War and Peace

Even a six-hour adaptation isn't going to do justice to Tolstoy's doorstopper.  It is, after all, the sort of book you could take to a desert island and still be ploughing through when the rescue ship hove into view.  Nonetheless the Beeb have gamely taken it on, and crammed in every Brit actor of note they can find, with American star Paul Dano as Pierre.  Rather confusingly, this includes a couple of the cast of 'Dickensian'.  So for the next five weeks we'll have to extrapolate Stephen Rea's Inspector Bucket from a devious Russian aristocrat and Tuppence Middleton's innocent Amelia Havisham from said Russian aristocrat's shallow daughter, though she looks rather more like Messalina than Helene here.

It's visually gorgeous (though we're not sure about one-shoulder dresses in a high society salon), and is shaping up to be perfect Sunday-night escapism.  Purist fans of the novel should probably steer clear though.

Dickensian

Christmas half-hour gobbets of Dickens seemed to work well on BBC1 with 'Little Dorrit' in 2008, so they've come up with this series of 20 half-hour episodes, airing a bit like a soap over the holidays.  This is another of those reboots/reinventions such as all those spin-offs of Austen novels, featuring characters from various Dickens stories in a murder-mystery.  None other than Inspector Bucket investigates the murder of one Jacob Marley, partner of Ebenezer Scrooge.

It's all rather fun if you like the Dickensian vibe without being too familiar with the original novels.  If you are a die-hard fan you will probably be too busy allocating characters to novels, or being appalled at the licence taken with, for example, the relative chronology.  Young Miss Havisham (Tuppence Middleton) is here dressed much as Estella would dress in 'Great Expectations' some years later.  And then there's Marley, who here deviates from miserliness just long enough to engage the services of young Nancy, through her pimp Fagin, much to Sykes's chagrin.  Meanwhile Amelia Havisham's friend Honoria Barbary is about to disgrace herself with a soldier under the disapproving eye of her spartan sister Frances....

Hopefully it can sustain 20 episodes, because if not it will just look like a lazy purloining of pre-written characters and their stories.  It never ceases to amaze us how what is essentially 'fan fic' can suddenly become respectable if commissioned.  We hear the new series of 'Endeavour' features riffs on famous tales such as 'The Great Gatsby'.  There are masterful reinterpretations, but they are rare, and 'Morse' ran out of good ideas when they'd exhausted Colin Dexter's novels.  So there. 

The Honourable Woman

We weren't all that crazy about Blick's previous dramatic outing in 2011, 'The Shadow Line'.  It was one of those intriguing but flawed pieces we wanted to like but....  'The Honourable Woman' has been trumpeted as this year's serious BAFTA contender with a stellar cast including Hollywood's Maggie Gyllenhaal and a storyline encompassing the unending conflict in the middle-east.

So far, this is a huge improvement on its predecessor, which was willfully opaque and overblown.  Not that this is the kind of drama you can snooze through, by any means, and nor does it deal with smaller themes.  Ms. Gyllenhaal plays Nessa Stein, who with her brother Ephraim (Andrew Buchan) directs the legacy of her rich Israeli father, who was killed in front of them when they were children, 29 years previously.  Nessa makes an enemy of a friend when she awards a communications contract for Palestine to a Palestinian.  Unknown to her, the recipient is already dead, having been murdered by killers who made it look like suicide.  Newly created a cross-party peer, Baroness Stein of Tilbury has secrets.  She tells us little more in her voice-over, but we're introduced at a steady pace to her bodyguard, her PA, her brother's family and a Foreign Office operative who knows her secret (Eve Best, from 'Shadow Line').  Another hangover from the other series is slightly rumpled, slightly sinister Stephen Rea as an about-to-be-retired spy who is drawn into the suspicious death, and who will no doubt have to call on his embittered ex (Lindsay Duncan) in the process.  Then there's the Israeli woman who helps Ephraim with his family, and has a past with Nessa in the Gaza Strip.  Whatever happened 8 years ago is catching up to the Steins by the end of the hour, leading Nessa to a tense, nighttime run through Hyde Park with unforeseen consequences.

