Best TV Of The Year

While I’ve found little to amuse me this year in music and movies, the TV has been something else this year. There have been a number of gems hitting our screens.

It is true that some shows are perhaps getting tired or have just plain run out of ideas – comedies in particular. The IT Crowd is rapidly making its once very engaging lead characters into catchphrase spouting clichés, which is a shame as it has previously been one of the most amusing of C4’s sitcoms. Likewise, Peep Show has clearly seen better days – a recent episode saw the non-dynamic duo locked in a house for the best part of an episode. Take away the profanity and the obsession with body fluids and you have an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, rather than an edgy modern comedy. Pete versus Life ended up doing Peep Show more effectively than Peep Show itself has managed this year. Speaking of body fluids, just how many episodes of The Inbetweeners can feature a main character urinating or spewing? Sure, it remains funny, but it is getting increasingly samey.

Yet there have been some great TV programmes this year. Misfits is everything The Inbetweeners wants to be, but often isn’t – with added superpowers. It offers intricate story-telling, laugh-out-loud yet always convincing dialogue and manages to consistently make the most extraordinary and unlikely plot points into credible storylines. What other series could have a menacing serial killer offing main characters through partially digested dairy products – while at the same time offering such a simple way of dealing with the monster? If this show’s writer and creator is not on the list of potential writers for Doctor Who then he bloody well should be.

Speaking of Doctor Who (well, it was bound to come up, wasn’t it?) it is worth pausing to note the gamble with the show that was taken at the beginning of the year. The man who brought the show back from relative security departed as both head writers and show-runner, while the actor who had become synonymous with the role also left, to be replaced by a young actor with foppish hair. It could so easily have gone badly wrong. But it didn’t. Smith is a natural as the Doctor – he offers a brilliant, original take on the role that arguably hasn’t been seen since the Baker era (Tom, of course, not Colin). And Moffat has revamped the way in which Doctor Who stories are told – this year’s season was one long story to a large extent, with further plot strands still to be explored next year. Quite simply, this was not only the best season of Doctor Who since the show returned, but one of the best also of all time.

And what of the individual episodes? Well, I’ll be ranking those tomorrow, so stayed tuned.

Another fantasy programme also had a storming year. Ashes to Ashes ended in the summer, and in doing so not only ended its own story, but also comprehensively ended the story begun in Life On Mars. The season as a whole deserves to praise for taking what was, at first, a lighter version of its predecessor and making it much, much darker. It also showed a determination to deal with the strange logic of the show in a credible and convincing way, and in doing so led to an absolutely fantastic final episode. It was always going to be difficult to end a series like this, but the producers and writers did so not only with considerable aplomb, but they made it look easy. In fact, they made it look as if they knew how this story would end all along. Ashes to Ashes final episode is quite simply one of the best finales I have ever seen.

Let’s hope that next year also sees some fine TV – with both Doctor Who and Misfits returning, I feel quite hopeful...

Ashes to Ashes: The Finale

Wrapping up a TV series is a difficult thing to do - particularly when you have a central mystery at the heart of your show, and many of your fans will have already formed their own theories about what is going on. You have to tread a fine line between keeping those fans happy and also offering them something new, as well as keeping everything credible enough for the casual viewer. This was the challenge facing the final episode of Ashes to Ashes - and it also needed to do justice not just to the world of Alex Drake, but also lay to rest Life On Mars and give a respectable end to a character who has become a veritable TV icon - Gene Hunt.

And did the series finale of Ashes to Ashes manage not only to do all of the above, but also manage to do it well? The only possible answer, as far as I am concerned, is "hell, yeah!"

Oh, and there will be spoilers. A lot of them. If you haven't seen the finale, I'd go away and watch it now before you read on.

