Serial Goodness

A top 5, this week, because I have little else with which to regale you.

I can understand why strict episodic formats are so popular with the TV powers that be; they allow new viewers to jump onboard any time without worrying about what they've missed and they make scheduling random repeats that much easier; but to my mind there is nothing more satisfying than settling down to watch a pilot, having no idea what's going on, and then spending the next 3, 4, 5, 6, or however many years, unearthing and unravelling a bunch of mysteries along with the characters.

I mean, it's the ultimate sign of respect for the viewer, is it not, that you not only expect them to, but believe them capable of, following events over the course of weks, months, or years? Certainly, it's a sign of disrespect to say they can't.

The middle ground, of course, is the episodic serial. Like the show that has a new case/mission/adventure every week but also soap opera-ises it's characters personal lives; or there's the recurring nemesis, who pops up two or 3 times a season (premiere, mid season sweeps and finale) and maybe gets a mention or two in passing elsewhere; The Mentalist's Red John being a prime current example of that one.

The realist in me says that the best format, for building, and keeping, an audience, is the episodic that morphs into a serial down the line. You do a bunch of stand alones, with a little background soap opera, maybe drop in a few hints here and there as to a bigger picture but nothing that's going to alienate any newcomers, then once you've built your audience and have them hooked, you allow the threads to come together and become gradually more serialised. The best examples of this, to my mind, being Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and of course the now legendary Buffy The Vampire Slayer.


That's the realistic view though. The idealistic view, is that the show designed from day one as a serial, the show that asks questions from the outset and makes you work for every answer, the show that has you drawing flow charts and venn diagrams almost from the moment you switch on the pilot; that is the show I love. That is the show I want to watch. The history of television, or at least the recent history of television, is littered with shows that tried this method and failed, but when it hits, it hits big.

Either way, though, the need in my heart for a nice meaty epic is always going to make these shows the ones I gravitate toward the most, in terms of favourites. I watch the other stuff, because I watch everything, but I don't love it. These shows I love.

I make no apologies, by the way, for the fact that some of these shows, including those in the top spots, are household names. I could have tried to pull a bunch of obscure stuff out, but the fact is I aint no hipster; if it's good, it's good, regardless of it's popularity, and these shows are good.


5. GAME OF THRONES



What? I know, I know, it's only on it's 2nd season, and it's barely gotten going; in fact, at time of writing this I have only actually seen 7 episodes of S1. And those 7 are more than enough for me to say you should all be watching. Not that I need to say it of course, since you're all watching anyway. Right? Right?

If I'm honest, I might have held off on it's inclusion on this list if I hadn't read the books. After all, lots of shows can start off good and trail away. However, knowing the excellence that is to come; assuming they remain as faithfull as these early episodes have been, and there's no reason to suppose they won't; gives me shivers, and I'm genuinely a little bit jealous of those who come to this through the show. You have no idea what lies ahead.

4. BABYLON 5



Like Buffy, Farscape, DS:9, and countless others Babylon 5 is a show which began in a very episodic fashion, built it's world, and then gradually became a serialised story as it went along. Unlike those shows, though, it's a show that intended from day one to do that, rather than gradually evolving toward it.

Let's be honest. Given show creator J. Michael Straczunski's explicitly stated aim to write a show that told a finite story with a set beginning, middle and end, over a predetermined number of seasons, the show is the quintessential serial. Those early hours may have appeared standalone, but that was just because we didn't yet know just how they connected. If the episodes didn't end on cliffhangers and pick up immediately were the previous ones left off, that was only because that level of urgency wasn't needed. Yet.

Once the storyline(s) really kicked into high gear, the show gave us some of the most intense waits between episodes that TV had ever provided, up until that point, and if it's been bettered since it's only as a result of it's own success; others recognised it's greatness, emulated it, and refined it's principles. Sci-Fi TV as we recognise it today would not exist without Babylon 5. Fact!

3. AMERICAN GOTHIC

This is an odd show, in that it started off heavily serialised, switched to episodics, and then reverted to serialised, all over the course of one season. One season, I might add, that was the only season the show ever got. Which is, not to be too blunt, a fucking outrage.

Focussing on Sheriff Lucas Buck; still Gary Cole's greatest role, and he was on The West Wing; the show charts the attempts of a small group of naysayers to break the stranglehold that Buck has on the people he polices. He's charming, manipulative, and utterly ruthless; they don't stand a chance.

There's a stellar cast involved in this show. Aside from Cole, there's Paige Turco, Jake Weber, Sarah Paulson and of course a very young Lucas Black showing the world what he was made of.

