With the fourth series of the revived “Doctor Who,” the BBC brings the series’ unique tone into its most perfect realization, a playful kaleidoscope of comedy, goofiness, horror and tragedy, all working as multiple sides to the same story. It’s a presentation that is as smart and varied as its lead character, perpetuating the notion that adventure need not be either funny or dark and characters who fight for the greater good don’t have to be boringly pure. Continue Reading…
Let’s imagine for just one moment that the current creators in charge of the “Star Trek” franchise decided that it was a really good idea to, after so many decades, give the character of Chekhov his own TV show spin-off. Not only that, but let’s imagine they decided it should be a kid’s show.
That’s kind of what “The Sarah Jane Adventures” is like — and by all logic, it shouldn’t work at all. Continue Reading…
British author Phillip Pullman had a high profile screen adaptation last winter with “The Golden Compass,” a film of mixed reviews that drew controversy for its atheism, albeit toned down from the original book. More important, but less covered in the press, was the success — or lack of, depending who you ask — in adapting a terribly complicated young adult science fiction novel. For many fans of the book, the movie took too many liberties in the translation.
Off the beaten path and perhaps more alluring for it, Pullman’s earlier trilogy of Victorian suspense for the YA crowd, the Sally Lockhart Mysteries, have also been adapted. These films — the first being the tight and charming “Ruby in the Smoke” and the second being “The Shadow in the North,” which premieres on PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery” next Sunday — are BBC productions, intimate and gripping, with no reliance on CGI effects or trendy youth-oriented fantasy posturing. Like the books, they have old fashioned trappings and pride in craft, but with clever, modern twists that prevent clichés — and they aren’t beholden to the high expectations that Pullman’s other work was. The pressure being off gives the productions more space to work out the inherent inadequacies of film adaptation and settle into a middle ground that results in a gripping mystery movie.
In “The Shadow in the North,” Sally Lockhart (Billie Piper) is a sensible girl in a dark, gritty Victorian world filled with secrets and danger who works as a financial adviser with a special interest in helping out women. When one of her clients takes a major loss on an investment and suspects foul play in regard to the chain of events that ruined the company, Lockhart investigates and finds a shadowy industrialist who may well be engineering the company’s demise towards a deadly scheme.
At the same time, Lockhart’s associates — the estranged love of her life, Fred, and amiable young protector Jim — are helping a stage magician escape stalkers who he believes aim to kill him. When the investigators realize that the two cases in interlinked, they pool their resources to solve the cases.
Pullman is not a by-the-numbers novelist and “The Shadow in the North” is much more than a standard Victorian thriller. The story brings in a number of elements, from the psychological shackles of being a female in England in the late 1800s to the grip of spiritualism to the idea that technology could affect war and peace in one stroke, thus capturing both views of a the mechanized world of the future.
The downside is, of course, that the investigation has to be pared down as it is brought from book to screen. In this manner, this bears a great resemblance to Harry Potter movies — extremely well-done and entertaining, but, in reality, only half of the story. That’s the only fault, however, and it leaves a whole new level of enjoyment for that moment you rush out to buy the books after being intrigued by the BBC productions.
Though sold in America to adults, the BBC’s latest version of “Robin Hood” is really a show for kids and that was a source of frustration for some viewers of the first season who expected some kind of bodice ripping mature adventure. The traditional tale of Hood was basically in place, with some tweaking — a heightened role for the servant character, Much (Sam Troughton), the lack of Friar Tuck and Prince John, and a high quotient of acknowledgment to the Crusades that were going on at the time and the Muslims being attacked. The season ended with several Muslim characters, most notably the girl merry man, Djac (Anjali Jay), saved from slavery by Robin (Jonas Armstrong) and the crew.
One of the biggest updates — and improvements — was Maid Marion’s (Lucy Griffiths) transformation into a can-do and brave woman who masquerades as the mysterious Night Watchman. There is also a conspiracy against King Richard that has proven exciting.
As characterizations go in children’s shows, those in “Robin Hood” have been fairly complicated, particularly Robin himself, plying his trade of freedom fighting out of a mix of decency and conceit. Equally stirring was Guy of Gisborne (Richard Armitage), a nobody lackey who is wiling to buy his way into legitimacy through deceit, thereby branding himself a second fiddle forever despite his delusions of grandeur. Similarly, there was some level of political overtones — albeit a simplified one — that paralleled the Bush administration and its follies in Iraq.
