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12 March 2015 at 17:48 #38714
@bluesqueakpip — very sad news.
@scaryb — yeah, I like that Rankin is pretty up-front about just how much of an influence Laidlaw is in Rebus. And for my money, Strange Loyalties is McIlvanney’s best book. Starts of looking like a detective novel then sneakily takes you into all kinds of more literary places.
Yeah, I don’t think Blackstuff would have a hope in hell these days. Commissioning Eds think they’re ‘being political’ when they do conspiracy thrillers or dystopian ‘what ifs’ but they’re really not. If you tried to pitch something about homelessness, or food banks, or redundancy these days you’d get absolutely nowhere. And they certainly wouldn’t make Cracker in its original form now. They’d push to make Fitz a lot more sympathetic and probably a lot better-looking too. And you’d be unlikely to get a character like Jimmy Beck or Robert Carlyle’s Albie these days.
12 March 2015 at 13:21 #38709What exactly do you think was ‘the point’ of the last series? You might find it doesn’t tally with what many thought the point of the series was? And what does that really mean anyway? But I’d recommend scanning back through the posts on Death in Heaven and other stories to see that there aren’t really that many what you call plot holes. For instance, Danny saving Clara/The Doctor is not so much a plot hole as a perfectly valid plot point that you don’t personally like.
I think SM is doing just fine. In fact, better than fine.
11 March 2015 at 10:40 #38696@scaryb — Radio Times did a near-identical piece yesterday too. How can Buffy be 18 years old?? I’m getting so old. Waaah.
10 March 2015 at 10:25 #38680@janetteb — do indeed remember both shows. From what I dimly remember, Stones was also very Who-like in some of its themes — time bubbles and recurring timelines. Plus it had the mighty Iain Cuthbertson in it, and Blake-in-waiting Gareth Thomas.
9 March 2015 at 16:10 #38657@janetteb — yes, Pertwee is a very much a neck-rubbing, condescending sexist arse.
But this is definitely one of his finest hours. Again, my key base of reference for this era is the Target novelisations and this one — by Barry Letts — is particularly fondly remembered. And the Third Doctor comes out a lot better in print than on TV, I think.
But this is a great story. It’s riffing on lots of stuff — from the Avengers (sinister goings-on in rural England) to the Wheatley-esque devil-worshipping conflated with the paganism of The Wicker Man. And it really works for Who — which is why they’d go back to this well so often — The Stones of Blood, The Awakening, The Image of the Fendahl, ven k9 and Company and so on.
Not much happens in episode one, of course. It’s a five-parter so it’s taking its time with the set up and we get lots of nice character work. I’ve never been crazy about the screen portrayal of Miss Hawthorne compared to how I imagined her in the book but the BBC types are a great piece of mild self-satire and the Hoggart-esque archaeologist is wonderful too. And for once I think the constant presence of the Master works. The appeal of him in this episode is not that he appears but that he’s having to play at being the trendy vicar.
All nicely set up and a great little script. A bit of a lacklustre cliffhanger though and Bok looks rather rubbish to modern eyes.
7 March 2015 at 23:07 #38596@lisa — I’ve only now just realised that you’ve posted this Chabon piece. Thanks for that. Very interesting indeed.
@craig, @scaryb @ anyone else interested in Scottish literature — there’s a great little documentary about the mighty William McIlvanney available on iPlayer at the moment. It’s well worth checking out. Left me feeling a bit teary but the guy’s always been something of a hero of mine.
5 March 2015 at 17:11 #38515@craig and @fatmaninabox — Got one too. And here was I thinking we had something special between us….
5 March 2015 at 09:05 #38508@purofilion —
No need to apologise. I love me some Buffy chat.
But am I to take it that Angel isn’t floating your boat?
4 March 2015 at 11:42 #38499On the whole Broadchurch debate, it’s probably only fair to point out Chris Chibnall’s defence of the legal scenes on the Graun here.
Personally, the first thing I’d have said to him would be to rewrite the hysterical, overheated intro. And the fact that he doesn’t know the difference between ‘alternate’ and ‘alternative’ doesn’t exactly inspire confidence either.
Nor does his argument particularly convince, boiling down to ‘artistic licence, so there’.
4 March 2015 at 00:27 #38490@purofilion — yes, they’re fine episodes. Which is why s3 always wins the best Buffy season prize for me. Oz was great and I believe the plan was to have brought him back for s6 of Angel had it actually come about.
I love Band Candy. It’s definitely one of my favourite episodes. Great script and it’s always great when Armin Shimmerman gets something to work with and this was his best episode as Snyder, I think. And I do like the Ethan Rayne episodes. I think it’s a shame that they allowed the Ethan/Ripper thread to slip away as I always enjoyed it and thought it had great potential. As I’ve said before, a more interesting thread for Giles in s4 might have been a more prolonged return of Ethan and him Giles being so directionless that he comes under Ethan’s spell again. A kind of mid-life crisis with magic. And Kristine Sutherland should receive kudos for her work with ASH in the ep. They truly are the delinquent teens from hell.
Helpless too is wonderful. It’s the first indication, I think, that we get that the Watchers’ Council is not all fluffy and nice and well-meaning and Harris Yulin as Quentin is great. Plus it has the great Jeff Kober as Kralig who for my money is one of the most memorable of the Buffy vamps and sells unrepentant evil far better than David Boreanaz does as Angelus (in Buffy anyway). Rack in s5 was not the most subtle character but I forgive him a lot because he’s being played with maximum cool by Kober.
