Reviews

Casualty: Series 22 - we have a weak pulse… a very weak pulse

Well, it’s all over once more. Another tortuous and overlong series of Casualty wound to a close tonight, and in what has become something of a trend of late, it ended with a whimper rather than a bang. A friend of mine recently asked me why I continued to watch this programme when I had almost nothing positive to say about it, and I must confess I was at something of a loss to explain myself. I suppose the best answer I can give is that, every now and then, it throws something at me that makes slogging through hour after hour of poorly written, inadequately researched, at times frankly embarrassing mush seem worthwhile after all. These moments are rare, but they do come along every now and then.

Anyway, as befits something into which I have sunk a good 40 hours out of the last 11 months (each episode runs for 50 minutes), I’m going to treat Series 22 of Casualty to a mammoth post. You have been warned.

Ratings:

These are my ratings (out of 10) for each of the 48 episodes of Series 22. I’ve marked particularly good (8/10 or higher) episodes in bold and particularly bad (3/10 or lower) ones in italics.

22.01: “My First Day” (Part 1 of 2) by Mark Catley - 9/10
22.02: “Charlie’s Anniversary” (Part 2 of 2) by Mark Catley - 10/10 (best episode of Series 22)
22.03: “Meltdown” by Sasha Hails - 6/10
22.04: “No End of Blame” by Patrick Wilde - 8/10
22.05: “Sliding Doors” by Rachel Flowerday - 6/10
22.06: “Core Values” by Al Smith - 5/10
22.07: “Inappropriate Behaviour” by Michael Jenner - 7/10
22.08: “My Aim is True” by Jason Sutton - 3/10
22.09: “As One Door Closes…” by Stephen McAteer - 6/10
22.10: “Finding the Words” by Katharine Way & Mark Catley - 8/10
22.11: “A House Divided” by Daisy Coulam - 8/10
22.12: “Strangers When We Meet” by Jason Sutton - 2/10
22.13: “How Soon is Now” by Ian Kershaw - 7/10
22.14: “Inheritance” by Rachel Flowerday - 6/10
22.15: “Behind Closed Doors” by Mark Catley - 6/10
22.16: “Snowball” by Suzie Smith - 6/10
22.17: “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” by Gert Thomas - 8/10
22.18: “Take a Cup of Kindness Yet” (Part 1 of 2) by Sasha Hails - 6/10
22.19: “For Auld Lang Syne” (Part 2 of 2) by Sasha Hails - 8/10
22.20: “Broken Homes” by Steve Keyworth - 7/10
22.21: “Adrenaline Rush” by Stephen McAteer - 4/10
22.22: “Take it Back” by Rachel Flowerday - 5/10
22.23: “Where’s the Art in Heartache?” by Jason Sutton - 4/10
22.24: “Before a Fall” by Dana Fainaru - 7/10
22.25: “Sex and Death” by Mark Catley - 9/10
22.26: “Say Say My Playmate” by Abi Bown - 3/10
22.27: “Silent All These Years” by Laura Watson - 4/10
22.28: “Thicker Than Water” by Jason Sutton - 5/10
22.29: “Diamond Dogs” by David Bowker - 7/10
22.30: “Face the World” by Jeff Young - 2/10 (worst episode of Series 22)
22.31: “To Thine Own Self Be True” by Patrick Wilde - 7/10
22.32: “Bricks and Daughters” by Paul Jenkins - 6/10
22.33: “Someone’s Lucky Night” by Mark Cairns - 8/10
22.34: “Walk the Line” by Rachel Flowerday - 3/10
22.35: “The Great Pretenders” by Jack Kelsey - 7/10
22.36: “Love is…” by Sasha Hails - 5/10
22.37: “Saturday Night Fever” by Mark Catley - 7/10
22.38: “When Love Came to Town” by Jeff Povey - 8/10
22.39: “Opposing Forces” by Jason Sutton - 5/10
22.40: “Have a Go, Hero” by Martha Hillier - 6/10
22.41: “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” by Martin Jameson - 5/10
22.42: “They May Not Mean To But They Do” by Paul Logue - 7/10
22.43: “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” by Ian Kershaw - 6/10
22.44: “Salt and Sugar” by Jason Sutton - 4/10
22.45: “Paradise Lost” by Ellen Taylor - 5/10
22.46: “The Things We Do For…” by Dana Fainaru - 4/10
22.47: “This Mess We’re In: Part 1” by Daisy Coulam - 7/10
22.48: “This Mess We’re In: Part 2” by Sasha Hails - 6/10

Key writers: Jason Sutton (6 episodes), Mark Catley (5½ episodes), Sasha Hails (5 episodes), Rachel Flowerday (4 episodes)

What worked:

Season premiere: The two-part opener which began the series was everything I used to expect from Casualty and more besides. It may have set up unrealistically high expectations for the rest of the series, but at the time I was very happy indeed. In addition to dispensing with the soap opera element, these two episodes above all grounded the drama by focusing squarely on two characters, one new recruit (Toby) and one old stalwart (Charlie), and their reactions to the unfolding carnage. I wrote quite extensively about these two episodes immediately after they aired, and I direct you to my original post on the matter.

Scaling back the soap: Initially, the soap opera elements which blighted the last few years (specifically the Series 16-21 period) were toned down considerably in Series 22, to the extent that, for the first few episodes, they were almost entirely absent. Inevitably, they started to creep back in after a while, but I don’t personally have too much of a problem with that. While the “who fancies who” element doesn’t do much for me, particularly when I find it hard to care about either party, I’m certainly not about to begrudge it to those who do enjoy that element. It’s all about balance, and, provided the soap element doesn’t overwhelm the medical element, then I have no problem with it being there.

An increase in good episodes: While the output of this series has, on the whole, been very varied, with several weak episodes and a few truly awful ones, there were far more genuinely good episodes this series than in the previous one. In addition to the excellent two-part opener, Sex and Death stands out as an episode which, despite my reservations about the portrayal of the character of Ruth, was a solid achievement in terms of storytelling and jetisoning the Casualty formula. (You can read my extended thoughts on this episode here.) In addition, several other episodes, although lacking the “special event” factor of the ones I previously mentioned, nonetheless stood out as being solid efforts, whether because they managed to tell a standard storyline in an interesting way (in the case of the effects of addiction in A House Divided), or because of a standout performance from a guest actor (as with Aisling Loftus in Broken Homes), or for any number of other reasons. In the glory days, such episodes would have been considered the norm rather than the exception. These days, however, I’m sorry to say that I tend to be pleasantly surprised when I get something that makes me think or affects me emotionally.

The “film look”: With this series, Casualty finally abandoned the old interlaced video look that it had used since its inception in favour of a more film-like, non-interlaced appearance. While the colour grading and contrast tweaks that initially accompanied it seemed to largely be abandoned after the first three episodes (perhaps it was deemed to time-consuming to colour correct 50 minutes’ worth of material on an almost weekly basis, or perhaps they got too many complaints from fuddy-duddies), the show, as a whole, now has a more professional look than it had in the last few years prior to this change.

The removal of Harry Harper: While I thought the storyline involving his exit was eye-rollingly idiotic in the extreme, words cannot express how glad I am that this (to quote a friend of mine) “crass, overbearing, arrogant, insufferable, hypocritical, bottom orifice” was finally given the boot after blighting our screens for nearly six years. His arrival, towards the end of Series 16, seemed to coincide with the dismantling of what the show originally stood for, pushing out the ensemble element in favour of a one-man show about a pompous consultant and his adoring underlings (even his five-month hiatus last year seemed to be structured entirely around how everything was going to pot without him there to steer the ship), and, as the months turned into years, he become more and more insufferable. It doesn’t help that the actor playing him, Simon MacCorkindale, appears to have graduated from the School of Scenery Chewing, magnifying the character’s negative traits and ensuring that ignoring him whenever he was on screen simply was not an option. All in all, I was delighted to see this dreadful character finally hanging up his stethoscope, and I’m just sorry it took so long.

