Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Gazette 1.6
Episode 1.6 (In Between the Lines) - a nice lively tale of a libel suit featuring a groovy turn from Donald Sumpter as a nasty little upper class shit. A spectacular "hair in the gate" film sequence towards the end. There is some great Eastern-sounding psych music playing in the background when Gillian Wray first goes to visit Isla Blair's character but I don't know where to begin finding out what it is. Some spectacular pieces of fluffed delivery from Norman Claridge, who nonetheless has a good and effective episode. The end credits have changed to a gentler pan across the downs - it is pretty incongruous having such a pastoral scene play out against a vigourous piece of punchy beat jazz. I have also started to get the giggles every time a very clean and weedy guitar part appears from nowhere to accent the end of a sting.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Gazette 1.4 and 1.5
1.4 Missing was a reasonably diverting tale of a missing girl. There is a very particular way in which the working classes are portrayed in this sort of show, grotty wallpaper and sullen pride. I have no idea how accurate it is, presumably it's at least a bit condescending and at worst downright insulting in tone - but at the same time I guess it must have its roots in some sort of reality.
There is a truly bizarre film sequence towards the end where a man is giving directions to a search party, he appears to be a completely untrained non-actor stumbling through his lines and occasionally reading from a cue card.
No Hadleigh but a nice seedily genteel performance from John Nettleton as a crime journalist from London - highlight of the ep for me was a film sequence where he and his photographer are being driven up to Yorkshire and stop on the way to buy some milk for Nettleton's character's ulcer. Beautifully filmed in crisp b&w, gave a real sense of the UK streetscape - one felt fairly sure that the Doctor and Jamie were concurrently dealing with Cybermen in the sewers.
Did I mention how I have trouble working out if Gillian Wray is attractive or not? I mean, she's not unattractive - but the scripts treat her like God's Gift, whereas all I can see is a fairly presentable dolly bird perhaps a bit on the short side. I don't think the haircut helps. Anyway, I wonder if this is just one of those beauty paradigms that just hasn't aged well.
1.5 In Between The Lines - They're going to build a road! Cripes. Most notable thing in this ep was seeing Reginald Marsh as a slighly pushy local councillor. I hadn't really been aware of Marsh until seeing his rather likeable performance in The Plane Makers recently, and it is interesting to see him playing more of an alpha male here. Hadleigh is back. Gillian Wray gets a makeover and is, indeed, rather pretty. The Gazette gets another staff member, Woodward, which must be a great relief for them.
I'm enjoying Gazette without being bowled over - my enjoyment is probably currently comprised 30% watching Gerald Harper, 30% the location film sequences, 30% the plots and 10% general vintage television sensations of mellow nostalgia. This is fine.
There is a truly bizarre film sequence towards the end where a man is giving directions to a search party, he appears to be a completely untrained non-actor stumbling through his lines and occasionally reading from a cue card.
No Hadleigh but a nice seedily genteel performance from John Nettleton as a crime journalist from London - highlight of the ep for me was a film sequence where he and his photographer are being driven up to Yorkshire and stop on the way to buy some milk for Nettleton's character's ulcer. Beautifully filmed in crisp b&w, gave a real sense of the UK streetscape - one felt fairly sure that the Doctor and Jamie were concurrently dealing with Cybermen in the sewers.
Did I mention how I have trouble working out if Gillian Wray is attractive or not? I mean, she's not unattractive - but the scripts treat her like God's Gift, whereas all I can see is a fairly presentable dolly bird perhaps a bit on the short side. I don't think the haircut helps. Anyway, I wonder if this is just one of those beauty paradigms that just hasn't aged well.
1.5 In Between The Lines - They're going to build a road! Cripes. Most notable thing in this ep was seeing Reginald Marsh as a slighly pushy local councillor. I hadn't really been aware of Marsh until seeing his rather likeable performance in The Plane Makers recently, and it is interesting to see him playing more of an alpha male here. Hadleigh is back. Gillian Wray gets a makeover and is, indeed, rather pretty. The Gazette gets another staff member, Woodward, which must be a great relief for them.
I'm enjoying Gazette without being bowled over - my enjoyment is probably currently comprised 30% watching Gerald Harper, 30% the location film sequences, 30% the plots and 10% general vintage television sensations of mellow nostalgia. This is fine.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Gazette 1.2 and 1.3
Heh, already getting behnind on this.
