PETRONA

The Silence: BBC TV drama

Extraordinary news - I've watched a TV programme over the past two or three evenings, due to an unusual combination of no football, no Prof Petrona, daughters busy doing other things, and not being impressed enough by current reading for it to keep me awake for a whole evening.

So, based on some good reviews in the paper during the week and with some technical assistance with the iPlayer (a new experience on me), I watched the BBC's four-part series The Silence, and rather enjoyed it - the first two episodes anyway, before it slipped into predictability. The plot is that the 18-year- old, deaf  Amelia witnesses a murder while walking her uncle's dog in the park. The uncle is a senior detective in the Bristol police, Jim Edwards. Amelia is staying with Jim and his family while she undergoes therapy for her recent cochlear implant. Before she witnesses the murder, she sees the victim, a policewoman, having sex with a boxer at a local gym. She is so terrified by her experience that she does not tell anyone. Jim is a workaholic and brings CCTV tapes home of another investigation he's working on. Because Ameila is deaf she's jolly good at lip reading, so looking over Jim's shoulder while he's watching the tapes, she speaks out loud what the people are mouthing. This makes Jim realise that the case is linked to the murder in the park. His dilemma is that he suspects police corruption, so does not want to reveal to his colleagues that his niece is a witness as this would put her in danger, or that she has seen the tapes as this would compromise that investigation as well.

The positive aspects of this series are overwhelmingly the acting of Douglas Henshall, who plays Jim, and Genevieve Barr, the deaf woman who plays Amelia. Amelia's psychological relationship with her condition, together with her fraught relationship with her mother, are excellently portrayed, as is the whole "teenage condition". 

The downsides are the usual "beautifully designed TV lifestyles" of everyone and the cliched character of Jim's wife, overplayed by Dervla Kirwan in a way that reminded me of a marshmallow; the number of coincidences which if you stop to think about it is very silly; the length - two episodes would have been far better than four; the police complaints woman who looks like all those other suited, lipsticked-to-death TV detectives who surely bear zero relationship to reality; and the ending which threw in as many new (and blindingly obvious) ideas as it could in the last 15 minutes and then didn't do anything with any of them. (Oh, and while I am about it, the baddies were exceptionally stupid in the end, having been marginally cleverer than the impulsive and short-tempered Jim for the previous 3.75 episodes, but pretty comprehensively bettered by the cooler, more thoughtful Amelia.) 

Well, that seems like quite a lot of downsides. Even so, I did enjoy it: perhaps because the first two episodes were far superior to the last two, I was sufficiently mellow to forgive all the latters' laziness and cliche. In sum, a reasonable enough way to pass the time if you don't have anything better to do, but my TV-watching experiment has not convinced me that I'm missing anything much by not doing it and reading books instead.

The Silence at the BBC website, with various links including to the iPlayer version, good for a few more days on the TV and for about 3 weeks on your computer, I believe, if you are in the UK.

About The Silence at Douglas Henshall's website, including lists of cast, crew, episode guides, etc.

Reviews of The Silence at The Guardian blog (positive, mainly about deafness), HeraldScotland (negative), The Telegraph (mixed), The Arts Desk (mainly positive).

Spiral is back for a third series later this year

Ever since the online version of The Times has been converted to paid-for, the print edition keeps featuring interesting articles to which I'd quite like to link. The new subscription-only website does not let you even create a link to an article without registering, which I am not going to spend time doing just to find out whether or not linking is even possible (some publications allow you to read an abstract free, others don't even do that).

So, I write here about an article on page 47 of the print edition on Wednesday (14 July) all about Engrenages (Spiral, though a literal translation is "Gears"), the French TV series which is jolly good   indeed. Seasons 1 and 2 are out on DVD in subtitled versions, and series 3 will be broadcast in the UK "later this year". I was first alerted to the existence of this series by Euro Crime, and have never looked back since. I do, however, recommend either watching these filmic series on DVD or recording the episodes and watching them more frequently than once a week, to keep up with the convoluted plots.

The Times feature is by Sarah Hay, and describes her experience watching part of the new series being filmed. She calls it "France's answer to The Wire" for its "complexity of its characters, realistic depiction of Parisian life and biting portrayal of the French judicial system". If the depiction of Parisian life is truly "realistic" then the city would never attract any tourists - this is the Paris of Dominique Manotti, not the Paris of Gene Kelly or Coco Chanel. I should also add in all fairness that the three main characters: the policewoman, her main antagonist and the prosecutor, are all extremely good-looking. 

