Is the second season of the hit Netflix sci-fi comedy Russian Dollheading the way of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes? Just check out the trailer below for the second season, arriving in only two weeks. The first season introduced chapter one in the story of Natasha Lyonne′s vulgar, angst-plagued New Yorker Nadia, an emotional, more accessible Jessica Jones, a superpowered heroine with a unique gift (like Deadpool 2’s Domino), the power of the do-over. But the trailer appears like Lyonne, as star, writer, director, and showrunner, is pulling out all the stops this time, taking the series to an incredibly realistic New York of the past. The time jump made the irreverent comedy a science fiction genre bender. It’s now getting a Stranger Things-esque retro fix that looks to be even more layered than its first season.
My name is Sam Tyler. I had an accident, and I woke up in 1973. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever’s happened, it’s like I’ve landed on a different planet.
First off, it’s really going to rile some people when you pronounce something the greatest ever. But we’re talking here about the British television series Life on Mars. And not just Life on Mars, but The Empire Strikes Back of television series, Ashes to Ashes. You can quibble with M*A*S*H or Law and Order or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Twilight Zone, or engage you people over there shouting Firefly and Supernatural and the others over there fighting over the best Star Trek series–but we’re talking about Life on Mars here. And if you’ve watched its two seasons in 2006 and 2007, or the three seasons of Ashes to Ashes from 2008 to 2010, then the news that another chapter of the series is in the works is the kind of happy news that can actually distract you from the real world right now.
Yet it’s true. Life on Mars co-creator Matthew Graham confirmed it all yesterday as part of a Twitter “watch-along” of the first episode of the genre-bending series for the UK audience. Graham first hinted at the possibility in a Tweet he posted Tuesday promoting the event, and he provided more details after the show. Just like over the past 15 years, Brits posted how much they loved the series, how they believe it to be the best series ever made. The series follows John Simm (Doctor Who, State of Play) as Sam Tyler, a British cop in 2006 who is working on a case when he is hit by a car. He awakens in the same police station 33 years earlier, in the year 1973. He knows he’s unstuck in time, but unsure how he got there. Is he in a coma? Did something supernatural take over? Is this what death is like? This is where the genre-bending begins. Until you’ve watched all five years of episodes, you won’t really know what is the true genre behind the genres hinted at in the series. Tyler befriends and shares his situation only with co-worker Annie Cartwright, played by Liz White(Doctor Who, The Woman in Black). He finds he is now working under the cantankerous Detective Police Inspector Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister(Cranford, Horatio Hornblower), one of my picks of the greatest characters of all time (seriously, I wrote about it here eight years ago). DCI Hunt becomes the centerpiece of this strange world, continuing past the second season of Life on Mars to co-star in the same role in Ashes to Ashes along with Keeley Hawes(Doctor Who, The Bank Job), a police officer named Alex Drake who is shot in 2008 and wakes up in 1981. Life on Mars continued with Ashes to Ashes much like The Closer continued with the series Major Crimes for U.S. audiences, swapping out the lead roles, but continuing with the rest of the cast. Here that included two other cops, played by Dean Andrews(Father Brown, Marchlands) and Marshall Lancaster(Doctor Who, Casualty) who appeared in all five seasons.
During yesterday’s watch-along, Graham peppered Twitter with glimpses at what lies ahead in what he called, The Final Chapter. Although he didn’t say if any actors had confirmed returning, it seems impossible anyone would make this announcement without buy-in from Glenister, Simm, Hawes, White, Andrews, and Lancaster. To that point he said, “we intend to get as many back (across both decades) as we can. So when you wonder who will be coming back for The Final Chapter – think Avengers Assemble!” He specifically referenced wanting Annie (Liz White) back, and Hunt’s boss DCI Litton. Graham mentioned the series will be set in Manchester and London, partially in the 1970s, partially in the 1980s, but mostly in an alternate now, all running for four or five episodes. “I’d like to tell you that in The Final Chapter there will be a TV show WITHIN our TV show. TYLER: MURDER DIVISION,” adding, “We would never make another Mars unless we really had something to say and could push the envelope all over again. Finally we have something.” While watching a classic scene in the first episode, co-creator Ashley Pharoah Tweeted, “I wonder if Phil and John could jump over that desk now? I guess we’ll find out”.