I was reminded a lot of just how great an episode Helpless is when I was watching the s4 Angel episode Spin The Bottle, which is basically Helpless crossed with Tabula Rasa, with an Angel riff added. It’s one to look forward to.
3 March 2015 at 19:58 #38481@ichabod — hmm, that’s interesting. Will need to take a more detailed look when I’ve got a moment. But it looks and sounds suspiciously like privatisation by the back door to me….
3 March 2015 at 15:50 #38478Just to say that I’ve created a new General TV Shows topic here as this one was reaching its limit.
3 March 2015 at 15:40 #38473@bluepipsqueak, @purofilion, @ichabod et al —
Just to add that it’s worth checking out Tennant in Taking Over The Asylum and probably Single Father too for a full appreciation of just what he’s capable of on TV when he’s firing on all cylinders.
2 March 2015 at 23:09 #38465@purofilion and @ichabod–
Must admit I found Tennant’s Hamlet a bit underwhelming when I saw the televised version but I’m sure it had real power on the stage. With regards to his Doctor, I loved it at the time but find it a bit mannered and one-dimensional these days compared to Smith’s portrayal.
However, I did think both he and Colman did incredible work on Broadchurch — which I realise it now looks like I had major problems with when I really didn’t and did quite enjoy. S1 anyway and I’m now definitely going to have to watch the remainder of s2, so have no doubt I could well be tucking into some humble pie at some point in the future.
2 March 2015 at 19:29 #38460@ichabod and @bluesqueakpip–
It’s certainly interesting how much of a reaction the L word has prompted. But personally I think I’d still prefer it to ‘incompetent’ which would seem to be the alternative in the particular context of Chibnall and Broadchurch.
I don’t dispute Pip’s general points or that it can be used incorrectly or as an, erm, lazy label in other contexts.
However:
I can only speak to this from the acting side: the motto of the performing arts is very often ‘I don’t want it brilliant, I want it Tuesday.’
In general, I agree, I think. But I don’t think it applies here. There’s been two years between BC1 and BC2, so it’s not that Chibnall has been racing against unreasonable deadlines. For context, Steven Moffat is producing more episodes of Who in half that time-frame — a show that is logistically more complex than Broadchurch. And most American showrunners are producing even longer runs, albeit under a slightly different system.
And perhaps a more apt and telling comparison might be with Line of Duty. Both shows are in similar genres, with similar levels of narrative complexity (although I’d be tempted to argue that LoD is slightly more involved than BC). LoD has slightly fewer episodes per season but there is a similar gap in time between both the first and second series and there’s no dodgy narrative developments that require some kind special pleading. And I think that’s largely down to the fact that Jed Mercurio is just a far, far better writer than Chibnall and takes the time to make sure his scripts are relatively sound.
A lot of viewers can throw ‘lazy’ around because – while they know about deadlines – they don’t always know in their gut how an absolute deadline is going to affect the writer
At the end of the day, writing is a job. You sign a contract and you deliver a script (or a book or whatever) to the best of your ability. If you think you’re not going to meet a deadline, or that a deadline is going to ‘affect’ you in some way, then you don’t sign the contract. Writers make bad calls, produce lousy plot points, poor characterisation etc. Especially if they’re working on a serious clock — a writer producing an episode of say Emmerdale or Enders has days to produce it, a week maybe, but they’re also working off a beat sheet supplied by storyliners/script editors. It’s probably forgivable if they slip up (although if they do chances are they won’t be given any more work basically). But they should still produce the absolutely best work they can. Same as anyone in any job.
But as Pip said, Chibnall is hardly a novice at this game anymore. And he was working on what is one of ITV’s big flagship shows, not on a mid-series filler of a run of Law and Order, where he might get away with playing fast and loose with the narrative.. The spotlight was definitely on him — and on ITV/Kudos/etc. He didn’t have the luxury of making mistakes like those in the courtroom sequences. Nor did he have the luxury of ignoring them and hoping for the best, as I agree it’s unlikely that he didn’t realise they were there. What we’re talking about here is not Chibnall taking his show in a direction that I personally didn’t agree with. That would have been fine. You can’t please all the people and all that. What it is about is him not paying enough attention to the fundamentals of his craft. Or worse, not caring about them.
But I don’t think he was up against any greater pressures than any other writer creating a second series — Mercurio, Abi Morgan etc — all faced similar pressures and they managed to produce quality work. Whether or not it was exactly what people wanted to see is a moot point but I don’t think overall anyone could take exception to the standard of what they wrote. I’m not convinced you could say the same of Chibnall. He might well have had problems with his scripts, he might have felt under pressure but I don’t think the ‘he didn’t have enough time’ defence is going to wash. It’s got something a bit ‘please sir, the dog ate my homework’ about it….
OK, I didn’t mean that to be quite as long or quite as ranty. Apologies and thanks for reading if you got to the end of it. I’ll get off me soap box now….
2 March 2015 at 12:10 #38453It is not surprising however that McGovern would choose to dip into history in order to be able to express political ideas. History like Sci fi and fantasy can present controversial ideas by default.