Overall, I'd say that the finale succeeded far better than I thought it could. I'd always found the ending to Life On Mars to be a little bit jarring - Sam struggles for 15.5 episodes to get home, then manages it, only to find it a bit boring so he jumps off a roof. It didn't quite ring true to the character of Sam. Plus, the beginning of Ashes to Ashes - and in particular, the debut episode - struggled to really work. The stories felt like an over-the-top parody of Life On Mars, and Alex Drake's additional knowledge of the world in which she found herself meant that she struggled (by her own admission in the last episode) to take her situation seriously. And if your protagonist can't take your premise seriously, then you're going to have to work extra hard to get your viewer to take it seriously as well.

But Ashes to Ashes got much better as it went along, giving back stories and therefore a certain gravitas to the more minor characters, and weaving in subtle hints (such as Shaz's anger over who left a screwdriver on her desk in an early episode of Series Three) of what was to come. In the end, the final episode felt like a convincing denouement for the series. More than that, it felt like the authors had always had this ending in mind. As a result, they had the time to make that episode absolutely convincing, when it could have just been exposition to round everything off. Or even just plain bollocks.

There were several very spooky moments in the final episode. Keats trying to tempt Chris, Shaz and Ray into the lift was one of them - particularly when they heard the muffled screams from below. The scenes where the trio also saw their own deaths on video worked very well - in particular, Ray's death managed to be brutal, unsettling, and oddly moving all at the same time. But for me, the spookiest moment was in the rundown old house in the countryside, dirty and still decked out with Union Jacks from the Coronation, where Gene Hunt remembered his own death*, and felt his world crashing in on him.

The episode was poignant too. Perhaps the most moving scenes were given to Alex and Gene. Alex's realisation that she had died was a heart-breaking moment, particularly as she knew that this meant that she would never see her daughter again. It was also a brave move by the programme makers - rather than giving us a cop-out ending and having Drake recovering from a bullet to the brain, they showed that her struggle across three seasons was ultimately pointless. She had to bow to the inevitable. And Gene's refusal to let her stay, even though they had clearly fallen in love, compounded the heartache of their final moments together. Gene was left alone as his colleagues all moved into the bright light of the pub.

But fortunately the series managed to give an emotional departure to Gene's team, but didn't end on a sad note. The final moments, with Gene realising that he had a new detective who'd just arrived in limbo from the future, was a knowing nod to how the series began and hinting that there would always be new cases, and new foils, for the Gene Genie to deal with.

And there were other nods to the past for fans to clock. There was the faint reflection of Sam Tyler in the glass door to Hunt's office at one point. I also liked Keats' jibe about the world of Ashes to Ashes not being how the police actually work; it was a nod to those who've criticised the heavily fictionalised police procedures of the show, but at the same time it was the producers blowing a raspberry at those critics and saying "well, of course it wasn't realistic. It was never meant to be. This isn't reality, stupid." But for me, the most effective nod to the past was the reappearance of the Railway Arms, complete with St Peter Nelson. Nelson had always seemed to know more that he would admit to in Life On Mars - something that was never fully explored. So the fact that he was the one welcoming people from limbo into the afterlife was a nice touch that enhanced Nelson's character. In fact, it makes me want to go and watch Life On Mars again with the knowledge of who Nelson actually is, and see how his responses to Sam fit in with the revelation that he stands at the doorway to the next world.

And despite all this going on, the team still managed to solve a crime in their own inimitable, and completely over the top way. However, this time there was one casualty - Gene's beloved Quattro. Although, judging by the brochure on his desk at the very end, he was able to move on from the sad demise of his car.

Of course, nothing's perfect, and this final episode had its flaws. I could have done with out the hints at heaven and hell - rather like the references to God at the end of Battlestar Galactica, it was a touch of religiosity that did not, for me, add to the story. Still, I suppose I should count myself lucky that these were only hints, rather than explicit references, to life after death. And if there is a heaven - and I end up having to go there - then I hope it is like the one in Ashes to Ashes. All eternity in a pub - I could cope with that...

