby, and the plot’s enormous.

But, a couple of pedant’s points:

•  The newsreader’s scorn at the PM’s activities didn’t sound professional, more like Paxman in overdrive.

• Would the Helpdesk allow their Clean Skins to operate in the UK?  For the uninitiated, or those confused or forgetful, that translates as: would the shady pseudo-establishment outfit allow the criminals they’d officially killed, but unofficially kept alive as state assassins, to do their stuff in the UK?  What are the chances they’d bump into someone who knew them?  In this small world of ours, we’d say pretty high and it’s the premise of the whole show after all….

As for Anna Chancellor, she gets our vote, for being far more smartly turned out and downright chic than any woman MP we can think of, and for looking so darned comfortable and confident on that sofa while plotting a coup.  You’ve come a long way, Duck Face!

Hidden *spoilers*

With Walter Bernstein of Watergate fame as one of the creative team behind this, you wouldn't be expecting a cosy caper, and the first episode delivered pretty much what you'd think: violence, corruption, sex and drugs, which translate, of-course, into 'gritty, dark, urban thriller'.  The setting is a fictional, contemporary Britain, where the coalition government is crumbling amid schisms and allegations, while on the streets, protests at austerity measures turn into riots.  Did I say 'fictional'?

Philip Glenister is Harry Venn, classic staple of political/noir thrillers, the slightly seedy solicitor with dodgy connections and a murky past.  With a lippy, casual office junior, he's a PI gumshoe in all but name.  There's a mysterious woman representing a shady client who needs his help.  It goes without saying he'd rather sleep with her - she even looks a little like Lauren Bacall.  Then there's the link with his supposedly murdered brother, his own criminal past and his wayward son.  This has four leisurely hours to unravel, but the writing so far is snappy enough and thankfully it's not quite as in love with itself as was 'The Shadow Line'.

Thekla Reuten is the obligatory sex bomb - in the noir world, you understand - Gina Hawkes.  Why are they always foreign?  Would British automatically mean Maureen from Skegness?  Apologies to Maureens from Skegness, many of whom may be shoe-ins for femmes fatales at auditions, I grant you.  Anna Chancellor as a political shaker is so constantly onscreen these days playing the savvy, world-weary operator that she must have been asked to stand for Parliament by now.


As usual, the details don't bear too much scrutiny.  Would Harry really be left alone with a prisoner and able to physically intimidate him?  Is he really so irresistible to women that his dumped girlfriend and his ex-wife offer themselves up?  (You know his leading lady can't be more than three episodes behind them....)  Fans of Mr G would say yes, but his character so far offers little to add to his looks.  And before anyone can think 'Gene Hunt' let alone talk about firing up the Quattro, here's Harry having flashbacks of being the victim of a Gene-like interview, involving blood and bruises.  The bad old days aren't so good, in this case, after all. 

So far, then, so could-go-either-way.  Since the end of last night's episode involved an explosion aimed at our (anti?) hero, we're hoping the only way is up. 

The Final Hour

We liked the performances more and more, but still couldn't care less what happened to the characters.  This, we think, was down to good actors struggling in vain with a clunky, leaden script. We're reluctant to criticize Abi Morgan, when there are (still) so few front-rank women writers in television, but if she has a passion for the 1950s, it wasn't on show.  Storylines were wrapped up neatly enough, but with careful 21st Century sensibilities and without any real sense of climax.  The horse race satire was too long and frankly dull and the flat revelations about Ruth Elmes were uninvolving to viewers who had glimpsed her only briefly in episode one.


A second series is apparently planned, set in 1957.  Lets hope that if it continues to be dogged by 'Mad Men' comparisons, it is able to live up to them this time and show a strong, unsentimental love of what it's portraying, rather than a trite trip through dramatic cliches.


***


Oh and we read that Rafe Spall is proud of his performance in 'The Shadow Line'.  He also says he admires Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis, which explains a lot.  You can act, Mr Spall, but please keep it a wee bit smaller?

Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Politics

After posting yesterday , we looked around and saw other reviews prompted by the halfway mark of episode 3.  Opinions vary, unsurprisingly, with general positives about its style and cast and some negatives about its being slightly flat and the historical inaccuracies.  So far, so expected and fair.

What disturbed were the many sneering jibes about the BBC, or more specifically the BBC's 'woolly liberal' tag.  We agree wholeheartedly that many dramas - including this one - have essentially modern characters in period dress, and that it is neither accurate nor helpful to depict falsehoods as fact, even within the confines of a drama's 'internal reality'.  However, it genuinely didn't occur to us to assume that the programme makers had some kind of political axe to grind here, and it's both distasteful and worrying that some loud posters (loud onscreen, anyway) are so quick to be so scathing.

Perhaps we're naive, and certainly (Ali) must claim some bias as an ex-BBC employee, but before the jeering mob leap into action, let it just be said that knocking the BBC is an occupational pastime for most of its employees - bad management, overpriced canteen, terrible output (in other departments, of-course), dingy workspaces, rubbish studio equipment etc.  In that sense, little has changed since the 1950s, we would guess, except that modern employees are more vociferous in their moans and complaints.  What most staff also seemed to share, though, was a commitment to public broadcasting generally and a belief in trying to produce the best and most eclectic output possible.  The results are hit-and-miss, unsurprisingly, and pretty much anything that espouses a political point of view via a sympathetic or unsympathetic character could be accused of being propaganda.  If there is left-leaning at the Corporation, it didn't stop them falling foul of a Labour administration, nor did it prevent them allowing the BNP a slot on 'Question Time'.

