2013: My Year in TV (UK)
In which I settle down with tea and crumpets to see what the Brits have been up to this year.
Probably the biggest milestone in British TV this year, at least as far as I was concerned, was David Suchet's last episode as Poirot, over twenty years after the first. The veteran series ran into a predictable problem since the only stories it hadn't already adapted were kind of duds (The Big Four, Elephants Can Remember), so the original plots were wisely turfed and new creations sketched in around them. The Big Four in particular was barely recognisable from the confused pastiche of the original Christie, but it was much better for it. Dead Man's Folly was a fairly standard affair, reminiscent of so many others, but I really like what was done with The Labours of Hercules, my favourite short story collection. Obviously the original format couldn't be kept (although I did miss the priceless equation of the Nemean lion with a missing Pekinese), but I'm a sucker for an isolation story and this one was done quite well - with an excellent performance by Eleanor Tomlinson at its heart that convinces me she'll be one to watch. And then, of course, we came to Curtain. I always felt the book was ambitious but a bit more than Christie could quite pull off with her capabilities as a writer, but Suchet did it really, really well. There were a couple of last-minute "how have you not been on this show yet?" performances from Anne Reid and Philip Glenister, but it was a testament to how much Suchet immersed himself in the role of Poirot that such comparative triumphs could be drawn from fairly mediocre source material. (Don't get me wrong, I love Christie. But there's no denying that, in the last few years, she put out some shockers.)
Poirot's fluffier counterpart, Marple, has a way to go before it is anywhere near as venerable, although it in contrast to the generally faithful nature of Poirot it feels itself merrily unconstrained by such apparent limitations as the lack of a lead character. Marple has always inserted its detective into stories in which she did not originally appear, but rarely has she felt as superfluous as she did in Endless Night, one of the best of the late Christies that has more than a shade of Roger Ackroyd. This one was entirely carried by Tom Hughes in what I thought was a very good performance indeed, although I was distracted by the sudden thought that he was born to play Tom Riddle. (He really was.) A Caribbean Mystery was a more staid affair, and Greenshaw's Folly was far more faithful than the show usually is. I remain less keen on Julia McKenzie's Marple than I was on Geraldine McEwan's, but she is fine in the role.
The other big milestone of the year was, of course, Doctor Who's momentous fiftieth anniversary. It was a stupendous milestone for any show, but I have rarely felt more out of touch with it than I do right now. With each season I sink deeper and deeper into the anti-Moffat camp, a place I never thought I'd be. I think it is impossible to dispute that Moffat does have a problem with female characters (not quite as big as some would have it, but enough to be a problem), but the bigger issue for me is that I don't think he has a lot of discipline as a writer. There's no argument that he's clever, sometimes brilliantly so, but he is very easily carried away by that cleverness, and that is how the show has become the convoluted mess it is at the moment. Clara is something of a nothing character, despite Jenna Coleman's best efforts. How the Capaldi years will take shape I don't know - I like Capaldi, and I think he should bring something good to the role. But while I was ready for Matt Smith to move on, I am even more ready for someone else to take the showrunner's reins.
In fact, I enjoyed two side-products of the anniversary a lot more than the anniversary itself. One was An Adventure in Space and Time, a terrific look at Doctor Who's early days with Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert and Brian Cox as Sydney Newman. I really liked the way the behind-the-scenes nature of a show was portrayed, but my favourite thing by far was David Bradley's complicated and ultimately very touching portrayal of William Hartnell. We were presented with a man that at first seemed little more than a curmudgeon, and not a very likeable one at that; but over the running time Bradley (who is hugely underrated as an actor) showed us the pent-up frustration, the pride battling with the self-doubt, and the warmth that was buried deep down.
The other, altogether more light-hearted Who outing was Peter Davison's delightful romp The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, in which Davison, Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker (and Paul McGann, sort of), aided and abetted by everyone from Moffat to Ian McKellen (but never Russell T), lied, swindled and begged their way into the fiftieth anniversary. We had all the living Doctors (sans Tom Baker, for some reason), most of the companions, John Barrowman's darkest secret, Georgia Moffett caught between two Doctors, David Troughton and Sean Pertwee, Daleks, Cybermen, and everything in between. An utter joy.
I've already talked about Atlantis, and really, little changed. It's still a lot like Merlin, except generally less interesting. It has surprised me slightly on a few occasions (mostly with the speed with which the Medusa storyline was taken care of), and more substantially with the ending twist. It's a pity about that twist, because it's probably going to bring me back for season two, even though at its heart the show is just dull. Parish and Stevenson, though. What can you do?
