Hail, Britannia: BBC America rises to the occasion with The Hour

As noted in previous post, Americans are suckers for British accents and will cut most programs (or plays or movies) from the UK a lot of slack, mistaking those sophisticated (to us) accents for high class and high caliber; however, sometimes the Brits really do excel and high class and high caliber art - they often can turn a pretty ordinary genre premise into a rock solid entertainment - it comes, I think, from a long tradition of a love for language and an acceptance of witty and complex dialogue in art, and also from the great theatrical tradition - guessing that most British TV actors do come up from a school with a serious dramatic training (and maybe even RSC experience?), whereas American actors come from - who knows where? Advertising and modeling, mostly. Anyway, the BBC America import "The Hour" is a good example of material that could be too trite or too sensational but rises up at least one level and maybe more thanks to the always high British production values and to a really smart script - at least what I can hear of it. Compared with the other recent BBC America import, Luther, The Hour is clear as a bell - but the characters talk so fast and in such an odd melange of dialect that it's hard for an American ear to pick out all the words, let alone the nuances. That a quibble, however - the series, at least the first 3 (of 6) episodes, is really smart: a kind of Goodnight and Good Luck meets Mad Men: an homage to young and on the make urbanites in 1956 London (far less hip and prosperous than the NYC of Mad Men, however) in a group that's putting on a TV show, the eponymous Hour, that was ahead of its time and something like 60 Minutes. Show driven by the young writer - an amibitious guy who wants to focus on investigative reporting and gets drawn into a murderous conspiracy (a little too far over the top and improbable, but a lot of fun - made funnier by the fact that he's seen reading the newly published Casino Royale) and his producer and BFF, a very attractive and much more straitlaced young woman. Though we keep hoping for and wanting them to get together, they seem unable to do so - and eventually she falls for the handsome but vapid "star" of the show, known to us in the U.S. as McNulty (The Wire), and in a similar, louche part BTW. All aspects of the series are entirely entertaining and engrossing - the acting of course (mostly unfamiliar actors to Americans) and even the updated 1950s jazzy score, almost a riff on the Mad Men credit sequence.

We're suckers for a British accent : Luther

I well remember a theater director speaking to a group of us (mostly American) students in London many years ago and noting so aptly that Americans are suckers for a British accent - and it's still true, anything in British English seems to us classier, smarter, more literary right from the top. Do we associate British English with classic drama, i.e., Shakespeare? Or is it some weird and deep-seated snobbery and deference, a class deference still deep in our blood or our psyche? Or are plays, movies, TV shows from Britain just plain smarter and better than ours? "Luther" makes an interesting case study. I honestly think that if you took this entire series (I saw only a few of the first episodes) and transposed it into an American setting it would be just another one of the many police procedurals, replete with all the cliches: the cop who's smarter than everyone else but can't stay out of trouble, has major issues in his family life, and plays by his own rules (the eponymous Luther), the younger assistant who specializes in getting info through technology and the Internet, the tough as nails supervisor (in this case, a woman) who actually likes the main cop but can't show it, the sexy but beleaguered wife. And so on. It's not that Luther is a bad cop show - it's just that there's little special about it, other than its setting. Granted, these are not the posh London Oxbridgian accents that we hear on PBS - these are (I think) East End accents that, to be honest, are extremely hard for my American ear to decode, especially in that the characters often talk in conspiratorial whispers. One strength is Idris Elba, best known as Stringer Bell, my personal fave character on The Wire - here in his native British, and he's a compelling actor, but not enough to carry the show. One weakness is that instead of showing police life as it really is (which The Wire did so commendably), this show is drawn, like Dexter to a degree, to cases so lurid and weird and improbable it's obvious they're cooked up by the over-active mind of a screenwriter and not by anyone with more than a passing interest in reality - in other words, if you can accept a London police station where, week after week, they're dealing with an upper-class patricide, a serial cop killer crazed by military service, a vampirish madman who abducts women and scrawls on walls in human blood, leaving the most ridiculous possible trail of clues - that this series is for you. I hope to see Elba in many other shows, but not this one.

