More A Way Of Life… Look, this is just between you and me

Unexpectedly Into The Good Wife

By way of a change from the last few rants:

Courtesy of some channel surfing on the part of The Mrs, he discovered, and found himself enjoying an episode of, The Good Wife, which led to a Season One boxset coming into the house and several evenings given over to a couple of episodes at a time.  It's a million miles away from the geeky fare that usually grabs the attention of us both, having no aliens, spaceships, time travel or dysfunctional cartoon families in it, but despite that we're both really gripped by it.

For those not in the know, it's the story of one of those 'stand by your man' wives caught on the periphery of a political/sex scandal and forced to return to her former career as a lawyer when her husband is jailed.  Julianna Margulies (really good here) is the wife in question, and the ongoing stories weave between her legal cases, the law firm, her family/home life as she deals with her teenage kids and an absent husband, and the husband's political and legal wrangles as he tries to recover from the scandal and overturn his conviction.  There are multiple layers to each of these too, with her new boss being her old law school flame, for example.  There's a great cast assembled around the lead, and the individual stories are generally pretty strong.

I'm not going to delve too much into reviewing the detail, because at this point we're viewing stories that are two years old, but I did want to recommend it.
And also to note that having thought about it, it seems to be holding both our interest by existing at a conjunction between two types of TV series we each individually like.  For me, it's squarely in the LA Law school, a series I absolutely loved back in the day, and plays in that same 'office politics and relationships mixed with courtroom drama' space.

For The Mrs, I think the secret is in his description of the series to someone as "It's only a legal drama to the extent that House is a medical drama".  House, a series he loves and I can't stand, is absolutely one of those that he'll consume an entire season of at a sitting, and I can see where he makes a connection between it and The Good Wife structurally.

We're into the final third of Season One, with the whole second season ahead of us before we're caught up on the US screenings.  Worth a look.

Deathly Hallows Part 2

Not a review, just some thoughts.

Took a couple of weeks, but we got along to see this on Friday evening.  It's slightly weird to think that the series is over, but also slightly a relief.  The kids aren't kids anymore, and catching part of a TV screening of Prisoner of Azkaban on Saturday when they all still looked REALLY young really brought home how the last few films have been having to stretch credulity.  The epilogue looked like very little effort was required to make the leads look parent-age.

Anyway - it was a good end.  Hit all the key points of the book without letting some of its less dynamic sections slow the film down, and at least all the grim stuff with whining Ron and the never-ending camping trip was got out of the way in Part 1.

As a climax, it did the spectacle well, though the chaos of the battle scenes was a bit too chaotic.  It was often hard to see what was happening, and to whom, as the camera flew around, so a certain amount of the emotional impact of the events was lost, but obviously that's where the books have it easy.  If Rowling has to tell you that random supporting character X is being hit by a bad spell you can't help but know whether you should care, and how much.

We went to see it in 2D, obviously, and as with practically every other film with a 3D option I've seen, it's hard to imagine what extra 3D would have brought to it.  As it was, for all that the books became annoyingly self-indulgent over the years, even with the splitting of the Deathly Hallows in two, the films have tended to be a leaner and therefore more purely entertaining series, and I think they did themselves proud with this last one, in all its two-dimensional glory.

Review – Much Ado About Nothing

In London, it's not just the buses that come along all at once - this summer, two separate productions of Much Ado About Nothing landed.  I didn't see the version at The Globe, but having seen David Tennant and Catherine Tate's first official announcement that they were starring in a version, there was absolutely no way that The Mrs and I weren't going to be seeing this.  I mean, come on - it's The Doctor and Donna.

We've debated the point of non-period productions of Shakespeare before.  Broadly speaking, The Mrs disapproves.  Less broadly speaking, I disapprove sometimes.  I actually avoided letting on that this wasn't period beforehand to avoid any issues, but in the end I didn't need to bother - the production itself won him over.

And actually, it IS period, just not its original period.  Director Josie Rourke transplanted the setting to early 1980s Gibraltar, making the conflict from which Don Pedro and his men have returned The Falklands War, and setting up a convincingly insular kind of world in which the well-off drift around the place in swimwear with drinks in their hands.  It's all helped by a really clever set design based around only four columns and a lot of use of the revolve.