More Charlie: Charlie (Derek Thompson) is the only character out of the original cast to still be in the show, and for many people, he is the strongest anchor to what Casualty once was. He remains the most well-rounded character, and while the actor’s performance can be a little, erm, erratic at times, he continues to provide a strong anchor for the show, grounding it in some semblance of reality and serving as someone with whom the audience to identify. (He’s also an atheist, and there aren’t enough of them on TV.) In recent years, and particularly as the series have become longer, Charlie has had fewer and fewer appearances, and when he has appeared has done little of any value. There was something of a change this series, with two episodes (Charlie’s Anniversary and (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding) being shown entirely from his point of view. He played a far more significant role than he has for years, being at the centre of two of the longest-running storylines this series (although, given the overall quality of these storylines, I’m not sure this is necessarily something to be celebrated). By my count he appeared in 31 out of 48 episodes, including a straight 14-episode run at the end of the series, which is a first since… oh, Series 14 at least. That might not sound like much, but it’s an improvement on his 20 appearances in Series 20, and 25 in Series 21, and that’s despite a three-month sabbatical this year.

What didn’t work:

Scaling back the soap, part 2: For all the writers’ good intentions, the decreased emphasis on the soap opera element didn’t last, and, after a few months, they fell right back into their old habits. As the second half of the series rolled round, the soap became more and more pronounced, to the extent that, if things continue in this vein for much longer, I fear that we could be right back where we started again within a year.

Cast turnover: This series saw a grand total of 9 characters leaving and 13 new ones joining (two of the departures being characters who had only joined the show during this series) - a ridiculously large turnover that has not been matched by any previous series. While, for the most part, those who left were characters I either didn’t like or didn’t care about either way, there is one particularly egregious exception, and that is the departure of Josh Griffiths (Ian Bleasdale), a stalwart of the show who first joined way back in Series 4. Had his departure occurred about a decade ago, I would probably have been disappointed but would eventually have moved on, given that he would have stood a high chance of being replaced by a character who was decent in his or her own right. In any event, Casualty in the early days survived the departure of several mainstays thanks to the quality of the ongoing storylines. In recent years, however, the show has come to rely more and more on an ever-dwindling group of established characters, who have helped keep its head above water by countering all the inanities with a degree of normality. Josh was one of the last of these characters, and losing him was what someone described to me as “the penultimate nail in the coffin” (the final nail, of course, being the character of Charlie, who exited briefly at Christmas but mercifully returned three months later). Of course, it doesn’t help that, like virtually every other exit this series, Josh’s departure storyline was utterly daft (my thoughts on it here).

By the end of this series, only seven characters remained who had been introduced during previous series, less than half of whom had been with the show for more than two years. Worse still, two of the characters who were introduced this series were each brought in solely to fuel a particular storyline and were them promptly discarded as soon as it had run its course. And this leads us on to my next criticism…

Too many characters = not enough screen time: Casualty, as it currently stands, has a regular cast of 19 characters (although, given the end of series departures, the ranks will have been thinned a little when Series 23 begins), which, given that each episode is only 50 minutes long, is an absurd number and causes serious problems in terms of giving everyone adequate screen time. While I can certainly see the point of having a decent number of characters - each episode takes two weeks to film, which means that between two and three episodes are in production at any one time, necessitating the need for there to be enough actors so as not to require someone to be in three places at once - surely there’s a happy medium to be achieved? There were characters in this series who got to speak one or two lines per episode (for example poor Alice, pictured opposite, being used as a footstool by the producer… sorry, I mean a patient), provided they opened their mouths at all, while the main action seemed to be centred around a chosen few.

Quality of episodes: While, as mentioned above, there was an increase in the number of good episodes this year as compared to the previous series, the standard still fell way short of what I would have liked to see. The majority of the episodes were neither particularly good nor particularly awful. (Some episodes combined the very good with the spectacularly awful, such as Salt and Sugar, which was made watchable by an interesting portrayal of anorexia, despite the utter drivel going on around it.) Most were simply uneventful and unremarkable in every way, while others contained some good ideas but were let down by being mixed in with bad ones, or by ineffectual execution. As with last year, the biggest slump came immediately after New Year with a series of episodes that were either mind-numbingly boring or featured central concepts so flawed that they were impossible to enjoy. The biggest debacle during this period was the storyline involving Ruth Winters’ attempted suicide, which led Harry Harper to take action that eventually resulted in him being forced out. While this gave us two highly positive outcomes (the excellent episode Sex and Death and the removal of the most odious character in Casualty’s 22-year history), the actual storyline itself was not only fudged but also completely and utterly reprehensible from a moral standpoint…

Absurd storylines: For those who don’t know, Harry decided to read Ruth’s private diary while she was lying upstairs in a coma, and then took it upon himself to publish the aforementioned diary to “highlight the plight of junior doctors everywhere”. Words cannot express how moronic this is. Not only is it illegal to publish something someone has written without their consent, the contents of the diary made it blatantly obvious that the problem was not the system and its treatment of junior doctors but rather Ruth herself. But oh no, Harry was made out to be a righteous crusader for justice and was even greeted by a round of applause from the staff during his send-off. In reality, I suspect that the only storyline that would have remotely satisfied me in terms of an exit for this character would have been to have the entire episode consist of him writhing on the ground as every single person he had ever belittled, bullied, sneered at or otherwise demeaned in any way took it in turns to kick him very hard where the sun doesn’t shine. Come to think of it, such an event would probably require an entire season to be devoted to it so as to fit everyone in, so perhaps I should be grateful for what we actually got.

To be honest, more or less every long-running storyline this series was either botched in its execution (such as the aforementioned MIU storyline, which could have been quite interesting from an ethical standpoint) or a stupid idea to begin with (let’s introduce a new character purely so we can play out a pointless storyline involving an unidentified member of staff posting derogatory comments about his/her co-workers on a blog - hey, do you think the new guy who show up one episode earlier might be the culprit?). Oh, and let’s not forget when we were expected to forgive the actions of an internet stalker (who fabricated an identity and wooed a hospital employee for several months before getting cold feet and faking his creation’s death) because he turned out to know sign language.

Lack of continuity: There has been a really nasty habit throughout this series of ignoring past characterisations and events. Sometimes this can be fairly minor, such as a long-running character who has been shown in the past to know sign language conveniently losing this ability so that another character can come in and save the day. Other times, it’s far more damning, with basic aspects of a character’s personality being completely ignored in order to serve the ongoing storyline. Charlie, for example, a man of strong principles and a staunch believer in the NHS, was reduced, in the second half of the series, to a rambling buffoon who, in objecting to the establishment of a privately-funded minor injuries unit within the hospital, decided to turn his misgivings into a personal vendetta against one of its employees.

On a less severe but still incredibly irritating and stupid level, we got to experience the age-old soap opera trick of accelerating a character’s ageing process to a ridiculous degree, with Charlie’s son, Louis (born September 1996) mysteriously transforming into a stroppy, spotty-faced teenager (played by a 20-year-old, no less) purely so the writers could play out some half-baked storyline about him truanting and smoking pot. It’s at times like these that the powers that be demonstrate their utter contempt for their audience.

Age acceleration is something I’ve never seen Casualty do before, but continuity as a whole was a problem last year as well, and I think the blame can be attributed to two issues: the absurd length of the series (48 episodes - come on!), and the lack of attention being paid to characterisation by the script editors. In British TV, a script editor’s job is to maintain continuity from one episode to the next - a very important role given than many different writers are involved, most of whom are freelancers. Based on the total lack of consistency that has been demonstrated by Casualty of late, the script editors are completely incompetent.

