John Walker's Electronic House

I think people are going to somewhat miss the point of Painkiller Jane. There’s a simple trick to understanding it: Read the title.

Read it again.

One more time.

Ok, so now perhaps we can forget our worries about its not being Dostoyevsky and enjoy a bunch of nonsense that is enjoying being such? Episode 1 of anything science fiction always has a hard time – introduce the cast, then the special nature of that cast, then have them face a typical scenario, and then introduce a twist. It’s a lot to do in 43 minutes. And so while PJ has some awful moments of awkward exposition, and while it has a couple of, “Oh no, please don’t say… Oh! You said it!” scenes, it does a fine job of being daft scifi about super-elite cops fighting against the Neuros – genetically enhanced humans with paranormal abilities.

Most impressive is the use of colour. I’m sure ten thousand TV blogs are currently writing, “…looks like a music video…” and tsking loudly, as if this is inherently a bad thing. It’s the laziest of dismissals for any form of innovative filming, and, you know what? Sometimes music videos look really fantastic, and it can be a good thing to look like one. PJ’s use of colour is really very impressive, with the shades washing away subtly throughout scenes, sometimes leaving things entirely in black and white, other times letting colour bleed back in at dramatic moments. It’s a really nice technique, and makes a pleasant enough show keep your attention throughout. Plus it stars the T-X terminator.

Please, someone, take charge.

Despite a decent opener, and a surprisingly unhateful performance from Mr Who’s new assistant, Martha, it’s more clear than ever before that a reasonably entertaining family sci-fi could be something really special. If only someone other than Russell T Davis were in charge. I’ve no objection to his working in the background, and I’m pleased that he’s made a nice idea viable once more, but he is a very bad science fiction writer, and someone needs to be involved who can say so.

For two partially enjoyable series, he’s screwed up the arc appallingly twice. Series 1 teased us with “Bad Wolf” references scattered through the universe, suggesting that something magnificent was coming. It wasn’t, and the final result of a grumpy TARDIS (American readers, sorry) seemed like it had been cobbled together at the last minute, rather than some clever meta-theme reaching its zenith. Series 2 was even more dismal, despite having a really wonderful final moment. As much as everyone enjoyed watching the Daleks and Cybermen hitting each other with their handbags, it was a really dreadful load of crap, only fondly remembered thanks to the remarkably emotional and effective scenes seeing Rose and the Doctor separated irreparably.

Series 3 is shot from the opening moment, unless he’s doing something cleverer than he’s ever demonstrated the capability for. Dropping hints that he’d feature The Master soon, and then throwing around references to “Vote Saxon” and people discussing that a new leader is on the way, isn’t exactly subtle. If it’s intended as a big reveal, then perhaps it shouldn’t be available as an episode summary on any listings site. If he’s a better plan in mind, deliberately playing off people’s expectations, then I’ll be delighted to be wrong, and remarkably surprised.

Meanwhile, episode 1 did a surprisingly decent job of introducing Martha, without it turning into Eastenders again. And thank God she doesn’t have a moronic boyfriend to drag every other episode into the lowest depths of chav TV. Transporting a hospital to the moon was a satisfyingly idiotic idea, and RTD inevitably couldn’t write an ending and it all became nonsensical farce, but for a while there it was onto something.

