The Bridge II

Normally, when reviewing TV series, it is customary to give your opinion after the first episode and so possible encourage others to watch the rest. I wasn't able to do that with The Bridge because time just got away from me and suddenly it was the middle of the week and a Saturday night crime drama seemed somewhat passe. But it was just so good I couldn't not write about it. Also, in this age of iPlayer, streaming and DVD series binges it's not as if it has gone forever.

So, my advice to you is GO AND WATCH THE BRIDGE II RIGHT NOW!!! Beg, borrow and steal just please see it. Also please ignore that little voice that kicks in whenever someone recommends something too much (we all have them). This is seriously worth it.

Ahem. Anyway, The Bridge II. There is a Bridge I but I haven't seen it (although DVD will soon be rectifying that and I'll let you know what I think of it when it has). It's a Swedish/Danish crime drama focusing on crimes that affect both countries, particularly Copenhagen and Malmö which are the cities connected by a bridge across the sea. It begins with a boat crashing into the bridge almost at half way so police departments in both cities are required to investigate. 

That's how it starts, but The Bridge has the most complex plot I've come across in a long time. Throughout the ten episodes it goes through murder, family feuds, marital infidelity, eco-terrorism, biological warfare and EU climate policy to name just a few themes. It isn't lazy viewing. You have to be paying attention or you will just get lost. It being subtitled actually helped me in this respect as things tend to go in better if I've read them. There were also so many characters that kept popping up in different connections sometimes it was helpful to have my memory jogged by them basically wearing name tags. 

It didn't suffer from being 'too complicated' though. There were never moments of blind incomprehension resulting from the writers either getting too caught up in their own cleverness or details being forgotten/shoe horned it. It was all very considered and every little clue had it's place. It must have been an incredible feat to conceptualise, let alone write. 

The writing was magnificent as well. Every episode was pacey, the dialogue (even translated into another language and read rather than heard) was good and there were no weak or seemingly pointless storylines. 

The characterisation (you've probably guessed) also worked liked a dream. The personal lives of the two central detectives, Saga Noren (Sofia Helin) and Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia), were explored well alongside the main plot but it never became a drama about two dysfunctional cops as often happens when detectives are given complicated personal lives. Another interesting dimension was Noren being high functioning autistic (a good overview of which is in this Telegraph article). Although never overshadowing the case it provided an interesting dynamic to a lot of the on screen relationships. I also thought it was shown in a very nuanced manner without turning Noren into a caricature or victim. 

I also loved the way it was shot. I've noticed with a lot of Swedish cinema how muted the colours are and how sparse the soundtrack is and I've often found it a welcome contrast to the loud and bright techniques used in British and American films. The Bridge is especially bleak with not one single scene being shot in sunshine. But I like it. It's kind to my eyes and adds a sense of coldness that works in a crime drama. That's not to say The Bridge is overly po-faced or serious. It raised a smile several times. Noren and Rohde have some brilliant conversations that lighten the mood when needed and help make it, despite the darkness and complexity, surprisingly easy and enjoyable to watch.

In short, despite it being only the beginning of February, I feel fairly confident saying this is probably the best crime drama of 2014. 

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Christmas Telly; Doctor Who, Downton Abbey and Death Comes to Pemberley

Doctor Who

Like turkey, presents, Christmas trees and heavy drinking before midday being socially acceptable the Doctor Who Christmas special has become something of a tradition. Indeed this year, faced with a new flat, the catalyst for getting a TV and a TV licence was the unacceptability of missing said Christmas special. So, full of Christmas dinner, I settled down to watch it. And was disappointed.

I’m a fair-to-middling Whovian. I’ve seen every episode since Christopher Eccleston took control of the TARDIS, but not necessarily as they were aired and not always in the right order. There have been some fantastic ones and some ok-ish ones and some that I wish didn’t exist. But the Christmas ones are usually a pretty safe bet. It being Matt Smith’s last episode and our first proper glimpse of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor (aside from a teasing glimpse of his steely gaze in the 50^th anniversary episode) only seemed to add to a sense that it couldn’t really go wrong.