Part one of eight and we'll keep watching.  Maggie Gyllenhaal is wonderful as Nessa, with a flawless English accent and a performance of poise and gravitas as the self-possessed, super-rich but damaged businesswoman.  A sense of doom hangs around her, evidenced by protests that dog her even to a musical evening and a hounding by a radio presenter.  There's also the poignant music, which is currently balancing between adding atmosphere and instructing the audience that hey, this is tragic stuff, but is in danger of veering towards the latter.  Whatever the secrets are, Blick will no doubt unfold them in unexpected, cleverly-measured ways, and with the superb cast and the script thankfully understated, we're hoping this will be the rich experience it promises to be.

Single-Handed

Lovely, remote Connemara.  Lovely, remote Jack Driscoll.  So remote is the area that he must be the only eligible bloke in sight, hence a magnet for any eligible women.  So remote is he that he manages to lose each new love each week.  This TWNH spoils what is otherwise a likeable cop drama.  We’d almost prefer him to have a sidekick to confide in and shout at, and even have an affair with if he got lonely enough.  His two-short-planks junior (though older) colleague hardly counts.

In-between love affairs, Garda Jack drives through beautiful bleak landscapes, has a warm if gently chiding relationship with his dear old mum and looks miserable.  This may be partly because of his disastrous love life.  (In series one he managed to commit incest, albeit unknowingly, and had left Dublin because of his affair with a married colleague.  He also fell out with his dad, who then died.)

Yes, he does solve the odd murder or two, exposing the nasty underside potentially lurking in isolated rural communities.  Not, we hope, that the crime rate is at all realistic (we’ve been to Connemara and saw all sorts – another blog – but thankfully nothing to alarm the cops).  Last night's opener set up a possible murder with a probable suspect, which in telly-speak means he won't have dunnit, guvnor.  This plotline is low key, so far, in comparison with Jack's troublesome family.  Cue Stephen Rea, thankfully minus his 'Shadow Line' hat.  We shall be tuning in for episode two in a week's time, and may even be thankful for the 'Previously on...' intro.

The Shadow Line reminds me of...

It's time for another post on The Shadow Line.  As the series has progressed a few things have become clear:

- It's too long, and has too many characters.  It would have been better as a shorter, less convoluted story.

- It's hard to follow, and it seems to take pride in this.

- There are still lots of TWNHs - for example a shop is turned into a fireball, and the two men inside walk away.  Hmmm

- It's not as good as Psychoville 2, also showing on BBC 2.

Psychoville 2 is also a story with lots of characters.  There's a mysterious man who goes around killing off the main characters.  There's a woman who has a terminal illness, and her companion (her son in this case) is very upset by this.  There are some mysterious powers at work.  There are some gruesome killings (Oscar Lomax's hanging, for example)  There is a shop that isn't what it seems (Hoyti Toyti, which turns out to have a cellar full of Nazi artifacts).  However Psychoville manages to hold it together much more successfully, and isn't nearly as confusing.

I think maybe someone at the BBC was laughing to themselves when they they scheduled Psychoville 2 straight after The Shadow Line!

The Shadow Line

‘The Shadow Line’ (spoilers)

Unfair to review before reaching the end, so this is a work in progress.

Generally speaking, we have no problem with slow.  If you tune into a thriller, it can hit its ground running or take all the time it needs to ratchet up the tension.  It’s when it takes more time than it needs, and way more time than it should, that there’s a problem.  Even the pre-credit sequence of the first episode was too darned long, to the point of being boring, and by the end of that episode our impressions were that ‘Shadow Line’ loved itself, deeply and solemnly, and at the expense of anything like a convincing performance from the usually-good Rafe Spall.  It tried its best to confuse, but as the closing credits appeared, you knew you were dealing with a quarrelling criminal gang, complete with psycho scion (the aforementioned Spall, the victim’s nephew) and a cop with a past that he (in)conveniently can’t remember.  We’ve been here before, just a few times.

