90210

This week, we are doing a show whose title is a postcode.  Only, it’s called a zipcode in American.  As always, they’ve taken a concept and given it a jazzy name that deserves the sunglasses face emoji, and we’ve made it sound ornamental and begrudgingly functional, like a National Trust tearoom.  But this isn’t just any postcode, this is 90210.  Even the sequence of numbers can conjure images of sexy beaches and palm tree-lined boulevards: yet another challenge of growing up British, where my home postcode was KT22 9PE.  What did that tell you about the place?  Not much, beyond the fact it was a forty-minute drive from Kingston-Upon-Thames, which wasn’t even a real town, but a bit of London with its own John Lewis.  But 90210 wasn’t aspirational due to its digits, but because of its association with Beverly Hills, 90210, the teen programme that ran for the whole of the nineties and from whose memory this week’s show emerged years later in 2008.  From a young age, I knew 90210 to be a thing, but I thought Beverly Hills was just a famous lady or one of my mum’s friends with an impulse perm.  Either way, at the age of 23, a version of the IP came along for me on e4 and I was hooked from the start.

Ticking my first box was the setting.  We had both the fish-out-of-water schtick, and shiny US high school.  The initial premise revolved around the Wilson family, returning to LA from down-to-earth Wichita to look after a grandmother (played by Arrested Development’s and Archer’s Jessica Walter).  Through the eyes of their kids, we entered a privileged world, adopting a trope done so many times before.  In fact, at one point, 70% of all television was about people coming to LA who were not from there and having to stay true to their hearts while existing alongside dogs in handbags.  But what about the bloody kids?  There was biological daughter Annie.  She was a dick.  Well, not really, but I remember getting more and more annoyed by her over the course of the five series.  A highlight for me was her taking part in the school production of Spring Awakening, but only because it was a play I had studied in its original German (shout out to all my Frühlings Erwachen fans yeah) at university.  She was a good kid who made bad choices so often, it became fun to watch her suffer.  On the other hand, her adopted brother, Dixon, also had the same appalling track record, but was able to laugh most things off with a little chuckle that was his response to everything.  Tristan Wilds had previously appeared in a series of The Wire, but as I watched that after 90210, I was alarmed to see this Beverly Hills jock as a child drug dealer.  But then I remembered about acting and that.

Joining Annie and Dixon at high school are a parade of beautiful people.  Memorable among them was Naomi, running the show as chief mean girl, but also dominating the script with all the best lines.  But don’t worry, she learned there was more to life than being cool when she fell for one of the school geeks and dressed up as a Na’vi from Avatar for him.  She looked really convincing.  Her best mate was bad girl Adrianna Tate-Duncan, who combined teen pregnancy with drug abuse, all while I don’t think anyone ever explained her double-barrelled surname.  Not that it needs explaining, but you rarely see these in fictional characters, so I have been obsessed with it ever since.  I enjoyed self-righteous scarf-wearer Silver, but she often veered into being nothing more than a conduit for mental health storylines.  Similarly, Teddy went from background jock to reason to have a coming out storyline.  90210 aimed well in its attempts to tackle issues, but they were always wedged into the plots like shirts you can’t fit in a wardrobe because it’s too full of hangers.

I’ll dwell briefly here to slag off Navid as well.  I enjoyed his Iranian mother getting disappointed by him, but his need to wear waistcoats over t-shirts can, I realise now, be blamed for some terrible outfit choices of my own.  And he had a weak chin, which, as we all know, should never ever be teamed with boyband hair.  Unacceptable.  But if this new generation weren’t enough to draw in the viewers, the stars from the original Beverly Hills, 90210 also cropped up in the high school corridors, providing continuity but only if you had paid attention to old storylines from around a decade beforehand.  I hadn’t, so I would lose myself in tracing the plastic surgery lines on their faces while they did their acting and failed to hide the joy behind their eyes that they were being paid to work again.

