In today's issue: dodgy theories about television; Sapphire and Steel; Blake's 7; a marvellous dream
Original Star Trek has set me thinking again. It's just so...shiney. Free of ambiguity. There's some gentle conflict, but all our heroes are that and nothing more: heroes. Original Galactica is just as bad; so is The A-Team. I've been busy building Sapphire and Steel into my conception of what television looks like, and it's conspicuously non-American. Again. Our "heroes" are a bit incompetant; one of them is grouchy, the other definitely not as nice as she seems; and while they're easy to like, you wouldn't trust them.
Consulting the map of television in my head, this fits neatly with what British television does. Doctor Who was at its darkest in its first few years, and while the Doctor is generally a heroic character, he shares a lot of Steel's flaws. He'll pop out of nowhere and save you from the supernatural, but he's not polite or pleasant about it, his agenda is entirely his own and if you catch him on a bad day, he may just poison you, shoot you, gas you or sacrifice your entire planet because it's the most expedient thing to do.
Perhaps the keyword here is "unreliability", which is something Blake's 7 also has in spades. These people are primarily heroic, can usually be trusted and are basically friendly - but don't count on it. The concept extends throughout their universes: the Doctor has a spaceship he can't pilot, and Blake has one which answers back. Furthermore, the program itself does not always seem to approve of its own characters actions - there is room for doubt, and often disapproval from the writers. This is also different to the American style.
Today's theory: British heroes are unreliable, British TV shows portray an unreliable world. American heroes, conversely, are reliable and live in a world which confirms their beliefs. American TV shows also approve of themselves.
Because the web is being truculent, I'm having difficulty finding other examples to expand my sample beyond six shows. I tried consulting the Guardian's Top 50 list, but it didn't seem to have any old American telly on it. Is this telling?
I looked up the BFI's top 100 TV, and all the dramas seemed to fit:
Fifties - 1984, Quatermass, Coronation Street
I'm aware Quatermass is like all British sci fi - dour, and packed with villainous establishment figures - but I can't comment on its hero
Sixties - Cathy Come Home, Doctor Who.
Lord, presrve me from ever seeing Cathy Come Home...
Seventies - Abigail's Party
Eighties - Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darknesss
I was also deeply satisfied (and very surprised) to see Blake's 7 voted top of the "Shows Which The General Public Think Should Have Been On This List". This probably says less about the show, and more about the demographic most likely to vote in force on an internet poll...
While this seems to confirm my theory, statistics are difficult. As my most quoteable hero Charles Fort puts it, "there will be data". Is this merely because darkness sells, and anything positive = mainstream = trashy = not voted by the BFI?
A few things didn't quite fit: The Prisoner (but is maybe too weird to? Six doesn't have enough personality, and we never see him in morally trying situations - he is purely an escape machine) and Thunderbirds (purely for kids? Have kids shows always been shiney, both sides of the pond?)
I also found myself wondering, does America have a companion to our soap operas? Eastenders started in the 80s, Coronation Street in the 60s. British TV has always been closely linked to the social realism agenda, a naturally flawed and miserable genre. Perhaps that has seeped into all British dramas, or any number of potential correlations.
When do things change? Nowadays, angst is America's biggest export, which means there must have been a watershed point where everything changed. At the same time as cinema - you can tell you're watching a 1970s film, because there will usually be a downer ending? More likely, the 90s: Twin Peaks is 1990, X-Files is 90s-ish.
Your challenge for today: prove my theory wrong. Find me some old American television which isn't shiney, or some old Brit TV which is. For the sake of this study, comedies and book adaptions don't count.
While you're chewing on that, oh yes, let's talk about Sapphire and Steel, a rather perfect little 70s show. And all the little directory things I've thought about it in the past week.
After a gleefully incomprehensible opening spiel, which actually leaves you less informed about the show than before, our heroes arrive from another dimension to handle "irregularities" on Earth. So far, the phenomena we would recognise as ghosts. They have an array of weird powers, a talent for wandering into trouble, a mysterious agenda, and are definitely just as scary as the things they've come to chase off.
It digs out all the cliches in the damn book: nursery rhymes! Clocks! Flickering lights! Written by the guy who gave Torchwood its spooky-fairground/haunted-cinema episode But it is so marvellously constructed it seems less hackneyed, than a perfect example of its type. Friend 4 rightly identified that its special effects make Doctor Who look big budget, but cheap has always been best for spooky. Partly because it forces directors to be clever, partly because suggesting and not-showing is always more terrifying. Partly because there is something innately scary about bad special effects. They don't quite fit, they seem disjointed in some way - otherworldly - and this I have always found scary in its own right. And so these ghost stories do their best with flashing lights and ticking noises, and so somehow does it better.
