onsdag 29 mars 2017

Why I won't be missing The Halcyon after all

I had got to episode six of ITV's new period drama The Halcyon when I learned that it had been axed after only one series, and I can't say I was surprised. Though it did pick up during the last two episodes, in the end this series took far too long to get off the ground. I've seen far worse costume dramas, but I've also seen better, and I've certainly seen more exciting ones.

The first episode of The Halcyon left me feeling hopeful that it could amount to something: if not the new Downton, then at least the new Mr Selfridge. And something you could say about the series was that its creators plainly cared about the characters. They were nice: maybe even a little too nice. Mr Garland the manager is a good man who looks after hotel owners and staff alike, though he sometimes uses vaguely questionable methods in doing so. His daughter Emma is a heroine born and bred - efficient, fair-minded, brave and, just as it happens, very pretty. The porter is nice; the switchboard operator is nice; the Indian bartender Adil who falls in love with the youngest Hamilton brother is the kind of dishy, devoted boyfriend I would have wished for Thomas in Downton; the cynical-on-the-surface (though not that cynical) American journalist Joe O'Hara has a heart of gold; the earthy jazz singer Betsey Day is a sweetheart, and to do the show credit her romance with the touchingly protective band leader Sonny is far more convincing than Downton Rose's dalliance with Jack Ross. Even Lady Hamilton is not so bad after all. All in all, the characters are such good eggs it's hard to get some real drama-fuelling conflict going.

In a way, The Halcyon's problem was the opposite of Poldark's. Poldark had sketchy characters but plenty of plot. The Halcyon had promising characters but little plot to go with it. The fact that the series was set in a hotel was something rarely used to dramatic advantage: we saw surprisingly little of the guests. Then there was the World War Two setting, and the usual peddling of the Bravery during the Blitz cliché. Storylines included Emma influencing O'Hara to stay on in Britain and report on how fantastically courageous everyone was instead of taking a dream job back home. One thing that decided him was meeting the flying crew of Emma's other love interest, the young Lord Hamilton aka Freddie; great chaps, who were so not going to bomb towns and civilians to smithereens themselves a little later on in the war. When Emma risked her life during a bombing attack by staying with a corpse because she had promised the corpse's daughter, I'd had my fill of wartime heroism; I sorely missed the nuances of Foyle's War, which always remembered that human nature during wartime remains the same as during peacetime (thankfully from a drama perspective).

And then there was the villain, or rather the lack of one. All right, so we had a villain reveal, but not until episode six, which in a run of eight episodes was far, far too late. What's more, he wasn't up to much. I can see how it must have looked good on paper - the amoral spy lurking behind an always genial exterior - but the problem was, we only got the genial exterior, and no hint of steel beneath. The scene where the villain showed his true colours by blackmailing Adil should have been full of smooth menace, but wasn't; there was a disappointing lack of villain purring. Not much more character development was forthcoming afterwards either: this was the kind of bad guy who gets himself killed in the series finale for being a nuisance.

I know I can't complain about there being any lack of costume dramas, but what with the somewhat underplotted shows set in the Forties and Fifties which we've had lately - Grantchester, The Collection, The Crown, The Halcyon - I find myself longing for both more costume and more drama, not to mention a decent stab at a costume-drama villain. I suspect that there's some kind of notion that it's unsophisticated to include a villain in a drama, but a villain needn't be a boo-hissable pantomime character (not that I think I would even boo a pantomime villain if I saw one - King Rat sounds promising). A villain can be complex, as long as he or she poses a threat to one or several of the main characters and reveals something about the darker sides of human nature. Other genres - such as, ahem, fairy-tale-inspired fantasy - get this. The next crew who aspires to create a costume drama to rival Downton should too.

torsdag 16 mars 2017

The art of character-pinching: serial numbers on or off?

I know I've already gushed about the first part of James Benmore's Dodger trilogy, but it's worth noting that the two follow-up volumes - Dodger of the Dials and Dodger of the Revolution - are equally first-rate. True, they're not so chock-full of references to other Dickens novels and characters, but there are a few. Noah Claypole resurfaces in Dodger of the Dials (though disappointingly it is never made clear that it is he, not Oliver Twist, who is responsible for Fagin's fate) as well as Oliver himself as a young man, who turns out to be convincingly priggish and likeable at the same time. In Dodger of the Revolution, which I've recently finished reading, we're introduced to the grandson of the Defarges in A Tale of Two Cities (who's a chip off the old block) and the son of Rigaud in Little Dorrit (who, luckily for Dodger, isn't).

