HEARTS OF DARKNESS
It's only the 14th of January and there's already been some splendidly thought-provoking and inventive television, while over on DVD, Breaking Bad's last two series continued to amaze.
You’ve
got to pick a pocket or two
 |
| Hard times on Benefit Street. (Image: BBC) |
First up on the Fairclough Towers
viewing schedule was Benefit Street. A
documentary about James Turner Street in Birmingham which houses a high
proportion of unemployed, the Channel 4 programme’s participants looked like the
cast of a Dickens novel given a 21st century reboot. Among the residents were ‘Fungi’,
a habitual relapsing drug addict who had “lost the will to help himself”;
‘White Dee’, the single mum bringing up two kids with the support of benefits
alone who also acted as the matriarch of the street’s workless inhabitants;
‘Black Dee’, another single mum who had been out of work for six years and the
sour Becky, one half of a young couple who considered the government’s slashing
of benefits “a f***ing piss take”, demanding “how are we supposed to live on
£50 a week?” It was could have been Hard
Times 2014.
There was a lot of coverage in
the media in the show last week, from the predictable “We told you so”
finger-pointing of the Daily Mail, always
keen to do its best to encourage intolerance of minorities, to the mildly
amusing report of Benefit Street’s
contributors’ threatening to sue Channel 4 for misrepresentation. You can see
why the opposite ends of the social spectrum said what they did about the documentary:
although the programme did its best to be a matter of fact record of unemployed
people’s lives, James Turner Street did unfortunately come across as a ghetto
for the work-shy stereotypes the government and the Daily Mail are keen to demonise.
I expected more of Channel 4, as the unemployment
situation isn’t that simple. Writing as a highly skilled art college
graduate with a degree who’s been out of work for a year, and who has a mortgage and lives in
a nice area, I expected a more even-handed approach. On the evidence of the
first programme, it was disappointing to see that the producer had opted for a
sensational approach not a million miles away from The Only Way Is Essex or Big
Brother.
Train
of love
 |
Commuter love: Morrissey and Smith.
(Image: BBC) |
Clashing annoyingly with Benefit Street on BBC1 was the The 7.39, a drama about the flipside of
unemployment, namely the spirit-crushing daily train commute from suburbia to
London and back again. Set among the landmarks of commuting to the capital such as Charing
Cross Station, the London Eye and the South Bank, The 7.39 speculated on what would happen if a man and a woman broke
out of the commuter cocoon and got to know each other, with the inevitable
romantic results.
Written by One Day author David Nichols, another story of middle class
melancholy and frustration, the two-part story was helped immensely by the
mature playing of its two leads David Morrissey (as property manager Carl
Mathews), adding to his impressive gallery of angst-ridden middle aged men, and
Sheridan Smith (health club worker Sally Thorn), an actress so natural and
comfortable in whatever role she plays that it doesn’t look like she’s acting
at all – a rare quality. Although The
7.39 concentrated on Morrissey and Smith, equally impressive actors
had been attracted to the smaller roles: Sean Maguire as Sally’s body-fascist control
freak fiancée Ryan and national treasure Olivia ColmanTM as Carl’s kind and supportive wife
Maggie.
You could argue that The 7.39 trod a predictable path of
affair/discovery/split/reconciliation, but that wasn’t the point. Here were two
characters, both lost in different ways, who knew that their blossoming romance
on the railways was going to lead to heartbreak and hurt for their respective
partners but, as both were quietly desperate people, they went ahead anyway, a
scenario that felt realistic. The story was pleasingly non-judgmental about their
liaison too, even if Colman was allowed one of her virtuoso, hurt tirades when she
discovered Morrissey’s infidelity. The bitter-sweet moral appeared to be that
in an increasingly homogenised and isolating society, if you get the chance to
make something beautiful, however short-lived, you should go for it then grit
your teeth and deal with the consequences later. The 7.39 was an accurate, if
depressing, assessment of the emotional landscape of modern Britain.
The
Master Blackmailer
 |
| Sherlock: back on form. (Image: BBC) |
After a wobbly two weeks it’s
heartening to report that Sherlock was
back on form on Sunday. Following the nebulous-to-the-point-of-invisibility
villains of Series Three’s first two instalments, Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch)
was matched by the worthy opponent of newspaper magnate and blackmailer Charles
Augustus Magnussen, brought to life in a wonderfully repellent performance by The Killing’s Lars Mikkelsen.
