Tag: TV

She Spies

  By

she spies
★★½
“Spies Unlike Us”

Cassie: What a day, huh? Parachuting into a cemetery because the perimeter was guarded and it was our only way in, and exposing a deadly double agent who was trying to elude capture by faking his own death and being buried with an oxygen tank, only to be dug up later.
D.D.: We knew all that, you know.
Cassie: I know. I’m just saying it for anyone who might’ve been wondering why we’re going through all that trouble.
Shane: Who’d be wondering?
Cassie: I don’t know, anyone. Look, I’ve never told you guys this, it’s kind of embarrassing. Sometimes I get the weirdest feeling like people are watching us, like they’re listening in on every single thing we do or say.
Shane: Yeah, I get that feeling, too.

This series came out in the wake of the Charlie’s Angels movie which rebooted the franchise in 2000, and shares much the same combination of action escapades and tongue-in-cheek, self-referential (and often self-deprecating) humour. However, sustaining this for 90 minutes is a much easier proposition than doing so over 20 episodes, each three-quarters of an hour or so without commercials. What seemed like a deliciously frothy concoction in the opening episode, juggling the elements with some skill, eventually ground down to tedious repetition. Chris, in particular, hated the show with a passion, which is a little odd, since she’s a big fan of the similar Chuck. Mind you, since I can’t stand Chuck, I’m not really able to argue, especially since my arguments in defense of She Spies became more like token gestures by episode 20.

shespiesJust like Charlie’s Angels, this focuses on a trio of butt-kicking babes: in this case, liberated from prison by Jack Wilde (Jacott), who puts them to work in a quasi-governmental organization that hunts down bad guys while exchanging witticisms. They also share a house, which makes things very convenient for any of said bad guys, who want to take them out. The trio all bring their disparate, somewhat dubious skills to bear on the situations that result: there’s con-artist Cassie McBaine (Henstridge), computer hacker Deedra “D.D.” Cummings (Miller) and master thief Shane Phillips (Williams). The first episode is a fairly accurate summary of the basic idea: they’re assigned to protect a former politician turned talk-show host from an assassination plot, and have to go undercover at the studio to reveal the culprit [and given the target’s former and current occupations, there’s no shortage of suspects].

What the first episode does brilliantly – and what the rest of the series never consistently recaptures – is not so much breaking the fourth wall, as riding a wrecking-ball into it, repeatedly. For instance, the three ladies are introduced by Jack on a literal game-show, with him as a host. Does this make any sense? Of course not. But it doesn’t matter, since we are already on a show about, to quote the introductory voice-over, “three career criminals with one shot at freedom. Now they are working for the feds who put them away. These are the women of She Spies, bad girls gone good!” Take the suspension of disbelief that requires, added to the cast and crew clearly being in on the joke, and you can potentially manipulate proceedings in any direction you want, the more ingeniously whimsical the better. The universe is your plaything.

Too often, however, the opportunities this offers are squandered rather than exploited, and the plots became tedious rather than springboards for the imagination. Though there were still occasional moments of surreal genius, such as the trio pretending to be Swedish – which worked rather better for blondes Henstridge and Miller (“I like toast!”) than African-American Williams. Most of the time, the episodes largely have to skate by on the personalities of the leading ladies: that’s not a bad thing as such, since they all do credibly, with Miller likely faring best. There are also some very entertaining guest stars, beginning with Barry Bostwick as the talk-show host mentioned above; also in the first season are Claudia Christian, as the original She Spy, and Jeffrey Combs. However, there’s only so much emptily witty banter I can take, and the script-writers’ well ran painfully dry, the deeper into the series I went, for instance with the increasingly obvious use of money-saving flashback sequences.

The last edition of season one was particularly bizarre. Shane bumps into a former boyfriend who is planning to have himself cryogenically frozen so that he can be with his dead fiancee, and uncovering a plot by the facility to harvest body parts from their subscribers, in order to keep a billionaire away. I’d like to have been at the planning meeting where that idea got green-lit, simply due to the copious quantities of drugs which much have been ingested there. It possesses a darker tone, which is jarringly at odds with the ironic approach of the series as a whole, and supports the impression, generally escalating as the series went on, that those involved in creating the show had more or less given up and were phoning it in. I do exempt the four leads from this criticism, since they bravely struggle against the snowballing tedium of the scripts until the very end.

shespies2Even the action becomes relatively muted, and to be honest, it was never very good to begin with. And that is comparing the show to its contemporaries on television – say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer – rather than the Charlie’s Angels movie, which had the SLIGHT advantage of action choreographed by Yuen Wo-Ping. This is the area where Miller is probably the weakest of the three, since she looks less like a brick-house, and closer to one built of straw, vulnerable to anyone on-set sneezing in her direction. While Henstridge and Williams fare better here, it’s still generally clear they are more effective in the scenes requiring flexibility and grace, than at portraying strength and power. All three sometimes suffer also from painfully obvious stunt doubling, though since this is the bane of TV action generally, it’s par for the course.

In the end, it’s a difficult path to tread, because the show [at least the first season watched for the purposes of this article] could never appear to decide whether or not it quite wanted to be taken seriously. Zap2It.com describes She Spies as “Alias meets Austin Powers” and, while that certainly isn’t inaccurate, those are almost contradictory and mutually exclusive genre entries. It’s very hard to be taken seriously, when you are constantly undercutting yourself with cool, ironic asides or acknowledging the silliness of the scenarios being depicted, and you probably shouldn’t even try. In reviewing the Angels movie, the conclusion I reached was “It works beautifully, despite its flaws, but it wouldn’t bear frequent repetition.” Twenty episodes of She Spies largely proves the truth of this.