From The Times piece: "In Engrenages, viewers follow Captain Berthaud, a workaholic cop played by Caroline Proust, as she tumbles between the gritty underlay of Parisian life and the Kafka-eque corridors of justice, where ambition and intrigue thrive. Standing between Berthaud's team and resolving their cases are Pierre Clement, the handsome, idealistic deputy prosecutor; Judge Francois Roban, whose doddery  appearance hides a sharp instinct for unveiling conspiracy; and the deliciously unscrupulous lawyer Karlsson. In series three the web of storylines tightens until a nail-biting denouement, hinting at corruption that reaches to the very top." (Sounds just like series 1 and series 2, then.)

Among other revelations in the article, we learn that red-headed Audrey Fleurot, who plays the unsavoury Karlsson, has a role in Woody Allen's next movie (currently shooting in Paris), and that a real-life lawyer recently gave a press statement on behalf of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, using the phrase "C'etait un engrenage") - a title which Kerviel used for his book. 

Like The Wire, the criminal plot lines are created by an experienced police superintendent, who says that all the situations in the TV series are based on real cases. Viewers who can't speak French and rely on the subtitles are often in the same boat as native French speakers, because the dialogue is full of argot and police insider-slang. The pace, the secondary characters, everybody is guilty and everyone is losing the plot, the sidekicks and, of course, the main characters - these, according to The Times, are the factors that make this series such a delight and why I am so much looking forward to series 3. (And the good-looking actors, of course!)

Official series website.

Engrenages at Facebook

Euro Crime posts about Engrenages.

Detectives in novels and on screen

I am sure many other people will have read the article in today's (13 October) Times, in which P. D. James and Ruth Rendell (who also writes under the name of Barbara Vine) discuss their lack of regard for the TV adaptations of their novels. They weren't too keen on their respective leading detectives - Baroness James says that Dalgliesh does not have a moustache (you never see a senior detective with one, according to her), and Barnoness Rendell that Wexford was ugly (she thinks George Baker too handsome). I did see a few of these adaptations years ago, and I suppose I must agree. I invariably prefer books to TV or film adaptations, so have just learnt to see them as completely different entities.

If I were an author of a series, I'd find it hard to continue once actors were firmly established as my characters. As a reader, it is bad enough - can one read a Henning Mankell now without visualising Ken Branagh as Wallander? Whatever one may think of Ken Branagh in that part, he is not the books' Wallander. Everyone liked John Thaw as Morse - I was already a fan of Colin Dexter's books long before the TV series was dreamed up - but even though I did not see all that many of them, it is impossible to detach Morse from John Thaw in my mind.

The best part of the Times article, for me, is this: "Baroness James said that she had given up trying to make sense of changes made to her stories when they were adapted for television. “I don’t read a script of adaptations because I know I’m not going to like it. They do things sometimes that are nonsensical.”
Dame Ruth said that her stories were always augmented with irrelevant action sequences. “They put a car chase in all of mine. There’s no reason for a car chase but everyone likes one. In the end you don’t care.” "

Absolutely. Fewer car chases and more plot, please (ideally, a plot that actually makes sense). I doubt this will ever happen. But it is why I tend not to watch detective programmes (or anything else) on TV -  because it is always obvious what is going to happen after the first few minutes. One exception to this rule was Cracker, which started out being about a truly unpleasant person (Cracker, played by Robbie Coltraine) and some gritty police procedural, headed up by Christopher Ecclestone. He (Ecclestone) soon jumped ship, and before you knew it, Cracker had morphed into a "loveable old rogue" and I switched off. David Jason as Frost was (is?) similar: the character on TV had very little connection with the scurrilous, politically incorrect man in the books - superficially wisecracking with very off-colour humour, bursting with obsessive energy, but a very sad, lonely person at some level. Again, I switched off after a few episodes. Not because I'm a purist about differences between page and screen, but because the screen versions were boring in their predictability and sameness to each other (both within and across series).

Last words to the Baronesses: "Dame Ruth, who has written 21 Wexford books, said that she had no creative control over television adaptations but that they were not important to her. “I think that people expect us to be far more concerned with our television productions than we are. You can say that television makes you famous and sells your books but you don’t care very much about it.” "

TV series, armed birds, unpresents, writing and not blogging

A few items from the web that caught my eye, in case you missed them.

