Oddments

Perennial heavy Pat Roach gets heavy in 'Gangsters', and I'm not just talking about his jewellery.

Gangsters: The Bottom Five

As a final 'Gangsters' note, I just wanted to revisit the bit about the ‘abysmal’ acting. I can’t think of another show that has such a poor cast. I’m not sure if there was a dearth of black and Chinese and Asian actors around at the time, but the ones they have (with the exception of Sayeed Jeffrey) are terrible, and elaborate, overwritten dialogue plus unconvincing performances / mangled diction leads to a number of strange, stilted, uncomfortable scenes that do nothing apart from highlight that it’s all a big panto. Perhaps given the show’s experimental leanings this was deliberate, but either way it makes for a slightly awkward and jarring experience.

Anyway, in reverse order, here, in my opinion, are the five worst actors.

Maurice had a long career as an actor, latterly appearing in 'Howards Way'. He was always pretty wooden, but here he has to keep it all together as the star and he starts creaking as soon as he's asked to convey anything out of the ordinary. One of his signature bad acting traits is a soundless, mirthless laugh, and he uses it a lot here and it really gets on your nerves because because it's so poorly executed and incredibly fake.   

This is writer Philip Martin. He can obviously act (he played the villain in the original play very well), but his second series impersonation of W.C Fields is funny for approximately two minutes and then just seems staggeringly self-indulgent, especially when he can't quite keep up the pretence in key scenes.

Familiar to British audiences in both Chinese and Japanese roles, Lee always seems fast asleep. When he speaks, you can neither hear nor understand him, and his face doesn't form any kind of expression, so you're fucked if you're trying to follow the plot.

Aside from the fact that we share a first name, Mr. Satvendar does very little for me apart from to annoy. Shrill, slow to react, fond of rolling his eyes and almost forgetting his lines, Paul adds insult to injury by suffixing almost every sentence with a high-pitched hollow giggle and killing virtually every scene he's in stone dead. Awful.

This fellow is just terrible. He can't even walk around convincingly and his laugh (bit of a  recurring motif - I often find you can judge an actor by how they laugh and cry) is a thing of cringing terror. Luckily, his character is written as something of a joke (he has a ridiculous hat and keeps quoting from gangster films) and he gets knocked off pretty quick so it's not like he's given much to do - but what he does do is SHIT.

Who's your favourite terrible actor? And your least favourite? And what's the difference? 

Gangsters 2

 

Series two of 'Gangsters' followed three years later and goes off the rails almost immediately by introducing the Chinese Triads as a new adversary for the increasingly weary looking Kline. The Triads here are ridiculous, inscrutable stereotypes that owe a lot to Fu Manchu, but this seems deliberate, as this series seem intent on examing popular cliché and subverting the idea of the crime show. This also manifests itself by some bizarre fantasy interludes, an intermittent voice over in which the writer of the show (Phillip Martin) dictates instructions to a typist and Martin later appearing as a hit man who, for cover, impersonates W.C Fields (badly) all the time. This time around, the pretty decent theme tune has turned into a pretty awful theme song.

Clever clever, occasionally infuriating, totally self-indulgent, the series ends with one of the main characters simply saying ‘well, that’s that’ and walking off set followed by the writer throwing his script into the air. It’s not a completely satisfying show in any of its forms, but it is a great example of a time when the BBC had much more faith in its creative people, and was fully prepared to fund their stupid, bizarre, brilliant ideas, as long as at least a dozen people watched it. Them was the days.

Gangsters

'Gangsters’ is a weird show that, over time got weirder and weirder. Starting off as a ‘Play For Today’ before becoming two (very different) series, it is ostensibly about the murky world of organised crime in Birmingham, but also works as a treatise on race, society and the nature and conventions of drama itself. If that sounds heavy, don’t worry, it does it all in a tongue in cheek, often bizarre way. Oh, and a lot of the acting is abysmal.