True, but it can also take the sting out of them. People can turn around and say ‘yes, that was awful, but it was a long time ago and we’ve moved on’. It might not be true, but it does give them a ‘get out of jail free’ card in a way that say a drama about a foodbank wouldn’t. This, I suspect, is why the schedules are choc full of things like Call the Midwife, Peaky Blinders etc. Nice and safe and not upsetting anyone in power — say, anyone who might decide that the licence fee is past its sell-by date.
I’m not convinced that McGovern wouldn’t prefer to be writing something more current, but bearing in mind that his last project got buried in the daytime slot, I do suspect he’s going down the historical route because he realises it’s the only way he’s going to get something on prime-time in the current cultural climate.
Having said that, it’s going to be interesting to see him tackle something like this and I’m sure he’ll bring a hard edge to it. Am I the only one who would be interested in seeing just what he would do with an episode of Who?
2 March 2015 at 10:49 #38451The US model was producer-led TV (and the producer might or might not be a writer). British TV series often did come directly from a writer’s pitch, and the writer would then write the entire series.
Absolutely. And this really only worked in the UK with series that had a run of six or seven episodes. Now runs are longer (as a general rule, there are exceptions both now and back in the day) and more of the writing work is spread out. Another issue is that the process originates much more from the commissioning editor these days, rather than the writer coming into pitch (although that still does happen). A lot of the shows we see at the moment have been commissioned based on an observation of the market, rather than a writer coming in with a vision and a story she wants to tell. Thus The Hour is the Beeb wanting something a bit Mad Men-ey, Peaky Blinders, a bit Boardwalk Empire-ey. I’ve no doubt within one or two years we’ll see a couple of series that are a bit like British versions of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad.
The problem with this is that the genuinely original voices/ideas have a much more uphill struggle. In The Flesh, The Fades and Ripper Street are all recent examples of shows that deserved a bit more nourishing than they actually received because of a management who are more comfortable backing what they feel are shows they can get a handle on because they can see other things out there like them. I always wonder just how would Dennis Potter fare on TV if he were just an emerging writer now. Would he even get a shot at anything? I suspect not.
But the writing is definitely the key. You still occasionally see the attitude (didn’t we have someone who briefly showed up here who had it?) that American TV equals poor quality. That stems from the days when it was dominated by producers who weren’t writers but businessmen/raconteurs. The Aaron Spellings, Donald Bellisarios and Quinn Martins of the world. It was only when the likes of Whedon, Chris Carter and later David Simon, David Chase, Aaron Sorkin, Alan Ball etc gained that sort of commissioning power that we saw the emergence of the current ‘golden age’ of US TV drama. (This is all a tad simplistic and doesn’t take account of the intermediate influence the likes of Stephen Cannell and Steve Bochco also had, so apologies for that).
The true irony here, I suppose, is that as the UK becomes mired in TV drama commissioning being increasingly beholden to a non-writer layer of executive management and is stagnating as a result, the US has been freeing itself from those constraints and is flourishing as a result. The other problem with regards to the ‘room to fail’ problem mentioned by @scaryb above is that there are just not enough TV shows being made in the UK at the moment to allow emerging writers to cut their teeth, learn by their mistakes and so on. Even 10 years ago, there were many more soaps and continuing dramas that would allow new writers in — from the Royal to The Bill to all kinds of little one-offs. Time was when the likes of Doctors would happily give new writers a try-out, now that’s as ring-fenced for established agented writers as flagships like EastEnders are.
The loss of production in the regions is another problem. Until the mid to late 80s — when the more or less, erm, heavily coerced outsourcing to independent prodcos kicked in — regional TV networks all had their drama output which meant a) jobs for writers b) a larger and more diverse cultural portfolio of drama output than we get now.
@scaryb — McGovern’s new series Banished is about to hit the screens. It’s an odd one — set around the transportation of cons to Australia in the 18th century. And it will be interesting to see him tackle something not based around gritty social realism. (Although part of me wonders if that is just him rolling with the prevailing trends at a currently incredibly politically supine BBC. I find it fascinating that given the times we’re living in, you find almost nothing set in the present day that isn’t a crime or relationships drama. Certainly nothing that has the slightest whiff of social comment about it. And I can’t believe there aren’t writers out there who wouldn’t jump at the chance to tackle this kind of subject matter.
2 March 2015 at 01:32 #38444@pedant — I’m not sure with regards to the BC production teams. But I suspect ITV were so wowed by having such a surprise hit that they just let Chibnall have his lead with no one there to rein him in. A quick look on IMDB seems to suggest that BC1 has script editors/supervisors but that there are no similar roles on BC2. But then again IMDB is not exactly the most reliable source.
It seems that part of the problem that shows like Who and Broadchurch are stuck in this halfway house between the old British method of production of producer>script editor>writer being replaced by the US showrunner model, while not understanding the importance and necessity of the writers’ room and the checks and balances that a core of staff writers and execs have on the showrunner himself. (Whedon again being a good case in point. While the man’s undoubtedly talented, the input of Noxon/Espenson/Greenwalt/Fury/Minear, hell, even Petrie, can in no way be discounted.) And a US writers’ room seems to be a merciless sort of place and in the good ones anyway no one is untouchable. Don’t know if you’ve read it but Inside the Writers’ Room by Christina Kallas is an interesting read on this and has contributions by Espenson.
So we have showrunners but not the institutional mechanism that ensures quality control. It’s interesting that Moffat insists he still gets notes but you have to wonder how seriously he actually has to take them — bearing in mind the amount of producers he goes through. I suspect that for BC2 no one was giving Chibnall notes at all, or at least not on the finer points of dramatic structure.
