Going 'round in Circles
The British TV industry appears to be much like its Australian sister, especially in that most fun (and American) of tv sports: playing Six Degrees of Seperation/Kevin Bacon. Don't bother clicking through the cut if you can't be bothered by my musing about some British telly, yeah?
These shows are mostly old news, I know, but just to be safe - Spoilers for Blackpool, State of Play and Doctor Who (in particular) follow.
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I've just seen Blackpool for the first time (thanks to a friend who lent me DVDs) and really enjoyed the off-beat nature of the show with its incorporated musical numbers, side-by-side with such a flamboyant, monstrous, but also sympathetic character in David Morrissey's Ripley Holden. I was also very taken with David Tennant's D.I. Peter Carlisle, who alternatively inspired laughter and romanticism by interminably chasing Ripley Holden while starting an affair with Natalie (Ripley's wife) and instantly falling in love with her.
Here enters the 'Six Degrees' aspect I mentioned earlier - on re-watching State of Play (starring, among many others in a fantastic cast, David Morrissey and John Simm), I noticed parallels with Morrissey's MP Stephen Collins. While the Collins character is a very different and much more emotionally contained character than Ripley Holden - so much so that I only realised it was the same actor when I IMDb'ed Morrissey - the two characters deal with similar family issues and both face the loss of their reputations and careers when events and their own actions conspire against them. In State of Play, John Simm's fantastic portrayal of journalist Cal McCaffrey takes of the place of Tennant's police officer as Morrissey's character's antagonist. These characters also share a number of commonalities, the most noticeable being that both conduct affairs with the wife of Morrissey's character (Polly Walker's deceptively strong Anne Collins in State, and Sarah Parish as Natalie Holden in Blackpool).
What I found most interesting when I realised this commonality and thought about it more was the difference in the characters of the wives. I saw Natalie as a softer, downbeaten character who is brought back to life by Carlisle's affection (and who takes her time to think about whether she will stay or go, not to mention all the flops between those two points!), while Anne essentially makes the first move in her affair with Cal. While she too bounces between attacking and defending her husband and his reputation, it is more due to her concern about her children than it is about attempting to save her marriage (which raises the interesting point - made in 2003, a year before Blackpool, State of Play shows Stephen Collins with a son and daughter, aged around 15 and 12 respectively; while Blackpool has Ripley Holden with a 20-year-old daughter and maybe 16-year-old son. Apparently Ripley married a younger woman and had children earlier in life than Stephen!)
Finally, Tennant and Simm's work together on Who as The Doctor and The Master respectively complete the 'circle' for me (seeing those two behemoths of performance together in that arc was brilliant.) Now all we need is for Morrissey to appear as a guest in Who and we'll have some sort of star-shaped construction.
In awesome and exciting news, I've just found out that a drama course I've booked to do next week will, despite being slightly under the intended minimum number of participants, go ahead. Last week we were told that it may be cancelled due to the low numbers, and that if it was we could apply to a different short course or accept a refund. I figured that if the course was cancelled, it would be a sign, and I would take the refund and return to my regularly scheduled packing-up-of-my-life. But hey - it's still on. Who am I to argue with signs? =D
These shows are mostly old news, I know, but just to be safe - Spoilers for Blackpool, State of Play and Doctor Who (in particular) follow.
|
|
|
I've just seen Blackpool for the first time (thanks to a friend who lent me DVDs) and really enjoyed the off-beat nature of the show with its incorporated musical numbers, side-by-side with such a flamboyant, monstrous, but also sympathetic character in David Morrissey's Ripley Holden. I was also very taken with David Tennant's D.I. Peter Carlisle, who alternatively inspired laughter and romanticism by interminably chasing Ripley Holden while starting an affair with Natalie (Ripley's wife) and instantly falling in love with her.
Here enters the 'Six Degrees' aspect I mentioned earlier - on re-watching State of Play (starring, among many others in a fantastic cast, David Morrissey and John Simm), I noticed parallels with Morrissey's MP Stephen Collins. While the Collins character is a very different and much more emotionally contained character than Ripley Holden - so much so that I only realised it was the same actor when I IMDb'ed Morrissey - the two characters deal with similar family issues and both face the loss of their reputations and careers when events and their own actions conspire against them. In State of Play, John Simm's fantastic portrayal of journalist Cal McCaffrey takes of the place of Tennant's police officer as Morrissey's character's antagonist. These characters also share a number of commonalities, the most noticeable being that both conduct affairs with the wife of Morrissey's character (Polly Walker's deceptively strong Anne Collins in State, and Sarah Parish as Natalie Holden in Blackpool).
What I found most interesting when I realised this commonality and thought about it more was the difference in the characters of the wives. I saw Natalie as a softer, downbeaten character who is brought back to life by Carlisle's affection (and who takes her time to think about whether she will stay or go, not to mention all the flops between those two points!), while Anne essentially makes the first move in her affair with Cal. While she too bounces between attacking and defending her husband and his reputation, it is more due to her concern about her children than it is about attempting to save her marriage (which raises the interesting point - made in 2003, a year before Blackpool, State of Play shows Stephen Collins with a son and daughter, aged around 15 and 12 respectively; while Blackpool has Ripley Holden with a 20-year-old daughter and maybe 16-year-old son. Apparently Ripley married a younger woman and had children earlier in life than Stephen!)
Finally, Tennant and Simm's work together on Who as The Doctor and The Master respectively complete the 'circle' for me (seeing those two behemoths of performance together in that arc was brilliant.) Now all we need is for Morrissey to appear as a guest in Who and we'll have some sort of star-shaped construction.
In awesome and exciting news, I've just found out that a drama course I've booked to do next week will, despite being slightly under the intended minimum number of participants, go ahead. Last week we were told that it may be cancelled due to the low numbers, and that if it was we could apply to a different short course or accept a refund. I figured that if the course was cancelled, it would be a sign, and I would take the refund and return to my regularly scheduled packing-up-of-my-life. But hey - it's still on. Who am I to argue with signs? =D