This show doesn't pull any punches. Over the course of it's 22 episodes it goes to some very dark places; the efforts of the local school teacher to exert her influence over young Caleb (Black) are incredibly creepy, and the gradual disintegration of one heroes sanity is a little hard to watch as well. There's a nasty (albeit mostly implied) rape scene, and the final run of episodes, in which virtually every character is corrupted in some way is just gutting. You really will not see that ending coming.

A word of warning; if you do decide to watch this show, do a little research first (while being careful to avoid spoilers of course). As with all of creator Shaun Cassidy's shows; he's also responsible for William Fichtner starring Invasion, and the show that kick started Heath Ledger's career, Roar; it's heavily dependant on a building atmosphere and intricately plotted, slow burn storylines. So the fact that the network screened the episodes in the wrong order and missed 4 out altogether doesn't do it any favours. The DVD release has the 18 aired episodes in their incorrect order, and then the other 4 tacked on the end; serving to ensure that the show doesn't make any sense. At all. Find out the right order before watching. You'll be glad you did.

2. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA



I debated the running order of these last 2. Both huge critical successes, I was hard pressed to choose between them in terms of quality, so I didn't. Instead, I chose based on enjoyment.

You see, as much as I love Battlestar Galactica, and I do, it's not a show you can really say is 'enjoyable' to watch. It's bleak. Unremittingly bleak. This is a show that has the human race all but wiped out in an almost succesfull genocidal attack in the first episode, and just gets more depressing from there. Not a single character is safe, be it from physical injury, psychological harm, or death, and as the 4 season run rolls on you can't help but come to the conclusion that these writers had some very twisted childhoods.

Lest I put you off, I'll tell you that a happy ending of sorts does arrive, but it's all relative. It's an ending that is only happy as opposed to everything these people have been through up until that point, and it's an ending that has been paid for in blood. A lot of blood; far far fewer characters arrive at the destination than started the journey.

As downright depressing as the show is to watch though, it's also immensely addictive. Writing, direction, and above all the acting; Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Aaron Douglas, Lucy Lawless, James Callis and Nicki Clyne are the names I would singe out for especial praise; are pretty much flawless throughout. You will need to know what happens next, even as you dread it.

1. LOST

You all know what Lost was about. Even if you never saw an episode, you couldn't have avoided all the hype surrounding it's launch, all the praise heaped on it's early seasons, all the grouching during the middle years, and all the dissapointment and scorn directed at the finale.

Well here's the thing. The launch deserved the hype; it was awesome. The early seasons deserved the praise; they were some of the most addictive and engrossing hours of television I've ever seen. But that's where I partways with the masses, because I had zero problem with the 'difficult' middle years, and I absolutely adored the finale. So nyah!

Of course, your mileage may vary, as they apparently say, so the only way to find out where you stand on the issue is to watch it for yourself. One opinion is as valid as any other, after all, what with taste being subjective. One thing that will make me hurt you, though, is if you trot out the 'unanswered questions' argument. The number of people I heard bemoaning the fact that they kept piling on the mysteries without ever resolving them, and then listing a bunch of plotlines that had already been resolved, at least implicitly, if you were actually bothering to pay attention... enough to make my blood boil. Hate the show if you want to, but at least hate it for crimes it actually committed!

Farewell and Welcome

One in, one out, as the old saying doesn't really go, but would if their was a bit less poetry and a bit more literalism in the world.

The last couple of weeks have seen me smash my way through the final few episodes of Battlestar Galactica and add to my schedule the new Arthurian show, Camelot. One endeavour gave me immense levels of entertainment, with action, emotion and noble sacrifices galore while the other was a big pile of try hard adolescent nonsense. Guess which was which.

I've been guilty in the past of judging shows before I've even seen an episode. I assumed, as I think most people did, that Buffy The Vampire Slayer was going to be disposable fluff; I assumed that Spooks: Code 9 was going to be arsom; and I assumed that Merlin was going to be really irritating youth oriented nonsense, more Robin Hood than Doctor Who. We all know about the incredible legacy that Buffy has left, the less said about Code 9 the better and Merlin has fast become a firm favourite of mine. The success of this latter show in winning me over was largely responsible for me attempting to put aside my prejudices regarding the latest addition to my schedule; Camelot. The thematic and narrative ties between the two led me to hope that where Merlin had succeeded in winning me over, Camelot would as well. Sadly, my preconceptions in this case were quite strong, since everything I heard about this show prior to watching pointed toward it being a dismal failure.