1 March 2015 at 23:37 #38432If you ask me, I think the Whovian equivalent to the courtroom procedural problem is the Baby Moon Dragon.
Very true. To be honest, I wasn’t clasping my brow in outrage at the courtroom stuff but it did jolt me out of the action enough that the show ceased to be appointment viewing for me. I think the main problem was that it was unnecessary and disappointing. Chibnall is, as you say, a veteran by this stage and has a veritable track record in crime procedurals. He must have known he was flying by the seat of his pants in BC2 and to not be bothered to sit down and tweak the story to fix that seems to me cavalier and disrespectful to the audience. Old school script editors of the Bob Holmes variety would have made sure something like this would have been addressed, I suspect.
1 March 2015 at 23:28 #38431@purofilion — let’s not forget that Angel also tried ignore his soul and ‘stay evil’ and with Darla in Angel s2 before he was forced to confront his new state. Also the situation of Spike’s ensoulment is somewhat different. It’s a reward rather than a punishment. Whether it’s a deserved reward is open to question. But that’s undoubtedly going to affect how they perceive their new state.
It’s probably also worth pointing out the nature of Spike’s ensoulment and how he feels about it is one of the themes of Angel s5, especially in comparison to Angel.
@ichabod — I’m standing by calling Chibnall lazy but it’s not in the sense of not putting in the work hours. He’s been a very prolific writer and is probably one of the more high-profile writers in UK TV drama and you don’t get that by any other way than many, many hours pounding the laptop. But I’d argue he doesn’t put the work into his structure, or perhaps his pacing might be a better word. He’s in too much of a hurry to get to the punchline, lets his excitement with the big set pieces get the better of him. Most of his Who and Torchwood episodes are overloaded at the back end with the foundations cursory and elided. I find it hard to believe he doesn’t realise this and get the impression that he’s just hoping to blag it a lot of the the time. Thus we get badly conceived courtroom scenes that he in all likelihood knew needed a bit more work but which were steamrollered through anyway. I call that lazy.
I think the main flaw with BC2 is that he didn’t have as firm a handle on what he wanted to say compared to the first series.
1 March 2015 at 13:00 #38416Daemons definitely says I.
1 March 2015 at 12:59 #38415@pedant– As someone who can quite reasonably be accused of occasional snippiness, can I just say, abrasive much? Not sure there’s a need for quite that level of ‘tude. @bluesqueakpip does, after all, have a reasonable point to make and makes it well, and doesn’t really deserve that kind of snark.
RE. Broadchurch, I think I’m kind of in the middle in my attitude towards it. I found the first series on reflection good but not great. It was a nice, compulsive bit of telly but still a million miles away from the quality that La Plante or McGovern would have brought to the same material. I think part of the kicking that Broadchurch 2 got was partly a retroactive realisation of that.
I agree with @bluesqueakpip that absolute verisimilitude in courtroom scenes is not necessary and it’s perfectly acceptable to play a bit fast and loose with legal procedure in the service of the plot. But it still has to maintain the appearance of verisimilitude at least. If we’re torn out of the drama by ‘yes, buts’ and ‘hey, wait a minutes’ then it’s failed as drama. Things like should the pilot have been in a Lancaster or a Halifax are mere nitpicking and pedantry and can be overlooked by any sane person. But if he’d been flying a, say, Sopwith Camel then we’d quite rightly have to take issue with it. And like @pedant I found the handling of the courtroom stuff in BC2 far too sloppy and very much the epitome of bad writing. And in an age when really not nearly enough TV drama is being made in the UK, there’s no really no excuse for this kind of amateur behaviour.
Not that Chibnall has an excuse anyway. He worked long enough on Law and Order that he really should know this stuff. It seemed to me that he did and just crossed his fingers and hoped he’d get away with it. It’s not that he’s a bad writer. He’s good at certain things, such as dialogue certain aspects of character. But he is limited. And worse, he is lazy. His work on Who and Torchwood exposes it the most. He wants the big pay-offs, the ‘hey that’s really cool’ moments but he doesn’t put the groundwork in that makes those moments. (This Buffy talk of the moment is actually handy, as Whedon is the textbook example of someone who gets this, will always put in the work, even if it takes years sometimes and knowing that it will then have the power to tear your heart out.)
Chibnall doesn’t understand this. He probably watches the work of the likes of Whedon, Chase, Gilligan etc and wants to emulate it but he can’t be arsed putting in the graft. He just wants to cut to the chase, get to the cool stuff. And he short-fuses the emotion as a result. It’s a bit like being expected to shed tears for a hard-luck story you’ve just heard from some stranger in a bar.
I get the feeling that BC2 suffers a bit from Matrix syndrome in any case, with it being a sequel where there wasn’t really any good narrative reason for one. BC1 was a nice little series and a pleasant surprise, if for no other reason than Chibnall managed to remain consistent throughout. But it really didn’t need a follow-up. It was always going to be that bit too phoney and contrived to really work. If leaving loose ends is a dramatic no-no, then how much worse is unravelling previously tied ends just to satisfy the suits who want to milk a surprise hit?
However, based on @scaryb‘s review above, I think I’m going to give it another go.