Too many cooks spoil the broth: I’m a big believer in consistency, both in front of the camera and behind it. There’s a reason for my including the writer(s) responsible for each episode in the listing above, and that’s to give some idea of just how many different people had their ladles in the pan. In certain cases, these writers had already written for Casualty in the past, some of them back when the show was still good on a reasonably consistent basis (Patrick Wilde, Katharine Way, Suzie Smith, Jeff Povey), but for many of these writers, this was their first time contributing to Casualty, and more often than not this inexperience manifested itself in poor writing and characterisation. I realise that British TV shows don’t have a permanent group of staff writers like they do in the US (instead, each episode is essentially written on a freelance basis), but surely it makes sense to at least have the key episodes written by those who know the show and its characters instead of farming them out to some random person who has written a couple of episodes of EastEnders or Doctors (if that)? Casualty in its golden age boasted some pretty impressive writing talent - Barbara Machin, Bryan Elsley, Bill Gallagher, Peter Bowker, Ben Aaronovitch - but nowadays it seems that the only required criteria to qualify as a writer is to be able to hold a pen and construct some domestic strife. The death knell of any show is when you find yourself thinking “I could do better than this,” and I’m sorry to say that that is exactly what I was thinking on several occasions.

Best and Worst:

Top 5 episodes:
5. 22.17 “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” by Gert Thomas
4. 22.33 “Someone’s Lucky Night” by Mark Cairns
3. 22.25 “Sex and Death” by Mark Catley
2. 22.01 “My First Day” by Mark Catley
1. 22.02 “Charlie’s Anniversary” by Mark Catley

I think there may be a pattern here.

Bottom 5 episodes:
5. 22.26 “Say Say My Playmate” by Abi Brown
4. 22.34 “Walk the Line” by Rachel Flowerday
3. 22.08 “My Aim is True” by Jason Sutton
2. 22.12 “Strangers When We Meet” by Jason Sutton
1. 22.30 “Face the World” by Jeff Young

Well, that’s it for another four or five weeks. Now I just have time to recharge my batteries before doing it all over again with Series 23. I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment.

Waking the Dead: Series 3, Episodes 3 and 4: Walking on Water

Written by Simon Mirren; Directed by Andy Hay

After yet another extended delay, I finally get back into Waking the Dead’s third series, and with a significantly better episode than the season premiere. Taking the same path as Series 2’s Special Relationships, the plot this time focuses on a man, Mark Lovell (Craig Kelly), who has recently been acquitted of the murder of his adoptive father, Thomas, an event which took place almost a decade ago. On the night of the murder, four other members of the family vanished without a trace along with their boat. When the latter is discovered off the coast near the family home and salvaged, Boyd reopens the investigation, the assumption being that, if they can find out what happened to the rest of the family, they stand a good chance of finding Thomas’ real killer. Unfortunately, since he was locked up, Mark has changed - dramatically so. He is now Maria, and Maria is proving to be less than cooperative when it comes to dredging up Mark’s past.

It’s at this stage that Waking the Dead becomes very, very confusing, and I must confess that, despite having now seen the episode three times, I’m still completely flummoxed by what is supposed to be going on in the final twenty minutes. It doesn’t help that the writer, Simon Mirren, inserts a Big Huge Plot Twist out of left field, involving conspiracies, espionage and drug smuggling, and it’s a shame, because everything leading up to these final twenty minutes is very good. I love the way the script pokes fun at Boyd’s discomfort when faced with Mark/Maria. Much like with David Hemmings’ character in Argento’s Profondo Rosso, Boyd isn’t disgusted by the sight of a man dressed as a woman: he simply doesn’t know how to deal with the situation. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for all his tantrums and crudity, Boyd is actually a pretty liberal fellow, something of a rarity in TV detectives. (When Spence asks how Mark’s gender disorder affects his status as a suspect, Boyd snaps back “It doesn’t.”)

There’s some nice direction in this episode too, including a very neat shot of a body being slid out of a storage freezer, shown from the point of view of the body. On the other hand, I’m not wild about the various shots of the dead appearing and vanishing while Frankie is working alone on the salvaged boat. It’s getting a little too close to the pseudo-mysticism that plagued some of the later episodes for my liking.

Holby connections: The writer of this episode, Simon Mirren, penned several episodes of Casualty during the Series 13-14 period (he’s also Helen Mirren’s nephew), while Craig Kelly, who plays Mark Lovell, starred as SHO Daniel Perryman throughout Casualty’s tenth series.

Why Britain will never complete with Boll and Fagrasso

Note: this film was sent to me by Baron Scarpia as part of our ongoing trade in dreadful movies. You can read his thoughts on the film in question here.

My good friend the Baron once opined that the UK traditionally doesn’t have much of a track record for producing truly awful filmmakers. While Italy has given us Claudio Fragasso and Germany has bestowed Uwe Boll upon us, and America is responsible for Tom Green, I don’t really think the British Isles has an equivalent. Broadly speaking, Britain tends to make films in the “drippy toffs played by Hugh Grant who find love” or “grimy northern squalor picture in which everyone has perpetually just been laid off from their job down the coal mines” models, and most of them are far from dreadful, just mind-numbingly tedious and depressing. Occasionally, an exception to the rule comes along, such as Pawel Pawlikowski’s romantic drama My Summer of Love or Neil Marshall’s excellent monster horror flick The Descent, which serve to suggest that perhaps the British film industry shouldn’t be dismantled after all, but by and large this country wastes its lottery grants on brain-destroying crap like Sex Lives of the Potato Men (of which I managed to stomach approximately twelve minutes before turning off my TV and disconnecting it from the wall lest it somehow turn itself back on and subject me to yet more pain).

There’s a third broad category of British film about which I’ve yet to say anything, and that’s the gangster movie à la Guy Ritchie. I don’t like gangster movies, particularly British ones. There are few things I find more irritating than watching a bunch of gristle-chinned wannabe thugs swaggering about, talking in incomprehensible Cockney accents and calling each other unpleasant names. About the only thing I find passably interesting about them is the moral grey area in which they operate, broadly speaking encouraging the audience to align its sympathies with a bunch of moral degenerates for whom theft, assault and murder is a way of life. It’s possible to pull off if you’re good: I’m sure I’m not alone in finding Hannibal Lecter to be a highly compelling character in spite of (or perhaps because of) his nastiness. Lecter isn’t a gangster, but he serves to illustrate a point: if done right, it’s possible to root for the bad guy.

The All Saints eagerly examine the papers for reviews of their film.

Honest doesn’t get a lot of things right. For a start, it stars three-quarters of a British girl group known as All Saints. (If you’ve never heard of them, don’t worry. They were never really relevant to begin with and are extremely unlikely to become so in the near or distant future.) If you’ve had the misfortune of seeing Mariah Carey or Britney Spears’ forays into the world of acting, you’ll know that such endeavours rarely meet with success, and that’s before you even begin to take acting ability into consideration. The All Saints (I’m not going to bother referring to them by their actual names, because neither they nor their characters do anything in particular distinguish themselves from each other), I must assure you, cannot act. Given that at least one of them appears in virtually every single scene in the film, you’d be forgiven for assuming this to be a massive problem. Oddly enough, it’s not, and the reason for that is that their incompetence is matched on every level, if not dwarfed, by a dreadful script, moronic direction and an outlook so morally derelict that it makes Dr. Lecter simply seem like a cheeky chappy who went a wee bit too far.

The All Saints, you see, are gangsters. Hard-talking ladies who walk the streets of 1960s East End London and routinely do things like steal diamonds and threaten innocent bystanders with crowbars and shotguns. One such jaunt goes wrong, and one of the Saints ends up being apprehended by and falling in love with a wretched excuse for a journalist, whose seemingly radical prose is matched in its incompetence only by every single other act of incompetence committed by the filmmakers. Along the way, we get to see the All Saints doing their damnedest to act menacing, getting stoned out of their minds and having a slow motion argument inside a moving vehicle. No, that last part is not a typo.

