Season Finale
Recently, I have managed to get to the end of three television series (and you wonder why I didn’t update the site for weeks… no? Oh well), all of which deserve a comment or two. It’s a well known criticism of current telly that it is crap, that its glut of reality shows and a sense of ‘dumbing down’ somehow has us harking back to better times in the past, an era when people in the business actually cared, and churned out material of optimum quality on a regular basis. Not so. In fact, I remember the schedules being filled with detritus, forgettable nonsense for the most part. We might have some lazy broadcasting masquerading as reality TV now, but this unwanted phenomenom is only the natural descendant of the plague of cheaply made gameshows we used to get. For every Brucie-fronted The Generation Game, or Les Dawson on Blankety Blank, there were endless editions of Going for Gold, Strike it Rich or the vulgar greed monster that opened with Leslie Crowther beckoning people to ‘Come on down!’ during The Price is Right. At least these days, we have The Apprentice.
That’s how I see it, at any rate, and besides it’s difficult to fault a lot of the drama being pumped out both in the UK and Stateside. The trio of season finishes I caught up with over the last week or so are all examples of great entertainment, which can make valid dramatic statements whilst never losing a sense of fun. Can anyone think of a bygone series that matches the kinetic excitement of 24? The marriage of elaborate character study and superb effects that make up Battlestar Galactica? Or the beautifully wrought nostalgia of Life on Mars? There really is some good stuff out there, and I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy it, whilst wielding a glass of Pinot Grigio and carefully guiding my rump from the edge of the chair, starting with…
24: Season Three
I’ve had this on DVD for a while, having snapped it up with Season Two after thoroughly enjoying Jack Bauer’s first outing. The second was, for me, a bit of a letdown, marred by poor acting and a plot that screeched towards the ridiculous once too often. True, we had the bombing of CTU, and that was good, but too often it slowed down to a thudding halt, or asked viewers to accept things that were frankly impossible. Fortunately, S3 turned out to recognise much of this, and is a thrillfest almost from the word go. Jack doesn’t die this time around, but we first see him battling a self-inflicted smack addiction, before he pulls himself heroically together to get on with the job in hand. Heroin can’t stop Jack Bauer!
I mention the silliness of Season Two with my tongue wedged into the recesses of my cheek. Of course it’s ridiculous - no one on earth could do the things Jack does and not collapse in a messy, exhausted heap three hours into the allotted mission time. So for this one, the show embraces its own craziness, piling on twists and turns that don’t make an awful lot of sense, but keeping us too thrilled to care. For instance, President David Palmer gets embroiled in a personal problem, and has to resolve it somehow. Anyone with half a brain would bellow that the last thing he wants to do is recruit his snakelike ex-wife, Sherry, to help him. But that’s just what he does, and it’s such a good thing to see the old villain back on the screen that the sheer implausibility of it all barely registers.
Best of all is that the action focuses less on Jack himself. President Palmer, Tony, Michelle and Bauer’s sidekick, Chase - someone so like Robin that he even resembles Chris O’Donnell a bit - all get a fair bite of the cherry. The one who suffers from a lack of screen time is Kim, Jack’s oft captured daughter, surely the 21st century’s answer to Penelope Pitstop. Kim’s eye candy as ever, but the show doesn’t insult us by giving her too much to do, and thus get herself into further trouble.
The plot, for what it’s worth, revolves around the threat of a deadly virus being leaked into Los Angeles. Via an early storyline that sees Jack working deep cover in an effort to be in with a couple of Mexican wrong ‘uns, the action soon moves to LA itself. An inevitable hierarchy of bad guys fall to CTU’s endless investigations whilst a higher tier always exists to pose threats and keep the story moving. None of it really matters. I have never watched 24 because its content might have some sort of contemporary relevance. I don’t care what the exact problem is that Jack and his IT-friendly mates have to overcome. The programme knows this, and doesn’t let reams of exposition unsettle its pace. Season Three never stops moving, never gets dull, and turns suspense into an artform.
If only they’d let Jack have a kip once the danger has passed…
Battlestar Galactica: Season Three
The oddest thing happened midway through this season - I was getting bored. Not an expected reaction, as ver Galactica has been one of the most consistently thrilling shows aired in recent times. But nonetheless, as this series lurched towards its conclusion, keeping up with it seemed less essential than usual, and only a definite upturn in the last couple of episodes saved it from descending into absolute tedium.
It doesn’t help that Season Two ended on a real cliffhanger. Guided to the surface of habitable planet, New Caprica, by Gaius Baltar, who had just assumed the presidency, events took a decisive twist for the 40-odd thousand human survivors. A year passed, and by now complacent, our heroes were easy prey for the Cylons, who assumed control with breathtaking ease and ushered in a new era of martial control. Given this premise, the new series couldn’t fail, and it didn’t initially. Early episodes depicted the origins of a resistance movement, the hold the Cylons had over hapless Baltar, and Admiral Adama’s desperate hatching of a rescue plot. Beyond all that was a very topical allegory. The scenario on New Caprica had uncomfortable parallels with the United States’ own occupation of Iraq, and to really cook our noodles, placed the human heroes in the guise of Iraqi freedom fighters. Baltar was revealed to be a puppet, entirely at the whim of his captors. Ex-President Roslin faced death at the hands of a firing squad. Did the imagery need to be made any clearer?
