Warden’s Watch: Medium

During 2009 the programme that became a regular viewing fixture for me was “Medium”. BBC Two ran repeats of the first four series, mostly in double bills, during the early hours of Saturday mornings. Living has shown Series Five in the UK and now Freeview viewers have a chance to see it on Virgin1. Meanwhile, in the States, Series Six has just completed airing. There are a total of 117 episodes (16, 22, 22, 16, 19, 22). While both “Heroes” and “Ugly Betty” have fizzled out after just four seasons apiece, “Medium” is quietly stronger than ever. On paper “Medium” doesn’t look as though it should work. It’s a supernatural-cum-detective-cum-domestic drama about a housewife, Allison Dubois, whose dreams help solve crimes. Sounds ludicrous but it’s terrific.

As regular readers may know, I’m not keen on kitchen sink anecdotes in fantasy stories. It’s the main reason why Steven Spielberg films aren’t a favourite of mine. Spilling milk on the wood-panelled floor adds unnecessary clutter, getting in the way of a rollicking good adventure! In “Medium”, however, the family scenario is the programme’s most interesting feature. That’s not to say the show falls down elsewhere. Dream sequences are often imaginatively constructed while the information needed to solve the criminological puzzle can be disseminated non-chronologically. It seems ironic that I can relate more easily to the domestic arrangements and traumas of this fictional American family than I could those of the Tylers in “Doctor Who”!

Cast in the lead role, in “Medium”, is Patricia Arquette, best known hitherto for her performance in Tony Scott’s “True Romance”. I suspect the original casting director, on the television series, may possibly have remembered her from “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors”. Despite having wildly different iconography, the essential scenario of a “Medium” episode and an instalment in the “Elm Street” franchise is the same - criminal enters the dreams of the protagonist. When at home, Allison’s husband Joe is her moral compass, while, at work, District Attorney Devalos and Law Enforcement Officer Lee Scanlon perform the same function. However, it is Allison and Joe’s three daughters who invariably steal the limelight! Bridgette, the middle child, is just the right side of precocious in her curiosity over all things worldly. Maria Lark’s performance is the best I’ve ever seen by any child actor while Sofia Vassilieva, as eldest daughter Ariel, is thoughtful and stunningly beautiful. “Medium” is a marvellous mixture to mull over!

Telly Visions Special: Michelle Ryan

This is an extra post for fans of Michelle Ryan mainly to let you know she will be appearing on BBC Two this Sunday morning, at 10am, as a guest on “Something for the Weekend”. Not quite sure what she’s there to promote but I’ve heard she may be returning to “EastEnders”. You’ll probably have to put up with Tim Lovejoy’s endless waffle on football but you can always leave the programme on in the background until the lovely Michelle’s appearance!

You’ve probably realised by now - my new blog-header kinda gives it away - that I enjoyed last year’s “Doctor Who” Easter Special, “Planet of the Dead”. I expected to enjoy November’s “The Waters of Mars” more, being horror based and directed by Graeme Harper, but preferred the rapport between the two leads on the red bus to the comedy robot on the red planet! Due to the prominence of said bus, “Planet of the Dead” reminded me of the Sylvester McCoy adventure “Delta and the Bannermen”, for which I’ve always held a soft spot. Both stories are great fun. However, I suspect Michelle’s episode was probably more influenced by “The Mummy Returns”. I thought David Tennant and Michelle Ryan worked extraordinarily well together and, like the relationship between Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri in “The Caves of Androzani”, they left me wanting more…

Michelle is building quite a reputation for herself in the fantasy genre altogether. What with a returning role, playing a villainess, in the first series of “Merlin”, an aborted attempt, after eight episodes, to revive the “Bionic Woman”, and as one of the protagonists in Steven Moffat’s “Jekyll” it would be good to see her continue in this vein rather than return to soap land. It may be a question of needs must but that would be a shame for this fine actress. Her turn in corset drama “Mansfield Park”, alongside Billie Piper, is also worth a mention. Support Miss Ryan on Sunday!

