The War Of The Worlds - BBC

War Of The Wells

The War Of The Worlds - BBC
2019 UK Directed by Craig Viveiros
Three episodes. Airdate: 17th November 1st December

Just a heads up that there have been two TV series based on H. G. Wells’ famous novel The War Of The Worlds in 2019. One is produced by Fox/Canal, runs for eight episodes and, as far as I can tell, has not yet been screened in the UK (although it has aired in a lot of other countries, by the looks of it). The subject of this review, however, is the recent BBC, three episode mini-series. I was originally going to write three reviews, one for every episode but, after I saw the first installment and knowing I really don’t enjoy writing negative reviews, I decided to just do one piece encapsulating the whole series. Why post three miserable reviews when one could suffice?

Now, I‘ve had my problems with both The War Of The Worlds as it’s been adapted for the screen over the years and the current state of BBC created science fiction. Let’s briefly mention the previous adaptations first...

I’ve not seen all of the screen versions of the novel but I have seen many of them. The George Pal movie of the 1950s is something I would probably enjoy watching again but the last time I saw this, when I was a kid, I remember being disappointed with the lack of the tripods from the book in it and, obviously, the change to the time period. I remember seeing a couple of episodes, too, of the semi-popular TV series in the 1980s which, if memory serves, used pretty much the 1950s George Pal version of the martian machines and, again, it seemed to have not too much to do with the book. Even Spielberg had a go with it but his contemporary version with, again, some pretty hefty changes to the concerns of the book, was somehow closer than the other versions out there. In fact, in all cases I’ve seen so far, the closest to Wells’ original novel would have to be the rock concept album produced by Jeff Wayne in the 1970s... which really is a work of earworm perfection if you listen to it in its original form.

The new BBC series, despite claims of period authenticity (which is dubious but close) is somehow even further removed from the source material than even Spielberg’s version, it has to be said. The science fiction of the BBC always used to be a wonderful thing. They had the Quatermass serials, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven and a whole host of other hot and interesting sci-fi shows done with creative flair and panache which helped make them a leading representative in the field of televisual science fiction. Alas, standards have slipped over the years and there seems to be a lot of ‘not up to it’ productions going on lately. For instance, the state of Doctor Who over the last seven or so years in terms of the quality of the writing (nothing wrong with the way the Doctors are played at all, which has been consistently brilliant) has been pretty ‘Bleah!’ and you only have to compare the BBCs vibrant and exciting, ‘definitive’ adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Day Of The Triffids back in 1981 to their ‘dire to the point of being almost unwatchable’ 2009 adaptation of the same novel to see how far standards have fallen.

And I have to say, the trend continues with this new adaptation of The War Of The Worlds. This is pretty much nothing to do with Wells’ original story other than it a) has martians on it... looking nothing like the original martians, b) has tripods in it which have somehow been designed to look as bland as possible instead of the robust, steampunk creations which might have served the spectacle of the story better, c) has something similar but really not right in terms of the way of ending the martian conquest was inadvertently thwarted in the books and d) has token references to the red weed.

Now, the writer here has obviously decided he can write something different and more relevant than H. G. Wells here and you can even see where he’s been trying to do something different with the material to set it apart from what we’ve seen before. Well, my big argument with that would be... we’ve never had a faithful adaptation as far as I know. You’re trying to run before you’ve proven you can walk and people wanted to finally see a straight adaptation of the original rather then some half baked, non-linear depiction of something barely inspired by the events of the novel in a way that’s deliberately structured to take away any surprise whatsoever from anyone not familiar with the source... which, bearing in mind it has never been properly adapted, is probably less well known than the writer here thought.

So yeah, we have the death by disease coming up in the flash forwards to years after the initial invasion and giving away the real ending before it’s barely begun. It’s also not a common cold virus that knocks the martians out in this either... it’s a carefully worked at and cultivated mish mash of viral ingredients that, in this version, spells the end of the red weed. So even Wells’ brilliant punchline of the deadly foe being taken out by accident, by something as relatively docile as the ‘common cold’, is revealed way too early and has had its real sting removed. So yeah, not happy and that’s just the tip of the iceberg in regards to this version.