Eventually however, the crew escaped and were back on their way to an alleged Earth. It’s here the story took a turn for the mystical, introducing a number of new elements that teased at the links between humans and Cylons, both’s ties with Earth, and the ever-nagging issue over which crew members were in fact robots working deep cover. There has always been an element of this in the series, introduced gently as Roslin made prophecies in her drugged states. Here though, long swathes of the action were slowed down as we paid witness to endless ethereal scenes that jarred with the grittier ‘realtime’ plot. No doubt, all this is building up to an over-arching climax that will answer all our questions about the improbable journey to that elusive thirteenth colony. For now, it’s just dull.
All of which is a shame, as BSG is otherwise such high quality viewing that it’s only the loose science fiction tag stopping it from being a much bigger success. The best episodes continued to be the ones that put its characters in real jeapordy, leaving the others to seek logical solutions to save the day. One such chapter was ‘A Day in the Life,’ where Chief Tyrol and Cally are trapped in a hull that’s leaking air. Another, ‘Dirty Hands,’ once again involves the Chief, who deals with the issues of working unions, and class structures, within the fleet.
Exactly like in Season Two, this one ends on a significant cliffhanger, one so visually spectacular it would appear half the budget went on it. With the final two episodes, mainly concerning Baltar’s trial for treachery, we get a nice summary of what’s happened so far, and a definite return to the seriousness with which this show has treated itself for much of its run. However, the unmasking of four ‘undercover’ Cylons all seems a bit random for my liking. I guess there are previous clues that would unmask their identities, if you look hard enough. As far as I’m concerned, it’s as though an urgent board meeting took place, at which everyone involved tried to think of a suitable thrill to end the season on, and someone came up with this rather implausible solution.
For all that, the fact the agents are still very much part of the Galactica crew makes for interesting possibilities in Season Four. I have a feeling the upcoming series may well wrap BSG up for good. In fact, I hope it does. The cracks in the show might yet be minor, but they are beginning to show, and I’d much rather it went out on a high, long before it ran out of ideas.
Life on Mars: Season Two
After mine wife and I watched the final episode, we debated what the truth was - did Sam go back in time, or did he really belong in the seventies all along, meaning the noughties were a figment of his imagination? Mine wife thought there were enough clues in the episode to make this worth arguing, and naturally, the show’s writers were far too clever to spoonfeed us all the answers. However, an interview I read with the creators made for a far more mundane truth - what you saw on the screen was exactly what you got. They had never intended any mystery - Sam was a police inspector living in 2006 who found himself in 1973 after a road accident put him in a coma. Following two series of fun in glam rock Manchester, he made it back, didn’t like what he saw, and plunged himself back into his own history/fantasy. And that’s it. End of. They laughed off the theories - no, the story wasn’t actually going on in Gene Hunt’s head, or formed the root of Ray’s nightmares, Annie’s dreams, etc.
What this means is that the show’s writers basically wanted to do a story about cops from the old school, and to legitimise depicting them in all their bigoted, corner-cutting glory, their yarns were spun from the perspective of a 21st century detective, who could tut at the casual racism, the peeling wallpaper, nothing on but Open University, and hoops for tea. That works for me. LoM was always at its best when it left behind Sam’s surreal interactions with the Test Card girl or a mysterious voice on the phone, and instead concentrated on gritty Sweeneyesque plots that forced Sam and Gene to clash on a weekly basis.
Talking of which, though the show was ultimately about John Simm’s bewildered Tyler (and how well they made him the sharp focus at the series’ finale), it was Gene Hunt, played with menacing charisma by Phillip Glenister, who we all tuned in for. By the second series, he might have been a walking caricature, yet he was a glorious one, given superb lines and some fantastic situations to walk into. The plot where he was accused of murder made for engrossing viewing, whilst the very idea of a monster like Hunt tossing his keys into the pot was bizarre and hilarious. What really made him a favourite was that no matter how many times he might have learned something from Sam, or about himself, by the next episode he was reset and as boorish as ever, which is exactly how we wanted him to be. Even his final lines in the show, when he drives Tyler off to some new adventure, were classics. They don’t make characters like that any more, but thanks to Life on Mars, we got to see one, and what a treat he was. In fact, the character endeared himself so readily that they’ve refused to kill him off, and Gene Hunt will return in 1980s based ‘Ashes to Ashes.’
The loss of these shows makes telly quite dull at the moment, though I’m currently enjoying Heroes a lot, and The Tudors looks set to do for ‘Hey Nonny’ England what Titus Pullo did for Rome. The new series of Doctor Who hasn’t worked too well for me - it’s been more a case of watching good moments than excellent episodes, with the writing playing second fiddle to an admittedly bulging effects budget. Where’s this season’s ‘The Girl in the Fireplace?’ Or ‘The Impossible Planet?’ That said, last night’s ‘The Lazarus Experiment’ marked a definite upturn in quality, featuring a restrained performance from David Tennant and Mark Gatiss transforming into the Scorpion King. It’s been a little thin on the ground otherwise. I enjoyed the Dalek mutation from ‘Daleks in Manhattan,’ which reminded me of a hundred crap B Movies, yet there was a good deal about the episode that jarred horribly. A definite plus is Martha Jones, who has made for a welcome new companion, after Rose stayed long past her sell-by date. Sometimes, I wonder if one could say the same for Russell T Davies, whose continuing involvement suggests the show is heading for a dearth of ideas.