28 February 2015 at 10:23 #38353@pedant–
And also Kennedy was exactly the sort of forceful character that would bring Willow out of her shell. Disappointing that he didn’t have the courage of his convictions. Sometimes fans are idiots and need to be told that.
Or they could, in fact, have a point. I agree that a forceful character was what was needed but Kennedy wasn’t it. Willow’s post-Tara lover is ultimately going to suffer a little from the Riley Effect and fan sensitivities should definitely have been put to one side — especially after the lessons learned in the handling of Riley but Kennedy just didn’t work.
And largely down to the casting, I’d say. Iyari Limon’s Kennedy was brash and cocky, petulant and spoiled, without being remotely likeable. And when she was playing at being drill sergeant descended into risible. You only have to look at what Eliza Dushku did with Faith to see that you can play a part like this without coming across as a one-dimensional brat. Have to agree with @purofilion that the main problem was just an absolute lack of chemistry between Limon and Hannigan.
This is the problem with Campbell’s Hero’s Journey – it misses the point: it isn’t about the hero, but the impact they have.
I think it’s about both really. I’m not really sure you can divorce one from the other. I think Vogler’s reinterpretation of Campbell is much more useful in that context. I’m also not sure the extreme, stultifying linearity of Campbell’s Journey is all that applicable to TV, compared to cinema. Pam Douglas’s book on writing for TV is good on this, arguing that while film narratives progress exclusively on a horizontal axis (the traditional from inciting incident to climax and resolution model), TV narratives progress on a vertical axis too, from episode to episode and season to season. Buffy is pretty much the perfect example of that in action.
that beautiful sequence of young women taking that power on, without understanding it but knowing that its theirs, and standing up, literally or figuratively… Lord, that moves me so much
Agree. It’s not that s7 is a bad season. It’s just that the writers made some bad choices and I am always slightly aware of a vibe of ennui going through the whole thing. But the finale delivers big time. I’m not overly in love with the whole Lord of the Ringsey-ness of it but something epic was obviously needed — especially as the previous outpourings from the Hellmouth look a bit ropey to modern eyes. But what it did deliver on was it provided a resolution to the themes/questions raised right back in Welcome to the Hellmouth. It’s a spine-tingling moment that redeems whatever weaknesses the season overall had because it’s not just a powerful, affirming statement to make but because it’s also a moment of incredible narrative power. This is Buffy ultimately triumphing over the Watchers’ Council, Prophecy, the whole patriarchal edifice that has dictated her life since she was called as a Slayer.
27 February 2015 at 11:43 #38335@scaryb — the remastered version of That Sinking Feeling is definitely worth picking up. Just got it in Fopp for £9. Both DVD and Blu-Ray included and has a shedload of excellent features with it too.
27 February 2015 at 09:13 #38334@thekrynoidman — I’d say the three Forsyth films to watch are:
Gregory’s Girl. A brilliant, warm little film about adolescence, growing up and the essential absurdity of school. Very true and very funny.
Comfort & Joy. For me, Forsyth’s best film. Starring the mighty Bill Paterson as a radio DJ whose life and career goes on the slide at Christmas time while simultaneously getting caught up in the infamous Glasgow ice-cream wars.
Being Human. A big, sprawling shaggy dog of a film. Largely considered a failure but I think it qualifies as an interesting one. Robin Williams plays an ordinary man in love reborn through multiple points in history, starting as a caveman and ending in the present day.
26 February 2015 at 23:10 #38328@scaryb — ah yes, That Sinking Feeling. Also a great little movie. I’d say stronger for script than direction as Forsyth seemed to be still to find his confidence in terms of directing actors (who are really great and more than a few of them find their way into Gregory’s Girl, I seem to remember.
I love Forsyth so much because, like Cassavetes, he showed that if you truly want to get out there and make a movie and have people see it then there are always going to be ways to make that happen. You’ve just got to get out there and do it. And that’s even more true today than it was for those guys because the obstacles they faced were greater.
25 February 2015 at 23:45 #38308@purofilion — not aware of there being an actual commentary for Seeing Red — it’s not on my boxset anyway. It’s possible that it was a region 1-only feature, or it could be an Easter Egg, I suppose. Maybe Mr P might know.
However, I have read a few interviews with Marsters where he’s talked about how difficult he found that scene and that he didn’t enjoy even seeing the snatches of it in the pre-episode re-caps. Pretty sure they’re on the interwebs. Certainly there’s snippets of said interviews on Marsters’s IMDB page.
25 February 2015 at 22:42 #38303@purofilion — on Firefly. It probably holds the distinction of being the only show I’m aware of that had its pilot aired last — no, seriously. Studios didn’t like the first pilot — which is actually awesome and asked for a second one — hence when you watch you’ll get a weird feeling of deja vu in the second episode. There then follow another 10 episodes that are consistently great before the series got canned in the sweeps. It’s the most mismanaged by the suits show ever.
That would have been that if it hadn’t been for the interwebs, massive fan reaction and enormous DVD sales which led to Joss getting to make a cinema-release finale — Serenity. Personally I think Serenity (also the title of the pilot btw) pales in comparison to the TV series but is still kinda fun. Just make sure you watch it after you’ve watched the series. Or confusion will ensue.
25 February 2015 at 22:20 #38300@purofilion–
Anyway how can Spike come back. He’s dead. He can’t be a ghost! That’s mad.