Cast-wise, (before we get to the inevitable) I'd call it about a 90% success.  Don Pedro and Leonato work well together, and Claudio and Hero make a winning couple, if a somewhat wet one, though to be fair that's in the writing more than the performances.  Dogberry, meanwhile, comes close to stealing the show.  Conversely, a couple of the actors in minor roles don't seem very bothered, and a couple of others seem a little ill-fit.  Don John, in particular, looks at times as though he's being played as if Mark Heap had been cast in the role but wasn't actually available.  Arguably, having the conniving villain also be the screaming closet case should itself make me more annoyed, but mostly I was too busy enjoying other stuff to care.

Much of this other stuff comes from Tate and Tennant (I'm getting there), but also from Rourke's admirable decision to play this comedy as actually funny, rather than just witty and arch, which is what you usually get.  There is plenty of background incident (Tennant's initial arrival in a golf cart sets the tone) and broad verbal delivery, but most obviously there are scenes of out-and-out slapstick that work brilliantly.  I've certainly laughed frequently in productions of this play, but I've never laughed as much as at this one, and judging by the clearly delighted audience, I wasn't the only one enjoying it.

But of course we're not here to see all that, we're here to see Tennant and Tate (well, mostly, it is after all a brilliant play on its own accord ) and they don't disappoint.  Tennant plays Benedick broadly, with his own natural accent, I was pleased to note, and conveys a clever, honourable man playing the clown as much for effect as for real.  Tate's Beatrice on the other hand, feels authentically sharp and weary of men - though importantly never bitter or shrewish, if certainly 'shrewd', as she's described more than once.  Their interplay feels exactly like the re-commencement of an ongoing sparring match that just went on hold when he went off to war, and they instill the relationship with more than enough authenticity.  Whenever they're on stage together, the energy level rises, and both make much and effective use of non-verbal communication - there's a moment the night before Hero's wedding when the 'stag' and 'hen' parties cross over and Beatrice and Benedick spot each other that's played totally wordlessly and is totally priceless.  They make you want to know what their life beyond the end of the play will be like, which must be seen as a victory.

The sense that this cast is just having a bloody good time is highlighted in one detail that we have to assume isn't a nightly occurrence, though what marked last night out I don't know.  The was a lot of unplanned laughter on the stage.  At one point, confronting Tennant covered in paint, Tate had to make three efforts to get her line out through the laughter, glaring at the audience as we laughed at her hysteria (which made us worse) before exiting to a huge round of applause.  Brilliantly, it was on a line which Benedick then repeats when alone, giving Tennent the chance to ad-lib the triple repetition and causing Tate to come back on stage to glare again at both him and us.  Later, by the closing scenes, Claudio couldn't complete a line through his laughter.  It's all a bit unprofessional, of course, but honestly, when they were giving us such a good time, I think everyone present was probably willing to let them off with enjoying themselves.

This is the second production of Much Ado I've discussed on this here blog.  The last, back in 2007, was one of the best productions I'd ever seen.  The Rourke/Tate/Tennant version, while entirely different, probably tops it.  And makes me want to see the stars keep on working together - imagine them in something by Wilde, or Noel Coward...

Review – The Impossible Astronaut

It's become something of a tradition in the media to look for any sign that the returned Doctor Who is going off the boil.  So the online reporting following the first episode of the new series (Series six of 21st Century Who or series 2 of Matt Smith depending on how you're counting) pounced on lower overnight ratings than last year and announced that this will 'probably be the least watched series opener since the return'.  And probably even once time-shifted viewing is taken into account it will be, but it's still out-performing practically everything that's not a soap.  And in other news this week, the first episode broke BBC America's previous record audience and Matt Smith was nominated for a BAFTA.  I think any effort to suggest that the bloom is off the rose is a little premature.

So what about that episode?  Well, it's hard to review without giving a major plot point away, but the gist of it is that Amy, Rory, River and apreviously unseen old man are summoned to the middle of nowhere in the USA by The Doctor, where something unimaginable happens.  The rest of the episode's running time is given over to the fallout and an effort to understand what the hell is going on.

This two-part season opener has all the feel of a two-part season finale, which is at least partly its stated aim.  It feels epic in scope, dramatic and emotional in content, and strangely climactic for the start of a thirteen episode run.  The epic feel is helped by the filming in Utah, and judging by the trailer for part two that gets even more use there, and the very direct involvement of President Nixon lends a sense of import to the proceedings.  The dramatic and emotional is covered well by reactions to the unimaginable thing, by some major news from Amy, by the increasing mystery around River, and by the cliffhanger, which falls just the right side of overwrought.  Add to that a truly creepy new set of villains, the return of something unexpected from last year's episode The Lodger, and some sterling interplay among the regulars (and Mark Sheppard, who frankly feels like a regular after half an episode) and honestly it's hard to find major fault.