The first four episodes in September 2002 were planned to screen on NBC, before the series was then bumped from network to syndication [while this was always the plan, it is snarkily referenced in a later discussion about She Spies action figures: “You wind them up and they dare you to find their time slot”]. but it only lasted three before being yanked. At the end of the first series, Jacott left proceedings, and the second run of episodes also abandoned much of the self-referential approach, playing things straighter. However, the new approach failed to catch on any better, and the show was not renewed beyond its sophomore season. Below, you’ll find the first episode in its entirety – all forty have been up on YouTube for more than three years, so seem to have at least tacit approval. But it’s largely downhill from this first show, folks.

Star: Natasha Henstridge, Kristen Miller, Natashia Williams, Carlos Jacott

Cleaners: season two

  By

★★★½
“Holidays in the Sun: Sex and Pistols.”

cleaners-season-2-posterWhile twice as long as the first series, at 12 episodes rather than six, I can’t say it’s actually any better. Indeed, I think the dilution of the main element which was so much fun the first time round – the relationship between the two, disparate hitwomen, Roxie (Osment) and Veronica (Chriqui) – leaves this season less entertaining. Yes, it’s bigger and more exotic: but it feels spread thinner, to the detriment of the core aspects. The story takes up shortly after the events of the first series, with V+R in the Caribbean, waiting to get their share of the money from Eileen (Missi Pyle) and Mother (Gershon). But instead, an assassination squad is sent to get them, kicking off a reunion with Veronica’s “parents”, a deranged killer who thinks Roxie is his dead wife, a rogue CIA operative who sends Frank Barnes (Arquette) after Mother, and so on. It builds to a climax where Veronica, previously injected with a lethal nanobot virus that’s about to go off, takes part in an underground death match at a cockfighting arena, to prove her love for the deranged killer. I shit you not.

It’s nice everyone from the first season apparently wanted to come back. But it wasn’t necessarily in the show’s best interests, especially with all the other angles being thrown in. Eileen, in particular, is entirely superfluous, adding nothing to the plot but occupying an inordinate amount of screen-time, which could have been better used, say, on better developing the thread of Veronica’s background. Much the same goes for Barnes, who is shoe-horned back into the plot, through frankly implausible circumstances because… I dunno, because Arquette fancied a vacation in Puerto Rico? It’s a shame, because some of the other stuff is potentially interesting. Discovering Veronica was brought up, almost from birth, to be a trained killer (perhaps inspired by Naked Weapon), was an intriguing concept, and I’d like to have seen more of that, rather than Eileen’s party girl antics. The most interesting new character of note is Mathilda, the last pupil at Veronica’s alma mater, who looks not unlike Uma Thurman, though the name would appear a nod to Leon. She provides a quiet, but no less-lethal, counterpoint to Roxie’s mania, and allows for a few Charlie’s Angels-esque riffs.

The action remains plentiful, as Roxie and Veronica are tasked with bringing down a local drug-lord, as well as dealing with the killer on their trail, and it’s a show that’s easy to binge watch [you can do so at Crackle.com, and it’s probably better there than through a device like Apple TV, which inflicts unskippable commercials, that get very old the tenth time you see them]. I’m sure everyone had a fabulous time making this; however, for me, it didn’t capture overall the same spirit, of not giving a damn, that made the first such an enjoyable surprise. It probably comes over as more self-indulgent than anything else – but still kicks ass harder than just about any other action heroine show this year.

Dir: Paul Leyden
Star: Emmanuelle Chriqui, Emily Osment, David Arquette, Gina Gershon

cleaners2b

Modesty Blaise (TV pilot)

  By

★½
“Modesty blasé“

modestyblaise1982It seems that around every two decades, someone decides it’d be a good idea to adapt Modesty Blaise. First up, in 1966 was a wretchedly camp adaptation, so bad I can’t bring myself to watch it again, starring Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp. In 2003, there was My Name is Modesty, which was a good deal better, but appears to have been a quickie intended to allow Miramax to hang onto their rights to the character. In the middle, dating from 1982, ABC took a shot at creating a TV series inspired by Peter O’Donnell’s anti-heroine, but it never went further than this 50-minute pilot. In it, Modesty (Turkel) and her trusty if no longer Cockney sidekick, Willie Garvin (Van Bergen), rescue a student from an attempted abduction. Turns out, she’s the last piece in activating a cryptographic device, that Debbie DeFarge (Seymour) intends to use to crack the stock-market. Federal intelligence agent Gerald Tarrant (Curtis) requests Modesty’s help to recover the device, so she and Willie head down to Mexico to stop DeFarge’s evil plan.

I think the kindest thing you can say about this is, maybe it made more sense in 1982. This certainly isn’t the Modesty I imagined, one whose history on the streets may be in the past, but is never entirely buried beneath the surface. Turkel is striking enough visually, and I was amused to see her rip open her skirts, the better to fight villains, but she doesn’t have any kind of edge or darkness to her character. That’s somewhat understandable – after all, American network television in the early eighties was hardly renowned for pushing the envelope – but, why bother adopting Modesty Blaise if you want something so utterly bland and neutered? Van Bergen is even more mis-cast: when writing the script for the original film, O’Donnell said he was thinking of Michael Caine as the ideal actor for the role, who is about as far from Van Bergen as imaginable.

