(no subject)
I feel like I am the only person on earth who hasn't seen The Avengers.
Instead, I have been watching British dramas! The State Within is a Beeb single-series show from 2006, that hinged, I realized midstream, on the fact that Jason Isaacs had been famous mostly for playing villains up to that point in his career. He's now happily -- okay, gloomily -- ensconced in heroic crime-solving both American (Awake) and Scottish (Case Histories), so it's a bit difficult to reel back the brain and remember that his foremost talent used to be flaring his nostrils angrily at Mel Gibson. Although on some thought that may not villainy any more.
Anyway! Jason Isaacs, as the only Ambassador (of UK, to USA) never to marry or have a security detail, dashes to and fro in Washington while Lacey of Cagney and Lacey fame swears to grind under her formidable heels a fictional country in Central Asia. There are reverses and double-reverses, betrayals and lies, and as much bugging equipment as you might hope for in a political thriller. Being as it is a British take on American politics, it's full of stereotypes, exaggerations, and faff, much of which is obnoxious, but not glaringly so. It's not a hate-letter to American hijinks and hasty anger, not really; I realized about episode 5 (of 6) that it was a fixit-fic for Tony Blair endorsing the Iraq War.
Pretty straightforwardly, really. An intentionally crashed plane; a few well-placed bits of political theatre towards a misdirected target; a lot of huffing and puffing and seethroughable suspicion; and everyone wants to go to war with Blankistan all of a sudden. All except Our Hero, who like the audience was not born yesterday. He's got a sidekick, the excellently-named security officer Brocklehurst (just say it out loud a few times! It is great.), who might be villainous or might be just villainous enough to catch the villains. Also he is gay and carries a silencer and knows karate.
There's a subplot involving Lennie James, as a British ex-soldier wrongly being executed for murder (in Florida, of course), which seems veeery distantly related to the A-plot till it comes together suddenly and a bit conveniently. But whatever, the main point was to show that the death penalty is for barbarians, nay corrupt and craven barbarians, for who among us would execute Lennie James? He is even guilty, not of the crime charged but a dozen worse than that, and the story and characters pause in their headlong conspiracy-izing to give the executed his dying dignity.
(Turns out the whole thing was filmed in Toronto, with Canadians playing the Americans and a few of the British characters too. This would explain why "aircon" and "lent" -- not "AC" and "lended" or "loaned" -- slip into the Americans' dialogue now and then. There was only one actor anywhere approaching Bingo, although several faces were familiar.)
In fact, cravenness and corruption are the convenient targets of the story: CEOs of international companies that manipulate deaths as casually as dominoes, and the quasi-idealistic or even clumsily realpolitical apparatchiks who carry out that manipulation. Everyone figures it out, step by step, and finds a way to back down. Finds an alliance, finds a friend, reaches out to someone to beg for help and is not turned away. The guilty cannot be punished for this crime, but there are plenty of other crimes on which they can be gotten. The ramp up to war can't be ramped back down so easily, but suddenly all the players involved have a reason to think twice. In your face, Tony Blair.
In sum: Jason Isaacs plays a hero and takes his shirt off, but would be up shit creek without his gay superhero right-hand man. With explosions and moralizing, and some clever use of cell phones.
I have moved mostly over to Dreamwidth. Please comment there if you can.
Instead, I have been watching British dramas! The State Within is a Beeb single-series show from 2006, that hinged, I realized midstream, on the fact that Jason Isaacs had been famous mostly for playing villains up to that point in his career. He's now happily -- okay, gloomily -- ensconced in heroic crime-solving both American (Awake) and Scottish (Case Histories), so it's a bit difficult to reel back the brain and remember that his foremost talent used to be flaring his nostrils angrily at Mel Gibson. Although on some thought that may not villainy any more.
Anyway! Jason Isaacs, as the only Ambassador (of UK, to USA) never to marry or have a security detail, dashes to and fro in Washington while Lacey of Cagney and Lacey fame swears to grind under her formidable heels a fictional country in Central Asia. There are reverses and double-reverses, betrayals and lies, and as much bugging equipment as you might hope for in a political thriller. Being as it is a British take on American politics, it's full of stereotypes, exaggerations, and faff, much of which is obnoxious, but not glaringly so. It's not a hate-letter to American hijinks and hasty anger, not really; I realized about episode 5 (of 6) that it was a fixit-fic for Tony Blair endorsing the Iraq War.
Pretty straightforwardly, really. An intentionally crashed plane; a few well-placed bits of political theatre towards a misdirected target; a lot of huffing and puffing and seethroughable suspicion; and everyone wants to go to war with Blankistan all of a sudden. All except Our Hero, who like the audience was not born yesterday. He's got a sidekick, the excellently-named security officer Brocklehurst (just say it out loud a few times! It is great.), who might be villainous or might be just villainous enough to catch the villains. Also he is gay and carries a silencer and knows karate.
There's a subplot involving Lennie James, as a British ex-soldier wrongly being executed for murder (in Florida, of course), which seems veeery distantly related to the A-plot till it comes together suddenly and a bit conveniently. But whatever, the main point was to show that the death penalty is for barbarians, nay corrupt and craven barbarians, for who among us would execute Lennie James? He is even guilty, not of the crime charged but a dozen worse than that, and the story and characters pause in their headlong conspiracy-izing to give the executed his dying dignity.
(Turns out the whole thing was filmed in Toronto, with Canadians playing the Americans and a few of the British characters too. This would explain why "aircon" and "lent" -- not "AC" and "lended" or "loaned" -- slip into the Americans' dialogue now and then. There was only one actor anywhere approaching Bingo, although several faces were familiar.)
In fact, cravenness and corruption are the convenient targets of the story: CEOs of international companies that manipulate deaths as casually as dominoes, and the quasi-idealistic or even clumsily realpolitical apparatchiks who carry out that manipulation. Everyone figures it out, step by step, and finds a way to back down. Finds an alliance, finds a friend, reaches out to someone to beg for help and is not turned away. The guilty cannot be punished for this crime, but there are plenty of other crimes on which they can be gotten. The ramp up to war can't be ramped back down so easily, but suddenly all the players involved have a reason to think twice. In your face, Tony Blair.
In sum: Jason Isaacs plays a hero and takes his shirt off, but would be up shit creek without his gay superhero right-hand man. With explosions and moralizing, and some clever use of cell phones.
I have moved mostly over to Dreamwidth. Please comment there if you can.