Minor faults are that River's big scene about her worry arising from the temporal weirdness of her relationship with The Doctor managed to confuse even me, and I thought I was pretty clear on at least the mechanics if not the detail, so god knows what less well dug-in viewers thought; and there's some terrible acting among the Secret Service agents in evidence.

Highlights are most of the interplay between River and The Doctor, including a slap that looks like it should have taken Matt Smith's head off, the brilliant creepiness of the Silents, the opening scenes of The Doctor having fun in history, and the development of the TARDIS family that having everyone around represented.

The Impossible Astronaut got the series off to a rousing start, managed the odd juxtaposition of being both epic and a romp, and set up what could be the darkest, most complex season arc so far.  I'm prepared for each series to throw up at least one clunker, but fortunately, this wasn't it for this year.

New Who – Spoiled/Not Spoiled

So Doctor Who came back on Saturday, and lo, there was much rejoicing across the land (well, our bit of a the land for certain, and almost certainly others).  I attempted an episode-by-episode review a few years back which didn't work.  Can I make it this year?  Who knows, but I will at least try.  I'll do episode one in a bit, but as a general intro I thought it worth noting that every now and then a Who fan demonstrates that we're every bit as capable of ridiculous excess as those Trek people.

Background:  The issue of Doctor Who Magazine which previewed this first two-parter ran four alternative covers with photos of The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River, and the headline promise that one of them would die in the first episode.  Lo and behold, one of them did - no I'm not saying; spoilers!  Possibly contrary to expectation it didn't happen at the end, it actually happened about ten minutes in, and its ramifications began to be played out through the rest of the episode.  Executive Producer Steven Moffat said in an interview that he had the thought that he'd open the series with a story that felt as big and important as the series finales have been since the programme came back, which I think he managed nicely.

To summarise: the officially licensed magazine of the show produced a preview of the new series which promoted the first episode with a dramatic headline, having agreed all its coverage with the show's production team and included Moffat himself in said coverage.  It's how TV series get promoted, and it's all how the people who make the programme wanted it to be.

So on Saturday night, poor, abused DWM editor Tom Spilsbury notes on Twitter that someone's announced they are "incandescent with rage, depressed and filled with raw anger and hate" over the spoiling of the episode by his magazine, and starts going on about 'formal letters of complaint'.  Looking at the Twitter feed of the person who is so incensed makes for depressing reading, and to be fair, obviously that's lacking a lot of context.  But when you post publicly about things you have to deal with the fact that people reading only see and know the words on the screen/page, so that's what I'm working from.

And doing so, the thing I'm most puzzled about is that it was only when he watched the episode that he decided to be offended by the 'spoiler'.  Indeed, I *think* he's suggesting that based on the covers and the trailer following the Christmas special he'd worked out exactly who died.  But this only seems to have become an issue when he was proved right.  He'd been looking at the cover for a couple of weeks, he'd seen the trailer four months ago, and nothing anywhere had said "Person X dies in The Impossible Astronaut".  So in the first place I'm not sure a teaser counts as a spoiler anyway - surely a spoiler is a specific plot point that's revealed in advance - and in the second why did he only decide to kick off about it on broadcast, not when he was first 'spoiled'?

There is, by any standard, a fine line between promotion and spoiler.  And everyone promoting a film, book, TV series, etc treads it carefully all the time.  I was in the supermarket at the weekend and noted the Eastenders-centric covers of this week's regular TV listings magazines; one suggests a character is going to commit suicide, a couple of others that a new relationship is going to be starting, and alongside that, how various other series' plotlines will peak over these seven days.  This is how it works.  You tell a potential viewer/reader/listener that something dramatic is going to happen to encourage them to see how it pans out.  If the cover of DWM had said exactly who died, in what circumstances, and what it all meant, I'd allow that the episode had been spoiled.  If they'd revealed more than the production team wanted them to, rather than worked with that team to get the promotional level right, I'd allow that they'd crossed a line.  But just creating some anticipation of something that *still* came as a huge shock because of its timing and circumstance?

That's not a spoiler.

