The Killing II

The Killing II

 I am such an old fashioned guy. This manifests itself in many ways; my love of old comedy shows - Dick Van Dyke, Bilko - my love of neatly crafted plots, my dislike of any music that sounds more like a security alarm. Now I discover that it's actually old fashioned to watch a television show. I mean really watch. Apparently I should be watching whilst updating my Facebook, playing games on my phone – sorry, mobile communications device, beam me up, Mr Scott – whilst listening to some indie scream on my ipod.
Well, sorry, this old fashioned guy likes to watch, give a show my full attention. Okay, there may be the distraction of a warming cup of Earl Grey, several biscuits and, on a Sunday, the entirety of the national press strewn before me and around me as the 4 o'clock football match plays on the TV but generally those shows I choose to watch are those I like to give my full attention to.
So, when it came to the Danish series The Killing, which returned to BBC4 this weekend in a double episode, subtitles were no problem. Because I watch. What those subtitles may have done to people who prefer the less dedicated approach to viewing, the juggling with various other bits of technology as described above, is to make them watch too. The thing about a Danish show for an English speaking viewer not versed in the mother tongue of Hans Christian Anderson is that to follow the plot you absolutely have to read what's there on the screen. And in reading we pay closer attention. Maybe we should make a few of our more elegant shows in foreign languages - just to focus the viewer's mind a little more sharply.
I'd put the first series of The Killing in my top three shows of the year - I came to it late and caught up with the repeats stripped across four weeks. This compressed showing, 6 nights a week, was brilliant. I couldn't wait for ten o'clock each night to find out what twist the next episode would provide. The parallel storylines of a local election and a local murder were intertwined so carefully you never knew where the thing was going but - unlike Lost - it headed towards a finale that satisfied on all levels.
However, the show wasn't written or plotted in entirely before fiming commenced. The writers were working on the storyline and scripts as the show was going out. To be fair, much American writing follows the same pattern but here in the UK I can't imagine a broadcaster committing to a twenty episode series on the basis that 'this happens and this happens and we'll find our way to a conclusion'.
The Killing was and still is more than just a plot. It is as much a character study as it is a detective story, though the thrills here are more cerebral than car chases and gun battles. Like so many admirers of the show I suggest anyone viewing lock away all other possible distractions because Saturday nights from now until Sarah Lund finds her man - or woman - are going to be compulsive watching.

Death by Paradise

The BBC's new fish out of water drama is called Death in Paradise. Like all new series, when I sit down to watch I really, really, really want to love it it. I do. Honest. But...ten minutes in and in our house it was being referred to as Slow Death in Paradise.

Ben Miller is the dark suited New Scotland Yard cop sent to the Caribbean to solve the murder of another British cop. It's a 'locked room' puzzle, the sort usually left to Jonathan Creek to unravel.
But all is not well on the Paradise Island which, since watching the show, we've been calling St Cliche. It really is depressing when something new hits the airwaves with a first episode so weighed down by the well worn.

Our hero, the fish out of water detective, is an asshole, or at least anal - both. No sooner has he landed then he's on the phone to his neighbour asking him to put out the bins. His luggage hasn't arrived and he had no idea that it would be hot in the Caribbean(what?), hence the charcoal-grey suit and lack of sunglasses. Hang on, a Scotland Yard detective who is so stupid he doesn't know that it's hot in the Caribbean? The sound you just heard was my head exploding. There's a goat in the lock-up at the police station, the island force has only one car and the police uniforms are being inhabited by comedy cops.
I don't mind that Miller is the sort of detective Scotland Yard would rather have stranded on on Island a long way away - actually I like the thought - but the idea that he's been posted there without his knowledge - duh! - is as unbelievable as most of the rest of the set up.
This is the crime equivalent of Doc Martin - lots of 'funny' characters surrounding a curmudgeon. Actually what it is is the kind of show that used to play on kid's tv when I was seven. "The Freewheelers" - the show I used to rush home to watch when I was seven (look it up) had better plotting, characters and dialogue. And yet this sits in prime-time on BBC 1.
Why does everything that has a comic twist have to be dumb? Because this truly is. With it's faux Poirot plot and it's achingly stupid colourful characters and a blurred flashback device that was used on The Last Detective - and it didn't work then. The only vaguely interesting character in the piece was carted off to jail at the end of the episode. (sod the spoiler alert).

