Material Witness

REVIEW: The Crown on Netflix

The triumph of The Crown, the Netflix dramatisation of the British Royal Family following the current Queen's ascent to the throne in 1952, is that it does so much with so little.

At its heart The Crown is the story of a young woman coming to terms with her new job and a young family with its new circumstances, albeit that those circumstances are of course somewhat extraordinary. Nothing much of anything happens. But writer Peter Morgan squeezes every last drop of drama and pathos out of what was likely lived as a fairly slow sequence of events. After the death of her father and her rise to power, three stories dominate the 10 episodes - the health of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his battle to hold on to power; the doomed love affair of Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, equerry to the late George VI; and the growing realisation of the young Queen that her life is no longer her own, that her every decision is now subjugated to whatever is best for the Crown. 

The result is a fascinating, often moving and entirely believable (even if exaggerated) drama that held us spellbound over its 10 hours. Even as the Queen becomes more Royal, more cold and calculating under the tutelage of her mother and a succession of politicians and private secretaries, she becomes more human. Her overwhelming loneliness and isolation, the essential sacrifices she made for her role, are strangely surprising. Claire Foy brings the young Elizabeth to life beautifully, mastering the uncertainty and vulnerability of the early episodes, then later the inner conflict and her growing confidence and assertiveness. BAFTAs and other awards surely reckon. 

Foy is surrounded by a glittering supporting cast of royals and courtiers. Jared Harris is suitably understated as George VI, a shy man thrust into an unwelcome limelight, while Victoria Hamilton is spiky and  challenging as his widow, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The late Queen Mother, regarded with reverence, might be one of the few royals to come out of the show with her reputation dented. Hamilton plays her as a tough almost unpleasant figure, the stolid defender of the royal realm. Alex Jennings is typically superb as the Duke of Windsor, wearing his forced exile with a self-centred sense of injury and injustice, illuminated by the occasional blinding flash of insight and inspiration. His commentary on his niece's coronation from a Paris society party was one of the cleverest pieces of writing in a series that was exquisitely scripted. (Morgan truly is the star of this show). 

And then there's Phil the Greek, the Duke of Edinburgh played by Matt Smith. The Duke has rarely been one to elicit a lot of sympathy from his wife's subjects with his air of superiority and a history of rudeness and gaffes.  But here Morgan reveals the great difficulty of his position, married into a life that has stripped him of his freedom, his career and even his name - his masculinity if you like.

Matt Smith plays him as a restless cad, gadding about with his friends and coming in drunk at all hours while his tortured wife worries her way through another constitutional crisis. It's a strange performance, dominated by a coquettish-knowing-smirk-cum-smile delivered from underneath blonde locks. But just as the Queen Mother comes out as a much less sympathetic figure than the royal saint of tabloid yore, with Phillip the reverse was true. You genuinely wouldn't want his half life. 

Also living a half life, in the shadow of her sister is the most radiant of The Crown's jewels, the lovelorn Margaret, played by the iridescent Vanessa Kirby. Margaret begins the series as a carefree party girl  with an effortless cool, finishes it in the sloughs of despair. But Kirby, beautiful and elegant, shines regardless. We are going to see a lot more of her.  

And then there is John Lithgow  as Churchill, struggling with mortality. I never quite came to terms with Lithgow's face, but his movement, demeanour and speech captured the final age of Winston Churchill quite brilliantly and emotionally.

Naturally the whole thing - Netflix's most expensive original series - looked utterly magnificent. The 1950s may have been an austere decade of renewal and rationing, but it didn't much look like that in the Royal planes, trains, boats, automobiles and palaces. Costume and set design was absolutely spot on.

I've no idea what Netflix's plans are for The Crown, but if they come back for more, I'm with them.  

 

 

 

 

Foyle's War: Silence is Golden

I came late to Foyle's War. The wartime-detective-turned-spy series had already completed seven seasons by the time I watched my first episode in August 2013. By the end of the month I had binge-watched all 22 episodes I could find. 

It took me a little longer to work out why I liked it quite so much: Foyle, an intelligent and under-stated hero, only speaks when he has something to say. This is a rare quality in a character on television, where there always seems to be a compulsion to fill the airwaves with dialogue. 

Not so on Foyle's War, where a combination of smart scripts, excellent cinematography and  terrific acting often means that less can be more. Michael Kitchen, in particular, is terrific first as DCS Foyle and then, post-war, as an MI5 agent.Kitchen plays Foyle with a quiet humanity underpinned by steely resolve. He is unflappable, clever and - mostly importantly - entirely credible. And whether confronted by a villain with a gun or an MI5 bigwig with hypertension and ethical deficit disorder, Foyle deploys his most dangerous weapon: silence.

