In this day and age, when everyone has so little time and shows can be cancelled within just a few episodes, most shows put all their cards on the table straight away, leaving the viewer an easy decision – to watch or not to watch, based purely on that first episode, which should be representative of all subsequent episodes.
But there is a reason for the existence on this blog of first The Carusometer and then The Barrometer: shows may be bad or even completely different in their first episode and then get much better and/or change scenario after a few episodes. VR5 was one such show, a show considerably ahead of its time that dared to have a story arc, to fool the audience and expect them to be observant, to kill regulars and to introduce much loved characters only after the fifth episode.
It starred Lori Singer (Fame) as telephone engineer Sydney Bloom. Sydney’s had a crappy life. Her computer scientist father, Dr Joseph Bloom (David McCallum), was killed, along with her sister, Samantha, in a car accident when she was just a child. Her mother, Dr Nora Bloom (Louise Fletcher), a neuroscientist, ended up in a vegetative state after overdosing on pills.
Sydney’s a bit of a nerd. She likes playing with this new fangled virtual reality equipment that’s all the rage in the mid-90s (remember Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms, anyone?). One day, while taking a phone call from someone, she accidentally connects to her virtual reality equipment at the same time and finds herself entering the mind of the person she’s talking to. There, her subconscious is able to interact with the subconscious of the other person and change their behaviour when they leave this shared experience.
Troubled and wondering how on earth this could possibly have happened, she seeks guidance from noted scientist Dr Frank Morgan (Will Patton), who tells her she’s achieved VR.5 – virtual reality level 5. After failing to convince her not to use VR, he offers her a job with an organisation called ‘The Committee’, doing spy-like work. To keep herself grounded, she confides in her Zen-master like childhood friend Duncan (Michael Easton) who guides her both inside and outside of VR.5.
And that’s the first episode.
So you might assume that that’s the show: a slightly touchy feely show in which a nerdy woman goes around helping strangers get over their traumatic emotions while wearing much sexier clothes in a Cell-like virtual reality, guided by her craggy, uninteresting scientist mentor.
And you might have switched off as a result because it sounds a bit like complete bobbins.
Mistake.
Because it’s not long before you discover that all is not what it seems in VR5. Will Patton’s character gets killed in the fourth episode, to be replaced by the much sexier, somewhat morally ambivalent Oliver Sampson (Anthony Head – Giles from Buffy). There are problems with story continuity that at first seem like poor writing, but turn out to be planned – to be clues that not everything is what it seems, as you might expect with a show about different realities.
Because there are other levels of VR, including VR8 – the ability to transplant or implant personalities and life experiences in another person. And someone has done just that to Sydney. Here’s the title sequence.
In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC. Starts October 10 In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living. To air this month
You’d have thought that NBC would have learned from its mistakes, wouldn’t you? Not three years ago, Trauma burst onto our screens, a bombastic tale of daring emergency services personnel – in that case, paramedics. That got cancelled. At the same time, it was airing Mercy, a tale of regular-type nurses and their professional and emotional lives. That got cancelled.
A year later, after removing most Law & Order shows from its schedules, it picked up another Law & Order from producer Dick Wolf: Law & Order: Los Angeles. That got cancelled.
Yet, here, bursting onto our screens in less than a week from now is Chicago Fire, a bombastic tale of daring emergency services personnel – in this case, fire-fighters and paramedics – from Dick Wolf. Starring House‘s Jesse Spencer trying his level best not to sound Australian, Justice/The Whole Truth‘s Eamonn Walker doing pretty well as usual at not sounding English and Sex and the City‘s David Eigenberg, who actually is American but still sounding very New York indeed, it revolves around a Chicago fire station and its group of buff manly men, and a couple of tough but nurturing female paramedics.
As with Trauma, there’s a terrible tragedy within the first few minutes that traumatises everyone and sets up tensions between members of the brigade. Also as with Trauma, there’s a newbie who needs to learn the ropes, there’s inter-staff sexual tension, one of the fire crew is hooked on drugs and everything comes all right in the end.
In fact, the only thing in Chicago Fire that’s new or different from not just Trauma but also more or less any other TV show you’ve ever seen is a lesbian, a silent cameo by Rahm Emanuel and firemen getting their tops off a lot. I understand that’s in the job description, though.
Since we were talking about youthful suicide pacts very recently, it seems appropriate that this week’s Wednesday Play should be the 1978 BBC production of Romeo & Juliet.
Although it might be tempting to be incredibly awe-struck by the ambition of the BBC’s recent The Hollow Crown season, which this year adapted four of Shakespeare’s history plays – Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 & 2 and Henry V – step back in amazement at the ambition that was the BBC’s seven year-long Television Shakespeare project between 1978 and 1985: a series of adaptations, staged specifically for television, of all 36 First Folio plays, as well as Pericles (but not The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward III).
Co-productions with the US Time-Life Television, controversially, the plays were originally planned to be staged conventionally in Shakespearean costumes and sets, and to be abridged to fit an allotted length of two and a half hours. However, when it was realised that that would kill most of the tragedies stone dead, the time limit was lifted, even if all the other restrictions were left in place – something that resulted in director Michael Bogdanov resigning from his modern-dress interpretation of Timon of Athens (Jonathan Miller replaced him) when it failed to be appreciated by Time-Life.
The result was a slight reputation of the series being staid and dull productions of the texts. Nevertheless, the project did have virtues, in some cases producing the only ever televised versions of some of Shakespeare’s more obscure plays, such as The Life and Death of King John, which starred Leonard Rossiter in his last screen role. Other notable and surprising actors to appear in the series included Roger Daltrey, Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, Anthony Quayle as Falstaff, Anthony Hopkins as Othello (no really), Bob Hoskins, John Cleese as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Donald Sinden, Alan Howard as Coriolanus, Laurence Olivier, Brenda Blethyn, Jonathan Pryce, Felicity Kendall, Diana Rigg, John Hurt, Bernard Hill, Zoe Wanamaker and Robert Lindsay.
The plays quickly found love in schools, thanks to the arrival of VHS recorders, and although the BBC only made them available as a set on VHS, they eventually became available individually as well as a collection on DVD.
The 1978 production of Romeo & Juliet, directed by Alvin Rakoff, was the very first of the adaptations. It sees Patrick Ryecart and Rebecca Saire as the star-crossed lovers, and also features Celia Johnson, Michael Hordern, John Gielgud, Anthony Andrews, Alan Rickman, Jacqueline Hill and Christopher Strauli to name but a few. If you like it, as always, buy it on DVD to support those nice BBC people who made it. Enjoy!