Ben Miller may look like an attractive proposition for a BBC1 audience given the popularity of his sketch show Armstrong and Miller but every time he plays a character in a drama it's the same character. Sorry Ben, but by the end of this I couldn't give a flying fig about your detective  - or the CGI lizard you're about to spend another seven episodes living with.

Anyone who tells you that it's just a bit of harmless fun and sunshine to brighten a British winter should be stoned.

It IS possible to do cops and funny and colourful and bright and sunny without the cliched and the moronic.

Watch Justified.

Period Drama From Over Here and Over There

Whilst a sizeable portion of the British TV audience is still in love with Downton Abbey (I elected to jump ship after just one episode of season two) I've been lapping up the altogether more engrossing 'Boardwalk Empire'.

Steve Buscemi as 'Nucky' Thompson

At the end of season one, Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (Steve Buscemi) was basking in the glow of having helped usher in both Warren G. Harding (Malachy Cleary) as President of the United States, and Edward Bader (Kevin O’Rourke) as Mayor of Atlantic City. He also saw his mistress,  Margaret Schroede, played by the sublime Kelly Macdonald, return to his side after briefly leaving him when the full extent of his criminal activities dawned on her.
Meanwhile, as Nucky’s power and influence ascended, a clandestine arrangement between Commodore Louis Kaestner (Dabney Coleman - a great actor in shows like Buffalo Bill and The Slap Maxwell Story), Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) and, possibly least shocking of all, Nucky’s brother (and sheriff of Atlantic City), Eli Thompson (Shea Whigham) was being formed with the intent of bringing down Nucky and dividing his power amongst the conspirators. Keep up, there's so much story going on. By the time the second season starts, the plan is in full swing – and with Nucky seemingly none the wiser.
This is fiction but the kind that is confident enough to use enough truth to make the whole thing seem real. We've seen a young Al Capone, a young "Lucky" Luciano and we're promised a young Bugsy Segal in this new series. 

One of my favourite characters doesn't say a lot but everything about him says so much about this show.Jack Huston plays Richard Harrow – a former Army marksman who initially allies himself with Jimmy.  He's been horribly scarred in the war, so much so that he wears a tin mask over half his missing face, a mask that almost perfectly mirrors the flesh and blood half but is sufficiently tin to make him appear one of the creepiest characters ever seen on television.

Much was made of the 18 million dollar pilot directed by Martin Scorses but the series proper has grown and grown. It's enjoyed widespread critical acclaim, for it's look, it attention to historical accuracy - Downtown Abbey seems to attract more stories about its inacurracies then it does about its less than compelling storylines. As Nucky Thompson Buscemi has proved himself a highly watchable if unlikely leading man.

But a lot of the 'heavy lifting' on this show has been acomplished by writers, producers and directors who grew, if not cut, their teeth on The Sopranos. Producer and Writer Terence Winter adapted the novel Boardwalk Empire having been interested in creating a series set in the 1920s, feeling that it had never properly been explored before. Here the 20's really come to life. He's also joined Tim Van Patten, a regular Sopranos director who brings a confidence and visual style to the show that just oozes Prohibition USA. Boardwalk Empire is violent and sexy and mannered, we feel sympathy for characters who have no right to such emotions - that's how clever the writing is - and we can't wait to find out what will happen next.

This winter I think I'll strick with my Saturday night costume drama and leave the Sunday Night Downton Abbey to those who like their shirts a little more stuffed.

Comedy Drama

I'm of the firm opinion that any drama must have moments of comedy and any comedy must be built on a dramatic structure. Otherwise what have you got?

The Street

One of the bleakest dramas in recent years was Jimmy McGovern's The Street, by God did he put his characters through hell. And yet, even in the darkest corners of those shows there were moments to make you laugh out loud. McGovern knows that lives are not all bleak or all sunny.

Take an hour of your life and look at the emotions you experience: frustration, anger, jealousy, happiness, disgust, pride - and that's just watching Deal or No Deal.

I need all the shades in the dramas I watch and some of the darkest of my favourite shows are the funniest. Since Sky Atlantic popped up on my planner I've found myself hooked on new series and old favourites. Even though I have the box set of The Sopranos I was watching it all over again, week by week, marvelling at the depth of character and subtlety that sits alongside the moments that make me laugh out loud. Of course the trick with funny in a show like The Sopranos is conjuring the unexpected, be it slapstick or a mispronounced word - there's plenty of them, the Wise Guys ain't always too wise - or the incongruous alongside the surreal. The darker the show the funnier the comedy.

