Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts

05 February 2023

Wednesday died on Saturday


Wednesday Addams fan illustration
example of fan art, artist unknown
© WallPapersDen.com

Lisa Loring, who played the original Wednesday Addams, died last weekend, the 28th of January. Since her 1964 series, Wednesday has been played by a number of actresses.

The Addams Family grew out of a series of 1938 cartoon panels and evolved ever since. Most recently, in the titular Wednesday, Jenna Ortega stars in the rôle in which she enters a private school where she plays detective to solve a murder. She’s good as the character and interacts well with her charming, scene-stealing werewolf roommate, Enid. Anything involving Tim Burton and Danny Elfman is bound to be interesting.

Fortunately, Wednesday’s parents barely appear on the screen, Part of the fun of the original series was the deep and abiding (and over-the-top) romance between Morticia and Gomez. Hardly so in the latest incarnation. The performances of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán fall colder and flatter than a collapsed gravestone. Reading between the pixels, the couple appeared ready to barf as they monotoned dry-rotted romance lines.

Yes, Jenna Ortega took two months of cello lessons to learn how to handle it. No, she does not play the popular excerpt in the film.

The series appears to nod at a few influences– Harry Potter, The Munsters, and The Exorcist, this last hinted at in a few strains of tubular bells. It’s on Netflix.

Wednesday Addams fan illustration
example of fan art, artist unknown
© WallPapersDen.com

That Other Wednesday

Thus far, I’ve spoken of official elements owned by MGM, Paramount, and the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, but clearly this recent release has been influenced by a lovely YouTube renegade, Adult Wednesday Addams starring Melissa Hunter. She crowd-funded it, seeking $5000 through IndieGoGo… and received $15,000, hardly a fetid pimple pop on the studio’s Uncle Fester.

And her skits are funny. Word spread about the little episodes. Adult Wednesday rights small wrongs. No injustice is too minute not to be taken seriously. Until one day…

A letter arrived from the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation: cease and desist. Thus landed a slap on the creative face.

On the one hand, Addams intellectual properties are owned by the foundation and studios. Further, they have the financial means to wear out almost any litigant: Those with the deepest pockets wins, and clearly Hunter doesn’t have deep pockets.

By some lights, Melissa and her little group appear on the side of the (dark) angels– the work is parody, clearly transformative, and appears in a smaller format. But fair use law remains exceedingly vague and only a judge could decide. She couldn’t afford to challenge the big guys on an iffy outcome.

But what an opportunity for the studios! Why not hire Melissa Hunter and her crew? Hit the ground running with an existing popular series with millions of views? Nah, that would be too sensible.

The big corporations issued take-down notices forbidding YouTube to publish Adult Wednesday Addams on her channel. Since then, episodes appear, disappear and reappear as stubborn fans post and repost.

Try these episodes while they’re still available. Tell me if you enjoyed the show.

Adult Wednesday Addams episodes
Season 1Season 2
S1E1 • The Apartment HuntS2E1 • Babysitting
S1E2 • Job InterviewS2E2 • Driver's Ed
S1E3 • Internet DateS2E3 • Wednesday v Catcallers
S1E4 • Dog WalkerS2E4 • The Haircut
S1E5 • One Night StandS2E5 • The Reality Star
S1E6 • Planned ParenthoodS2E6 • The Flea Market
____ • A Special MessageS2E7 • True Love Series Finale

18 September 2022

Woo-Woo!


Extraordinary Attorney Woo

I've fallen in love. She's Korean, smart, attractive, lovable. My previous Asian dalliance didn’t fare so well, but I’ll discuss that shortly.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo

The first ‘she’ is a television show available on Netflix, Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Wow to Woo. Characterization is fantastic. The settings give a limited peek into South Korean city life and village peace, but most interesting was a temple. The plots were consistently clever and well executed. And… this is the only time I include a food review with a telly review, but I wanted to try what he had… and she and that guy over there.

I’ve given to understand the Korean title of Extraordinary Attorney Woo leans closer to Strange Lawyer Woo. The present translation is better than the original. The Woo in question is a fresh-out-of-law-school attorney and she is extraordinary.

She’s also autistic, which makes tasks small and large difficult for her. The story line counters her autism with a dose of savant, statistically not typical but it works. She remembers everything she reads.

Although she graduated top of her class, she couldn’t find a job until her single father called in a favor, winning her an internship in the second largest law firm in Seoul. Her dad is a bit of a mystery, a man who also trained in law but chooses to run a luncheonette.

Employees at Woo’s firm are wary of her, but after initial doubts, her supervising attorney takes her under his wing, mitigating some of the office politics. And wow, their law office makes that Northern despot crackpot seem like an amateur. Colleagues refer to one of Woo's fellow interns as a ‘tactician’, which I gather imputes a sly and devious plotter, one determined to oust Woo from the firm.

Two other colleagues are of interest, one of them her romantic interest, the boy all the girls love chooses to hang with Woo.

The most fascinating amongst her associates is her former classmate, Choi Su-yeon. All through university, Su-yeon helped Woo navigate campus life just as she helps her integrate into the corporate workplace. And, just like Su-yeon constantly came off academic runner-up in the shadow of Woo’s first place, Su-yeon finds herself exasperated she’s repeating the same pattern in the professional world. And yet, Su-yeon can’t help herself. She’s kind, selfless, and fond of Woo at her most helpless and hapless. She’s a beautiful character portrait.

In case after case when all seems hopeless, Woo makes a mental connection and resolves the current court battle. She astonishes the legal world and comes to the attention of the city’s largest firm. Indeed, the two largest firms in Seoul are both run by the smoothest of women. They reminded me of a real-life supervisor at a large Central Florida theme park. Fellow cast members in her way never felt the sharpest of blades in their backs but wondered where the pool of blood came from.

