Power

In and amongst the various quality boxsets (Watchmen) and trash series (Love Island USA) I might have on the go at any one time, there’s always a background show that I’m getting through at a more leisurely pace.  For the last one hundred years, this has been Power.  I forget when I finally relented to Netflix’s constant algorithmic suggestion that this was a show I might enjoy, but somehow I’ve got through its six series of at least ten (sometimes fifteen) one-hour episode.  Let’s be clear: I’m here to say I’m a fan of Power.  But, crikey, it’s been some tough going.  How easily and how often I’ve been distracted by shinier (Euphoria), cleverer (I May Destroy You) programming.

Firstly, let’s categorise the show.  It belongs in a group that I have previously christened: a whole lot of f*cking.  Alongside Elite and, let’s be honest, Game Of Thrones, Power viewing comes with the risk of sudden sexually explicit antics filling your screen.  Episode one barely throws out a few establishing shots before our sexy leads are not just cavorting in their marital bed, but properly having a right old go at some serious slap and tickle (I definitely heard scrotal slapping).  You don’t need to use your imagination, because nothing is left to it, but you might want to ensure your 55” telly screen isn’t overlooked by neighbours with young children and you haven’t yet sorted out curtains for your floor-to-ceiling French windows.

So, who are these people whose close-up intercourse is essential to the plot development?  Power is all about James “Jamie” St. Patrick, an NYC kid from the wrong side of the tracks who, after amassing a fortune from large-scale drug dealing, is trying to turn himself into a legitimate businessman.  Played by the exquisitely goateed Omari Hardwick, this is a character we root for no matter what terrible things he does, clothed or otherwise.  And if he happens to interpret legitimate business as opening up seedy nightclubs that are dogged by violent crime, then so be it.  What we rarely see Jamie doing is going to the gym, despite the fact he is stacked beyond all belief.  There’s some intense jogging in early seasons and he does visit a prison weights room later on (albeit briefly and bloodily), but I find it hard to believe he’s not constantly repping out some big lifts and counting his macros, in between trimming his beard, dealing drugs, shooting people, surveying his night club from a raised walkway or being an absolute sod to his long-suffering wife, Tasha, (Naturi Naughton).

Tasha St. Patrick is the heart of the show, often called upon to channel her inner boss to protect her family (with mixed success) or to ward off threats.  She and Jamie are often found in their swanky penthouse where the lift opens straight into the lounge, and it’s here they’re often visited by our third lead and Jamie’s childhood BFF, Tommy Egan.  I vowed I would never troll anyone on this blog, but Joseph Sikora is the hammiest actor I have ever seen.  It takes a real scenery-chewer to know one, so we can accept this is coming from a place of being a ham on stage myself, but you eventually develop a charmed affection for his idiosyncrasies – he is simply another layer of camp in the outrageous proceedings that almost never seem to end.

As we’ve noted before (Narcos, Narcos:Mexico) a career in drugs can be a touch stressful – I don’t think they even get to work from home during lockdown.  Drama dogs Tommy and Jamie at every step, with each season introducing a new array of dastardly dealers looking to steal their patches, take their connects and generally indulge in anti-competitive business practices.  Instead of litigation, recourse is taken rather to ultra-violence, with the body count exceeded only by the nudity count.  Whenever a fresh character is introduced, you’re hard pushed to guess whether they’ll die before they get naked or get naked before they die, or do both at the same time by dying naked.  As a homebody, the worst part about their chosen industry is the constant galivanting about town.  The endless texts and calls between the characters predominantly showcase them demanding to meet each other in person all over New York.  Once you factor in a journey time of more than 45 minutes each way then suddenly the millions of pounds earned from selling cocaine to yuppies don’t seem worth it at all, and that’s before the FBI start tailing you.

Despite being sexy and sleek, a certain bleakness with Power can take things out of you.  Sure it’s a banging soundtrack that accompanies the, er, banging, but everyone behaves like angry children and it can only really go round in circles as they cross, double-cross, triple-cross and shoot at each other.  It’s made me want to go back to New York, but I’m not currently allowed in case I bring the sniffles with me there or take it back with me afterwards.  For fans of 50 Cent, you’ve got 50 Cent, so I suppose that’s something, as he really does play an absolute shit.  Most galling for me was, being very close to the end, I inadvertently caught an advert for the spin-off series which spoiled the ending of Power completely, so all the hours of viewing became slightly redundant, resulting only in these few hundred words of poorly structured prose.  I’m about to search for GIFs to pepper in here and I’m a touch afraid about what I’ll see but, assuming you’re not pulling together an indulgent blog on your viewing experience, you can’t go wrong with a bit of Power’s sexy gangster mayhem.  And with Lockdown Two ruining lives near you soon, you’ll have plenty of time to get through it all.

