UK TV

An archive of blog entries about UK TV programmes and production.

What did you watch this week? Including Crossing Lines, Perception, Satisfaction, Under The Dome and Much Ado About Nothing

5 July 2013 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

It’s “What did you watch this week?, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I’ve watched this week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

Normally, at this point, I’d list my usual recommendations. But what with international viewing schedules, etc, that’s started to get awkward. Instead, as I revealed on Tuesday, I’ve put together a “TMINE recommends” page, featuring links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended. I’ll improve it in all sorts of ways over time, since it’s a bit rough and ready at the moment, but it should mean that you’ll be able to find some good TV viewing if you need to.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been watching this week. Still in my viewing queue, though, is Being Mary Jane, BET’s new comedy-drama with Gabrielle Union, about “one black woman who is not representative of all black women” and her struggles with life and love. I’m not in a big rush to review this since the series itself doesn’t start until January 2014. But after a slightly shaky, very ordinary first five minutes, it started to improve post titles, so I’ll probably have a review up on (checks work schedule) Thursday next week.

The Almighty Johnsons (TV3/SyFy UK/Space)
Yes, it’s the return of New Zealand’s best drama show, with Norse gods (weakly) reincarnated in the bodies of ordinary mortals, all hoping that they’ll return to full strength once Odin and Frigg get married. It feels like the show’s trying to right itself after a somewhat erratic second season, with more of a focus on relationships. Some great individual dramatic and comedic moments, but no sign yet of a strong season-long narrative drive to push the plot. UK viewers will be relieved to hear season three has been acquired by SyFy UK, for broadcast soon.

Crossing Lines (NBC/TF1)
The first episode, of course, was a tiresome mixture of dramatic cliché and serial killer topes from cop shows, all set against a European backdrop. Episode two was a vastly chattier affair, less cliched but incredibly boring to watch. There doesn’t appear to be a good reason at all for Donald Sutherland to be in this, but they keep trying to find things for him to do, and the poor old German character may be the best of the actors not performing in their native languages, but he’s got almost nothing to do in terms of character development, sadly. It’s also becoming readily apparent that the writers have no real understanding of the difference between Northern Ireland and Eire, with yet another Irish character popping but having a Northern Irish accent. Some vague hints at a season arc involving a shady Russian, though, so maybe it’ll get better in the next few episodes.

Graceland (USA)
Too boring and not unique enough for me to keep watching, so it’s been dropped from my viewing schedule.

Perception (TNT/Watch)
A slightly stronger episode this week than last week’s, with our hero and heroine investigating a woman who thinks her husband has been abducted by aliens – it’s all because of a rare brain syndrome of course. The season arc stuff was quite well handled, alternately funny and moving, but the procedural side of things once again easily the worst aspect of the show, which would be great as a simple “weird condition of the week” psychological House.

Satisfaction (CTV)
A funny second episode that went a little way towards rectifying the problems that the first episode had with Leah Renee’s character. It could do with steering away from the supporting characters, though, since they’re bordering on the offensive (particularly the one with a cleft palate). Fake TV show The Horse Doctor was inspired though.

Under the Dome (CBS/Channel 5)
Exactly the same as any other Stephen King story set in a small town in Maine, and this week, of course, the casualties began to mount up. Absolutely unremarkable but reasonably diverting.

And in movies:

Much Ado About Nothing
Leagues better than the self-congratulatory Kenneth Branagh version, this sees virtually everyone who’s been in a Joss Whedon-directed TV show or film all together in one place for the first time outside of the convention circuit to do a modern-day but linguistically intact retelling of Shakespeare’s classic comedy – all shot in black and white in what’s probably Whedon’s house during his lunch breaks. Fine performances from everyone, particularly Nathan Fillion and Amy Acker, and excellent direction from Whedon, too, who manages to make a Shakespeare comedy genuinely funny. Still, it always weird to hear Alexis Denisof with an American accent.

“What did you watch this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Friday’s “The RSC’s Wolf Hall, Sky to acquire less US drama and casting on Legacy” news

5 July 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Film casting

Theatre

  • Ben Miles, Lucy Briers and Nathaniel Parker to star in the RSC’s Wolf Hall

UK TV

US TV

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Blue Remembered Hills (1979)

3 July 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Blue Remembered Hills

Anyone who’s ever watched US TV that features teenagers and young people will have noted that fairly frequently, adult actors have been cast in roles that they’re clearly too old for. Think of Buffy The Vampire Slayer: set in a High School for its first three seasons, it featured Charisma Carpenter as one of its pupils – at the time of the first season, Carpenter was 27 years old, despite playing a 16-year-old. Smallville – which got the subtitle of Superman: The Early Years over here – featured Tom Welling as the 16-year-old Clark Kent, when at the time he was 24. Add to that list shows like Gossip Girl, Modern Family and Pretty Little Liars, and you can see a pretty concerted strategy to not employ young people to play young people.

The general aim, of course, has been to get people with acting talent and the emotional maturity required for roles, as well as to make them allowably fanciable (in certain cases). Plus there’s those tricky child labour laws, education and so on to deal with.

But famed playwright Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective, Brimstone and Treacle) went to a different extreme, using the technique in an entirely different way in a number of plays for entirely different reasons. Both Stand Up Nigel Barton and his final work, Cold Lazarus, saw Potter casting very much grown adults in the roles of children to emphasise aspects of childishness in adults, to highlight the differences, and to achieve emotional resonances and performances that might not be achieved with child actors.

Perhaps his best use of the device was in Blue Remembered Hills, a Play For Today that aired in 1979. The play gets its name from poem XL of AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, ‘The Land of Lost Content’, which is read by Potter himself during the play:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

It stars Michael Elphick (Boon, Private Schulz), Robin Ellis (Poldark), Helen Mirren (do I have to remind you? Prime Suspect, at the very least), Colin Welland (Z-Cars), Janine Duvitski (Diane), Colin Jeavons (Inspector Lestrade in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) and John Bird (Bremner, Bird and Fortune) as the seven-year-olds in question. Probably the closest point of comparison is Lord of the Flies, with a group of normal children playing in the Forest of Dean one summer afternoon in 1943 but victimisation, stereotyping and brutality setting in over time, with tragic results.

Since airing on TV, the screenplay has been adapted for the theatre and is now a standard text at GCSE Drama. Enjoy, and remember if you like it, buy it on DVD to support those nice people who made it in the first place.