After the moderately exciting opening, there is an awful lot of sitting around and chatting, whether it’s in Modesty’s house, or after they’ve been captured by Defarge’s minions (including renowned pro wrestler, Professor Toru Tanaka). The final five minutes sees a brief flurry of activity, as they try to stop the computer from executing Defarge’s buy and sell orders – though the computer in question resembles, in shape and size, a washing machine rather more than anything you’d see in a finance house these days. The cutting-edge technology shown here has not aged well either, with Blaise able to rescue the Western financial world by picking up another phone connected to the same line, thereby disrupting the device’s ability to communicate. Yeah, that degree of planning is not exactly going to get Defarge honored by the Supervillains Academy. Wikipedia claims Sparks wrote the theme song, but that definitely isn’t them on the pilot, and I suspect their version was for a different, unconnected attempt to adapt the show.

Should you be interested, I’ve embedded a video copy of the show below. Not great quality, but I can’t say even watching this on Blu-Ray would make it bearable. Roll on 2021 or so, and the next scheduled adaptation. We know Quentin Tarantino’s a fan, and Neil Gaiman as well, with the latter having written an unmade script based on I, Lucifer. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm.

Dir: Reza Badigi
Star: Ann Turkel, Lewis Van Bergen, Keene Curtis, Carolyn Seymour

Queen of Swords

  By

qos1★★★
“Leather, whips and lace – gotta love the type.”

In 1817, a young Spanish aristocrat, Tessa Alvarado (Santiago), returns to Spanish California after the death of her father and finds her home in ruins, her father’s manservant reduced to stealing. The town where she was born is run by militaristic governor Colonel Luis Ramirez Montoya (Pelka), who abuses his power, resulting in the miscarriage of justice and the poor living conditions of his subjects. Upset about the state of her birthplace and the murder of her father, Tessa’s path is revealed to her in a mysterious dream where her father comes to her and talks of his murder, his hidden gold, and of his “Avenging Angel”. She will take up arms to protect the people from the town’s governor and to avenge her father’s death. Tessa will do this in disguise behind a mask, becoming that “Avenging Angel”, The Queen of Swords.

Synopsis shamelessly cribbed from Wikipedia, but why re-invent the wheel? That seems to have been the approach taken by the makers here anyway, for their show which ran a single season from October 2000 through June 2001. The obvious, if unacknowledged, inspiration here is Zorro, in which another member of Spanish nobility, adopts a secret identity in order to defend the downtrodden populace from corrupt officials, etc. etc. Indeed, so close were the similarities that Sony sued Fireworks Entertainment, the producers of Queen of Swords, asserting that there was a breach of their rights. The resulting decision was murky: the court initially ruled the character was in the public domain, but later vacated that decision, and the suit was settled out of court, but it’s certainly possible the legal wrangling contributed to the decision to pull the plug on the show, after only eight episodes had aired.

qos2Certainly, in terms of quality, it’s by no means a disaster, and I enjoyed this more than other, recent shows which were yanked as fast, e.g. Killer Women or the Charlie’s Angels reboot. Of course, the central premise requires quite some suspension of disbelief: the concept that putting a little lacy mask on somehow transforms Alvarado and renders her completely unrecognizable by anyone, is nonsense. It’s not as if the town is full of similar-looking women, and she doesn’t even bother to change her voice. Still, if Superman can put on a pair of glasses to the same end, I guess we shouldn’t pick on Queen of Swords. What does work, is the interesting range of characters. Montoya is a bastard, always out for himself, but he’s quite a clever bastard with it, aided by captain of the guard Marcus Grisham (Lemke). On Santiago’s side, she assisted by her gypsy maid – who, like all gypsies, has psychic powers (I think it’s genetic) – and also by the local doctor, Robert Helm (Wingfield), who also has secrets of his own. These are all well-rounded characters whose interaction is fun to watch.

The action work is a bit of a mixed bag. Santiago was found at an open casting call, and underwent two months of training under swordmaster Anthony De Longis, who also plays Tessa’s fencing tutor in the opening episode. However, portraying the character required cobbling together a patchwork of Santiago with stunt doubles and other replacements, including Natalia Guijarro Brasseur, Roberta Brown, Gaëlle Cohen, Mary Gallien, Mary Jose, and even the occasional male for particularly difficult stunts. Again to quote Wikipedia, this “is exemplified in the Queen’s run up the hill away from the soldiers in Death to the Queen. Mary Gallien started the run, Roberta Brown performed the medium shot duel with swords on the hill, Tessie Santiago performed the spoken parts and was in the close-up, and Natalia Brasseur fell off the cliff.” The results are hardly seamless, and fall more into the category of competent than anything else, with the occasional moment that either impresses, or is painfully obvious in the doubling.