Cobie Smulders has enough street cred playing badass leads, including co-starring opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, serving as the most powerful non-superheroine of the Marvel movies as Maria Hill, and she’s the perfect Wonder Woman, although we only hear her voice as the character in The Lego Movie series. So why head back to television? Maybe after 200 episodes of being part of a hit ensemble cast on How I Met Your Mother, she wanted her own series? Whatever the reason, it’s a win for TV viewers. Her new project is Stumptown, and the first episode aired this week on ABC.
Smulders is promising as Dex Parios, an army vet with PTSD, who takes care of her brother and has a gambling problem. Happily for her, everyone, including the head of the gambling house, seems to be on her side. In her first case, she’s trying to locate the missing daughter of her deceased college boyfriend, in exchange for having a five-figure tab written off at the local Portland casino (yes, evidently Portland has had casinos since 1988). Initially she fails, but before she’s totally written off by everyone except her brother (played by the engaging Cole Sibus), the writers skillfully show viewers why she might be a character to return to each week. Dex is a fighter, while also a mess and a bit snarky, but hopefully that’s not all she is. Her old red Ford Mustang and its broken cassette tape deck that offers up the right song at the right time is a nice throwback to Philip Glenister and his red Audi Quattro on the classic detective series Ashes to Ashes.
Along with good writing in its opener, Stumptown boasts a supporting cast that brings plenty to the show. Jake Johnson(New Girl, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Jurassic World) as bartender pal Grey demonstrates again why he’s the best at playing the best friend. If you missed Michael Ealy as a great cop on Almost Human (or as Slap Jack in 2 Fast 2 Furious) you’ll appreciate him back with a badge on this series. Even better, it looks like Donal Logue(Gotham, Vikings, Life, Zodiac, Sneakers) will join the cast in next week’s episode. The only thing the series could benefit from is tapping all those local Portland actors like NBC’s Grimm did so well. Unfortunately, other than some establishing shots, it doesn’t look like the series will be filmed there.
Two episodes down and we at borg seem to be the only viewers utterly underwhelmed by BBC America’s hotly-anticipated new import, Broadchurch. Lured in by trailers featuring some of our genre favorites, including Jodie Whittaker (Attack the Block), David Tennant, and Arthur Darvill (both, Doctor Who), we eagerly cleared our schedule and tuned in, expecting the sort of dazzling drama that series like The Hour and Life on Mars have led us to expect from BBC. We won’t tell you what happened next (it makes borg.com reviewer Elizabeth C. Bunce seem soulless), and we won’t waste the bandwidth trying to shout over the accolades. Instead we’re putting our energy into giving other disappointed viewers what they really wanted from the eight-part series. Unfortunately for many American viewers, several of these shows have not yet made it to Region 1 (U.S.) DVD, but they are well worth tracking down.
If you tuned in to see…
Jodie Whittaker as a grieving mum, try Marchlands (reviewed earlier this year here at borg.com)
The luminous Jodie Whittaker gives a haunting, nuanced performance as a young mother trying to come to terms with the disappearance of her daughter, while stifled by life at her in-laws’ home and the judgement of local villagers. Also starring Denis Lawson (Bleak House, Star Wars) and Doctor Who’s own River Song, Alex Kingston (Arrow), Marchlands is a complex look at the lingering resonance of one family’s tragedy. Plus there are ghosts, which in borg.com’s opinion is always a bonus. (And if you love Marchlands then you’ll want to see the follow-on series Lightfields we also reviewed here).
David Tennant investigating a murder in an idyllic seaside village, check out Viva Blackpool (just Blackpool in the UK)
From the first scene of Orphan Black you can’t help getting reeled in. Although the pilot opens with a woman walking in front of a passenger train, the world of a street urchin instantly is propelled like a freight train into strange, new territory for fans of action and sci-fi. Not since last year’s pilot for NBC’s short-lived series Awake were we so quickly certain a series had to be added to the must-watch list. That’s saying something since there have been so many new series to try on this year, series like The Following, Cult, and even the more recent Bates Motel that have already started to stack up in the viewing backlog. With series like Lost Girl, Psych, Arrow, Continuum, Grimm, Dallas, New Girl, and now Doctor Who back from hiatus locked-in the must-see TV realm, Orphan Black is pretty much a late but welcome entry, especially to the sparse Saturday night line-up.