 Maurice Colbourne plays John Kline, a former SAS man who is the archetypal tough, good man in a rough, bad situation, inexorably caught between rival underworld groups that are characterised by both their particular line in crime and their ethnicity. There are the Asian gangsters, who specialise in human traffic, illegal immigration and extortion; black gangsters who concentrate on drugs and prostitution and, over-seeing the whole bun fight, there are white gangsters, who sit back and take the lion’s share of the profits. The initial play was straightforward enough, a quirky but basically conventional drama that, apart from the racial diversity, and Brummie setting, could have starred Jimmy Cagney.

The two series that followed, however, go to strange places, eventually ending up somewhere between post-modernism and disappearing up its own exhaust pipe. In Series One, Kline battles to keep a nightclub open, keep the Law happy and play opposing criminal factions off against each other. He also falls in love with a posh junkie and part time prostitute. It’s far from conventional, but has structure and an element of realism, albeit a reality that could quite easily be imagined. Heavily stylised, the characters are many and mad as hatters, a multi-racial rainbow of thugs, twisters, bullies, bastards and undercover Pakistanis.

‘Gangsters’, in all its incarnations, is, like so many flawed things, absolutely fascinating, and far more interesting retrospectively than any number of tighter, tauter, straight crime dramas. Yes, it can get on your nerves, but it provokes a reaction, and that is assuredly a very good thing.

Liberators

Up until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t watched an episode of ‘Blakes 7’ since the original show came to its controversial close in 1981. Over the years, despite once being a fan, I had mentally packed it away under ‘rubbish’ and put it into brain storage. Prompted by my friend and colleague Fearlono’s constant texting about various elements of the programme, however, I decided to revisit it. I believe they call that ‘peer group pressure’. 

I’m not going to pretend that it’s the greatest programme I’ve ever seen, but I have to admit that I was wrong - in fact, it’s dark and sombre and serious - proper dystopic sci fi space opera – and all set in a depressingly squalid future.

Blake may be an idealist (although he is prepared to put others at risk for his beliefs), but the rest of his crew are, by and large, scumbags. Villa is a thief, Jenna a smuggler, Avon a borderline psycho with a Messiah complex. Only Gan (my favourite as a child) has an excuse for his criminal record – he killed the man who murdered his ‘woman’ – and suffered an experimental brain implant that limits his capacity for violence as a result. Basically, they are lawless fugitives but, because Blake has principles, they occasionally blow something up or jam a Federation signal and, subsequently, have created the legend that they are freedom fighters, a desperately needed commodity in an appallingly restricted world.

Under the jackboot of The Federation (or the high heel of Servalan, if you like, and a lot of people do), the entire universe has been turned into a machine to serve the evil empire – a grey, dirty conglomeration of factories and refineries, scrappy colonies and half-abandoned research stations on barren, unforgiving planets. Half of the people are slaves, the other half fascists and quislings. So called ‘inferior’ races labour away in mines until malnutrition or radiation poison kills them. It’s depressing as hell, not a hint of glitter or brave new world. Resistance is met with death (the series opens with a massacre) or torture and disgrace (they frame Blake for child molestation in order to destroy his reputation). If you’re lucky, you get your brain wiped and get to start again.

This is the real future of humanity: living on a slag heap, working like dogs, kept in check by a ruthless, faceless police force and crappy robots, scrabbling around trying to survive for no other reason than instinct. It all seems completely pointless. There is literally no-one in this world who enjoys life or living. Power must be its own reward because, apart from an increasingly outlandish array of white outfits, even supreme commander Servalan seems to simply rattle between space stations and quarries, endlessly tramping around in high heels and being menacing without ever actually getting anywhere. It’s a chilling and, I think, pretty accurate picture of what things will be like in 700 years: shit. The only thing the show does get slightly wrong is that everywhere seems semi-inhabited rather than teeming with over-population, but perhaps there was a plague or something equally catastrophic. It wouldn’t surprise me, it feels like the End Of Days now.

So, ‘Blakes 7’ – not rubbish, not rubbish at all.

Blake's 7

Coming to an Island near you soon!