What especially impressed me was the continuing charm of the central character, who feels true to Dickens's original throughout. It would have been easy to go down the predictable route of making Jack Dawkins aka The Artful Dodger into a sort of class warrior, what with him having reason to find himself in Paris during the June uprising of 1848 and everything. However, when Dodger is - in spite of himself - carried away by revolutionary ardour, it's because of the festive feel at the beginning of the revolt, before the actual fighting starts. His good humour remains: while there's fellow-feeling with the hard-up masses of Paris, he can't really bring himself to hate those better off than them or himself (though pinching their valuables is obviously not a problem). Dodger's mission in Paris is to steal a valuable document on behalf of a brother and sister which proves their claim to legitimacy and an aristocratic estate, but while these siblings are snooty enough to have anyone in Dodger's position casting a side glance in the general direction of the nearest lamp post, he actually sees the point of his employers and quite likes them. I have a feeling this trilogy hasn't done as well as it deserves sales-wise (I only found the first volume by a fluke), which is a pity: I think I'm going to miss the Artful.

Benmore's sure touch is the more noteworthy since it's especially difficult to get another author's characters right if you keep their name and setting, giving yourself little leeway to do your own thing with them. If you stray too far from the original, fans like myself will complain and wonder - as I have done more times than I can count - why you didn't simply invent your own character with some traits in common with a figure from a well-loved classic. If, on the other hand, you don't put any kind of new spin on your material, you risk what I call character congealitis, where all the reader gets is a tired retread of a series of traits and mannerisms displayed by the original character, though seldom as well done as the first time around.

On balance, then, it seems less risky to do what I believe is called "filing off the serial numbers", though if wiki sources are anything to go by the expression is mostly used when writers of fan fiction change characters' names etc. for copyright reasons. The practice has its non-copyright-related advantages as well, though. If you pinch a character, or several - hey, why stop at one? - from another author and change the names, you can suddenly do what you like with the raw material. It doesn't have to stop with the name, the setting or the general context: you can experiment with changing a few of the personality traits as well and see what happens. Is the original character's essence still there, or has the non-serial-numbered copy morphed into something else entirely? And does it matter, as long as the result is a success?

Filing the serial numbers off has its own perils, though. Kate Saunders included some characters from David Copperfield in her Victorian crime story The Secret of Wishtide, but under other names. She wasn't sneaky about it - she made the characters' origins clear in her acknowledgements. Still, their inclusion irked me strangely, though I've always wanted to see more in the prequel/sequel/retelling genre relating to Dickens. Moreover, I've loved other books by Saunders (Wild Young Bohemians especially) and was glad to see her writing fiction for adults again. However, truth be told, the Copperfield copies were so close to the originals that I didn't see much point in giving them other names at all, though it does allow the author to imagine another (not necessarily better) fate for them than in Dickens's novel. There was also a slightly didactic "look how women were treated in Victorian times" feel to the story, even if the heroine (entirely Saunders's own creation) was not the judgemental kind. While I understand how Dickens's telling of the Little Em'ly story could get anyone's blood up, I didn't feel that Saunders added anything new to my understanding of her, Steerforth, his mother or Rosa Dartle who are the borrowed characters in question. I think what it amounts to is that if you do file off the serial numbers, you should do something with the freedom this brings you. Either that or I'm just miffed that Uriah didn't make an appearance.

torsdag 2 mars 2017

Poldark series 2: Is it George, or me, or the whole series?

I feel bad about George Warleggan. I was so enthusiastic about him when first making his acquaintance: he was hot, he was brainy, he was a banker, he had slender hands perfect for coin-weighing, and his enemy Ross Poldark was so irritating it made siding with George even easier. I really thought, once I'd seen the last of Downton's Thomas (except for a possible film which shows no sign of materialising anytime soon), that Gorgeous George might prove to be my consolation and be promoted to the position of prime villain crush.

Well, it didn't turn out that way. When I finally got round to watching series two of Poldark, I found myself oddly unimpressed by George. I didn't dislike him, and I certainly didn't switch sides and start rooting for the increasingly awful Ross. I just didn't feel anything for him. What makes it worse, instead of being disappointed, I was relieved: it made a nice change to be able to view a villain's setbacks without feeling as if someone had my heart in their hand and was slowly squeezing it. So why this cooling of my affections?

