Addendum: Hung, Big Breadwinner Hog
Okay. Hung, judging from one ep, has its faults, but I like the leads - *together*. Rather hard to like Ray per se, but Tania is *wonderful*. And I like the fact that his kids are grown and icky. Looking forward to ep 2.
Finished Big Breadwinner Hog tonight - general thoughts on the series: a strange, at times florid mix of pulp and more general crime story, overlong and padded and really very slow by today's standards. That said however, every episode has stretches which are oddly, immobilisingly compelling - while the shock-horra crime aspects are (by now) quite tame, it still has some genuinely suspenseful and *nasty* moments. The three best are equally divided between Hog, Akerman and Lennox :) to discuss them would be spoilery so I won't here. They shine, nastily :)
Two brilliant central performances hold it together - Peter Egan as Hogarth, confident, brutal, nasty, cruel, arrogant newcomer bubbling with youth and enjoyment; and Timothy West as the more respectable, genteelly removed yet equally nastily pragmatic boss Lennox. Kudos also to Donald Burton as Akerman (caveat: once the not-quite-tedious but sadly laughable Moira substory's dead and gone - he becomes so much more interesting as the series progresses); and to Alan Browning, Godfrey Quigley and Barry Linehan who give solid, credible backup as the middle-rank thugs. They're all genuinely interesting and individual, not just filler.
Sadly laughable police :) but that's half the fun. Especially when they're *nasty* police. You really do want the bad boys to win. I wasn't all that bothered about *which* bad boy, to be honest. That doesn't reflect a lack of engagement - quite the opposite in fact. They all *deserved* to, really (but I liked the way it played out, anyway).
Slashy? Hell yes. Hog/Ray, Hog/Ryan, Hog/Spicer - okay, so that'd be a tad hard to pull off, given the Plot, but by jingo it could sizzle... - Hog/Izzard, Hog/Akerman, Hog/Lennox. Each at different points in the series; some overlap, some don't. Don't get me wrong, I've no big thing about Peter Egan (despite his rather revelatory beauty here), but what an amazing set of actors and relationships. *Chemistry* everywhere.
So: multiple faults, and to a modern eye it's often (unintentionally) funny, but overall it's nicely complex and refreshingly free of comment on OMG MORALS. Add a great cast & chem that packs a real wallop, and it's well worth the time.
Looking forward to Spindoe and Knocker now :)
I now want very badly to find someone, somewhere, who can help me nut out a plausible way in which Hog can have been DS Don Beech's first shag. It would explain so very, very much.
ETA: and the theme tune fuckin' *rocks*. Good candidate for all-time favourite :)
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Finished Big Breadwinner Hog tonight - general thoughts on the series: a strange, at times florid mix of pulp and more general crime story, overlong and padded and really very slow by today's standards. That said however, every episode has stretches which are oddly, immobilisingly compelling - while the shock-horra crime aspects are (by now) quite tame, it still has some genuinely suspenseful and *nasty* moments. The three best are equally divided between Hog, Akerman and Lennox :) to discuss them would be spoilery so I won't here. They shine, nastily :)
Two brilliant central performances hold it together - Peter Egan as Hogarth, confident, brutal, nasty, cruel, arrogant newcomer bubbling with youth and enjoyment; and Timothy West as the more respectable, genteelly removed yet equally nastily pragmatic boss Lennox. Kudos also to Donald Burton as Akerman (caveat: once the not-quite-tedious but sadly laughable Moira substory's dead and gone - he becomes so much more interesting as the series progresses); and to Alan Browning, Godfrey Quigley and Barry Linehan who give solid, credible backup as the middle-rank thugs. They're all genuinely interesting and individual, not just filler.
Sadly laughable police :) but that's half the fun. Especially when they're *nasty* police. You really do want the bad boys to win. I wasn't all that bothered about *which* bad boy, to be honest. That doesn't reflect a lack of engagement - quite the opposite in fact. They all *deserved* to, really (but I liked the way it played out, anyway).
Slashy? Hell yes. Hog/Ray, Hog/Ryan, Hog/Spicer - okay, so that'd be a tad hard to pull off, given the Plot, but by jingo it could sizzle... - Hog/Izzard, Hog/Akerman, Hog/Lennox. Each at different points in the series; some overlap, some don't. Don't get me wrong, I've no big thing about Peter Egan (despite his rather revelatory beauty here), but what an amazing set of actors and relationships. *Chemistry* everywhere.
So: multiple faults, and to a modern eye it's often (unintentionally) funny, but overall it's nicely complex and refreshingly free of comment on OMG MORALS. Add a great cast & chem that packs a real wallop, and it's well worth the time.
Looking forward to Spindoe and Knocker now :)
I now want very badly to find someone, somewhere, who can help me nut out a plausible way in which Hog can have been DS Don Beech's first shag. It would explain so very, very much.
ETA: and the theme tune fuckin' *rocks*. Good candidate for all-time favourite :)
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