Downton Abbey chugs along, and I have little to say about it, really. Edith's story had me conflicted; I have long wanted Edith to become a lady novelist or something similar, and to basically buck the limiting family traditions and really give Robert something to whinge about, so her secret lovechild was not exactly what I was hoping for from her. However, it brought Rosamund in (more Rosamund!), and was played moderately OK-ish. Anna's rape was surprisingly not handled as badly as I thought, although I suspect we're supposed to like Bates as a character and I really, really don't. I'd prefer for Mary to take a break from the men game, but confess a certain fondness for Charles Blake based entirely on the fact that Julian Ovenden played Andrew Foyle and, well, sometimes actor association wins out. By far the best thing about the show continues to be Maggie Smith and, increasingly, Penelope Wilton, who bring both great delight and a certain subtlety to their scenes.
Broadchurch was an event. It was tremendously well cast and I can't say I wasn't over the moon to watch a show with David Tennant and Olivia Colman in the leads, but - and here's the but - I didn't think it was as amazing as everyone said. I mean, yeah, it was good, but I didn't think it was that much better than any of the other good crime shows on British TV. I didn't see whatever it was that people felt made it transcend its peers to quite that degree.
Last Tango in Halifax, on the other hand, was one of the loveliest shows I've seen in years. I caught up on the first series earlier in the year and then saw series two when it came on, and this is just delightful. I do love dramas about family, and that is what this unquestionably is. While the love story between Alan and Celia is ostensibly the heart of the show, it's really about them and their families and how they cope with everything life throws at them. Plus this show is blessed with a seriously note-perfect cast (from veterans like Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi, to one of my favourite actresses in Sarah Lancashire, to Tony Gardner, who has playing human slime down to a fine art), and a complicated group of characters that are treated with empathy but not excused for their faults.
I've always been a fan of Stephen Poliakoff, ever since The Lost Prince (which remains one of my favourite things in the world), so it's surprising it took me so long to catch up with Dancing on the Edge, especially given it has not one but two Merlin alumni in Angel Coulby and Anthony Head (and that's not even counting guests like Janet Montgomery). It's supposedly about a black jazz band in London in the 1930s, but, as the always astute ravenya03 put it, it's really about white people reacting to them. It's slow and thoughtful and more than a little dense, but I'm glad I committed the time to it. And it, too, is blessed with a great cast, from Coulby and Head to Tom Hughes (again, and I really like him - one to watch), Joanna Vanderham (the MVP), Jenna Coleman, a woefully underused Caroline Quentin, and even John Goodman in a very strange role.
As for Sherlock, well, I'll lump the most recent series in here as well. I liked the second one the most (definitely a first!), and I confess that Moffat's, well, Moffat-ness is beginning to intrude on my enjoyment of this show as well. I felt we were supposed to laugh along with Sherlock in a lot of instances where he was really just being horrible, and the show was determined not to call him on it. It was at this point that I realised that I had made the once-unthinkable jump into the Elementary camp, because there's no denying that that show has a better relationship at its core. Having said that, there's still a lot to like about Sherlock, and by far the best thing about series three was Amanda Abbington's wonderful turn as Mary, a character who is now just about as important to the story as John and Sherlock (and thank goodness for that). But please, can we have everyone get over Sherlock a little bit?
Death Comes to Pemberley was a lovely surprise, in that I had no idea it was coming until it appeared. Pride and Prejudice "sequels" are rarely better than substandard fanfiction, but this came from the pen of P.D. James (a writer I tend to find ponderous, but certainly higher calibre than the Mills and Boone stuff or that zombie atrocity). Add in Anna Maxwell Martin, a tremendous actress, as Lizzie and we were on our way. Admittedly, like all things of this kind, I was a teensy bit more interested in the interaction between the characters than the plot itself (which was a typical James one), but this was very nicely done. Highlight: Rebecca Front as Mrs Bennet, finding the right balance between Alison Steadman and Brenda Blethyn.
And then there was The White Queen. This was a royalty piece, so of course I had to watch it, but at the same time it was Philippa Gregory, which meant I had to watch it through my hands. And yes, that Gregory trademark - unaccountable loathing for most of the women she writes about - was there. But here, somehow, after meandering through five or six exposition-laden episodes, we finally found something worth watching. The chief pleasure to be had was Amanda Hale's luminous performance as Margaret Beaufort, the perfect mixture of wild-eyed fervour and genuine passion. For the rest, it was mostly a case of enjoying some nice performances and pretending the witchcraft rubbish wasn't there.
And that's about it, although I do want to squeeze in a plug for a fun little series called Privates with Alex Vlahos, for anyone else trying to keep up with the Merlin cast. Otherwise an interesting year on British TV.
And lastly, a little update - I caught up on Arrow since the last post, and my goodness do I love it. I kind of want to retract everything I said about Smallville in that post a few months ago, because Arrow is so much better.