Cos this is, like, what the 60s was all about.

This film was directed by David A. Stewart, who the Internet Movie Database handily tells me was part of the Eurythmics. Barring some music videos that he shot for his own band, Honest was the first thing he ever directed, and I’m pleased to report that he has never stepped behind a camera since. He also provided the film’s music and co-wrote the script (along with Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who between them have written everything from Porridge to Across the Universe). A man of many talents, clearly. Or not. You see, consider that one person had his hand in so many pies and it begins to look pretty obvious why every single one of them tastes foul. No matter what’s wrong with this movie (and there’s a lot wrong with it), Stewart is the common factor. This is a man who thinks that the most exciting part of a car chase is a conversation taking place between the vehicles passengers, and that the best way to accentuate the tension is not to show exterior shots of the car travelling in slow motion, but to show close-ups of the characters talking in slow motion. He also believes that slowing down and speeding up his footage to a handy “Whoomfff!” sound effect is the height of stylishness, that shots of naked people writhing around during an acid trip is, like, the coolest, most provocative thing ever, and that the All Saints can act. To be fair, you could argue that he is simply being let down by useless leads, but then he also manages to draw useless performances from competent actors like James Cosmo and Corin Redgrave, which puts paid to that theory. (Oh, and Matt Bardock, who currently plays Cockney wideboy paramedic Jeff in Casualty, appears in this film as a Cockney wideboy gangster. I wonder if the loss of hair that he experienced between his appearances in these two productions is to do with the stress resulting in the knowledge that he had appeared in such a train wreck.)

Did I mention the script? Clement and La Frenais have done good work elsewhere, so I can only assume that, once again, the problems stem from our friend Mr. Stewart. Gangster movies generally have the unenviable task of aligning the audience’s sympathies with people who are utterly nasty individuals who, by rights, should be locked away for the rest of their lives somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine. Most gangster movies are reasonable honest about this and either don’t attempt to excuse their anti-heroes’ behaviour, or at the very least pit them against people who are equally or more repugnant than they are. Honest, despite its title, is anything but. At every possible occasion, the script attempts to exonerate the All Saints for their contemptible behaviour by offering pitiful excuses like suggesting that they don’t like doing it (don’t do it, then), that they’re only doing it to get their dad a new telly (get a job, then), or that it’s because their mother is dead (get over it, then). Oh, and we have a tasteless little subplot involving one of them teaching a lesson to a next-door neighbour who routinely assaults his girlfriend, which again is only there to show us that the girls are good after all, innit? (The Saint in question, incidentally, pours engine oil down the offending ladybasher’s throat, which, in addition to being incredibly messy, strikes me as about as distasteful as you can get once you realise that the writers actually want you applaud this act of torture.)

One of the All Saints recreates how she got the part.

Oh, and the film is also content to wallow in its own hypocrisy, opening with the girls chastising a security guard for looking at pornography, despite the fact that the film is loaded to the gills with gratuitous nudity, the most leering of which is provided by two-thirds of the three-quarters of the All Saints, neither of whom are even attractive enough to warrant such exposure. I have, however, provided a picture of one of them, in order to rub their faces in their own double standards.

All this is well and good, but the film’s greatest crime, by far, is how boring it is, and this is where my opinion and the Baron’s part ways. The Baron, you see, feels that a film can do worse than be boring. I, on the other hand, think that there is no greater crime. Note to filmmakers: you can be as incompetent and as morally bankrupt as you like, but provide you do so in a semi-interesting way, you may at least retain my attention. Unfortunately, for the most part watching Honest is like watching paint dry. There are a few moments that make me shake my head in disbelief and cry out “What the fuck were they thinking?”, but, for the most part, it’s simply as dull and worthless as virtually every other British movie, and it’s because of that that it doesn’t make it into “so bad it’s good territory”. It’s just a feckless, incompetently made waste of celluloid.

Incidentally, the back cover of the DVD proclaims that this film is a “cult classic”. Presumably, in the same way that Manos: The Hands of Fate and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 are cult classics.

But… but… grain!

Paramount’s HD DVD release of Babel features a stellar transfer (note: the MPEG-2 Blu-ray version is not reviewed here) which shows off the varied methods of photography to great effect. From the rough, 16mm Moroccan scenes to the 35mm anamorphic look of Tokyo, there’s really nothing to complain about here barring some minor artefacting. Predictably, not all reviewers were quite so impressed, some of them labelling the abundant grain a “problem with the transfer” (morons), but I’ll let you judge for yourselves using the images below.

Babel
(Paramount, USA, AVC, 25.8 GB)

DVD review: 101 Dalmatians: Platinum Edition

One Hundred and One Dalmatians marks one of the few occasions on which I read the book (a childhood favourite that I still revisit every few years) before seeing the Disney film. Consequentially, perhaps, when I finally did see Disney’s interpretation, it was something of a letdown, maintaining the plot of its source material but transposing a number of its most cherished moments. It’s still a cracking film, though, endlessly rewatchable and constituting a welcome change of pace from Disney’s previous string of folktales and fairy stories.

Better late than never, I’ve reviewed Disney’s Region 1 Platinum Edition release of 101 Dalmatians, a feature-packed 2-disc presentation of one of the studio’s most enduring films.

You must see Wall-E!

After 13 years of producing hit after hit, I’ve learned to trust Pixar to deliver gold. To date, they haven’t made a single bad film (not even Cars, which for some reason seemed to attract a comparatively heavy amount of criticism from certain circles), and I think it’s safe to say that whatever magic formula they have tucked away over in Emeryville works.

I still wasn’t expecting their latest film, Wall-E, to be as good as it is, though. For me, it’s the best film I’ve seen this year… which, admittedly, isn’t a particularly high accolade when you consider that the only other 2008 release I’ve seen so far is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (not counting films made earlier but released in the UK in 2008 like All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and The Orphanage). However, I’d go so far as to say that this is the best film I’ve seen since The Incredibles in 2004: the last film to which I awarded the coveted “10/10” rating.

In comparison with warmer fare like last year’s Ratatouille, Wall-E is a rather sombre affair, something it shares with director Andrew Stanton’s previous film, Finding Nemo. The subject matter is unusually grim for Pixar: in the distant future, humankind has ruined Earth, turning it into a smouldering wreck of garbage and pollution. No long inhabitable, the luckier humans boarded a giant spacecraft and took off into the ether to wait until the clean-up of the planet has been completed and it is once more inhabitable. Alas, as time has passed, it has become increasingly clear that it will never be cleaned up, and the humans aboard the spacecraft, who, several generations down the line, have evolved into overweight, tiny-boned, borderline retarded bags of flesh, have all but forgotten about Earth. The only form of life that now remains on earth is a robot named Wall-E, tasked with cleaning up the planet - a monotonous task of collecting and compacting garbage which he has been performing non-stop for centuries, and centuries, and centuries.

I think a film like Wall-E is the perfect example of what makes Pixar’s output so different from, and so much better than, that of their competitor, DreamWorks. Whereas DreamWorks’ animated features are usually based around a one-note joke (Bee Movie, anyone?) or the latest celebrity actor they’ve snared to do a voice over (look - a talking fish who looks and sounds exactly like Will Smith!), or an endless cavalcade of sub-Family Guy pop culture references, boogers and farts (the Shrek franchise), Pixar builds their films around solid characterisation, with the rest flowing naturally. The last thing Wall-E is about is famous voices; actually, for a good two-thirds of the film, there is no dialogue whatsoever. Given that Wall-E can only make a few primitive speech sounds (which are provided by veteran sound designer Ben Burtt), and his only interactions are with a silent cricket and a fellow robot, EVE, whose vocal range is even more limited than his, his emotions have to be conveyed entirely through pantomime and the expressions made by his eyes.