It makes healthy use of sound and space. Lengthy serials fully establish the layout of the single locations on which the stories are set - the first in a creepy house, the second a railway station, and another four I haven't seen. This too is good: in it's purest form, a haunting is merely a building made notable by absence. Things not there, forgotten, hidden, so giving the location strong character is important. It's this, probably, which makes me love the show more than anything else. Hauntings, of any sort, bother me. I can't be bothered to waffle about the sound design, except there's a lot of it and it works well.
It is also notably well shot. The camera positively worships Sapphire - she always seems to stand right underneath light sources. This isn't unusual for telly, until you compare it to Steel's treatment. He's shot by an incompetant - totally in shadow most of the time, not in an arty way where the camera hits you side on and makes a fascinating mess of your face. Just out of focus, like a shadow. It's a marvellous contrast.
They are also often shot as a couple - not in a cute way, more creepily, as if they don't quite understand human interaction. Brief film studies lesson: generally speaking, there is only one reason for shooting two lead characters in close up, in a single shot:
Probably because there's no other obvious reason for two people to stand quite that close. It's the reason you can always "feel" a kiss coming in romances - the camerawork changes. In any other context, it conveys a feeling of extreme discomfort - it would be suitable for, say, two characters trapped in a tiny space. I've included the Blake's 7 scene on the right as an example of the latter working very, very well. This scene stood out as particularly disturbing at the time, even though it's only one of many arguments between the two heroes. Having recently rewatched the episode, I think it is the use of this shot that particularly makes my skin crawl. The dialogue and performances help, but it's this very intense, tight camera which conveys the feeling of attempted domination.
Sapphire and Steel does it all the time, for no readily apparent reason. But even though you'd think a man and a woman wouldn't make the shot quite so bizzare, it still feels like an alien violation of personal space. Whether they are a couple remains to be seen, and is perhaps impossible to answer - they are obviously abstract concepts of huge power who adopt human form, and presumably human limitations, when on Earthbound jobs. So whether they actually do emotion or relationships the same way we do is automatically contentious. It edges around blisteringly romantic and back into "no, just creepy..."
Not a couple. Definitely non-coupley. And the picture on the right is a perfect example of light missing Steel entirely.
The character dynamics are also intriguing. They are attempting masculinity and femininity (indeed, you could add the romance angle under that - they are attempting "couple" into the bargain). Sapphire is nice, comforting, motherly, while Steel is the "bad cop", all toughness and authority. This is curious because at the same time as this obvious polarity, I get the strong impression that Sapphire's feminine wiles are as alien to her as Steel's strength. The same goes for Lead's excessive joviality - they are aiming at something human, and almost achieving it. But not quite. I like that Sapphire provides the brawn, and Joanna Lumley's masculine qualities complete the whole bizzare impression. They also spend equal amounts of time rescuing one another.
Finally...I have returned from France much as I had hoped, with more Blake's 7 episodes, and more surviving characters, than on the fingers of a hand. But it must be said, neither is much more, so I am spending much time morbidly dwelling on the reputedly "climactic" final episode. Friend 4 has rightly pointed out that B7 finales never quite do what you expect them to, and tend to arbitarily pull the rug from under your feet - which hasn't stopped me listing everything on my brain, for your reading delight.
As I'm merely guessing, I don't think any of these count as spoilery, but if you were being extra careful you might not want to read them; it's also possible that I'm right. Here is the pick of my theories:
Original Star Trek has set me thinking again. It's just so...shiney. Free of ambiguity. There's some gentle conflict, but all our heroes are that and nothing more: heroes. Original Galactica is just as bad; so is The A-Team. I've been busy building Sapphire and Steel into my conception of what television looks like, and it's conspicuously non-American. Again. Our "heroes" are a bit incompetant; one of them is grouchy, the other definitely not as nice as she seems; and while they're easy to like, you wouldn't trust them.
Consulting the map of television in my head, this fits neatly with what British television does. Doctor Who was at its darkest in its first few years, and while the Doctor is generally a heroic character, he shares a lot of Steel's flaws. He'll pop out of nowhere and save you from the supernatural, but he's not polite or pleasant about it, his agenda is entirely his own and if you catch him on a bad day, he may just poison you, shoot you, gas you or sacrifice your entire planet because it's the most expedient thing to do.
Perhaps the keyword here is "unreliability", which is something Blake's 7 also has in spades. These people are primarily heroic, can usually be trusted and are basically friendly - but don't count on it. The concept extends throughout their universes: the Doctor has a spaceship he can't pilot, and Blake has one which answers back. Furthermore, the program itself does not always seem to approve of its own characters actions - there is room for doubt, and often disapproval from the writers. This is also different to the American style.
