Starburst Magazine

TV Zone - (issue 366)

Written by Paul Mount Wednesday, 04 May 2011

Now where was I? Oh, yes….TV Zone; I remember it well...

If you’re a refugee from the old days of Starburst under its previous owners and you’re old enough to recall what might be kindly called its ‘glory years’ (that’d be the late 1980s and the early 1990s - and not just because that’s when this old geezer was writing for the magazine) you may have some memories of the old TV Zone column.

You may be one of the people who almost took out a fatwah against me when I dared to suggest that Robin of Sherwood possibly wasn’t actually the best TV show in the history of the tube and was, in fact, a bit pants. You may have trembled in your anorak when I voiced the opinion that Sylvester McCoy’s era of Doctor Who was a new low for British TV and, perhaps, Western civilisation (I didn’t actually say that but I wish I had). You may, alternatively, have jumped up and down and shouted ‘Yaay, right on’ (or whatever it was young people were prone to shouting back in ‘the day’) when I gave a retro thumbs-up to Gerry Anderson’s UFO and Irwin Allen’s Land of the Giants. If you remember any of these things you’re very old, possibly even as old as I am and I'LL TRY TO SPEAK UP. However, it’s much more likely that you’re wondering what the Hell this bloke's wittering on about and how you can Make It Stop. To cut a long and horribly dull story short, I had the pleasure of presiding over the TV Zone column for ye olde Starburst Magazine from 1986 to 1996 until a combination of exhaustion and a disagreement about Star Trek caused me to hang up my quill (other writing devices are available) and put away my opinions.

Because, my new online chums, opinions are what this column is all about. My opinion, in fact. It’s become the trend, in what’s left of the UK genre press and online, for reviewers to pass comment on every individual episode of every individual 'genre' show on TV - in intricate, stifling detail. Funniest line of dialogue, pop culture references, story arc importance, blah blah blah. But that’s not the TV Zone way, oh no. We prefer to step back and look at the bigger picture. I’ve no interest in writing dreary story synopses and examining every episode of every show in suffocating detail, like some TV surgeon performing an autopsy on a DVD boxset [What?? - Ed]. I’m more interested in providing a broader overview of a series, either as a work in progress (if said show has a good long run of episodes) or an end-of-series post mortem when the dust has settled and the internet chatter has died down. Of course the science-fiction TV world has changed a bit in the fifteen years (gulp) since I last wrote this column and, thankfully, there’s a lot more to write about now than there was back then. American TV still churns out the lion’s share of what might be loosely called science-fiction TV (I’m really struggling not to use the word ‘fantasy’ here, bear with) but the dark rise of reality TV has made it harder for scripted stuff to find and hold an audience and a lot of good shows have died over the last few years, unloved or unwatched (and Outcasts, which was both). Fortunately even we Brits, with our television screens saturated with soaps, medical and detective dramas and mind-numbing talent shows, have rediscovered our sci-fi mojo since Doctor Who exploded back into our lives in 2005 even if only a handful of the shows which appeared in the TARDIS's wake lived to tell the tale for more than a year or so. But at least we're back in the game with ongoing successes like Torchwood, Being Human (more of which later), Misfits and Primeval (which appears, from its frankly pretty dreadful recent series, to be on its last dino-legs) and rumour has it even Red Dwarf is on the verge of a proper full-blown comeback next year courtesy of lad's TV channel Dave which scored a considerable success [bone of contention surely? – Ed] a couple of years back with a three-part revival. So hopefully over the months this rejuvenated column will be casting its beady eye on just about everything the genre has to offer us avid box-watchers. Whether it's the product of the American networks still chasing that illusive new Lost or otherwise created in a small, anonymous warehouse just north of Cardiff(?). Speaking of which...

I doubt we'll see a better 'fantasy' show on UK TV this year than the recent third run of Toby Whithouse's quite brilliant Being Human (and that's definitely a gauntlet being thrown down, Mr Moffat with your 'darker, scarier Doctor Who and you too, Russell T with you big transatlantic all-guns-blazin' Torchwood). Being Human set aside its second season slump and delivered up eight episodes which effectively reformatted and rebooted the whole series and, finally shaking off that irritating 'comedy drama' tag so beloved of lazy listings magazines, sent its characters off into some very dark places indeed...and for some of them there's clearly no way back.