The first problem with Camelot was of course it's casting.There is no way on Earth that even the most talented PR man or woman is ever going to convince me that Joseph Fiennes is a suitable choice to play a) Merlin or b) any other character at all, in this show or any other, ever. To put it simply, The. Man. Can. Not. Act. Sorry, but there it is.

Other casting decisions were less worrying by comparison but only in the way that getting run over by a car is less worrying than getting run over by an articulated lorry; Eva Green, whose work I'm not overly familiar with, seemed to be talked about entirely in terms of how often she got her kit off, which while always a welcome trait in attractive female characters, dosn't constitute a character in and of itself.

Meanwhile, Jamie Campbell-Bower as Arthur spends the whole show looking like he'd be more comfortable running up and down a beach in Summer Bay than charming a nation into proclaiming him the greatest monarch they'd ever had. I should say that I have no problem with the concept of a reluctant young hero forced into responsibilities he doesn't feel ready for; it's a standard trope of the fantasy genre and plenty of solid drama can be drawn from the premise when it's done well but you need a charismatic lead for it to work and here we have, well, look at him.

All the casting woes aside though - and I won't even go into what a drippy mare Tamsin Egertons Guinevere looks - pale into insignificance when you factor in the big one; Executive Producer and head writer Chris Chibnall, who has proven time and again over the last few years that there isn't a cliche or plot contrivance he won't stoop to in his quest to thoroughly dumb down genre drama. I can see why Starz felt he was the man for the job, what with the two seasons of Torchwood he oversaw doing such great numbers in the States but really, they are television proffessionals; could they not recognise that that shows success was almost entirely in spite of his efforts? He wrote 'Cyberwoman' and 'Countrycide' for Gods sake.

So, despite my best mental efforts I couldn't go into Camelot with high hopes. The question is, did the show (under)perform as expected, or did it blow my socks off? I'll be brutally frank, it was the former. I tried, I really did, but Arthur was a sulky prick, Merlin was another one note performance from Fiennes exactly as I'd predicted and Eva Green seems to have been watching the BBCs Merlin series as research on how to play Morgan, since she has got Katie 'Morgana' McGraths blank eyed woodenness down to an art. Chibnall meanwhile has fulfilled all of my expectations of him by littering the script with dialogue that is by turns crushingly bland and cringe-inducingly try-hard, while his attempts at fore-shadowing and portentousness are so maddeningly unsubtle as to be insulting to the audience; we see Arthur sleep with his brothers girlfriend and then an hour later he meets Guinevere but, gasp, she is engaged to Arthurs new friend. Surely Arthur, as figurehead of the Government and squarejawed hero, wouldn't steal his friends woman? Of course not, he wouldn't drea...WAIT A MINUTE, THAT BIT AT THE START! HE TOTALLY WOULD! That's subtlety for you, people, Chibnall style.

I am reliably informed, by various anonymous commentators whom I've never met and whose opinions are therefore bullet-proof, that the show picks up dramatically as it progresses and ends the season on a massive high. I genuinely hope that this is true, but I'm afraid it's very much a case of "I'll believe it when I see it."

So, if Camelot is the less than stellar of this weeks featured shows then Battlestar Galactica must be the one that managed to float my boat. Having amassed a pretty hefty backlog of episodes I had resigned myself to having something of a slog ahead of me, due in large part to the attitudes of several people who had convinced me that it suffered a huge downturn in quality in it's latter days. Imagine my surprise then when what I actually encountered was a show so confident, both in it's story and in it's cast, that it continually pushed the limits of what it was and what it could be, right up to the very end of it's run, producing what I would describe as pretty much the exact opposite of a downturn in quality.

Knowing well in advance that the 4th season was going to be the last meant that there was no longer any need, nor indeed time, for tedious filler episodes like S2's 'Black Market' or S3's 'Unfinished Business'. Instead we got the most consistent run of episodes since S1, that looked, from the premiere onwards, for all the world like a show on a mission; confident in their story and in the ability of their cast to tell that story, the writers gave us a rollercoaster tour-de-force that more than delivered on the properties early promise. They even back-burnered the awful Apollo/Starbuck romance nonsense.

The biggest factor in the show going out on such a high was the recognition from the writers that when you make a show about warfare, and indeed genocide, you'd better be willing to shed a little blood if you don't want to appear toothless; and boy oh boy did they spill blood in S4. To be fair, the show had always acknowledged, and remained truthful to, the very dark premise with several recurring characters meeting untimely ends over the years but as the big finish began to loom it became apparent that while the writers may well be willing to give Humanity a happy ending, it was going to make them sacrifice a hell of a lot to get there.