1.2 (Turn A Blind Eye) - Easy highlight of this episode was two wonderful film sequences of Gillian Wray walking around pristine "civic modern" landscapes. If watching archive television is (in part) an attempt to escape in time into a yearned-for past, then it is footage like this that does a lot of the heavy lifting. The unhurried edit pace allows one to savour a lot of background detail, I often feel like I am "hoovering up" the texture of the era.
Ralph Michael is a lot of fun as Colonel Chamberlayne, very reminiscent of Hugh Laurie playing a slightly sneery but generally amiable old buffer.
The central thematic conflict between truth-telling and profit (via fear of libel suits) is meaty stuff, not the sort of debate one sees much (at all?) in popular drama these days, when I suppose it is a foregone conclusion that Money Wins (or fiscal pragmatism, anyway). Interestingly, the Hadleigh character is the one taking the moral high ground, his independent wealth allowing him to assume perspectives not dictated by greed or fear of financial hardship - this was often the case in the later Hadleigh series as well.
With this episode I properly noticed the end credits, which constitute a bizarrely jerky pan over what is presumably a picture of the Yorkshire Dales.
1.3 - (Exposure) - Another solid ep, with the Gazette pitted against a shit of a local businessman. Norman Claridge's Appleton character hoves into focus as a vigorously waspish attorney.
There is some more of that ultra-stagey dialogue, which I realise is made slightly more prominent by Jon Laurimore not quite selling it - Harper takes a good run-up at his trickier lines and puts a bit of flourish into them, as befits his character - poor Laurimore is playing a more stolid middle class kind of bloke and some of Walters' attempts at aphorism and/or grooviness feel a bit forced. He's also sweating under his armpits a lot - in fact this is a sweaty show all over, there is lots of beaded perspiration on brows.
I don't mean to rag on Laurimore, his is an excellent presence in the show and I do like the way television felt comfortable with portraying more undemonstrative, "normal" characters baqck then.
There is a nice "friends together" ending with a mildly surprising coda. The series is building well and it's a pleasure to look forward to catching an episode on a quiet evening.
1.2 (Turn A Blind Eye) - Easy highlight of this episode was two wonderful film sequences of Gillian Wray walking around pristine "civic modern" landscapes. If watching archive television is (in part) an attempt to escape in time into a yearned-for past, then it is footage like this that does a lot of the heavy lifting. The unhurried edit pace allows one to savour a lot of background detail, I often feel like I am "hoovering up" the texture of the era.
Ralph Michael is a lot of fun as Colonel Chamberlayne, very reminiscent of Hugh Laurie playing a slightly sneery but generally amiable old buffer.
The central thematic conflict between truth-telling and profit (via fear of libel suits) is meaty stuff, not the sort of debate one sees much (at all?) in popular drama these days, when I suppose it is a foregone conclusion that Money Wins (or fiscal pragmatism, anyway). Interestingly, the Hadleigh character is the one taking the moral high ground, his independent wealth allowing him to assume perspectives not dictated by greed or fear of financial hardship - this was often the case in the later Hadleigh series as well.
With this episode I properly noticed the end credits, which constitute a bizarrely jerky pan over what is presumably a picture of the Yorkshire Dales.
1.3 - (Exposure) - Another solid ep, with the Gazette pitted against a shit of a local businessman. Norman Claridge's Appleton character hoves into focus as a vigorously waspish attorney.
There is some more of that ultra-stagey dialogue, which I realise is made slightly more prominent by Jon Laurimore not quite selling it - Harper takes a good run-up at his trickier lines and puts a bit of flourish into them, as befits his character - poor Laurimore is playing a more stolid middle class kind of bloke and some of Walters' attempts at aphorism and/or grooviness feel a bit forced. He's also sweating under his armpits a lot - in fact this is a sweaty show all over, there is lots of beaded perspiration on brows.
I don't mean to rag on Laurimore, his is an excellent presence in the show and I do like the way television felt comfortable with portraying more undemonstrative, "normal" characters baqck then.
