The Walking Dead, Frank Darabont dir. (2010)

Nov 04

AMC’s motto is “Story Matters Here”, and with Mad Men consistently proving to be the best written and most entertaining show on television it’s a hard one to refute. This year’s first season of spy-drama Rubicon also proved to be engaging and well crafted, and I had high hopes for comic-book adaptation The Walking Dead. The first episode however, left something to be desired.

There has been a glut of zombie films, games, comics and books in the last few years (eclipsed (pun somewhat intended) only by the avalanche of vampire media). Arguably this makes things harder for a new show telling a similar story to develop its own character and stand out from the crowd: The Walking Dead‘s pilot fails.

Here is an hour’s worth of television comprised almost entirely of zombie movie cliches. When the show’s main character wakes up in a hospital and stumbles out into the newly post-plague world it’s difficult to see the whole 15 minute sequence as anything other than a giant homage to / steal from 28 Days Later. What follows is the requisite set of scenes where a couple of survivors hole up in an abandoned building and explain to our hero what has happened. It’s a scene we’ve all witnessed so many times that we could easily write it ourselves; which, of course, makes it wholly unnecessary. And what’s worse, the fact that not on character uses the Z-word is painfully contrived. The scriptwriters are seemingly so shy about calling their “walkers” what they are that entire scenes pass laboriously that could have been replaced by someone saying “Oh, it’s like those Romero movies.”

Which is the show’s other big problem. Right up until the last scene of the episode there isn’t one hint of humour. It’s not that it has to be Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland (though both of those handled their explication a lot better), but it’s going to be a long season if we’re expected to watch The Road every week. AMC’s other big shows balance humour and drama adeptly, and it would be a shame if The Walking Dead too itself too seriously.

But, if we’re being optimistic, perhaps The Walking Dead has a secret weapon. For all of the zombie stories we’ve been told recently, from the Left 4 Dead games to Stephen King’s novel Cell, we haven’t had one with this show’s potential longevity. If AMC mean what they say, that it’s story that really matters, they have a chance to prove it over dozens of hours of television. Hopefully The Walking Dead is simply playing the long game; it’s just a shame we had to get through an hour’s worth of by-the-numbers prologue first.

Author Adam
Category Television
Comments No Comments
Tags , , ,

Rubicon

Oct 01

It’s a river in northern Italy; it marked a sort of point of no return for Julius Caesar’s army when they crossed it on the way to Rome in 49 BC, which is where the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” comes from. I know that not because I paid attention in history class, but because Brian K. Vaughan wrote it into a brilliant scene of Y: The Last Man, which I won’t spoil here.

Rubicon is also the new show from AMC, the US channel that brought you (the consistently impressive) Mad Men. It’s on that basis, and the strength of a fairly glowing NPR piece by David Bianculli, that I took the first opportunity that came along to start watching. And I’m glad that I did; the show really holds up. Shot in an understated, reserved style which lingers on the characters’ faces and the architecture of their elegantly unkempt offices and apartments, it doesn’t have the quick-cut editing of say 24 or CSI. Approaching the show I was expecting a similar tone to Tony Scott’s 1998 movie Enemy Of The State, but instead the show’s producers wisely adopt a steadier pace; unafraid to leave threads unresolved over multiple episodes, and allowing characters to reveal themselves slowly, instead of giving you everything there is to know about them upfront. Perhaps there is a touchstone to be found in series producer Henry Bromell’s previous work on Homicide: Life On The Street, and one also likes to think that AMC have been emboldened by the critical plaudits that have greeted their other show despite its glacial pace.

But mastery of pace and tone would be nothing if the characters and situations were uninteresting; luckily Rubicon has intrigue, imagination and inspiration in good measure. The pre-credits inciting incident of episode one still feels a long way from being explained after five episodes, but in each installment it does feel like a good deal of progress is being made in terms of both plot and character development. The lead character of Will Travers is both instantly likeable and possessed of detectable depth enough to retain your interest; unlike with a Jack Bauer (in many respects a one-dimensional caricature which later seasons attempted to over-complicate), there is obviously more to Will than we are being shown this early in the show’s run. In fact, despite the occasional too-clever touch which falls flat (eg a character with the surname Rhumor), each of the characters seems to offer the possibility of worthwhile further exploration.

Set firmly in the mold of ‘decent guy finds himself in the middle of something bigger than he thought’ it remains to be seen whether the show can retain its genuine sense of craftsmanship, or whether it will fall into the trap of being convoluted in place of being clever. From what I’ve seen so far it certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Rubicon comes to BBC Four later this year.

Author Adam
Category Television
Comments 1 Comment
Tags ,

Wonders of the Solar System

Mar 30

On a Sunday evening you can’t help sometimes thinking about Monday morning and the desk, the inbox, the paperwork that’s waiting when you get to the office. The last couple of weeks I’ve found the perfect antidote to all of that: BBC1′s Wonders of the Solar System.

Like anyone who has sat down in front of one of the BBC’s nature documentary series over the years I’ve been awed by the process of learning my place. I’ve never been a great traveller but National Geographic and the BBC have allowed me to see corners of the world I would never have made the effort to journey to, and discover places, cultures and species I would otherwise have remained ignorant of. Having your view widened like that does wonders for your perspective; if you see people making supreme efforts for water your Monday meetings begin to feel less daunting. There is something humbling about observing the practices of other cultures, which lifts the weight of your own pressures a little. And those practices don’t even have to belong to your own species. Watching a luminous frog, or a sloth or a bacterium go about its business always makes me re-consider my own.

Wonders of the Solar System expands the view out further again. Some of the power in the program comes from revealing to us the narrowness of our entire experience. As Prof Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) talks about the frozen landscapes of Mars or the surface of the Sun we see the true extremities of the temperature spectrum. Similarly with size: we’re shown images of trenches on Mars that would span continents on Earth, or Jupiter’s perpetual storm, large enough to contain our planet more than twice over. I find it impossible to take in that information and remain concerned about unanswered correspondence, deadlines, voice-mail.

The show is beautifully shot, and presented with an infectious, genuine enthusiasm by Cox, who the BBC would do well to keep on retainer for anything in this field in the future. The numbers that get thrown around can be simultaneously awe-inspiring and impossible to comprehend, but Cox does a good job of grounding the science as much as he can. Grand in scope, flawless in execution and full of inspiring material – tune in and forget your inbox.

Author Adam
Category Television
Comments 1 Comment
Tags ,