And yet…
Spoilers are tricky but will do our best for you to remain unspoiled as much as poss for the remainder of Angel. It’s made trickier because you’ll have heard hints, been able to deduce things, from the later seasons of Buffy. But I think of that as tantalisations rather than spoilers.
You’ve probably realised by now that Darla is pivotal in Angel-lore. And in Buffy too for that matter. She is, after all, the very first vamp we see. And Julie Benz did audition for the part of Buffy. In another lifetime, it might have been her we’d have been following around Sunnydale for all these episodes. Kind of appropriate too when you consider the amount of comparing we’re asked to do here of Buffy to Darla.
Yes, I thought Fillion was great as Caleb. It’s kind of a shock to the system though if you’ve first seen him in Firefly, where he’s all noble and heroic (and often very funny) to see him in Buffy where he’s all chilling and misogynistic and clearly channelling Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. The whole series is only 13 episodes long – an unrivalled act of studio idiocy – but I’d say it ranks up there as one of the best things Joss has ever done. And it has the lightness of touch I think you felt might have been lacking from the later seasons of Buffiverse shows.
In Angel, you must be on to Guise Will Be Guise. A real favourite of mine – in which Alexis Denisof really gets to show off his comedic muscles. Plus it has some great lines.
25 February 2015 at 13:17 #38295@purofilion –Yes, it’s a bloody good finale, which really does justice to the whole show (although to be honest, I can think of season finales that I find slightly more satisfying). Lots of great moments though. I liked that it ended in the Hellmouth. It had to really though, didn’t it?
Caleb was played by the mighty Nathan Fillion, a refugee from the implosion of Firefly, other cast members find their way onto Angel at around the same time. But I think he really helped give the end of the season a lift. If you haven’t seen Firefly — and I would heartily recommend it — you’ve probably seen him in Castle.
Sounds like you’ve been slightly spoiled for Angel s5, so it won’t shock you to learn that a certain Buffiverse character joins the show in a way that kind of devalues his noble sacrifice in the finale. But also gives a nice, erm, soulful vibe to the season. Of all the seasons of Angel, s5 is the most Buffy-like I think. And it has a kick-ass finale, which I think I actually prefer over the Buffy one.
Now, let’s talk Darla…. 😉
24 February 2015 at 14:17 #38261@pedant — to be quite honest, if I was stuck in a house with the Potentials, I’d be telling the First the best way to take the annoying little feckers out myself. Kennedy, in particular, is more than deserving of a painful and gruesome death.
With Giles, I think he’s far more ambivalent about the Council than anything else — his priority was always with Buffy. I think The Gift might have represented a slight change in that attitude though. But I take your point. The guy’s got a lot on — and I don’t just mean that hideous corduroy jacket.
As to fear, distrust and dissent … I think Buffy’s bringing a lot of that on herself, with or without Spike. I’m often struck when I watch this season how much Buffy actually reminds me of her Wish-universe version from s3. Whether she was being ditzy, misguided or just plain wrong in previous seasons, she was still someone to root for. I find in s7 I increasingly just don’t like her that much anymore.
24 February 2015 at 13:37 #38259@pedant–
All that needed to happen was for a Potential to absent-mindedly tune to Hokey Ditties FM and it would have been slaughter
It’s pretty clear at the end of Lies that the trigger was no longer effective. Spike had worked through his, erm, Oedipal issues and free of the First’s influence. Buffy makes many, many crappy decisions but not sure this is one of them. The Potentials would have been quite safe.
My main problem at the moment is that Giles’s actions bear little relation to the Giles of the previous season. It’s hard-nosed and quite Watcher-ey of him — so maybe he’s learning to be a proper Watcher again after killing Ben in s5, but to me it feels more like Wesley than it does Giles.
But yeah, Spike is definitely starting to dominate far too much. Fortunately for the coming episodes, I think the writers are starting to realise that and get him out of the way a bit more. The Spuffy arc was fun and interesting in s5-6 but after Beneath Me it was basically done. But it just continued to hang around like yesterday’s kippers and distract from everything else.
24 February 2015 at 11:36 #38253@purofilion — it’s the silly name that always gets me with Robin and I feel he’s just not quite as badass and driven enough. Avery Brooks would have brought more to the party, I think. But he’s still quite a cool character.
I know old K-Stew (as I believe the young people call her) gets a lot of stick and she certainly ain’t Meryl Streep but again I can’t help but quite like her. And I thought she was alright in On The Road. Stake me now.
24 February 2015 at 10:25 #38248@purofilion — well, personally, I quite like Storyteller. It’s the genuinely funny episode for me, compared to the trying-too-hard-ness of Him. Andrew is a spineless coward with zero moral-fibre but I find I can’t help but like him and think he’s quite good in this episode. Plus I love Anya’s ‘why can’t you just masturbate in there like everyone else?’ line
And you should definitely tune into Robin Wood’s showdown with Spike (Lies My Mother Told Me). If for nothing else to see Spike’s arc approach (but not arrive at) its conclusion. And how could you resist a tale of the vam-py-res?
I too enjoyed The Killer In Me — despite of the supremely irritating presence that is Kennedy. Amy continues to be great — conflicted, petty and definitely veering towards Evil. If you ask me, she should have been the Big Bad of this season. A Big Bad that the Scoobies have to take a lot of the blame for creating themselves.
The arc in general picks up by miles by the time you get to Dirty Girls because of a couple of welcome and much-needed additions to the mix.