The biggest problem was probably that it didn’t have a plot. There were glimpses of plot, cheeky little suggestions of a story, but then they were dropped like a bit of left over turkey by a full family dog. The flimsy story line was that the Doctor finds himself stranded in a town called Christmas where you can’t lie. The exact nature of how it came to be that you couldn’t lie, or indeed any details of Christmas itself, were left out. The Doctor was stranded because someone was whispering ‘Doctor Who’ through time and the Timelords might be coming back but every other race was waiting for them. If the Doctor revealed himself there was the possibility of started another time war. There was potential there but nothing, literally nothing, was properly explored. There was no solid reason given for anything. Overseeing all this was a strangely named Church of the Papal Mainframe and a high priest who had the potential to be interesting but again was given no back story or character exploration. It felt like a string of half baked ideas held together by not very much at all.

Steven Moffat also once again demonstrated admirably that he cannot write decent female characters. The two main women (Clara and the high priest) just simpered over the Doctor, acting all lovelorn and shooting jealous glances at each other. The misogynistic streak in Moffat’s writing has already been gone into in great detail by others so I’ll leave you to peruse that at your leisure but I would have thought for a Christmas episode he would at least have made a bit of an effort.

There was also a clumsy attempt at an emotional ending akin to David Tennant’s final moments (which still makes me tear up) that had a child Amy running around the TARDIS and a brief return by Karen Gillan (who was given, rather graciously, a grand total of one line, and a pointless jealous look from Clara). It felt cheap and like a last ditch attempt to get an emotional reaction from an audience that had probably mostly fallen asleep. My Mum certainly had. Coupled with regeneration used as a weapon for no easily discernible reason even the finale failed miserably. Possibly because there was precisely zero dramatic tension even towards the end of the episode.

Then Capaldi finally showed up, yelled about his kidneys and made me smile for the first time in an hour.

Matt Smith was a decent Doctor following, in my view, an impossibly brilliant turn by David Tennant. I enjoyed how he played the role and had a great part in many a memorable episode. I felt he deserved a better final episode than this one. It was also a great pity after how fantastic The Day of the Doctor, the 50^th anniversary episode, was. I hope he’ll be remembered more for his performance in that. With regards to the future I think Capali will be an interesting contrast to Smith’s Doctor and I’m really looking forward to his stint. I just hope 2013’s Christmas episode gets canned so badly they finally give Moffat the boot and Capaldi gets some decent writers worthy of his talent as an actor.

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Downton Abbey

After the fiasco that was Doctor Who I needed some soothing, so Downton Abbey was the obvious route to take. I enjoy how little the series asks of itself. The story lines are mostly gentle, the witty one liners from Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess are endlessly entertaining, and it’s always fun to take bets on who will be killed off in the Christmas episode. Downton’s greatest asset is how comforting it is. My partner only needs to see that golden lab’s backside at the start of the credits to feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The plot was simple and easy to follow. Young niece Rose has reached womanhood and is presented to the King and Queen. While down in London they are privy to some dubious actions by the Prince of Wales and they must act quickly in order to avoid a scandal. Cue plottings of burglaries, poker games used as distractions and valets being asked to forge notes to butlers. It’s all quite ridiculous, but watchable and easy going. There was nothing really dramatic this time round, and it wasn’t really distinguishable from a regular series episode, which was a bit of a let down after the shockers at the end of the previous two Christmas specials.

There were still the old reliables though. Thomas is still conniving. Tom Branson still looks a bit lost. The Dowager and Mrs Crawley are still winding each other up despite how obviously they like each other, and Mrs Hughes and Mr Carson are still sharing tender moments that melt your heart like fondue. The only interruption in the lavender scented world is a passing comment about ‘brown shirted toughs’ in Munich. There’s something almost impressive about the ability to make Nazis sound quaint.

