My American TV drama habit is getting out of hand
Last night I snapped at Prince Charming because he tried to talk to me in the middle of my two-hour Dark Angel session - and earlier today I saw the CSI partwork thing (builds week by week into a fascinating behind-the-scenes guide, plus a look at real-life crimes and how forensics help to solve them!) advertised on TV and for a moment I actually thought to myself "hmmn, that sounds interesting".
It's all Taxloss's fault, for it was he who first said to me, "You know, I think you might quite like CSI, you should give it a try". You know, he gives it all the "I'm such an intellectual political observer and wry satirical commentator" but tonight Provincial Princess can exclusively reveal that actually he regularly rots those Oxbridge-honed brain cells in front of prime-time dromma.
Anyway, I can't afford the CSI partwork because I'm going to be spending my £6.99 a fortnight on The Pocketwatch Collection (builds week by week into a fascinating history of classic timepieces, and each week there's a reproduction pocketwatch with a high-quality mechanism, absolutely free).
Apparently, the only publishing sector growing faster than partworks is the women's mag sector. So I think maybe I should be sending my CV to De Agostini instead of Future.
Do you think they'd be impressed if I sent it a little bit at a time, so it builds week by week into a fascinating resume detailing my skills and experience? I could include a stylish binder with the first page and a free example of my previous work absolutely free for them to keep, every week.
posted by Fizzwhizz at 12:49 AM
4 Comments:
I have never denied my interest in American drama. CSI is pure class. (Sadly, CSI: Miami is dreck.)
Interesting how watching American drama is considered "low-brow" while our home-grown stuff is so regularly rubbish; "Midsomer Murders", anyone? Compare that to CSI. The only domestic things we've made that can hold a candle to CSI were the first series of "Silent Witness" and the first three series of "Prime Suspect", and they were more than a decade ago. I went off ER ages ago - the writing, direction and camerawork became extremely formulaic and flabby - but even now it's vastly superior to "Casualty" or "Holby City" or any of that rubbish. The only show that come anywhere close was "Cardiac Arrest" and, again, that was more than 10 years ago.
These things are cyclical, I suppose; at present British TV comedy is enjoying a resurgence and we have some very fine documentaries about the place (I've never seen so much history of telly, gleaming with so much money. TV historians are becoming famous now for the first time since ... ooh, Kenneth Clarke, I'd say.) But our drama output is in the doldrums.
January 23, 2005 at 10:02 AM
You're absolutely right of course. Although I've got a lot of time for Hermione or Hortense or whatever the gingernut in Miami is called.
I think the problem with prime-time drarma as opposed to dromma is that our drama serieses are usually nothing more than vehicles for some ex-soap star or other, and their acting skills just don't hold up to it.
I have rarely watched Casualty because it always used to involve somebody taking ecstasy in the first five minutes who then went on to die horribly later in the show (of course, this is what happens to everyone who takes recreational drugs; it is, in fact, impossible to be a user of illegal drugs and actually live to tell the tale - certainly not to have (whisper it) fun) and it used to be on on a Saturday night just before I went out clubbing and quite honestly stomach-pumps are not the sort of thing you want to see while you're on the phone to your mate trying to score.
ER went downhill as soon as Alex Kingston arrived. It wasn't her fault, it was just that her arrival marked the point at which it turned from a hospital drama into a soap with a bit of blood attached.
January 24, 2005 at 2:51 AM
PS Oh god oh god. They've got the CSI partwork thing in my local newsagents. How can I resist? You get two episodes for £3.99, plus a fascinating magazine.
January 24, 2005 at 2:59 AM
McReadie: Funnily enough, I was going to mention our current strength in comedy, relative to what seems like American weakness at the moment (well, Scrubs was alright ...). However, I forgot to.
Your point about characterisation is absolutely spot on. British drama writers seem to think drama is all plot (the more convoluted, the better) and tension. Those are necessary, but it's the characters, and the lines they are given, that turn CSI from a glossy, humdrum police procedural into a must-watch show. I mean, even Amanda Burton is Silent Witness was rather wooden, but a shallow character. Helen Mirren was brilliant in Prime Suspect. Oh! And I just remembered: Robbie Coltrane in Cracker. Amazing television. Long, long ago.
January 28, 2005 at 9:34 AM
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