Then there’s the acting. It’s bad but I’m not blaming the various cast for their performances here... I’m blaming the writing and direction. Some of the lines are bad enough... not to mention the introduction of a subplot about divorce coupled with an extra marital affair culled from H. G. Wells’ own life and a ridiculous, bizarre guilt trip about the achievements of the British Empire. However, the way the physical performances are often left as dangling, visual non-sequiturs was, perhaps, the editor having nothing to cut to in the next shot or, I dunno, just some strange decisions on the part of the director.

Seriously, the main cast consisting of Rafe Spall, Eleanor Tomlinson, Rupert Graves and Robert Carlyle are all brilliant enough but, apart from having to deliver some ridiculous lines at times, they all seem to have a penchant for looking away or staring at something out of shot, sometimes at amusingly inappropriate times. Such as when Tomlinson might be asked by the director to ‘look up and out past that line of trees there’, perhaps... I was waiting for something to maybe materialise or at least show us what she was looking at but, nope. Just staring into space, I guess. And Spall seems to often pause in thought and pull faces without letting us know what’s precisely on his mind at regular intervals, for example. And, honestly, I’m happy with visual storytelling where characters can think and convey their inner turmoil without having to vocalise it and often enjoy these kinds of movies but, yeah, I really didn’t feel like playing guessing games for a show which, somehow, manages to skirt around the real heart of the source material it is busy ignoring and ends up as just, I have to say it, a deadly dull affair.

That being said, the second episode picks up the pace a little, only to jettison it by the time the third episode rolls around, with its unimaginative creatures and its slew of unnecessary, wholly preventable deaths of various characters, In fact, bearing in mind the ending of the original novel is kinda revealed and slightly side-stepped early in the story, I have to say I found the last shot of the last episode particularly confusing. Here we have the lovely Eleanor Tomlinson staring up at the sky and I’m left thinking... okay, what’s she looking at? Is it the... wait... is she patiently awaiting the approaching, inevitable end credits of this monstrosity to turn up at some point? Yep. Pretty much. I didn’t get anything else out of that last sequence which, considering it’s supposed to be The War Of The Worlds, left me a little disappointed.

Added to all this is the fact that, honestly, the special effects and the design of the martians isn’t all that great. I did find myself clock watching at a number of places in the narrative and overall, I can’t help but think that overly ambitious substitutes for a decent, working version of ‘the heat ray’ would have been a lot more satisfying than this dull carnival ride of a weapon that they’ve presumably spent a lot of time and money on dreaming up for this version.

So there you have it. I’ve always quite liked The War Of The Worlds but this is pretty far removed from anything H. G. Wells wrote, to be honest. Yeah, it’s time to do a proper, big budget version of this but, seriously, let’s not try to deviate so far from the story that it’s got so little in common with the original text that it’s almost unrecognisable. I’d been looking forward to seeing this production for a long time and I suspect I know why it’s had a fair bit of a delay in its release to the general public now. This one definitely wasn’t my cup of tea and I’d perhaps suggest going back to the musical album if you want a more palatable version of Wells’ original classic.

Sherlock: The Sign Of Three

Best Man Standing

Sherlock: The Sign Of Three
Airdate: 5th January 2014

Warning: When you eliminate all the stuff from this article which wouldn’t, in any way, spoil the episode for you, what you’ll be left with, no matter how improbable, will be a big bunch of spoilers. Sorry.

Okay... so that was a little bit different then... and when I say a little bit different I actually mean this episode seems to have taken a heck of a lot of us out of our regular Sherlock comfort zone and sent us orbiting at a tenuous distance for a while, before bouncing back down to planet Baker Street again.