There was also something positively mesmerizing about the Sheriff of Nottingham, a man of pure selfishness played with verve and implied depth by Keith Allen.
The second season has a little trouble mixing the youthful simplicity of the first season with nail-biting complexities — it picks up steam at a certain point, but, in the beginning, settles for jabs of the obvious type. The first episode opens with a widened-conspiracy, but a mostly ho-hum development involving rich benefactors called the Black Knights. More embarrassing, though, is the Sheriff’s pseudo-dominatrix sister with whom he shares disturbingly close affections. The sexual element has been upped in this season as well — Marion is more gaunt and her bustline brought to the audiences attention a bit more and Jac has been feminized and given saucy double entendres to utter — but it really adds nothing to the adventure and story, let alone the characters and ambiance. It’s fine to tart things up if one must, but it’s best to do so only after the stories have been given the proper care.
Several sub-plots command the season, most notably Alan A. Dale’s (Joe Armstrong) turn as a spy for Guy of Gisborne. Once Alan is put in a position to choose sides publicly, the plot finally reaches its potential and makes a good study of a criminal opportunist who works for whatever side is convenient. While it’s consistent with the character, after three episodes, the plot becomes a bit tired and it thankfully reaches a conclusion mid-season — or at least a transformation that springboards into further, better situations.
Once the series gets its groove — finally does by the fifth episode, which features Josie Lawrence in lively form as an accused witch — you’re finally good to go, with plenty of fine derring-do, back-stabbing, and last minute rescues. There are several good plots involving attempts at communicating with King Richard in the Holy Land. One particularly good episode has diabolical guest star Denis Lawson— so great in “Bleak House” and “Jekyll” and well-remembered as Wedge, the ultimate survivor in the original “Star Wars” films — as a former friend of Marion’s father who will either help or betray Robin.
Unfortunately, it all adds up to some rushed disappointment. By the end of the very tense series finale, however, you might find yourself a bit lost and wondering if certain changes have been made not in service of the story but the typical show-biz game of musical contracts at the whiff of stardom. Without giving away any surprises, I can at least say that for such a long build-up, complications are tidied rather quickly and aspects disposed of out of nowhere — the conclusions the series come to are neither poorly done nor illogical, but far too sudden. The rushed quality taints a series that had finally found its way — the story presented in the finale could easily have used some relaxed storytelling over a few episodes, if only for a little more logic in some of the story turns it takes. Escapes are curious and anti-climactic, defections sudden, and portions that should be epic are solved in a split second. It’s one thing to forsake story logic for excitement and intensity, but if those two virtues are not distracting an audience from the fact that certain things don’t make any sense at all, then you are failing on several counts.
At the very least, a viewer might well begin to wonder why such decent guys are so beholden to a jerk as big as King Richard, who can’t take the time to got back and straighten his house out, all the while expecting his most loyal to sacrifice with their dearest possessions. Sure, the real King Richard would act like that, but this is ret-conned King Richard who inhabits a world where outlaws are sensitive and talk about their feelings and treat women with respect — surely he with the heart of a lion could be similarly updated.
There are many directions the show could go in that aren’t obvious. One would be in the introduction of Friar Tuck, long dismissed as a possibility by the show’s creators, the feeling being that they don’t want to introduce a religious element into the show. This is flawed thinking, since introducing a religious element does not have to be an endorsement of it — and considering that, at the time, churches were at the center of daily life, it seems odd that there are none to be had in Nottingham. Also, just because you have a friar, it doesn’t mean he has to be a standard, by-the-book friar. As the Sheriff might say, a clue — it’s called characterization.
Widening the conspiracy by introducing Prince John instead of shadowy figures might help as well — and eventually just bringing King Richard home and changing the set-up of the plot, which they could have done following the finale for series two, considering so much is torn down by the last minute of the last episode.
What is good about this new “Robin Hood” series remains good in these new episodes — for the most part. But it always leaves you wanting — in the end, that wanting might be for a little more thought in a story’s outcome.