Probably the biggest milestone in British TV this year, at least as far as I was concerned, was David Suchet's last episode as Poirot, over twenty years after the first. The veteran series ran into a predictable problem since the only stories it hadn't already adapted were kind of duds (The Big Four, Elephants Can Remember), so the original plots were wisely turfed and new creations sketched in around them. The Big Four in particular was barely recognisable from the confused pastiche of the original Christie, but it was much better for it. Dead Man's Folly was a fairly standard affair, reminiscent of so many others, but I really like what was done with The Labours of Hercules, my favourite short story collection. Obviously the original format couldn't be kept (although I did miss the priceless equation of the Nemean lion with a missing Pekinese), but I'm a sucker for an isolation story and this one was done quite well - with an excellent performance by Eleanor Tomlinson at its heart that convinces me she'll be one to watch. And then, of course, we came to Curtain. I always felt the book was ambitious but a bit more than Christie could quite pull off with her capabilities as a writer, but Suchet did it really, really well. There were a couple of last-minute "how have you not been on this show yet?" performances from Anne Reid and Philip Glenister, but it was a testament to how much Suchet immersed himself in the role of Poirot that such comparative triumphs could be drawn from fairly mediocre source material. (Don't get me wrong, I love Christie. But there's no denying that, in the last few years, she put out some shockers.)
Poirot's fluffier counterpart, Marple, has a way to go before it is anywhere near as venerable, although it in contrast to the generally faithful nature of Poirot it feels itself merrily unconstrained by such apparent limitations as the lack of a lead character. Marple has always inserted its detective into stories in which she did not originally appear, but rarely has she felt as superfluous as she did in Endless Night, one of the best of the late Christies that has more than a shade of Roger Ackroyd. This one was entirely carried by Tom Hughes in what I thought was a very good performance indeed, although I was distracted by the sudden thought that he was born to play Tom Riddle. (He really was.) A Caribbean Mystery was a more staid affair, and Greenshaw's Folly was far more faithful than the show usually is. I remain less keen on Julia McKenzie's Marple than I was on Geraldine McEwan's, but she is fine in the role.
The other big milestone of the year was, of course, Doctor Who's momentous fiftieth anniversary. It was a stupendous milestone for any show, but I have rarely felt more out of touch with it than I do right now. With each season I sink deeper and deeper into the anti-Moffat camp, a place I never thought I'd be. I think it is impossible to dispute that Moffat does have a problem with female characters (not quite as big as some would have it, but enough to be a problem), but the bigger issue for me is that I don't think he has a lot of discipline as a writer. There's no argument that he's clever, sometimes brilliantly so, but he is very easily carried away by that cleverness, and that is how the show has become the convoluted mess it is at the moment. Clara is something of a nothing character, despite Jenna Coleman's best efforts. How the Capaldi years will take shape I don't know - I like Capaldi, and I think he should bring something good to the role. But while I was ready for Matt Smith to move on, I am even more ready for someone else to take the showrunner's reins.
In fact, I enjoyed two side-products of the anniversary a lot more than the anniversary itself. One was An Adventure in Space and Time, a terrific look at Doctor Who's early days with Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert and Brian Cox as Sydney Newman. I really liked the way the behind-the-scenes nature of a show was portrayed, but my favourite thing by far was David Bradley's complicated and ultimately very touching portrayal of William Hartnell. We were presented with a man that at first seemed little more than a curmudgeon, and not a very likeable one at that; but over the running time Bradley (who is hugely underrated as an actor) showed us the pent-up frustration, the pride battling with the self-doubt, and the warmth that was buried deep down.
The other, altogether more light-hearted Who outing was Peter Davison's delightful romp The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, in which Davison, Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker (and Paul McGann, sort of), aided and abetted by everyone from Moffat to Ian McKellen (but never Russell T), lied, swindled and begged their way into the fiftieth anniversary. We had all the living Doctors (sans Tom Baker, for some reason), most of the companions, John Barrowman's darkest secret, Georgia Moffett caught between two Doctors, David Troughton and Sean Pertwee, Daleks, Cybermen, and everything in between. An utter joy.
I've already talked about Atlantis, and really, little changed. It's still a lot like Merlin, except generally less interesting. It has surprised me slightly on a few occasions (mostly with the speed with which the Medusa storyline was taken care of), and more substantially with the ending twist. It's a pity about that twist, because it's probably going to bring me back for season two, even though at its heart the show is just dull. Parish and Stevenson, though. What can you do?