Telly Visions: Ruth Wilson

It seems a little ironic that, a few years ago, Ruth Wilson made her name playing plain “Jane Eyre” when she is clearly one of the best-looking actresses working in television today! It’s the long red hair, searing eyes, and that thing she does with her lips that make her so striking. More than a regular femme fatale!! However, with the use of theatrical cosmetics, and unflattering costumes, an actor can be made to appear dowdy where, in the everyday world, makeup would be applied to enhance one’s appearance. It seems a shame to go out of the way to make a beautiful girl look less pretty. Jane Eyre, the character, is renowned for her inner beauty but television, being mainly a visual medium, has to express this loveliness outwardly so Ruth Wilson seems perfectly cast.

I discovered recently that Ruth and I have a number of things in common. Before her breakthrough role, she read history at Nottingham University. This is the same establishment of further education I attended, though my subject was music. Whilst there she participated in amateur dramatics, as some of us do with a theatrical inclination! If we ever cross paths at least we’ll have something to talk about!! She was born in the same month as me so we’re both Capricorns. And, she’s also a big fan of American soap-cum-murder-mystery “Twin Peaks”. That revelation may go some of the way to explain why she took one of her most recent roles…

Ruth Wilson is currently appearing in two television series. On ITV1 she is 313, appearing alongside Sir Ian McKellen in the six-part remake of the 1967 cult classic “The Prisoner”. She says she took the part because of similarities to David Lynch’s earlier surreal television series “Twin Peaks”. In last Saturday’s episode, “Schizoid”, Bill Gallagher, screenwriter of the new version of “The Prisoner”, even went so far as to quote “Twin Peaks” delight of food stuffs. Perhaps it was that which made Ruth think of her childhood favourite. I’m not sure how well the new series works. It quotes the original’s catchphrases in abundance but is colder and less colourful. The interiors of Number Two’s residence, for example, are shot in a manner similar to “Blade Runner”. It may all be going on in his wife’s medicated mind but Sir Ian assures us that, unlike the end of the original series, everything will be explained in this week’s final episode.

On BBC One Ruth is playing Alice Morgan, a psychopathic genius who has murdered her parents, in the six-part classy crime thriller “Luther”. Detective John Luther is played by Idris Elba while a whole host of famous names pop up throughout the run. Eighth “Doctor Who” Paul McGann comes to blows with the lead in the first episode while Third Doctor Jon Pertwee’s son Sean battles the police from within his prison cell in the following instalment. You may recognise Suzie (“Torchwood”) Costello actress Indira Varma as Luther’s wife with whom McGann’s character is having an affair. There’s a marvellously stylish moment, near the end of part one, where Luther is holding Alice over a bridge and she invites him to “kiss me, kill me”! He should’ve reluctantly unhanded Ruth at that moment and said “be seeing you”!!

Warden’s Watch: Doctor Who - Series Five, Episodes Four to Six

The new series of “Doctor Who” continues to be a mix of the good and the downright awful! Episodes four and five, “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone”, attempt to develop ideas from two of Steven Moffat’s earlier stories, the Weeping Angel statues from Series Three’s “Blink” and Alex Kingston’s River Song from the two-part library story of the Fourth Series. I like the former, not so keen on the latter! All this “sweetie” nonsense, and continued reference to “spoilers”, is a bit cringe-making. For heaven’s sake, it was only in the previous story, “Victory of the Daleks”, that the Doctor called one of the pepper pots “sweetheart”! Despite liking the statues in the Carey Mulligan episode, I’m not so sure it was a good idea to bring them back. The new story seemed to virtually ignore the original concept of what happens to an Angel’s victims. Less importantly, but nonetheless irritatingly, the Doctor loses his jacket to one of the stone beasties, at one point, then, unseen by the viewer, somehow manages to retrieve his tweed threads by the end!