The shows did have some decent guest stars. Among the most memorable was perhaps Bo Derek, who played retired pirate captain (!)  Mary Rose, who is intent on seeing her son escapes a murder charge. She could, at least, do her own horsework, being quite an accomplished ride. David Carradine also appears, getting to wield a sword some years before doing so in Kill Bill, and Sung-Hi Lee plays another action heroine in a later episode, The Dragon, where she plays a member from a temple of Japanese warrior-priests, whose master (Burt Kwouk – not Japanese either!) is killed, and seeks vengeance on the Queen after being told by Montoya she was behind the attack. Elsa Pataky also has a regular role, playing the wife of a local landowner, who is having an affair with Grisham. Other guests in the series include Simon MacCorkindale and Ralf Moeller. Oddly, given the setting, there’s a high percentage of British actors in both the regular and guest cast, led by Pelka who, despite his accent, was actually born in Yorkshire – his exotic name is Polish, rather than Hispanic…

A few random other thoughts: I grew to despise the theme song, which sounds like a low-rent version of something by the Gypsy Kings. But the lack of over-riding romantic entanglement works in the film’s favour. While there’s a sense Tessa and Dr. Helm have an attraction, unlike certain shows I could mention, the storylines never gets bogged down in this ‘shipper drivel. I reached the end with a feeling of sadness that the show never quite did well enough to merit further season. If far from original, and not even the first female version of Zorro [which would be Zorro’s Black Whip], it was generally entertaining, with performances that were better than I expected. Even now, the legal status of Zorro remains undecided, and until that is resolved, I doubt anyone will head down the distaff version path again. Episode 1 is on YouTube.

Star: Tessie Santiago, Valentine Pelka, Anthony Lemke, Peter Wingfield

Cleopatra 2525: season one

  By

cleopatra2525a★★★
“After the apocalypse, crop tops will fortunately not be in short supply.”

When Hercules: The Legendary Journeys ended its run in January 2000, producers Renaissance Pictures looked to replace it, but instead of going with another hour-long show to follow the hit Xena, took the unusual step of making two, 30-minute action series. This was a break from normal practice: half-hour comedies were standard, but for shows like these, it was a format which had not been seen since the seventies. The second was Jack of All Trades, starring Bruce Campbell as Jack Stiles, a wisecracking spy for the US at the turn of the 19th century. The first was radically different: a SF saga, set 500+ years into the future, when robots have driven humanity, literally, underground.

Waking up here is Cleopatra (Sky), a 21st-century exotic dancer who got frozen after a boob-job went wrong. She’s rescued by Hel (Torres, who’d go on to cult stardom in Firefly) and Sarge (Pratt), part of a team fighting the robots, which are known as ‘Baileys’, their human-imitating agents called ‘Betrayers,’ and dealing with the anarchic and dangerous life beneath the surface, guided by a voice in Hel’s head, that organizes the anti-Bailey resistance. [In the original pilot, that voice was Lucy Lawless, but she ended up being replaced by Elizabeth Hawthorne] Cleo gradually becomes part of the team, being the viewers’ voice in the dystopia of 26th-century life, while Hel and Sarge represent the brains and brawn of the team.

cleopatra2525cAll three, however, were clearly selected as much for their visual appeal, and the 25th century is not short of beautiful people – it’s also quite warm, going by the ah, flimsy clothing worn by the trio. Cleo and her former profession fit right in. But taking any of this seriously would largely be doing the show a disservice, because it’s clear it doesn’t take itself seriously. There isn’t really time for that kind of thing, with each episode barely 20 minutes, excluding opening (theme song sung by Torres, a funked-up and lyrically altered version of Zager and Evans’ one-hit wonder, In the Year 2525) and closing credits. There isn’t much time for anything, in fact: both characterization and plotting remain about as scanty as the outfits. Hel is thoughtful but can be distant; Sarge likes shooting things first and asking questions later; Cleo, to be honest, is mostly irritating, coming over as both whiny and rather vacuous.

At least in the first series, the storylines don’t focus on the Baileys as much as I remembered. The heroic trio also find themselves taking on evil clown Creegan, against whom Hel has a personal grudge (for good reason), or psychic Raina, who can not just read your mind, but implant suggestions in it. The latter was a personal favourite villainess, played by Danielle Cormack, who is a veteran from Xena, having played Amazon Ephiny there. That’s true for much of the cast: Sky read for the part of Gabrielle, but also ended up playing another character, Amarice, while Pratt was Cyanne, the Queen of the Northern Amazons. Torres was on the show too, though not as an Amazon. Perhaps more confusingly though, she played Cleopatra – the Egyptian version, not the stripper one.  There’s also a considerable overlap of directors who worked on both shows.

Cleopatra is generally more consistent in tone: that may not necessarily be a good thing, as one of the joys of Xena was seeing it swing from mass crucifixions to musical numbers. It does make Cleo less suitable for binge watching, because the episodes exhibit a certain sameness that grows somewhat repetitive after a while: three was about my personal limit, so not much more than an hour, before the titular heroine started to grate on my nerves. But in the show’s defense, it wasn’t created to be viewed like that, and in 20 minute chunks, generally manages to be energetic and action-packed entertainment. Outside of the Raina episodes mentioned earlier, I particularly enjoyed Run Cleo Run, a take on one of my most beloved films, Run Lola Run, that somehow manages to be even more hyperkinetic than the original – though with a less kick-ass soundtrack.

Star: Jennifer Sky, Gina Torres, Victoria Pratt

"In 20 minute chunks, generally manages to be energetic and action-packed entertainment."
cleopatra2525c
cleopatra2525d
cleopatra2525e
cleopatra2525f
cleopatra2525g
cleopatra2525h
cleopatra2525i
cleopatra2525a

Agent Carter gets her own TV series

  By

Agent-CarterSomewhat following up on the news from February that Black Widow will get her own film. Marvel Entertainment and ABC announced that the comic book company’s Agent Carter, will get her own 13-episode series this summer. It’ll be screened when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. goes on hiatus, before returning for its second season [we tried it, but gave up a few episodes in; our son remains a fan though]. Here’s the official blurb on the new show.

