Yes, it's about damned time I said something about things I've been watching on TV recently... I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting, but here's the most significant recent(ish) stuff...
Had I known before watching approximately half of the first episode of The 100 that it was based on another scintillating work of teen fiction, I probably wouldn't have bothered watching even that. There's just something about this sudden movement of 'Young Adult' writing, and particularly the way it keeps getting made into terrible movies and TV shows, that is deeply frustrating. I know TV/Movie adaptations aren't necessarily the best indicator of the original medium's quality, since most tend to go through at least one stage of stripping out everything that made them interesting and unique, and adapting whatever 'message' might be hidden in their pages so that it's obvious enough for couch potatoes, but the premise behind The 100 is so unpromising that it deserved to be left to gather dust in teenagers' bedrooms throughout the world.
Actually, maybe that's unfair... Some aspects of the premise are perfectly adequate: after some kind of nuclear holocaust, the few humans left alive are stuck on a conglomeration of international space stations (and yet are all, somehow, unapologetically American) which is slowly failing, and the government (because, naturally, any group of people larger than about 50 requires a government to tell it how to behave while stuck in a can out in the vacuum of space) is hiding that fact from them... gradually becoming more fascist, and ejecting any dissenters into space.
Where it gets stupid, and where it basically tries to retread the same ground as, for example, Lord of the Flies, is that this government decides that the best way to determine whether or not Earth has become habitable again (less than 100 years after the war) is to send down 100 of their criminals.
And all their criminals just happen to be... Teenagers...
So, naturally, the first thing they do when they alight upon the formerly scorched earth, after deciding that the air is safe to breath, is have a party. I wish I was kidding. Then they start removing the devices that tell the folks on the space station what condition they're in, health-wise. From there, it only goes downhill, because they all decide to blindly follow the loudest voice in the group, who also just happens to be a former member of the station security team.
My big problem with this is that we're meant to be rooting for the kids, but they're all such whiny, selfish, short-sighted idiots, I found myself getting more enthusiastic whenever one of them died. In fact, the most believable thing in the few episodes I could bring myself to watch was when a little girl (whose 'crime' I recall no mention of), having been told to 'fight her demons' (or somesuch... I don't recall the precise phrasing), decided that the most efficient thing to do was stab to death the son of the guy who killed her father (by having him chucked out of an airlock... which is, I'm sure you'll agree, a far more sensible punishment than simple imprisonment for any totalitarian society with a premium on living space and oxygen).
The adults, meanwhile, acted like people who didn't understand the concept of 'the big picture' - first sending 100 teenage 'criminals' down to a planet they felt was probably still inhospitable to human life (clearly the concept of radioactive half-life has been lost to history by this point), sending them down without any real equipment or means of survival beyond landing, and without any sensible means of communication, let alone any way of ensuring they do what they were supposed to do. The situation on the space station was such that, at one point, they had to 'accidentally' lose life support in one area of the station, killing a certain number of people, to ensure a temporary reprieve for the rest. All their 'solutions' are distinctly self-serving and short term, and the three main characters are the driven doctor, the indecisive politician and the power-hungry head of security - all very stereotypical, and enabling all sorts of illogical plot 'twists' that are obvious well in advance. I frequently found myself wondering how people like these actually found themselves on a space station in the first place - clearly none of them were Astronauts.
Naturally, life on Earth wasn't one big party... Everything from mutant animals to Lost-derivative yellow clouds of death to the 'shock revelation' that, actually, there were humans alive on Earth already, but they're sort of tribal-goth mutes. And just when things started settling down, one main character's girlfriend made the perilous journey to the surface, seemingly just to increase the tension, because he'd just slept with another main character.
Suffice it to say, I gave up on it as another lacklustre teen drama... It really does seem that nothing will ever get close to the likes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in terms of handling human drama in a mature and thoughtful way, while in a fantastical setting.
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I'd been told all about Murdoch Mysteries many years ago (probably when it debuted in the UK on one of the Sky satellite channels), and it sounded pretty good, so when I noticed it in a Freeview TV guide, I was keen to tune in. Based on a series of novels, it's essentially a Victorian era Canadian CSI, where a policeman uses pioneering (and anachronistic) investigative techniques to solve crimes, and meets 'celebrities' of his day, like Nikola Tesla and Arthur Conan Doyle. It also attempts to deal with 'issues' like gender equality, religious strife, domestic violence and even homosexuality, through the lens of Murdoch, who can be a little puzzling. For example, even his unreconstructed superior, Inspector Brackenreid, has a better attitude toward homosexuality than the strict Catholic Murdoch... but then, Brackenreid has become better developed as a character over the course of the first half of the series (not least the sudden revelation that he's a big theatre lover) than almost any other character, but particularly the titular character. In fact, I'd have to say that Brackenreid (played by Thomas Craig, formerly of lots of British television) is easily my favourite character of the lot. William Murdoch is a very straight-laced sort of guy, albeit one who is given to (very useful) flights of fancy when it comes to identifying and examining evidence. The thing is... he's virtually always right. In fact, the only significant time he was wrong, the matter involved his estranged father.