There’s a lot of talk of Wall-E being 2008’s first contender for Best Picture as next year’s Oscars. That’s right, Best Picture, not Best Animated Feature. If an animated film can actually win the most prestigious of the Academy Awards, then perhaps it will finally break the long-held stigma against the medium.

See it!

DVD review: The Frightened Woman

Not quite trash and not quite art, The Frightened Woman represents Italian popular cinema at its most trippy. It’s just about as batty as they come, and I defy you to find another film that looks and feels anything like it. Beneath all that surface glitz, however, is a surprisingly deep construct, one that is likely to beguile and bemuse in equal measure.

We’ve got yet more toothed vaginas in my review of the deliciously weird The Frightened Woman, a unique offering of 60s sexploitation from Shameless Screen Entertainment.

DVD review: Teeth

Teeth is ultimately a highly promising debut feature that’s unique enough for me to recommend it on that basis alone. It has considerably more going for it than merely being different, however, most notably an excellent lead performance from an extremely promising actress and a quirky, infectious sense of humour. It’s not entirely satisfying, and it’s not quite as brave as its provocative premise might suggest, but it’s entertaining, engaging, and even strangely endearing. Be prepared to cross your legs, though.

Cross your legs and lock up your sons - Dawn is on the prowl! I kick off a delightful “vagina dentata” double bill with a review of Dimension Extreme’s Region 1 release of Teeth, which proves the old adage that sex is indeed a weapon…

No innuendos about electric toothbrushes, please

Yesterday heralded the arrival of a much-awaited review copy, the delightful Teeth, a film about a young lady who has a set of razor-sharp fangs inside her vagina, and the hilarity that ensues as she has various, ahem, prickly encounters with the opposite sex.

If you’ve heard this story before, then you’ve probably encountered a form of the vagina dentata myth, which we might describe as a product of the male of the species’ enduring suspicion and/or fear of women. You might also have heard of a no-budget British shocker called Penetration Angst, reviewed here by the indomitable Baron Scarpia. Penetration Angst is, I’m reliably informed, absolutely dreadful, which is why, when I first read Teeth’s synopsis, I was surprised, to say the least, to discover that both films shared almost exactly the same premise. The notion of a toothed vagina is, of course, nothing new, but the precise details of the two films’ plots makes it hard for me to believe that mere coincidence is at play here.

I’ve been saying for ages that, instead of remaking good films, studios would be better off remaking bad ones, and it sounds as if Penetration Angst is as bad as they come. Teeth, I’m sure, is considerably better, but I still haven’t decided quite how I feel about it. Like Penetration Angst, it falls into the trap of making all the men that our intrepid heroine comes into contact with end up being filthy slimy perverts (to quote Tenebrae). It’s frustrating because of its predictability, and also because it allows the writer/director, Mitchell Lichtenstein, to dodge any potentially difficult questions - like why are we rooting for a serial killer/mutilator? The way the film is set up, everyone who loses their wang (or, in one case, fingers) basically “deserves” it (yep, even the gynaecologist to whom she rather astutely pays a visit when she realises something isn’t quite right downstairs), and the majority of the sexual encounters are forced on her (the only one that isn’t is someone she actively seeks to entrap).

The acting in Penetration Angst is described as being uniformly awful (which is probably appropriate enough given the apparent quality of the rest of the film). This isn’t a problem with Teeth, whose lead, Jess Weixler, is actually very very good. She has the rather unenviable task of playing a character whose head is firmly up in the clouds (she is a blissfully ignorant Christianity enthusiast who gives talks to impressionable teenagers about “waiting” - c.f. the Silver Ring Thing), and the film, not unreasonably, treats her attitudes without a great deal of respect. Somehow, though, she doesn’t lose our sympathy, at least until the final third of the film, in which a rather predictable tonal shift occurs and it becomes considerably harder to root for her. Actually, it’s a rather well-made film all round, more so when you realise that it’s the director’s first feature. I think this raises the bar in terms of quality and prevents it from simply being moronic dross. That, and the fact that a very interesting balance of horror and sly comedy is maintained throughout.

Expect a full review in the near future, once I’ve had a chance to mull it over.

Transmission interrupted

In the unlikely event that you’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for my review of Issue 15 of the dreadful Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comic (you know who are, you weird, weird freaks), then I hate to break it to you: it’s not happening. Today, it suddenly occurred to me that the festering thing hadn’t arrived, despite it having been released over a month ago. A quick peek at my TFAW account explained this anomaly: my subscription actually expired with Issue 14.

This means that I won’t be able to tell you which forms of sealife are jumped in the four and final instalment of Drew Goddard’s woeful little tale of Japanese vampires, dead Slayers and laughably predictable plot “twists”, and, to be honest with you, I don’t care. Back when I thought I would also be receiving Issue 15, I contented myself with the knowledge that, although I was abandoning the series, I would at least be jumping off the boat at a semi-logical point. Discovering, today, that I would essentially be left hanging, I realised just how much it doesn’t bother me. And why should it? The comics themselves are risible, and I don’t consider them to be in any way canonical, regardless of what their creator might say. So, while it’s slightly frustrating to be ending on a comma rather than a full stop, as it were, at least this means I can devote less time to writing about crap and more time to stuff I actually like.

Waking the Dead: Series 3, Episodes 1 and 2: Multistorey

Written by Ed Whitmore; Directed by Robert Bierman

After a somewhat lengthy break, I return to my Waking the Dead reviews and plunge into the show’s third series. For some reason, Series 3 is always the one that I have the most trouble remembering: ultimately, only the final episode stands out in my mind, and that’s only because it’s unusually character-driven for Waking the Dead at this stage in its history. That’s not to say that Series 3 is in any way poor, but it’s not particularly memorable, and it has the unfortunate disadvantage of starting with what was, at the time, the programme’s weakest storyline to date.

The focus is on a mass shooting which took place in 1996 when a lone gunman, Carl Mackenzie (Sean Pertwee), murdered or injured several pedestrians in the high street from the vantage point of the top floor of a multi-storey car park. In the present day, the case is up for appeal. Pertwee always claimed his innocence, stating that he had in fact been kidnapped and framed by the real gunman, but two witness reports, including that of the police officer who succeeded in apprehending him, state that they saw him with the gun in his hands…

It’s hard to put my finger on what it is about Multistorey that doesn’t work. On paper, it’s actually a very interesting scenario, but for some reason none of it really pulls together. There’s no real sense of urgency, despite Boyd have a personal connection in the form of having been friends with a police officer who was killed in the massacre, and despite him (temporarily) concealing evidence when an eyewitness’ account is revealed to have been less than reliable. None of the characters, not even the accused, really come to life, and it ultimately all feels a little pedestrian.

On a side note, after swapping producers every year since the pilot, the show finally got itself a long-term producer in the form of Richard Burrell, who remained in that role until the end of Series 5 and has since gone on to produce a diverse array of programmes for the BBC, including the first series of the recent re-imagining of Robin Hood, The Invisibles and Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story. Oh, and, on a purely trivial note, it never ceases to amaze me how much the moustache and beard Spence adopts as of this episode changes his appearance, adding at least ten years to him and greatly increasing his stature.

Holby connections: Robert Pugh (Robert Cross in this episode) played paramedic Andy Ponting in the first two series of Casualty, while Kim Vithana (Beth Downing in this episode) played midwife Rosie Sattar between Series 5 and 7 of Holby City.

Blu-ray review: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

What this ultimately leaves us with is a fairly conventional and reasonably well-made exploitation flick with a bit of WB-style surface gloss thrown in to detract from the grit and grime of the bloodletting. Taken on these terms, it’s a fairly entertaining way of passing the time, but it’s hard to shake the impression that it puts a bit too much effort into achieving very little. Reviewed as a straight-up horror flick, it’s slightly better than average, but by purporting (and failing) to be something more, its makers may have ended up making it seem like more of a failure than it actually is… if that makes any sense.