The Sopranos

But no-one calls The Sopranos a comedy drama or a dramedy, I suspect that a 'comedy drama' based on 'at home with the Mafia' would have been a very different beast - and, because it would constantly be looking for the laughs, not funny at all. No, I'll stick with my one or two laugh out loud moments in the drama.

The best episodes of House are seldom those that build on a comic plot. House intentionally being  funny is not half as funny as him being a flawed, miserable, cantankerous, self centred, medical genius.

Let's come this side of the pond, to a series that's a mainstay/highlight in the ITV schedule - Doc Martin. The good doctor is a distant, distant relation of House. He too is miserable and cantankerous and self centred and a jolly good doctor too - even if his phobia of blood was a determining factor in leaving his London job and heading to a GP's surgery in Cornwall.

Doc Martin

Doc Martin is a fish out of water tale. Brilliant man with phobia heads for English coastal village where he's surrounded by enough colourful characters to keep the series going ad infinitum with the slightest of plots and a love interest (now with baby). Doc Martin is very much 'comedy drama', barely a scene ends without a knowing look or comic button. It benefits from having Martin Clunes giving a terrific performance as Martin and a host of much loved British character actors around him. Those actors play 'comedy characters'; the funny policeman, the funny fat plumber, the funny lady from the chemist with a thing for the Doc. At its best the show delivers enough smiles to sustain - and draw a massive audience. It's not too demanding, the sun always shines and everything turns out alright in the end. It's a latter day Darling Buds of May.

But unlike those other great rude TV characters Basil Fawlty and Victor Meldrew, I often find it hard to feel sympathy for Doc Martin. He is so socially inept the longer the series has gone on the more his rudeness grates. In some recent episodes he seems to have had no dialogue other than a terse 'Yes'. He may now be the father of a child but isn't it time he started to show outward signs of growth.

You only have to look at the audience figures to see that this formula is a winner with the audience but here's the thing about 'comedy drama' - I just wish it was a tad more dramtic and all those 'funny' characters were a bit more real - which I'm certain would make them funnier.

Is It Ever A Good Idea to Bring Back A Successful Show?

As we head towards the end of October we get closer and closer to the return of one of the BBC's juggernaut comedies of the 90's - Absolutely Fabulous.

The original series began in 1992 and I seem to remember they had a 'last ever' episode before dusting it off and bring it back again. But is it a good idea to bring something back? Is it a great treat for fans or a cynical attempt to breathe life into a once great brand?

Isn't Ab Fab a child of the 90's?


Some years ago the BBC had a star studded bash to celebrate some anniversary or other and decided the best way to honour its entertainment output was to hold an awards shows. The Beeb handed out gongs to the best shows it had ever produced. It was a one off and kind of worked.

The winner of the Best Sitcom OF ALL TIME gong was.. go on guess...

Well, it wasn't Hancock, or Steptoe and Son, or Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads or Porridge or Dad's Army or Fawlty Towers or Till Death Us Do Part or Only Fools and Horses. It was...

Men Behaving Badly.

At the time this was the most popular show on the BBC. And what happens when you ask the public to tell you about their favourite show ever at any given point in time? They tell you about their current favourite. Even at the time the recipients seemed baffled.
 
Some shows are timeless, some work at a certain moment in time. I saw an episode of Men Behaving Badly recently and it meant almost nothing. And yet at the time I would have said it was  consistently funny. Viewed from a distance I see that it captured a mood, a moment brilliantly.

But that moment has past. Some shows have a finite shelf-life.

If you brought it back today - remember this is the show the PUBLIC voted the best BBC comedy OF ALL TIME it would look wrong. We remember those characters the way they were, we don't see them the way they are now.

Attitudes change, actors change. They take on different roles, we see them in a new light. Have we ever really accepted Nicholas Lynhurst, so wonderful as Rodney in Only Fools and Horses, in any of the other roles he's played?. Be honest, I'm not alone in thinking 'that posh voice is all wrong'! I agree,  I'm typecasting the poor chap and he's a fine comedic actor but I'm talking about what the public will accept.

