Close to the Enemy (is the title of a BBC drama)
Last night, at the last minute, instead of catching up with Humans (but I will so I can watch it live from Sunday on), as I’d intended to, I ended up watching Stephen Poliakoff’s Close to the Enemy. I won’t be repeating that action next week.
It was an interesting concept - in post-WW2 Britain, a military intelligence officer is ordered to get a German jet plane expert (they abducted from his home) to agree to work with, well, for Britain in a faded London hotel that people in the know know is used by military intelligence. You had the contrast of glamorous rooms, faded glory, Blitzed London and an office where people listened in to the interesting guests. A great set-up, but the execution was mostly affectless.
It neither worked as realism, although there was plenty of arresting detail about food - toffee apples and oranges as exotic treats, the black market as a response to rationing, or in any other mode. (I wished I was watching John Steed and Emma Peel, I think. But not made by Poliakoff. O)
Our protagonist Callum (played by Jim Sturgess, who I have a Cloud Atlas inspired liking for, with his dark, dark eyes and weird accent, attempting to be 1940s English) just didn’t seem all that brilliant or as competent as they’d said. Apart from sucking his captor, there was also the captor’s daughter, who you felt some measure of sympathy for. And needing to watch out for the Russians and the Americans who were at the same game. But unlike the viewer, he didn’t really seem to be suspicious of everyone (coughhisbestfriend’sAmericanwife), yes, even the wordless old ladies who were wandering around London.
Angela Bassett turned up to be electric as a band leader (Poliakoff continuing the story of a band like Louis Lester’s, which featured in Dancing at the Edge) in a couple of scenes and Molina had fun with Acting Suspicious and Out Acting All the Pale Youngsters in the rest of the cast. Well, I liked Phoebe Fox’s determined Miss Griffiths of the War Crimes Unit, fighting to do the right thing against institutional lack of co-operation and even opposition. But that wasn’t enough, and neither was the ending, where innocent Lotte was led off somewhere by a creepy child-catcher, to make me want to watch the rest.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/259770.html.
It was an interesting concept - in post-WW2 Britain, a military intelligence officer is ordered to get a German jet plane expert (they abducted from his home) to agree to work with, well, for Britain in a faded London hotel that people in the know know is used by military intelligence. You had the contrast of glamorous rooms, faded glory, Blitzed London and an office where people listened in to the interesting guests. A great set-up, but the execution was mostly affectless.
It neither worked as realism, although there was plenty of arresting detail about food - toffee apples and oranges as exotic treats, the black market as a response to rationing, or in any other mode. (I wished I was watching John Steed and Emma Peel, I think. But not made by Poliakoff. O)
Our protagonist Callum (played by Jim Sturgess, who I have a Cloud Atlas inspired liking for, with his dark, dark eyes and weird accent, attempting to be 1940s English) just didn’t seem all that brilliant or as competent as they’d said. Apart from sucking his captor, there was also the captor’s daughter, who you felt some measure of sympathy for. And needing to watch out for the Russians and the Americans who were at the same game. But unlike the viewer, he didn’t really seem to be suspicious of everyone (coughhisbestfriend’sAmericanwife), yes, even the wordless old ladies who were wandering around London.
Angela Bassett turned up to be electric as a band leader (Poliakoff continuing the story of a band like Louis Lester’s, which featured in Dancing at the Edge) in a couple of scenes and Molina had fun with Acting Suspicious and Out Acting All the Pale Youngsters in the rest of the cast. Well, I liked Phoebe Fox’s determined Miss Griffiths of the War Crimes Unit, fighting to do the right thing against institutional lack of co-operation and even opposition. But that wasn’t enough, and neither was the ending, where innocent Lotte was led off somewhere by a creepy child-catcher, to make me want to watch the rest.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/259770.html.