Who is Mandy Lane and why do all the boys love her? It certainly isn’t for her originality or sparkling conversation. I take a look at Optimum’s upcoming all-regions Blu-ray release of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Review at DVD Times.

Waking the Dead: Series 2, Episodes 7 and 8: Thin Air

Written by Ed Whitmore; Directed by Edward Bennett

In 1989, 18-year-old Joanna Gold (Sophie Winkleman) vanished without a trace while walking on Hampstead Heath with her parents, brother and sister. Flash forward to the present day, and the striking red dress Joanna was last seen wearing is discovered, in immaculate condition, in a storage facility. It turns out that the facility is being rented by an Alec Garvey (Justin Salinger), a man with a track record for stalking girls. Being leaned on by the Commissioner to get a result, any result, Boyd charges Garvey, resulting in his attempted suicide. Faced with the horrible prospect that he fingered the wrong man, Boyd reopens the case and goes back to the fateful day of Joanna’s disappearance, digging up disturbing family secrets and discovering that Joanna Gold was not as squeaky-clean as the public have been led to believe.

This is one of my all-time favourite episodes of Waking the Dead, and I think one of the reasons why it works so well is that it’s unusually creepy. At its heart we have a striking and frankly baffling image - a girl in a red dress simply vanishing into thin air on a clear day in an open space - and, as the investigation intensifies, all sorts of guilty secrets come to the fore. The Golds put up a front of being model members of society, but it’s clear from the outset that they are all as guilty as sin and each have something the hide. It helps that we have a superb array of actors playing the key members of the family: Roger Allam, as the father, can’t help but look suspicious, and everything about his demeanour screams “hostile” from the second Boyd encounters him, while Cherie Lunghi works wonders as his brittle wife. However, the best performance comes from Sophie Winkleman (whom you might know as Big Suze in Peep Show - a very different role), who plays both Joanna Gold and the present-day incarnation of her younger sister Clara. The resemblance is intended to be uncanny, but it’s not until the final fifteen minutes that we realise just how disturbing this actually is.

This was the first episode to be written by Ed Whitmore, who would become Waking the Dead’s key writer until the regime change at the end of Series 5, penning a total of six two-parters. Whitmore’s scripts are drier than those written by Stephen Davis, but I think he tends to do better at connecting the A-to-B plot elements, gradually teasing out information and taking the investigative team down unexpected avenues. Particularly well-handled is a plot development that I accused of being tacked-on when I wrote my review of the Series 2 DVD set for DVD Times, but which in retrospect I now see is actually foreshadowed quite brilliantly, particularly in the curious relationship that develops between Boyd and Clara. It’s one of these moments that leaves you screaming “No! No!” at the screen as Boyd digs his own grave, and the actions that he commits in order to get to the bottom of the mystery are reckless in the extreme, culminating in him going for a midnight jaunt on Hampstead Heath with Clara wearing Joanna’s red dress. However, when you consider the extent to which his own child’s disappearance (mentioned briefly but, thankfully, not flogged to death), it’s possible to find reason in his obsessive behaviour.

On a side note, this episode indirectly reveals more about our core cast of characters than all of the previous ones put together. In addition to the revelation that Grace was at one point married with two sons (the marriage didn’t last), and that Mel lives alone but has “lots of friends”, we discover that Spence previously considered jacking in his career as a policeman and going into business with his entrepreneur friend, and that, in 1989, Frankie spent the summer in Cyprus having a wild affair with a tattoo artist named Andreas (Grace’s response of “Ooooh, Andreas!” being the one time in the series that Sue Johnston’s performance reminds me of her part in The Royle Family). She too, it seems, was sorely tempted to abandon her career, but decided that, although the sex was great, she wasn’t in love. This focus is, as ever, on Boyd, but it’s these little moments that help build up a bigger picture of the rest of the cast without rubbing our faces in their personal lives.

Series 2 is, on the whole, not as consistent as Series 1. While this means that we do get a slightly weaker episode than we’ve been used to seeing up until now, Deathwatch, it does also provide us with the best episode so far, Thin Air. In the next instalment, we’ll be venturing into Series 3, which, to tell the truth, I can recall little of, before heading towards, in my opinion, the best series, Series 4.

Waking the Dead: Series 2, Episodes 5 and 6: Special Relationships

Written by Stephen Davis; Directed by David Thacker

Around a year ago, the body of Home Office Advisor Katherine Reed (Francesca Ryan) was discovered by burglar Ricky Taft (Del Synnott) during a routine break-in. Flash forward to the present, and Taft has just been acquitted of killing her. With the investigation closed, it becomes a cold case and is immediately sent the way of Boyd and company… along with a humourless Home Office auditor (the two are completely unconnected, naturally). The team’s investigations reveal a maze of conspiracies and cover-ups, and the more digging that is done into Katherine Reed’s private life, the less it makes sense.

This is probably the most convoluted Waking the Dead story so far, and one that firmly establishes the series’ penchant for outlandish explanations. It appears that almost everyone is/was screwing everyone else, both literally and figuratively. In order to delve into this and show just how mixed up everything is, I’m afraid I’m going to have to enter into spoiler territory.

Highlight below to reveal spoiler text:

See what I mean about complexity? And I haven’t even got into Boyd’s past relationship with the investigating DI in Katherine’s murder, Jess Worrall (Ruth Gemmell), his signing and flouting of the Official Secrets Act, an interview with an extremely uncooperative CIA operative and a grand conspiracy involving Boyd suspecting either MI5 or the CIA of assassinating Katherine. There’s a massive amount of stuff going on here, and I’m not convinced that it all comes together in an entirely satisfying way (the Home Office auditor, in particular, feels somewhat tacked on and is brushed aside just over 20 minutes into the second part, when Boyd sends her packing), but it does strike me as quite clever in its own way. It also helps that, as with the previous episode, also penned by Stephen Davis, this one is rather witty, poking fun at the Boyd character and his thinly-veiled fear (or perhaps misunderstanding) of tough women. The angry, over the top Boyd of later years is definitely beginning to take shape here, by the way, culminating in him bawling out Grace, to the best of my recollection the first time this has happened. (Oddly enough, it would take Grace a further four years to declare “enough is enough”.)

Waking the Dead: Series 2, Episodes 3 and 4: Deathwatch

Written by Stephen Davis; Directed by Maurice Phillips

Also known as “The One With David Hemmings In It”. The man himself doesn’t look at all well (his appearance was filmed just over a year before he suffered a fatal heart attack), but it’s a pleasure to see such a legend in the series, and he gives a good performance. It’s one that initially seems to be that of a grumpy ex-cop, disparaging of the newfangled investigative methods and reminiscing about a time when there was no paperwork and the police went by their instincts, but one that, in the second hour, reveals considerable complexities and twists things in a different direction. It’s not exactly surprising that Hemmings’ character has something to hide - he’s the major guest star, after all - but everyone in this episode is keeping a secret of some sort, so that’s not giving much away.

Anyway, the plot focuses on the death, under suspicious circumstances, of Harold Newman (Howard Goorney), an elderly man living in a nursing home. It becomes clear that he died with a guilty conscience, leaving a list of twelve people whose deaths he claims to have caused. The mysterious twelve turn out to have comprised the jury who condemned East End gangster Frank Sutton (Toby Mace) to death in 1963. Working with the assumption that Newman was a contract killer, Boyd and the CCS set out to find out for whom he was working, and who would now want him dead.

So follows a rather convoluted tale that, to be perfectly honest, doesn’t really play fair with the audience, by giving us a killer who, prior to being identified, only appears in a single throwaway scene and has a single line of dialogue. Of course, he’s ultimately only a means to an end, as the real thrust of the plot takes place nearly 40 years in the past, but it’s somewhat frustrating nonetheless. What makes up for this is, as is often the case in the early episodes, the interaction between the team. The explosive, absurd side of Boyd is now firmly established, but there is still degree of warmth between him and his colleagues that is almost completely absent in the most recent episodes. There is a dizzying array of genuinely amusing dialogue in this episode, much of it involving Grace’s birthday celebrations. (My favourite is Boyds “All right, all right, the shopping channel’s closed down. Now it’s time for the news.”)

