Tuesday, May 08, 2007
A wholby new world
COPPERS! HolbyBlue, 8.00pm, BBC1 Labels: BBC1, Charlie Fairhead wanders into shot, crime, Holby Blue, Holby/Blue, HolbyBlue, TV
Having decided that the best way to package emergency service-based drama is to reassure the rest of the country that the vast majority of unpleasant accidents and criminal acts in the UK are concentrated on one fictional city, tonight the BBC finally launch the much-trailed HolbyBlue, based around a district police station in the fictional sort-of-South-Western city where the slings and arrows of perilous fortune are as likely to deliver you a squash racquet through the side of the neck as they are a fulfilling career alongside a top-flight, mostly-attractive team in a service industry.
And what a top-flight, mostly-attractive team they are! lowculture favourite Zoe Lucker plays a civilian member of staff who’s “nothing like Tanya Turner”, Kacey Ainsworth plays a police inspector who’s “a far cry from Little Mo”, and, just to up the blue content (“We thought it was going to be a drama about naughty nurses!” – oh, shut up), lovely Kieran O’Brien aka Gruey/The Bloke Who Had Real Actual Sex Using His Real Actual Cock in 9 Songs plays a starting-to-be-a-bit-long-in-the-tooth police constable. There’s also a desk sergeant who might turn out to be a gay, if having blond hair, having a laugh at work while feeling unfulfilled and being called Christian are all indicative of homosexuality (yes, they are), and the obligatory chalk/cheese detective partnership between Cal Macaninch from Sorted (the one with the spooky, featureless face) and Richard Harrington from Bleak House (the one who still loved Esther after she’d had smallpox). Oh, and Charlie Fairhead pops up early on to reassure viewers that this really is Holby and they’re not going to have to rupture their brains by imagining a brand new fictional city (or even a REAL one, as was used magnificently by the fantastic City Central).
Having previously spent a year working for the police in a dangerous and thrilling administrative capacity, lowculture will be scanning HolbyBlue extremely closely for any major inaccuracies, such as attractive offices with less than eight people crammed inside them, tidiness, rooms being used for what they were designed to be used for, decent chairs and internal mail that gets to where it’s supposed to be going in less than three days. Oh, and police corruption, which is revealed (to the viewer, if not to the cast) around three or four episodes in, but with which we were never involved, disappointingly.
A small point: There appears to be some confusion over whether HolbyBlue is written as one or two words, with the majority of TV listings guides going for the former, but the Radio Times defiantly swimming against the tide and splitting the thing in two. Much as it goes against every natural instinct we possess to disagree with RT, on this occasion we’ll follow the crowd (and the BBC website) and try to ignore the chaos they’ve caused by trying to be all clever with their stupid logo.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Hunt is the C-word
EXPLAINED! Life On Mars, BBC1, 9.00pm Labels: 1973, 2612, a bit like The Sweeney, back in time?, BBC1, brown cars, coma?, corruption, crime, Dorothy, Frank Morgan, Gene Hunt, Hyde, Life On Mars, mad?, Sam Tyler, test card girl, TV
And now back to 1973 (or is it?), where Sam Tyler finally gets some answers (or does he?) in the final episode EVER (or is it? Yes, it is) of Life On Mars, and the rest of us finally get to learn the truth behind Sam's rather individually-tailored situation. Kudos to the BBC for not dragging the series on beyond its natural shelf life and public interest rate, leaving behind a hermetically-sealed little modern classic with lots of brown cars in it, not to mention a completely new definition for the term "coma acting".
So, what IS going on inside Sam's head? Well, we don't know, obviously, but we've heard some very convincing explanations over the past couple of weeks, and with the arrival of the enigmatic, Samlike DCI Frank Morgan in the penultimate episode last week, it seems that Sam may finally be due a decent explanation himself. But will he like what he hears? Can Morgan be trusted? And why does he seem so keen to get Gene out of the way? After two series of Sam and Gene colliding with each other at every turn and yet apparently building a mutual respect for each other's unfamiliar policing methods, is it time for them to start punching each other again? Is Gene Hunt possibly more real than Sam gave him credit for? Could he even be the key to Sam waking up? How easy is it to write a fairly convincing theory into a preview without making the whole thing blindingly apparent? Not very, it seems.
What we do know is that events come to a head at a rather critical moment during a police operation to foil a train heist (or do they?), and that other operations and other heads may also be involved in other planes of reality and [un]consciousness. The BBC say they've filmed two endings (or have they?), so whether it ends with Sam alive or dead or awake or asleep or being fed half a dozen different explanations for his predicament and having to sort through them with his quite good police brain, we have no idea.
Naturally, the relief at finally being let in on the secret is mixed with sadness at the passing of what has been one of the finest, most engaging and beautifully-shot television shows of recent years, with the personality-clash dynamic of Tyler and Hunt's partnership for people who like police dramas and the underlying mystery of the entire situation for people who never thought they'd get so involved in a police drama but always enjoy something a bit baffling. Of course, there's some consolation to be had from vague promises of Hunt-centred spin-off Ashes To Ashes (hmmm), not to mention the prospect of John Simm expanding his time-travel CV in the Doctor Who finale in a couple of months. Though whether he'll be required to flirt with his mother again has yet to be confirmed.
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007
I dream of The Sweeney
RETRO! Life On Mars, BBC1, 9.00pm Labels: 1973, BBC1, crime, Life On Mars, TV
Oh, Sam Tyler. Sam, Sam, Sam Tyler. DCI Sam 'Rose' Tyler. You're in a bit of a hole, aren't you? You see, Sam got hit by a car, which was bad enough, and when he woke up he'd been demoted to DI, which added insult to injury, and he was also in 1973, which was pretty much the tin of beans that split the fucking Sainsbury’s carrier bag. Still, he’s got his health, although not so much his physical health (1973 seems to involve far more friendly workplace punch-ups than 2006), or his mental health (he keeps hearing ventilators and heart monitors and the BBC Test Card Girl talking to him in riddles from his television in the middle of the night). Well, he’s still got a job. And lots of brown clothes. Oh, Sam!
When we left Sam a year (thirty-four years) ago, he'd just stumbled across the long-absent Dad Tyler. However, after trying to persuade him to stay with his family to secure a happy future/present for grown-up Sam, it emerged that his father was actually two of the most notorious gangsters in Manchester, at which point it suddenly became clear that his absence was probably for the best. But that leaves Sam with a bit of a conundrum: if reconciling his family won't propel him back into the future, what will?
Oh, Sam! It’s not that simple, is it? Because Sam doesn’t know whether he really is in 1973, or if it’s all a coma dream, or if he's even there for a reason. And to make matters even more difficult, his boss in 1973 is DCI Gene Hunt, reversenaissance (hmmm) man and the antithesis of Sam’s responsible, meticulous approach to policing. On the plus side, DCI Gene Hunt is pretty much the most amazing character in the history of television, so there’s clearly something to be said for not being a soft little ponce. Sorry, Sam.
So now we’re all set for the second series of Life On Mars, and as we’re guaranteed a resolution to the mystery this time it should be EVEN BETTER. Those of us you who enjoy that sort of thing can play the usual ‘spot the bit of Manchester’ game that’s seen us you through so many Northern-set dramas (most Red Productions, for a start), with bonus points for accidental glimpses of satellite dishes, burglar alarms and non-historically-accurate TV aerials. Or you can just concentrate on the programme and watch Sam do his best to police a world where scientific calculators cost $365 (thanks, Official BBC Life On Mars website!), while trying to guess how the Ford Cortina it’s going to end. Oh, Sam!
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