Ultimately, the descriptor for this show is unashamed.  Everything 90210 did, it did unashamedly, legitimised by its predecessor.  It was unashamedly Californian and unashamed in reflecting that aesthetic.  It was welcome as an escape from drizzly London life, particularly when I remember the terrible roles and low salaries I fulfilled and earned at the time of its broadcast.  I could ignore being dragged into adult life by looking at wealthy American teenagers.  These days, grown-up reminders slap me in the face every time I open my eyes: my friends have birthed further babies, my conveyancers want more bank statements or colleagues need actual line managing.  My postcode now has SW4 at the front, which you either associate with a chavvy festival for pill-heads or with a London suburb so preoccupied with brunching and Instagraming that someone has thoughtfully spray-painted “welcome to Wankerville” on the railway bridge as you enter Clapham.  I know where I’d sometimes rather be: in Beverly Hills (the bit in LA, not inside my mum’s friend).

Our Planet

You haven’t known true despair until you’ve seen a walrus inadvertently shuffle its immense mass to the sheer drop of a cliff edge, pause momentarily, eyes partially blind while out of the water, before helplessly shifting its weight an inch too far, beginning an unstoppable tumble down a hundred feet of rock face, fins pawing at thin air as its every bone crunches and cracks on solid boulders, its blubbery insulation unable to protect it as it lands crumpled and dead on the pebble beach below.  Those that don’t die instantly (or during one of the collisions as they plummet) lie paralysed in the freezing waves waiting for an end to their suffering.  Dear reader, I hear you crying out: why is this happening?  Well, the problem is us.  These walruses’ Arctic ice shelf has melted away so much on the Siberian coast that they’re forced to rest cramped in their hundreds of thousands on rocky outcrops.  Those escaping the deadly fighting that living cheek by jowl by tusk by 1,000kg body causes ascend coastal cliffs to find space.  But, they cannot see well enough out of water to get down safely, so they tumble, often to their deaths.

Filming this grisly and harrowing display is the Our Planet team from Netflix.  You might think that it’s only occasionally that a walrus slips off, or that the camera crew camped out for weeks to capture the moment, but this occurrence is common.  Never has the power of montage been used to such horrifying effect.  But, once that had passed, my next response was helplessness.  I was as helpless as those salty old souls careening down scree, all twitching whisker and beady, blinkered eye.  What could I do about the climate change that was melting their homes?  In fact, what can we do?  The screen you’re reading this on (thanks for reading, though, yeah) runs on from some sort of power source, and that power source probably has its roots in non-renewable energy.  So too, most likely, did the vehicles the film crew used to reach the walruses.  What can we do about their cruel fate when our entire way of living’s end result is this sort of dreadful circumstance?

Our Planet offers little by way of solutions, but its strength comes from forcing you to face up to the question: why do things have to be this way?  Just as Blue Planet II set the anti-plastic revolution in motion among the conscious classes, so too does Our Planet feel like the flame that might ignite explosive change for the better.  I promise I am doing my part: smugly parading around with my keep cup whenever I get coffee, shooting passive-aggressive glances at anyone still using disposable receptacles.  But this is the same look I give to any morbidly obese person chowing down on a donut or a litter bug throwing their fag end onto the streets of London, and, frankly, it doesn’t seem to be working: I still see more fat smokers each day than I ought to.  So maybe I am the problem.  I certainly was on the wrong end of the self-righteousness scale when my taxi back from a swanky media lunch was held up by congestion from the Extinction Rebellion troops currently occupying Oxford Circus.  But this blog has already firmly established the point that I am terrible.

But I don’t want David Attenborough telling me off.  That would be like having a very disappointed grandfather.  It’s one thing to want Ted Hastings wagging his anti-corruption superintendent finger at me as in some episode of Line Of Duty, but if Attenborough told me I was a twat, there wouldn’t be much bouncing back.  And this is Netflix’s strength, getting the ur-voice of natural history to do its animal programme.  He’s reminding us that this isn’t This Planet, or That Planet, or Some Practice Planet We’re Having A Go On, but that it’s Our Planet, and we’re titting it up.