Normal People

It’s alright guys; I’ve read the book.  Now we can talk about Normal People.  Fair enough, most normal people finished talking about Normal People a few weeks ago.  At one point, a greeting as common as “Hello” or “I think your mute button is on” became “Have you seen Normal People?”  It was, if anything, completely normal to discuss your response to this show and, in particular, its gratuitous sexual content, before proceeding with whichever Zoom call you had dialled into that day.  But no, I seemed to have been taken by the notion that, while my curiosity was of course triggered by all and sundry’s compulsion to signal that they had been watching along, I would rise above all this popularity and universal experience by pulling my smuggest face, adjusting my voice to be more patronising than normal, and declaring: “No I’ve not been watching Normal People.  I’m going to read the book first.”  I’m all for gratuity.  I only got into Big Brother twenty years ago as my teenage self read an outraged newspaper article about nudity on the television.  The constant threat of an unneeded shag helped to suspend disbelief each time a dragon is mentioned in Game Of Thrones.  I came to Elite for some foreign language swearing and high school high jinks, and stayed for the constant erotica.  But the sensible me felt a need to impose a literary barrier before joining in with everyone else in gawping at the body parts onscreen.

Once I finally got hold of the book, though, it was a great read.  A dear friend promised to lend me the book, but subsequently either forgot to bring the book to our lockdown park walks, or I would forget to take the book with me on leaving, or we wouldn’t think about the book for a few weeks while I was lost in reading something else (such as the book Unorthodox is based on), or we’d just lose all hope that I would ever get my hands on the book in order to read the book.  But then I got the book and I went ahead and read it (the book).  That task out the way, I was able to catch up and dive into iPlayer to see how everything came to life televisually.

On reflection, consuming a drama straight after devouring the book from which it sources its material probably isn’t a flawless approach.  There isn’t sufficient distance to be surprised and delighted by elements of the novel you had forgotten.  You’re only really checking off the adaptation against the pages you’ve just torn through.  If this were A-Level English, we’d have just finished taking it turns to read the book out loud in the classroom together (worryingly highlighting that a significant number of 18-year olds are not fluent readers) before the teacher gave up hope and wheeled in the big VCR so we could sit through the BBC production over and over until the end of term.

My own stupidity aside, Normal People is a beautiful series of filmmaking.  Every shot is a luxury.  Set in and around Sligo and Dublin in Ireland (plus some Italy and Sweden, reminding me constantly that Ireland gets to stay in Europe), the mundane looks cinematic.  Even drizzle takes on a sexiness.  But part of the reason our settings all crackle before our very eyes is the truly gripping tension of our central story.  Normal People is the tale of a relationship between Marianne and Connell.  Almost banal in its secondary school origins, we follow our protagonists as they navigate university and beyond, at once incredibly compatible and somehow prone to the no banana part of an idiom that starts with the words close and but.  As I read the book, I hadn’t seen any stills from the show, so Marianne and Connell remained faceless to me.  But, on starting episode one, I was able to conclude immediately that this was perfect casting.  As Marianne, Daisy Edgar-Jones perfectly captures what it feels like not to fit in at school but to find your niche at college.  Walking round Trinity in her velvet jackets, she is almost everyone I went to university with.  She’s utterly believable when navigating banal and awkward social moments, particularly when coming across Connell’s friends one New Year’s Eve in a pub in their hometown.  I felt I was literally in that moment.  As a character, Marianne is damaged by her family.  I obsessed over the exact situation here.  Her mother’s coldness, her brother’s fixations – where do these come from?  The fact we never seem to get the full picture (unless I was looking at my phone when this got explained) makes the circumstances all the less generic and all the more credible.

Meanwhile, Paul Mescal must wrestle (and win) with Connell’s complexity, ensuring we buy him not just as the sporty lads’ lad at school, but the keen reader, the keen writer and the struggling student.  Some of their dialogue is drawn out to the point of snapping, but you don’t wish for them to hurry up (unlike the constant pausing for effect in Skins) because every swallow, hesitation, eyeball swivel, neck tendon tightening, hair adjustment, all of this washes over you in a way that brings you into the heart and the heat of the emotion.  And yes sure, just as the book is frank about their sexual interaction simply because it forms a significant part of any relationship of this kind, we have a lot of opportunities to see their whole bodies emote and perform with a full-on and unblinking focus.  It’s not all vanilla, so this is certainly the element that got tongues wagging, but given how certain I am that my neighbours’ children can see my TV screen through the window, I could probably have sacrificed about 50% of the slapping and tickling and lost nothing of the sentiment.

I’ll spoil none of the plot beyond its premise, but I will comment on my inability to understand the motives of either lead at various points in their relationship’s journey.  They do things that will make your soul wail in frustration.  You yearn for a glimpse of resolution, which means that even a slither of potential happiness for them brings on floods of tears (if you’re the kind of person who only experiences emotion in relation to TV shows).

I’m off to find the soundtrack on Spotify, looking forward to the next time I can drop into conversation that I’ve read the book and watched the TV programme when it comes to Normal People.  Basically, I’ll win.  I’ll leave you with some quick mentions of the supporting cast, simply because they’ve left a similarly deep impression on me.  Sally Rooney’s book enhances its own reality with such believable friends for Connell and Marianne.  Joanna (Eliot Salt) charms with every line and doesn’t seem to be acting at all (a similar comment was made about I May Destroy You), whereas lovely Karen from the school days deserves far more backstory.  I’m still creeped out by Fionn O’Shea’s horribly recognisable turn as the terrible boyfriend, even though his behaviour is sadly commonplace in some of the dreadful people I have come across in my life.  And that’s the strength in this drama – it’s at once normal yet abnormal in its familiarity.  The everyday elements set up a level of recognition, but the specific and unusual details enhance that reality.  This isn’t the movies, where films end with co-stars kissing, leaving us to envision them not parting till death.  This is much realer life.