A hit in the US, the psychotherapy drama has quality acting from Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Wiest and a great script. So why are UK networks afraid to commit to the couch? Clare Birchall examines the reasons why The Treatment won't be appearing in UK TV screens on The Guardian TV and Radio blog. Pity, as it sounds a good show. Maybe it will eventually be available on DVD. There's a comment to the post that made me laugh, by someone who could try reading a book or getting out more: "As usual, UK networks underestimate the audience's desire for intelligent, quality drama. We watch stuff like Holby City or Casualty because that's mostly what's on in the evening, but it doesn't mean we love it."

If you like Improbable Research, you'll know what to expect if you check out these armed bird photos (not babes with guns). I'm nost sure if this is more silliness or welcome sanity: Scott Adams's negative Christmas (or birthday): "rather than giving gifts, you can force a family member or friend to discard one item that he or she already owns. The selected item might be a hideous shirt that you consider an abomination, or that pair of bedroom slippers that are an insult to all footwear. The idea is that the unrecipient should be better off without the item you ungift."

As is well-known, more than 90 per cent of blogs last for less than three months, many of them only ever featuring one post - a bit like the diaries I started on 1 January when a child. The New York Times recently ran a feature on this statistic, which I idly read thinking it might contain some new insight on this old (internet timescale) chestnut. It didn't - people stop blogging because nobody reads their blogs, because they don't make any money at it, because their readers get too intrusive, because they get no comments, or for other predictable reasons. You might like to read one or two of the case-histories, though, which are mildly amusing, particularly the poor mystery author who was surprised to discover that nobody read her rants against the Bush administration.

Finally, a couple of useful posts for writers. Random Jottings reviews A Seriously Useful Author's Guide to Marketing and Publicising books by Mary Cavanaugh, which sounds pretty good, in particular this excerpt provided by Elaine (the reviewer): "A bookblogger is an independent person who takes it upon themselves, for no financial reward whatsoever, to post online articles about books they have currently read, mostly on a daily basis......their reading output is amazing.....as well as being devoted and fanatical readers, they also review books. The biggest breaks of my literary career were made by Book Bloggers and without them I would have got very meagre coverage in any sphere". Hear hear! And Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works provides a very useful round-up of writers' forums, with a great set of comments providing feedback about these sites. Best comment (selected by Jane): "the major benefit in using writers' workshops is in the critiques you write on other people's work, not in the ones you receive.".

 

Thoughts on The Jewel in the Crown

Watching the magnificent The Jewel in the Crown, based on the (even better) Raj Quartet by Paul Scott brings back many thoughts and memories of the year of first transmission (1984), a significant year for me. Putting that to one side, two of the many things that strike me watching the series again now:

Although only half-way through the series, the style of the dramatisation is one that seems unimaginable nowadays. Each episode mainly consists of two-handers between characters - sometimes main, sometimes minor. These scenes are long interactions, sometimes unbearably tense (I literally could not watch the prison scene between Merrick - who was the most hated man in Britain the day after the first transmission - and Kumar) and sometimes apparently banal - but it is through these scenes that the allegories and drama are perceived. This structure is repeated in episode after episode, providing a stylised framework for the exciting events that occur during a world war and a country in the throes of cultural and revolutionary change.

And second, I am amazed at the roles for women "of a certain age"! Not only do we have the young Daphne Manners and the sisters Susan and Sarah Layton, but we have a range of middle-aged and elderly women - Barbara Batchelor (Peggy Ashcroft), Mabel Layton, Lady Ethel Manners (Rachel Kempson), Mildred Layton (Judy Parfitt) and other less central ladies - who are allowed simply to "be" themselves, at relative length. How often these days does one see ladies who will not see 30 again (by a long way) as significant characters in a mainstream drama series? (I exclude series with titles along the lines of "a drama series about oldish ladies".) Because I rarely watch TV, I don't know the answer, but I can guess it. It is truly wonderful to watch these actresses convey so subtly and convincingly and unhurriedly, their characters' experiences of life, emotion and wisdom.

Top six amateur TV detectives

I sense I am about to kick myself for not paying more attention to TV over the years, because  Georgina Turner at The Guardian has identified "six amateur (non-police) TV sleuths", about whom she writes: "They're not on Her Majesty's payroll, yet somehow they constantly find themselves banging up badduns. Have-a-go heroes or interfering know-it-alls, we're not sure, but we do know one thing: Britain would be overrun with cunning killers without them."

