22.11.63

22.11.63 is an 8 part series from Stephen King (who wrote the original book) and JJ Abrams (producing), that deals with a man travelling back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK.

All time travel shows depend on a) the means of travelling back in time, and b) the rules you need to obey once you get there.  Here it's pretty clunky - the means is a cupboard in a diner, and the rules are that i) you end up at the same time and place as a starting point each time, ii) that 2 minutes passes no matter how long you spend in the past, and iii) if you try to change history bad things happen.

The central premise is good, and apparently King thought of it in the early 70s.  However it seems rooted in the past, because surely an American man in the 2010s would actually want to go back to stop 9/11 and the Gulf War, rather than keep JFK alive and (supposedly) then stop Vietnam. 

It looks very glossy, and clearly has had lots of money spent on it.  Why have one vintage car from the 1950s to set the scene when you can have about 30 parked up?

At this point, Dan's will to blog gave out.  He didn't watch beyond episode one.  Enough said.



 

The Last Panthers

In a tense opening scene, a well-executed diamond heist is underway.  Disregarding the alarm they know will be pressed, the gang pour pink paint over the manager with the combination to the safe (Pink Panthers!) and make it out in the allotted time.  Instead of the usual foot-to-the-floor getaway car, they pound the pavements, having hamstrung the police vehicles with a ring of fire.  Then things start to go a bit wrong, for the gang and for the drama.

It takes them an age to discard their conspicuous white boiler suits, leading one of them to accidentally shoot a child while aiming fire at police.  He then rather unbelievably escapes across a piece of open ground, when a few seconds earlier several policemen, presumably armed since they are in Marseilles, were in hot pursuit.  Though the gang evade capture, their buyer/fence doesn't want to be implicated in a murder and they are forced to try to sell the goods elsewhere.  This turns out to be somewhere in the vicinity of Belgrade, in a shanty town that even hardened criminals would probably eschew in favour of a prison cell.  That they make it out of here alive is thanks to Milan (Goran Bogdan) who has a panther tattooed on his chest, a man who used to be known as 'Animal' and who is about to find that criminal fraternity is a myth.

While this is going on, diamond heist specialist Naomi (Samantha Morton) and her insurance boss Tom who, as played by John Hurt, is surely well past retirement, arrive to check out the scene of the crime and trace the diamonds, quickly clashing with the irritated cops, led by Khalil (Tahar Rahim) who are themselves investigating.  Tom and Naomi soon follow the trail to Belgrade, which is the cue for her flashbacks to the Balkans conflict in what are very cliched and badly-done CGI clips of her in uniform.  By the end of the episode, she too has only narrowly escaped with her life.

We differed in opinion a bit on this one, with Dan liking it more than Ali, but then he is more of a fan of those violent 1970s French heist thrillers, and more recent ones like 'A Prophet'.  This owes something to them, and thankfully uses subtitles rather than English actors speaking in accents, but the tone is somewhat uneven, and whether there is action enough for all the episodes without spilling over into total implausibility, we shall have to wait and see.  Plus, it must be said, we have nothing against beards per se, but one hirsute man is rather too much like another to immediately identify our cops and robbers, so a shave or two wouldn't go amiss.

The Affair

The Affair is an American series starring British actors Dominic West and Ruth Wilson as the two protagonists who (not a spoiler alert) have an affair.  The big selling point of the show, apart from the two leads, is that each episode covers the same amount of time twice, from the two characters' different perspectives, first his, then hers, as they each tell the story of the affair in a police interview room. 

Set in The Hamptons, it follows New Yorker Noah Solloway and his family on vacation at his wife's dad's large house.  Noah's father-in-law is a famous writer, whose works are filmed, hence lots of money, while Solloway is a teacher and aspiring writer, essentially living a pretty affluent life thanks to loans from his in-laws.  In the Hamptons he meets Alison Bailey, a waitress recovering from the death of her son, and they then start a liaison.  The viewer is never sure whose accounts are accurate, with both being (potentially) unreliable narrators.

For example in his account her clothes are always more revealing, and women are always coming on to him (he comes across as a bit of a sleaze even in his own version...).  In hers she's a woman in torment, dealing with grief, but also her husband's reaction to the death.  In his version she's pursuing him, and vice versa. 

It's a good drama, without many unrealistic elements, but since it runs over 20 weeks (according to IMDB) we do wonder if they're stretching it out a bit, and also what is likely to happen in series two - a different affair?  Or will it, unusually for American TV, have a natural life as just one series?

The Smoke (spoilers)

 

It has been a while since the demise of 'London's Burning', a one-time soapy ITV staple alongside 'Peak Practice' and 'Soldier Soldier'.  Sky One have decided it's time for more everday tales of muscular, blokey men fighting fires, each other and their womenfolk.