Heartless Seoul

I’d previously watched the wildly popular Squid Game. Once the series ended, I stood under a long, hot shower, brushing my teeth and tongue to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Visually, it’s fascinating and I enjoyed the M.C. Escher quadriplex. But psychologically, it’s a sick ƒ. Give me Silence of the Lambs any day.

Frankly, I don’t think of Squid Game as a horror show although hints of horror break the surface from time to time. Perhaps its most interesting scene is a short ripoff of Eyes Wide Shut, that did it better and didn’t leave the audience wanting to scrub off their skin to get clean. And after the show should have ended, we had to endure an anticlimax as the tale petered out. It's a parable, see, like the Book of Job, which requires lots of slowwww explanation.

Without doubt, my distaste of perfidy factors into my opinion. Squid Game brings us 455 (actually more) examples of betrayal… and death. Rumors that Leader Kim Jong-un hung over his toilet bowl might be slightly exaggerated. But as I said, it is extremely popular and Leonardo DiCaprio will join the production for its second season. Let me guess– he might crack open the secret organization.

One opinion, of course. Your mileage will vary.

Heart in Seoul

I’ve talked about everyone except W우우 Young-W우우. Her name is a palindrome as she remarks at every introduction. She eats the same lunch every day, gimbap (seaweed sushi). She counts to three before skipping over a threshold. She converses almost exclusively about Cetaceans (whales, dolphins). She tends to wobble instead of walk. She’s terrified of revolving doors… and I have sympathy for her.

But we, like her colleague Su-yeon, see her beauty. She’s moral and ethical, which sometimes conflicts with the law. She’s vulnerable. She tries to fit in, and she wants her father to let her make her own mistakes. She worries she won’t be able to fall in love and please a husband. She’s bloody smart. And every so often dimples pop out of nowhere.

Producers waited a year to land the actress for the rôle and they chose well.

Watchers in Korea criticized the last two episodes of Season 1. (Yes, there will be a Season 2.) Her supervisor has cancer. When Woo visits him in the hospital, someone comments that the odds of survival are good. Woo corrects them, rattling off dismaying probabilities and percentages. Viewers were offended, saying, “How insensitive. My Uncle Ted got cancer and…”

That was part of the point, of course, that autistics often misread the room. Instead of watching Woo with social horror, they should have noticed her supervisor, smiling from his hospital bed. He understood she meant no harm and showed her concern by visiting.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo cast
At first blush, it might appear an overhanging vine, but look again. It’s Woo’s obsession.

I can’t emphasize enough how clever, kind, smart, smart and charming the program is. I’m noted for detesting SOS (soap opera shite) that so often appears in series as dying shows drag on. Woo profides a surfeit of personal drama, but it never crosses the line in jump-the-shark melodrama.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo. I give it 114 stars and six thumbs up.

03 July 2022

More Boxes, More Idiots


This column drafts in the wake of John’s article yesterday regarding favorite series on the Harlan Coben channel, aka Netflix. I love a great plot but what I tend to remember are characters. John, I, and others have mentioned Queen’s Gambit. It is one of the few shows that I give its rating a slight edge over the novel. It’s that good.

Elise Wassermann, Karl Roebuck
Elise Wassermann, Karl Roebuck

The Tunnel (and The Bridge and The Bridge)

Two series I recommend are related, The Tunnel (French) and The Bridge (Mexican). I've not yet seen the original Scandinavian version. The Bridge is good, but I especially liked The Tunnel. The heroine reminds me more than a little of a French friend. Elise (actress Clémence Poésy) is probably on the spectrum, as folks say, and she’s constantly surprised that people like her. The wrapup is a shocker.

Behind the scenes, producers added a touch of class. They presented every Chunnel (Eurotunnel) employée with DVDs of the series as thanks for their time and effort in advising and assisting the film crew in a highly secure site.

cast members of family
The family: Chema, Mariana Lazcano, César Lazcano, Alex, Sara, Rodolfo, Elisa

Who Killed Sara

I haven’t seen the new season, but this Mexican production is particularly well cast and well acted. The characters, particularly César Lazcano, the primary bad guy, are complex with diverse motivations. He wistfully mentions he wishes he had a son like his adversary.

It’s become de rigueur to insert gay characters in gratuitous spots and then draw attention to them. (“Hey, look who we included!”) Sara takes the time and effort to flesh out the Lazcano son Chema, a fully realized character from childhood crush to, well, adult crush. The viewer might not be gay, but he (or she) would have to be one cold-hearted bastard not to feel Chema’s heart break.

Fletcher Ice Pick Nix
Fletcher 'Ice Pick' Nix

Justified

SleuthSayers agree. This is Elmore Leonard’s modern old-fashioned Kentucky cowboy quick-draw Federal Marshal whereupon we happily suspend disbelief, including disbelief the series will reprise as Justified: City Primeval. You’ve probably seen Justified, but if not, it’s catching its breath over on Prime.

I kept rooting for the bad guy, Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), wanting him to find the right path. No matter what Crowder does, he’s shunted to the dark side. Both good guy Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and Crowder are brilliantly cast.

Another cleverly cast baddie appears in the first episode of season 3, Fletcher ‘Ice Pick’ Nix, assuming of course anyone still knows what an ice pick is. The kind of guy who brings a knife to a gunfight is chillingly portrayed by Desmond Harrington in an ingenious plot tactic.

It’s too easy when you’re the good looking lead, and I say that with all modesty. But one other wonderful character is Constable Bob (actor Patton Oswalt). Bob Sweeney looks like a small man with a trashbox car, but he’s huge on the inside. Unlike hero Givens, he’s not the fellow most guys would like to be; he’s the fellow most guys need.

