Cast Out

The BBC's latest foray into science-fiction is predictably dismaying nonsense

I must be in a particularly irritable mood.  Having administered a sly elbow to the kidneys of Midsomer Murders (apparently David Cameron's favourite TV prog), today I can't rest until I've vented my spleen about the BBC's execrable sci-fi drama Outcasts.

Grim faces greet the delivery of the latest script

The premise is promising, if unoriginal.  Human settlers struggle to survive on an alien planet, battling not only malevolent--if shadowy--indigenes, but their own rivalries and prejudices.  The vision is realised triumphantly, marred only by failure in the peripheral areas of plot,  dialogue, characterisation and acting.  Cliches which were barely tolerable in the 1960s incarnation of Star Trek spew forth with a straight face.  In one cringeworthy moment of the final episode, President Tate (Liam Cunningham, playing the role like a geography teacher striving for street cred with his students) rebuts the arguments of a hostile alien with "at least we know how to love!".  Come on!

Cunningham's task is not helped by an inconsistent and underwritten character, a problem which also afflicts Hermione Norris, phoning in a reprise of her role in Spooks.  Langley Kirkwood, as the leader of the persecuted ACs (if you don't already know what the ACs are, you don't need to now), spends eight episodes looking moody in a parka with the sun behind him.  These performances are Bafta-worthy when set against the plywood majesty of Ashley Walters as the one-dimensional soldier Jack, and Daniel Mays as Cass, who delivers a masterclass in bellowing and lumbering.

Luckily the show has a machiavellian villain, Julius Berger (played with actual competence by Eric Mabius).  Sadly for the viewer--and Mabius--the writers don't realise that your genuine machiavellian type doesn't go around announcing his plans as they unfold, so Berger rarely rises above the risible.

Fear not: there is good news.  Dire ratings saw the show shunted to the arse end of beyond in the schedules and, unlike The Killing, it was unable to recover.  The day after the final episode was broadcast, the BBC announced that the show was cancelled.  This was not, however, accompanied by an apology for wasting my licence fee on such trash.

Next time, happy pills at the ready, we'll look at something I like!

English Idyll

Normally over here at ::Acquired Taste we steer clear of contemporary politics (political discourse got pretty dull once poisoning your rivals went out of fashion) but when my bete noir Midsomer Murders hits the headlines, it's time to take stock.

Today the producer of Midsomer Murders, Brian True-May, has been suspended for the observation:

"We just don't have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn't be the English village with them. It just wouldn't work. Suddenly we might be in Slough ... We're the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way."

 As a Guardianista I can only find such sentiments distasteful--although the trend for suspending or sacking people for expressing unpopular views is equally unfortunate--but True-May's views encapsulate all the reasons why Midsomer Murders is such piss-poor drama.

In for a penny, in for a pound, and the beleaguered True-May continues to blaze away with both barrels from his Middle England fortress: 

If it's incest, blackmail, lesbianism, homosexuality ... terrific, put it in.

Two out of those four are not criminal offences in this country.  Can you guess which?

Best, perhaps, to leave True-May to his thoughts, bellowing in a dark and soundproofed room.  If you listen very hard, maybe you can hear him.  Or maybe not.

Midsomer Murdered

TV crime drama covers a range of styles

A few weeks ago, a Midsomer Murders landmark occurred when John Nettles' final episode as DCI Tom Barnaby was broadcast, after 81 episodes spread over 14 years.  In that time, Barnaby has solved several hundred murders in a lavish and popular series which has featured just about every character actor in Equity. 

Fans of the show need not fear that Barnaby's departure signals the end of their pleasures, though: a relative, DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) has arrived to take his place.  Good news for everyone!

Err, not quite.  Thirty years of formal and informal study of the narrative art-forms have equipped me with a formidable critical vocabulary and so I am able to arrive at the mot juste for Midsomer Murders: shite. 

For those of a more elevated sensibility, I can expand: Midsomer Murders is simply egregious--smug, unengaging, patronising.  The murders have all the emotional impact of a visit to Waitrose (the natural habitat of the MM-watcher).  Lazy, vapid and repetitious, the show could with dignity have ended with Nettles' retirement.  Instead, a new cash-cow is sent to the farm.

