In the US: Fridays, 10pm, Cinemax
In the UK: Sky Atlantic. Starts October
As fans of The Great British Bake Off have recently discovered, format rights are very important these days. In fact, there have been 60-odd legal disputes over format rights around the world, over the years.
This is odd, since legally, there’s no such thing as format rights. After all, it’s one thing to argue that as you created suave British superspy James Bond, someone else writing books about suave British superspy James Bond without your permission is doing something untoward; it’s quite another to argue that no one else should be able to make a TV show that involves amateur cooks making cakes.
Of course, there’s a grey area somewhere between those two extremes. How about books featuring British superspy? Or superspies of any nationality? Or just regular spies? What about baking competitions that have a host called Mary Berry and all the same rounds as The Great British Bake Off, that’s called The Pretty Good British Bake On?
It’s somewhere lurking in this middle ground that we found Quarry, Cinemax’s latest excursion into adventure, drama, things being shot and ladies getting naked. It stars Logan Marshall-Green of Traveler, Dark Blue and Prometheus fame as a soldier returning home to Memphis after the Vietnam War, where he discovers not only that veterans aren’t that welcome, particularly ones implicated in rather heinous massacres, but also that jobs aren’t that common. However, the rather mysterious Peter Mullan (Miss Julie, Red Riding, My Name is Joe, Tyrannosaur) is willing to pay him and fellow war buddy Jamie Hector (The Wire) rather a lot of money to put their soldiering skills to work killing people, and before you know it, the body count is piling up.
If that sounds a bit familiar, it’s because of one of two things.
- You’ve read Max Allen Collins’ Quarry series of books on which the show is based
- You’ve seen ITV’s The Fixer, in which a war veteran who’s done some bad things ends up killing people for Peter Mullan.
The shows aren’t exactly 100% identical and the Quarry series was written way before The Fixer. But with the very Scottish Peter Mullan playing a very Southern but otherwise identical ‘tough bastard boss’? Hmm. That does not to me coincidence say.
If only format rights were real, ITV might be having some quiet words with Cinemax right now.
As well as being a relocated Fixer, Quarry also has a lot in common with Cinemax’s own Banshee, beyond simply the involvement of Greg Yaitanes. ‘Quarry’ – as Marshall-Green soon becomes known – is returning to a lost love whose love he might have lost (Jodi Balfour); he’s come back brutalised by his experiences and has to adapt to normal life again; there’s the lure of criminal life and its rewards but the acknowledgement of its costs, particularly in the lives of people we care about as well as of normality; there’s a sexually fluid and amusing fellow criminal (Damon Herriman – last seen as a trans spy in Australia’s Secret City); and practically everyone in the cast is from outside the US (Mullan – British; Balfour – South African; Herriman – Australian; Nikki Amuka-Bird – Nigerian-British).
But the tone’s different – whereas Banshee was pure pulp that both transcended and embraced its trashier qualities, Quarry wants to be something greater, something more noirish, something more philosophical. As well as lapping up its period setting, the mid-70s being a respite from the omnipresent 80s nostalgia we’re currently experiencing, Yaitanes also gives us all the directorial tricks he can throw our way, ranging from flashforwards and dream sequences to odd camera angles and compositions. And both Marshall-Green and that non-American cast list are top-tier acting talent – they’re not here for the shootouts.
While the feature-length first episode was a little too long and a little too exploitative for its own good, Quarry made a good start, clearly setting itself up to be Banshee mark 2, a more refined show that should still appeal to the same audience but which isn’t going to dwell in the realm of the hyper-violent and could draw in more discerning viewers as a result. The producers need to work a little on making the characters more appealing, as pretty much everyone is either too messed up or too criminal for you to want to spend much time with them. But they have the foundations they need in place, plenty of source material to work with (including The Fixer) and a decent story to tell, so I’ll be tuning to see waht they do with it all.