Intimacy/Intimidad

Intimidad is a Spanish political mystery drama set in a city I so wish to visit, Bilbao. The title should translate more like Privacy than Intimacy, but it’s more about intimidation.

Two threads involve the illegal sharing of private sex videos. In one plot line, Bego deals with the suicide of her friend Ane, and in meeting Investigator Alicia, crosses paths with Malen, a smart and clever politician who has just been appointed Mayor pro term of Bilbao. Videos of Malen, who is married, surface. Her lover turns out to be the reckless son of a major businessman, killed in an auto accident.

The question arises: Who paid the lover to seduce Malen, and then beat and subsequently kill the lover?

Here we run into a problem where the producer believes in characterization at the expense of plot. We come to admire Investigator Alica and Bego (Begonia), and we ache for Ane. Malen is made of sterner stuff and the fallout from her public indiscretion affects her husband and child as much as the politician. As a bonus, the series presents a believable insight into politics.

But the dénouement presents a major problem. The designated bad guy previously had mere moments of screen time and the weakest of motives. Indeed, Inspector Alicia and others seem to apologize profusely, trying to explain away why this particular guy masterminded this dastardly plot.

As mystery readers and writers, we have expectations. Authors don’t pick a perpetrator out of thin air and appoint a bad guy, not without good reason, not without clues. And Intimidad had so many choices! Seriously.

Cast of Intimidad (6 women)
Cast of Intimidad: Ane, Bego, Malen, Leire, Alicia, Miren

Have you seen Intimacy/Intimadad? What say you?

Let us know. Thanks to John for initiating this train of thought and chain of events.

19 June 2022

The 7 Lives of Léa


7½

7½ months or more ago, Rob and I wrote about an unusual English manor mystery, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Much of the surrealism comes from what we’re not told. We’re given damned little in framing and a backstory.

Compared to the British title, The 7 Deaths… both Rob and I prefer the American variation, The 7½ Deaths. The novel left an impression– Four years after publication, I’m still yakking about it. But this isn’t about that.

The 7 Lives

When NetFlix presented a French miniseries, The 7 Lives of Léa, based on the novel, Les 7 vies de Léo Belami by Nataël Trapp, I couldn’t help comparing. Like 7½ Deaths, each day the protagonist in 7 Lives finds herself jumping from one body to another, trying to learn what is happening, trying to figure out who killed Ismael, a nearly forgotten boy thirty years earlier.

Think of it as a French episode of The Twilight Zone.

Raïka Hazanavicius
Raïka Hazanavicius as Léa

Conceptual Issues

Hard sci-fi proudly embraces the physics of its world, whether real-life or a well-defined fictional model, the science in science fiction. Time travel novels and films may or may not succeed in the redefined reality of their new world. Laws of physics disallow a traveller meeting a past or future version of himself. A traveller must be careful not to alter his ancestral line that might preclude his own birth… while sometimes trying to disrupt the lineage of an adversary.

The average time travel story earns perhaps a C. I’ll award Léa a B-/C+, reasonable for the tale in question. It doesn’t pretend to be more than it is.

The 7 Lives of Léa follows a recent pattern of recasting male leads as female. Some reimagining works better than others. Without having read the book, I felt comfortable with a heroine instead of a hero. And indeed, the story zeroes in on unsung heroism.

The multi-generation actors of 7 Lives seemed to have been cast while wearing blindfolds. Virtually no teenage character resembles its much older adult version, which made it trickier to track the plot.

Léa manages to squeak past a couple of incestuous make-out close calls. Perhaps the funnest part, so to speak, occurres when she lands in the body of Pye (Pierre-Yves), the town’s rich kid, who’s not only popular but a snobbish bully. Léa alters the timeline to make a clumsy fool of him (with the result of making him somewhat endearing), but hooks him up with Jennifer, the school’s picked-on homely girl. Time travel should be built for anti-bullying alone.

Although a suspected murder is involved, The 7 Lives of Léa isn’t truly crime fiction, but it is an enjoyable journey into an imagination Rod Serling would have been proud of.

15 May 2022

¿Quién mató a Sara?


John Floyd Bad Guy Award

Not every miniseries on Netflix is a Harlan Coben story. Astounding, yes, I know, even though I enjoy them sprinkled amongst other series.

My Netflix favorites tend toward foreign productions. European shows dominate, but occasional works slip in from South Korea, South Africa, Venezuela, and Mexico. And Mexico is where the murder mystery Who Killed Sara? is set.

Many of its actors appear in telenovelas, i.e, Hispanic soap operas, sexy soap operas. Cultural tip: Pretty much everything on Telemundo and Univision is sexy, good motivation to learn Spanish.

So, because a number of these actors are cast in daytime dramas, Who Killed Sara? was miscategorized as another telenovela and dismissed. Creator José Ignacio Valenzuela never expected the show might become a global sensation, and misjudging the series as a mere soap serial seemingly sealed its coffin, limiting its impact within Latin America.

Except word got out. People watched. And more people watched. And more. So many viewers, Netflix noticed. And funded a second season. And a third. At one point, it topped their popularity list. Who Killed Sara? had made it.

How Good Are the Bad Guys?

I’m convinced the success of a crime novel hinges upon how good– er, I mean how bad the bad guy is or how complex. The worst of the bad guys should either make your fictional life much more interesting or scare the bloomers off Buchenwald Oberaufseherin Ilse Koch… or both.

Think of any James Bond movie. The best are those with the baddest badass bad guys. The cars or the fancy ass gadgets from Q, might have drawn our curiosity, but remember the scary Colonel Klebb, Dr No, the metallic-toothed Jaws, and pretty much anyone from Golden Eye. Them’s scary!

