Space, dinosaurs and gladiators
Feb. 8th, 2011 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllI haven't been up to a huge amount lately; judging by today's sun the time of hibernation may be ending, but there's been a lot more reading and DVDs than antics. Spot of furniture construction for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xandratheblue (sometimes I wonder if I may have overdone the John Steed-style 'pose as feckless incompetent' bit, people do get very surprised when I'm practical), comedy then pub on Sunday (Michael Legge especially good as the bewildered MC, Steve Hall from Klang talking more about his swimsuit area than I might have wished, but still excellent). I've watched a lot of films, but more on them later in the week, I think. Two series finished and one promising new show started, so let's keep this one televisual.
My hopes for BBC One's new space colonisation drama Outcasts were not high; I'd heard bad things about how the makers didn't like it being considered science fiction, and as a rule that just means someone is making very bad science fiction. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be the hardest SF I've seen on TV...possibly ever. And that's hard in both senses; the set-up is not that far off Firefly, but this is a lot less jaunty and swashbuckling. This is about the hard slog of the early days, the muttered references to how bad things were on Earth, the realisation that humanity is down to a few thousand people and even they can't live peacefully together. A good cast - Liam Cunningham, Hermione Norris, Keats from Ashes to Ashes and Apollo from BSG - but not all of them make it to the end of the episode. I like it when shows kill off major characters unexpectedly, it helps to maintain the sense of jeopardy.
Primeval used to be good at that too. This series, not so much, even though the protagonists have suddenly developed a quite uncanny ability to go on missions without adequate back-up, then drop their guns. Since ITV attempted to cancel their one good programme - for showing up everything else they produce, I assumed - it has got visibly cheaper, not in terms of the monster CGI (still great) but in terms of what seems a hurriedness to the writing, and a weird emptiness of the sets. They've saved a ton on extras, but ended up with something that feels a bit too much like Bugs, if anyone remembers that. But if nothing else, it's the only TV drama I've spotted which has any interest in demonstrating the evils of PFI.
But for really getting through the main cast, since Oz ended there has been nothing to equal Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I'm not surprised they're following it up with a prequel, because there really aren't many characters left to follow into the future except Spartacus himself, and Andy Whitfield is too ill to resume that role, poor bastard. And of course prequels have their own problems, because you know who's going to make it. So this may turn out to have been essentially a one-off - but what a one-off. Looking back, even in the earlier, sillier episodes the big theme was there, and that theme was the real trickledown effect. Not the happy, fluffy right-wing fantasy where we all get rich off the very rich's spending - the real version, where the moment's whim of someone higher up than you can up-end (or simply end) your whole life. Again and again, person A suffers simply because B has just had a row with C. And especially when B literally owns A, that can be fatal. Even when they don't, a catastrophic cascade can still result - but the indignities and worse, the difficulty of love or friendship, of being unfree are powerfully drawn. And where the corny old film of Spartacus used this haunting horror of slavery to praise the American Dream, to show how much better things are nowadays, the TV show is made in darker, wiser times. It knows that, unless there happen to be a couple of oligarchs watching, the audience are slaves too.
xandratheblue (sometimes I wonder if I may have overdone the John Steed-style 'pose as feckless incompetent' bit, people do get very surprised when I'm practical), comedy then pub on Sunday (Michael Legge especially good as the bewildered MC, Steve Hall from Klang talking more about his swimsuit area than I might have wished, but still excellent). I've watched a lot of films, but more on them later in the week, I think. Two series finished and one promising new show started, so let's keep this one televisual.My hopes for BBC One's new space colonisation drama Outcasts were not high; I'd heard bad things about how the makers didn't like it being considered science fiction, and as a rule that just means someone is making very bad science fiction. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be the hardest SF I've seen on TV...possibly ever. And that's hard in both senses; the set-up is not that far off Firefly, but this is a lot less jaunty and swashbuckling. This is about the hard slog of the early days, the muttered references to how bad things were on Earth, the realisation that humanity is down to a few thousand people and even they can't live peacefully together. A good cast - Liam Cunningham, Hermione Norris, Keats from Ashes to Ashes and Apollo from BSG - but not all of them make it to the end of the episode. I like it when shows kill off major characters unexpectedly, it helps to maintain the sense of jeopardy.
