Trashy Old Shorts TV Special

I don’t have any premium film channels on my satellite package. I don’t go to the cinema any more. I’ve run out of space for DVDs on my shelves and have no way currently of playing digital media direct to my old cathode ray set. So the upshot is that I’ve finally run out of films to watch, which is no bad thing as it turns out there’s been a ton of quality TV on recently so that’s the focus of this weeks trash culture slot.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty I’m going to shamelessly steal the brilliant ideas of my co-writers Ken and Michael and work in some gaming material into an article about my favourite TV. I’ve got another piece up at BGI this week, looking at why some gamers choose to play games against their favourite designers instead of their friends. Sound odd? Well it’s supposed to, as a hook to get you to go read it. So if you want more explanation, get clicking and join the discussion over there.

Back so soon? Alright then. On with the show. Or shows as the case may be if you subscribe to the creeping Americanisation of our language.

I’m going to start out with the elephant in the room that is A Game of Thrones. My assessment of the novel that it’s based on as good-to-mediocre instead of the second coming of Tolkien that most fantasy fans seem to think it is is well known, but truth be told I’ve quietly nursed a suspicion all these years that it’d make quality TV. On the box the lack of depth that was one of my major critiques becomes a lot less of a problem, the lack of originality that was another fades into the background due to the lack of decent fantasy TV serials, and at the same time the medium plays to the novel’s tremendous strength in fast-paced, character-driven, unpredictable storytelling. Suffice to say that for the most part, I feel my suspicions have been proven correct. The result was edge-of-the-seat stuff that had my partner - who has never read the book and isn’t much of a one for fantasy - gripped from the first. The translation from book to screen was extremely well done, with problematic scenes and concepts either neatly excised or worked brilliantly into the wider story, and the sense of frantic pace for the most part maintained (it dropped a little in episode 8 or 9, I don’t remember which). It did seem to me that in the transition Ned Stark had become less of a tragic hero and more of an obstinate idiot but perhaps that was there in the book all along and I just missed it. The crowning glory though was the sets, costumes and special effects which were absolutely flawless, especially when you consider the relatively limited (compared to Hollywood) budget they must have put the series together on - not once do I recall seeing a suspiciously polystyrene textured building or prop, and the visual sense of a medieval world was evoked brilliantly. I wasn’t so sure about the acting though, especially at first. Peter Dinklage as Tyrion was outstanding and Sean Bean (Ned Stark), Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister) and Harry Lloyd (Viserys) all did well but from most of the rest of the cast I got a frequent sense of classically-trained actors struggling to make sense of a setting and a medium (fantasy) with which they were entirely unfamiliar. There was equally a definite sense of improvement as the series progressed though, and the cast settled down into their roles. It all looks nicely set up for the second series, which I’m keenly anticipating although it has to be said that watching the final episode gave me a stark (excuse the pun) reminder of why I swore not to read the second book - absolutely nothing is resolved at the end of the plot, and I suspect Mr. Martin is going to pull the same trick at the end of each and every book, padding out the material inbetween, until the final novel. So no more books for me, but lots more TV action please, and soon.

I’ve also been caught up in another recent big series from the states that seems to have made rather less of a splash this side of the pond, The Walking Dead. For a long time I’ve been of the opinion that, entertaining as it remains, there wasn’t much left in the zombie trope to explore in terms of originality. The Walking Dead changed that opinion through the very simple but effective notion of making a zombie apocalypse little more than an unusual backdrop to a good slice of solid, old-fashioned piece of character drama. I mean, survivors of zombie-induced devastation is a good an excuse as any to throw together a variety of odd-couple style misfits in the same group and make them mutually dependant at the same time as being mutually distrustful, right, just with the added joy of zombies? And it all works brilliantly. Just when you’ve had enough of people having heart-to-heart discussions, or working through their brutal love triangles, or having moral dilemmas over what to do with the crazed rednecks of the group, some zombies pop up to chow down on the protagonists and everything is right with the world again. It really is a sublime juxtaposition and it works really well, leaving you hanging on both the fate of the characters and the adrenaline-fueled horror sequences between episodes. It doesn’t pull any punches either: unlike most zombie survival pieces the people seem to act in a realistic manner and grapple with believable issues and the results aren’t always best-for-everyone, goody-two-shoes solutions but are sometimes brutal and harrowing as you would expect. It is the end of the world, after all. I like the fact they just made six to start with - it’s a taut, well oiled storyline as a result. A second series is in production and I have a horrible feeling it’ll be spun out for longer and may loose some charm as a result.

From the American take on zombies, to the British TV version, Dead Set which is rather older than the other material I’m covering here but which I just managed to catch on DVD. Unlike The Walking Dead, Dead Set is a re-tread of the old zombies-as-mindless-consumers satire that first got wheeled out in the original Dawn of the Dead, and indeed the series contains a number of knowing pop culture references to that film, but it’s done with such style and panache that I couldn’t help but like it. Besides which, framing the story through the eyes of a group of people locked in the Big Brother house (you have had Big Brother in the states, right?) where they’re relatively safe from the carnage outside is a stroke of genius in this regard, as there’s surely no better example of mindless media consumption in the modern age. Dead Set makes the absolute most of its setting to ram home its critique of the celebrity culture, and at the same time manages to be by turns gripping, sad, repulsive and on occasion laugh out loud funny. The grotesque examples of humanity that make up the characters are horribly compelling, much like the programme on which it’s based and the special effects are impressive, especially considering it was made on an absolute shoestring budget for a very minor digital channel in the UK. Well worth checking out if you get the chance.

Finally, having previously done a piece gushing with love for it, I could hardly skip over the last season of Doctor Who, the first with Stephen Moffat as head writer. And I have to say that in spite of the entire cast clearly getting on much better with their allotted roles, and the writing staff doing a lot better at bringing them some unique character, I’ve been disappointed. From the beginning on this series that was a sudden and distinct change of direction away from the largely self-contained plot lines that I lauded in my previous piece into much more complex territory that requires following the whole series episode by episode. There’s nothing essentially wrong with that. It could even be a good thing: it certainly offers a lot more opportunity for satisfying, mature storytelling, and there’s no doubt that the extra complexity allowed the writers to do some magnificent set-up and reveal pieces. The ends of the final two episodes feature some of the most jaw-dropping revelations ever seen in the series. But the trouble is that whilst packing in all that extra detail, the writers seem to have forgotten important points like narrative continuity and excitement. There doesn’t seem to be very much interesting about the series except for the added complexity. Take the first two episodes where a convenient three-month gap in between the two allows the story to gloss over a variety of hard-to-resolve plot intricacies in their entirety, assuming that the audience are too caught up in puzzling out what the fuck is going on to care. Well some of us did notice, and we do care. Take the final episode of the season which features a cardboard cutout cast of villains who have no real character, no real motivation, no real background and as a result generated about as much interest and emotion in me as a brick, in spite of them having committed a truly heinous act against the doctor and his companions. Again, the big reveal at the end is no substitute for some actual narrative. The high point of the series were the two episodes with “The Flesh” doppelgangers which had some proper, old-fashioned sci-fi action as well as touching on some genuinely complex moral dilemmas. But nothing else other than those cliffhangers really stood out as being particularly memorable. More episodes are scheduled for later in the year. I hope by then the new writing team have managed to find a way to give us complexity and emotion in the same package. If they can it’ll make Doctor Who one of the finest television serials ever. If they don’t then this looks to me like the beginning of the end of the reboot.

So there you have it. Now I have a media player device I can plug into my ancient TV set and watch some of the films that I’ve missed out on to give me some primer for my next trashy old shorts piece. Until next time!