Today's theory: British heroes are unreliable, British TV shows portray an unreliable world. American heroes, conversely, are reliable and live in a world which confirms their beliefs. American TV shows also approve of themselves.
Because the web is being truculent, I'm having difficulty finding other examples to expand my sample beyond six shows. I tried consulting the Guardian's Top 50 list, but it didn't seem to have any old American telly on it. Is this telling?
I looked up the BFI's top 100 TV, and all the dramas seemed to fit:
Fifties - 1984, Quatermass, Coronation Street
I'm aware Quatermass is like all British sci fi - dour, and packed with villainous establishment figures - but I can't comment on its hero
Sixties - Cathy Come Home, Doctor Who.
Lord, presrve me from ever seeing Cathy Come Home...
Seventies - Abigail's Party
Eighties - Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darknesss
I was also deeply satisfied (and very surprised) to see Blake's 7 voted top of the "Shows Which The General Public Think Should Have Been On This List". This probably says less about the show, and more about the demographic most likely to vote in force on an internet poll...
While this seems to confirm my theory, statistics are difficult. As my most quoteable hero Charles Fort puts it, "there will be data". Is this merely because darkness sells, and anything positive = mainstream = trashy = not voted by the BFI?
A few things didn't quite fit: The Prisoner (but is maybe too weird to? Six doesn't have enough personality, and we never see him in morally trying situations - he is purely an escape machine) and Thunderbirds (purely for kids? Have kids shows always been shiney, both sides of the pond?)
I also found myself wondering, does America have a companion to our soap operas? Eastenders started in the 80s, Coronation Street in the 60s. British TV has always been closely linked to the social realism agenda, a naturally flawed and miserable genre. Perhaps that has seeped into all British dramas, or any number of potential correlations.
When do things change? Nowadays, angst is America's biggest export, which means there must have been a watershed point where everything changed. At the same time as cinema - you can tell you're watching a 1970s film, because there will usually be a downer ending? More likely, the 90s: Twin Peaks is 1990, X-Files is 90s-ish.
Your challenge for today: prove my theory wrong. Find me some old American television which isn't shiney, or some old Brit TV which is. For the sake of this study, comedies and book adaptions don't count.
While you're chewing on that, oh yes, let's talk about Sapphire and Steel, a rather perfect little 70s show. And all the little directory things I've thought about it in the past week.
After a gleefully incomprehensible opening spiel, which actually leaves you less informed about the show than before, our heroes arrive from another dimension to handle "irregularities" on Earth. So far, the phenomena we would recognise as ghosts. They have an array of weird powers, a talent for wandering into trouble, a mysterious agenda, and are definitely just as scary as the things they've come to chase off.
It digs out all the cliches in the damn book: nursery rhymes! Clocks! Flickering lights! Written by the guy who gave Torchwood its spooky-fairground/haunted-cinema episode But it is so marvellously constructed it seems less hackneyed, than a perfect example of its type. Friend 4 rightly identified that its special effects make Doctor Who look big budget, but cheap has always been best for spooky. Partly because it forces directors to be clever, partly because suggesting and not-showing is always more terrifying. Partly because there is something innately scary about bad special effects. They don't quite fit, they seem disjointed in some way - otherworldly - and this I have always found scary in its own right. And so these ghost stories do their best with flashing lights and ticking noises, and so somehow does it better.
It makes healthy use of sound and space. Lengthy serials fully establish the layout of the single locations on which the stories are set - the first in a creepy house, the second a railway station, and another four I haven't seen. This too is good: in it's purest form, a haunting is merely a building made notable by absence. Things not there, forgotten, hidden, so giving the location strong character is important. It's this, probably, which makes me love the show more than anything else. Hauntings, of any sort, bother me. I can't be bothered to waffle about the sound design, except there's a lot of it and it works well.
It is also notably well shot. The camera positively worships Sapphire - she always seems to stand right underneath light sources. This isn't unusual for telly, until you compare it to Steel's treatment. He's shot by an incompetant - totally in shadow most of the time, not in an arty way where the camera hits you side on and makes a fascinating mess of your face. Just out of focus, like a shadow. It's a marvellous contrast.
