Classic TV

Nostalgia Corner: Hannay (1988-1989)

13 March 2014 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

When you think of genre-defining Scottish spies, you usually think of James Bond. True, James Bond started off as the quintessential English hero in Ian Fleming’s books, but once Sean Connery assumed the mantle in the movies, he became so synonymous with Bond than even Fleming felt compelled to make Bond Scottish, something very evident in the latest Bond movie, Skyfall.

But long, long before Bond, back when even Ian Fleming was just a young boy, there was another Scottish spy who more or less defined the genre in the first place: Richard Hannay. Based in part on Edmund Ironside, an Edinburgh-born spy during the Second Boer War, Hannay appeared in no fewer than seven books by John Buchan, the best known of which is The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Set in 1914, it sees ex-soldier and engineer Hannay visited in his London flat by a man called Scudder, a freelance spy, who reveals that there’s a German plot to assassinate the Greek premier during a forthcoming visit to London. When Scudder is murdered, the finger points at Hannay who not only has to evade the authorities and the German spy ring that killed Scudder, he also to save the Greek premier and expose the ring.

Buchan’s ‘shocker’ was an instant, astonishing hit, and proved so enticing that Alfred Hitchcock adapted it in 1935 with Robert Donat as Hannay.

But that was far from the last time the book was adapted. As well as numerous radio adaptations, including one with Orson Welles, a 1959 film directed by Ralph Thomas saw Kenneth More become Hannay.

More recently, Rupert Penry-Jones became Hannay for a 2008 BBC TV adaptation.

And even now, a comedic version of the book is a West End staple.

However, the best known adaptation of the story is the 1978 movie directed by Don Sharp and starring Robert Powell…

…that’s famous for out-doing Hitchcock with this scene on Big Ben.

So well regarded was this version that over a decade later, ITV asked Robert Powell if he’d reprise the role for a TV series called, naturally enough, Hannay. Here are the rather engaging, patriotic, not-at-all symbolic titles.

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US TV

Review: Believe (NBC/Watch) 1×1

13 March 2014 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

NBC's Believe

In the US: Sundays, 9/8c, NBC
In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, Watch. Starts March 27th

There used to be a time when I’d look forward to a show that had the name JJ Abrams attached. Even to this day, Felicity has its fans and although Alias went to seed in the second season, it was a real gamechanger and made Jennifer Garner’s career. Lost cemented Abrams’ reputation, even if he had minimum involvement with it, as did Fringe – at least in some quarters.

But largely, Abrams’ reputation rests on those shows – and it’s a foundation of sand. Look over his CV, and even if you discard the pilots he made that never saw the light of day, such as The Catch, Anatomy of Hope and Shelter, you’ll see he’s mainly produced turkey after turkey. Remember Six Degrees, Undercovers, and Alcatraz? Almost Human wasn’t exactly a tour de force, and if you’re still watching either Revolution or Person of Interest, you have my sympathies.

So now I approach any TV show with Abrams’ name attached with a fair degree of caution. To a certain extent, that’s because Abrams’ playbook has become quite clear. He stocks up the pilot with a sci-fi or fantasy scenario, fills it full of random mysteries and questions that must be answered, adds a secret organisation with answers to these mysteries of the in-world universe that have no implications at all in the real world, adds in a few ‘wow’ moments, a few martial arts fights and then, over the course of the series, slowly ekes them out, adds more mysteries, before finally revealing the largely unsatisfying answers. Not always, but that’s usually how it goes, assuming they don’t get cancelled before they’ve had a chance to reveal all.

So behold Believe, Abrams’ latest show in which a mysterious organisation led by Agent Dale Cooper (sorry, Kyle MacLachlan) is hunting down a young girl with secret powers over pigeons. Yes, pigeons. Oh, she can do other things, too, like predict the future and read minds. How? Good question. She just can and she might change the world as a result, so the baddies want to control her.

