The Why
BBC2 started showing The Wire last week. What with everyone calling it the best thing in the universe (almost universally a bad sign - in fact the only instance I can think of a terminally hyped show actually turning out to be much cop is Battlestar Galactica) I thought I'd check it out.
First of all, a quick glance at the BT thingy's list of recordings at first suggested they were repeating it a lot, as after just a week I had five epidodes recorded. Nope, that was five actual different episodes. Now this is a problem for me right off. There is no, I repeat no, TV show that I'm prepared to dedicate five hours a week to. It's just such a criminal disposal of my life that I'm not prepared to entertain the concept. That, and the fact that I get bored with even the best things on TV after about 2 or 3 episodes back to back. All this aside though, we settled down to watch the first episode.
What is it with HBO (an acronym I've come to suspect stands for 'hyped but ordinary')? I know they're trying to be gritty and realistic, but I refuse to sit there and be bombarded with swearing for an hour. I have been known to use colourful language from time to time and I'm not going to get on my high horse about the decline of English (this time), but this is just relentless. All I could hear was motherfucking this, motherfucking that, and I really just don't want to hear that. It was painful, annoying and grating - and frankly the complete antithesis of clever dialogue and writing. I call it "the Pulp Fiction effect" - the idea that you chuck in a lot of swearing and apparently uncaring characters and voila you have gritty realism. Er, no, sorry. There's more to it than that.
I did manage to get a bit of an idea of where they were looking to go with it - it's a realistic and compromised view of the war on drugs, told refreshingly from both sides at once, but must it be so damn unpleasant? I don't mean subject matter, which is obviously going to have its moments, but in presentation?
Apparently it's the best thing since HBO's previous 'critically aclaimed' seriese Deadwood. Oh, yeah, I remember that too - what was the problem there? All the bad language getting in the way of characterisation and plot. Sound familiar? I'm sure every one of the six hundred fully formed characters in The Wire is multi faceted and fascinating, but all I see is a bunch of foul mouthed people, some in shirts and some in baseball jerseys (and this appears to be one of the principles of the show) all fundamentally dealing with the same shit. As in real life, I'm really not interested in the life and thoughts of anyone who can't form a sentence without the phrase motherfucker in it, and as such I shan't be following the series. In fact we didn't last the entire first episode, sorry. It may well require more than that to fully appreciate it, but I don't imagine my issues with it changing, and if one more person tells me I've missed the point I'll lamp them.
Mind you, BBC - what is the deal with showing someting that's plainly as densely plotted and complex as this is every week night?? Even if I did like the show that would be the kiss of death for me.
First of all, a quick glance at the BT thingy's list of recordings at first suggested they were repeating it a lot, as after just a week I had five epidodes recorded. Nope, that was five actual different episodes. Now this is a problem for me right off. There is no, I repeat no, TV show that I'm prepared to dedicate five hours a week to. It's just such a criminal disposal of my life that I'm not prepared to entertain the concept. That, and the fact that I get bored with even the best things on TV after about 2 or 3 episodes back to back. All this aside though, we settled down to watch the first episode.
What is it with HBO (an acronym I've come to suspect stands for 'hyped but ordinary')? I know they're trying to be gritty and realistic, but I refuse to sit there and be bombarded with swearing for an hour. I have been known to use colourful language from time to time and I'm not going to get on my high horse about the decline of English (this time), but this is just relentless. All I could hear was motherfucking this, motherfucking that, and I really just don't want to hear that. It was painful, annoying and grating - and frankly the complete antithesis of clever dialogue and writing. I call it "the Pulp Fiction effect" - the idea that you chuck in a lot of swearing and apparently uncaring characters and voila you have gritty realism. Er, no, sorry. There's more to it than that.
I did manage to get a bit of an idea of where they were looking to go with it - it's a realistic and compromised view of the war on drugs, told refreshingly from both sides at once, but must it be so damn unpleasant? I don't mean subject matter, which is obviously going to have its moments, but in presentation?
Apparently it's the best thing since HBO's previous 'critically aclaimed' seriese Deadwood. Oh, yeah, I remember that too - what was the problem there? All the bad language getting in the way of characterisation and plot. Sound familiar? I'm sure every one of the six hundred fully formed characters in The Wire is multi faceted and fascinating, but all I see is a bunch of foul mouthed people, some in shirts and some in baseball jerseys (and this appears to be one of the principles of the show) all fundamentally dealing with the same shit. As in real life, I'm really not interested in the life and thoughts of anyone who can't form a sentence without the phrase motherfucker in it, and as such I shan't be following the series. In fact we didn't last the entire first episode, sorry. It may well require more than that to fully appreciate it, but I don't imagine my issues with it changing, and if one more person tells me I've missed the point I'll lamp them.
Mind you, BBC - what is the deal with showing someting that's plainly as densely plotted and complex as this is every week night?? Even if I did like the show that would be the kiss of death for me.