(A major miscast in Tomorrow Never Dies was media mogul Elliott Carver– the world had yet to meet Rupert Murdoch, an Australian leftist hellbent on bringing the US and Britain to its knees… That’s one hypothesis.)

I previously promoted Hungarian actor Lukács Bicskey as one of the most interesting bad guys in the film Titled Day of Wrath / Game of Swords. Sadly, the movie’s star, American actor Christopher Lambert, sucked the life out of the show, guaranteeing a spot in Film Purgatory.

Who Killed Sara? poster

I present a new nominee for badass bad guys: Ginés García Millán playing César Lazcano, self-made multimillionaire businessman, patriarch of the Lazcano crime family. He’s a charming man who kicks the crap out of his son Chema for being gay and recreationally bangs the wife of his older son, Rodolfo. He and his henchmen are not above murder, including multiple attempts to kill their children’s betrayed friend, our hero Álex. And yet as much as César hates and fears the boy he betrayed, he also admires him. More than once, he is heard berating his kids, telling them he wished he had Álex as his son instead.

Other bad guy nominees might include the OddJob to  Lazcano’s Goldfinger is psychopathic sadist Sergio Hernández, played by Juan Carlos Remolina, César’s best friend and business partner. And Mariana Lazcano, portrayed by Claudia Ramírez, wifely manipulator and enabler. Thanks to her motherly pretense, her insidious nature takes longer to reveal. But César Lazcano…

The plot’s problem becomes not who killed teen Sara, but who didn’t have a motive to kill her? Sara, her brother Álex, and the three Lazcano children were close childhood friends, but Sara was extra ‘friendly’ with everyone. She pretty much jodido’d the entire cast except possibly her brother Álex… I think. Then someone sabotaged a parasail killing her.

To keep his family and their business at arm’s length, César and Mariana Lazcano persuaded the dead girl’s young brother Álex to shoulder the blame, promising at most weeks in jail, a transplant for his ailing mother, and a handsome reward him for his troubles. Álex and the Lazcano children were shocked when Álex was sentenced to eighteen years, and worse, reneged on the promises, including caring for his dying mother. Lazcano even attempted to kill Álex in prison.

Thus the series begins with Álex’s release from a tough Mexican prison. He’s angry, wants vengeance, and is determined to sort out who killed his darling sister, not knowing she had carnal relations with half of Ciudad de México, both Lacano parents and their son Rodolfo, Álex’s former best friend.

And then things change. Fluid situations melt and reform. Alliances shift. César Lazcano and Álex team up and attain a mutual respect, whereupon the second season wraps, waiting for season three, and we’re not much closer to figuring out who killed Sara.

Some of My Best Friends…

Actor Eugenio Siller plays the Lazcano’s middle child, José María ‘Chema’ Lazcano, César and Mariana's middle child, second best friend of Álex… and deeply in love with him, unrequited love. His father refuses to acknowledge Chemo is gay and beats him badly to demonstrate manly virtues of something or other.

Nothing goes right for poor Chema. Minor missteps and the simplest of errors results in magnified consequences. To my surprise, I found my heart breaking for him. His character has tragedy stamped all over him. Second only to the relationship between Lazcano daughter Elisa and Álex, I chewed my metaphorical nails over Chema. The actor and writers reached across the border, the cultural barrier, and the gay-straight continuum shaking up my normal affectionate tolerance similar to Álex’s. Nicely accomplished.

And Now We Wait

This project has been filmed through the pandemic. I can’t imagine what the crew had to go through to avoid infections in this midst of this killer coronavirus. For certain, they have created an innovative story with care worthy characters, at least through two seasons. I’m adding this to my list of pending new seasons. It’s darn well worth it.

Have you seen it?

Update: NetFlix says season 3 will be released on the 18th of the month. Yay!

13 November 2020

Mitchell and Webb versus Holmes and Watson


We've had some fun here with those great British sketch artists David Mitchell and Robert Webb.  Here they are shedding an unfamiliar light on two well-known detectives.


05 October 2020

A Touch of Frost


Inspector Frost with one
of many new sergeants
One of the downsides of advancing age is an inability to read as much as one once did. This is a nuisance for everyone, but especially for writers, for whom the written word is up there with food and drink. Lately of an evening, I have found myself looking at wavering lines of print and clicking on the TV to Britbox, a combined service of the BBC and ITV which was a Christmas present last year.

The service has an assortment of good programing, but, especially in this time of virus and isolation, I've been favoring Gardener's World and A Touch of Frost. The latter was a long running UK favorite, originally from Yorkshire TV, starring David Jason as Inspector William "Jack" Frost, a self-described street copper with a nose for crime and good-sized problems with bureaucrats and authority.

He's old fashioned and quick-tempered and not altogether loath to cut corners, characteristics that look less desirable in cops these days than they probably did back at its debut in '92. His saving grace, besides being an excellent, even obsessive, investigator, is his sympathetic knowledge of his community, including the many poor but decent folks who wind up in difficulties.

David Jason in A Touch of Frost
Inspector Frost, himself is often in trouble, especially with his ambitious and rather dim Superintendent Mullett. Out of the office, Frost's absorption in his cases drives any number of nice women out the door, even while his grumpy charm attracts new ones. As played by David Jason, this character proved durable and extremely popular.

And he had good scripts. These are formulaic, unsurprisingly, given that some 42 episodes were made, but well done, nonetheless. Most episodes had two cases running simultaneously, one involving a death, the other less serious. Although there was a solid cast of regulars, the Inspector was frequently paired with new sergeants and constables, some of whom seem to have been assigned with the express purpose of exasperating him, others for whom he comes to feel genuine affection.

Frost expects all of them to work hard, and there is a good deal of cooperation and delegating of duties except for the last twenty minutes of most episodes, when, despite his years of experience, Inspector Frost rushes off on a hunch of his own, confronts various bad guys and winds up in an obstacle laden chase or facing a gun or a serious fight.