It is one of the truisms of fictional detectivess everywhere that while interviewing suspects, it is advisable to leave silences to develop, because generally people are uncomfortable with conversational voids and will seek to fill them, possibly with incriminating evidence. Foyle takes this to extremes and the patrician Kitchen fills the void eloquently with facial expression and body language. And it works brilliantly.

Underpinning this excellent show - one of the best detective series to have graced UK television screens - are Anthony Horowitz's excellent scripts which combine factual war time events, personal drama and artistic licence to near perfection. The first episode of the current series - the eight and PLEASE ANTHONY hopefully not the last - was perhaps the best yet. The narrative was wide-ranging and ambitious, pulling together corrupt American industrialism, middle eastern oil politics and the Nuremburg trials into one neat and satisying package.

If all television was this good, I'd never go out. 

Gadget Inspector solves Wallander ringtone mystery

Hats off to Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor of the Telegraph, and one of the paper's intrepid Gadget Inspectors: he has tracked down the elusive ringtone used by Swedish detective Kurt Wallander in the BBC's adaptation of Henning Mankell's bestselling crime novels.

Material Witness turned to Twitter friend Wallop to assist in the quest to find the ringtone, as outlined in Material Witness on Friday, after other avenues of investigation, including the SonyEricsson press office, failed to produce the answer that thousands of visitors to the site - the highest ever for a story - were looking for.

In this piece published at the Telegraph today - surely an early contender for Investigative Journalism of the Year -  Wallop offers good news to those seeking the ringtone: it will be available soon as Wallander producer Left Bank Pictures, which composed the tune, plans to make it available.

The final episode of the excellent Wallander airs on BBC One on Sunday December 17.

Post-apocalypse is so now - Survivors returns

There's really no escaping the end of the world as we know it. First of all its a strange adaptation of The Day of the Triffids - with Eddie Izzard emerging as an unlikely dictator - on the Christmas schedules of all things. Next we have the release of the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, depressing, horrifying and apparently impressing cinema audiences the world over. There was even 2012, memorably described by Mark Lawson on Front Row on Radio 4 as "the comedy version" of The Road.

And now, if anyone has any shred of hope for our collective futures remaining, we have the second series of the BBC's series Survivors, a remaking of a 1970s series.

Series One, which I bought from iTunes and largely watched on a 2 inch screen somehwere over the Baltic ewas surprisingly entertaining. The premise was simple - and particularly germane in the wake of bird flu, swine flu and various other pandemic-threatening viruses - humanity (or at least the portion that lives in and around Manchester) is stricken by a flu like virus that spreads rapidly and destructively, killing all but a handful of the population.

Those that remain are left to fight for their lives and over dwindling supplies of energy and food in a landscape that is bleak and a society that is Hobbesian and increasingly dangerous.

If the path of Survivors was largely predictable - battles for food, for territory and for power - it was also very entertaining. The series fcouses on the battle of one particular group, led by a woman, Abby, searching for her lost son and including a violent career criminal, a Muslim playboy and the devout child he finds while racing an Audi supercar around the devastated city and a doctor who loses her faith in her profession.

A sinister background is provided by a former minsiter running an authoritarian compound which aims to recreate civil society using a combination of the jackboot and a Stalinist five year plan and a group of scientists in pristine who may or may not have been involved in the spread of the virus - or in trying to control it.

It's not The Road, but it's not 2012 either. As many of the critics have said, it is entertaining.

Series Two started with the spectacular and explosive destruction of a hospital in which some survivors were searching for the tools with which to repair the shotgun-impaired of the myserious Greg, who was wounded during the finale of Series One as Abby was kidnapped by the sinister scientists. She is now in their lab - the only person known to have contracted the wound and survived - a guinea pig for whatever plan they are putting into effect.

And even if the second half of the show was a rather slow Earthquake-rescue scene, It should be another good ride, with the poltico-medico plot to the fore. I may need a bigger iPod for those cross-Baltic flights.

The unsolved mystery of the Wallander ringtone

LATEST: Mystery Solved

It is time for a little detective work of our own here at Material Witness as we seek to solve one of television's small but infuriating unsolved mysteries: what is Kurt Wallander's highly distinctive mobile ringtone?

In December 2007, I opened a review of the BBC's first series of Wallander with the following: "The ring tone of Kurt Wallander's mobile phone is shrill, insistent, impossible to ignore and just a little bit hypnotic. As such the phone represents the pull of the job on Wallander's life: it is always on; liable to go off at any second; it has an unbreakable hold on him."