Attenborough’s BBC shows typically wallowed in the majesty of the natural world before the environmental conscious sting was slipped between your ribs like a steely dagger in the last ten minutes, just before the exposition about cameraman Keith who hasn’t seen his family in six years while waiting for a nine-second shot of a snow leopard.  Our Planet’s finger wagging is woven throughout.  Here’s a lovely bird.  It’s dying out, because of you.  Here’s a rainforest.  It’s ruined, because of you.  Here’s a stunning coral reef that’s taken millennia to form.  It’s bleached, because you left that light on.  The panic really sets in during the quarter of the show taken up by showing ice caps melting.  Each time a million tonnes slips in the ocean, you’re convinced the ocean around you is rising.  I wanted to shout out for everything to stop.  Maybe I could rewind it and stick the ice back on and reverse the process by which we’ll drown ourselves.

In case you can’t tell, you need a certain resilience to cope with this show.  I had planned to ration myself to one episode a week, earmarking 9pm on Sundays for something relaxing to treat my eyes with before the final sleep preceding the return to the Monday through Friday strip-lit nonsense of office life, a sort of zoological Downton Abbey.  But it was becoming a sour full stop to my weekend.  In addition, the awesome visual feast of the photography left me unable to resist ploughing through multiple episodes.  I would just have to handle the guilt.

But is it entertaining?  Let’s be honest, this is competing with a glut of Netflix carbon-producing content.  Indeed, the first episode opened to slight disappointment.  Here, again, was a shoal of fish in the open sea, Attenborough wanging on about nutrients in the water as if someone has spilled their protein shake in the ocean, with dolphins herding the poor blighters to the surface and seabirds diving to pick off lunch and dinner until the whole lot is polished off.  Awe-inspiring, yet familiar to my jaded eyes.  But fear not, for shortly afterwards my senses were overloaded by more flamingos than I have ever conceived of, galivanting along salt plains in searing heat.  For the fair-weather viewer among you, there is plenty to enjoy and that you have never seen before.  You just need to feel guilty while you see it.

So, what can we do about that sense of helplessness?  I didn’t vote for Brexit, but it’s ruining my life.  I mustn’t use fossil fuels, but how else can I power my laptop on this crowded train?  Let’s face it, we are looking for a leader to overthrow the corporate interests that have trapped us in this consumption cycle destined for total depletion of resources.  It’s not going to be me, as snide remarks such as those I throw at TV shows here can only galvanise a people to so much action: perhaps a titter or a chortle, but not enough to overthrow governments.  Anyway, if that leader could step forward please, that would be great.  Either way, one principle will remain as true after the revolution as before it: David Attenborough’s is the only voice I can watch wildlife to.

Line Of Duty

Fresh off the realisation I could in fact enjoy a British police drama, after devouring Happy Valley on Netflix many years after its BBC debut, my insatiable desire for content saw me follow the crowd into Line Of Duty.  My phone set to one side, I squished myself into the sofa in my current flat’s TV room, tuned out the sounds of the girls upstairs constantly lumping around as if taking part in some sort of overweight aerobics session, telling myself that I am only constantly staying in and watching this much telly while I save my final pounds for the upcoming transaction of my first flat, ignoring the fact that I’ve actually overstretched myself and won’t have any money left for furniture when I do get in there, and allowed the first episode to wash over me.  I was ready for drama, tension, twists and turns.  I was there willing myself to be hooked.  But I didn’t click.  Within ten minutes, I was listless.  My fingers twitched for my smartphone screen.  Maybe someone had sent me a funny Whatsapp.  No, I had to concentrate.  Perhaps I was doing it wrong.  The next night, I tried another episode, bound by some sort of duty to carry on.  Possibly even acting in the line of duty LOL.  (I’ve put the LOL in so we all know this isn’t funny).