Episode 2’s trip to see Shakespeare was about as loathsome as the programme could imaginably get. Even RTD couldn’t come up with a script so abysmal, instead having to turn to a writer for, er, Brookside. Gareth Roberts has clearly never seen anything of Shakespeare beyond Shakespeare In Love, as he proved by embarrassingly misunderstanding anything that made Shakespeare of interest, instead believing the power of the plays to be in his flowerly language. Endless references to the Bard’s being “the greatest genius of all time” were tiresome drivel, and worst of all, spouted by the character with an understanding of science, and perhaps therefore a decent grasp of slightly more productive geniuses out there. And no, this isn’t some Shakespeare snobbery – I’m barely more literate on the subject that Roberts’ primary school grasp, but that’s one of the primary reasons why I wouldn’t write a television programme about him. And then comparing the works of Shakespeare to that of talentless hack JK Rowling was the last straw, leaving me screaming enraged at my monitor. (Goddammit, even if you’re one of these cheese-faced buffoons who think Harry Potter is “lots of fun”, you surely wouldn’t be so repulsive as to compare her sub-literate prose with that of Shakespeare?) Seeing that the Doctor was to meet the Bard, I sighed predicting that we’d have to sit through the ordeal of the Doctor saying Shakespearean quotes to Shakespeare, who would reply, “That’s good – I could use that.” I never, even in this pessimistic funk, thought that they’d do it FIVE BLOODY TIMES. Burn everyone involved.

Episode 3 was back to RTD’s usual fare: having a good idea, but then not knowing what to do with it. So he wanted to satirise the traffic jam nature of modernity, and create a literal traffic jam with no destination, and all involved oblivious to their reality. But then he decided to fill it with wacky characters, and spend over half the episode watching people aimlessly chat inside hovering car sets worse than something Red Dwarf would have hammered together. It took a Doctor Who stalwart – a mysterious giant monster hidden at the bottom – and then completely removed any notion of terror by hiding it for far too long, and then revealing them with no ceremony. The man has no idea how to write monsters, and it would be nice if he stopped trying. This is the guy who had a Dalek explode over pondering the emotion of love. Gah. Nice to hear what the Face of Bo had to say, but sadly it only seems to point further in the direction of a Saxon anticlimax.

The future looks mixed. Next is a two-parter written by one of the script editors, which bearing in mind the results of her work so far, doesn’t bode well. Then it’s someone who wrote for The Bill. Then, dear God, a producer and writer from Torchwood. Then, after those weeks of worry, Paul Cornell (who wrote the wonderfully moving series 1 episode, Father’s Day) is back with a two-parter. And then, immediately it’s Stephen Moffat’s episode, Blink. So far he’s written the three best episodes – The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances from series 1, and best of all, series 2’s The Girl In The Fireplace. Then it finishes with three in a row from RTD. Sigh. Please, get him off the scripts, someone. Get Moffat in charge! Is anyone producing this programme? Anyone?

Hooray! It’s back! I’ve watched the first two, and am saving the mysteriously appearing third episode for a rainy moment. Following on immediately from the rather stunning climax of season 5’s back-n-forth between Chiklis’ Vic Mackay and Forest Whitaker’s Jon Kavanaugh, it’s maintaining that breath-stealing frenzy of intense wrongness, as everyone growls at everyone else, sometimes without pissing on them and/or setting them on fire.

The Shield has always straddled the peculiar ravine between ludicrously daft and intensely traumatic. Perhaps it’s the ridiculous limitations of semi-deep-cable channel FX, where they can say “shit” but not “fuck”, show a bare bottom but never a nipple. The impression that the writers are constantly trying to see how far they can go within such arbitrary and nonsensical restrictions gives it the feeling of their being a naughty boy constantly testing parental lines. And there’s the idiotic, hilarious phrases like, “I’m going to shit you up.” But fortunately, it’s probably this property that keeps it watchable, rather than leaving you having to seek counselling for the constant emotional brutality.

There was an interesting debate on some forum recently about whether The Shield is racist. It was pointed out that the cops spend a lot more time punching and kicking black and Hispanic criminals than they do for the whiteys. It was also observed that the all-white Strike Team (but for the unfortunate black cop who joined briefly, before meeting his inevitable way out) was constantly helping all those pesky non-white gang members to run their drug operations, which they’d all mess up if left to their own barbaric devices.

I think the second point does stand. The assumption that all the crims are thick is too easily written in. Even the stand-out exception, uber-baddy Antwon Mitchell, was eventually bested by Mackay’s shiny white head. I don’t believe this is malicious writing – perhaps just a bit stupid. The first point, however, simply misses the entire point of The Shield: There are no good guys.