Downton is not a documentary, but there’s still a part of me that’s interested in how different life was only a hundred years ago. A life of debutantes and balls and complex hierarchies within the servants is fascinating and this is probably the root of a lot of the charm period dramas have for me. I especially enjoyed the little contrasts in American and European politeness which may have possibly even had a shred of historical accuracy about it. You know it’s not real, but it’s fun to imagine people living such different lives. This is not ground breaking telly, but there probably is nothing better on offer for Christmas Day evening.

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Death Comes to Pemberley

By the time Boxing Day rolled around I was ready for even more period drama. I have to admit that I’ve never gotten to the end of one of Jane Austen’s books (I get bogged down in the language) but I very much enjoyed that adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and I’m always up for a murder mystery so I thought I’d give this three part drama a go.

Set a few years after the end of Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley finds Elizabeth and Mr Darcy happily wed and living in the Darcy’s beautiful Derbyshire mansion. It’s the day before a great society ball and Elizabeth seems to be happily occupied preparing for it. That, however, wouldn’t make very interesting telly and the peace is soon shattered by a murder in Pemberley woods. The only suspect is Mr Whickham, the dastardly cad from Pride and Prejudice who is married to Elizabeth’s younger sister, Lydia.

The first episode set up the scene nicely both by reminding those familiar with the original story of the characters and relationships and building the tension around the murder. It’s also extremely well cast (Darcy is still dark and brooding, Elizabeth is still kind and unexpectedly funny). There are also some wonderfully Austen-esque witty moments that link it back neatly with the original novel. I know I can’t speak for the true Austen fans, but I don’t think there’s anything outrageous enough to cause offence in this sequel.

As well as keeping things in the Austen spirit the drama also manages to create the atmosphere of a good, solid murder mystery. There’s intricate little sub plots involving Darcy and Whickham’s childhood and scenes of eighteenth century crime investigation involving the brilliant Trevor Eve as local magistrate Hardcastle. The filmography was also spot on with moody, foggy shots of Pemberley woods and clues glimpsed from behind half closed doors. The addition of a ghost terrifying the servants also adds a delightful spot of gothic to proceedings. This is seriously classy stuff that I’m sure Austen would have thoroughly enjoyed.

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Raised by Wolves

The setting is a council house in Wolverhampton full of offspring, exhausted looking mothers and a truly formidable lawn. It probably wouldn’t be something I’d make a point of watching if it hadn’t been a pilot written by Caitlin Moran and her sister Caroline. I will confess a pretty serious crush on Ms Moran, and, having read both her autobiography and the collection of articles she brought out this year, I’ve always really enjoyed the way she writes about her childhood and her family. Finding out that she and her sister had written a comedy based on those experiences therefore got my attention immediately. So it’s probably fair to say I went into this with some pretty high hopes.

The story centres on a group of siblings (I never did get round to counting exactly how many), their free spirit mother and degenerate grandfather. The girls all seem to be named after notable female pop culture figures from the last fifty years (the ones I picked up were Germaine, Aretha and Yoko).  The kids are being home schooled so have relatively little chance to interact with wider society. This may explain their charming eccentricities, or it could be genetic. Their mother is a chain-smoking, idealist who wanted her children to grow up without the corrupting influences of ‘The Man’ (so they are home schooled) and the grandfather climbs through the window then takes the kids back to his house to retrieve his weed stash. It’s the sort of chaos that can easily be played for laughs and the sheer absurdity of the situations alone should raise a chortle.

Much of the pilot focussed on the relationship between oldest sister Germaine (probably based on Caitlin) and second oldest Aretha (probably based on Caroline). Germaine is a lovelorn teenager unable to keep her internal monologue to herself with wild Wuthering Heights hair and dreams of an impassioned life of love affairs and swooning. Aretha is more practical, scathingly misanthropic and really wants a tenner for a new history book. Aretha is probably the character I most related to, but I’ve met my share of Germaines.
 

However the other siblings and the mother felt a bit one dimensional. Sometimes comedies can get away with using people as talking props if they’re funny enough, but, to be brutally honest, this one wasn’t (sorry Caitlin). There were some genuinely funny moments and good one liners, but other jokes just felt contrived. I expected it to be side splitting, but it was only watchable.