Granted, not everyone can have a Moriarty-style nemesis who's able to outwit them, or even offer a challenge, but there haven't really been any (convincing) false leads so far... and, aside from his very ignorance-of-the-time views on homosexuality, Murdoch is almost unfailingly nice to everyone he meets. There's also a very obvious (yet frustratingly slow) budding romance going on between Murdoch (a widower) and the completely anachronistic coroner/forensic pathologist, Dr Julia Ogden, who - despite being a mere woman (remember, this is the 1890s!) - is very well respected and well connected in her field. OK, perhaps Canada was more enlightened than the UK or the US at the time, but it still stretches credulity.
Then again, I don't think this series was ever really meant to be taken seriously, if only because Murdoch's long-suffering sidekick, Constable Crabtree, invariably gets involved in some rather embarrassing crime reconstructions to make up for getting just about all the comic stuff not already delivered by Brackenreid. It certainly makes a change from some of the more po-faced police procedurals out there, and is a welcome antidote to the CSI franchise, which quickly disappeared up its own backside as it branched out.
The fact that Murdoch has appeared on Freeview about six years after it made its original debut brings me some hope that the likes of The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne will eventually turn up on UK TV...
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Under the Dome returned to our screens with a spectacular lack of fanfare considering it's the second half (I hope) of the adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Trouble is, like The 100, its characters don't really behave like real people, just characters in a weird sci-fi/mystery series who are directed by the necessities of the plot. I may yet read the novel, but I've completely given up on the TV adaptation as it's bloated, dull and frequently feels quite pointless... And I'm not sure I even watched the whole of the first episode. It's incredibly frustrating to be watching something and constantly screaming "why would you do that?" to the characters...
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Quirky new British crime drama Chasing Shadows is a whole different kettle of fish. It functions on two levels: first and foremost, it's riding on the coat tails of The Bridge and giving us our own version of Saga Norén in the form of Detective Sean Stone, a socially inept but gifted investigator who is introduced to the viewer making a complete mess of an interview about the successful conclusion of a case, because he feels it wasn't successful enough. Rather than being immediately sacked, his enraged superior palms him off on Missing Persons, to be partnered with Ruth Hattersley, and the pair frequently run into Detective Inspector Carl Pryor over the course of the first two-part story, in which a killer is preying on missing, vulnerable teenagers. Its secondary function seems to be as a Doctor Who reunion, of sorts, with the awesome Don Warrington (several roles in Old Who) as Stone's superior, Alex Kingston (River Song) as Ruth, Adjoa Andoh (Martha Jones' mother) as her boss and Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith) as DI Pryor. Even Reese Shearsmith has a Who connection, having played Patrick Troughton in An Adventure in Space and Time, the drama based on the very beginnings of Doctor Who... I can't wait to see who they bring in next.
It lacks the bleak, subdued colour palette of The Bridge, as well as its Noir-ish elements, but it has all the smart - and frequently very funny - dialogue of its Swedish/Danish cousin. Stone isn't quite as prickly as Norén, but Hattersley is following Martin Rohde's example by very quickly jumping into bed with Prior, even after declaring that her terrible taste in men has included far too many police officers in the past.
It's very nice to see Noel Clarke in a role like this, where he plays a less stereotypical, more human character who actually gets to smile once in a while, but I can't help thinking that there's something missing in both Shearsmith's portrayal of Stone and Kingston's portrayal of Hattersley... but, until I figure out what that is, I'm really enjoying the show, and looking forward to more in future (the current series is only set for four episodes).
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When ITV broadcast its first original follow-up to its adaptation of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, I was rather dubious. Optimistic... but dubious. The trouble was, Whicher was something of a cypher in the book - we learned a few facts about his career, but his personality (other than his dogged determination) remained largely mysterious as it had no bearing on the events. Paddy Considine's portayal was good, but the original - much like the book - was ultimately unsatisfying because the case was never solved. A new mystery seemed rather pointless and ended up being more of an attempted exploration of everything we don't know about Whicher, and particularly how his sense of self tied into his work in the police force, with very little focus on the mystery. To say I wasn't impressed would be an understatement... but it was obviously received well enough that they commissioned another two original tales.