Orphan Black has a completely cool look–big city, edgy, dark places, with an equally cool lead in Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany. Maslany, who has a bit of the look of actress Summer Glau, plays a Brit who encounters what could be her twin at a train stop in New York City, but it’s all filmed in the not-quite-the-same looking streets of Ontario. The women look each other in the eye and this is so well filmed you don’t question that these are two separate people despite Maslany playing both roles. The pilot manages to take some extraordinary circumstances and render them believable, a rewarding feat successfully handled, due to good acting and a story that answers every question the audience could ask, and each question real people in these situations would ask.
Following on the heels of the successful Canada import Lost Girl, the Vancouver based sci-fi series Continuum premiered this year on the Syfy Channel in the U.S. and it easily earns the status of best new TV series of 2013. Like Lost Girl, the first season has already aired in Canada, and is being shown one season behind here, hopefully to catch up in the U.S. market later this year. The series has already been renewed in Canada, and Season 2 is being filmed on location in Vancouver, B.C. Tonight, episode four airs at 7 p.m. Central/8 p.m. Eastern on the Syfy Channel. You’ll want to set up your DVR for this series and if you’ve missed episodes 1-3 you can still catch them on primetime Free Per View.
Continuum stars Star Trek 2009, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and Conan the Barbarian’s Rachel Nichols as a British Columbia cop from the year 2077 named Kiera Cameron who gets transported back in time to 2012 where she tracks down a group of rebel terrorists who have come to the past with her. The terrorists, who go by the name Liber8, were sentenced to death and at their execution someone smuggled in a device that created a warp field that spun the convicts back in time and sucked in security officer Cameron. Like her cool and tough performance as Scarlet in the first G.I. Joe movie, Nichols is perfect as a no-nonsense cop, quick to act in a gunfight and several other situations she never could have trained for.
The producers of Continuum have created the most seemingly realistic future technology here along with a creepy possible future political structure where corporations have bailed out the defaulting government and eventually taken over all its functions, taking away individual liberties from citizens. The police force Cameron works for is in protection of this new world order, and the great twist of Continuum is having the terrorists’ ideal be a return to our political structure today. Continuum is the series many hoped the Battlestar Galactica spinoff Caprica would be, but in only three episodes Continuum has already surpassed that other Syfy Channel series in production quality and story.
Yesterday we started in on what makes a great character, and who and how we determine our favorites, mentioning dozens of favorites from different genres and different media. The challenge? Come up with your top 5 favorite fictional characters from anything. When I was finished selecting them, I was surprised what they all have in common: a desire to protect others and defend the good against the bad. I went through a ton of characters to whittle it down to five. Most of my favorites I see as having some trait I want for myself, or guys I want to be like. Along the way I carved away Boba Fett, the obscure but coolest of the “men with no name” anti-hero Western archetypes, and opted instead for another Star Wars character. I lost Steve McQueen’s too cool cop Lieutenant Frank Bullitt for another cop that made the list and had to cut the other coolest guy (other than The Fonz), the no-named drifter from They Live. I lost Thomas Magnum, the TV show private investigator, that, along with Batman, is up there at the top of my Sherlock Holmes influenced characters. I cut big life-long heroes like the Six Million Dollar Man, Luke Skywalker, Tron, and even the awesome A.A. Milne creation Eeyore. No room for Will Riker and Captain Dathon from Star Trek. I love Dana Andrews’ noir detective Mark McPherson in Otto Preminger’s Laura. Fred Gailey, who defended Santa Claus (successfully!) in court in Miracle on 34th Street, hung to the list almost to the end. A top 10 list would have been far easier!
After a lot of soul searching–and this is not an easy exercise (try it for yourself!)–here is where I finally ended up.