Now I'll cheerfully admit that I did a bit of an eye-roll when I heard that Being Human was moving from its edgy Bristol setting and heading across the Severn to rub shoulders with yer Sherlock and yer Doctor Who and Sarah Jane if only because I can't even go into Morrison's in Cardiff these days without bumping into camera crews and dodging Police Boxes. But fortunately the move to sunny Barry Island (home of Gavin and Stacey) hasn't especially influenced the stories Whithouse and his writers have been able to tell. Fleeing Bristol in the wake of the Box Tunnel 20 railway Massacre (vampire Mitchell's dreadful return to form and the terrible secret he must keep from the others), George, Nina and Mitchell pitch up in an inappropriately-named derelict hotel called 'Honolulu Heights' near Barry Island and whilst werewolves Nina (she's pregnant!) and George are busy nest-building, Mitchell's desperate to rescue ghostly Annie from the purgatory into which she tumbled at the end of series two. Turns out said purgatory resembles an abandoned hospital and Stacey out of EastEnders is living there, making vague threats and terrifying Mitchell witless with prophecies about his 'death' via a 'wolf-shaped bullet'. Once Annie is wrenched back into the land of the living (where she remains dead, of course) the quartet set about settling into their new environment and the show widens its core cast with the introduction of a slew of new characters, some of whom become threaded throughout the series. Episode one, Lia, introduces us to itinerant werewolves McNair (Robson Green showing some real acting chops for a change) and Tom (Stephen Socca, brother of potty-mouthed Lauren Socca from E4's Misfits) to whom Mitchell instantly takes a dislike due to the 'wolf-shaped' bullet threats from Lia (Lacey Turner) and in episode two we meet an extravagant bunch of hedonistic vampires led by him-again Welsh actor Mark Lewis Jones and, extraordinarily, Melanie Walters (the demure Gwen from Gavin and Stacey). The show maintains a healthy balance between the comic and the horrific - the plight of zombie party girl Sasha in episode two is by turns tragic and hilarious - but when season one's 'Big Bad' Herrick (Jason Watkins) is resurrected in episode five but with no memory of his former 'unlife' as a vampire, the wheels are set in motion towards a series finale we all sort of hoped we might not see. Being Human wobbles only once or twice throughout its third series run; Daddy Ghoul in which George is reunited with his father (James Fleet) is a misplaced comedy episode which isn't really very funny and just gets in the way of the more interesting dramas being set up elsewhere in the series and the resolution of Lia and her 'wolf-shaped bullet' prophecy (she made it up) falls about as flat as something very flat indeed. But on the whole the third series is pretty much edge-of-the-seat stuff from the off and with Mitchell now dust (curse you, Peter Jackson, stealing our Aiden Turner for your Hobbit movies!) a new ancient vampire threat is looming on the horizon ready for George, Nina and Annie. It'll be interesting to see how series four shapes up; it's sometimes hard for shows with such strong, well-balanced casts to recover when one of them moves on (see also series three of Misfits, now minus Robert Sheehan) but Whithouse has proven himself as a clever, imaginative showrunner who'll surely rise to the challenge of taking his extraordinary creation in a bold new direction. Here's to it...

ITV, whose horrors are usually more of the Simon Cowell/Piers Morgan variety, chilled a few spines earlier in the year with their impressive and engrossing star-studded five-part thriller Marchlands. The first fruits of a curious creative collaboration between ITV and Twentieth Century Fox in the USA, Marchlands was based on a failed Fox pilot from 2008 entitled The Oaks. British writer Stephen Greenhorn took the concept and crafted a subtle, evocative chiller which made a refreshing change from ITV's usual preferred drama option of doctors'n'detectives.

Set across three time periods - and cleverly twisting its narrative across these eras - Marchlands tells of three families living in a big ol' country house. In 1968 we meet Ruth and Paul Bowen, living with Paul's straight-laced parents Robert and Evelyn. Six months earlier Ruth and Paul's daughter Alice drowned in the nearby woods but Ruth is sure there's more to the death than just an accident. In 1987 Helen and Eddie Maynard are renting the Marchlands house with their two children. Their daughter Amy has an imaginary friend named Alice (aaahhh!) and a series of paranormal occurrences lead her parents to send Amy off for medical tests. In 2010 Mark Ashburn and his pregnant lawyer wife Nisha move into Marchlands but the death of Alice over forty years earlier still hangs heavy over the house and there's still a mystery to be solved.

Marchlands is slick, clever stuff. It's packed with eerie - if familiar - imagery and incident; pale, ghostly figures, mysterious messages, apparently-inexplicable supernatural accidents. Complex, intertwining relationships, solid performances from a big cast (including Jodie Whitaker, Shelley Conn, Anne Reid, Alex Kingston, Dean Andrews) and, for once, a satisfying and actually quite heart-warming conclusion, combine to create one of the ITV Networks’ better recent drama serials. The viewing figures - regularly around the 7 million mark - tell their own story too. Here's hoping this one will compel ITV to commission a few more dramas in this genre and a bit less vacuous Cowell fodder and by-the-numbers cop dramas. I can dream, can't I?

