New Worlds

This is the sequel to 2008's 'The Devil's Whore' which had a starry cast (Andrea Riseborough, Dominic West, John Simm, Michael Fassbender, Maxine Peake and Peter Capaldi, to name a few) and some well-phrased moments but was essentially a missed opportunity for original historical drama.  Freed from the constraints of a source text or a biopic, it featured a fictional character living through the turbulent years of the English Civil War, but the heroine, Angelica Fanshawe (then Andrea Riseborough, now Eve Best) took an improbably romantic journey through every major issue and player of the day.  The original drama left her back in her ancestral home, with a new baby daughter and an enlightened view of the world.

So, this wasn't exactly eagerly anticipated by us, and the synopsis of two parallel (and inevitable) romances taking place in England and America seemed to be aimed squarely at fans of Philippa Gregory.  Those fans won't have been disappointed.  Everyone looks impossibly lovely and clean (Dornan is a model, and with 'The Fall' is the only recognisable actor here, although Hope is played by Jane Campion's daughter Alice Englert and Freya Mavor (Beth) was previously in the adaptation of Gregory's 'The White Queen').  Both 'worlds', England and Massachussetts, are depicted as lands of fierce struggle, against which backdrop our two pairs of lovers experience the sort of 'their eyes met...' epiphanies that have them changing the course of their lives in mere minutes.  There is clumsy exposition, to explain the back story, and equally clumsy visual symbolism with white nighties, fresh and copious blood, dark woods and bedraggled heroines.  The American chapter is basically a 'first of the Mohicans', complete with the spectacular, deliberate fall from a cliff and a scalping.

Most disappointing of all is the childlike black and white depiction of the English Civil Wars as simple struggles by the liberal and the poor against a wicked tyrant King who wants to rule without Parliament.  Charles II may have been other than a Merry Monarch to many of his subjects, but he's portrayed here as a virtual Caligula.  This seemed to have more in common with 'The Musketeers' than any serious adult drama, not least the very 21st Century women who take up arms and pursue their men with the zest of post-sexual revolution feminists.  Hard to believe that Flannery was responsible for 'Our Friends in the North'.

Progs we love

And yes, we did watch 'The Killing' and mostly loved it, but it did have a couple of TWNHs: Thais wouldn't tell Pernille that Nana had worked in the wonderfully-named 'Boils'?  The security guard didn't admit to filling up the car, knowing it was where the body was found, until days afterwards, despite being questioned?  Troels's campaign was on and off a few too many times to be believed.  It seemed a bit hamstrung by the gimmicky structure of one episode per hour (think '24', spread out) but it was good enough to keep us watching for the full 20 hours....

The real reason for this blog is our love of good tv, and just to show we mean it, here are some shows we love:

Clocking Off – fresh, original stories with 3-dimensional characters, and in our opinion Abbott’s best work (yes, better than ‘State of Play’).

Life on Mars – for once a terrible-sounding premise: “Cop goes back in time!” produced a fun, entertaining drama.  The less said about AtoA the better.

Holding On – riveting, heart-breaking collision of contemporary lives, and so far unsurpassed by anything Marchant’s done since.

GBH – surreal, sublime, what more can we say?

Edge of Darkness – lionised from the off, and of its time, but still as powerful 25+ years on.  Maybe if they’d followed the original idea and turned Bob Peck into a tree at the end, it would have been even more relevant now, who knows...?

A Very British Coup – as with the above, being remade for some unfathomable reason.  Come back, Ray McAnally, Tony Benn and the vanished left?

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet – character-driven plots, realistic scenario and genuinely funny.  Take a bow, Messrs Whateley, Healy, Spall et al.

Our Friends in the North – who’d have thought a multi-hour drama adapted from an RSC play would become state-of-the-nation telly?  Another career-making programme, and maybe here the question is whether Ms McKee and Messrs Eccleston, Craig and Strong have bettered these performances?

The Singing Detective – another piece lauded almost before broadcast, and by a positively idolized writer.  We think his output pretty uneven, all told, but this is about as good as telly gets.

House of Cards – and another work that would fail all tests of ‘realism’ but translated the satire of the novel brilliantly, drawing the viewer into a sinister, claustrophobic and darkly funny tale.

Shooting the Past – great example of something that works in its own little universe, that of a photo archive in crisis, with slavishly dedicated and seriously knowledgeable staff and several fascinating life stories captured in boxes hidden away on dusty shelves….  So much more than the sum of its strange parts and, if we dare repeat ourselves, has Poliakoff done better work elsewhere?  (OK, maybe ‘Caught on a Train’.)

The Beiderbecke Trilogy – England’s dreaming, 80s style.  Some say twee, we say the sharp barbs of Jill and Trevor (pre and post- First Born) lift this clear of the derided category of ‘comedy-drama’.

The Wire – Proof that it’s possible for a cop show to avoid cliché.  Comparisons to great 19^th Century novels for scope and comprehensive human experience are not unfounded.

And not even exhaustive!  A brainstorm threw up such gems as After Pilkington, Conviction, Bellman and True, Low Winter Sun, Brideshead Revisited, Das Boot, Longitude, The Cops ....  We confess there may be TWNHs within these, but they’ve escaped us in the sheer enjoyment of watching.