Marvel’s Agent Carter, starring Captain America’s Hayley Atwell follows the story of Peggy Carter. It’s 1946, and peace has dealt Peggy Carter a serious blow as she finds herself marginalized when the men return home from fighting abroad.

Working for the covert SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve), Peggy must balance doing administrative work and going on secret missions for Howard Stark all while trying to navigate life as a single woman in America, in the wake of losing the love of her life–Steve Rogers. Inspired by the feature films Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, along with the short Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter.

Starring Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter, Marvel’s Agent Carter is executive produced by Christopher Markus, Steve McFeely, Tara Butters, Michele Fazekas, Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Jeph Loeb.

AgentCarter2It’s largely inspired by the Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter short film, included as a bonus feature on the home release of Iron Man 3, though as the blurb notes, Carter also played a significant role in the two Captain America films. But her character dates all the way back to May 1966 (making her virtually the same age as me!), first appearing in Tales of Suspense #77. In her comic incarnation, Carter joined the French Resistance, fighting alongside Captain American and falling in love with him, before suffering amnesia and being sent home.

The film – and presumably TV – version is rather different, having Carter as a British agent. Atwell says of her, “She’s an English soldier through and through, although she always looks fabulous. She might stand there with a machine-gun shooting Nazis, but she’s obviously gone to the loo beforehand and applied a bit of lipstick. She doesn’t need to be rescued. That’s exciting to me – her strength.” The period setting is interesting, not something often seen in network shows, though cable’s Mad Men shows that it can be highly successful. If Carter gets renewed, one suggestion is the show will probably move forward a couple of years with each season, up until the formation of S.H.I.E.L.D. It’ll cover the gap in Carter’s life between the events of the two America movies, the first set during World War 2, the second during the present day.

It’s also interesting to note that the series will be helmed by two female showrunners, Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters, who created Reaper, and just finished a stint working on Resurrection [which we did watch, but vastly preferred the French take, Les Revenants]. However, perhaps most relevant to this site, they were writers and consulting producers on Dollhouse, starring Eliza Dushku, which certainly had a decent quota of ass-kicking heroineocity. I must confess, I haven’t see the Marvel One-Shot as yet, but this news has certainly inspired me to see if can track it down. Below, you can find a quick clip, to whet your appetite for what is to come on ABC this summer.

Cleaners: season one

  By

Cleaners★★★★
“Girls, guns and cars. Well, one car, anyway…”

Crackle is the streaming content subsidiary of Sony – it has been around for a while, but we only became aware of it last December, when a new widget popped up on our Apple TV. Think of it as a little like an advert-supported version of Netflix; you can watch for free, whenever you want, but you have to “pay” by sitting through commercials (during which the FF option on your remote is disabled. Bastards!). The library of movies and shows offered is based around that studio’s library, and has a number of entries for action heroine fans. Bonus points, not just for having Run Lola Run, but in the subtitled version; they also have Ultraviolet: Code 044, the anime spin-off from Milla Jovovich’s action-horror film, though that is only available dubbed. We’ll get to that later, I imagine, but the first thing to leap out at us was this original series, about a pair of female assassins. It’s certainly not to be confused with the Samuel L. Jackson movie or Benjamin Brett show.

The two heroines are Veronica (Chriqui) and Roxie (Osment, straying far from her Hannah Montana roots). Both are hit-women, working for “Mother” (Gershon), but that’s about all they have in common: Veronica is serious and almost OCD about her work, while the much younger Roxie is a party animal who shoots first and asks questions… Well, almost never. Mother insists they work together on this case, much to both their chagrin. This particular mission involves the repossession of a classic car from its current thuggish owners. The car is then to be driven to Point B, without stopping for any reason. Naturally, that doesn’t quite work out, and they discover an autistic boy, unconscious in the trunk. Turns out, locked in his brain is the key to $57 million dollars. Mother wants him. His dad, currently serving 20 years, wants him. FBI agent Barnes (Arquette) wants him. His mother (Missi Pyle) wants him. Now, they all have to go through Veronica and Roxie to get him.

Cleaners2There are six episodes, but they’re barely 20 minutes each, discounting adverts, and by the time you remove the credits, and “previously/next time on Cleaners” sections, it’s basically a single feature. Maybe I’ll get round to editing it together in exactly that fashion. There’s a hint of Tarantino in the fast-paced dialogue, as the characters snark back and forth at each other – my favourite line was Roxie’s response, after Veronica had expounded on some topic: “Jesus! What did you have for breakfast? Wikipedia?” Leyden throws on large helpings of style, which is something of an acquired taste: in the first episode, it seemed more of a chore than a pleasure, but as the show wore on, he either restrained himself better or we grew used to it.

The episodic approach doesn’t leave much opportunity to pause for breath, each part having to fit in advancing the storyline, developing the characters and, typically, an action set-piece, involving guns or hand-to-hand combat. For instance, the first episode has Roxie tricking her way into the thugs’ house, and opening the back door so Veronica can join her for a full-out assault. It’s a structure which makes for a copious volume of action overall, and these are both well-shot and assembled – the art of editing fight sequences is something I think is often overlooked. It looks like Chriqui and Osment both handled more of their own work than I’d have expected, though credit should also go to Osment’s stunt double, Mandy Kowalski.