When we first meet Uncle Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi, played by Sir Alec Guinness in the original Star Wars, he was an old man. A miser living out beyond the Dune Sea. Luke thought he was long dead. Then he comes out of nowhere in the desert at just the right time to barely save our story’s hero. Ben doesn’t remember the droids he supposedly owned a few decades ago. Is he a bit absent minded? Has the desert gotten to him? Without Uncle Ben, Luke Skywalker would be dead, and he saves Luke’s life six times: first, from the Tusken Raiders in the desert, second, from an alien in the cantina’s hive of scum and villainy, third, from the Empire by getting Luke out of Mos Eisley, fourth, by releasing the Millenium Falcon in the Death Star, fifth, by guiding Luke from afar to destroy the Death Star in his X-Wing Fighter, and sixth, by keeping him alive after he is mugged by a snow beast on the frozen planet of Hoth. Kenobi was part samurai warrior, part medieval wizard, part mystic, a monk, a veteran of the last battle of the Jedi. And later we’d learn he was the reason Luke and his sister survived at all: he’d saved Luke as an infant by bringing him to the remote planet with twin suns. He doesn’t have much time to mentor Luke, but what he does counts for a lot. Kenobi proves nothing is more powerful than wisdom and experience. Ultimately he sacrifices everything to save the galaxy by using his knowledge of the force to convert into a spirit, the only time this ever happens in the original Star Wars trilogy, so he can assist Luke along the rest of his journey. Later on Ewan McGregor put a very nice spin on the character for the prequels, but the original played by Guinness can never be beaten and Guinness received the only acting nod from the Academy for all the great actors of the series.
DCI Gene Hunt was a cop, a cop played by actor Philip Glenister. A good cop that blurred some of the rules of British law enforcement, but who was a product of his times, which was 1973 in the BBC TV series Life on Mars, and 1982 in the series Ashes to Ashes. He is brash, rude, and mouthy. He is kind. He is crude and speaks in local colloquialisms that make non-natives have to rewind and view the closed captioning to understand what the heck he just said, and sometimes you still can’t tell. He protects his team. More than anything, this guy has angst. Yet he wants to help others. He wants to do the right thing. He believes in justice. He believes that sometimes a cop has to break the rules to get to the right result. To find the criminal. To protect the innocent. He’s willing to stop and help a woman having an emergency birth. He falls for a co-worker who herself is a mess and desperately lost. He tolerates his bizarre group of subordinates, as he prefers them to everyone else, and he’ll join them for a drink at any time of day. And he always drives a cool car. He’s like a British version of Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, but with more layers and a lot more problems. He becomes so involved in everyone else’s affairs that he ultimately forgets who he is. I have seen Philip Glenister in little else, and wonder whether I like Gene, or I like Gene because Glenister played him. Either way, nothing is as it seems in Manchester and Salford police departments. And that leaves Gene to rise above it all and become the best cop in the best cop series ever made.
In the western movie Silverado, at the beginning of the film, Paden is dead. At least he is left for dead, like real-life Beck Weathers in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Paden is played by Kevin Kline. You can’t start much worse off than Paden, prior to being rescued by Scott Glenn’s character, Emmett. All Paden has to his name is his 1800s long underwear. He was trusting, befriended some cowboys who turned on him, stole his horse, his saddle, his hat, his ivory-handled Colt. The whole rig. But he really missed the bay horse the most. They were laughing when they left him. Thought it was real funny. He walked for a little while but there was no use, so he gave it up. Figured it was just bad luck. He lies down to die. And he gets a second chance. But he’s not so much about revenge as looking out for the little dog one of his fellow riders mistreats. He’s trying to find his place in the world, which just so happens to be managing the affairs of a saloon. And you never know what Paden will care about. Even if that means he must stop looking the other way. He is a hero so he must act. If that means risking his footing in a new town to defend a man against a racist saloon operator, so be it. And if that means killing the men who run Silverado and the sheriff himself, his old friend, well then so be it. Kline plays Paden as funny, serious, smart. Sometimes warm, as when he is taking care of new friends, sometimes cold, as when he has to shoot a man. Sometimes puzzling, like when he flirts with a woman the night her husband is shot dead. Sheriff Cobb is using Stella to get to Paden. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” Paden says. Stella responds: “He can’t hurt me… if he’s dead.” Paden is a complex guy who changes his luck in a time when getting by was good enough.
