Posted in: Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh, Recent Updates | Tagged: e4, misfits

Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh #27: When Brits Do It

Published Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:30:46 -0600

All these months of talking about the difference between British and US genre shows has made me think about them more when I looked at two new Brit shows that have started, MISITS and PARADOX. I started seeing them as prime examples of current British genre TV.

First, a potted and entirely subjective history of how British SF and Fantasy TV ended up where it is now.

Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, Britain had the edge on genre television. The shows were more edgy, quirky, eccentric and hard-nosed than Hollywood counterparts. The QUATERMASS series (which introduced adult Science Fiction to television anywhere in the world), DOCTOR WHO, THE AVENGERS, DOOMWATCH were unique shows that could only have been created in Britain. Things began to change when Thatcher's government came to power in 1979 and her administration spent the 1980s working to hobble the BBC and other entities that they didn't like. The 1990s were a wasteland where British genre TV was concerned. This was the decade in which Thatcherite bean-counters finally took over the BBC and ITV, driven by ratings and "market share". Thrillers were fixated on cops chasing serial killers. Many producers who wanted to innovate or make challenging material were turted out. You couldn't get a Science Fiction or Fantasy show off the ground for most of the 90s because TV executives were snobs who didn't understand or like Science Fiction, so they solipsistically declared that there was no audience for it when Hollywood SF movies consistently make big money. It wasn't until later in the decade that half-hearted attempts were made and half-assed shows like INVASION and CRIME TRAVELLER were the results. It wasn't until US shows like BUFFY and THE X-FILES became popular on the BBC and Sky that the same execs started make noises about finding "the British X-FILES". Almost every Science Fiction writer and screenwriter in Britain tried to get a pitch in but nothing came of it because there really was no will or desire to make such a show beyond a commercial drive. One infamous story making the rounds was of a decent series pitch that was shot down because the executive hearing the pitch didn't understand what telekinesis was and the writers had to spend five minutes explaining it to him before he decided to turn down the idea, reasoning that if he didn't get it, no one would. No surprise, then, that there was no British counterpart to THE X-FILES throughout the 1990s. It also signaled that the British Film and TV industry had developed an "also-ran" mentality, only reacting to what Hollywood shows and films were successful before they decided to try a British version rather than try something entirely new or original under their own steam. The BBC adaptation of Mervyn Peake's novel series GORMENGHAST snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by making an overly-bright production rather than the dank and decaying world of the books, ensuring that the chances of producing anymore Fantasy TV was also in the crapper for the rest of the decade. The failure of imagination of the 1990s pretty much belied the mediocrity of the Tories in charge.

It was really the huge success of Russell T. Davies' revival of DOCTOR WHO in 2005 that made it acceptable for the British industry to produce Science Fiction and Fantasy TV again. The newer producers now active had grown up on Hollywood Science Fiction shows and movies, and were thus less snobbish about the genre than their stuffy predecessors. However, the also-ran mentality is as strong as ever. The new genre show that has since has been a reaction to other successful shows. Either that or they're remakes. PRIMEVAL was ITV's reaction to the success of DOCTOR WHO. ROBIN HOOD and MERLIN are merely re-imaginings of famous British folklore that happens every generation. NO HEROICS is comedy and really the easy British trick of sneering at pathetic people who are easy to sneer at. Charlie Brooker's DEAD SET was at least an interesting updating of the zombie genre to take in reality TV and BIG BROTHER. MISFITS, alas, is a reaction to HEROES, and also crosses it with the popular Channel Four teen angst drama SKINS, so you get a bunch of juvenile delinquents doing Community Service who end up with superpowers after a freak storm. The writing isn't terribly good, but there's a street-level grittiness that HEROES lacks as it keeps its actions set in a council estate setting and the characters are none-too-bright teens whose powers get them into more trouble than ever before. The biggest draw to me is that the main characters are so obnoxious that you want to see them get tortured and miserable every week.

PARADOX is not the best or worst British genre TV show ever, it's not the smartest or dumbest genre show, but it's a good example of a typical one for 2009. It's a marriage of both traditional British genre conventions and current attempts to incorporate American techniques. It's really the Brit answer to FLASH FORWARD, only a lot less epic and less glamourous. It follows the established genre tradition of "ordinary cops drafted to investigate extraordinary cases". Where FLASH FORWARD tries to spin out its mythos into a vast conspiracy, PARADOX keeps things practical and simple. This might be due to the fact that Britain is smaller than America and doesn't have the scope to be quite to epic. There's more time spent hand-wringing as the characters question whether they could really be receiving images from a future disaster they need to prevent, and they have to spent a lot of time talking about how this is really happening, which feels like special pleading – we're already watching your show, thre's not need to convince us that the entire premise of your plot is really happening. The enigmatic scientist who brings the team together creates a nostalgic twinge in me as he harks back to shows like DOOMWATCH, but the problem with the show is that its format is to spend the whole hour sending the cops scrambling to piece together the clues to prevent the coming disaster. What makes the show British is its insistence on pessimism – the heroes do not save the day, and everyone feels awful about it afterwards. Then the next episode is going to introduce another set of images for another impending disaster for it to start all over again.

At the end of the day, neither MISFITS nor PARADOX have that urgent, must-see quality that really good TV requires. They're both just not good enough, which might be the attitude of the makers. They're just not trying that hard. I find that rather depressing.

Feeling merely adequate at lookitmoves@gmail.com

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