Even at the start of the series, Jason, small and a bit plump, was getting up in years, so it is not too surprising that he finally retired from the role at 68, noting that a real detective would have been off the force eight years earlier. During his long run with A Touch of Frost, however, Jason managed to finesse the problem of his advancing years with the vigor of his performances and the robust physicality of his acting – catch the pop eyes and flushed face when he's angry or the sly twitch of a smile when he has outsmarted some crook.

Frost's nemesis,
Superintendent Mullett
He's good in quieter scenes, too, suggesting a genuine sympathy that counterbalances his brash personality and impulsiveness. This sense of balance is reflected in the scripts, too. They are clever without being obscure; the perpetrator's motivations are plausible, and at least some of the criminals are in morally complex situations.

There's enough surprise to keep the stories interesting, and enough familiarity in Frost's unending struggles to thwart Superintendent Mullett, to rescue the romance of the moment, or to finish his mostly rushed and unwholesome meals to make the show relaxing of an evening. This is definitely one of the better mystery imports.

08 April 2020

Prodigal Son


Here's a binge candidate I wasn't sure about, but after watching the pilot season, a couple of which I missed the first time around, I'm down with it. Miami Vice.

The show went on the air in 1984, but it didn't crack the Nielsen top thirty until the second season, which was arguably its most influential. After that, NBC began to screw around with its scheduling, and audience numbers fell off. The fifth-season finale drew 22 million viewers.

Watching it thirty-five years later is somewhat of a mixed bag. Certain aspects date badly. Not so much the fashions, as in the clothes, but the fashion of narrative tropes. (There is the matter of Marty Castillo - Edward James Olmos - wearing ties that are less than an inch wide, but that's very much in character.) More problematic is the predictability, that morally compromised good guys are unlikely to survive an episode, for example, or that any fleeting romantic interest is clearly doomed. And why are Trudy and Gina always going undercover as hookers, not even once in a while as, say, lawyers?  

On the other hand, once you re-acclimate to the rhythm and conventions of the series, you find yourself moving to some familiar dance steps. You forget that the color palette was a real departure, back then, the sun-bleached stuccoes and desaturated pastels during daylight, and the heavy, deep, silken darkness of night, streetlights a hot, retinal glare. The look is a character. That, and of course the soundtrack. A little Phil Collins goes a long way, but the use of music bridges as structural was transformative.

Granted, you're shooting as many as two dozen episodes a season, they're gonna be uneven. Some of them are, to be generous, no better than pot-boilers. And then, just when your patience is running low, they serve up an episode like "The Maze" (S1, Ep18), which demonstrates how strong the show can be, without its aggravations. The other thing this particular episode points up is that Philip Michael Thomas, who I always thought was the weakest link, is a lot better than you remember, or gave him credit for. "Evan" (S1, Ep22), also from the first season, has a showcase of a scene - as written and acted - between Tubbs and Crockett, that allows Don Johnson to take all the air out of the room with unexpected discipline: the guy's got serious chops.

The idea that Miami Vice was a game-changer is part of its mystique, and it was used to promote it at the time. Was it all that different? If you compare it to Hawaii Five-O or Mannix, or even Hill Street Blues, you'd have to say yes, because Miami Vice used a less linear narrative. It also moved the goalposts for Standards and Practices, for content, and what followed. It's hard to imagine Wiseguy getting past the network censors, if Miami Vice hadn't come first.

I don't want to stake too broad a claim. American commercial broadcast television has never been known for daring, and cable has changed the environment entirely. Not necessarily for the better. The primary instinct for the lowest common denominator, for audience share, is still dominant. But in a landscape that was often vapid and inauthentic, not to mention technically primitive (stuck following the restrictions of a three-camera set-up, like the soaps, establishing shot, close-up, reverse), the surface tension, the urgency, the angles and the edits, the information overload, gave the show an invigorating edge.

In retrospect, it's probably fair to say that we get the TV we deserve. There was in fact a Golden Age, with scripts by Rod Serling and Paddy Chayevsky, directors like John Frankenheimer and Arthur Penn, and a huge stable of actors. But let's be honest, plenty of that live drama was crap. There was at the time, though, a kind of free-for-all, an open market for programing. Locals were by and large network affiliates, and they had to provide a lot of their own content.  Then the marketing challenge changed, and the Big Three dominated, and predictability and stagnation set in. I'd guess it lasted from the late 1950's to the middle of the 1970's, but that's also when PBS got legs. As the market fragmented, with UHF and then cable, the audience became more directly engaged. When there was no selection, and only three choices, ratings depended on audience fatigue, or indifference. The yardstick for the broadcast was least offensive - you didn't have to like what you were watching, but you liked whatever else was on less. It made for homogenized material. As a sort of object lesson, a show like Miami Vice could be seen as emblematic. It came along when we needed it.



22 January 2020

Once Upon a Time


This is a quixotic sorta thing, but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood got me thinking about Who It Might Really Be. Granted, it's a counter-factual narrative, and part of its weirdness is how and where the real world overlaps the fantasy. Sharon going into the matinee and watching herself in The Wrecking Crew is an enormously charming conceit. Her murderers going to the wrong house and finding Brad Pitt stoned out of his mind is a lot more disturbing, because in real life the Manson crew did actually go to the wrong house, and Terry Melcher wasn't home.

Anyway, some of you might have noticed that Edd Byrnes died last week. He was obviously most famous for 77 Sunset Strip and Kookie. He was also from a generation of actors who caught the last gasp of the studio system. He was under contract to Warners, along with Ty Hardin, and Peter Brown, and Troy Donahue. Doug McClure signed with Universal, as did James Farentino and Guy Stockwell. They did a lot of series TV with their respective stablemates, for their specific studios, and they got feature work, but again, they were locked into longtime studio commitments.