I’ve read everything I could get my hands on related to Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow, as re-developed in DC Comics’ silver age, from 1971 forward. Queen was a billionaire who lost it all. He became “everyman.” He ended up fighting crime as a vigilante and donned the outfit of Errol Flynn’s Adventures of Robin Hood and took his bow and arrow as well to fight crime. He’s a bit like Batman, a sleuth in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes. He became a force for social change and fell in love with a beautiful woman, Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary, and they ended up together in Seattle running a floral shop. They were members of the Justice League and rubbed elbows with the best superheroes around. Oliver always was outspoken, sometimes offending everyone around him, yet everyone around him always respected what he had to say and they often took his lead. He always fought for the underdog. My favorite incarnation is my first revisit to comic books, Green Arrow written and drawn by Mike Grell, but O’Neil and Adams’ version is a close second. In his first scene of the modern era, he must convince Green Lantern that he needs to stop protecting a slumlord and instead protect the tenants. With his on-again/off-again, fiery relationship with Dinah, he became part of the only crime-fighting superhero couple, together ridding the streets of every kind of baddie.
The only one of the five of my favorite characters listed here that never veered from my #1 spot is Captain Benjamin “Hawkeye” Pierce. As the leading character in the TV series M*A*S*H over the course of eleven seasons, Alan Alda became the best actor on any TV series, and soldier/doctor Pierce became my favorite character. He is defined by triage. Triage in his job as he must discriminate between who has a chance to live and who won’t live. Triage is his circumstance as he must decide to make the best or worst of being stuck in a place no one, even the local Korean refugees, wants to be. His tools consist of scalpels, forceps, alcohol, and humor. He takes the most depressing of dramatic situations and makes everyone laugh, and when the brilliant writing team gives us a serious story, he leaves us silent. He gives us gut-wrenching performances, via a simple salute to Radar O’Reilly as he leaves for home to take care of the farm, to his reaction to the death of Colonel Henry Blake, to his interview responses for Movietone news. He makes us laugh at his unending supply of practical jokes, against Hot Lips, Frank, Winchester, or B.J. He is a hero, he’ll save the life of a North Korean soldier without flinching, and at his worst he freaks-out, asking those questions everyone wants to ask in the middle of a war, but doesn’t. Why can’t we all just get along, as bunkmates, as co-workers, as Americans, as humans? And he is calm when he needs to be. Even when he is being bombed while trying to save lives after hours without rest. With more than a dose of inspiration from Groucho Marx, Alan Alda conducted a one-man band of chaos in the middle of a stellar cast of characters. It’s hard to believe M*A*S*H was a 30-minute show. Never before or since has anyone come close to packing so much emotion, drama, comedy, and energy in such a small period of time, for so many years. Although the writing of his character bottomed out in the last episode, what came before is what matters, and it explains why the series finale was the most-watched show ever.
Editor’s note: Tomorrow… we will take a day away from our favorite characters and Jason McClain will run down his recommendations to the Academy for the Ten Best Picture nominees, who will be announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Tuesday, January 24. Come on back Tuesday bright and early for Jason McClain’s top five favorite characters, followed by Art Schmidt on Wednesday and Elizabeth C. Bunce on Thursday.
Growing up in the United States, I never quite understood British TV, not from a language angle, but from a choice of subject matter angle. Long before BBC America, the only real exposure for decades was public television, which limited you to made-for-television Agatha Christie and Poirot or shows about priests or wacky but hard to decipher comedies. To this day I still don’t see what’s so funny about Monty Python. Don’t get me wrong, I know there are tons of folks that see this as classic material. But I won’t just dismiss any genre of comedy. I keep coming back for more.
“A wise man changes his mind. A fool never does.”
In light of the above maxim, I’ve re-tried Monty Python from time to time. I just must not be ready for it yet. I keep re-trying British shows, too—especially those that others view as classics.
Late night programming over the past few decades often exposed Americans to The Benny Hill Show. Benny Hill is bawdy and crude but he is funny at an LOL level. There’s something Chaplin-like about Benny Hill’s antics. So maybe Benny Hill is as good as any an introduction to British TV for newbies.
For some 40 years Americans have also been exposed to Doctor Who, in his numerous incarnations, again mainly thanks to public television. For years I would flip on an episode to give it a try. I just never figured it out. I think the strange fashions on the show, particularly as worn by the Doctors, kept me away. The rare friend liked a particular Doctor and would latch on for a while. So for some, Doctor Who was a gateway to British TV. My own getting to like Doctor Who is only incredibly recent, and a subject for a later date, maybe British TV 304: Why you should watch the Doctor.