Self-Satisfied Buffoonery

Midsomer Murders works within a "cosy crime" tradition which, to declare a prejudice, I don't find very interesting.  But it can be done much better than this; I'd love to see a TV adaptation of LC Tyler's Ethelred and Elsie novels, and David Suchet plays the preposterous Poirot with such brio that the viewer is charmed. 

Midsomer Murders has little of Suchet's straight-faced conviction and none of Tyler's sardonic wit.  It smacks of Thursday afternoon amateur dramatics at the village hall, an environment which no doubt has provided at least one interminable plot for the great detective.

It's bad karma to thunder ex cathedra from my blog pulpit (to mangle my religions a touch) without doling out some more approbatory sentiments, and with this in mind I can recommend, in the strongest terms, BBC Four's outstanding crime drama The Killing.  Stuck away in the middle of the night on a channel nobody watches, this Danish exploration of a young woman's murder has everything Midsomer Murders lacks. 

Subtle, nuanced and understated...as good as The Wire?

The emotional impact of the crime is truly harrowing, and the performances of Bjarne Henriksen and Ann Eleonora Jorgensen as the bereaved parents are heartbreaking.  The programme's one cliche is the mismatched detective duo (Sofie Grabol and and Soren Malling) and even this is done with some charm.  Grabol, in particular, is extraordinary.  The way the show weaves in contemporary political themes draws comparison with The Wire--a comparison which does not embarrass the Danish show.

Embarrassment should more properly be directed at the thought that Midsomer Murders is broadcast in 38 countries--including, humiliatingly, Denmark.  If you've overlooked The Killing (which, unless you're an insomniac, is very likely), it's out on DVD in April.  Don't miss it!

Voices from the House of Tin
A Turd on Every Page: some thoughts on the fiction of Ken Follett

Pity me, gentle reader. Although I have read some excellent books lately, with others jostling for attention on my shelves, I have spent the past week flogging through Ken Follett's World Without End, his tale of Black Death, medieval architecture and humdrum sex. Follett sells a lot of books, so he can live quite happily without my approval, and he's obviously digested the "conflict on every page" mantra*. Incident piles on incident, improbability on improbability, although after a while even this surfeit of action becomes wearisome. Once every couple of pages, breast-fondling occurs: this is the Middle Ages, and men of a certain stamp can't see a woman without lurching into grope mode. Readers will be reassured to learn that breasts in the period ranged from the fried egg profile to ample rotundity.

Perhaps the most ludicrous such moment comes on page 1078 (I really did get that far) in a dialogue of self-parodical risibility:

"I've never been good at breaking news gently," she said. "I'm pregnant."
"Good God!" He was too shocked to hold back his reaction. "I'm surprised because you told me..."
"I know. I was sure I was too old. For a couple of years my monthly cycle was irregular, and then it stopped altogether -- I thought. But I've been vomiting in the morning, and my nipples hurt."
"I noticed your breasts as you came into the garden. But can you be sure?"
"I've been pregnant six times already -- three children and three miscarriages -- and I know the feeling. There's really no doubt."
"Well, we're going to have a child."

You have to read this several times to savour the full crassness of the passage. "Good God!" He was too shocked to hold back his reaction irks with its redundant commentary; had it been necessary at all, it should have been before the exclamation. My monthly cycle has been irregular ... Good God! I am too shocked at the tinniness of this to hold back my reaction. I noticed your breasts as you came into the garden. This spectacular non sequitur defies any kind of logic: are painful nipples really so obvious, even in Follett's mammocentric fictional world?

Writing of this standard annoyed me particularly in the context of the book I am currently reading, Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. This is a fantasy with prose of relaxed elegance, a pleasantly judged humour and an engaging authorial voice. Yet Rothfuss, a purveyor of mere fantasy, the preserve of maladjusted adolescents, sits on the bottom table in the Grand Hall of Literature, while Follett, though never likely to win the Booker Prize, basks in vast sales and a degree of critical success. Ladies and gentlemen, there ain't no justice.

* the rather more challenging maxim introduced to me by David Isaak, "a gem on every page", has not been fully implemented. Is there a school of creative writing which demands "a turd on every page"? Or indeed "a tit on every page"...