Even Sky Living has jumped onto the supernatural bandwagon with its recent six-part serial Bedlam, its first ever drama commission and whilst it didn't have an original idea in its head it was done with style and enthusiasm and with several knowing winks at the genre conventions it was cheerfully regurgitating. Kate (Charlotte Salt) and her developer father Warren (Hugo Speer) are having trouble attracting much interest in their new apartment complex built over an old mental hospital (perhaps calling it 'Bedlam Heights' wasn't the best way of attracting new residents?). Hunky former psychiatric patient Jed Harper (Theo James) arrives on the scene; fortunately he can see ghosts and when he moves in to Bedlam Heights with Kate and her chums Molly (Ashley Madekwe) and Ryan (faded lantern-jawed Pop idol Will Young) he's on hand when the spooks and the spirits start to terrorise the inhabitants of the apartments. We get them all across these six episodes - a spooky Victorian ghost girl, a ghost seeking revenge for a Crime He Did Not Commit, eerie telephone calls, messages scrawled on walls, inexplicable fires. We've seen all this stuff before in dozens of films and TV shows but Bedlam does it with some style, assisted by its attractive cast, decent direction and some genuinely Gothic locations. Then there’s the obligatory "second series please!" cliffhanger series finale and with decent, if unspectacular viewing figures for the run, I'd expect to see a return to Bedlam in the next year or so.

A quick mention too for the increasingly barking mad True Blood which has recently finished its third run on the FX Channel in the UK. Created by Alan Ball (who, as the brains behind Six Feet Under, one of the best ever US drama series) from the Sookie Stackhouse novels, True Blood is pretty much required viewing because of Ball's involvement if nothing else. But it's completely nuts. If you've not seen the show, True Blood is the one where vampires share an uncomfortable co-existence with humanity whilst lurking in the background are assorted other supernatural phenomena such as shape-shifters, werewolves and, now, it appears, fairies. I love True Blood even though it's narratively all over the place. The vampires all have names like estate agents; Bill Compton, Eric Northman and this year's baddie, the centuries-old blood-sucker known as....Russell Edginton (played with glorious relish by Dennis O'Hare) and the show is studded with extreme gore, explicit naughtiness and loads of creative swearing. It's fast, funny, utterly insane and absolutely unmissable. Catch up with it if you can.

Finally this month...I really have to say a word or two about Elisabeth Sladen. The Doctor Who world (and even, I noticed, the wider world) was rocked by the news a few weeks back of the unexpected death of the marvelous Lis Sladen, loved and adored by generations for her role as the definitive Doctor Who girl, journalist and investigator Sarah Jane Smith. Lis appeared in the series from 1973 to 1976, reappeared in her first spin-off, K9 and Co in 1981, then back in the parent show for the twentieth anniversary special in 1983. Various fan projects kept the character alive in the dark years when Doctor Who was off our screens and when the show finally returned in 2005, one of then-showrunner Russell T Davies' many inspired decisions was to bring Sarah Jane back in 2006 for a meeting with the tenth Doctor (David Tennant). This quickly led to The Sarah Jane Adventures, a brilliant and intelligent children's drama which cemented Lis's popularity with a whole new generation of young viewers as well as those of us from an earlier age who just couldn't and wouldn't let go of their past. I met the wonderful, warm-hearted, generous Lis just once, just after the resurrected Doctor Who was announced and I recall her telling me how she very much doubted that she'd be a part of the show's new lease of life. If only she'd known... Once again it's Russell T Davies who seems to sum it all up: "The Universe was lucky to have Sarah Jane, the world was lucky to have Lis Sladen." Have to go now, something in my eye again...

Next month: The Walking Dead arrive on 5 (and I don't mean the return of Big Brother) and Doctor Who is back on BBC1...

←Previous TV Zone - (Issue 367)

Comments

0 #8 Brian Gorman 2011-06-21 02:03

Rock on, Tommy! (I mean, Paul)

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+1 #7 Robin Pierce 2011-05-17 19:11

Great to see you picking up where you left off Mr Mount.

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0 #6 Mr Cheese 2011-05-17 16:53

Another great column. Hit this out of the park...

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+1 #5 PaulM 2011-05-16 16:18

Hi JR...no offence re the 'intricate, stifling' details. Ahem!! DW deserves it, of course, but in its own dedicated place...and you've got it well covered!!!

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+1 #4 jim 2011-05-16 14:26

Superb article, a very good read.

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+2 #3 Ted Lyons 2011-05-16 14:15

was already happy with the new/old starburst. then they get my other favourite back and with mr mount.
can't believe all this, and how thoughtful it all is. Paul sounds just like the old days, and i mean that as a complement!

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