The cast was also too large. Some of the siblings appeared to be there just to fill up space (including ones who had actual lines). I was never sure how many children there were. I think the writers were probably trying to give an accurate reflection of their childhood, but I couldn’t help feeling the script wouldn’t have suffered from just being Germaine spouting romantic nonsense which was then expertly punctured by Aretha for half an hour.

But I did enjoy it and if it gets made into a series I will certainly be back to see how the dysfunctional pseudo-Morans are getting along. There is a lot of room for character development here. Germaine and Aretha are pretty well put together and the have a wonderful sisterly relationship. You can tell they love each other, but that will not stop them throwing lawn mowers at each other or locking each other in spider infested garden sheds. I think most people with siblings close in age to them can relate to that.

Raised by Wolves on Channel 4.

Orphan Black

BBC Three seems to be a channel of extremes. They either show absolute dross or complete genius. This is a channel that can show in the same night Snog Marry Avoid and In The Flesh (which I fangirled all over when I still had just the one blog). The latest thing they’ve come up with to prove their good for more than Seth McFarlane cartoons is Orphan Black.

I wanted it to be good. The adverts made it look good and I liked the premise, so I really wanted it to be good. This is often a set up for a fall but that hasn’t been so in this case. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two episodes and I think this will be something I see through to the end and not get bored of part way through. It is, however, not completely what I expected. I thought it would be more stylised for one thing and more plot driven. But I kind of like what they’ve done with it.

The main character, Sarah (Tatiana Maslany), sees a woman who looks exactly like her kill herself and steals her identity to help herself get back on her feet. But that wouldn’t stretch to a full series so complications ensue. It turns out there are several women all identical to Sarah and they all have their own lives and problems to sort out. The role of Sarah carries the whole show. It is a very demanding one, but I think done well by Maslany. She certainly looks perfect for it. Even as she plays the different identities her facial expressions stay pretty constant (her shocked face is excellent). I don’t know if that was intentional but I like how it links the different ‘Sarahs’ together.

There’s an interesting background to Sarah, and it looks like the writers have done a good job with the other ‘Sarahs’ as well. You do genuinely believe that these women have their own lives and aren’t just plot devices. I also think the balance Sarah strikes between investigating why there’s seventeen of her and her own life is struck pretty much perfectly. Throughout the two episodes I’ve seen Sarah’s story remains interesting, as does Beth’s (the woman who kills herself at the start of episode one). But, despite these various threads running through the story it hasn’t felt crowded. The breadcrumbs are dropped at the right points to keep you interested in all the storylines.

Sarah’s the right kind of screw up as well. She has a troubled past and it’s neither a closely guarded secret or held up as the only interesting thing about her. I think she’d be a fantastic character had she never discovered she was part of a matching set. There’s also not even a hint of victim about her, which is a pitfall often fallen into when writing troubled characters (especially female ones). She also has a daughter that she’s lost custody of but things haven’t got too mushy with that subplot. I have a big soft spot for Sarah. I like her quiet steeliness and her eyelined eyes. I think I’ll always automatically like a punky looking complex woman. I’m going to start calling it Lisbeth Salander Syndrome.

It looks pretty good too. There’s a run down, urban goth aesthetic to a lot of the sets and costumes which I find very appealing. I thought it would go further with it and have a much more stylised feel, perhaps with all of the characters having ripped fishnet somewhere on their body, but it doesn’t. This wouldn’t feel so strange to me if it had a definite setting, but it doesn’t. The city is never named, even being omitted from written addresses. The accents are all over the place as well. There’s nothing anchoring the location. I’ve found it a little frustrating not being able to place the action, but the story is so compelling and has moved fast enough for me not to be too bothered by it. It makes it feel unreal, but they haven’t used the unreality for much. I think that if I was going to create something rootless I’d use the opportunity to go all out and take the gutter punk aesthetic as far as it can go.

But the stylistic nitpicking isn’t enough to take away from the story. The script’s good, the acting’s good and the plot is involving and watchable. A definite win for BBC Three.

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