Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jason Bourne and today I would like to apologise to you and everyone else in the world for my legacy.
No, not The Bourne Legacy, although someone should probably apologise for that. I’m talking about the effect I’ve had on movies and television throughout the world.
Now, I used to be a super cool, secret agent, able to fight, rewire things, break into buildings, hack computers – the works. But I got shot, I lost my memory, my identity and even my real name, and it took me three movies and an awful lot of fighting and travelling around the world to get it back.
In the world of movies and television, the result has been an awful lot of films and shows in which people, particularly secret agents, lose their memories and then have to fight and travel around the world a lot to get them back, usually in a not particularly interesting way.
I’m sorry to say that now, the bottom of the barrel has been scraped. Canada, a country whose last contribution to the spy genre was InSecurity, has decided with the help of the French to make XIII, a show in which Stuart Townsend – once so promising in things like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Queen of the Damned, before ruining it all with a remake of The Night Stalker – plays a secret agent who loses his memory and has to do an awful lot of fighting and travelling around the world to get it back.
And if you watch it, you’ll know what my life is like – because you’ll feel like you’re losing your memory, too. Here’s a trailer – just for fun, see if you can spot the differences between it and the trailer for the XIII mini-series made by the same people that aired a few years ago:
I went away to Cardiff for the Easter weekend. Lovely place, but it turns out there’s a fair degree of TV-related mentalism in and around town.
First off, we went to Barry Island! Yes, Gavin & Stacey land. Turns out the funfair only starts at 12.30, even on bank holidays. That’s mental. We did at least get to play pirate mini-golf along the seafront though.
But Barry Island is keen to cash in on the popularity of Gavin & Stacey. Look:
Yes, it’s the Oh! What’s Occurrin’? gift shop. Enterprising.
Meanwhile, back in Cardiff, we went along Mermaid Quay and had a look at what used to be Torchwood‘s back entrance (ho, ho).
Yes, it’s the Ianto Jones memorial, complete with little flowers. FFS, you mentals, he’s a fictional character.