The best scene in the Fifth Series, so far, came in the second part of the Weeping Angel yarn. I’d go so far as to say it’s the best scene since Jefferson’s eulogy to Scooti Manista, four years ago, in “The Impossible Planet”. I’m talking about the marvellous dialogue between the Doctor and Father Octavian upon the latter’s demise. Genuinely moving. The trouble is, it is almost immediately undermined by the ending of “Flesh and Stone”. New “Doctor Who” does this a lot. It’s afraid to capitalise on truly emotional moments. What does Moffat do? He has new companion Amy come on to the Doctor in the most ludicrous manner. We’ve been there before. Russell did all that ad nauseam… for five blooming years! I’d hoped we’d put such crassness behind us. At first I thought it was padding because the story had under run again, like the Dalek episode two weeks earlier, but its dubious purpose is to set up a ménage à trois between the Doctor, Rory and Amy exploited during the sixth episode, “The Vampires of Venice”, written by Toby Whithouse - the man behind “Being Human”, the “Doctor Who” episode “School Reunion” and the “Torchwood” episode “Greeks Bearing Gifts”.

And what a flippant beginning to the much-awaited vampire tale. It would’ve been amusing in any other drama but “Doctor Who”. We’d already had Amy as a WPC kissagram, in the opening story of the series, and so we return to the idea with the Doctor replacing the stripper at Rory’s stag night! I was hoping for some genuine gothic horror, just for once, but “The Vampires of Venice” is undermined before it has barely begun. Why does the series try so hard to be domestic just to appeal to the “EastEnders” crowd? Why doesn’t it simply be itself? It managed it for twenty-six years. I don’t buy into the notion it had to change to appeal to a modern audience. Only if said audience lacks intelligence! (There is a current series does domestic brilliantly, by the way, even though it’s ostensibly a supernatural drama. I won’t reveal its name here as I hope to devote a future post to it.) The vampires themselves were terrific looking, as you can see from the above picture - a scene reminiscent of the Haemovores breaking in through a vestry window in “The Curse of Fenric”, while their two leaders were portrayed suitably seriously until being revealed, predictably pseudo-scientifically, as “fish from space”! “They bite”!!

Telly Visions: Eliza Dushku

Hello, Dolly! Eliza Dushku first aroused the interest of the viewing public playing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s young daughter, straddled across the nose cone of a Harrier Jump Jet, in James Cameron’s James Bond-esque “True Lies”. That’s a pretty titanic start to anyone’s career! However, the actress has really made her name working in American television. It’s probably fair to say that Miss Dushku became more of a household name when she became a recurring character, a semi-regular as they’re known in the television industry, in Joss Whedon’s “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and its spin-off series “Angel”, playing a violently-wayward member of the Scooby-gang.

From a supporting role in “Buffy”, Eliza has gone on to play the lead in not one but two US series. First up was “Tru Calling” in which she inherits her mother’s gift for saving lives through reliving days at a deceased’s request. “Groundhog Day” with a pretty girl at its centre. Sounds an unlikely concept for an ongoing show and sometimes it works brilliantly, others not so. Tru works at a morgue, whilst studying to become a doctor, and each episode a dead body will suddenly turn to her from the slab and cry “help me”! The show ran for two seasons but the second was cut short. People lose interest very easily these days!! Anyone curious in seeing what it’s all about, for themselves, can find repeats on Sky Three (Freeview 11).

Reunited with Joss Whedon, Eliza Dushku is currently starring, as programmable agent Echo, in the unusual Sci-fi adventure series “Dollhouse”. Already broadcast in the States, the show returned to British television, again on ITV4 (Freeview 24), for its second season, on Wednesday, 28th April, 2010. In the first episode, “Vows” (as in wedding), after her encounter with Alpha, Echo has seemingly recovered. But, as she embarks on a long-term engagement, she begins to behave strangely. And, in the next episode, “Instinct” (as in maternal), Topher’s extraordinary abilities backfire when Echo takes too strongly to her new role as mother to a newborn baby and runs away with the child.

If you’re familiar with “Joe 90”, Whedon’s new show plays like a sexed-up version of Gerry Anderson’s Sixties’ Supermarionation series, with the added attraction of supermodels rather than models! But, the characterisations in “Dollhouse” are even less-well developed than those of either their earlier wooden counterparts or the figures of the actresses inhabiting the American show!! Still, over the course of the next thirteen weeks, I’m looking forward to uncovering any evolution of Echo and her gloriously well-endowed bunny girls!!!