Target

'Target' is a deadly serious show, which may be why it's so very funny. A sort of Alan Partridge re-imagining of 'The Sweeney', 'Target' is set in Southampton, and stars ant eater featured Patrick Mower, who plays Inspector Steve Hackett. Hackett is the sort of man who never speaks when he can bellow, does all his own stunts (sometimes) and drives a flashy American car: the sort of maverick on the edge copper who one day they'll throw the book at but, for now, gets results. Crime is a disease - he's the Beechams. He's also desperate for a shag, but only has two hours off a week so is reduced to making dates he can't keep with witnesses or sniffing around old flames who had more than enough of him when they were going out.

A tiring, violent show (for the first series, anyway - things were toned down second time around thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse) 'Target' reminds me of something that would have appeared in boy's comics of the time like 'Action' and 'Fireball': full of shooters and villains and cars being driven into each other, but utterly one dimensional - an adolescent fantasy of blood and guts, pretty girls and shouting. Hackett dominates everything, which is just as well, as no-one though to write any other characters, so everyone else in the show is dull and interchangeable, just puppets for Hackett to yell at or nick, send out to get killed or ordered to the shops to get him a bar of chocolate. Much worse than that, however, is that Mower tries to live up to his inexplicable image as a sexy symbol by constantly walking around in his underpants, and once you've seen that, it stays with you and rakes at the inside of your eyeballs until you weep blood.

Who says men can't multi-task?

So - not much 'cop' (don't forgive the pun, I get away with far too much as it is) but not entirely without merit - it's certainly entertaining. I'd like to see the show remade, properly, as a comedy, using the same scripts and starring Matt Berry. That would be ace. Come on, BBC: GO! GO! GO!

Dr. Who: Carnival Of Monsters

I love the Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who like mad, but I’m not a massive fan of ‘Carnival of Monsters’ or, indeed, of the creeping, cringing sensation I get as I watch it. Is it the sock puppet monsters? The glam rock Bacofoil outfits? The insistently unsuccessful attempts at comic relief? Well, yeah, it’s all of that, but it’s mainly because Jon Pertwee doesn’t seem to be bothered, and that makes everything a bit stilted and sad.

Granted the freedom by the Timelords to take the TARDIS wherever he fancies, the Doctor heads for the beautiful blue planet of Metebelis 3 (a running joke in several stories is how he never quite gets there - and, when he finally does, it's bloody awful). Instead of going on holiday, however, he and Jo find themselves stuck in a futuristic contraption called a Miniscope, sort of a cross between a zoo and a ‘What The Butler Saw’ machine. There’s a Cyberman in there (the closest Pertwee came to one as an incumbent Doctor), an Ogron, and a load of vicious, drooly, shouty rubber dragon monsters called the Drashig. There’s also a British ocean liner populated by a group of awfully posh idiots who haven't noticed they are living the same day in 1926 over and over.

Outside of the miniscope a depressingly unfunny diplomatic incident is taking place between the miniscopes owner Vorg and his scatty asistant (grumpy old Leslie Dwyer and Cheryl Hall) and a race of pompous, squabbling bureaucrats who look like Sam the bald eagle from The Muppets and really get on your tits, although there is a good bit where one of their rubber skull caps goes a bit awry.

The Doctor and Jo have to basically get out of the Miniscopee before it blows up or is destroyed by the blue bonced powers that be, and this takes the best (worst?) part of two hours. Oh dear. Not so much a carnival as a tatty fairground sideshow.

Only ever mildly diverting, occasionally awful ‘Carnival of Monsters’ seems in many ways to herald the end of the very best of the Pertwee era, although he would continue in the role for another couple of years. There was something special about the Doctor being exiled to Earth, something unique and absolutely right for the time. Maybe Pertwee knew that as he just doesn't seem that into it, and looks weary and unmoved throughout. He's normally such a good reactor, for example, so much so that he quite often goes over the top. Here, his first sighting of the Drashig doesn't even warrant an arched eyebrow.

Later on, he has another go, and does a bit better, but it's still pretty lazy by his superlative standards.

It's just not like him to be so non-commital.