13th May.  Episode two has a tense chase at the end.  Nothing like it for obliterating the dull 50 minutes building up to it.  For us, it wasn’t quite that good, partly because every ten seconds it looked like Andy, our AWOL driver, had to get caught by one of the people chasing him, and then suddenly there he was again, way out in front, with not a tree root or heart attack to beleaguer his pursuers.    The other reason is that, like extreme pain, the sheer self-indulgence of the various interview/interrogation scenes preceding it was hard to forget.  And lest we neglect them, the intimidated partner and mother of our AWOL driver, knowing at least something about what he’d been involved in, cheerily open the door to two strange men, one after the other.  TWNH.  Oh and the seriously sinister drug baron/criminal overlord who is owed money by the gang says he has been waiting for it for two years.  Most patient drug baron/criminal overlord ever?  Lucky gang!  He also agrees to Bede’s so-surefire-it’s-never-been-done-before plan after 5 minutes.  Lucky, lucky gang!

20th May.  Episode Three was an improvement.  Rafe stopped chewing the carpet (only so much twist'n'pile an actor can take?) and there was less of the staged set-piece feel of the previous hours.  We are prepared to follow in the increasing hope that there is a decent payoff at the end of the series.

That said, trained cop Gabriel wipes his bloody paws on the crime scene.  Presumably this will have repercussions for him later, but it was a pretty clumsy device.  And Harvey, lately a crime lord, has but one mourner at his funeral - mad Rafe.  The cops were so excited when mourner # 2 turned up they took endless pictures.  They'd obviously been hoping for a Krays-style underworld bash.  Even his 'lieutenant' (do they all watch 'The Wire' in the way that mobsters watch 'The Godfather'?) failed to show up.  Is it an offence?  The two main twists revealed were intriguing, except that the Gatehouse one threw up a nice TWNH: since our AWOL driver knew he had in fact killed his boss, and the killer knew he knew, would he choose to trust this man over the boss's family and the cops?

And please, Mr Blick, give the wives something to do other than attract sympathy for their husbands!

27th May.  We have a division.  Dan likes it more than Ali.  As divisions go, this is not unusual and not serious.

What Ali dislikes is that, more than halfway through the series, the main characters are all people she’d take serious detours to avoid, be they criminals, cops or journalists.  This isn’t only because they are inherently unsympathetic, but because they all speak as though they were in an o.t.t. send-up of a noir thriller.  “It’s so much p*ss in the wind,” snarls a top cop, “and I’m beginning to feel the spray”.

Dan says he takes Ali’s points (except the pompous dialogue, which he hadn’t noticed and now can’t remember) but he still likes it, despite the TWNH (or at least the TWBUTH - Unlikely To Happen) ending.  Do young, ambitious London journos live deep in the countryside?  It felt like a scenic way of killing him, and also an unreliable one.  The professional killer chose a method which might injure him too and not kill the target.  That's if he managed to time the thing so that they'd both be on the same stretch of empty road at the same time.  Note to self....

3^rd June.  I (Ali) must be a masochist.  I can’t stop watching even though it frustrates me.  Somewhere in here is, just possibly, a really good story, but it’s drained of all life by the ponderous dialogue, lovingly-framed shots and over-emotive music.  It takes itself so seriously I want to laugh, and I’m feeling more manipulated than ever.

Last week’s episode ended with a splattered journalist.  He wasn’t very nice, but doesn’t anyone wonder how he died?  The police were preoccupied with snapping at each other about a dead colleague and how to cover their tracks.  This week’s episode ended with a splattered gangster.  He wasn’t very nice either, but will the police take note?  The killing scene was spliced with those of other characters staring moodily, while an ironically crooning song played.  A little homage to ‘Sopranos’/’Mad Men’?  Sadly the likes of ‘Casualty’ got there first – and I’m deliberately ignoring Mr Coppola here.

In-between, we had this week’s big TWNH: an explosion where a shop was blown to bits but the two men inside it survived with minor cuts and bruises.  Having been about to kill each other, they growl a bit and part ways.  Then there was not so much a TWNH as an OHoT (Only Happens on TV) moment, with Bede starting an affair with Glickman’s girlfriend as soon as they meet.  Lonely criminal meets scared gangster’s moll = obvious affair, on TV.  Will there be a point to this?  Will one of them end up splattered at the end of episode 6?