Downton Abbey chugs along, and I have little to say about it, really. Edith's story had me conflicted; I have long wanted Edith to become a lady novelist or something similar, and to basically buck the limiting family traditions and really give Robert something to whinge about, so her secret lovechild was not exactly what I was hoping for from her. However, it brought Rosamund in (more Rosamund!), and was played moderately OK-ish. Anna's rape was surprisingly not handled as badly as I thought, although I suspect we're supposed to like Bates as a character and I really, really don't. I'd prefer for Mary to take a break from the men game, but confess a certain fondness for Charles Blake based entirely on the fact that Julian Ovenden played Andrew Foyle and, well, sometimes actor association wins out. By far the best thing about the show continues to be Maggie Smith and, increasingly, Penelope Wilton, who bring both great delight and a certain subtlety to their scenes.
Broadchurch was an event. It was tremendously well cast and I can't say I wasn't over the moon to watch a show with David Tennant and Olivia Colman in the leads, but - and here's the but - I didn't think it was as amazing as everyone said. I mean, yeah, it was good, but I didn't think it was that much better than any of the other good crime shows on British TV. I didn't see whatever it was that people felt made it transcend its peers to quite that degree.
Last Tango in Halifax, on the other hand, was one of the loveliest shows I've seen in years. I caught up on the first series earlier in the year and then saw series two when it came on, and this is just delightful. I do love dramas about family, and that is what this unquestionably is. While the love story between Alan and Celia is ostensibly the heart of the show, it's really about them and their families and how they cope with everything life throws at them. Plus this show is blessed with a seriously note-perfect cast (from veterans like Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi, to one of my favourite actresses in Sarah Lancashire, to Tony Gardner, who has playing human slime down to a fine art), and a complicated group of characters that are treated with empathy but not excused for their faults.
I've always been a fan of Stephen Poliakoff, ever since The Lost Prince (which remains one of my favourite things in the world), so it's surprising it took me so long to catch up with Dancing on the Edge, especially given it has not one but two Merlin alumni in Angel Coulby and Anthony Head (and that's not even counting guests like Janet Montgomery). It's supposedly about a black jazz band in London in the 1930s, but, as the always astute ravenya03 put it, it's really about white people reacting to them. It's slow and thoughtful and more than a little dense, but I'm glad I committed the time to it. And it, too, is blessed with a great cast, from Coulby and Head to Tom Hughes (again, and I really like him - one to watch), Joanna Vanderham (the MVP), Jenna Coleman, a woefully underused Caroline Quentin, and even John Goodman in a very strange role.
As for Sherlock, well, I'll lump the most recent series in here as well. I liked the second one the most (definitely a first!), and I confess that Moffat's, well, Moffat-ness is beginning to intrude on my enjoyment of this show as well. I felt we were supposed to laugh along with Sherlock in a lot of instances where he was really just being horrible, and the show was determined not to call him on it. It was at this point that I realised that I had made the once-unthinkable jump into the Elementary camp, because there's no denying that that show has a better relationship at its core. Having said that, there's still a lot to like about Sherlock, and by far the best thing about series three was Amanda Abbington's wonderful turn as Mary, a character who is now just about as important to the story as John and Sherlock (and thank goodness for that). But please, can we have everyone get over Sherlock a little bit?
Death Comes to Pemberley was a lovely surprise, in that I had no idea it was coming until it appeared. Pride and Prejudice "sequels" are rarely better than substandard fanfiction, but this came from the pen of P.D. James (a writer I tend to find ponderous, but certainly higher calibre than the Mills and Boone stuff or that zombie atrocity). Add in Anna Maxwell Martin, a tremendous actress, as Lizzie and we were on our way. Admittedly, like all things of this kind, I was a teensy bit more interested in the interaction between the characters than the plot itself (which was a typical James one), but this was very nicely done. Highlight: Rebecca Front as Mrs Bennet, finding the right balance between Alison Steadman and Brenda Blethyn.
And then there was The White Queen. This was a royalty piece, so of course I had to watch it, but at the same time it was Philippa Gregory, which meant I had to watch it through my hands. And yes, that Gregory trademark - unaccountable loathing for most of the women she writes about - was there. But here, somehow, after meandering through five or six exposition-laden episodes, we finally found something worth watching. The chief pleasure to be had was Amanda Hale's luminous performance as Margaret Beaufort, the perfect mixture of wild-eyed fervour and genuine passion. For the rest, it was mostly a case of enjoying some nice performances and pretending the witchcraft rubbish wasn't there.
And that's about it, although I do want to squeeze in a plug for a fun little series called Privates with Alex Vlahos, for anyone else trying to keep up with the Merlin cast. Otherwise an interesting year on British TV.
And lastly, a little update - I caught up on Arrow since the last post, and my goodness do I love it. I kind of want to retract everything I said about Smallville in that post a few months ago, because Arrow is so much better.