We groan about licence fee rises as much as the next person, but imagine life without public service broadcasting, or just visit a country without it.  Why quibble about paying less than the average lottery player spends on losing tickets each year for hours of programmes, some of which are undeniably entertaining, educational and excellent television.

Too Many Telephones - The Hour Pt 3

I'm liking the way The Hour is progressing (writes Dan).

The look - certainly the look of the people - feels right, and the plot is progressing a lot faster than lots of other dramas, especially Mad Men.

However one TWNH point is that there are too many telephones!  There would never be a telephone in a guest's bathroom in a big house in the 1950s.  Heck, even in Dallas the house only had one phone, and that was in America in the 1980s!  The scenes with Freddie on the phone to the office, checking up on Kish, shouldn't have happened - the writer should have found another way to manage the way the story moved forward.  It's just a sign that writers these days find it very hard to write for a world before mobile phones.

However that's not enough to put us off - we're still watching!

Ahem!  Ali has one quibble with the above, namely the look of the people, and particularly one person: Bel.  She looks wrong.  She lacks enough hair laquer, her face is au naturel pale, with dewy eyes and lips, and her underwear, as seen last night, is clearly not the provider of staunch support favoured by 1950s women.  To say she looks like a 21st Century girl at a vintage party would be an insult to the many party-goers who take serious trouble to create a bona fide period look.  Bel resembles Peter Pan's Wendy, adrift on a news set, minding adult-sized, perennially lost boys.

This of-course is a symptom of that strange old assumption by programme makers that audiences can't or won't understand that other eras had different beliefs, tastes and ways of doing things.  Hence the 1970s-made dramas set in WWII with... 1970s hairstyles and, more recently, the frankly terrible 'The Tudors' which ditched codpieces (and not just because the ludicrously youthful Henry VIII was forever bedding wenches) and head-dresses presumably so that viewers would, like, y'know, get it that these were real dudes.  The only characters generally allowed to wear something perfectly in keeping with the era which is alien to modern eyes are those we are meant to dislike or laugh at.  Julian Rhind-Tutt thus has appalling glasses and Freddie's geeky junior sports the kind of knitwear only found on dated knitting patterns and the odd uber-hip catwalk.

We could even go further and say this extends to casting.  Bel is meant to be late 20s and the inspiration for her character is cited as Grace Wyndham Goldie, who was influential in BBC news in the 1950s and 1960s.  She'd joined the BBC in 1944, aged 44.  Never mind her achievements, who wants to watch a plain, middle-aged, slightly dumpy woman?  So in the interests of a pretty face, pretty dresses and some sex, we get an anachronism.

That said, it is at least edging towards integration of the spy/murder plot.  There are those who praise 'Mad Men' for its slow pace and lack of action, but while I don't dislike those elements, it does sometimes drag and lack focus.  I'm still hopeful that 'The Hour' will strike a balance between its soapy relationship storylines and conspiracy thriller, which would make it a better thing than the likes of either 'Mad Men' or the too-numerous cop procedurals.

The Hour

“The Devil is in the detail” says Freddie the newshound at one point in The Hour’s hour, and he’s right.  Every set, every costume is painstakingly recreated, as though daring a challenge.  It looks telly-land perfect, which is to say that most of the usual signposts for 50s London are there, but the people look younger and better-dressed than they ever do elsewhere.  It’s a tough balance to make a programme look *wow, so old-fashioned!* and yet not alienate the viewers with the less sexy attributes of the period.  (Where are the ubiquitous hats and gloves?)  The advance publicity seemed to present it as a British version of ‘Mad Men’ with a dash of ‘Good Night and Good Luck’, the 2005 Clooney/Downey Jr film about CBS news during the McCarthy era.  This did it no favours as far as anyone with an inkling of knowledge about 50s Britain is concerned: Manhattan was glamorous in the 1950s and early 1960s, and perceived as such.  London was not. 

The cast do their best against the yesteryear scenery.  Ben Whishaw (Freddie) has a natural look of someone who is hard done by and prepared to whine incessantly about it.  This has served him well in his career so far (‘Brideshead Revisited’ and ‘Criminal Justice’ to name but two) and does so here.  Abi Morgan had better give him ample opportunity to shine or he will remain thin in all senses of the word.  As for Romola Garai, nobody does ‘gutsy woman in a man’s world’ quite like her, whether she’s playing a fortune-hunting Victorian miss, a fortune-hunting Victorian prostitute, or as here, the producer of a news programme in the exciting new world of television.  And lest we forget that Dominic West isn’t from Baltimore, or serial-killer Fred, here he is as a suave (but not as suave as he thinks he is) presenter who has married his way to success.

So far, so fun nostalgic news drama, but this has a murder with cold-war political/spy undertones thrown in.  It’s an odd hybrid, with as much tonal difference as black-and-white to glorious technicolour.  So far our only link is Freddie, and the stage would appear to be set for a pleasant few hours of conspiracy-hunting, risking life and career and ultimately transforming the state of Britain and its news.  Phew!  Let’s hope they pull it off.  We have a list of visual clichés, made before we watched, and we’re hoping to reach the end without ticking them all off.  (Dan won the bingo: housekeeper, gentlemen-only drinking establishment...)  The dialogue is smart and sharp, so no need for story cues like rehearsing interviews in the mirror, the chatty newsman and the sudden realisation of (un)likely hiding places.

Whether you love or hate it, though, you can neither miss nor fault the BBC’s great timing in airing a series all about the emergence of challenging television journalism just as the Sky Corporation’s cracks are appearing and our fine police and politicians are being sucked right into them.  Opposition, independence, public service – more please!