Insert Corny ‘Farewell’ Line Here

There's a weird thing that happens when famous people die, where some members of the group known as 'the rest of us' get almost more overwrought than if a close personal friend had died.  The extreme of this is obviously Princess Diana - oh lord did I see some extraordinary sights in London that week - but it happens with far less famous people to varying extents.

I confess I always feel a mix of stunned amusement and mild despair at the way people sometimes create apparently deep emotional connections to figures they don't really know, and allow that connection to affect their reaction to that person's death.

And yet.

Elisabeth Sladen died yesterday.  And I'm feeling very emotional about it.  I met her twice, both times introduced only in passing by people who knew her far better than I, who I assume are even more emotional this morning.  I couldn't possibly claim an emotional attachment in any personal sense, but she's been there in my life to some degree since I was less than ten years old, when she first appeared in Doctor Who, and given how emotionally attached to that series I've always been, it seems that Lis gets it by osmosis.  But it seems, ONLY Lis.  I've lived through the deaths of three Doctors and only recently The Brigadier, and while noting it sadly, never really felt a bit teary the way I have on and off for the last twelve hours.

I guess it's that, at a time when an impressionable kid is still young enough to wish that The Doctor might actually turn up and whisk him away, the 'audience identification' figure in the series takes on a greater importance than usual.  It helped, of course, that she became iconic in a way that most other companions hadn't/didn't, and so there was always someone else (even among those who didn't regard themselves as upper case Fans) who would remember her and be able to share a memory.  And the whole Doctor Who 'industry' kicked off around that time, meaning she was a fixture at conventions, that fanzines and DWM were around to keep her in our minds.  So she never really went away.  And then, amazingly, she came back anyway.  Unlike a lot of people, I knew that she was coming back a long time before the word was officially out, and it immediately felt so right it was almost ridiculous to think people weren't already just assuming it would happen.

I've blogged about School Reunion here, and at the time called it my favourite episode of New Who.  If I'm completely honest, it isn't that any longer, because, well, almost everything with Donna in it, basically, but it's still extraordinarily special.  And this morning I listened to Russell T Davies' tribute and everything I felt about Sarah Jane, and Lis Sladen, at the time I first watched School Reunion so clearly reflected the way he felt making it, I got a bit emotional again.

I started writing this on the train this morning and have been in meetings, so I'm posting it very nearly twenty four hours since the news hit.  And right this very minute the terms 'Elisabeth Sladen' and 'Sarah Jane' are both still trending on Twitter WORLDWIDE.  I'm sure I can't be the only one who finds that both astonishing and 100%, satisfyingly, gratifyingly, right.

Quintessentially British; Quintessentially Great

I defy anyone to suggest that any broadcaster but the BBC would ever bring a programme like The Great British Bake-Off to our screens.

For those poor souls deprived of this gem by geography or ignorance, this is (I kid you not), a competitive baking programme.  Each week, in a different location, the programme focuses on a different subset of the baker's art; cakes, bread, puddings, etc.  And each week, a number of amateur baking enthusiasts are presented with baking challenges, and are ousted from the competition if their bread is of insufficiently open texture, their Victoria Sponge not perfectly risen, or their scones fail to present an entirely uniform colour.  Judges Paul Hollywood and baking legend Mary Berry look like the most easy-going pair in the world, but mess up one of their own recipes in the technical challenge and you'll wish you were standing in front of Simon Cowell with a plate-spinning act.

Between challenges (each programme has three rounds; signature bake, technical and a variable 'big' challenge) presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins - not seen enough as a double act these days - provide filmed inserts outlining the cultural histories of each week's subject bakes, from the way the invention of the railway affected the development of biscuits, to the impact of Queen Victoria on the classic wedding cake.

In those terms, it sounds like a piece of inoffensive fluff of the kind Stephen Fry probably thinks fearful BBC execs thought of as a safe option.  But even if it is, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with at least some of that on our screens.  There's a lot to be said, after all, for showing 'ordinary' people indulging in activities they feel passionate about, and explaining the history of any elements of our culture is surely part of the BBC charter requirement to 'promote education and learning'.

There's something about The Great British Bake-Off that makes me happy it exists.  Maybe it's the fact that it allows people to be proud of something regarded as mundane.  Perhaps it's the fact that it evokes a British idyll at a time when I think the country's in a pretty crappy place.  It's possible that it's just a happy collision of elements that I think work.

But mostly I think it's because I know that only the BBC could or would ever make it and broadcast it.  And I think that's a reason to be happy by itself, even if the programme itself wasn't so engaging.

