Do you love director Jack Gold, who was responsible for – among many other things – The Naked Civil Servant? Then I have got the season for you at the BFI in July, with everything from documentaries to plays.
Do you want to watch something other than Jack Gold’s directorial work? Then sorry, nothing for you here. Move along. Although you might want to try this week’s Wednesday Play (on Thursday) first – Stocker’s Copper, a neo-realist dramatisation of the Cornish China Clay workers strike of 1913, starring Gareth Thomas (Blake’s 7), written by Tom Clarke (Muck and Brass) and directed by Gold. Or you might not.
As we all know, US networks have a marked tendency to copy one another. No sooner is one network commissioning a time travel series then all of them are. Period dramas beget more period dramas. Hangover knock-offs beget Hangover knock-offs. And so on.
Of course, the US isn’t unique in this. For every Doctor Who and Atlantis in the UK, there’s a Primeval and a Beowulf. Australia isn’t immune either. Although last year was a bit of special case, we saw not one but two dramatisations of the events at Gallipoli, and following on from the political intrigue of ABC’s The Code, we’ve had Ten’s Party Tricks and now Foxtel’s Secret City.
But a copy needn’t be inferior to the original and surprisingly, Secret City is easily the best of the lot. Adapted from journalists Chris Uhlmann and Steve Lewis’s The Marmalade Files and The Mandarin Code, Secret City has huge amounts in common with The Code but is far better. Also set in and beautifully filmed in Canberra (part of a concerted effort by ACT to get more Australian shows filming in the city), it sees Anna Torv (Fringe) playing a top political journo who’s mysteriously sent some incriminating photos featuring Australian defence minister Daniel Wyllie (The Beautiful Lie) when he was just a lad in China, hanging out with the state police as you do. As Wyllie is surprisingly pro-Chinese, anti-US, there’s the suspicion that he’s possibly a Chinese plant. But who sent the photos and why? And how is it all related to the murder of a young student with similar Chinese links?
In contrast to The Code, which was all flashy computer hacking, trendy Asperger’s kids and running around in the countryside, Secret City is shoe-leather journalism. The first two episodes sees Torv doggedly ploughing her way through documents and interviewing witnesses and her contacts in order to expose the truth. In this she’s helped (and also hindered) by her trans ex-husband Damon Herriman (Battle Creek, Justified, Flesh and Bone), who works for the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and who handles all the techy stuff involving mobile phones et al.
While not 100% accurate when it comes to either newspaper journalism or computing, the show is close enough to reality that it feels real, almost like an Australian version of State of Play. Rather than pseudonymous political parties in the style of Byw Celwydd (Living A Lie), the show is happy to deal with and satirise real parties (particularly the Greens). There are references to real political situations that affect Australia, such as China’s ambitions in the South China Sea, and China and its manipulations are explicitly Chinese, not YA “Asian country”.
It’s also quite subtly written – Herriman’s trans status isn’t explicitly mentioned and is handled sensitively, yet is also a plot point. I’m not quite sure why ASD only has a male security guard – you’d think it might have more than one female employee, wouldn’t you? – but the show manages to handle trans issues without coming across like a piece of ‘social justice’ propaganda.
Despite being a thriller, Secret City is also funny at times, particularly thanks to Jacki Weaver, who plays Labor’s straight-talking, foul mouthed power broker – the Peter Capaldi of the piece – but also because Torv’s newspaper editor is none other than Huw Higginson (for 10 years, PC George Garfield on The Bill) and the American ambassador to Australia is Mekhi Phifer, who hasn’t improved as an actor one jot since Torchwood: Miracle Day. It’s also amusing to hear from his mouth talk of the singular importance of the special relationship between the US and Australia. And, of course, Jim from Neighbours (Alan Dale) is the Australian Prime Minister now.
I really enjoyed the first two episodes; I’m hoping the next ones will be just as good, particularly as we’re at a time of year when we face a plethora of new shows that are rarely worth our time. No word yet on a UK pick-up of the show, but since both The Code and Foxtel’s own Deadline Gallipoli eventually got acquired by UK networks, I’m hopeful.
In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, AMC In the UK: Acquired by BT Vision. Available in Autumn
We are, I’m sure, all knowledgeable, media-literate gentlemen and ladies of the world who have at least seen The Player so know what a pitch-meeting is. In case you don’t here it is:
Now, I’m wondering exactly what the pitch was to AMC that made its commissioners think, “Yes, let’s do it!” I’ve tried all sorts of permutations:
“I’d like to remake the Danish series Bankerot, which is about two friends who decide to set up a restaurant together.”
No bite. So then the pitch progresses.
“The mafia is involved. One of the friends, the chef, has been in prison. He owes them money. The restaurant is how he’s going to pay them off.”
Stoney faces. After all, would you be commissioning at this point? It’s already at nearly double the 25 word count, too.
Time for a plot dump. “The chef friend was coked up and burnt down the restaurant they were working for, which is why he’s in jail. The other guy is a sommelier. His wife has died. His son has become selectively mute. He lost his job and so has become a travelling wine rep and hates it. He’s living in a disused factory in the Bronx. He doesn’t speak to his rich dad any more because his dad’s an epic racist and his wife and son are black. But then he has to borrow money from him to set up the restaurant.”
I’m still not seeing anyone commissioning it, are you?
So I’m therefore guessing, since we do actually have a show called Feed The Beast on our screens as a result of said pitch meeting, is that what happened was it either ended with or entirely consisted of: “I’m Clyde Phillips. I was the showrunner of Dexter when it was good. David Schwimmer from Friends will play the sommelier and I’ve got John Dorman from The Wire to play the dad.”