In the series “Life on Mars,” modern day police detective Sam Tyler (John Simm) was wounded in duty, goes into a coma, and wakes up to find himself working for a police squad in the 1970s. In the sequel series “Ashes to Ashes,” modern day police psychologist Alex Drake (Keely Hawes) is wounded in duty, goes into a coma, and wakes up to find herself working for the same police squad, this time in the 1980s. This time, however, there’s a difference — Drake has been reading Sam’s files and knows every aspect of this odd little world she has been trapped in — it’s as if a fan of the original TV series found herself in her favorite TV show.
In such a context, there are plenty of mysteries presented in the situation that are designed to whet the appetite of the viewer, but the real question is whether it will all add up to anything. If “Life on Mars” is any indication, the answer is both yes and no — and it’s the answer of no that makes you feel as though you’ve spent forever being lead on.
As in the original series, the police squad is headed up by the brutal-but-charming Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), a walking cliche of over-the-top TV police bravado. The idea is that the primitives learn a lesson in detecting from the modern styles, while the modern cop reconnects with his or her inner gut, realizing that sometimes the job is about hunches and action. In this opener, the dynamic is somewhat played with, as Drake claims to be going on a hunch when she insists that a harmless doofus informant is actually a drug kingpin and the man Hunt has pegged as the kingpin in actually just a messenger boy. In fact, it’s not all instinct — Drake knows this because the doofus was the one who, 25 years later, would shoot her and put her in the coma. An offhand comment he makes brings her to this conclusion and all she has to do is set it up so Hunt can witness the guy in action.
This presents one of the same problems as the original series had — while the personal drama can be interesting, the police investigations often feel like they have been scribbled on a cocktail napkin and slapped into the other bits in order to justify the series as a cop show. There’s just not much to the mystery here — the viewer already knows Drake is right and Drake already knows Drake is right, it’s just matter of filling in the right spaces at the right time. In “Life on Mars,” the mysteries bordered on total sloppiness, where the solutions only came together through a series of unbelievable coincidences that were apparently being justified because this was going on inside a man’s coma induced fantasy — it’s always convenient when you have a catch-all excuse for your own lack of inventiveness. While this opener certainly wasn’t as sloppy as “Life on Mars” eventually became, there looms the threat of “Ashes to Ashes” following the same path.
There’s no reason to think it won’t, particularly in the cop-to-cop dynamic. In the original series, it became a point of frustration that each episode, Gene Hunt would learn a little something about being a more exacting cop and, one episode later, we were back to square one, with he and Sam Tyler having the same cliched bickerfest about methodology. The same dynamic is being set-up here, but in the realm of psychology. The problem is that the writers seem to feel that if Hunt gives in on the methodology, then he loses the swagger, and it’s this sort of thinking that prevented “Life on Mars” from entering into an honest emotional landscape a la Dennis Potter, where the fantasy really does become intertwined with reality as a way of working it all out and avoiding everything all at the same time. In order for that sort of thing to happen, you can’t be working from a cartoon, you have to allow character development — you have to allow that Gene Hunt will change as a character, even if he is a coma-induced figment of someone else’s imagination (though it seems that, once again, the writers are able to use this element as a crutch for their own laziness).
As it stands, “Ashes to Ashes” looks to follow the same road map as its predecessor, where solving mysteries in cop show settings is the dying’s way of having their lives flash before their eyes and giving them a chance to correct their wrongs — it is said as much in this opener, and driven home by the conclusion of “Life on Mars.” Though they are trying to inject some mystery as to this condition that both cops have found themselves in — how can two cops share the same illusion? — the previous series showed that it all added up to just that, a coma, and though emotionally powerful in its conclusion, it was hard to see how the story needed two series to build up to something you already knew in the first episode. In “Ashes to Ashes,” they have thrown a spanner in the works as their signal that Drake’s story is different from Tyler’s — she has a daughter waiting for her in real life and isn’t likely to give herself willingly to the fantasy like Tyler ended up doing. And though they’re sure to keep it vague in its conclusion, Drake probably shares the same fantasy because she was so immersed in reading Tyler’s prior to being shot. It’s all mapped out in the first episode — as it was in “Life on Mars” — and I will genuinely be surprised and pleased if it goes another route. But I doubt it will.
It’s too bad, because Hawes is wonderful and Glenister is as mesmerizing as he ever was. And so “Ashes to Ashes” has the same things going for it as “Life on Mars” does — the occasional funny bit and a ton of great performances that the writing of the show never quite matches. In this way, however, “Ashes to Ashes” may be every bit as good as “Life on Mars.”
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