If the the ringtone was interesting, I did not expect it to become one of the major sources of traffic to this site in the following months. But the close correlation of the words "ringtone" and "Wallander" did beging producing a very steady stream of traffic to Material Witness.

The airing of the first episode of the second series on Sunday has produced a similar effect. Wallander's ringtone is unchanged and the traffic from Google searching on the two words has resumed.

Last time around I made a half-arsed effort to find out what the ring tone was. But to no avail. Others have tried also, including this poster at Digital Spy, one at Booktalk & More (a good site I've not found before) and another at PBS in the US who admires its "defeated simplicity", which I think is a rather nice turn of phrase.

This time I am not to be foiled. The phone is clearly a SonyEricsson - compulsory equipment in Sweden, where you probably get the same death stares when carrying something else that you do when using something other than a Nokia in FInland - and an email to the press office should be able to reveal the secret of the tone. Watch this space.

In the meantime if anyone else can shed light on this topic, please leave a comment below.

 

ITV's Whitechapel - saved by Jack the Ripper

So Rupert Penry-Jones waves goodbye to the world of Spooks and swaps it for the staple of British television drama: the detective show.

His first assignment, tonight on ITV1, was Whitechapel. A woman is found butchered in the East End of London, her throat cut, her intestines on display. Sound familiar? It should do. It happened before. In 1888 to be precise, executed, so to speak, by the UK's first and most celebrated serial killer: Jack the Ripper. 

ITV's body is found on the 120th anniversary of what was assumed to be the first Ripper murder. Called to the scene is Inspector Joseph Chandlor, a fast-tracked DI, a graduate trainee with friends in high places. He arrives at the scene, fresh from what looked suspiciously like a St James's St gentlemen's club, wearing a dinner suit and bow tie. He bromptly blanches at the first sight of blood and displays all the signs of obsessive compulsive disorder, carefully arranging his Moleskin diary, Mont Blanc pen and BlackBerry on his new desk. 

Meanwhile a team of "proper" down-to-earth, get-the-job-done coppers, led by the ever-excellent Phil Davis treat their new leader with disdain, laughing behind the back of jotter-blotting desk jockey.

Sound familiar? It ought to. The lazy writers of Whitechapel have plumped for just about every cop show cliché you can imagine, short of Chandlor putting Verdi in the CD player and sitting back on a leather armchair with a glass of Laphroaig.

It's a waste of Penry-Jones' talent. His is a strange role: uncertain and nervous. And it all looks a bit odd and never really got going. 

But, but , it is underpinned by perhaps the most compelling story in the history of British crime: the Jack the Ripper murders. Unsolved and 120 years on, utterly compelling. As the story unfolds, the parallels between 1888 and 2008 become clear, Chandlor helped by a Ripperologist who runs tours of the Ripper sites in the modern East End.

And the Ripper connection just about keeps the show from drowning. If this were any common or garden murder - in the West End, perhaps, or South London - I would have turned off after about 15 minutes, destroyed by the clichés. But the Ripper endures. Can Adam, sorry Chandlor, solve the UK's most famous unsolved crimes?

Episode Two immeasurably better. click here

Damian Lewis breathes Life into cop show format

Perhaps the only drawback of having a hard drive recorder is that I often watch shows far too late to be able to make useful recommendations (see Wallander review in the week after the series finished on the BBC).

Even so, in these days of DVD box sets, Torrents and iTunes there is some value in promoting an unusual and highly watchable cop show. Life first aired in autumn 2007 on NBC and was picked up by the network for a full series after decent ratings and critical acclaim. The first series was truncated to 11 episodes by the writers' strike but a second series was commissioned and shown in 2008.

In the UK Life aired in late 2008 on what, for me at least, was the uncharted backwater of ITV3 and I might never have found it if it were not for the fact that Damian Lewis was cast in the lead role of Detective Charlie Crews which ensured that the review pages here picked it up a little. I pushed the little green "series link" button on Sky Plus and a few weeks later was very pleased I did.

Life tells the story of Detective Crews, who has returned to the LAPD following a long stint in prison for a pair of murders he did not commit and has been absolved of following the introduction of DNA evidence. Unsurprisingly, the former cop was brutalised in prison and has come out a changed man having found his "Zen". He has also come out extremely wealthy following a wrongful imprisonment settlement that includes his detective's shield as well as a large, but unspecified, sum of cash.

Crews is not especially welcome back in the LAPD, but eventually settles into an uneasy relationshiop with his partner Dani Reese, who herself has overcome problems of drug addiction following a stint undercover in narcotics.