Primeval used to be good at that too. This series, not so much, even though the protagonists have suddenly developed a quite uncanny ability to go on missions without adequate back-up, then drop their guns. Since ITV attempted to cancel their one good programme - for showing up everything else they produce, I assumed - it has got visibly cheaper, not in terms of the monster CGI (still great) but in terms of what seems a hurriedness to the writing, and a weird emptiness of the sets. They've saved a ton on extras, but ended up with something that feels a bit too much like Bugs, if anyone remembers that. But if nothing else, it's the only TV drama I've spotted which has any interest in demonstrating the evils of PFI.
But for really getting through the main cast, since Oz ended there has been nothing to equal Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I'm not surprised they're following it up with a prequel, because there really aren't many characters left to follow into the future except Spartacus himself, and Andy Whitfield is too ill to resume that role, poor bastard. And of course prequels have their own problems, because you know who's going to make it. So this may turn out to have been essentially a one-off - but what a one-off. Looking back, even in the earlier, sillier episodes the big theme was there, and that theme was the real trickledown effect. Not the happy, fluffy right-wing fantasy where we all get rich off the very rich's spending - the real version, where the moment's whim of someone higher up than you can up-end (or simply end) your whole life. Again and again, person A suffers simply because B has just had a row with C. And especially when B literally owns A, that can be fatal. Even when they don't, a catastrophic cascade can still result - but the indignities and worse, the difficulty of love or friendship, of being unfree are powerfully drawn. And where the corny old film of Spartacus used this haunting horror of slavery to praise the American Dream, to show how much better things are nowadays, the TV show is made in darker, wiser times. It knows that, unless there happen to be a couple of oligarchs watching, the audience are slaves too.
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John Steed-style 'pose as feckless incompetent'
Date: 2011-02-08 11:26 am (UTC)Given that I don't have much else to comment on, I might as well tell you that I keep mis-reading "BSG" as referring to the "Baby-Sitters Group" (otherwise known as a Club, the BSC).
Re: John Steed-style 'pose as feckless incompetent'
Date: 2011-02-08 11:31 am (UTC)I definitely read an interview with Patrick Macnee about Steed where he was saying about things like insisting they drop the gun, and generally lightening the character up, after the first few shows (none of which I have ever seen). The idea being that Steed would come across as a complete fop and thus be underestimated by his enemies, on whom he could then spring his general heroic aceness.
Re: John Steed-style 'pose as feckless incompetent'
Date: 2011-02-08 11:36 am (UTC)Being 'foppish' != 'feckless incompetent' - being a heroic fop is a huge trope (there's even Raffles as the anti-hero example). Pssssh. I don't recall ANY Avengers villain (or at least, not in the Diana Rigg era) ever treating Steed with anything other than awed respect (part of the 'cordiale' of the coldwarish games, made explicit in that episode where they swap Mrs Peel for her Russian equivalent)! I <3 the Avengers. Maybe one day I'll watch an Honor Blackman episode (I've been meaning to, but not managed).
Re: John Steed-style 'pose as feckless incompetent'
Date: 2011-02-08 11:40 am (UTC)(As against eg Adam Adamant, who was just a straightforward hero with good shirts)
Re: John Steed-style 'pose as feckless incompetent'
Date: 2011-02-08 11:46 am (UTC)I was just thinking about Adam Adamant the other day - the boxset is mega cheap on Amazons and I am thinking of ordering it, just for the Blackpool episode alone. "The richest mile in England!"!
So clever but oh, so vulnerable
Date: 2011-02-08 11:50 am (UTC)Barry Sarll fitted my locks
Date: 2011-02-08 03:14 pm (UTC)This Spartacus sounds good, do you own it? If so, can I have a lend some time? (*remembers that she has borrowed a couple of books from you and not actually read either of them yet, and possibly shouldn't be asking for more loans*)
Re: Barry Sarll fitted my locks
Date: 2011-02-09 10:59 am (UTC)Re: Barry Sarll fitted my locks
Date: 2011-02-09 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-08 07:41 pm (UTC)(Though I am still wondering whether I should have perservered with it for longer.)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 11:00 am (UTC)