Some Reviewin’ (1)

Thought I'd get back into exercising my critical faculties.

Sherlock is the BBC's new take on (you'll never guess) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, devised this time by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.  The twist this time is that it's a modern day version in a world where Doyle clearly never wrote the originals.  Now since I watched the first episode I've been tempted to explore what the actual impact of that fact alone would be on this world - the history of detective fiction obviously would have taken a different path, there would be significant cultural differences (no previous adaptation nor any of the countless works influenced by the stories would exist, and a lot of people's careers would have been different), and potentially the science of forensic criminology itself would be in a different place - the impact of Doyle's work is actually pretty broad.  But while it might be interesting to see some hints of that explored in the series, it would probably represent a fairly pointless shift in focus away from the actual drama.

So two of three stories in this new version in, what's it actually like?  Well, the basic set up is essentially the same: iconoclastic loner with apparently uncanny powers of observation and deduction sets himself up as the world's only consulting detective, providing advice and occasional humiliation to the police.  Needing to find someone to share the rent of his central London flat, he's introduced to an army doctor recently invalided home from the conflict in Afghanistan.  Said Doctor/flatmate becomes his sidekick/foil and so The Odd Couple set-up is complete.  They've stuck to most of the details - 221B Baker Street, Inspector LeStrade, Mrs Hudson (Una Stubbs on fine form; "I'm your landlady dear, not your housekeeper"), and I'm pleased to note have retained Watson's character as more the man of action that Doyle presented than the bumbler that a lot of adaptations have gone for.

The series' style on the other hand is resolutely modern, with fast edits, graphics overlaid on the pictures to represent Holme's thought processes, and a few too many arch references to 'The Gays' to be entirely naturalistic (Mrs Hudson again: "It's all right dear, we get all sorts round here.  Mrs Turner next door's got married ones!")

In terms of the stories themselves, things are a bit of a mixed bag so far.  The first of the three in this first series, A Study In Pink, takes a lot of its cues, though not all its plot, from the first published Holmes story A Study In Scarlet.  Series creator Steven Moffat has combined a number of the elements of the source into an original mystery which manages to hold its own against the weight of all the set-up that needs to be accomplished in its ninety minutes.  In fact, the clever direction and editing of the opening scenes, showing three unconnected people all apparently committing suicide in the same way, do a really solid job in using the visual nature of the medium to create an intriguing scenario that doesn't make the viewer feel cheated when all the facts are revealed later on.  For this to work at all it must have been scripted that way, so credit is due all round.

The unfolding of the plot happens at a fair old lick, and the whole thing is presented with a confidence that most British TV drama (and certainly that aimed at adults) is entirely lacking.  It's helped by some truly sparkling dialogue, particularly between the two leads (played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman - the former pitch perfect, the latter remarkably un-annoying compared to his usual performances, at least in the first episode) that really shows Moffat at his best.

The setting up of Mycroft is handled very well, and the establishment of an ongoing mystery apparently driven by someone called Moriarty offers hints of a lot to look forward to.

Episode two, The Blind Banker, is written by Steve Thompson.  On paper (or IMDB) Thompson's TV writing credits seem somewhat less extensive or impressive than those of the series creators, and frankly, this doesn't add much quality to his record.  The plot takes some elements from that strand of original Holmes stories involving mysterious messages in an unknown cypher (think The Five Orange Pips or The Adventure of the Dancing Men), but wrap it in a terribly thin tale about smuggling that considering the conscious updating going on feels oddly Victorian with its Chinese Tongs and circuses.  I could draw attention to any number of plot contrivances in this one that served to pull me wholly out of the drama, and indeed have in other online fora, but for me the worst sin of this story is in reducing the interesting characters of the pilot to something more like the caricatures that populate so many other Holmes adaptations.  Worse, the relationship at the end of the pilot is that of two people who have gone through a life threatening and life changing experience together.  The Blind Banker offers a pair who seem barely able to tolerate each other.

The huge disadvantage to having a series of only three stories is that one duffer like episode two weighs down the quality of the whole to a disproportionate degree.  Next week's third episode is written by Gatiss, so I have my hopes for its redemption, but when it inevitably comes back there needs to be a greater consistency than these first two episodes have managed.  And assuming they don't wrap up the Moriarty mystery in episode three, a longer series would at least present an opportunity to build it up better.  I'll be interested to see what happens here in both the short term of next week and the longer term of the series' future.