After the preceding two misfires, ‘His
Last Vow’ got it just right. This
series’ increasing interest in the private lives of its characters paid off
with revelations about Mary (Amanda Abbington), the wife of Doctor Watson
(Martin Freeman) and satisfying psychological insights into both Holmes and
Watson. What was especially pleasing was that all this was done in a way that intrigued
the viewer, added depth to the characters and – crucially – progressed the
story.
Stylistically it was great fun, too.
Extra tension was added to Holmes being shot by an extended sequence in his
‘mind palace’ in which various people he knew, from the devilish Moriarty
(Andrew Scott) to the ever attentive Molly (Louise Brealey), commented on how he could
survive or give in to death. Playfully self-aware, this complemented the
non-linear experiments with the narrative, as different characters’ interpretations
of events jumped back and forth along the spine of the story. In terms of genre, ‘His Last Vow’ was somewhere between a mash up of
James Bond, the Bourne films and The Avengers,
offering a villain with an unpleasant physical characteristic, a la Ian Fleming,
a CIA assassin with a new identity and a house that was all façade with one
long, thin room inside, a surreal touch played up by director Nick Hurran. This
debt to The Avengers was tacitly acknowledged
by the plea of Mycroft Holmes (Mark Gatiss) to his brother “You’re needed”, a
paraphrase of the request that summoned John Steed and Mrs Peel into action in
the 1960s. I’d expected the final twist
through all three episodes and I won’t give away here, but it was great to see nonetheless.
Almost as great was seeing our old bete noir the Daily Mail on Monday give over almost as many column inches as they
had to Benefit Street in trashing ‘His
Last Vow’. The reason for this was for this was prompted by comments Sherlock supremo Steven Moffat had made
in the past criticising the government’s current policies and the questionable
influence of press barons on policy making, to the point where Moffat had apparently delivered a villainous
media tycoon as part of a subversive left-wing agenda. The character's mantra regarding the truth? “I don’t have to prove it, I just
have to print it”. Touched a nerve, perhaps? BBC-bash all you want, Daily
Mail, but I think the record 8.8 million viewers Sherlock attracted for its Sunday timeslot proves that your
pathetically right-wing, paranoid views might just be in the minority.
An
American Tragedy
 |
| The endgame for Jesse and Walt. (Image: AMC) |
Before and after Sherlock, I was monopolising the Fairclough Towers sofa as I
watched the final two seasons of Breaking
Bad. There aren’t many series that can keep me up until 1 the morning, and
the final chapters in the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston) confirmed my
opinion that this TV series is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Watching each episode is like reading a new chapter of a great novel.
Walt’s downfall is so epically ironic
that the show could be subtitled An
American Tragedy, the title of Theodore Dreiser’s book that charts the
dissolution of Clyde Griffiths, another US anti-hero. Everything important in
Walt’s life, from his drug-making to his relationship with his family, slowly
disintegrates as the American justice machine slowly closes in on him. Although
the show continues to champion great performances, unfussy direction and straight-forward
storytelling, stylistically the tonal shift in the last third of the series is visually
conveyed by the interior of the White house becoming a permanently dark, brooding
place. By contrast, throughout the last 16 episodes the desert outside Albuquerque
is lit in a vivid, blood orange under the glare of the sun, suggesting, perhaps,
that everything is slowly going to hell.
I won’t give the details of the plot
away as I know there are people out there who haven’t seen the whole series
yet, and the many twists, turns and shocks are an essential part of its viewing experience. What I will say is that the most remarkable thing about Breaking Bad, which the last two episodes illuistrate particularly well, is that despite Walt’s transformation from a mild, frustrated
middle-aged man into a truly manipulative and vile monster, you never lose
empathy for him. That’s a tribute to both the actor who played him and how well Walter White was written, to the point where he can sit alongside icons like King Lear,
Willy Loman and Rodion Raskolinkov, as a character who offers illuminating insights into the failings and weaknesses
of the human condition.
Not bad for an ex-writer on The X-Files, huh?