I’m grateful he’s trying, really I am, and hands up I’ve no direct experience, but do CEOs of drug networks really stride around in sinister hats, commit their own murders and operate state-of-the-art surveillance equipment?  Are they all called things like ‘Glickman’, ‘Bede’ and ‘Gatehouse’?  (I know the average cop is not called ‘Gabriel’ or ‘Honey’)  And why is there always an androgynous juvenile sleeping with a seedy middle-aged gangster?

10^th June.  Praise be, not one but two female characters who actually had something to do in last night’s episode.  One of them was Petra, who committed murder (and attempted murder), true, but hey it beats the boring old ‘love interest’ role.  The other was Gabriel’s ex-mistress, whose grief helped her find some compassion, which hasn’t been very much on display anywhere in the programme so far.

Special mention for Nicholas Jones, a lovely actor who gets to spend all his time coiling ropes on docksides when not growling at unwanted visitors.

Things are now playing nicely like a Jacobean tragedy, except that the revenge motive isn’t clear.  Gripping, if even less rooted in the world as anyone knows it.  And no, police didn’t seem that interested in last week’s end-of-episode death either.  This week they’ve got Glickman, Petra and Gabriel’s illegitimate child, so they’ll have a grand job ignoring all three, plus Gatehouse’s near-miss.  We watch with interest to see if Gabriel finally gets the picture before the bullet kills him.

17th June.  All over in overblown style.  We think it would have been better if it hadn't screamed in every possible way - dialogue, acting, visuals, music - that it was so very serious, and important, and tragic.  Both Rafe Spall and Freddie Fox appeared in this week's 'Miss Marple' and managed to give more convincing performances in (what should be) a campier show.  Yes, we felt for Gabriel, the once-possibly-bad-but-now-struggling-to-be-good cop, as he realised that even Honey had lied to him and worked for Gatehouse.  We even felt for Bede, for whom letting go of his suicidal wife meant letting go of his own life.  But...

Are we meant to believe in major drug operations being masterminded by bent cops for decades?  Masterminded by one department, being investigated by another, some of whom are also, shall we say, walking the Shadow Line?  Somehow the suicide of our skipper friend the ex-Commander didn't ring true either: he'd given a helpful run-down of events to Gabriel, justifying everything he'd done (it was all for our pensions, don't you know), and surely if Gatehouse had wanted him dead, he'd have been splattered all over his deck long ago, so why kill himself?  And what became of the customs guy Beatty and the cop Foley, last seen as Beatty's punch bag?  The scene had one of the series' few moments of intentional humour when they both stopped the violence to flash their ID cards at a passing patrol car.  Even the familiar upbeat ending of a birth was clouded with predictions of doom by the late Gabriel's boss in a scene redolent of the drowning cat in episode two; both should have been terrifying, but ended up being a bit silly.  "We always look after our own," snarls the Commander as he salutes the newborn in front of his nonplussed mother.  Someone should have told him that (a) Gabriel was no longer one of theirs, even if he ever had been, (b) babies are a bit young to recruit and (c) this wasn't 'Rosemary's Baby' nor 'The Omen'.

We know this has its fans, and maybe we should thank the telly-watching gods that original dramas are made at all, but it could have been much better and it's a shame it isn't.  Mostly it feels like a film student's idea of what a classy thriller should be, with the elements to include ticked off one-by-one: violent murders, warehouses, sex, ailing wives, suitcases of money, guns, bent cops, foreign dealers, at least one psycho, characters speaking cryptic lines etc.  In all, it doesn't add up to much more than the sum of its borrowed parts.  Does Mr Blick understand his plot?  It's a kindness to say he doesn't, because otherwise he just didn't do his job in communicating it very well.  Were we the only lost viewers, we would keep quiet and enrol on a course, but we seem to be two of many.  Perhaps, as Foley says, the only way to get through it is to know nothing?  What have we got for seven hours of our lives, other than being very wary of hatted strangers at the front door?