The part that Leo gets in the pilot for Lancer was in fact played by Joe Don Baker, who was in his mid-thirties at the time. Jim Stacy and Wayne Maunder, series regulars, were in that same age band. It's one of those simply odd things, that one of these guys breaks out. Steve McQueen, for instance, after Wanted: Dead or Alive, the model for Rick Dalton's show. Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood came out of the same Petri dish, but bear in mind that for every one of them there was a Vince Edwards or a George Maharis.




Of this group of actors, what you might call male ingenues - like Robert Wagner or Jeffrey Hunter a couple of years earlier - I've always thought Guy Stockwell was the most poignant. He got some really good breaks. So did Doug McClure, for that matter, but Guy was an actor with more range. (They worked together twice, in Beau Geste and The King's Pirate, both of them dogs.) Brad Pitt has himself remarked that there are a lot of pretty boys out there, and a lot of pretty boys who can act, but it's still purely a crap shoot. Guy did a bunch of guest shots, and then he was signed for Adventures in Paradise. A year after that, he joined Richard Boone's repertory company for Boone's anthology show, which unhappily only ran one season. Then we get The War Lord, with Boone and Chuck Heston (and James Farentino), Blindfold and Tobruk,  with Rock Hudson, and Banning, with Wagner, and Farentino again, and Gene Hackman - right before Buck Barrow. Not too shabby a playlist.




He doesn't catch fire. It doesn't help that he gets cast in some real stinkers, but he goes back to guest work in television, much like Rick Dalton. Lancer (you guessed it), Bonanza, The VirginianThe F.B.I. (more cross-collateral with Once Upon a Time), and like as not, playing a charming psychopath. As he gets older, character parts.



It isn't that his career went in the tubes. That's not what happened. It's that he couldn't or didn't leverage his early advantage. Maybe he was disappointed in the parts he was offered. Maybe he didn't have enough animal magnetism. He reinvested himself in theater, and was a highly-praised acting teacher. It's not like he lost his chops. It's one of those unfathomables. He should of been a contender, along the lines of Bob Culp or Brian Keith.



All the same, he's got a legacy, whether or not he's the real-life model for Rick Dalton or not. That's just a conceit on my part. Every time I watch The War Lord, I think, Jeez, this guy is good. And this is a picture, basically, where everybody overacts. On the other hand, it seems so physically authentic. The bare stone tower, the winding stairs. When do any of these people bathe? you can only wonder to yourself.

So there it is. My little paean to Guy Stockwell, probably over-thinking on my part, conjured up by Tarentino.

13 July 2019

A Morning in Conan Doyle Land


I woke up on Saturday morning not feeling well (this was a month ago, I'm all better). I was resting on the sofa and doing the swipe through Netflix's recently added and currently trending lists, looking for something new and interesting to amuse, entertain, maybe even enlighten. Finding nothing that "grabbed" me, I moved over to Amazon Prime. Flicking down through the rows, I passed the children's section, and a title in that row reached out and took hold.

A Study in Scarlet. 

An animated telling of a Sherlock Holmes tale? For kids!? Seriously?!? I selected the program and let it start playing, the cynic in me chortling, this will be good for a laugh. I went in with zero expectations; in fact, minus expectations. I expected Dr. Watson to be played by Scooby Doo.


The opening shot is a moonlit set of rooftops; a dark and stormy night in Victorian London. A police constable is on the street, patrolling with a lamp. He winds up on the Brixton Road. He's joined by another bobby. There's a light on in an empty house. They enter. In a dilapidated drawing room, there's a dead body of an elderly gentleman on the floor.

Two and a half minutes in, and I'm thinking, this ain't too bad. The animation isn't going to win any awards, but the storytelling seems to be faithful to the source, and it has mood and atmosphere.
The opening credits started, and I was about to turn the thing off, when the following credit appeared: "With Peter O'Toole as Sherlock Holmes." That got my undivided attention. Naturally, I let the program keep playing. I could happily listen to Peter O'Toole read aloud from the phone directory, or recite the Periodic Table (have I mentioned My Favorite Year is one of my favorite movies?). I had no idea he had ever played Holmes. 

For the next 50 minutes, I was away (once again, happily) in Conan Doyle land. The program did indeed prove to be a reasonably faithful telling of the story, Watson was not played by an exuberant Great Dane, and nothing in the story's telling was "watered down" or "rendered appropriate" in any way for children; my biggest fear while watching.

And it's funny, when you think about it: an adult tale of murder, forced marriage (i.e., rape), revenge, and justice filed away for children's viewing pleasure alongside the likes of Anne of Green Gables, the Cat in the Hat, and Spongebob. I presume this was because it was animated. There persists (in some minds) that quaint notion that if something is animated, it must be for kids, that all animations are simply "cartoons" and should be dropped into the "Kids and family TV" box. (I gleefully await the addition of Fritz the Cat.) Had the exact same script of A Study in Scarlet been filmed as a live action drama, then it would have gone straight into the adult drama box. No questions asked.

But I'm glad it did, one way or another, wind up in front of kids. They seem to get so much rubbish in their TV diet. Let them find this quiet little doorway into the world of grownup mystery fiction.