Case in point; quite early in S4, the death of Callie (best looking woman on the show, fact) was as brutal and shocking as it was dramatically honest. I can't believe anyone, viewer or crew member, genuinely relished the prospect of Nicki Clynes departure from the show but the story is King and she needed to go, so go she did. It made me genuinely angry, but it also made me understand, perhaps for the first time, how far this team were willing to go, and made the rest of the season all the more thrilling, because you never quite knew who might be the next to go. I'll admit, too, that it did my little fanboy heart good to see that my favourite characters death was given extra meaning in the finale, as the reveal of her murderer initiates the last bout of bloodshed in the entire series.

When you take into account suicides (it comes out of nowhere and is properly shocking), executions (another of my favourites went in this way, following his part in a mutiny), and combat deaths (sudden and unglamorous, the way they should be) it really is shocking just how many regular and recurring characters don't even make it to the finale, and then it all kicks off just long enough to cull a few more, so that only the chosen (very) few make it to the redemptive new home. It's bleak, but probably realistic (if you can apply that term to a show about robots and spaceships), and one suspects that to end any other way would have fallen pretty flat.

Uber-foot RIPNow, final thoughts on the finale. In much the same way as Lost did, the finale ends on a very spiritual note. This has been used by several of my acquaintance as a negative, again just as with Lost. Now, without wishing to over stress the comparison, religion and spirituality has been a huge part of Galactica since the very beginning, just like Lost; in fact, Galactica was if anything even more explicit in that respect, so to point to the inclusion of such themes in the finales as a flaw or in some way a betrayal of the audience seems a little, well, dense and swimming in point missing. Maybe that's just me, though.

So there you have it. One great show ends and one mediocre show arrives and the wheels of the Quest continue to turn. Join me next week when I talk about something or other to do with the telly.

How does it all end?

I'll admit it, I have been watching season 6 of Lost, via the computer screen, courtesy of Megavideo. Yes, I am aware that I'm probably committing all sorts of terrible online piracy crimes and yes, maybe even a netiquette faux pas for admitting it but the fact is, I have every intention of purchasing the box set when it comes out. I'm too much of a fanboy not to. I look at these streaming viewings, not downloads you'll note, nothing permanent, as advance screenings, if you will.

RIP

You have to look at it from my point of view. I don't have Sky, and since Lost is now exclusive to said network I have no chance to see the shows in any kind of timely fashion. It wasn't so bad when they just bought first run rights and let the terrestrials have a go afterwards but these days even that concession is denied us. So I watch online. Most shows I don't. Most shows I do my civic duty and wait for the discs, or the inevitable Sky 3 early morning wallpaper repeats that I can get through the freeview box, or I just don't watch at all until years down the line when everyone has moved on and no-one cares about the exclusive rights anymore and it starts to appear here there and everywhere in all sorts of obscure corners of the schedules.

Evangeline Lily - Kate, Kate, Kate

You can't do that with Lost though can you? I mean you can, of course you can, but you'd be a muppet. The show thrived on unanswered questions. It encouraged the kind of fan debate that is second only to Doctor Who or the X-Files at it's peak. Which means that unless you stick your head in the sand, preferably whilst hiding under a big rock, in a cave, you have zero chance of avoiding spoilers. And this is one show where you really, really, don't want to have stuff spoiled. Already I know that Jack dies in the closing moments of the show. Okay, not too bad, since I don't know the manner of his death or the circumstances leading up to it but still...

Lost spoilers are no longer even considered spoilers anymore, are they? It's been long enough now that people are talking about the show quite freely, secure in the knowledge that anyone interested will have already seen the episodes. Go on the web now and spoilerific discussion abounds in forum threads that are not spoiler tagged and in many cases have nothing to do with Lost. It's almost like references to the show have become part of the geek vocabulary. To be honest, I reckon I've been pretty lucky to get away with staying relatively unspoiled for as long as I have.

Emilie de Ravin - Claire, Claire, Claire

So I decided to head to the web and get it out of the way as quickly as possible. Which I have been doing at a nice old clip. The episodes have rolled by, questions have been answered, characters have been culled and now, today, I get to the point that I have only one episode left to watch. The End II. The last chapter in a truly epic story and my final hurdle in finally being able to embrace the conversation.

"This video has been removed due to infringement issues"

Fuck. Just the finale mind, none of the previous episodes. Are they just toying with people now? "Let them see the buildup then leave the fuckers hanging, that'll teach them."

Terry O'Quinn - Locke, Locke, Locke

Someone definitely has it in for me when it comes to this show.


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