There are exceptions to the 'never go back' rule. Til Death Us Do part became In Sickness and In Health after a long lay off. Johnny Speight and Warren Mitchell had kept Alf Garenet going during the interim years in other shows - The Thoughts of Chairman Alf and guest appearances - so when they resurrected him in sitcom form he'd never really gone away. And Speight was clever enough to challenge the old goat. Garnett may have been racist by inclination but when faced with having a black, gay home help he had to confront his prejudices. And in this show they didn't bring the whole cast back. Yes, Una Stubbs popped up just occasionally as Alf's daughter, Rita and and almost unrecognisable Dandy Nicholls reprised the role of Else Alf's wife but she wasn't well and upon her death the series continued with Alf at its epicentre.

Garnett was a tool for satire. His bigoted views, his prejudice and ill-informed rants were the opposite of what writer Johnny Speight believed. Speight thought that showing people what an idiot Garnett was would make people question their own bigotry. Of course the danger with a character like that is that some people will nod and agree with him. But that's another story.

The return of Alf Garnett worked. As did the return of The Likely Lads. Moved on from the gentle black and white 1960's series the lads returned in full 1970's colour and scaled ever greater heights. The characters had grown as had writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. They chimed with the age but if you watch those show now there's still a lot of universal truth in there - and that's timeless.

The recent reincarnation of Reggie Perrin is another matter. Viewed as a comedy about a middle aged man in crisis it's fine. But why call it Reggin Perrin? Some characters are too closely associated with one actor - Steve Martin as Sgt Bilko anyone? - Leonard Rossiter was Reggie Perrin, Reggie Perrin was Leonard Rossiter. What's more the Perrin scripts were very stylised, there is a heightened realism about them, something that worked well in the 70's series that clangs in the recent resurrection. For me they should have kept the ghost of Reggie in the writer's room and called it something else.

In the US there have been any number of attempts to resurrect old shows with new actors - or spin off characters into their own shows. I should do a whole blog about Spin Offs, a fascinating area - compare Frasier with After Mash!

Which brings me full circle to Ab Fab. They've made three shows, specials to celebrate the 20th anniversary. The actors have all gone on to do other things in recent years. Julia Sawallah has had success with the BBC One costume drama series Lark Rise to Candleford.  Joanna Lumley
Lumley has been in the public eye politically with her campaign to help Gurkhas soldiers who retired before 1997 win the right to settle in the UK. Her acting career has seen her in shows like Jam and Jerusalem, Mistresses and Marple. 

Until recently the show's creator, writer and driving force, Jennifer Saunders, continued her partnership with Dawn French in their sketch shows. Recently she's been involved in the one-off return of the Comic Strip for Channel 4. 

Does any of that baggage clutter up the Ab Fab characters? Perhaps, perhaps not. I think seeing Julia Sawalha as Saff, all grown up, might be a stretch. But hey.

I have no idea whether it Ab Fab will work, I have my thoughts but the proof will be in the screening - and then we can all decide.

How long does it take to write a script?

I've just finished the latest draft of a screenplay. It's something that's been with me for quite a while. I wrote the first draft ten years ago and it went 'out there', got me a few jobs too. But it was never quite right. People said nice things about it, some people got very excited about it but no-one got so excited that they wanted to produce it.

So it went back in the drawer. Or at least in a folder on the computer. My old computer.

Every now and then I've thought about stealing a scene or two or a line for something else I was writing at the time. And every time I dusted it down I saw something that I thought I could put right and so I'd tweak and then it would go back in the file and I'd forget about it again. Until such time as I'd decide to try to plunder it again.

I used a little sequence in a pilot I wrote. We made the pilot. We didn't make the series so that sequence was still unseen, so no need to change it in the screenplay.

Then about two years ago I was writing something when suddenly I had a moment of clarity. I knew how to restructure it. It meant taking a scalpel and performing major surgery but it was always too long. But for some reason I didn't finish it. So, it went back in the file.

Until three weeks ago when I was mapping out a new idea. I was playing with the characters when one of them started to talk like the lead in the screenplay. Okay, so why don't I take all the best elements out of the screenplay and give them to him. Made complete sense.

Until I reopened the screenplay and started to read. I discovered that I had finished my restructure but I'd never sent it out. It was almost there.

But now I could see where others things could go. So I've spent my spare time in the past three weeks on a screenplay I first stared ten years ago and its in pretty good shape. Probably the best shape it's been in since I first thought I'd finished. It's leaner, funnier, structurally better. I've lost all the hand waving scenes where I thought I was being clever but actually I was just being self indulgent.

How long does it take to write a script? Well some I've done in a week but this one's taken ten years.

Sometimes things take time to cook.  But you know that's the easy bit. 

Now all I need is a producer.