However, it’s the characters which engage the viewer and keep them coming back for more. The two leads have a nice chemistry, bouncing off each other, and there’s a real sense of development as the show progresses. Initially, the pairing feels like Grumpy Cat being forced to socialize with an energetic puppy, but they both come to appreciate the other’s strengths, and the marginal tolerance becomes more based on respect. It’s a similar dynamic to the one we saw in Violet & Daisy, almost a big/little sister relationship. I do have some doubts about the plotting, which has too many convenient coincidences to be convincing. For instance, I sense that any such series of events with the massive body-count depicted here, would get a lot more traction than the solitary FBI agent who appears to be on their trail. However, this never destroys the energetic, pulpy and B-movie feel which permeates proceedings, and by the time the sixth episode finished (in a hail of gunfire, naturally), we were sad to discover, that was all there was.

For now, anyway. Because, the good news is, another series has been commissioned, and started shooting in January, so will hopefully be out later this year. I say “hopefully,” since Sony abruptly shut down Crackle in the United Kingdom at the start of last month. Fingers crossed that this isn’t an indication of wider problems for the company, because this is definitely a show that deserves a wider audience. You can watch the show online at crackle.com; it was apparently also released on DVD through RedBox, but a quick search of Ebay failed to locate a single copy. [Plenty of the Jackson/Brett versions….]

Dir: Paul Leyden
Star: Emmanuelle Chriqui, Emily Osment, David Arquette, Gina Gershon

Dangerous Lady

  By

★★★★
“No luck of the Irish to be found here.”

dangerousladyBased on the debut novel by British crime writer Martina Cole, this depicts the life of Maura Ryan (Lynch), the only daughter in her family, whose brothers are making a push for increased power in the underworld of 1960’s London, much to the disapproval of the Ryan’s matriarch (Hancock). Leading the push is Michael (Isaacs), who has more than a touch of Ronnie Kray about him, being both homosexual and a borderline psychotic. Maura falls in love with Terry Patterson (Teale), and is shocked to discover he’s a policeman. When he comes under pressure from colleagues to use their relationship, he ends it – unaware that Maura has just become pregnant. She is forced to have an abortion, which leaves her insides looking like they’ve been weed-whacked, and vows she’s going to show him, by becoming every bit the gangster peer of her brothers. But the path to the top is littered with dead bodies, of foes, friends and family.

There’s not a great deal here which you haven’t seen in a million other dramas about organized crime, be they set in America with the mafia, or Hong Kong and the triads. The whole “trying to go straight and make an honest life” thing is certainly not new, and strapping a skirt on, isn’t enough to make it so. It’s really the performances which make this work, and the acting is top-notch. Among the men, Isaacs is outstanding, going from zero to brutal in the blink of an eye, and you certainly get the notion of someone who was turned into what he became (Cole doesn’t explicitly snort derisively at “born that way”, but it’s certainly implied abuse as a youngster by another mobster is behind many of Michael’s problems). He’s a bundle of conflicting emotions: fiercely loyal to family members, but capable of savage brutality to anyone who betrays him, or whom he considers a threat.

But it’s Lynch and Hancock who are the driving force here, and both are excellent. The latter was a veteran of 40-plus years in plays, films and TV, and portrays Mrs. Ryan as being a loving mother, but one who gradually comes to the conclusion that they are beyond her control, Michael in particular. However, by the time she has realized this, she’s helpless to do anything much about it, except bar Michael from the house, even though that causes her pain, probably only a mother can know. Lynch plays Maura with very much the same streak of stubborn steel. As the show develops over its 50-minutes episodes, she becomes someone who won’t let anyone, least of all her family, tell her what to do, because she has seen the consequences of those bad decisions. She may not be right, but if she isn’t, at least it’s her own choice. You can’t help rooting for Maura, a victim of circumstance, as she negotiates the tricky life of a woman in the era, especially one in an area certainly not exactly female-friendly.

It’s slightly disappointing that we don’t get to see Maura go all Scarface on anyone; despite the cover picture, I’m not certain I recall her pulling the trigger at any point. However, that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm  for a solid slab of television drama, and we were sad to reach the end and realize that there were only four episodes – it’s an idea which could certainly have sustained a full season. I’ve now acquired a few of Cole’s books, and look forward to reading them in due course.

Dir: John Woods
Star: Susan Lynch, Jason Isaacs, Owen Teal, Sheila Hancock

The Women of Game of Thrones

  By

danerys

“All men must die. But we are not men…” — Daenerys Targaryen

We don’t have HBO, so were late getting into Game of Thrones, only starting to watch it after I accidentally stumbled across a copy [let’s just say, it had Chinese subtitles…]. Being tardy has its benefits: we could binge watch our way through multiple episodes, and I’m wondering how we’ll cope having to join the masses for Season 4, rationed to one episode per week. And it appears we were not alone: it’s one of the rare cases were a show has grown much more popular over time. The first ever episode was watched by only 2.22 million people on HBO. The second season opened 74% higher, at 3.86 million, and by the time the third series ended, viewing figures all the way up at 5.39 million. This mirrors the pattern of the books by George R.R. Martin on which the series is based: the first wasn’t a hit at all on its publication in 1991. But by the end of July 2011, he had five books in the New York Times top 20 bestsellers for fiction.