23 February 2015 at 20:32 #38246@purofilion — believe me, I share the s7 ambivalence but stick with it as there’s some really cool stuff in there too. And it is a worthy finale. One of the things that has irked me about s7 is the excessive speechifying that each episode tends to have. That and the Potentials. For me, the Potentials strike me as a good idea on paper but actually prove to be incredibly irritating in execution.
It’s been interesting watching s6 and s7 in tandem with Angel s2-3 because by the end, for me it’s no longer the case that Angel is the lesser show, so to speak.
And if you’re a fan of comics, Buffy s8 (and s9 actually) have all kinds of cool in them.
23 February 2015 at 14:15 #38241@purofilion — Yes, Michelle Trachtenberg does grate. But having said that if you think she’s bad, wait till you meet a certain character in future seasons of Angel and you may look fondly back on Dawn. And to be fair, I think it’s the part she’s given to a large extent. She had a brief role in a few episodes of Six Feet Under and I seem to recall her being pretty good (although she was playing a spoilt, bratty prima donna. Hmm, typecast much?)
I really don’t have the love for s7 that others here seem to and I rank it as my second least favourite season after s4. It’s not that it’s bad as such — it has some great episodes and the rest are mostly at the higher end of decent but it also has some kind of crappy, stillborn concepts in it and an arc that is just repetitive and treads water for rather a lot of the time. But it does pull back to the core theme of the whole series and gets to do it justice.
But to me it’s painfully clear as the season progresses that it just didn’t have another year in it. Not on TV anyway, as s8 is reinvigorated by being in the comic medium and using that to it’s full, erm, potential.
But s7 is redolent with character arcs that are finished or about-to-be finished. Spike’s arc has one last great episode left to resolve it — and you can see the writers trying to drag it out as much as possible to please the Spuffers. Giles just has nothing at all left to do and his presence is largely embarrassingly superfluous, I think. After Selfless — an amazing Buffy debut by Goddard and it was so clear that that guy was going to be Big — Anya didn’t really have anywhere left to go either. There’s a great many once-pivotal characters who are just really hanging about until we get to the finale.
I don’t mean to be too down on it though. Some of the early episodes are as good as anything the series produced — and there’s more to come. And the finale is a more or less fitting end to the series as a whole. I just get a whole slightly tired, ‘we’re running out of ideas’ vibe to the whole thing though.
@pedant–
Him isn’t the best episode, but it is a fun tribute to early Buffy.
Agreed but I’m not sure it really works. It just doesn’t have the effortless funniness of early Buffy. It’s too arch and self-consciously ‘look at us. We’re doing a funny one’. Not that they can’t do funny anymore. There’s an episode coming up later where it’s done really well, but there’s just something clumsy and a teensy bit desperate about Him, I think.
23 February 2015 at 00:02 #38212@purofilion — yes, that scene in the church never fails to move me. Probably James Marsters’s best work right there. And the flesh-eating creature is really, really creepy. I quite like the return to Sunnydale High but found myself thinking the kids were being too molly-coddled by that wussy new principal. Snyder would have sorted them out pronto. He certainly would have had any need for hiring student counsellors.
RE. Angel. Yes, indeed, s2’s Darla arc is just ace, in my opinion. And does it make me a bad person to think that Lindsey getting his hand cut off by Angel is one of the coolest things ever?
22 February 2015 at 23:06 #38207@craig — that’s an excellent little docu. Bill Forsyth a big hero of mine. (Apart from Gregory and His 2 Girls, that is) I even think Being Human is an interesting failure and not as awful is it’s usually made out to be. Saw him gave a talk before a showing of said film at the GFT and it was really interesting.
And Henry Winkler would have been all wrong for Mac. Peter Riegert was just great, I think.
@barbaralefty — Yes, the basic plot is essentially the same as Greenvoe, isn’t it. Without all the paganism and relentless Orcadian bleakness. I do definitely think there’s something of Powell/Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going in there too though. The essential message is the same and the portrayal of the women — especially Stella — is very similar.
22 February 2015 at 00:34 #38186It’s a great film, and the mighty Fulton Mackay (a once upon a time serious contender to be the fourth Doctor, which would have made him the first Scottish one) steals the show for me. But there’s not a bad performance here and Bill Forsyth delivers a charming script and visualises it perfectly. It looks amazing — mostly filmed in Pennan, in Aberdeenshire. The phone box was originally a prop but because of popular demand, a real one was installed a few years later. (Thus giving local journalists something to write about at inordinate and tedious length for years to come.)
And yet, despite it being probably his best known film, I’d have to say it’s not my favourite Forsyth film. I think Gregory’s Girl has a sharper, more acutely observed script, and I prefer Comfort & Joy overall. Local Hero tends to have one eye too fixed on the international markets for my liking, its portrayal of Scotland just a bit too on the cutesey, picture postcard-ey side. As a movie, it’s a close relative of Whisky Galore and Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going.
On the plus side, it manages the amazing feat of making Mark Knopfler’s guitar strummings remotely bearable.
On Capaldi, he doesn’t really have a whole lot to do — just gangle about and be fecklessly in love (anyone think there is something remotely eleventh Doctor-ish about him in this movie?) But he’s definitely got charm and a significant screen presence. You can see the potential there for the future, even if he doesn’t exactly set this film alight.
