Turks and Caicos

So you didn't know that 'Page Eight' was the first in 'The Worricker Trilogy'?  Neither did we.  So here we are breaking our own rules and reviewing a 'returner'.  Sort of.  It has been a couple of years since the first part and the third follows next week, so all that we remembered was that Bill Nighy was a mild-mannered, reluctant spy of the old school, let's say one of Le Carre's more decent creations, and got himself into hot water investigating the government's involvement in illegal torture during the war on terror.

Strangely enough, that's what this one's about too.  Ewan Bremner as his unlikely friend Rollo Maverley and Ralph Fiennes as slimy PM Alex Beesley must have enjoyed the first one so much they've returned for cameos, while Winona Ryder, Helena Bonham Carter and Christopher Walken join in the fun.  Because this is a lot of fun, even while it purports to be about Very Serious Things.  The theatre is Hare's natural home, and while this lifts the dialogue beyond the usual bland televisual standard, it also requires that little extra suspension of disbelief which a stage and the dimming of the house lights usually aids.  Do jaded security operatives really spy on big-time crooks on glamorous, if rather sleazy islands?  We can't help thinking that the reality is more 'death in a plastic bag' than 'death in paradise'.

On its own theatrical terms, though, it's rather like a Greek tragedy: the hero asks what has happened to (a sense of) shame; the heroine (Helena Bonham-Carter playing beautifully straight, for a change, as Margot Tyrell) risks everything for her lost love and his moral scruples which were once also her ideals; there is a woman so damaged by men that her only escape is to bury her own morals (inspired casting of Winona Ryder as Melanie Fall).  Christopher Walken, as shady CIA operative Curtis Pelissier, is even a sort of chorus, dogging Johnny, making him question his motives.  Suffice to say that, as with the Greeks, the rot is deeply embedded in the state, and the state these days is a global one.

Great ending-that-isn't-an-ending, leading us nicely to the final part.  No doubting that Hare crafts a good drama that is almost a eulogy to lost values, but we can't help thinking this is, more than anything else, a rather elegant way for Hare to declare his extreme dislike of modern politics.

The Widower

ITV brings us another dose of prime time true crime, courtesy of Jeff Pope, who penned the West dramatization 'Appropriate Adult'.  Here it's Reece Shearsmith (who must have had a busy few months with this and 'Inside No 9') who sends the shudders south as Malcolm Webster, whose rather bland and gormless manner belies a propensity to spend more than he earns and a rather more alarming one to incapacitate and then murder his wives.  Poor Claire (Sheridan Smith) is the first to fall foul of him in Aberdeenshire in 1994, when he stages a car accident and makes off with the £200k life insurance.

While not having the notoriety of the Wests or similarly outlandish serial killers, Webster must have had some considerable skill at hiding his immoral tendencies, since he wed twice and was attempting to do away with another woman at the time of his arrest.  He didn't target particularly vulnerable women either.  Yet by beginning each woman's story at the point of marriage, when he has already won them over, and then focusing on his short temper, need for control and subsequent abuse of them, his appeal doesn't come across at all.  And where, once he stopped nursing, did he get hold of all that Temazepam?

37 Days

This new 3-parter, screened on consecutive nights on BBC2, tells the story of the complicated countdown to the First World War from the point of view of the senior figures in the opposing governments.  It's about as clumsy as drama gets while still being riveting in its telling of the strange coincidences and politics that led to bloodshed.  For a start, the cast of the British cabinet is such that you identify the actors more than their historical counterparts, while the German Kaiser's staff all speak English viz ze German accents, Ja!  There are also helpful young narrators on either side, junior clerks, small cogs in big wheels, who introduce us to characters and their foibles from a future perspective.  "In those days, we weren't thinking of war..." and so on.  At one point an absurdly effeminate Austrian slinks onto the set and walks towards camera looking like an escapee from an Adam Ant video c. 1982.  Far be it from us to say they weren't terribly dandy types, but he's not the only Boche-lover to mince across the screen.  While the British are presented as crusty old backbiters, the other side indulge in sissy massages and have their hair oiled to dripping point while declaiming foppishly.  Overall it has the feel of a made-for-schools drama.  Lots of stiff dialogue that in the hands of lesser actors would creak loudly enough to drown them out.

