A complete archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s reviews of TV programmes since 2005
Ah kids. Little bastards, all of them. Give them a superpower and they’d all destroy the world in as much time as it takes to say, “I want my Happy Meal now!” It’s a lesson written large and clear in Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who, Fear Her.
Paul Abbott is a talented guy. He’s written episodes of Cracker, created Touching Evil and Shameless and has more awards than ITV has viewers (give or take). Russell T Davies thinks he’s a God.
Legions of journalists have huge respect for Abbott for creating State of Play, the outstanding 2003 serial that introduced the world to the now much-admired Life on Mars pairing of John Simm and Philip Glenister. Although it portrayed journalists as a lying, shifty bunch, willing to obstruct the course of justice for a good story, we forgave it that slight flaw because we were the heroes who saved the day.
Its depiction of life at a newspaper was actually pretty authentic, except for the bit where Simm is allowed to lay out the page and compose his own headline at the end of the final episode, which would never happen – although he did mess it up, thus demonstrating why reporters don’t get to touch Quark, normally. The bit about who owned the copyright on the story because Simm was on a freelance contract actually makes those of us who are self-employed all giddy with delight (seriously. There was an article in the NUJ newsletter The Journalist about it by one of my old tutors, Humphrey Evans).
If you haven’t seen State of Play, pick up a copy of it on 
Amazon. You’ll be impressed to see Amelia Bullmore in a straight role and Marc Warren (from Hustle and Doctor Who‘s Love and Monsters) having a crap time of it as the slippery Dominic Foy.
Despite all the plaudits, a sequel has yet to materialise. Hollywood is all set to adapt the original. Last year’s South Bank Show profile of Abbott said filming on the sequel was to begin last June. But three years on, still nothing. The last we heard was in an interview with John Simm in the Daily Telegraph in January:
…and there is talk of a second series of the excellent State of Play. “The last time I saw Paul [Abbott], he was so caught up in writing Shameless that he’d only managed one or two episodes of the next State of Play. God, it would be great to work with him again.”
I hate to say this, but I don’t care about another series of Shameless. How much more is there to say on the subject? I want more State of Play!
What with Stephen Fry backing out of writing a Doctor Who episode, I have to say: “Writers: get your priorities straight. Give us what we want!”
TNT isn’t a natural home to new drama. The network, once a home to pro-wrestling matches, managed to cancel just about every original drama series it commissioned before they’d even got to the end of the first season (cf Babylon 5: Crusade), with the slight exception of Witchblade.
All that’s a thing of the past. It now has shows like The Closer, which are chugging along nicely, a new minimalist catchphrase, “We know drama”, and another original series called Saved.
On the one hand, TNT should be applauded for its bravery. Saved verges on HBO-territory here, dealing with a paramedic, Wyatt Cole (Tom Everett Scott), who has a gambling addiction and a crappy existence. There’s no comedy, no moment of revelation when the hero realises he has to change his life for the better. He just lurches from one crisis to another, unwilling to do anything that would get him out of the gutter he knows.
Neither are there any other likeable characters. The paramedics he works with aren’t especially nice either. His ex- is moving in with another man – but is perfectly happy to cheat on him with Cole. His former High School friend who’s now a moneylender is still willing to have him beaten for failing to pay his debts.
On the other hand, on the strength of the pilot, all this doom is more or less the sum of the programme. Just as some shows are shallow for only dwelling on happy things and never letting the dark hand of reality sneak in and tarnish them, so it’s possible for others to be shallow for only dwelling on the misery. Aside from the occasional vein of black and teasing humour, the mood of the show is only ever misery or blank neutrality, designed to fill the gaps until the next bit of depression. It leaves you feeling a bit uninvolved as a result.
It’s a promising show though, with more than enough to keep the interest if they manage to flesh out the secondary and main characters some more. Directorially, it manages to avoid most of the clichés of ‘dark’ tales, avoiding the constant Se7en midnight and rain that so beset other shows that think they’re deep. When it’s not inspecting the disaster area that is Cole’s existence, it’s inspecting the disasters that he has to attend to in his job. With each victim he comes across, we get a potted photo romain of all the events in their lives that led up to this point – Casualty in an eye-blink if you will. The technique starts to become a little tired by the end of the show, but if the producers impose some self-discipline, it could become an effective visual trademark that’s actually reasonably disturbing.
All in all, one to keep an eye out for in future if the wind catches their sails just right,.
“Note to self: By episode ten, David and Billie will probably be knackered. Real risk of them appearing on top of Welsh parliament building with sniper rifles if I make them do more work. Plus not sure they can be at two places at same time, thanks to filming requirements of episode nine. Must come up with story that doesn’t involve Doctor or Rose. Hmm. How about story like Star Trek’s Lower Decks that focuses on other characters? Or like The Zeppo on Buffy? I love Buffy. I wish I was Buffy.”
From Russell T Davies’s “Production Notes: Doodles in the Margins of Time” © BBC 2007
Love and Monsters was quite a brave episode. You have to admire Russell T Davies for at least trying something new. A story that pretty much doesn’t feature the Doctor or his companions at all? Unheard of! (When was the last time? Yes, you there at the back. Mission to the Unknown, back in the Hartnell days? Well done!)
But does it succeed? Could it have ever succeeded?
Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 2×10 – Love and Monsters”
Caught my first few episodes of Deal or No Deal over the weekend. WTF? It’s such a bizarre show. I can understand the appeal for certain people – apparently market traders enjoy it because it’s more or less their job (ie guesswork combined with judicious decisions about when to back down) – but for the rest of us?
In case you’ve never watched the UK version, the rules are simple: you have a box, inside of which there is some money (or a sticky label with a number written on it, anyway). Then there are a whole load of other people with boxes, each with money/sticky labels inside. The contestant knows what all the numbers are on the labels, but doesn’t know which boxes they’re in. He or she then gets all bar one of these people to open their boxes in turn. Every so often, the ‘banker’ (for which read ‘a producer reading out numbers coupled with Noel Edmonds improvising dialogue’) rings up and offers an amount of money to the contestant if they’ll stop opening boxes. If you don’t take the money and run, at the end, you get whatever’s in your box .
In case you think you’ve missed something, you haven’t. It’s a game based entirely on random guesswork. I guess it’s like playing the lottery in that it’s just pure chance whether you get any money. In this case, the odds are considerably better. All the same, someone sat down and thought “How about a game show that’s all about opening boxes at random?” Someone Australian at that, since it’s an Australian format – you’d have thought an extrovert nation like that could have come up with something more dynamic, couldn’t you?
Oh well. I guess the thing is it’s gambling and if you’re a gambler (been there, done that, lost the T-shirt off my back), you’ll gamble on almost anything…
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