Life is both series and serial, with a separate and distinct murder for Crews and Reese to solve each episode running alongside Crews' own search for the plot and plotters who framed him.

While the latter carries the series and gives it its narrative power, the former are always entertaining and somewhat unusual (the half-corpse IRS agent/spy story was particularly inventive) and it seems that the writers were given licence to have some fun with them.

The back story of Crews' own life and investigation is excellent television with suggestions of institutional corruption and personal treachery giving it weight. The way the story is told with on-screen "interviews" about Crews' crime with his ex-wife (who left him, not believing his professions of innocence), his ex-partner (who did not back him up in the investigation), his lawyer is a clever device for exploring the plot.

Crews' own eccentricities are also entertaining. His penchant for fruit, for fortune cookie expressions of philosophy, unusual cars and for spending his money in strange ways (an orange farm and a solar power installation) give Life a different point of differentiation from cop shows where the leads are mean, moody and world weary. (The Zen was overdone somewhat in early episodes but bear with it, it improves dramatically by episode three).

For all this to work, Crews has to be just about perfect. Anything less and the whole thing could descend quickly into hokey slapstick. Fortunately for NBC, it has a man in the lead who has emerged as one of the finest television actors of his generation.

Damian Lewis, a ginger old Etonian, may not have been the obvious choice for a Californian homicide detective, but the producers had clearly seen his superb portrayal of Major Richard Winters in the truly excellent Band of Brothers and known they were backing a winner.

Lewis has everything it takes to pull off Crews. His timing and delivery is terrific and he is a fantastically physical actor, in this case from the neck up, allowing his face to tell Crews story without speaking. He has an understated screen presence and authority that works just right in Life, as it did with Winters.

The supporting cast works well too. Sarah Shahi plays his partner Reese with just the mix of exasperation and amusement, while Adam Arkin is particularly watchable as Ted Earley, a white collar criminal Crews saved in jail (a story not told in the first series) and who becomes his financial advisor and housemate on the outside.

Life is not Wired or NYPD Blue. It is not a warts and all exploration of society and criminal justice and nor does it belong in the very top tier of television police dramas. But it is refreshingly different, highly entertaining, beautifully written and well acted. I look forward to the second series.

Wallander - television at its best

(For a review of series two Wallander - showing in January 2010 - go to: The welcome return of Wallander).

The ring tone of Kurt Wallander's mobile phone - as portrayed in the recently broadcast BBC dramatisation of Henning Mankell's books - is shrill, insistent, impossible to ignore and just a little bit hypnotic.

As such the phone represents the pull of the job on Wallander's life: it is always on; liable to go off at any second; it has an unbreakable hold on him. 

The phone is a tiny detail. But that detail is rich, well-observed and illustrative of the high production values and careful attention to detail in this superb dramatisation.

Of course the heart of the programme is the headlined star himself, Wallander - given a far more elevated billing than Mankell ever handed his creation. For the programme to be a success, a command performance in the lead role was required. Branagh delivered in spades and if there is any justice in the world he will be up and down from his velvet seat with great regularity when the television gong season begins.

Branagh utterly dominated the screen, making it all but impossible to look away. His unshaven face, stooped gait, and tired red eyes held a raging storm of conflicting emotion as well as an uplifting humanity. It was a moving, mesmeric performance, understated and yet dramatic, absolutely as good as anything I have ever seen on the small screen.

The canvas on which Branagh was painted was equally dramatic. There is a quality of light and space in Scandinavian countries in the summer that is quite different to anything I have experienced elsewhere. It is captured exquisitely by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. But despite the light and the space Wallander also captures that essential quality of Nordic gloom. It is quite something to pull this off.

And finally there are Mankell's stories: compelling, complex, convicing. I only ever read one, about five years. And I found it dark and depressing, certainly enough not to return. But I can't help feel I made a mistake, and that Branagh has shown me the error of my ways. I will read more.

But for now it is enough that the BBC has shown that television can still be a powerful medium for drama, and that the British have not fully ceded this ground to the Americans making the Wire and other great shows. Let's hope for more.

A lot of love for The Wire, but a snub from Emmy

The final series of The Wire begins airing in the UK on Monday night, an event that has given newspapers here the opportunity to pull out all the stops and give the show some of the adulation it richly deserves.

The highlight of the coverage in unquestionably a three page spread in today's Observer, that asks the question: Is this the best TV series ever made?

The Observer asks a number of writers, including Irvine Welsh, Michael Connelly and Mark Billingham what it is that makes The Wire quite such a brilliant piece of art. Among the numerous reasons touted is that producer David Simon has been bold in his selection of writers for the show in bringing the rigour and insight of the novelist to the scripts, including celebrated crime writers including George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane, who is also interviewed in The Observer.

