The Sandbaggers

US TV

Review: Homeland 1×1

4 October 2011 Rob Buckley 17 Comments

 

In the US: Sundays, 10pm, Showtime
In the UK: Acquired by Channel 4

Ah, thank heavens for cable TV. Although network TV has been producing some perfectly acceptable dramas this fall season, the miss rate has been a lot higher than the hit rate. Cable, however, with the obvious exception of Starz, has a far better success rate.

You know what else? Thank heavens for Israeli TV. Although you could argue over the merits of The Ex-List and Traffic Light for a while, they were at least a cut above the normal fare, and Israeli TV has at least indisputably given us the basis for the surefire cracker that was In Treatment. Now Israeli show Prisoners of War has given us the basis for Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis and adapted for US TV by former 24 producers Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon. 

Bearing more than a passing resemblance to AMC’s Rubicon, the thankfully faster-paced Homeland sees obsessive CIA analyst Danes convinced that returning war hero and former prisoner of war Damian Lewis has in fact been turned and is really working for al Qaeda. All she’s got to do is prove it, even though no one else believes her, not even her mentor, best friend and boss Mandy Patinkin. In fact, given she’s on anti-psychotic drugs, there’s a very good chance she actually is crazy. All the same, to prove her hunch is correct, Danes is going to do anything she has to – whether Lewis is innocent or not.

Here’s a trailer.

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Classic TV

Lost Gems: Jane (1982-1984)

18 February 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

janegrab01.jpg

Glynis Barber may best be known now as a star of soap operas such as Emmerdale and EastEnders but back in the 80s, she was something of a small screen pin-up. After a brief appearance in The Sandbaggers as a Russian spy so beautiful “you’d crawl a thousand miles over broken glass” for her, her big break came as Soolin on Blake’s 7, a role about which I’ve already written. After Blake’s 7 finished, she went on to much greater fame and pin-up-dom as Makepeace in fondly remembered Dempsey & Makepeace:

Dempsey and Makepeace

But in between those two series, she starred in a much more poorly remembered show on BBC2 about a literal pin-up: Jane.

Yes, we’re about to get a little bit racey after the jump…

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Question of the week: what are the merits of sadness in drama?

13 January 2010 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

As Sally Sparrow once said, “Sad is happy for deep people.” And indeed, there have been a whole load of miserable plays, TV programmes, films et al designed for smart people: I love Se7en (as a quote in the introduction to the BFI book on the movie says – or was it one of the special edition DVD commentaries? – “Of course I love Se7en – I’m an intellectual”), for example, and Callan and The Sandbaggers are so brilliant because they’re so bleak. Think of Turn Left and Midnight in the latest series of Doctor Who, as well as the fate of Donna in Journey’s End: better for bleak, no?

Over the last year, though, there’s been an increase in sad TV programmes on the Beeb: Wallander, The Day of the Triffids, Survivors, Paradox, Criminal Justice et al have all been deeply miserable. As Paradox shows, being miserable doesn’t mean being good, but does it help – the bleaker moments of Paradox were its best bits.

So today’s question (in parts) is:

Does being depressed, sad or miserable increase the chances of a show being good? Is sad happy for deep people? Are TV shows getting more depressing of late (thanks to the recession maybe?) And do you like watching sad shows?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

Classic TV

Lost Gems: The Aphrodite Inheritance (1979)

7 May 2009 Rob Buckley 23 Comments

After Christianity became the dominant religion in the West, the Greek gods could have taken it easy and had a rest. Some suggest they did; others, however, tell a different story.

Modern US television suggests that right now, they’re off running their own companies in Valentine, trying to matchmake mortals in Cupid, or both. Back in the 90s in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, they were either trying to make television shows while trying to rescue innocent mortals or sabotaging their relative’s TV show so they could sit back and watch Millennium and Cop Rock in peace:

But if we go back to the late 70s, back when they were still in Greece (or Cyprus at least), they were busily helping to solve crimes – in their own inimitable way.

When David Collier arrives on Cyprus following the death of his brother, Barry, in what Collier believes was an accident, he meets the beautiful Helene and her mysterious companions, Basileos and Charalambous, who appear to know a great deal more about his brother’s death than anyone is admitting. Slowly Collier is drawn deep into a complex conspiracy until neither he, nor the viewer, know who he can trust, particularly when it becomes apparent that someone is trying to kill him. The police, in the form of Inspector Dimas, don’t believe a word Collier says, since every time he finds something, or someone, that could substantiate his story they inexplicably vanish.

When all is revealed and Barry’s murder is solved, there’s one last mystery: Collier discovers that rumours of the deaths of the gods Aphrodite (Alexandra Bastedo from The Champions), Pan (Stefan Gryff) and Dionysus (Brian Blessed in full Brian Blessed mode) have been greatly exaggerated.

It’s not been repeated since UK Gold showed it a decade ago, it’s never been released on DVD, although you can find it on YouTube (playlists later): it’s The Aphrodite Inheritance and it’s a Lost Gem. Here’s the title sequence and for those who want to cut to the chase, the final ten minutes of the final episode in which the gods’ game with the poor mortals is finally uncovered.

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Today's Joanna Page

Today’s Joanna Page: Making Waves

27 May 2008 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

This one was supposed to be easy. This was supposed to be brief: I said so, last time. You see – and there are going to be a lot of naval puns during this one, so brace yourself – Making Waves pretty much sunk without a trace.

After years in development hell and after being rescheduled four times, this ITV flagship drama emerged onto our screens in the summer of 2004, opposite Supernanny. Sort of Soldier, Soldier but featuring the Royal Navy (hence its nickname Sailor, Sailor), it depicted the arrival of a new captain – played by ex-EastEnders psycho, Scottish actor Alex Ferns – on board the fictional frigate HMS Suffolk, and his attempts to make it sea-ready, all to the backdrop of the relationships of the crew and various exciting naval events, such as piracy, illegal immigrants, smuggling and explosions.

With £5 million in budget and the might of legendary producer Ted Childs (Lewis, Inspector Morse, Soldier Soldier, Sharpe, Kavanagh QC) behind it, there were high expectations in some quarters, but after just three episodes, falling ratings meant it was cancelled. Despite there already being three more episodes in the can, ITV never repeated it or showed the remaining episodes.

Joanna Page as Rosie Bowen in Making Waves

There was a DVD of the show, but only ever 2,500 or so were pressed and they were mainly sold to the Navy. You can’t get it from Amazon; you can’t find it on eBay. And here’s the only publicity still of our Joanna Page, who played new rating, Operating Mechanic Rosie Bowen, that appears to have survived online. 

So I thought this was going to be brief, since I couldn’t really say much about it. As I said, easy.

But then I found out that someone had uploaded the whole series to YouTube, so meticulous journo that I am, I had to watch the whole thing – you can, too, if you hang around to the end of this entry.

And I have to say, despite a shaky start, it was actually really enjoyable (although typically, mainly during the cancelled episodes), has possibly one of the most exciting, hardware-based episodes of anything ever made for British TV – and more importantly for Today’s Joanna Page, has her only outing so far as ‘action heroine’.

In fact, I’m quite cross – angry even – that it was cancelled.

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