And it wasn’t a bad thing either.

Which is a relief, actually, considering the track record of the middle episodes in past two series. This one was very much though, a Sherlock murder mystery masquerading as something entirely different... swallowing up its cake aggressively while still managing, just about, to maintain it at the end for future edification.

That is to say... the mystery element which is part and parcel of a Sherlock Holmes adventure was certainly not approached in the most straightforward manner and this episode, focusing on the wedding of Dr. John Watson and Mary Morstan (played in the most accomplished manner possible, of course, by Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington), was more a picture of the way Benedict Cumberbatch’s version of Holmes perceives the world and how he thinks that world perceives him... which is not entirely as he would have thought, I believe.

So, a character study... but masking a murder mystery which approached the main narrative focus in the form of both anecdotes and intrusions into that story flow, before it all came together at the end. Let’s look at the opening sequence, for example...

Rupert Graves carried the first five minutes of frustration and rage admirably, in a manner that may seem, at first, a little over the top but was actually completely appropriate to the broad strokes required for such a fast paced opening. While a return to the series of Vinette Robinson as Sergeant Sally Donovan helped give Graves’ Lestrade character the sense of community and camaraderie needed to pull off a sequence worthy of a predictable, but no less humorous for it, punchline. He basically gives up on a collar he has been waiting to make, jumping through various hurdles for a couple of years and, when that final goal is in his sights, he drops everything and leaves Donovan “holding the baby” as it were, so he can rush off and respond to an “urgent” text from Sherlock. He brings all the back up he can in the form of responding police units and, when he rushes to Baker Street to find that he is only required to help provide funny stories about Watson for Sherlock’s best man speech his reaction is perfect... but so is Sherlock’s as we realise that he didn’t anticipate Lestrade bringing the cavalry with him.

Later on, in a scene told in flashback, like the majority of the sequences comprising this episode, Holmes reaction to Watson approaching him to be his best man, since he counts him as his best friend, is complete silence because he is unprepared for that possibility. This re-enforces the idea made evident in that earlier scene, that Holmes has no idea that he is valued by his friends in this manner.

Which is interesting and, to be honest, the whole episode was done with a large amount of humour but I noticed there was a general trend to humanise and chip away at the personae of this incarnation of Holmes which, while I might find that kind of approach a novel and interesting thing to do with an episode at some part in the life of this television series, is something which I think may have best been held off until the production team had got a more sizeable amount of episodes under their belt.

Even the brilliant Mary plays off Holmes and Watson against each other, to get them back into the groove of working together and it’s clear that each of them think they are both “in on it” to help out the other one’s piece of mind... unusual for Holmes to fall for something so obvious I reckon. They were definitely hacking away at the old IQ points in this one I can tell you.

The flip side of that is, of course, that it was both brilliantly acted and, for the most part, this character study was beautifully executed in terms of the way various scenes and incoming pieces of data invaded the storyline in an often metaphorical fashion - a courtroom doubling up in Sherlock’s mind for a jury rigged, multi-Macbook chatroom in his living room, for example. And, although I personally found the drunk scenes to be a little long and over-wrought (many people loved these scenes, though, judging from the tweets) and, quite possibly, just kept in at this kind of length as padding, the use of the standard typographic overlays reduced to vague and mostly unhelpful observations was a brilliant way of getting the information across and maintaining the humour of the situation.

For the most part though, the episode was pretty cool and pretty watchable. Although I am souring a little towards Mycroft’s personae, it has to be said... and a little bit of experimental transitioning using split scene wipes back and forth like a 1960s movie on acid was, I thought, badly executed in the way it was used in this episode.

The music was customarily groovy, with some nice variations on the sub theme which seems to be the “real” leitmotif for Holmes and Watson in action. I did, however, notice that, like Doctor Who lately, there was a fair amount of old music from the show recycled and tracked in at various places. Which is a shame but, you know, TV is mostly done on the cheap in this country, despite what they charge for TV shows on DVD and Blu-Ray.