Before reading any further I was sure I was going to demur, as one has to disagree with these lists on principle, and sure enough I do. The six honoured tecs are: Miss Marple  (obvious, but fair enough, I suppose); Jonathan Creek (watched one episode once, hated it for the facile lack of actual detection); Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote (please! and what of the "Britain" in the header?); Rosemary and Thyme (never watched it, but according to the reviews it was (is?) poor); Scooby Doo (er? real? and "Britain" again?); and Dick van Dyke as Dr Mark Sloan in Diagnosis Murder (never seen it, but can it be British? Wasn't Burt the chimney sweep enough of us for him?)

So, not watching TV is a bit of a challenge, but in addition to Miss Marple and without leaving these shores, I would venture to suggest (from my era): Hazell (Nicholas Ball); Brother Cadfael (Derek Jacobi); Eddie Shoestring (Trevor Eve); Anna Lee (Imogen Stubbs); and, of course, Sherlock Holmes (various). But I could equally have chosen Hercule Poirot (David Suchet), Hetty Wainthropp (Patricia Routledge - never watched but the name has stuck), Lovejoy (Ian McShane), Cordelia Grey (via P. D. James) and even Lord Peter Wimsey (Ian Carmichael, who did a good job with a spectacular bit of mis-casting). There must be lots of others given how much TV I have missed in the past 18 years - and even so I was not reduced to Scooby Doo.

Anyone got any better ideas? Top six fictional (book) amateur detectives? Top six US TV amateur detectives?

Desperate situations, part 94

Sitting at my computer while a daughter is watching a recorded episode of Desperate Housewives. Hear screech of brakes. Look up and round to see screen. Woman 1 is pushing man out of car and towards a car driven by woman 2. Woman 1 clearly needs to dash off somewhere alone - asks woman 2: "will you take him home?" "Sure" says woman 2 (from the back looks like Nicolette Sheridan). "Get in" to man as woman 1 drives of. He screams and pleads:

"Don't make me go back there! The other divorced men are trying to start a book club."

Later on, woman brings young girl into house. Angry man shouts "You took her to therapy behind my back!".

I only watched the first series of this programme (on recorded DVD of course) so have missed about 3,080 hours between then and now, but I really must get back to it based on these snatches of dialogue I am hearing.

Flooded with garbage

Nancy Banks-Smith (who has been going for even longer than me, and is still hilarious and razor-sharp) on The Flood, part 1 of which I watched last night. I shall not be watching part 2 (half because of the execrable adverts, trailers and sponsor messages, longer than the actual segments of movie, and half because I've it all before in Towering Inferno and various other disaster movies of the 1970s, down to every last cliche and detail):

"Tom Courtenay, however, saw it all coming. Suchet is typically decisive. "No man on the planet knows more about storm surges! We Need That Man Here!" Courtenay, who saves the film and London single handed, plays an absent-minded professor, slightly vague, almost vacant, but, on his own subject, precision itself. As he tells Suchet: "The danger areas include the Docklands Light Railway, 68 underground stations, 30 mainline stations, three world heritage sites, eight power stations, dozens of museums and art galleries and, of course, Whitehall." His daughter-in-law, the lovely Samantha (Jessalyn Gilsig), runs the Thames Barrier. She is Canadian, because Canada put up some of the money. His son, Rob (Robert Carlyle), is the head of the reassuringly named Defiant Engineering.They are all estranged from each other but the flood should fix that. That's what biblical floods (and towering infernos and crashing aircraft) are for."

"........."We must prioritise," said the police commissioner briskly. There's a woman who obviously lives in Kew not Lewisham. The royal family are airlifted to Balmoral. You really would expect them to know better by now. The Queen is well aware that it is her job to stand on Buckingham Palace balcony in a Burberry, waving to encourage her surviving subjects, who are hanging on to the Victoria Memorial for dear life."

Well, quite: the special effects may be good, but you need a decent plot (it was, truly, terribly predictable and clunky) and characters: here all, without exeption, terrible. Joanne Whalley, the only good thing about it, was wasted; the two "loveable common men" (straight from Pirates of the Carribbean, one, I am told, actually) were awful: they and the other actors delivered unbelievably hammy lines with varying degrees of lack of conviction. But the main issue was, why didn't everyone just go upstairs, instead of sitting for an hour in a car in the ground floor of a car park until the wave hit them, etc? Truly dreadful -- not to mention reinforcing my prejudice that it is always a mistake to watch live TV, especially on a commercial station.