I have tried A Bit of Fry and Laurie as I started to like Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry after seeing the movie Peter’s Friends, when Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson were the then-next big British invasion. Fry and Laurie’s old show may make you feel like the guy in the room that doesn’t get any of the jokes. (These guys are both funny in other shows).
Then there was Masterpiece Theatre. Alistair Cooke. Beyond the great trumpet fanfare theme music, what followed were melodramas and mysteries that for me just crawled. I know a lot of other folks that weren’t so slow to gravitate toward British TV, so some people have gotten hooked this way.
If you like animals, All Creatures Great and Small is a good series that is quaint and still holds up after all these years. It’s the true adventures of a small town British veterinarian. These shows, based on a series of good books by James Herriot, are a great introduction to British TV.
Another series worth checking out is Monarch of the Glen, a more recent series that takes place in Scotland and has a bit of humor and light drama, but, more than that, it serves as a great travelogue for Scotland. The cast for this series was great, and the stories not complicated but fun.
So what’s the best introduction for someone who hasn’t quite gotten the bug for British TV yet? My recommendation is that 30-minute sitcom with the two James Bond actors, that has aired live or in reruns since 1992. Know which one I mean?
Before the details, I have to say that I think Judi Dench is the best thing that ever happened to British TV. She is an actress who, at 77 years old now, is as in prime form as any actress in any country. She was an actress known in England for years but seemed to catapult into the international limelight beginning with her appearance in Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V in 1989. At least none of us on this side of the pond saw her before that. Judi Dench, now Dame Judi Dench, should be credited with popularizing British TV outside of Great Britain.
If you only know Judi Dench as M in the current run of brilliant James Bond movies (she’s been both Pierce Brosnan’s and Daniel Craig’s icy and savvy boss), then you should check out her 1992-2005 ground-breaking series As Time Goes By. Of all the programs ostensibly “about nothing,” there is no funnier show than the polite but determined banter of Dench’s Jean Pargetter and long lost but newly found mate Lionel, played by Geoffrey Palmer. It is a show that is elegant in its simplicity, about characters who are plain folk. As the action genre is concerned, you should recognize Palmer from the new Doctor Who, Ashes to Ashes, and as Admiral Roebuck in another James Bond flick, Tomorrow Never Dies.
Both Dench and Palmer have a stunningly long resume of roles going back decades. Yet both hit their prime when Palmer was 65 and Dench was 58. By then, their experience, including a lot of professional stage work, allowed them to come across the airwaves and the Atlantic Ocean as relaxed and as down to Earth as any friend in your living room no matter what you do, where you live, and who you are.
What’s As Time Goes By About? Before we meet the main characters later in life at the beginning of the series, Lionel and Jean were lovers during the Korean War. They are separated by a misunderstanding—a letter that was sent but did not arrive—and they moved on in their lives marrying others and raising families. Flash forward. Lionel is looking for a secretary in Jean’s office. He meets Jean’s daughter, then Lionel discovers Jean again from this encounter and they reunite. In short, each episode is about the baggage they both bring to the relationship. And it is not a lot. But these little niggling things are always subtlely introduced and before you know it, and in the face of good intentions, almost always result in a major catastrophe, or more aptly, much ado about nothing.
The supporting cast is equally enjoyable—daughter Judy (Moira Brooker) and friend Sandy (Jenny Funnell) are real and accessible to viewers, British or not. And then there is Alistair (Philip Bretherton), Lionel’s editor and Judy’s on-again/off-again love interest, a breath of fresh air in every episode. You can’t not like the guy who is always happy, always a glass half full kind of guy.
The ensemble is great not only for being a leading series with senior actors in the lead roles. Every episode is funny with a type of humor that is light-hearted, never malicious, never about putting anyone down. Dench’s Jean makes us laugh through her feigned naivete. Palmer’s Lionel has a dry, deadpan wit. It’s just about the funny things that happen to everyone. And no matter what your age, despite flatly believing all humans are pretty much the same, if you ask yourself whether you really believe that, it’s still worth challenging the thought a bit. The British and Americans have a common language, a common national history. Yet we branched off a few hundred years ago. Like someone was playing a game, maybe God: Let’s see what happend if we split them up… You can just hear the voice of God like a TV show announcer: What happens when you take these two countries, pull them a part and bring them back together 200 years later?