Films that create their own world: Onibaba

Japanese b/w classic from 1964 "Onibaba" (director: Shindo) isn't exactly a horror film - and certainly not of the Japanese export horror films of the 50s e.g. Rodin, Godzilla - but it's about as scary and horrific as any film you're likely to see - scene by scene could be one of the most visually striking films of all time, though it's kept from true greatness by the kind of thin plot and the clumsy acting - could have really benefited from Mifune in the male lead role. Still, it's a film with a style and atmosphere all its own. Simply put, movie set in Japanese feudal era, two rival emperors apparently at war, which has thrown the whole land into poverty and drawn almost all young men into the war, through forced conscription, on one side or another - entire movie takes place in on a grassy plain, with sawgrass constantly swaying, taller than any of the people - often we see only forms of people passing through the grasses or wind stirring the tops of the grass. At center of film, two women, mother and her daughter-in-law, the son gone off to war; in fabulous opening scene they chase two wounded samauri soldiers through the grasses, at last pounce on them in surprise and slay them with a few slashes of blades, then the cut off all their armor and dispose of the bodies down a deep hole. They take armor to an old man in a rough and trade for a small amount of millet - he's obviously cheating them, but he complains that it's tough to find a market; he propositions the younger woman. Eventually, a soldier shows up at the grass hut where the two women live and reports that the son/husband is dead; the soldier pursues the daughter/widow and they begin a rather torrid relationship - to the mother-in-law's anger and jealousy, as she tries in various ways to break up their relationship - attempts that end badly for all. Count among the amazing scenes in this movie: the appearance of a masked samurai at the women's hut; the mother-in-law's descent into the hole to recover the samurai's armor and mask; the mother-in-law haunting the young woman; and most distressing of all, the mother-in-law wearing the samurai mask. Won't give more than that away. Though Onibaba (it means The Demon Woman) isn't quite a great film, very few films succeed so well at creating a landscape and environment that is credible, consistent, vivid, striking, and entirely unique: possible comparisons?: Search for Fire, The Fast Runner, and The Seventh Seal - pretty good company.

The intriguing, engaging conclusion to Damages Season 4

Damages Season 4 does manage to tie up all its loose ends - I'm always impressed with how well the producers and writers manage these complex plots with the unusual use of time: all four seasons begin with a dramatic event (in season 4, an apparent ritual beheading by a terrorist group) and then flash back six months or so, and in each episode, give us a few more pieces of the approaching denouement so that we gradually begin to understand the culmination of the plot, even as we're watching the plot unfold - and then all the pieces cohere in the final episode, as, for the first time, we see that final (and initial) dramatic scene in full. In other words, the season begins with its ending and gradually fills in the pieces, keeping you constantly guessing and always engaged. I think the plotting of Season 4 was the best and most coherent of any of the seasons - not that the plots are entirely believable, there are always improbabilities and absurdities, but at least they make dramatic sense: Season 1 was probably too complex, I never could figure out who killed whom or why; season 2 relied too much on a sudden surprise appearance of a marginal character; season 3 was a good conclusion but one of the key "clues" from the opening scene turned out to be a red herring - unfair! Season 4 plot involves the CIA and illegal extradition of suspects from Afghanistan for interrogation who knows where - the CIA agent a very strong a intriguing character. So it's a really good series - carried very much by Glenn Close (though I did tire by the end of her clench-jawed mannerisms) and the ever-improving Rose Byrne. A weakness, however, is the very ordinary writing - as if all the writers' attention goes into plot, and much less into dialogue; way too many dead spots and long pauses where supposedly meaning develops but it doesn't always. Examples: Close's final session with her psychiatrist, not even close in drama and revealing content to scenes in The Sopranos, or the final Close-Byrne confrontation, in which Ellen/Byrne ultimately walks off saying nothing more than: Good-bye, Patti (Close). She could have, should have, really let her have it! Anyway, lots of entertainments and very admirable series for its willingness and ability to take big risks with dramatic form and structure.

Casting against type - in Damages

Damages is known, or at least known to me, for casting against type - in most roles except for the main one, protagonist legal sharpie Patti Hewes (Glenn Close), and in Season 4 these casting decisions are for me some of the highlights of the show: John Goodman makes a terrific evil corporate pseudo-patriot fake-religio thug - he's the CEO of a company that provides private security forces for the U.S. war zones, and despite his religious, family-values mumbo-jumbo he's willing to beat or kill - or, more accurately, have killed - American citizens to protect his corporate welfare. Damages similarly cast Ted Danson as an evil corporate giant in earlier seasons, and made a soft-spoken bearded plainclothes detective who looked like a philosophy grad student the cold-blooded executioner of Season 1. Alongside Goodman in Season 4 is a CIA agent played by someone not known to me - but he seems more like a down and out country musician than our image of a pro spy. Season 4 is maybe moving a little more slowly that the first season or two - in my view, too many long scenes that dwell on moments, that allow Close too many speech mannerisms, and that don't move the plot along rapidly enough - compare with The Wire, the gold standard, about which daughter J points out there is not a single moment that you can cut or live without. Not true in Damages - but still, it's a taut plot that keeps you thinking and guessing and has a few surprises along the way. Rose Byrnes has really matured in this season, and for the first time you can accept that she actually may rise to be Patti's heir apparent - or rival.