“Guys, I don’t think I’m into Line Of Duty,” I told some friends in the back of a car on the way to Bristol.  I might as well have said I had voted for Brexit, such was the pouring out of scorn each passenger saw fit to direct at me.  They chastened me, insisting I persist with further episodes or risk missing out on televisual gold.  But, here, in a sort of listicle, are the things that stopped me loving the show immediately:

The actors’ faces

I don’t mean their physical features, I mean their expressions.  And by expressions, I mean nothing.  I get the impression that everyone had been directed to play their parts without disturbing their impenetrable glares.  Lennie James does snarl around quite wonderfully in the first series (otherwise seen dispatching walkers in The Walking Dead) but Vicky McClure (DI Kate Fleming) just seems to stare and stare, while Gina McKee (who, to me, is always Irene from The Forsyte Saga) appears frozen (later on: literally…).  Maybe this is what life is like when you have low emotional intelligence: faces are just unchanging groupings of eyes, noses and teeth.  However, let’s say the facial emoting is simply subtler than the melodrama you might normally see, and, cleverly, it allows the actors to hide clues and conceal cues that would otherwise help you work it out all too quickly: who are the baddies and who are the goodies?

The lack of geography

I’ve talked before about liking a strong theme.  Happy Valley, for example, had the theme of being set in and around Halifax, which really rooted it in a human space.  Line Of Duty just seems to be in a big, grey city.  There’s talk of Central and East Midlands Constabularies, but I’m certain I’ve never heard an actual city named (and I’m not going to check this, either, as confidence is something the only ally of the wrong).  This is compounded by the various accents with which our heroes shout things at each other: Northern Irish, Estuary English, Northern.  In addition, any mapping systems used to track suspects look like they’ve been mocked up on ClipArt rather than taken from any real street plan, especially in the earlier series.

DS Steve Arnott

Not being funny, yeah, as I don’t want my input on the internet to be saying nasty things about people, but, this character: insert scratchy-chin emoji.  As a mediocre amateur dramatist myself, I am gonna say it: I’m not sure Martin Compston is a good actor.  Maybe I just wanted him to be more of a character actor, not the leading man.  His dominance of the first episodes felt like a red herring – I expected him to be offed pretty quickly.  Yet it slowly dawned on me: he was central to everything.  His hair aggravated me at first, as his face was framed by a ridge that no other human barnet has.  Then I struggled with his voice, as he sounded like his lines were too much effort, as if he were a guide vocal to the real performance.  Over time, his character became something of the studmuffin among lady witnesses, when the last thing he needed was a sleazy side.  In the current fifth series, he’s been styled at last, sporting designer stubble and showing commitment to little waistcoats by never taking his off.  He’s done nothing to redeem himself, but he’s grown in my affections as a hero.  I no longer secretly chuckle when he’s assaulted by criminals.

Over time, the above points all become part of Line Of Duty mythology.  There’s a style and framework in which the drama unfolds, and we’ve just got to respect that.  Each six-episode series opens with a dramatic police operation, normally going wrong.  We then deal with the aftermath, coming to things through the eyes of AC12, the police force’s internal anti-corruption unit.  If you’ve ever wondered who polices the police, then it’s these police that police the police in the police force.  I don’t know how they pick what to look into.  The opening operation could have gone swimmingly, and they start sniffing around anyway.  It’s for this reason that most other police hate them, giving each of the AC12ers a ballsy resilience that’s great to get on board with.  Either way, two layers of tension interface.  Firstly, there’s the investigation itself.  Then, there’s the eternal question (at least until the big reveal in the season finale) regarding whether the heroic bobby under scrutiny is a bent copper or not.  We’re kept guessing, but enough is revealed episode by episode that you gain a growing sense of closure, rather than being driven insane by never getting anywhere.  It’s fine storytelling, so let’s focus on three things that make it excellent:

The high admin of the police interrogations

AC12 need to do lots of interviews to find out facts.  They still seem to record these on cassette, which reminds me of taping the Top 40 off the radio back in the nineties, but this actually adds a nice element to the tension, as each session seems to begin with a few seconds of a blaring sound that signals the start of the cassette.  In each series, this blare gets longer, until they seem to sit there for about forty minutes just starting at each other (with blank expressions, obviously) over the airhorn.  But, that’s not even the best part.  For each interrogation, all the evidence must be ordered and arranged into a handy printout for each participant, and this must tally up with the presentation on screen.  I can barely sort out slides for the most basic of office meetings, but these AC12 folk are dab hands at making sure everything matches and is neatly packaged.  They might be great at detecting, but they are also fantastic at admin.  But, perhaps, this love of admin is to be expected from people with such unswerving devotion to the wearing of lanyards.

“He must be afforded the courtesy of being questioned by an officer at least one rank superior.”

This line is said in every series.  During the recorded interview, no junior riffraff can tackle their big bosses about malpractice.  The police, given its military tendencies, is obsessed with rank.  Failing to finish a sentence with the correct sir or ma’am can lead to upbraiding that is frankly lacking from my open plan-sitting, skinny jean-wearing office culture in the media industry.  This line often results in the same question being asked by someone of the right seniority, making its pointlessness clear to all.  But, once you’re a seasoned Line Of Duty fan, you relish all the curious turns of phrase that pepper police protocol.  We’ve started doing this among ourselves, now, saying things for the benefit of the DIR, directing people’s attention to piece of evidence RH5 and serving each other Regulation 15s.  Such fun.

Superintendent Ted Hastings

With nostrils as big as his hair is lustrous, Hastings runs AC12.  Instead of end-of-year reviews, he shouts at people in his office.  And it’s all done in the fieriest Northern Irish accent, berating Fleming and Arnott like they’re naughty siblings.  He’s as authoritative in his white-shirted officewear as he is in his bulletproof vest, equally able in both get-ups to dispense witty quips that belittle his suspects.  I really want him to tell me off, but then be secretly proud of me at the same time.

All in all, then, I’m now a fan of Line Of Duty.  The fifth series is currently playing out on the BBC, in case you missed any of the billboards that are plastered all over town.  And, most importantly, it’s gained me access to office chat, as everyone seems to have decided spontaneously to catch up on old series on Netflix.  Jed Mercurio, who’s writing the whole thing, can now add boxset genius to his list of qualities, alongside man with name that sounds incredibly cool.  For the benefit of the tape, I am now finishing the blogpost here, rather than going on to say things about too many guns for a British drama, the high mortality rate of police officers in the show or my inability to work out the ranks (Detective Chief Inspector is my favourite as it’s such a mouthful).  I do not have to say anything, actually, but it may harm my defence if I do not mention when blogging something which I later rely on in conversation.

F Is For Family

I think we’ve all seen this little box.  There it sits in your Netflix menu, coming up time and time again.  You’re looking for that latest boxset that’s become mandatory viewing within your social circle, or double-checking just in case Netflix have started putting popular films on again (they haven’t).  But no, drawing your eyes from Wild Wild Country or Kingdom is this show: F Is For Family.  Yet, you’ve no idea why.  Its beigey-whiteish hues, its crudely illustrated characters (each with a scowl), its name that doesn’t really make any sense: none of these things are particularly appealing.  But don’t worry, I won’t let you be worn down by attrition.  Frequency is not the same as quality.  I, the boxset ranger, have done you all a favour.  Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve only gone and watched all of F Is For Family.  And now, by vindicating me with a reading of this blog, I shall impart unto you whether you should succumb to its persistence (like a Riverdale) or if you should ignore the programme’s existence entirely, thereby maintaining your quality of life (much as I didn’t when I sat through all of Altered Carbon).