In many ways we are very, very different. But instead of looking at the differences, it is more fun to check out how we are alike. To some, you might as well be watching British TV as watching the Spanish Univision channel. It’s Greek to me. Then you watch that one show, see that one response, or phrase, or reaction, and slowly get sucked in—we live in different places, our accents are different, but we all have bedrooms and living rooms. We all have to get along with the guy next door, or even closer, the person in the next room. Everything we watch and see helps us understand others better and that helps us understand ourselves. This accessibility, this commonality of the human experience, is why As Time Goes By is a great program for anyone interested in sampling what this British TV thing is all about–to go give it the old college try. And at some point you might find yourself proclaiming a British TV series as the best series, in any country, ever made.
With a few spoilers, (said in the voice of River Song).
Well, huh. I’m not sure where to start with a review of “Let’s Kill Hitler” and “Night Terrors,” the two new Doctor Who episodes delivered to U.S. viewers this week. Perhaps it would be easier to start with “Terrors” and work our way backward.
“Night Terrors” is a classic one-off episode of the “monster of the week” type, featuring the fears of a little boy made terrifyingly manifest, as his creepy toys, neighbors, and worrisome apartment-complex noises nearly kill off Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill). Although we (and The Doctor) are drawn in by young George’s plight and plea (“Please come save me from the monsters!”), the real pathos of this episode was provided by Daniel Mays (Ashes to Ashes), in a convincing turn as the boy’s desperate and frustrated father, unable to comfort his pantophobic son (pantophobia being, as we know from A Charlie Brown Christmas, the fear of everything… not just pants). It’s always fun to watch Amy and Rory tackle danger together–whether facing down interstellar child abductors or fleeing oversized dollhouse denizens come to life (or cracking elevator jokes that nod to Mays’s Ashes to Ashes past)–but this story as a whole feels familiar: We’ve seen Matt Smith’s Doctor comfort children terrified by the monsters under (or behind) their beds before, and “Night Terrors” is nothing new. And the child in this case has none of young Amelia Pond’s charisma, nor even the chance to develop any, upstaged as he is by his father’s role in the story. All in all, an entertaining if lightweight entry into the Smith/Moffat catalogue.
“Let’s Kill Hitler,” however… wow. Where to begin? Capturing much of the frenetic energy from “A Good Man Goes to War,” the episode starts off breathlessly and doesn’t let up, firing a dizzying barrage of revelations at the viewer. We learn, finally, Everything about River Song. After the years of teasing and the season of setup, Now We Know.
But do we care? That’s another question altogether. I don’t feel satisfied by this episode, the way I did after “A Good Man.” There’s something faintly baffling about the resolution of all the mysteries surrounding River’s past, and something definitely missing from Amy and Rory’s emotional arc. They’ve lost their child! I don’t care if they hardly had time to get used to the idea of being parents–let alone River Song’s parents–they’ve still had part of their hearts ripped out, and we should see that. Everyone in this cast is capable of the emotions the events of “Good Man” should naturally have engendered, and as a viewer, I feel cheated that we didn’t get to see any of that. There were no consequences to anything we saw last spring, and that depresses me.
To be sure, as a vehicle for Kingston, it was a success–her performance is stellar and delightful, and she proves she’s absolutely up for whatever Moffat throws at her. But, again, I’m left unsettled by the development of a character we’ve come to love. Yes, we’ve been prepared to see her criminal past since her second appearance (“Time of Angels”/”Flesh and Stone”), but this still didn’t feel like the River we know. And as a viewer now invested in the drama of young Melody/River’s mysterious upbringing in the Gamma Forest, seeing her instead as a childhood mate of Amy and Rory was a weird letdown. It was over too soon. All that marvelous setup and worldbuilding was so full of fantastic potential, and it all just fell flat. Even the title felt like a cheat–the blithe declaration, “Let’s Kill Hitler!” becomes nothing more than a comedic red herring to a rush job to finish off the River Song storyline.
It’s too bad, really. It wasn’t necessary to give this sort of ammunition to the Smith/Moffat naysayers. The show has proven it can do so much more–deeper, farther-reaching storylines that play all the right emotional notes while constantly surprising and delighting the viewers. To seemingly wash their hands of such a promising storyline–one we’ve been primed to anticipate for three and a half years–makes me wonder if the show’s creators are getting bored with their own creations. And that bodes ill for all of us.