Before we go any further, we must establish some pro-Jamie Bamber credentials... for one of us anyway.  No prizes for guessing who cried when his character breathed his last in 'Hornblower'.  We are talking a three-hankie misery-fest that no amount of chocolate could comfort.  Mr. Bamber was also responsible for turning outrage at a remake of 'Battlestar Galactica' (because what could be as wonderfully terrible as the original?) into - well, acceptance.  His 'Law and Order: UK' cop was probably the basis for his casting here.  The well-spoken actor was likeable London detective Matt Devlin, who caused more wet hankies when he was gunned down in the street.

OK, so here, as Kev Allison, he ditches understatement to play the brash fireman who wets those hankies in the first scene of the whole series, thanks to a fire on a housing estate.  It's a strong scene, and viewers are left in no doubt that Kev's suffering is thanks to the sort of penny-pinching cuts that are so prevalent in the UK and elsewhere now.  Still one TWNH though: we hear the baby crying, and from the reaction of the firemen, so do they, but it's unlikely when they are wearing helmets and other protective gear in the middle of a blazing inferno.

Fast-forward 9 months and it's Kev's first day back at work, and what a day.  Showing White Watch playing poker, eating donuts and watching porn may not be the stuff of great drama, but this is serious overkill.  Surely never in the history of firefighting did anyone have such a full-on, lousy first day back?  Our Kev starts by rescuing a woman from a car wreck and then tackles a fire on the very estate where he had his trauma.  Far from being pleased to see him, the occupants throw him out and the local kids run off with his jacket, triggering an uncontrolled, violent response.  Returning to the station, paranoid about an assailant who tried to kill him during the original fire, he is tracked by the dad of the woman he rescued: she died.  Then he's forced to talk to a counsellor (err, wouldn't this have been necessary before he was allowed to return as fit for duty these days, especially in view of his attempted suicide?) and then gets drunk before going to collect his medal and reveals all, literally, to the shocked guests.  His girlfriend Trish (Jodie Whittaker, who hasn't had much to do yet) has told his workmates, you see, that the burns have affected a rather delicate part of his anatomy....

The episode ends cutting between the crew going about their business and a reveal of just who the would-be killer is, setting things up nicely enough for future episodes.  But... the script was leaden, the characters cliched and one-dimensional and at least one of the cast was wholly unconvincing.  This wasn't Jamie, we hasten to add, although it has to be said that he is not the obvious choice for Kev.  Calling everyone 'sweetheart' or 'darling' and eating a McFlurry aren't sufficient to get us inside Kev's headspace and world in a way that would be more believable from an actor like Daniel Mays, for instance.  And shouting about 'ALPs' may be authentic but it's just frustrating for a lay audience 'til you work out what the hell the acronym stands for.  Maybe 'London's Burning' fans will feel at home with this, but we can't help thinking that far from setting the world afire, firefighting dramas are still treading water after a couple of decades.

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.

Moonfleet

Apologies for the delay.  Ali is still a conscientious objector to Sky, but... a fan of James Meade Faulkner's 19th Century novel and becoming rather fond of young Welsh actor Aneurin Barnard.  Thus, she shamelessly asked Dan to do the honours and record it.

Since the romantic adventure novel first appeared, there has also been a 1950s film starring Stewart Granger, a 1980s Sunday teatime serial starring Adam Godley and now this 100-minute offering over two nights with Mr. Barnard as young wannabee smuggler John Trenchard and Ray Winstone as gang leader with a head and a heart, Elzevir Block.  Shown over the Christmas holidays, this is solid stuff, with the first episode being largely a setup for the more exciting second.  There's much to love (and no, Ali isn't referring to the underwater nude scene; honestly) in the story of the quest for a wicked forbear's hidden treasure, which retains all the staple elements of the young man's rites of passage, his filial relationship with the seasoned Elzevir and lots of derring-do.

If the romance falls a little flat it's largely because of a lack of tension.  Magistrate's daughter Grace Mohune (Sophie Cookson) is rather too available and forward for an 18th Century well-born lass.  They've hardly said 'hello' before they are cavorting on the beach like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in 'From Here to Eternity', so her father hardly poses a threat.  All of which makes it sit just a little uncomfortably in the prime-time schedules.  Is this a family drama or for adults?  Its (naturally) happy ending would suggest the former, as would the somewhat rushed storytelling.  For a 'good lad', why is John drawn towards violence and smuggling?  Presumably in the 21st Century he'd be a drug dealer.  What is he doing crawling around a graveyard at night?  How does he just happen to meet Grace so often?  What sort of relationship does she have with her father?  Why do Dorset villagers have Cockney or Welsh accents?  None of these quibbles are inexplicable, but no time is taken to develop things.

So, Sky, you beckon and beguile with your wares, but you have not tempted everyone over to the empire yet....