There is a nice "friends together" ending with a mildly surprising coda. The series is building well and it's a pleasure to look forward to catching an episode on a quiet evening.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Gazette 1.1 - Arrival
First impressions of Gazette are a typically (for the era) great dynamic title sequence, with Alan Moorhouse's urgently groovy "Stop Press" theme. It isn't on youtube but the next scene is:
As can be seen from the clip it is a bit stagey at times, some of the dialogue is trying really hard to be fast-paced and "with it" and ends up as terminally uncool as that phrase implies. The passage of time makes such light flaws charming rather than excruciating (I find) - perhaps the mere fact of watching archive television presupposes a certain generosity on the viewer's behalf, a preparedness to work a little harder to find the good in something, critical faculties slightly dulled by gratitude at being able to watch the thing at all.
ANYWAY. The degree to which Susan Jackson is cheerfully complicit in her own objectification is interesting, there's a bunch of casually sexist dialogue that would never cut it on television these days - it's taken as read that all the blokes want to bed her and her job is to fend them off with badinage. I understand why we're now so sensitive about portraying this sort of stuff - but at the same time I must say I enjoyed seeing this earthy, robust attitude to matters of sexual attraction. Something has been lost as well as gained in the move to more "acceptable" portrayals.
Generally the episode ambles along in a more than agreeable manner, it would be wrong to call it firebrand drama but it is substantial, well-made and fun. The team of regulars are pretty quickly established (with the exception of Bill Spence who seems there merely to make up the numbers but may yet have his day in the sun).
I realised somewhere during Act III that I probably wasn't meant to be sure if I liked Hadleigh or not - the possibility hadn't occurred to me as I was so accustomed to watching him dash about the place as the Gentleman Hero. The final scene where he squares off with Frank Walters is totally contrived, but extremely sweet in the way it determinedly assets that this mild conflict between two essentially reasonable men is the stuff of FUCKING HIGH STAKES DRAMA. Their last exchange may as well be "Shall we go to series then?" / "You can bloody well bet your life on it!" Chink of Scotch glasses, cue titles.
It's great to be back in Westdale, watching the entire run of Hadleigh last year was a huge pleasure and it's wonderful to see (and to be able to see) the character's early days. It was quite the rush of warm familiarity when the Melford set first appears. I remember thinking that Hadleigh's romance with the Gillian Wray character in Season 1 of Hadleigh came from absolutely nowhere, will be interesting to see if this is backgrounded at all in Gazette.
As can be seen from the clip it is a bit stagey at times, some of the dialogue is trying really hard to be fast-paced and "with it" and ends up as terminally uncool as that phrase implies. The passage of time makes such light flaws charming rather than excruciating (I find) - perhaps the mere fact of watching archive television presupposes a certain generosity on the viewer's behalf, a preparedness to work a little harder to find the good in something, critical faculties slightly dulled by gratitude at being able to watch the thing at all.
ANYWAY. The degree to which Susan Jackson is cheerfully complicit in her own objectification is interesting, there's a bunch of casually sexist dialogue that would never cut it on television these days - it's taken as read that all the blokes want to bed her and her job is to fend them off with badinage. I understand why we're now so sensitive about portraying this sort of stuff - but at the same time I must say I enjoyed seeing this earthy, robust attitude to matters of sexual attraction. Something has been lost as well as gained in the move to more "acceptable" portrayals.
Generally the episode ambles along in a more than agreeable manner, it would be wrong to call it firebrand drama but it is substantial, well-made and fun. The team of regulars are pretty quickly established (with the exception of Bill Spence who seems there merely to make up the numbers but may yet have his day in the sun).
I realised somewhere during Act III that I probably wasn't meant to be sure if I liked Hadleigh or not - the possibility hadn't occurred to me as I was so accustomed to watching him dash about the place as the Gentleman Hero. The final scene where he squares off with Frank Walters is totally contrived, but extremely sweet in the way it determinedly assets that this mild conflict between two essentially reasonable men is the stuff of FUCKING HIGH STAKES DRAMA. Their last exchange may as well be "Shall we go to series then?" / "You can bloody well bet your life on it!" Chink of Scotch glasses, cue titles.
It's great to be back in Westdale, watching the entire run of Hadleigh last year was a huge pleasure and it's wonderful to see (and to be able to see) the character's early days. It was quite the rush of warm familiarity when the Melford set first appears. I remember thinking that Hadleigh's romance with the Gillian Wray character in Season 1 of Hadleigh came from absolutely nowhere, will be interesting to see if this is backgrounded at all in Gazette.
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