Peter O'Toole did four Holmes animated stories. They were all made in 1983, they're all 50 minutes long (with the exception of Baskerville, 70 minutes), and they're all on Amazon Prime (here in NZ, at least).
  • A Study in Scarlet 
  • The Baskerville Curse 
  • The Sign of Four
  • Valley of Fear
I've watched all of them. And as I said, there's nothing overtly special about the animation. The specialness of the telling lies in the stories themselves, and in this instance, the actor playing Sherlock Holmes (not that the films' imagery bears any resemblance to the man). If it's a wet Saturday morning, and you're unwell, I can recommend this medication.






www.StephenRoss.net

12 January 2019

Stephen's TV Chocolate Box 2018


It's January, so it's a good time for me to reflect on the things I watched last year on television (TV shows, movies). And just a reminder, the best chocolate in the box for 2017 was Breaking Bad (which I finally got around to bingeing, after everyone else on the planet). Needless to say, there were a few Bertie Bott's farm-dirt flavored chocolates in 2018's box, and they were duly spat out. So, on to the good ones:

Dark Bittersweet 

I watched a handful more episodes of Black Mirror and its self-contained tales of technological terror, and it's still as great as ever. If you don't know this show, it's like the Twilight Zone, if Rod Serling had been British, on serious narcotics, and obsessed with messing with your head. Best episode in 2018: "Metalhead" — because it was taunt and tight, gave no ducks, and was in black and white (because at the end of the world there will be no color left).


Almendra de chocolate 

El Ministerio del Tiemo (The Ministry of Time). I like history, and I like science fiction. This show (3 series, 34 episodes) came out of Spain and put the two together. The premise of the show is that the Spanish government has a top secret division that has the facility to travel back in time; and their job is to put things right when historical events go astray, e.g., Salvador Dali painting a cell phone, the Spanish Armada actually defeating the English, Alfred Hitchcock getting kidnapped at the premiere of Vertigo. The show has a lot of humor; there's even a reference to the US having its own facility to travel in time: The Americans call it a "Time Tunnel." (Time Tunnel was one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid.)





Nougat Nutty 

The Lobster. I like weird movies. And they don't come much bat-shit weirder than this one. If I told you the premise of this movie, you'd think I was nuts. Watching it, at times, reminded me of the first time I saw David Lynch's Eraserhead. Stars Colin Farrell & Rachel Weisz. Filmed in Ireland.





Salted White Chocolate

The Terror (1 season, 10 episodes). History mixes well with many genres, and here it's thrown into the icebox of the Arctic Circle along with horror. In the mid 19th Century, two ships, one of them called The Terror, set out from England to find (and chart) the Northwest Passage in the icy waters between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The two ships, and their crews, were never seen again. All completely true. This show (based on a doorstop-sized novel) speculates (fictionally) on what happened to them. And it isn't pretty. I read a review someplace of this show that described it as "beautiful and horrific." Yep. This was without doubt the best thing I watched last year. Great cast, good script, fantastic design, music, and photography. And very scary... Terror? Oh, yeah.

Peppermint Crème

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (first season) also had some nice writing, a great cast, and great art design (60s retro cool). It's about witches, if you didn't know. A friend of mine described it as Harry Potter dipped in acid and silly putty. If you're of the Christian persuasion (and don't have a robust sense of humor), this show might not be for you.




Other tasty treats in 2018: Stranger Things (season 2), Death in Paradise (first 5 seasons), Tientsin Mystic (season 1), Frankenstein Chronicles (season 2), The Detectorists (seasons 1 & 2), Atlanta (season 1), The Bletchley Circle (seasons 1 & 2).

So, what were your favorite TV treats in 2018?

And happy watching in 2019! I hear there's a TV adaption of Catch-22 on the horizon (a favorite book of mine from my youth).


www.StephenRoss.net

02 January 2019

Spy TV


I recently had an experience that carried me off on a cheerful wave of nostalgia.  Our current TV package provides access to an obscure channel called TubiTV.  And on it I was able to make my reacquaintance with The Sandbaggers, a spy series from Britain's ITV.  I had watched it on PBS back around 1980 when it premiered.  I was surprised at how much I remembered and how well it held up.  (It also seems to be available on Youtube.)

The series revolves around the Secret Intelligence Service (never called MI6 in the show), and it's Director of Operations, Neil Burnside (played by Roy Marsden, before he became better known as Adam Dalgleish).  Burnside is in charge of all the British agents in foreign countries around the world, but his first love is the Special Operations Section, known as the Sandbaggers.  These are the smash-and-grab boys, the ones who get sent to perform an extraction or an assassination (or prevent one). Please don't compare them to James Bond or Burnside will slit your throat.  He hates Ian Fleming's famous creation.

And as for slitting your throat, he is himself a former Sandbagger, and as ruthless as they come.  And yes, this crowd is pretty ruthless.  In the 20 episodes you will see virtually all the characters lying to each other, and often doublecrossing their superiors and allies.  Burnside would defend himself by saying he is true to the service and to his ultimate goal: destroying the KGB.  And he is willing to destroy his own career to do it.

An example of Burnside's charming personality.  In one episode he is in a restaurant and someone informs him: "I just saw your ex-wife out on the street."

"Best place for her."  Like I said, charming.

One thing I love about the show is the title.  I like to imagine it made John Le Carre, the master of fictional spy jargon, terribly jealous.  His name for the same type of group was the Scalphunters, but Sandbaggers is so much better.  "To sandbag" means "to launch a sneak attack" but it also means "to build emergency defenses."  Clever, eh?

The show had its flaws, of course.  The SIS is seen to be strangled with personnel shortages but it felt like that had more to do with TV budgets than anything else.  The inside sets look like a high school drama club production.  So many of the international crises take place in Malta that one can only assume ITV had a deal with the local tourist board.  And the last episode of the show only makes sense if you forgot everything that happened four episodes earlier.

None the less, it has been called one of the best spy shows of all time, and I'm not arguing.

The show was created, and most episodes were written, by Ian MacKintosh, a former naval officer.  Because of the series' sense of realism there was speculation that he had been involved in the spy world, but he played coy about it.  The series ends with a (hell of a) cliffhanger, because MacKintosh died unexpectedly and the network decided no one else could do it justice.