The Strike Team are the baddies. It’s no more complicated than that. It’s not exactly subtle, either. Knocking over the Armenian money train, the initial murder of a cop, and Vic’s additional income from godfathering the district’s drug barrens don’t exactly suggest white hats. The cleverness of the programme is to ensure that as a viewer, you find yourself wanting them to win. And that makes you a bad person too. They are racist. They are deserving of immediate imprisonment. And often, they are far worse than the criminals they so horrifically hunt down. So how come the one person who should be stopping them, Kavanaugh, is the one at whom I’m booing? It’s because they write it really well, and they make you like racist bastards. And that’s tough going. Thank goodness they’re not allowed to say “fuck”.

Last September I thought this was going to be the one to watch. Shocked that it wasn’t picked up based on the excellent pilot, tales of Jeff Goldblum’s loony homicide detective and his imaginary victim buddies seemed like it should be ideal murder mystery TV. The deceased appears to Raines until he can solve their crime, but rather than being ghosts, they’re simply the result of his own delusions, and thus a helpful muse for his deliberations. The pilot had fun with this, having Raines’ own prejudices toward prostitutes play on how the victim appeared, along with some very smart writing as Raines leapt to intuitive conclusions (identifying the father as abusive immediately, then conflicting his assumptions). Then there’s the nice reveal at the end that his Latino buddy and former partner is also dead, and seems to be sticking around in Raines’ brains.

The reappearance a month ago of the first episode, finally broadcast on NBC, had a strange surprise. Luis Guzman, who had played Jeff’s dead friend, was entirely gone, replaced by Malik Yoba as Charlie, his black dead former partner friend. Why the racial change? Who knows. Did it matter? Not really. People who love Guzman will be disappointed, obviously, but Yoba did a fine job, and the banter was just as fun, if not even more natural.

But then came episode 2, which pretended it was going to delve into The Shield territory with a gang-related crime, but instead flapped about aimlessly, forgot Charlie altogether, and became a remarkably generic murder mystery where the apparantly bad guy corpse was lamely given good guy status by the end. And already having the cerebral haunting felt like a gimmick they’d run out of ideas for. By episode 3’s moralising on the homeless – and despite the presence of the constantly great Laurie Metcalf as the bag lady with an oh-so surprisingly normal past (a lesson for us all there) – it was hopeless, Goldblum doing his best to apply his trademark meta-stammering to woefully barren dialogue. It feels like the scripts were found in a time capsule buried in the 1970s, hurriedly subbed to mention contemporary technology to disguise their age. I decided not to bother with episode 4, but I expect it was about the murder of a young tearaway who was being given a second chance by the local boxing club, one of whose staff turns out to be involved in some shady dealings with match fixing.

Most daft is the show’s constant desperation for you to remember that the apparitions aren’t ghosts. Goldblum’s increasingly awkward voiceover repeatedly states this for the viewer, just in case they’ve forgotten over the last ten minutes. But there’s only so many ways a narration can mention this before it begins to sound as if the show is cross with its viewers for not getting it yet. It’s like the fantastic Mr Show sketch about the pre-recorded phone-in show.

If anything, this drives home that the conceit probably isn’t good enough. In fact, wouldn’t it just be far more interesting if they were ghosts who haunted him until the crime was solved?

Sorry Raines – I wanted so very much to like you, but you were rubbish. As Jeff would say, “That’s one big pile of shit.”

Yes indeed, it’s time for another TV round-up.

Thanks to the unique way US television has gone completely cuckoo, lots of new shows have recently started, with others waking up from their extended hiatus. So it’s probably important to find out what to think about them.

I’ve got more to say than previously, which will make some scream I realise, so I’m posting them as individual posts, and I’ve added a label for “Television”, so they’re more identifiably ignorable.