You know what to expect when Sean Bean is around, and it's not desperately metrosexual
Game of Thrones (Sky Atlantic)
Dr Who (BBC1) | iPlayer
The Reckoning (ITV1) | ITV player
In the same way that the dedicated smoker surveys the various cautionary enchantments ? "Smoking kills", "Smoking causes fatal lung cancer" ? on his chosen fag pack and thinks, "Yes, I'll have six cartons of those, please!", so it is that TV health warnings can have a kind of reverse effect.
"Expect very strong violence, language, adult themes and flashing images," advised the Sky Atlantic announcer before Game of Thrones, the new medieval fantasy based on George RR Martin's saucy sword saga. The effect, of course, was the same as if he'd said: "Turn your mobile off and cop a load of this."
In the event, there were no flashing images, although there were plenty of images of flashing, not to mention very strong violence, language and adult themes. And Sean Bean. Bean really deserves his own personal health warning. It's fair to say that when you see the bluff Yorkshireman's name in the titles, it's unlikely that what follows will include scenes in which urban professional types discuss their feelings and, in a spirit of therapeutic understanding, resolve their differences over a lentil roast and a chilled glass of Sancerre.
Say what you like about Bean, but no one has ever accused him of raving metrosexual tendencies. At least not to his face. So it was that Game of Thrones opened with the aftermath of a massacre, wherein decapitated bodies of men, women and children were set out like a butcher's window display across a bleak and frozen forest.
The one survivor from this carnage was then beheaded for desertion by Bean, or rather Eddard Stark, the local big-wig in the grim "north" of the fictional Westeros. As Stark explained to his young son, it's important that a leader does his own dirty work. Doubtless Sun Tzu would agree, but it's also important that Bean is seen to be Bean, someone who doesn't ponce around asking questions when there's brutal justice to be meted out.
There were endless ways, even without Bean's presence, in which this series could have appeared comically ridiculous. Mud, long hair and leather is never an easy look to pull off, outside of a Black Sabbath festival; and the genre seems to specialise in rigor mortis performances and storylines that would make a Dungeons and Dragons fan blush.
Yet, lo and verily behold, HBO's cunning ploy of throwing money and talent at the problem once again delivered the desired results. The script hit the right balance between the epic and the ironic, or between Bean and Harry Lloyd, who plays the degenerate prince-in-exile, Viserys Targaryen. Against her wishes, Targaryen betrothed his nubile sister to a murderous Genghis Khan-type figure, explaining that, to regain his crown: "I would let his whole tribe fuck you, all 40,000 men and their horses too, if that's what it took." He's that kind of guy.
Not that he was the only one with an unbecoming interest in his sister's sex life. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau played Ser Jaime Lannister (or was it the other way round?), who was boffing his twin sister, the Queen, played by the delightful Lena Headey.
Violence, murder, incest, intrigue: all in all, if you replace the gladiators with a Lord of the Rings aesthetic, it's like a classier Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.
And praise doesn't come any higher than that.
The key to great fantasy is that it conforms to its own reality. It doesn't matter if there are three-headed dogs, pink seas and everyone worships Dermot O'Leary, as long as it's all logical in that particular universe. The problem with Doctor Who is that logic long ago collapsed like a neutron star and there is no reality, but instead an ever-more frenzied effort to cover up the absence of what, back in this universe, we still refer to as a coherent plot.
It's like a four-year-old's bedtime story as made up on the hoof by a string theorist, only not as interesting as that sounds. In the first episode of the new series Matt Smith camped enigmatically around the Tardis, the Utah desert and the White House, while aliens whose faces appear to have evolved from Scream masks stood about spooking his irritating helpers.
Most of the script was taken up with characters repeatedly saying things such as "Who's he?", "What's he doing?" and "Who are you?" It was like watching TV with one of those people ? some of whom I share a house with ? who keep asking you what's going on, except that on this occasion they were on the TV itself.
Yes, it's for kids and all that, but there must be many small children, and perhaps their parents too, who secretly wished that Sean Bean might be transported from Westeros to start talking some bloody sense.
One of the cosmological theories that have gained popular attention is the idea that an infinite number of universes exist. It's possible, therefore, that in one of these universes last week's Doctor Who would have seemed like an intelligible narrative. But surely not even the most radical cosmologist would argue that a universe exists in which The Reckoning could be similarly reckoned with.
Sometimes it's not enough to suspend disbelief; it has to be fired, made to clear its desk, and ejected by security. The basis for the plot of The Reckoning was a variation on that old schoolyard question: what would you do for a million pounds? In this case Ashley Jensen was offered �5m to kill a stranger. Even though she had a daughter with leukaemia, she still turned it down. But she also had a boyfriend, Max Beesley, who was less bothered by moral qualms, especially when it turned out that the stranger in question got his kicks from murdering prostitutes and paying off their ghastly eastern European pimp (and has there ever been a sympathetic portrayal of an Eastern European pimp?).
But it further turned out that each person to accept the five mil was killed by someone else who'd accepted another five mil, thus setting up an ever-lengthening millionaire death chain. When Jensen, who's a fine comic actress, realised the nature of the predicament, she ran around groaning: "Ooh ? oh ? no ? aah!" and "No! Ah ? ooh ? oh!" And not for laughs.
That she managed this feat, while Beesley resembled a man who didn't understand the script (no shame in that in the circumstance), should remain as a testament to her commendable acting skills. Nonetheless, The Reckoning ought really to have come with a health warning. Something like "Expect very strong language ? your own."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/apr/24/game-of-thrones-doctor-who
Manchester City Oscars Amir Khan Petrofac Awards and prizes Small business
No comments:
Post a Comment