In fairness, it does clarify the points between the assassination of someone most British people had never heard of in the 'boring' and faraway Balkans and the outbreak of European war, and the effort of tuning into the rather wordy hour is rewarded entertainingly enough.  Ian McDiarmid, in particular, is superb as no-nonsense Foreign Secretary Edward Grey.  We're not going to be surprised in the remaining episodes, but we'll still watch, in the hope that it will evolve into the sort of classic historical drama that, without boasting, we do quite well here.

Maybe in another hundred years they'll be portraying the Russians and Ukranians in the same light, but let's hope not.

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.

Suspects

A homegrown cop drama on Channel 5?  Unlikely but true.  What makes this slightly different to the usual product is that the camera is hand-held (or appears to be) and the cast are improvising.  This gives the story of an abducted toddler a fly-on-the-wall documentary feel which is at once believable and discomforting.  Believable because it unfolds much as you'd imagine a real case would, with no sharp and clever lines and no amazing coincidences that solve the case for them, but discomforting because this is fiction, peopled by actors, presented as vérité.  Yes, we know that describes all drama to an extent and yes, Lars von Trier fans will applaud, but is dramatising a case of child abduction in this way somewhat tasteless?

Each episode deals with a case in 45 minutes including breaks, which thankfully allows no time for the usual buddy banter or sexual undertones down at the station and relates well to the unspectacular nature of most real crimes.  Television drama now features ever-more baroque explanations and/or resolutions, from 'Midsomer Murders', where it was always a specialty, to 'Lewis' and 'Gently'.  Having a straightforward story makes this refreshing, but even to solve a case such as this in reality might take several days or weeks, so despite the shaky camera and the unrehearsed lines, this is still speeded up and played out for the screen.  Inevitable, yes, but then that's what makes the attempt to take the illusion one step further than the average drama so disconcerting.

The Musketeers

Cynics may say that the lack of a 'three' or a 'four' in the title allows for growing room, should the series be successful.  Adapting the entire Dumas sequence of novels all the way to 'The Man in the Iron Mask' would mean ageing the actors some thirty odd years, after all, and in the days of serialised novels, the author packed in a fair heft of wordy padding that can be less than a thrilling read.  Far better to have our heroes in lots of off-piste adventures, and replace them when they wear out. It may happen quickly, since 'reinventing' anything for the 21st Century seems to involve making it faster and more physical.  Our heroes are here played by relative unknowns except for Tom Burke as Athos, and their arch-enemy Cardinal Richelieu is none other than our new Dr. Who, Peter Capaldi.

For purists, it's not a good start.  "Paris, 1630", says the onscreen blurb, which is a full four years after D'Artagnan originally clomped into the city on his father's yellowed horse.  Not a major difference, perhaps, but things quickly diverge further from the original, which admittedly is only 'based on the characters by Alexandre Dumas'.  This is less the 'Sherlock' treatment though than the 'Robin Hood' one, with the merry band appearing strangely modern and each week facing a different, resolvable case of swashbuckling, intrigue and romance.  Extra characters abound, and the writers have chosen to change some particulars with no obvious reason.  Porthos is not the giant hercules of the novels, nor Milady the fair 17th Century ideal of beauty, and she has already identified her fallen-noble husband in his disguise as a musketeer; the super-subtle subterfuge of Richelieu is also exchanged for a Cardinal who stoops to disposing of his enemies directly.

Although none of these are deterrents to non-Dumas fans, and perhaps only a minor annoyance to those who aren't purists, it's hard to see what the series offers (other than Tom Burke, whose brooding, drunken Athos may yet rival the old hellraiser Oliver Reed in the sumptuous Lester film version of the 1970s).  The newly-invented plotlines are unoriginal, and having already imperilled the lives of at least one of them, it's hard to see how the series will build thrills towards its 'season finale' - that's last episode to most of us in the UK - a whole 9 episodes away.  Its titles may be based on those of 'Ripper Street', but this fails to do for 17th Century France what 'Ripper' did for 19th Century Whitechapel.  Probably not helped by the females appearing in semi-undress that wouldn't look out of place in the Wild West.  It's getting to be a cheap shot to use established characters to write new storylines, because unless those plots are good enough to rival the originals, or go somewhere excitingly different, it's a pointless exercise.  Why not adapt a work and keep the elements that made it good in the first place, or else create something entirely new?