It’s utterly addictive, and populated with any number of great characters; indeed, some kind of scorecard would probably help in the early going, to keep track of who is marrying, supporting, invading or killing whom. Perhaps the outstanding aspect for me is the way  characters are nuanced, something especially noteworthy for the villainous. Even as they are committing heinous acts, you usually understand the reasons why they’re doing them. If you may not agree with the purpose to which they are aimed, you can see the justification. Well, except for boy-king Joffrey. He’s just a little shit, who has somehow managed to avoid the claws of the grim reaper. And speaking of which, another defining factor of the series is: anyone can die, at any time. No matter how beloved, Mr. Martin does not care. You can traumatize any GoT fan by sidling up to them and whispering two words in their ear: “Red Wedding.” I’ll say no more than that.

“The more people you love, the weaker you are.”  — Cersei Lannister

04CerseiLannisterIt certainly is a show ‘for mature viewers,’ containing its fair share of violence and sex, which has naturally led to the usual accusations of the usual misogyny from the usual sources. I don’t think the reality is anywhere near as simple as this, not least because the creators are pretty much equal opportunity when it comes to character abuse. Sure, sexual assault is skewed towards the women; decapitation, on the other hand, is pretty much a male preserve. No-one gets out unscathed: man, woman, child or wolf. There’s also an obvious difference between depiction and endorsement. And it’d be kinda ludicrous to have a medieval-styled fantasy world, operating as some kind of anarcho-syndicalist commune, where people take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting. Boring as shit, too.

Indeed, perhaps the oppressive world is a seed for the admirable number of strong female characters, which likely surpasses just about any other show on television these days. If you’re a man, you can be remarkably stupid and still do well in the GoT world, as long as you are fairly good at hitting people: Exhibit A, Jon Snow. As a woman, if you’re dumb, you learn quickly, or you don’t survive. If you’re weak, you don’t survive. Since you generally don’t have the option of direct physical force, other means must be found to bend others to do your will. This need not be malicious: Catelyn, matriarch of the Stark family, used family ties and other appeals to loyalty to amass her army. Others are less high-minded; to quote Cersei Lannister, “Tears aren’t a woman’s only weapon. The best one’s between your legs.” And make no mistake, some of the ladies in GoT are perfectly willing to use it, as part of their arsenal of tools.

But only some, for the variety of characters on offer here is another delight, from whores to high priestesses, queens to barbarians (even barbarian queens!), five foot short to six foot three tall, ages nine to eighty and everywhere in between. As the fourth season starts up on Sunday, here are our ten favorites ladies in the Game of Thrones universe to date – in increasing order of action heroineiness. Note: I’ll try and avoid major spoilers – for example, which if any of these are no longer alive! – but where these are necessary to illuminate a character, I’m not going to shy away from them.

“Some day I’m going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull.” — Arya Stark

10. Shae

In terms of social climbing, few can surpass Shae’s ascent. She started off as a prostitute following the Lannister army, but caught the eye of Tyrion Lannister (our most beloved character thanks to Peter Dinklage’s portrayal, the self-proclaimed “god of tits and wine”) and became his exclusively – she even convinced Tyrion to defy his father and bring her to the capital. There, she now serves as a handmaiden and confidant to Sansa Stark, the one-time potential queen of the realm. Yep, Shae has come a long way.

9. Olenna Tyrell

While certainly “veteran presence,” we mentioned above that you don’t survive in this world without being smart and tough. So her lengthy tenure at the heart of court politics testifies to both, as does her nickname, the ‘Queen of Thorns.’ In many way, she’s the real head of House Tyrell, despite marrying into it, rather than through her birth. Besides, we couldn’t omit any character played by Diana Rigg, who was not just the only Mrs. James Bond (in O.H.M.S.S.), but one of the all-time GWG icons, Emma Peel.

8. Melisandre

If there’s one thing more disturbing than your average religious zealot, it’s a religious zealot, with supernatural powers, who burns people alive. That would be Melisandre, a Red Priestess of the Lord of Light, a religion that has found devotees in House Baratheon, and who has an absolute conviction in her faith, to go along with her abilities of prophecy. You get the sense there’s a lot more to her than has been seen to date, but anyone capable of giving birth to shadows that kill on command, is clearly someone to be treated with respect.

“Death by fire is the purest death” — Melisandre

07ygritte7. Ygritte

A free woman from north of the massive wall which protects the bulk of Westeros from… things, shall we say. Life up there is even more brutal, and her survival skills have helped both her and Jon Stark, with whom she has a relationship best described as “complex.” Like others from her society, she possesses a fierce independence, and her loyalty is not easily won. She has an instinctive grasp of the best way to achieve her ends, and will ruthlessly exploit any weakness. If that fails – well, there’s always her trusty bow.

6. Catelyn Stark

At first, she was a dutiful and supportive wife to husband Eddard, but Lady Stark was thrust to the front following his appointment as the King’s Hand, which eventually led to his execution after the death of the current king. As the country collapses into civil war, she strives to be reunited with her children, rallies forces against those responsible for Eddard’s death, and acts as an adviser to her son Robb, who is heading the army they have raised. Balancing these various ends is a perilous task, to say the least.