However, there’s another secret organisation led by Delroy Lindo that wants to protect her. So they bust a wrongly convicted death row prisoner (Jake McLaughlin from the TV version of Crash) out of jail and put him in charge of protecting her… for the rest of his life. Not the best idea in the world, you might think, so why have they done that? Well, that’s a mystery. Kind of. But it all revolves faith and belief.

It sounds a bit rubbish, it is a bit rubbish, and with yet another central mystery of no real-world import, a secret organisation, etc, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was Abrams working by numbers. But, actually, it’s Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, Gravity) and Mark Friedman (The Forgotten) who are the creative forces behind it, so despite its Abrams-ness, there are a few quirks to it you might not have been expecting.

Like that it’s deliberately silly to the extent that the main baddie is worried she won’t be home in time for her mum’s birthday with all the child-hunting she’s got to do.

Here’s a trailer. It’ll tell you the answer to at least one of the mysteries mentioned above.

Continue reading “Review: Believe (NBC/Watch) 1×1”

News

News: Pretty Woman musical, The Wicker Man TV series, Those Who Kill to relaunch + more

13 March 2014 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

NBC's Constantine starts filming

Theater

UK TV

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV show casting

  • Rose McIver to star in The CW’s Rob Thomas adaptation of iZombie
  • Annie Thurman to to recur on TNT’s Proof, Shantel VanSanten joins The CW’s The Messengers
  • Scott Cohen to star in NBC’s Coercion
  • Olivia Wilde and Juno Temple join Martin Scorsese’s HBO pilot
  • Maggie Grace to star in CBS’s Wall Street pilot
  • Zoe Boyle joins ABC’s Astronaut’s Wives Club, Morgan Taylor Campbell joins ABC’s Sea of Fire
US TV

Mini-review: Sirens 1×1-1×2 (USA)

12 March 2014 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Sirens (USA)

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA

2011’s Sirens was a rare comedy for Channel 4. Based on real-life accounts of life in the London ambulance service, the show was edgy and funny as well as dramatic.

As is the way of things, it was cancelled at the end of the first season, but even before then, Dennis Leary was looking to adapt it for the US. Three years in the making, here it comes, and despite Leary’s own edginess and experience on Rescue Me, this is largely an insipid piece, taking all the sharp edges and character from the original and replacing it with blokes winding each other up and swearing.

Rather than a nihilistic paramedic, his possible romantic interest female cop and best friend, his gay best friend, a Muslim newbie and the hospital counsellor who has to deal with them, we now have a slightly blokey but neurotic paramedic (Michael Mosley from Scrubs), his ex-girlfriend cop (Jessica McNamee from Home and Away), his black gay best friend (Kevin Daniels) and a newbie paramedic who lives at home with his parents (Kevin Bigley). Also along for the ride is the Old Spice Guy (Isaiah Mustafa) as McNamee’s new boyfriend, as well as a couple of female paramedics who hang around in scenes and laugh a bit, and an old black guy who talks to them like a counsellor but isn’t.

And then we just watch them drive around from accident to accident, winding each other up. But there are no Muslims or issues of faith, no gay hook-ups, no booty calls from more powerful women, no real characterisation beyond the surface level, no insight into life as a paramedic. It’s just blokes making bloke jokes and silly people with soda bottles up their bottoms, or people struck by lightning and who act strangely afterwards. Let’s laugh at the silly people.

If I had to pick anything of interest other than the always awesome Mustafa, it’s that there’s an openly black gay character not being camp and yet still talking about being gay in a US TV series, which is novel. Also, the swearing, when allowed free flow in the second episode, almost verges on The Thick Of It for imagination.

But largely, it’s a pretty bog standard comedy that’s short on laughs, the big appeal of which is blokes winding each other up. Watch it if that’s your thing, otherwise try to watch the original instead.

Here’s a trailer. It makes it look better than it is, largely by taking moments from the entire first season, rather than just the first two episodes.