Reading this piece has given me one of the best Sunday mornings with the papers I've had in a while, so hats off to team at The Observer for such a great approach to the topic.

Among the gems in there is this observation from Irvine Welsh: "A lot of things interest me about the programme: the huge ensemble cast and the fact that there are no stars, the sheer honesty of the writing. It makes just about all of the writing on British TV look absolutely shit. It maddens me that BBC or ITV put out crap after crap after crap and they don't pick up something like this. We don't know what to do with quality. We wouldn't recognise it if it bit us in the arse. All of the HBO stuff shows up how poor and puerile we are, and how our TV people completely patronise the public."

Quite. Want to know where you have to go to watch The Wire on Monday night? A channel called FX. A channel so deeply buried in the Sky guide you'd need a GPS system to find it. Absolutely ridiculous. This should have a 10pm slot on BBC2, or surely ITV could find a home for it amidst the piles of shite they schedule on their four channels? Or perhaps Welsh has hit the nail on the head. Having The Wire would just illustrate the poverty of the rest of their output.

Another utterly incomprehensible decision is that which has left The Wire bereft of any Emmy nominations, which is the subject of this Reuters blog.  I couldn't even begin to  start explaining what might be behind this decision, and as I have never watched any of the other shows nominated it might not be a good idea to comment. After all they might all be better than The Wire, although it seems pretty unlikely.

But what I will say is this. As a piece of television, The Wire is so far ahead of its time as to be unrecognisable from the vast majority of the rest of the genre. The sheer brutal honesty of the story-telling, the bravery of the writing in avoiding the stereotypical view of crime, criminals, justice and policeman marks it out not just as a special piece of television but also as compulsory viewing for politicians, journalists, commentators and public officials who appear to be unable utterly to view the world in monochrome.

To my mind, the pitifully predictable and vacuous responses to the apparent epidemic of knife crime in the UK - "Lock 'em all up" or "Take them to A & E to visit the victims" - is evidence that society has become so fragmented that those at the top have absolutely no ability to understand those wielding the steel at the bottom. As a consequence their responses are inevitably framed solely by their own understanding of society - black and white, perhaps literally in many cases - and therefore they cannot even begin to think laterally enough or creatively enough to initiate policies with even the faintest chance of actually succeeding.

Aside from anything else, The Wire serves as a much needed reminder that there is nothing black in white in this world apart from chess boards, and to begin solving the problems of a complex and fractured society you need to be able first to see and then to think in colour.

Lewis and Morse: Together in spirit

I heard secondhand that some of the reviews of the new series of Lewis, the spin-off from the enormously successful Inspector Morse, have not been too kind. On the other hand, Sunday night's show dominated television ratings with 7.7m viewers for ITV, knocking the BBC's thriller The Last Enemy into a cocked hat.

Put me in with the 7.7m, rather than the critics. This is splendid television. Sure, at times the plot is verging on the incomprehensible, and some of the links between the characters are bizarre and incredible. But it is beautifully shot, wonderfully paced (think gentle stroll in the country), brilliantly acted and generally well-conceived thoughtful television, of a a type that seems all too rare these days. (And yes, I think I am getting old and grumpy and might now only be a couple of years away from banging on about much better things were "in my day").

Very sensibly, the producers remain closely tied to the format that served Morse so well for so many years: a chalk and cheese detective partnership; an aging, lonely detective  toying with the idea of romance; beautiful shots of dreaming spires and idyllic home counties countryside; eccentric Dons, strange, intense students and a glimpse into a lofty world that is unattainable to most of us (including Lewis).

And it just works. It is perfect Sunday night, take-a-deep-breath-before-facing-Monday programming.

In a diversion from more recent episodes, the plot on Sunday harked back to the long-dead Morse, who was a regular, if not central, presence.  I wonder if in the early days, the programme makers, keen to give the show its own identity, were deliberately quiet about the late detective, but have recently come to the conclusion that there is no need to be. This programme stands on its own two feet, and it is a great success in its own right.

Its biggest success has been finding the right balance between the central protagonists. Kevin Whately is a more confident Lewis in a leading role as an Inspector. He remains the salt of the earth northerner, with little patience for airs and graces or those who assume them. Alongside him is Lawrence Fox as Hathaway, Cambridge man and theologian, tall and patrician, quick and clever. But more sympathetic than Morse ever managed. The chemistry is right, which is critical.

Next Sunday's episode should be particularly interesting as the preview suggests it will take Hathaway back to his religious days.