But I oversimplified when I said MacKintosh died.  In reality he and his girlfriend disappeared in a small airplane over the Pacific Ocean after radioing for help. The plane disappeared in a small area where neither U.S. nor Soviet radar reached.

I wonder what Burnside would make of that.

Oh, the show also has a great musical theme (just about the only music ever used in the program). Listen all the way to the last note.



But wait, there's more!  In the midst of my Sandbaggery I discovered a very different spy show which is, curiously, both older and newer than The Sandbaggers.  Available on Netflix A Very Secret Service (Au Service de la France) was created in 2015, but is set in 1960. And now let's give Grandpa a moment to marvel here over the fact that The Sandbaggers is set closer in time to 1960 than to 2015.

The series (in French, with subtitles) tells the story of Andre Merlaux, a naive young man who is forcibly recruited into the French Secret Service, which promptly makes it clear that they don't much want him.   It is a rather peculiar agency where doing your job is much less important than turning in proper receipts and wearing suits from the correct tailors.

On his first day on the job Merlaux gets in trouble for committing the incredible faux pas - I know you will be stunned by this blunder -- of answering the ringing phone on his desk. Quel imbécile!

This show is wildly and wickedly funny.  In one episode Merlaux assumes that a suspect cannot be a terrorist because she is a woman  His tutor firmly instructs him: "In cases of terrorism women must be considered humans!"

In another episode the French capture a German on his way from Argentina and suspect he is a Nazi. Fortunately they have a scientific survey which allows them to detect such barbarians.  (Sample question: "Adolf Hitler: pleasant or unpleasant?")

The best spy in the bunch is Clayborn, who will never get promoted because she is a woman.  All her operations are described as "courtesy missions," which means they involve getting naked with someone, but don't think that means they don't also involve theft, blackmail, and murder.

At one point Merlaux pours out all his troubles to Clayborn. She is, of course, sympathetic: "You feel out of place.  I understand.  This is the women's bathroom."

Neil Burnside would not be amused, but I was.


22 December 2018

Why I could never be a Modern Fiction Novel Heroine
(back to humour for Bad Girl. Tis the season for frivolity, after all)



Let’s call her Tiffany.  Nah, too twee.  How about Jen.  Meet our fiction heroine, Jen.  She’s a modern girl. Has her own condo. Drives a car. Lives in the city. Has a meaningful job.  All in all, a typical    
modern heroine of a fiction novel.

Sounds reasonable, but I couldn’t be her.  I’m all for ‘suspension of disbelief’ in fantasy, but my world requires more human elements.  To wit:

THINGS THAT BUG ME ABOUT MODERN FICTIONAL HEROINES

1.  They look great all the time.
By this I mean: she gets up in the morning, perfect coiffed.  (Not quaffed. Except maybe in my loopy Goddaughter books.)  She dons clothes for her work day.  Maybe goes for a jog.  And spends absolutely no time in front of the mirror swabbing on makeup or doing her hair.  Did you ever notice fiction novel heroines look great in the morning without doing anything?  They may have a shit-load of angst about their personal lives, but apparently, they have Barbie doll hair.

As of immediately, name of heroine is changed to Barbie.

2.  They never eat.
Oh, they got out to dinner a lot.  You may even hear them order food.  But when it comes, do they ever eat it?  No! Barbie is far too busy arguing with her dinner companion, and then getting upset.

So many books, so many meals where our intrepid plucky heroine says, “oh my, I’m so upset, I couldn’t eat a thing.”

What is it with these feeble women who can’t eat?  Who the hell are they?  What do they exist on? 
When I’m upset, I eat, dammit.  Gotta fuel up for the famine that’s going to come sometime in the next 400 years.

If I hear another TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine say she’s too upset to eat, I’m going to shove the virtual dinner in her vapid virtual face and watch her choke to death.  Oh.  But then someone would have to rescue her.

EAT THE DAMN MEAL.

3.  They never go to the bathroom.
Twenty-four hours a day, we’re with this dame.  Does she ever go to the loo?  I mean, for other than a quick swipe of lipstick and a gabfest with friends?

Do none of these women have periods?
Do they not have to offload some by-products?  EVER?

Oh right.  Barbie is always too upset to eat a thing.  Therefore, nothing to offload. What was I thinking?


4.  They run into the haunted house.

“Oh, a haunted house!” says our plucky heroine. (Note use of the word ‘plucky’ to demonstrate she’s not a chicken <sic>)  “I’ll just pop in there and see what the fuss is all about, shall I?”
WHOMP
(Plucky heroines taste good with ketchup, in my parodies.)

Listen up, modern day heroines! Do NOT be so stupid as to walk into an abandoned place where you know someone was murdered, or even stupider, confront the murderer, all by your little selves! 

Let it be known: when I am pretty sure I know who the killer is, I do NOT confront him all on my own in an isolated location.  Instead, I pretty much run like hell in the opposite direction.  ‘Cause experience has taught me (apparently, I do this a lot) that if someone has killed once, they won’t hesitate to bop my bean.  Even Barbie with half a brain can figure out it ain’t a smart move. 

Modern day heroines, rise up! Rebel against these tired tropes!  Fight back against the lazy mucks who make you appear as dumb as dough.

GO ON STRIKE AGAINST YOUR AUTHORS!  Or alternatively, strike your authors.
I’ll leave now.

Author disclosure:  Just so you know, Gina Gallo of The Goddaughter series loves her food.  You’ll see her eat it.  She sneaks off to the bathroom (offstage, so don’t freak.)  She looks like shit in the morning. Just like me.  Even Rowena of my fantasy books goes to the outhouse and enjoys her meals.  (Not at the same time.)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!