5. Yara Greyjoy

After a previous rebellion was suppressed, the Greyjoy scion, Theon, was sent off as a hostage to live with the winners, to ensure his family’s future compliance,. This forced his sister, Yara, to step into the breach and become a son by proxy, commanding her own longship and leading her men as they pillage nearby territories. To quote her father: “She’s commanded men. She’s killed men. And she knows who she is.” That’s more than Theon does, completely failing to recognize the hard-ass she has become, when he returns, after almost a decade away.

4. Cersei Lannister

Cersei is played by another solid action heroine, Lena Headey having been Queen Gorgo in 300, as well as the title role in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Her character is responsible for the show’s title, saying, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.” And Cersei Lannister has no intention of dying, being a grand mistress at the arts of scheming, manipulation and intrigue towards her goals. Her son Joffrey is technically on the throne of Westeros, but there’s little doubt who is wielding the actual power there.

“Everyone who isn’t us is an enemy.” — Cersei Lannister

3. Arya Stark

We’re in the top tier now, and despite Arya’s youth, she undeniably deserves her position up here. Virtually the first time we see her, she’s spurning her embroidery lesson to out-shoot her brothers, and that sets the tone for her character. Per Wikipedia, “She rejects the notion that she must become a lady and marry for influence and power, showing no interest in the womanly arts of dancing, singing, and sewing; instead she revels in fighting and exploring.” Her father, Eddard, eventually admits defeat in this area, and hires a swordmaster to give her lessons in “sticking ’em with the pointy end,” an art in which Arya proves adept.

She goes with Eddard when he travels to take up his position as the King’s Hand, but when that goes pear-shaped, she’s thrown back entirely on to her own resources, with her sword, ‘Needle’. Disguising herself as a boy to avoid some of the dangers of life alone, she starts back to her family’s castle in the North. That plan is derailed and she ends up embedded deep in the enemy’s camp, acting as cupbearer to Tywin, the head of House Lannister, before escaping. At the end of the third season, Arya killed her first man, stabbing him repeatedly in the back of his neck. It’s not going to be her last, that’s for sure.

02brienne2. Brienne of Tarth

The only child of her lord father, Brienne is bigger and stronger than most men [Gwendoline Christie, who plays her, is 6’3″ in real life, so no need for orange boxes or forced perspective there!], and we first see her winning a tournament against male opponents. This gains her entry in to the Kingsguard of Renly Baratheon, but after his assassination, she is blamed for Renly’s death and has to flee the camp, vowing to take revenge on the real instigator – who would be #8, Melisandre. Brienne swears loyalty to Catelyn Stark, and is given the mission of taking captive Jamie Lannister back to King’s Landing, where he can be exchanged for Catelyn’s daughters. That journey forces both Brienne and Jamie to face uncomfortable truths, and they develop a mutual respect.

Characters in the show are very much shaded in grey, but Brienne is perhaps the closest to being purely good, holding to a chivalric ideal of knighthood, likely more rooted in fantasy than the harsh realities of life. She has managed to hold on to her idealism, despite never being accepted by her fellow knights, or society in general: her position as a warrior woman renders her a perpetual outsider to both groups. In one of the books, she says she was “the only child the gods let [my father] keep. The freakish one, one not fit to be son or daughter.” A great character, beloved beyond the screen time she has received, and I’d love to see a spinoff series, focusing on Brienne.

1. Daenerys Targaryen

The Targaryen clan used to be the rulers of Westeros, but her father was overthrown, leaving Daenerys and her brother Viserys surviving out on the edge of civilization. Viserys still plots to regain the throne, and to this end, arranges a marriage of his sister to a barbarian warlord, Khal Drogo, hoping to use Drogo’s army. Drogo dies after a wound sustained in battle becomes infected, and most of his tribe abandon their queen. However, at this low point, Daenerys discovers her destiny, walking into her husband’s funeral pyre, only to emerge unscathed. Indeed, she succeeds in hatching three supposedly inert dragon eggs given to her as a wedding present, resurrecting a species much feared in their time, yet considered extinct for centuries. The ‘Mother of Dragons’ is on her way back up…

Having not read the books when I watched the series, my initial reaction was that Viserys would be the focus, and Daenerys little more than eye-candy, a bribe used to give her sibling leverage, who’d rapidly be sidelined. Boy, was I wrong. From a chattel, she has steadily ascended the ladder of power, first winning her husband, then his clan, and building upon that, with some help from her little fire-breathers, to become a potential force to be reckoned with. While she is still sidelined – Daenerys hasn’t even set foot on Westeros through three seasons – it’s only a matter of time before she returns at the head of an army, fanatically devoted to her. How do you like your soldiers cooked? Medium-well?

She hasn’t forgotten where she came from either, and has a zero-tolerance policy for those who oppress others. Daenerys has gone from, “I don’t want to be his Queen. I want to go home,” to “Slay the masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who holds a whip, but harm no child. Strike the chains off every slave you see!” That’s what I call a character arc. But I do have to wonder what the future holds for her, because we should remember, her father was nick-named “The Mad King” by his subjects in Westeros, for good reason, and Viserys wasn’t exactly stable or sane. Let’s hope the insanity skips a generation: it’d waste one of the strongest and most memorable female characters on TV this decade

“We will lay waste to armies, and burn cities to the ground.” — Daenerys Targaryen

10. Shae
9. Olenna Tyrell
8. Melisandre
7. Ygritte
6. Catelyn Stark
5. Yara Greyjoy
4. Cersei Lannister
3. Anya Stark
2. Brienne of Tarth
1. Danerys Targaryen