They are also often shot as a couple - not in a cute way, more creepily, as if they don't quite understand human interaction. Brief film studies lesson: generally speaking, there is only one reason for shooting two lead characters in close up, in a single shot:
Probably because there's no other obvious reason for two people to stand quite that close. It's the reason you can always "feel" a kiss coming in romances - the camerawork changes. In any other context, it conveys a feeling of extreme discomfort - it would be suitable for, say, two characters trapped in a tiny space. I've included the Blake's 7 scene on the right as an example of the latter working very, very well. This scene stood out as particularly disturbing at the time, even though it's only one of many arguments between the two heroes. Having recently rewatched the episode, I think it is the use of this shot that particularly makes my skin crawl. The dialogue and performances help, but it's this very intense, tight camera which conveys the feeling of attempted domination.Sapphire and Steel does it all the time, for no readily apparent reason. But even though you'd think a man and a woman wouldn't make the shot quite so bizzare, it still feels like an alien violation of personal space. Whether they are a couple remains to be seen, and is perhaps impossible to answer - they are obviously abstract concepts of huge power who adopt human form, and presumably human limitations, when on Earthbound jobs. So whether they actually do emotion or relationships the same way we do is automatically contentious. It edges around blisteringly romantic and back into "no, just creepy..."
Not a couple. Definitely non-coupley. And the picture on the right is a perfect example of light missing Steel entirely.The character dynamics are also intriguing. They are attempting masculinity and femininity (indeed, you could add the romance angle under that - they are attempting "couple" into the bargain). Sapphire is nice, comforting, motherly, while Steel is the "bad cop", all toughness and authority. This is curious because at the same time as this obvious polarity, I get the strong impression that Sapphire's feminine wiles are as alien to her as Steel's strength. The same goes for Lead's excessive joviality - they are aiming at something human, and almost achieving it. But not quite. I like that Sapphire provides the brawn, and Joanna Lumley's masculine qualities complete the whole bizzare impression. They also spend equal amounts of time rescuing one another.
Finally...I have returned from France much as I had hoped, with more Blake's 7 episodes, and more surviving characters, than on the fingers of a hand. But it must be said, neither is much more, so I am spending much time morbidly dwelling on the reputedly "climactic" final episode. Friend 4 has rightly pointed out that B7 finales never quite do what you expect them to, and tend to arbitarily pull the rug from under your feet - which hasn't stopped me listing everything on my brain, for your reading delight.
As I'm merely guessing, I don't think any of these count as spoilery, but if you were being extra careful you might not want to read them; it's also possible that I'm right. Here is the pick of my theories:
1. Avon's Dream - the entire series is a hallucination-under-torture from Avon's cell back on Earth, in which an imagined version of The Federation's Most Wanted rescues him, but doesn't actually like him. Kinda interesting - who else would have a dream in which everything is so awful? It'd make sense of Avon's all-consuming coolness.Frankly, anything confirming that Blake is OK is an OK ending by me. That's all I really want at all, ever, from life right now. God, there's nothing half so dangerous as hope...
2. Blake's Dream - same theory, different dreamer. Again, makes sense of the show's one brilliant stroke of luck: accidentally stumbling along the greatest ship in the galaxy. Not likely.
3. Vila's Dream - same theory, concerning the only character to appear in every single episode of the show (so far). He also seems the type to invent a dreamworld in which everybody picks on him.
4. e.t.c. - continue this theme for every other named character and sentient being on the show, those three are merely the most plausible and would pack the biggest emotional smack.
5. The Federation Is Defeated. Everything Is Well. Not beyond the bounds of possibility, but also not very likely. A better variant is...
6. A Small Glimmer Of Hope - the Federation isn't defeated, but something big happens suggesting one day, soon, if we're very lucky, they are going to fall. Probable last shot - somebody smiling faintly. I like this one, and it seems reasonable.
7. Everyone Is Caught! Seems likely, that a show that started with everyone on a prison ship would end that way.
8. Everyone is Reconditioned! Ditto.
9. Everyone is Killed! Ditto.
10. Everyone Has Been Dead All Along. It's Purgatory a.k.a. what Lost didn't do. More probable version is:
11. Sartre's Scorpio: "Hell is other people"
12. Avon Sells Everybody Out - not likely, but I did consider this at one point. Repeat with "Tarrant sells everybody out", "Soolin sells everybody out" e.t.c....
13. Blake Has Been Captured And Successfully Reconditioned As A Villain And Is Now In Charge Of Hunting Down The Remaining Cast - I think this pips it for darkest theory.
14. Universe Ends.
15. Any combo of above.
Comments (1)
Old American telly tended to fall into easily defined boxes - cop show, western, situation comedy, serial thriller (Invaders, Fugitive etc). It may be to do with the commercial nature of US TV, ie have to please the sponsors and fit a nice audience niche. You still see it in the slick 42-minute shows of today. Brit TV dares to be rubbish and got away with it for so long because we only had 2/3/4 channels and half what was on was sport. BBC also immune to some extent from commercial pressure, hence art can thrive even on a shoestring.