Holby connections: David Ashton, who plays Father Cameron in this episode, wrote several episodes of Casualty during Series 2 and 3, while Ronald Pickup, who plays Charles Sutton, had a recurring role in Holby City about a year back as Lord Byrne.

Waking the Dead: Series 2, Episodes 1 and 2: Life Sentence

Written by John Milne; Directed by Edward Bennett

A playing card, the Queen of Hearts, is left on the windscreen of Dr. Claire Delaney (Susannah Harker), who, several years ago, was the first of six women to be abducted by Thomas Rice (Samuel West), and the only one to survive. All the others were raped and murdered, and, on each occasion, a pack of playing cards was delivered to the investigating officer, with the instructions that he gamble for the victim’s life by picking a card. Now, working under the assumption that Rice in fact had an accomplice, Boyd and his team set out to re-interview the notoriously slippery killer, now serving a life sentence.

It strikes me that this plot is rather similar to that of Dario Argento’s The Card Player, albeit without the Internet factor. This episode initially aired on September 2nd 2002, and The Card Player premiered in Italy in January 2004. Now, I’m not for a minute going to suggest that Dario Argento spends his time watching British television to get ideas for his film plots, but the likeness is nonetheless striking. The other point of reference, of course, is The Silence of the Lambs, the parallels being virtually impossible to ignore when you consider Rice’s “quid pro quo” attitude and Boyd’s use of Mel as a honey trap of sorts. Of course, Samuel West is no Anthony Hopkins and Claire Goose, good as she is, is no Jodie Foster, but the encounters between them (and Grace) are well-written and result in one of Waking the Dead’s truly tense scenes, as Rice systematically blocks his cell’s security cameras with various paintings, circling around Mel as he moves in for the kill.

Otherwise, this turns out to be a fairly conventional, albeit nasty, tale of kidnapping and murder. Certainly, after tales of bodies being found in churches and photojournalists burning to death in Series 1, this one seems a bit more like “real life”, while certain aspects of this case do bear a passing resemblance to the abduction storyline of the pilot. It’s an assured start to the second series, however, and one with a set of suspects that is manageable and at the same time not so limited as to make the culprit seem obvious. Actually, several people are hiding something, and the various allegiances are not all what you would expect.

Incidentally, from this episode onwards, the team have moved into their permanent location - the rather snazzy-looking headquarters with the transparent evidence boards and a lack of sufficient lighting. The episode also contains what is, to the best of my recollection, the first time Boyd uses his favourite interview technique of leaning forward and asking a suspect a question, then asking it again ONLY THIS TIME SHOUTING IT SO LOUD THE SPIT FLIES OUT OF HIS MOUTH. Truly, a man of tact and subtlety.

Holby connections: Paterson Joseph, who plays Dermot Sullivan in this episode, starred in Casualty as nurse Mark Grace from Series 12 to mid-Series 13. Nowadays, though, he is probably best known as Johnson in Peep Show.

Waking the Dead: Series 1, Episodes 7 and 8: Every Breath You Take

Written by Barbara Machin; Directed by Gary Love

“You know when you put a fork in a sausage and it bursts? Well, it’s the same with brain matter.” - Dr. Frankie Wharton

A body is fished out of the Thames, and is identified as that of missing police sergeant Debbie Britten (Joanne Farrell). Given that Debbie was something of a poster child for the police force, DAC Christie orders Boyd to drop everything and spare no expense in bringing her killer to justice. Prior to her disappearance, Debbie attracted a number of stalkers, among them Michael Skinner (Andrew Buckley) and Christopher Redford (Lee Ross), both of whom emerge as prime suspects. However, Boyd’s old friend Steven Maitland (Thomas Lockyer), who worked on the hunt for Debbie at the time of her disappearance, knows more than he is letting on, and an illicit check on the police DNA database reveals that his relationship with her was far from strictly professional.

Series 1, as a whole, is comprised of four very good self-contained stories, and I’m of the opinion that this one is, overall, the best of the bunch. Actually, it’s a shame this was the last episode Barbara Machin wrote of her own show. One thing I appreciate about her scripts is her attention to procedural detail. Whereas I tend to find that most writers working within the confines of so-called precinct dramas tend to use the basic formula (cop show, medical drama, etc.) as a framework upon which to hang a storyline about relationships (not necessarily of the romantic variety) between various characters, Machin is every bit as interested in the nitty-gritty of what the various professionals do, and will spend a lot of time recreating procedure simply because it can be compelling in and of itself. In this storyline, a considerable amount of time is spent showing how Frankie locates some bullets that have been concealed at the scene of the crime. It’s fascinating to watch and, given Machin’s track record for comprehensive research, no doubt completely accurate. I’ve always been more interested in the psychological than the scientific side of things, however, so the most interesting part of the episode, for me, is the way in which it constructs two distinct profiles for Debbie’s two obsessive stalkers. Likewise, there’s a twist at the end that comes slightly out of left field, but in retrospect it does make a great deal of sense.

Elsewhere, the more compulsive, aggressive side of Boyd’s personality begins to emerge. This is certainly the first time we see him literally bawling at his subordinates and suspects, and on the whole the level of dysfunction between members of the team is much higher here than it has been until now. There are still some nicely touching moments, though, including Boyd telling Grace about his own past stalker-like behaviour towards a woman about whom he became obsessed (“But you see, ultimately, you knew when no meant no,” Grace points out; “No, I married her,” replies Boyd), and Boyd’s apology to Frankie after putting her job on the line (“I love you, Frankie” - I suspect you have to see it for yourself to get it).

Holby connections: Gary Love directed a number of episodes of Casualty between Series 12 and 14, among them my second-favourite episode of all time, Love Me Tender, which contains what can reasonably considered to be Claire Goose’s finest performance to date. This episode has a considerably more ambitious look than that of the rest of the first series as a whole.

Update, June 16th, 2008 12:05 PM: Incidentally, something I forgot to mention last night is that, in this episode, Grace states that she has a thesis to work on and “kids I never see”. Later episodes, in which it is stated that Grace never married or had children, directly contradict this.

Waking the Dead: Series 1, Episodes 5 and 6: A Simple Sacrifice

Written by Simon Mirren; Directed by Robert Del Maestro

This is probably the weakest storyline of the first series, although not because it’s in any way bad. On the contrary, Series 1 is remarkably solid overall, and this merely sticks out as the least impressive of a very impressive bunch. The plot this time round focuses on the impending release of Annie Keel (Harriet Walter), a woman who, nearly 25 years ago, confessed to stabbing to death her husband and her son’s friend, who was sleeping over at the time, but leaving her own son, Sam, alive. The case is re-opened in 2001 due to two factors: first of all, the evidence appears flimsy and Annie’s confession too pat (the implication being that she is covering up for someone else). Secondly, someone has been sending the police anonymous letters claiming that Annie is innocent and that he/she knows who the real culprit is. Finally, Grace doesn’t believe that the attacks fit the profile of a woman, particularly a mother.

Quickly, it becomes apparent that the key to solving the mystery rests with Sam Keel (Cal Macaninch). Why was he left alive when the other child was killed? It’s therefore somewhat irritating that Boyd and his team take absolutely no steps towards tracking him down until very late in the game. Equally frustrating is the fact that, early on in the second part of this story, it becomes fairly clear who the real culprit, the same person who is now writing to the police, is. This is not because the evidence allows the viewer to work out why he/she would commit the crime, but simply because what we know about the killer’s gender from flashbacks allows us to rule out various other parties, eventually leaving us with two possible suspects, only one of whom is in a position to be sending the police information by the final half-hour.