So... kinda looking forward to next weeks season finale but really hoping they eschew the cliffhanger ending for something with a little more closure to it this time around. And also hoping that they don’t kill off Louise Brealey’s character anytime soon, as I think she has a lot more to offer the writers in terms of character development rather than to just go out dying while saving Sherlock’s life or some such. We shall see what we shall see.

Sherlock: The Empty Hearse

Hearse. Ay!

Sherlock: The Empty Hearse
Airdate: January 1st 2014. UK. BBC1

Warning: The spoilers are afoot!

Okay... this was all very good.

Written by Mark Gatiss, he got the third mini series of Sherlock off to a truly excellent start and I really hope this is a return to form for a series which was brilliant for most of the first season and the first episode of the second season, only to be dragged down by, relatively, duff episodes comprising the remainder of the second season.

After his death in The Reichanbach Fall (reviewed here) the team at the BBC foolishly showed that Holmes had survived... an unnecessary thing to do, I believe. After what has been two years of wild fan speculation as to the manner in which he faked his own death, this episode neatly sidestepped the question for a while by teasing us with versions of the wild theory, spouted by anorak figures not unlike those who write critical blogs, in an attempt to dumb down the importance of the solution to the fan base of the show, before springing the answer on you at a basic cliff hanger point. Actually, the timing and structure of that was quite unneccessary by this point because nobody believes that any harm is ever going to come to Sherlock or Watson in the series. At this juncture, I think it almost missed the point in a way... fans of the show weren’t really that worried about the explanation for Holmes death fakery, they just wanted to see how clever the writers were going to be at making it all reasonably credible.

Well I have to say, everyone did a good job on doing that, and more, in this first episode of Season 3. There was a welcome return to an abundance of the visual metaphor and typography, which permeated some of the earlier episodes, to show Sherlock’s thought processes and the humour and anger in the episode was all pretty good. The warmth of Rupert Graves’ Lestrade was absolutely a pleasure to watch and Cumberbatch and Freeman were, as usual, solidly spectacular. Watson’s fiance, played by Amanda Abbington is a very welcome addition to the cast and an extra special shout out for Louise Brealey, who regularly plays Molly Hooper in the series. This is probably the most we’ve seen of her in an episode and she’s pretty brilliant in it... which probably means she’s expendable and due an unwelcome and premature death at some point... but I sincerely hope not. She’s ace.

The story itself was a little less interesting than I’d hoped in that nothing was really actually solved. A plot is averted but there is obviously another criminal mastermind (or it’s Moriarty perhaps) waiting in the wings to come back in the final episode of this series. Hope they don’t leave it on yet another cliff hanger, to be sure. We’ll see. Perhaps Holmes is not the only one who can fake his own death in a clever manner.

I think my one real problem with it was that, at times, it did seem a little like it was being padded out. The fast pace which is part and parcel, it seems, of the adrenalin fuelled house style of the series seems to highlight that sort of thing all the more and perhaps the running time might have been better being a little chopped rather than include some of the sequences which seemed more “stand in the light of our brilliant characters and gaze at them lots” rather than actual sequences in the telling of a tale but, on the other hand, one person’s artistic decisions are not there to be agreed upon by the audience... only talked about. So it’s not really a harsh judgement I am making and I was, for the most part, absolutely riveted.

The music too, was its usual brilliant self and included the famous sub-theme we are expecting to hear in all the right places. Looking forward to buying Silva Screen’s compact disc of this sometime soon as they’ve already announced a release (although not an actual release date, which is annoying). Should be a good stand alone listen though, I expect.

And that’s that, I think. A real return to form but I’m not trusting it just yet. After all, I was very disappointed at how the way the second series went after that initial humdinger of a first episode so I’m really not going to expect too much. I will, however, be avidly awaiting the arrival of the next episode as soon as it comes on.