Odyssey

Ms. Friel again, playing here a modern plucky gal rather than a 1940s lipsticked one in 'The Saboteurs'.  This time she's American, and the security of western democracy is in her hands.  Or something.  A bit like 'Homeland', in other words.  However, a rather tired-sounding premise and a few early cliches (a young activist in New York is the son of a powerful businessman; a moral mover-and-shaker - who happens to be a dead ringer for a young Matthew McConnaughey btw - has a wife who delicately reminds him what a good job and lovely house he has) flourishes into a watchable, decent drama.  OK, Odelle Ballard (Anna Friel) manages to escape death almost as often as James Bond, if with rather more reliance on outside aid, but her journey along the Mali/Algerian border, interlaced with the attempts of her fellow Americans to find her, had us gripped for the extra-long 90-minute episode.

If she manages not to have an affair with any of the men who are looking for her, it'll be more believable than 'Homeland' for that alone.

Birdsong

We have to begin by saying that it isn't Dan's kind of thing and Ali wasn't mad about the novel, nor does Mr. Redmayne look like an obvious choice for Stephen Wraysford.


The first half was a beautifully shot 90 minutes, and effectively contrasted the hell of the trenches with the more exquisite hell of a clandestine love affair before the war.  It didn't do it in an original way, however, and the whole thing was soooo slooooow.  The two narrative hooks of what happened to the romance and does Wraysford survive the trenches are barely enough to keep a tired viewer awake.  There are lots of lingering, longing looks between the two leads and enough softly mournful piano music to signpost tragedy more clearly than the blasted intestines of a dying soldier.  The central love story doesn't come to life, however, either through singular characters or dialogue.


Visually handsome and fans of Faulks's novel will probably love it.  Anyone who loves a weepie with a bit of war thrown in, and not the other way around, will probably love it too, and if it prompts them to pick up the book, well... it's a better read than your average Mills&Boon.  It's just  that for the rest of us it's a bit dull.

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!