Systematic elimination of this sort is not necessarily a bad thing (and I’m sure it’s the sort of thing the police find themselves faced with all the time), but it’s slightly unsatisfying in a detective drama because it leaves the audience in a position of knowing who did it but not having the faintest clue why. It also provides us with information that the police themselves do not possess (the flashbacks), which in turn makes their unearthing of his/her identity a bit too convenient. When he/she does reveal his/her motives, during a particularly tense stand-off, they seem fairly pat (his/her reason for killing Sam’s friend is particularly anticlimactic) and don’t really lead to a satisfying conclusion. Far more interesting is why Annie Keel took the blame, and it’s this element that helps keep the episode above water.

Holby connections: a shedload. The writer, Simon Mirren, penned several episodes of Casualty during the Series 13-14 period, while the director, Robert Del Maestro, has helmed many episodes of both Casualty and Holby City over the years. The adult Sam Keel is played by Cal Macaninch, better known as DI John Keenan in Holby Blue, while Rakie Ayola (nurse Kyla Tyson in present day Holby City) has a semi-important role here as a prison officer.

Waking the Dead: Series 1, Episodes 3 and 4: The Blind Beggar

Written by John Milne; Directed by Robert Knights

Before reviewing the episodes themselves, I must take a minute to share with you the moment, about a third of the way into the second part, where I actually had to pause my DVD to allow myself a good old-fashioned chortle. The object of my derision was not this episode itself but rather the most recent series of Waking the Dead. You see, in Series 7, we finally get to meet Boyd’s son, who ran away at some point in the past and has been missing, presumed dead for several years. In Series 7, the character is called Luke.

In The Blind Beggar, Boyd calls him Joe.

At least ten times.

Savour that for a moment. Go on, re-read what I’ve just typed and think very hard about it. The disappearance of Boyd’s son is, understandably, an extremely significant moment in the character’s life and it has played a major role in defining his personality and his reasons for doing his job. And yet the people responsible for putting together the most recent series clearly considered it so trivial that they didn’t even bother to get the character’s name right. It’s no wonder Boyd’s personality has been so heavily mangled in recent years - if you can’t remember a simple name, what hope do you have of getting to grips with characterisation?

But I digress. The Blind Beggar stands out as a particularly good episode in the Waking the Dead canon. Slow to get going, this one tonally feels closer to an episode of Inspector Morse than your average Waking the Dead fare, with lots of slow, contemplative wanders through cloisters and incidental choral music. The plot deals with the discovery of a body during a routine excavation in the crypt of a Catholic church. The concealment of the body is dated to around the time that a previous excavation was carried out on the same area by a man named Gabriel Hare, who later appears to have committed suicide after being virtually excommunicated by the church’s incredibly nasty parishioner, Father Sebastian Stuart (Barry Morse).

Fairly quickly, it becomes apparent that the body is likely to be that of Nick Bowen, a young man who disappeared in 1982, at around the time of the initial excavation, but the story is considerably more complicated than it appears to be at face value. This is a confusing episode even by Waking the Dead’s standards, spinning a long and tortuous yarn through a close-knit community seemingly populated almost entirely by people with their own long-kept secrets and personal vendettas against each other. It’s a tribute to the writing of John Milne, who penned several episodes throughout the show’s classic period (Series 1-4), this it remains comprehensible despite the large cast of characters and convoluted family trees.

The episode also benefits from an excellent performance from guest star Annette Crosbie (Mrs. Victor Meldrew herself). The unwritten rule of Waking the Dead seems to be that the character played by the highest profile guest actor either did the killing or knows something about it (hence, when David Hemmings shows up in the second series, try as he might to keep his head down, he just doesn’t stand a chance), but the fun in this episode comes from working out precisely what Crosbie’s character knows or did. The character is multi-faceted and extremely conflicted, and it’s a testament to Crosbie’s performance that she remains sympathetic even when it becomes clear that she has behaved quite abominably.

Elsewhere, we get hints at Boyd’s disdain for religion: he tells us he only goes to church for “hatchings, matchings and dispatchings”, and reacts with barely disguised contempt when a priest wishes to reclaim various sacraments discovered with the body. Grace, incidentally, is portrayed here as a semi-lapsed Catholic, which hasn’t really been explored since despite there having been various opportunities to do so (I’m thinking particularly of the Series 5 storyline in which it is revealed that she had an abortion at some point in the 80s). It does, however, shed some light on he rather rigorous defence of religion in the Series 7 episode Skin when an irate Boyd postulates that the only difference between neo-Nazis and priests is the colour of their uniforms. (Yeah, you try to rationalise that one.)

Some choice dialogue, too, my favourite line being Frankie’s exclamation, while working in the church crypt, that she wants to take up smoking so she can have an excuse to go outside to shout and swear every once in a while.

Waking the Dead: Series 1, Episodes 1 and 2: Burn Out

Written by Peter Jukes; Directed by Edward Bennett

The series proper begins, and the various alterations made after the pilot had aired are firmly in case. The status of Boyd’s son now conforms with the established canon, although the fact that it is stated that he would be 25 now (i.e. 2001) is somewhat at odds with the depiction of the character seven years later in the recently aired Series 7, in which the actor playing the re-emergent Luke Boyd couldn’t have been much more than that age. Still, that’s a complaint for my Series 7 reviews, which I’ll no doubt get on to at some point.

In any event, this first episode dwells to a considerable extent on the degree to which the loss of Boyd’s son is playing on his mind. The specifics of his disappearance are not elaborated on at this stage, with it simply being made clear that he is missing, presumed dead. Fitting, therefore, that, on what would be his son’s 25th birthday, he encounters a young woman, Marina Coleman, whose father supposedly burned to death in a car crash nine years ago, who is haunted by the man’s memory and believes that there is more to the case than either suicide or accidental death. Badgered into taking on the case by Marina, Boyd, who initially tells her that he doesn’t accept cases on request, becomes increasingly driven to solve this mystery, much to the annoyance of his team, who are being leaned on by Detective Assistant Commissioner Christie (Simon Kunz) to produce results.

Marina, by the way, is played by Angela Griffin, who portrayed nurse Jasmine Hopkins throughout the first three series of Holby City. Several other names crop up on both sides of the camera related to it and its parent show, Casualty, beyond the obvious example of series creator Barbara Machin, and Claire Goose (who, immediately prior to Waking the Dead, played nurse Tina Seabrook for three years in Casualty), and if I can remember I’ll point them out as they occur.

This episode’s greatest strength, the straightforwardness of the mystery, is also its greatest weakness. On the one hand, the pool of suspects is fairly small and the script doesn’t throw in any unreasonable twists out of left field, which means that, unlike some of the later episodes, you can actually make sense of this one on the first viewing. On the downside, I guessed what was going on a few minutes into the second hour, after which point it became slightly frustrating having to watch the team going around in circles. Boyd is remarkably slow to catch on to all of this - “I don’t understand,” he says at one point. Well, it’s not exactly rocket science, and if I was DAC Christie I wouldn’t consider the amount of time it took the case to be solved as much of an incentive to keep the Cold Case Unit afloat.

In addition to laying much of the groundwork as regards Boyd’s son, we also get something of a hint of the sheer nastiness of which the character is capable when he tells a suspect, with some glee, that the team is about to exhume his brother’s body, and then proceeds, with total calm, to tear him to pieces by completely stripping him of his worth. In many ways, this earlier, calmer Boyd is actually more disturbing than the later one who rants and raves and throws his weight about, because he is so deceptively polite.

At the other end of the spectrum, though, I really enjoy the interaction between the team, and the sense of camaraderie that exists between them - something which is almost completely absent in the more recent episodes, where no-one seems to have a sense of humour. The jubilation they experience over cracking a particularly tough case is quite infectious, and the dinner scene between Boyd and Grace is very nice too. All in all, a good start to the series, if an unspectacular one.