Thanks to Caroline and Isabella for starting off the TV Done Right blog hop! This is my first installment (I told you, I love television). Today I'm going "across the pond" to talk about two of my most favorite shows ever.
Here’s what makes British television so good: brevity. It’s
not that the episodes are shorter, but the seasons themselves. Whereas our
seasons tend to go on for 22 episodes, in Britain eight is generous- and getting to five years is amazing. Why is
that a good thing? Because it keeps everyone focused on the core story they’re
trying to tell.
My picks: Luther and
Footballers’ Wives. Other than the setting, they could not be more different,
but they’re both equally well-done.
Luther is only 14 episodes long, spread out over three
seasons. It’s the story of Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, who’s brilliant,
hard-working and hot-tempered. That temper has cost him his marriage, and his
wife has already moved on. So it’s that bit of instability plus the desire to
solve a challenge that leads to what eventually becomes an obsession with
Alice, a woman who called in the shooting of her mother but whom John realizes
is actually the killer. Just one problem: Alice is as smart as Luther is, and
whereas he’s constantly waging a war between his demons and his angels, she’s
blithely thrown her lot in with self-preservation and has no qualms about
breaking the law to get what she wants...or to help John.
While John and Alice are escalating their game of Will They
Or Won’t They, John’s increasingly threatened at work, which I suppose you have
to expect when you’ve pissed off one too many people. Everyone
knew John cut
corners, it was just a matter of catching him in the act. To top it off, John
had horrible judgment in his personal life, which came back to bite him
when a good friend on the force not only
found himself caught up in a crime ring but then killed John’s wife as part of
a convoluted plot to protect himself. And who was the number one suspect? You
guessed it- John.
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| "What? Isn't this what you look like during an interrogation?" |
John found himself depending on Alice at the most
interesting times, despite all protestations that she needed help (which, of course, she did). Most telling
was when he pulled her out as his ace-in-the-hole when he needed to control a
ruthless organized crime family- even though she hadn’t been in those episodes.
Once we saw that, we knew that he was hooked even if he didn’t want to admit
it.
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| Guess who's filled with respect for him and guess who's dying to take him down? |
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At the other end of the spectrum that is British television
was
Footballers’ Wives, the most trashtastic television ever produced. “Narcissistic”
doesn’t begin to describe most of the characters, and yet you couldn’t help
root for some of them, in spite of (or because of?) it. And, of course,
sometimes we watched just to see someone get taken down...that, and the stories
were brilliantly out of control.
Footballer Jason and his grasping wife Tanya (the eventual
star of the show) caused team owner Frank to have a terrible accident, and
while unconscious he’s repeatedly raped (!) by nurse Jeanette. Tanya uses this
information to try and get Jeanette to kill Frank, but he makes a miraculous
recovery. (Tanya’s tears during that scene were darkly funny.) Frank is
convinced he and Tanya are having an affair, then remembers both being attacked
and being raped. It takes him a little while, but he finally gets what he needs to blackmail Tanya-
into marriage!
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| Please! This was just two guys having an affair- boring compared to the rest of the show. |
What about Jason? Tanya’s philandering husband got around-
including with his team mate Kyle’s
mother Jackie. (Kyle’s model wife
Chardonnay never looked twice at him, surprisingly.) When Jackie ended up
pregnant, Kyle and Chardonnay passed the baby off as theirs...until Jason figured
it out and brought baby Paddy to Jackie. His marriage to Tanya on the outs, he
and Jackie might have lived happily ever after if it hadn’t been revealed that
Paddy was really an intersex baby. Jason freaked out and went back to Tanya,
and when Kyle finally found out that Jason was really his brother’s father, he
almost killed him. Tanya, fed up with Jason’s constant indiscretions,
humiliated him during their vow renewal ceremony in one of the
best takedowns ever. After Jason punched Tanya, he went to drown his troubles in a bottle of
champagne while sitting on a ledge- and there was killed by none other than
sweet Chardonnay, who had been devastated over the loss of Paddy. Her
comeuppance? Death by anorexia.
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| *This*, on the other hand, was nuts |
Then Kyle started hitting his mother Jackie;
Tanya..."fornicated" Frank to death so she could be with Conrad, who was ending
his marriage to Amber; then Tanya passed off her baby with Frank as Conrad’s by
switching her baby with Amber and Conrad’s- and then saw her baby suffocated to
death by Amber’s poodle; Tanya grieved for about three minutes, then turned
around and tried to gaslight Amber, who wasn’t as stupid as she’d previously
acted and realized her baby was still alive. And...that’s just the first half
of the episodes. I promise, the rest was just as consistently, amazingly
trashy.
As they say, go big or go home- and don't waste your time doing it.
What was your favorite, just-about-perfect television show?
Thanks for reading! Please join Danielle tomorrow as she takes on her favorites.
