the pilot of The Bridge

[pellucid]

I really am on hiatus. But...

A couple of weeks ago I commented that I felt incapable of watching Aaron Douglas's new show. But for whatever reason, I found myself sitting down in front of the television with my dinner right as the pilot began to air (in the Maritimes, the feed of which I get; here it's an hour later and should just be finishing

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[pellucid]

As I commented above to both Allie and Asta, I was actually fairly impressed with my ability to separate both Tyrol and AD from this character for most of the episode. I even caught myself being pretty impressed with his acting chops. And then because it was that particular plotline, it all just went sailing out the window and all I could think about were the comments he'd made at Dragon*Con about Tyrol killing Tory. So yeah.

To be fair, it didn't sound as though Frank was proposing to cover up what the friend had done. He made a phone call to another cop, and it seemed like the plan was to make sure it really was (or at least looked like) an accident. They weren't proposing to go bury her in the backyard or anything like that. But there was still a lot of "you're not alone, buddy" and "I won't let you go to prison" and "we'll fix this" and that kind of thing, and it was just SO the wrong direction to go if they wanted to keep me as a viewer.

But with the geography, yes, one of my very favourite things, in novels and film and television, is a really accurately-set story in a place I know well and/or have lived. And they're rarer than you'd expect, even when they're set in places like London or New York, where they can reasonably expect many millions of people to know when they're doing it wrong. In the world of Rom-Coms Starring Meg Ryan, I much prefer When Harry Met Sally to You've Got Mail, but the former is kind of a mess of NYC's Greatest Hits, whereas the latter is very conscientiously set in a particular neighbourhood, and I tend to forgive it a multitude of sins for that. And the last time I was at home, my mother rented some not particularly engaging film starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, in which they spent the majority of the film walking for miles and miles and miles around London--she in heels--as if they were just strolling in the fresh air. One minute they're at Paddington Station, and the next they've supposedly walked to the South Bank down by the Tate Modern. There's a mystifying scene at the end of the film, after they've reconciled, when Emma Thompson takes off her shoes, and they start walking off, she in her stockings. My mother suggested this was supposed to comment on the disparity in their heights (Thompson is a good six inches taller than Hoffman, especially in heels), but I said it was surely to indicate that her feet were killing her after all the walking she'd been doing in those shoes.

Anyway, that's all quite longwinded and rather irrelevant, but it really is one of my favourite things ever when people get geography right, and it's also something I really notice when they don't, and if I do find myself unable to continue watching The Bridge (which I suspect will be the case), the thing I will most regret is the fact that it is so far doing the geography really well.