Sophie Okonedo, Marc Warren, Rufus Jones et al join W’s Flack
BBC One green lights: series of surveillance thriller The Capture, December-May drama Gold Digger, abuse pay-off drama Dark Mon£y and dementia mystery drama Elizabeth is Missing
In the US: Sundays, 8/7c, CBS
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living
There is a genre of drama known as ‘competence porn’. Don’t worry, this isn’t what it sounds like.
The defining feature of ‘competence porn’ is a character who’s just good at everything. They’re rich, they dress well, they’re good at their job, they don’t make mistakes, they don’t trip over cracks in the pavement. Whatever life throws at them, they use their top-notch brain, balletic grace and wealth of experience to overcome the odds and beat their adversaries.
Usually, it’s a straight white male who’s the star of competence porn – think James Bond, Sherlock Holmes or even Matt Damon in The Martian. But not always – Olivia Pope in Scandal is straight black female competence porn, for example.
Now, in Instinct, we have possibly the first TV instance of gay white male competence porn*. Based on a James Patterson novel, its shockingly competent central hero is Dr Dylan Reinhart, a well dressed, best-selling author, university lecturer and former CIA field officer and paramilitary, capable of slapping around bad guys while simultaneously theorising about whatever psychological issues led them to try to hit him in the first place. He’s also gay and gave up his CIA career so he could he could get married and have a normal life with his now ex-husband.
When a serial killer starts murdering people and sends the NYPD a copy of Reinhart’s book about mental abnormality, detective Bojana Novakovic (Edge of Darkness, Shameless) seeks out Reinhart and enlists him in the hunt for the killer. Which is handy because Reinhart’s agent is pressing him for a new, exciting book and Novakovic hasn’t got on with any of her new partners since the death of her ex-partner and fiancé. Gosh, if only this was the start of a beautiful, completely platonic, crime-solving partnership.
All of which sounds great and wonderfully diverse, if otherwise a little bit formulaic. The only problem? Reinhart is played by Alan Cumming. Yes, this Alan Cumming.
France 2 green lights: Victor Hugo biopic Victor Hugo, ennemi d’État (Victor Hugo: Enemy of the State), with Yannick Choirat and Isabelle Carré [French]
I’m always a little unsure of 50 Cent’s credentials. I know he’s supposed to have bullets lodged in his tongue or something from his days on the street, but every time I see him, I’m haunted by visions of CB4 – that Chris Rock movie about a group of nice black kids who want to be a rap group but don’t get anywhere until they pretend they were in prison, etc.
Now a TV producer as well as a rap artist, 50 Cent uses his credentials to give us ‘gritty’ shows about gang life and the such that are supposedly terribly authentic but are mainly just terrible. We’ve already had the grimly bad Powerand now we have the authentically dreadful The Oath. We start by being told that a goodly proportion of the criminal gangs operating in the US are actually corrupt cops – source (?) – after which we’re introduced to one such gang, consisting of Ryan Kwanten (True Blood), Katrina Law (Arrow), Cory Hardrict and JJ Soria. They rob a bank but unfortunately for them, the FBI are already on to them and have them all arrested.
Soon, Elisabeth Röhm is pressuring them to accept her agent, Arlen Escapeta, as a member of their gang so that together they can take down some bigger crooks. Meanwhile, corrupt cop Sean Bean is in the nick and he has plans of some kind that aren’t quite clear at the moment, mainly because Bean is mumbling his way to the bank and not even trying to pretend to be American.
Gloss
The Oath has many, many problems. It wants to be rough and tumbly, hard and street, giving the usual street cops with real-world experience out-smarting FBI agents, even those who have years of experience dealing with Rico investigations. But that largely equates into next to no characterisation, obviously plotting, dreadful dialogue and everyone looking like they’ve had the energy sucked out of them by a lifeless script. It is, after all, just a vague attempt to put a spin on Sons of Anarchy.
Of course, you’re supposed to take it on trust that this is what life is like ‘on the streets’. Because 50 Cent says it is. And it’s possible it is – people in real life generally have very bad dialogue. It’s just not much of it rings true. Can you bribe waitresses to slip customers knock-out drugs? Maybe… but how long is she going to keep her job? Doesn’t she have a little more sense of self-preservation? Is a bar full of armed hard nuts really going to allow white supremacists in with gangs of black guys? And if there is a fight, is it really just going to end with a few bleeding noses? It seems unlikely.
Its other problem is that the direction is constantly harking back to much, much better movies in an effort to convince you it’s the same as they are – it’s the CB4 of TV direction. The bank robbery is a pretty poor copy of Heat. The gang are chased through back streets in a direct rip of the chase scene from Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break. At every turn, you’ll get a sense of déjà vu as you’re reminded of a movie you might have enjoyed.
To be fair, Ryan Kwanten is at least making an effort and Law is light years away from her Arrow role, even if she doesn’t get much to do apart from run and stand around. But the only oath I wanted to swear after watching the first episode is not to watch such a preposterous piece of nonsense.