22 February 2015 at 00:12 #38185@pedant–
best of luck with the move. Hope it all goes as smoothly as possible…
21 February 2015 at 16:18 #38165@purofilion — rather like Buffy, I don’t think Angel really found itself completely as a series until its s1 finale. Certainly not until Wolfram & Hart truly step up to the plate as the big villains of the show. Until then they’re just slowly making their presence felt, I think. But then it definitely starts asking some hard questions — about what makes a demon, what it actually means to have a soul, is redemption even possible, and is that the whole point anyway etc. But I think it only truly begins to hit the ground running from s2 onwards.
Firefly is definitely worth a watch at some point. Criminally short-lived — and that’s a whole other story — it’s Joss’s last big highpoint and frankly doesn’t have a bad episode within it. Maybe the gap between seasons 9 and 10 should be spent with a Firefly/Dollshouse retrospective.
And there is indeed a Joss hate club. As is inevitable. A common criticism is that his characters don’t speak like real people and it detracts from the realism. Which in shows about vampires, space cowboys etc gets a big ‘duuuh’ from me.
20 February 2015 at 12:12 #38142@bluesqueakpip — post duly moved. Sort of. Working on it.
20 February 2015 at 12:07 #38140@purofilion — There is a kind of an uncritically obsessed cult of adulation that’s built up around Joss over the years. The man has wicked skills but as with everything some people take it too far.
RE. Angel. Yes, Five by Five and Sanctuary are awesome episodes. And Wesley’s torture more harrowing than anything seen on the parent show (the obvious comparison being Angelus’s torture of Giles in s2 of Buffy). And Faith is seen to cut loose in a way we never really get to see in Buffy too.
They’re also good for comparing the now-close-to-being established differences between the two shows. In Buffy, Faith is an adversary to be defeated. They have a vague discussion about what they’re going to do with her after they find here — but don’t come remotely to any conclusions. They’re focused on the fight. But in Angel, the gang know exactly what to do with Faith. They have to save her, although Wesley and Cordelia do naturally become a lot more ambivalent about this after the beating and torture at Faith’s hands. But for Angel it least, it’s Buffy that’s the problem for them rather than Faith. And interestingly, despite having been Buffy’s Watcher (briefly), it’s Angel’s side that Wesley eventually chooses.
Yeah, the smacking down of Buffy by Angel is not something you’d ever have seen on the parent show either, I suspect. That and the verbal smackdown at the end of the episode are quite eye-opening, I think. They’re not just telling Buffy that Angel’s world doesn’t revolve around her anymore but it’s also putting viewers on notice that Angel is its own show and is not willing to remain in Buffy’s shadow.
But to be fair, Angel regrets what he says to her and immediately goes to Sunnydale to, er, kick the crap out of Riley.
20 February 2015 at 00:58 #38132Oh, and while I’m a bit wary of the whole cult of joss thing, here’s some Whedon-Tweetage….
20 February 2015 at 00:47 #38131@purofilion —
I’m near the end of S1 Angel (I know, bad, right?)
Not in the slightest. The rate at which you’ve been caning the Buffies has been quite prodigious. And I’m sure you’ll dig the Angels in the same way. But you’ll definitely be seeing lots more flashbacks to the life and times of Angelus throughout the series. The godawful Irish accent may even grow on you in time.
I’m not sure why they went for another Flutie. Possibly a scheduling thing. The guy in the pilot is fun but I think I prefer the replacement version who had a nice passive-aggressive hopelessness to him. But the character didn’t have too many places to go and my heart will always belong to Snyder.
Your English teacher sounds, er, interesting. Can’t say I ever had a lesson that sounded quite as diverting as that. (And Ozymandias is indeed a sonnet by Shelley.)
19 February 2015 at 18:35 #38121@bluesqueakpip — my unreserved apologies. Snippiness absolutely not intentional.
I’ve seen the William/Liam link made before. Quite like that ‘lack of will’ idea. The connection between the two characters is definitely marked. (Although they did have to ret-con it majorly. Whatever happened to ‘you were my sire, man. You were my Yoda.’)
Never known anyone to choose s7 as their favourite. Will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it once it won’t be spoilery.
19 February 2015 at 17:54 #38118@pedant — also very good. Unpleasant old crone and massive, massive hypocrite.
I did mention that I hate her, right?
19 February 2015 at 17:00 #38115@pedant — that’s very funny. Good find. Man, I hate Ayn Rand.
19 February 2015 at 11:23 #38107@bluesqueakpip — you also had a good point about William/Spike. There’s a clear relationship in personality and character there that doesn’t seem to be all that present between Angel/Angelus.
19 February 2015 at 10:55 #38106@bluesqueakpip — no worries. Hope I didn’t come across snippy. And it was my bad. I should have been clearer in my earlier posts and it’s a good point that was well worth making.
@purofilion — RE. Shelley. That’s probably a hangover from how the Victorians tried to rehabilitate him — focus on Ode to the West Wind and On A Skylark but at no cost expose the kids to Queen Mab or The Mask of Anarchy or The Cenci. And he got sent down from Oxford (in his first year I think) for publishing a pamphlet On The Necessity of Atheism. Or rather for refusing to disavow authorship of it when confronted.
And, yes, that is indeed Darla. Where are you at in Angel? Or are you still revisiting early Buffy? I thought the siring of Angel was seen in s2 of Buffy but I could be mistaken.
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