Sometimes, you really can get the wrong end of the stick with these international productions. When I first heard about Safe, it was via an article in Le Figaro. Audrey Fleurot from Engrenages (Spiral), Michael C Hall from Dexter, in a Netflix drama written by US thriller writer Harlan Coben and set inside a gated community? Brilliant! It’ll be like Sky Atlantic’s Riviera – except good.
Sure, it was also going to feature the likes of Marc Warren (Mad Dogs) and Amanda Abbington (Sherlock), and at least some of it was going to be filmed in Britain, but I mentally glossed over that. Audrey, Michael, Harlan, all that talk by Le Figaro of Harlan’s obsession with French actresses – it was going to be exotic, wasn’t it? Maybe a bit in the UK, but mostly it would be in France, right? Or maybe 50/50? Why else cast Fleurot?
Then I saw the trailer.
Wait. That was all Britain. Nothing but Britain. No sunshine, no France, no French. Just Britain. Not even a good bit of Britain at that, but Manchester.
And what was that accent, Michael? Why haven’t they allowed you to be American? And have you been watching The Only Way is Essex with Chris Pratt?
Then I remembered – Harlan Coben had co-written that Sky1 show The Five with Danny Brocklehurst, hadn’t he? And Brocklehurst was one of the writers for Safe, too.
Oh dear God. This was actually a British show. It was basically a Sky1 show with a slightly more international cast than usual, but on Netflix. Oh the horror!
So that was the stick I incorrectly grasped with Safe. Although we in the UK obviously associate Netflix with bringing us both their own programmes made overseas and other country’s programmes that they’ve bought up, that’s something they do for everyone else, too, and this was going to be like The Crown – another entry in the ‘international TV that we made in the UK for everyone else’ category. We would be the rest of the world’s ‘exotic’.
However, there was a second stick. My assumption was that because it was UK TV made in the UK by a UK production company and written by UK writers, it was going to be unwatchable rubbish. Just dreadful, I thought.
Surprise! It’s not. Indeed, Safe isn’t half bad. A bit silly and even comedic in places – and not just Hall’s accent – with episode endings that push the boundaries of plausibility to their limits, but actually halfway decent. I even watched it all the way through to the end. That’s a first for me and a British TV drama in rather a long time…
Every couple of weeks, TMINE flags up what new TV events BAFTA is holding around the UK
A couple of new TV events have been announced by BAFTA this week, one in February, one in March, both ‘Masterclasses’.
Masterclass: The Crown
Monday, 26 February 2018 – 7:00pm
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
The team behind the BAFTA-winning Netflix series will discuss bringing the historical drama to our screens.
The Crown chronicles the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and the major historical events that defined the second half of the 20th Century.
Join creator Peter Morgan, Executive Producer Suzanne Mackie, Director Ben Caron and actress Vanessa Kirby (Princess Margaret) as they reflect and discuss the story behind first two seasons.
Although I’m not 100% sure it’s still running its Totally Serialized events, the Institut français du Royaume-Uni is still being very marvellous and running French TV events in London. To save me some hassle, let’s pretend it’s still called Totally Serialized so I don’t have to rename this section.
Office admin out the way, appropriately enough, the first ‘Totally Serialized’ of 2018 is a showing of the first two episodes of the third season of Le bureau des légendes (The Bureau) (France: Canal+; UK: Amazon), as well as a Q&A with producer Alex Berger.
Le Bureau des Légendes
FRA | 2014 | Series 3, episodes 1&2 | 2×52 mins | showrunner Eric Rochant | directed by Samuel Collardey | with Mathieu Kassovitz, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Léa Drucker cert. tbc | in French with EN subs | UK Premiere
If you were hooked by The Bureau, rejoice, here comes the UK premiere of the new season! Based on real-life accounts by former spies, this French addictive series depicts a branch of clandestine undercover agents, dispatched in key and hostile locations around the world. Offering a new perspective on intelligence agencies and intricate geopolitical issues, this third season centres on “Malotru” (Mathieu Kassovitz), who is taken hostage by ISIS.
Followed by a Q&A with Alex Berger, Producer of The Bureau
It’s taking place on Wednesday 24th January at 8.30pm at the Institut in London and you can book tickets online – seats are still available.
Incidentally, I don’t know if the Institut is misspeaking or not, but the Tweet I spotted about the event talks about it being a preview, suggesting that the full season might finally be coming to Amazon…
UPDATE: Turns out there’s also a debate the next day about politics on TV, chaired by Walter of Walter Presents fame:
Power and Politics: The Hottest Genre in TV Drama
22:45-23:45
Chaired by Walter Iuzzolino, the curator behind global drama channel, Walter Presents, ‘Power and Politics: The Hottest Genre in TV drama’ will lift the lid on some of the most popular recent hit thrillers and royal dramas. Why have they struck such a chord with international audiences, and what successful formulae do they share? Meet the producers, writers and actors behind blockbuster hits like Spin, The Crown, Victoria, and The Bureau, and explore the line where fiction and reality meet. Who is manipulating whom, and to what extent is fiction shaping real life politics and public opinion? Mathieu Sapin, author of comic books on politics will also join the debate.
Season 1 of The Crown could have been better. Written by perennial Queen fictionaliser Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Audience), The Crown is Netflix’s big attempt to outdo the BBC at what it does best, being a multi-decade, multi-season, semi-factual prestige project about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, starting in the 1950s with her ascent to the throne after the death of her father and following her through to the present day.
Beautifully made, wonderfully acted, frequently funny, frequently tear-jerking, often romantic, and sometimes eye-opening, season 1 was nevertheless an occasionally turgid affair. Too often focused on husband Philip (Matt Smith) or Prime Minister Winston Churchill (John Lithgow) and not her maj, when Elizabeth (Claire Foy) herself did get a look-in, she was something of a wet blanket of a monarch, constantly unhappy, personality-less and tossed from situation to situation like a corgi being taken for a walk. Whether it was the 1950s themselves being a bit dull, the writers trying to avoid saying anything too ‘interesting’ about the Royal Family or simply the choice of stories told – Churchill having his portrait painted or the Pea-Soupers don’t seem like the most obvious choices of plot for a show called The Crown – you got the feeling that everything was wrapped in plastic and a more lively show was lurking underneath it all.
Season 1 finally concluded with the departure of Churchill, replaced by Anthony Eden (Jeremy Northam), and the arrival of the Suez Crisis – the event that marked the true death knell for the British Empire and its status as a top-tier world power.
But with Claire Foy and Matt Smith signed up for only one more season, the question was whether the show would carry on in the 50s, leap to the 60s or do something completely different in season two.
Oddly, it chooses to carry on exactly where it left off. Fortunately, this season the gloves are off and we get a more warts-and-all portrayal of our constitutional monarchy – and of other similar relationships, including JFK and Jackie’s.