It's an animated show about a dysfunctional family.  So far, so Simpsons.  Also, so Family Guy, so Bob’s Burgers, so so many other programmes.  You’ll note I haven’t dared yet cover the first two in this list on Just One More Episode.  However, keep reading my posts forever, as both are in my strategic content plan (Bob’s Burgers, though, I have totally done, so click on that link then and you can get yourself caught up on that post in case you’ve ever missed anything I have to say), but such influential cultural phenomena require a bit of a run up.  I’m still laughing that I used the word strategic in relation to my content plan.  There’s no strategy; there’s no plan; and there’s not that much content beside me talking about myself (so, to that end, keep telling me what I should cover).  The trick to approaching any new animated family is to find what’s different about them compared to all those that have sat on cartoon sofas before them.  Otherwise, you risk King Of The Hill happening all over again: everyone expects Simpsonian high jinks and ends up with a more subtle and specific form of humour.

Our big difference in F Is For Family is that everything is set in the seventies.  From our morally advanced glasshouse of 2019 and beyond (Brexit, Trump etc), we can throw stones at this bygone decade’s attitudes towards all matter of things about which we want to believe we have achieved greater enlightenment: gender equality, racial equality, health and safety.  These are all played for laughs, leaving you to marvel that things were ever that way, before an ensuing crisis of confidence in your own open mind: is this joke at the expense of former attitudes to women in the workplace, or is it at the expense of women?  Well, here’s a moral conundrum nobody wants when watching a cartoon.  Either way, I’m not sure why I’ve brought it up, as I’ve always loved subversive comedy: the main thing is that you’re thinking about what you think.  Why not have some uncomfortable laughs along the way?

That’s the big difference covered then.  Otherwise, the family in the For Family bit of F Is For Family is run of a certain kind of mill.  Frank Murphy is our paterfamilias (a word I’ve never used before, and I’m 34), all white shirt and angry voice.  His tirades are laced with enough effing and jeffing that you can’t help thinking about calling social services to ensure the safety of his children.  But don’t worry, as wife Sue is a strong foil to his clenched fists and spewed vitriol.  Indeed, eldest son Kevin is such a loser (enjoying wizard-based rock and failing at school) that you can see why Frank is not a fan.  Youngest offspring, Bill and Maureen, add an extra element of sinister undertones, most notably whenever Bill is forced to witness some sort of harrowing violent or sexual act: his haunted eyes will stay with you long after you’ve chuckled at his plight.

Beyond the Murphys, it’s the supporting cast that are more interesting.  Ginny Throater is a creation whose neighbourly annoyingness is compounded by her incredible accent: she extends her every vowel to cover the full range and this just bloody tickles me, alright.  Bob Pogo, Frank’s morbidly obese, chain-smoking boss at the airport, serves to lampoon our past’s bad attitudes to personal health.  You can literally hear the fatty flesh of his neck compressing his windpipe when he speaks or wheezes while trying to reach mayonnaise from his mobility scooter.  A completely unacceptable figure in many ways, yet why does his ilk still block my path on many a busy street?  The blackest humour is saved for Ben and Kenny, two neglected neighbourhood kids inhabiting woodland when shooed out of houses.  Neither has jackets, but Kenny does have a full nappy, despite being way beyond the age of potty training.  Their throwaway lines are dark, especially when they mention they are looked after at home by a grandmother who is sleeping at the end of the stairs.

Let’s conclude now.  Those were my observations.  You have read them.  Should you watch this show, though?  Well, I’m going to go off my response to hearing that a fourth series was on the way: I felt positive about the prospect of watching more.  Therefore, this is a good show.  It’s neatly episodic, yet the Murphys’ fortunes progress (or decline) across the sequence of a season.  I want to know what happens next.  There’ll be loads more silliness to chuckle at when we reach the eighties.  So next time that little beigey-whiteish box is staring at you from the TV screen, and you’ve got half an hour spare, click it and watch it.  Just don’t ask me what the F is for.  Probably f***.