All right, maybe one doesn't need three days to guess the name of the reason why. But even if the post of my new prime villain crush is already resoundingly taken, I should be able to appreciate other bad guys and judge them by their own merits, not hold them up to some dizzyingly high master-villain standards which they were never designed to meet. George still looks a perfect banker peach, and Ross still needs to be taught a lesson by someone. Am I as fickle as Carmen not to become more engaged in the fight? Or could the fault lie with George himself?

Of course it must. I do believe the lessening appeal of George illustrates some wider problems with the second series of Poldark. It wasn't necessarily worse than the first one - though it started really weakly, before shaping up mid-way - it just didn't develop. Poldark never looked set to become the new Brideshead Revisited, but in the first series the storytelling zest made you forgive (up to a point) the fairly basic setup and characterisation. However, when a drama makes it to the second series, you expect layers to be added and new insights into the main characters to be revealed. This did not happen here. True, Francis toughens up quite inexplicably from one day to the next, but still remains as convinced of his own supposed inferiority to Ross as everyone else. As for the rest, they act exactly in the same way as in the first series, and if anything lose rather than gain in complexity. New characters are sometimes so threadbare as to be reduced to one characteristic or function. George's sidekick Tankard is weaselly. The intended fiancé of Doctor Enys's new love interest - a spoiled heiress - is a buffoon. John Nettles as Penvenen, the uncle of said heiress, has little else to do but to twinkle avuncularly. And the main characters? Demelza loves Ross, but is jealous of Elizabeth. Elizabeth, too, loves Ross. Francis admires Ross above anything. Enys is Ross's best friend. George envies Ross, which is why he spends his time doing little else than plotting his downfall...

See where I'm going with this? For the most part, the other characters are simply feeds to Ross, who isn't even close to deserving this much attention - in fact, he's a jerk, and not a particularly bright one. Yet never is it hinted that this darling of the Cornwall mining community may not live up to all the hype. I watched in disbelief as he was acquitted of all wrongdoing after overseeing the plundering of the Warleggans' wrecked ship, and not even having the grace to be sorry about it afterwards. His argument that he was helping the impoverished ought not to have carried much weight, seeing as it was not his own riches he was distributing: it's easy to be generous with someone else's money. (Incidentally, no-one spared a single thought on the crew or passengers until the ship had been stripped of every single item of value, so Ross's claim that his hordes first helped the shipwrecked and neatly stacked everything valuable on the shore was a bare-faced lie.) But, apparently, we are supposed to see the acquittal as the victory of justice. Ross continues to do no wrong in the eyes of his friends, family and employees - his losing a life or two in a preventable mining accident is not something likely to spark a Germinal uprising. Not until he commits an obviously reprehensible act and caddishly shies away from the consequences (according to an article I read, he actually behaved even worse in the novel and previous adaptation: it's still not pretty, though) does he get some stick, mainly from the furious Demelza. But, here's where the non-brightness comes in: Ross doesn't have the sense to feel or at least feign remorse - he just doesn't seem to grasp that he's done anything blameworthy. Maybe this is what happens when, for too long, everyone you know keeps telling you how wonderful you are.

The series could really have done with a genuinely Ross-sceptic voice, but sadly, George too thinks he's something to write home about, otherwise he wouldn't envy him. It's a pity that George's enmity towards Ross comes across more as childish petulance than burning hatred, because he does have some legitimate reasons for being miffed with the unshaved wonder. Not so much reason, though, as to make his monomaniac persecution plans credible. (Trying to make Tankard "debauch" Demelza? Hardly villain plot of the year.) Though I liked the mysteriousness of George's motives at first, by now - because we're already on the second series, dash it - we really ought to have had the explanatory why-I-hate-Ross villain rant. Nor was I convinced for a minute that George really loves Elizabeth. (And I don't think it's too much to ask that he should make a decent fist of the Wounded Villain Heart scenario - Thomas could do it in his sleep.) At the end of the day, George's problem is that he's a glorified function character, mainly there to create trouble for Ross. No-one appears to have given any serious thought about what makes him tick, because he's not deemed to be interesting enough.

In spite of all this, I did at least partly enjoy Poldark series two. The story moves along at a fair lick, and there are some Ross-unrelated scenes that are quite touching, such as a heart-to-heart between Francis and Demelza, and Verity's relief when her stepson turns out to be a friendly cove who takes the trouble to bring the sulky stepdaughter around as well. Plus, as I've mentioned, it's restful once in a while to watch something where you don't care overmuch what will happen. But I'd be lying if I said I was wildly excited by the prospect of series three.