The first of them, broadcast last weekend as I write, felt fairly simplistic and didn't really seem to go anywhere. Whicher was employed - by the very man who had him cast out of the police force over the Road Hill House incident - to look into a man who seemed to be following and threatening his son. Hints were dropped about dark goings-on while the son was in India, but the whole production was really quite dull. Had it been any more interesting, I might have stuck out its two hour running time... as it was, I was more keen to get a full night's sleep... aided, somewhat, by such an enervating first half.
In many ways, the point of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - both the book and the dramatisation - was that no-one knows what happened but, as one may gather from the title, Mr Whicher had his suspicions. The follow-ups have shown Whicher to be reasonably competent as an investigator, but chronically unsure of himself and consistently undermined by his comparatively low social status and the memory of that one unsolved case... And that doesn't work especially well as a repeating element in a continuing drama.
Needless to say, I haven't bothered with tonight's installment... it didn't sound especially interesting and, again, I'm more keen to get some sleep tonight.
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Of course, no round-up of my recent viewings would be complete without mentioning the return of Doctor Who with the new Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi. Part of me feels Capaldi is just that little bit too well-known for the role, but he seems to be settling into the role very nicely.
The first episode featured more clockwork robots (a deliberate reference to Moffat's New Who series 2 episode, The Girl in the Fireplace), a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Thames, and a very tense conversation between Clara and Madam Vastra which was, on the surface, about Clara's reaction to The Doctor's regeneration but, underneath it all (I suspect) a very frank explanation of the previous casting choices, and a hint at where the show will be going in future. The opening episode - which my girlfriend and I went to see in the cinema (much to the disappointment of her mother, who felt it was a waste of money since it was shown for free on BBC1) - also introduced a character currently known only as Missy, who is now the subject of much speculation in the fandom: Is she The Master? The Rani? The Tardis? Is she 'rescuing' people who sacrifice themselves for The Doctor? And what is this 'Promised Land'?
The next episode was the first disappointment of the series... To me, it seemed unfinished - in the sense of being in need of a little extra work - and also somewhat of a retread of some elements of the sixth episode of the first series of the reboot, entitled 'Dalek'. The whole Dalek rampage bit could easily have been library footage for all the effect it had, and the concept (originally mooted for a tie-in computer game, according to Moffat) was actually pretty half-baked. The idea that 'the only good Dalek is a seriously damaged Dalek' had some potential, and the episode was very open-ended,
Episode three took an almost entirely new direction, popping in on Sherwood Forest and meeting the real Robin Hood. Of course The Doctor couldn't believe there was such a thing - Robin Hood is a famous British myth, after all... and so the episode tried to deal with the concept of a man who became a myth, thus referencing The Doctor himself. It was one of the sillier episodes, with The Doctor engaging in a sword fight with Robin while armed only with a spoon (and is it just me, or did anyone else think they saw Capaldi very subtly stick up his middle finger as he put on his glove?), bickering senselessly, and generally letting Clara do all the important stuff, like uncovering the Sheriff of Nottingham's devious scheme. Quite a good episode... but was anyone else disappointed that Gatiss didn't make the Sheriff's soldiers Cybermen?
The latest episode, screened yesterday, felt very odd... On the one hand, it was intended to be a chiller - more for the kids than for the adults in the audience, I feel, but that's a good thing - while also giving us more glimpses of a new character in the series, former soldier Danny (or Rupert) Pink. I wonder if the 'monster' is going to appear in later episodes, since we didn't actually see it ourselves.
Moffat is certainly continuing his fixation on the companions - having already shown us that Clara Oswald was instrumental in guiding The Doctor throughout his life as a wandering Time Lord, here 'the impossible girl' proved to have been very influential in The Doctor's early life... And, given his terse exchange with a soldier at the end of the second episode, I'm very curious as to how Danny Pink fits into the grand scheme of things.
While he remains a very divisive showrunner, I still have far more confidence in Moffat than I did during the majority of Russell T. Davies' tenure. In particular, some of his 'relationship' dialogue (prime examples being almost any verbal exchange between Clara and Danny thusfar) has been painfully good. There's a sense of toe-curling honesty to it that was completely lacking in Davies' melodramas, and it's helped immeasurably by the complete absence of David Tennant's gurning.
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