The other flaw was the character of Keats. He'd been a pretty good foe for Gene Hunt across this season, but in the final episode, the character just became too much. He seemed to appear everywhere, acting more as an irritant than an adversary - particularly in the scene where he was driving Alex and Gene back to London. Furthermore, his increasingly insane behaviour was probably meant to be threatening, but ended up looking pathetic. Yep, I get that he was meant to be the Devil. But if the Devil is a fat-faced man with bad hair who can be defeated just by pushing him away, then the Devil is really over-hyped.

All in all, though, this was a fine end to a great series. And it probably has a message for anyone about to embark on a high-concept series like Life On Mars or Ashes to Ashes - work out where you're going with your series before you start. In fact, I'd almost be inclined to advise such writers to have their final episode in mind before they sat down to write episode one. That way, the overall story can feel like a calculated progression to a planned, satisfying conclusion. That way, it can be as good, and as rewarding, as the end of Ashes to Ashes (and, at the same time, the real end to Life On Mars.)

*I'd clocked that the ghost haunting Alex throughout the season was Gene Hunt, and that he was probably similar to Alex and Sam. I know, I know, get me. This would probably be more impressive, though, had I clocked that everyone else in the series was dead, and it was all set in limbo. Unfortunately, my imagination didn't quite go that far.

Remaking The Prisoner

Regular readers will know that I am not the world’s biggest fan of the remake as a concept. Either something is being remade because it was really good/influential, and as a result the remake struggles to live up to what went before, or it is being remade because the makers can’t think of anything else to do. And so they end up trying to polish a turd. Which, let’s be honest, never goes tremendously well.

There was something inevitable about a remake of The Prisoner. The original was, well, influential – people remember it, but if you actually sit down and watch it, the quality is variable. In fact, the show moved from intriguing to largely unwatchable over the course of 17 episodes. But people still talk about it, and remember it fondly. So there is a natural, ready-made audience for it.

I gave the remake a go. It is recognisably the same series, but with a couple of flaws. First of all, all of the character of the original setting is lost. Instead, it is set in a desert which is a pretty boring setting once the initial novelty wears off. And that happens within the first five minutes. But in a sense the boredom of the desert is perfect for this version of The Prisoner, because it is boring. It is really, really boring. It is so boring that I would happily sit in a dark room in silence rather than watch another episode of it. At least the silence of the dark room would be more interesting that the The Prisoner.

For all of its glaring problems, at least the original version of The Prisoner was never boring. It was often poorly acted nonsense, with no sense of plot, but at least it was diverting. The same cannot be said for the remake. It is beyond dull. The new Number 6 lacks anything even approaching charisma. The original Number 6 had no end of ways to demonstrate his rage at being imprisoned – scowling, gurning, shouting, stomping, being rude and laughing in a way that was simultaneously derisive and slightly constipated. The new Number 6 just appears a bit put out by his imprisonment, and if there was something good on the TV he’d probably just forget about it. Furthermore, Ian McKellen – as Number 2 – is a bit, well, number two. He’s phoning in his performance, clearly hoping that the shoot ends sooner rather than later so he can get back to real acting work. And as for the other people in the show, well, I can’t remember them. They were instantly forgettable.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that The Prisoner was novel in the 1960s. Nowadays, there is no shortage of high concept shows being aired on TV. And a lot of these are built around an enigma – of putting interesting characters in crazy scenarios surrounded by mystery. I mean, that’s the basic premise of Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes. However, those two shows realise that it is not enough to just create a mysterious scenario – you need to have interesting characters and great plots as well. That’s where the remake of The Prisoner falls own, and why it falls down so badly – it is a concept in search of a plot, characters, and also in search of something to make you want to watch week after week.

Of course, I only watched two and a half episodes (I fell asleep watching the third episode) so it is possible that the series suddenly got a lot better. But I doubt it somehow. Remaking a show that ended up just going through the motions is never going to work if you go through the motions from the first minute of episode one. There is a scope for a re-imagining of The Prisoner that takes the premise of the show and does something interesting with it – much as the remake of Battlestar Galactica did with its unpromising source material. Unfortunately, this version took the premise of the show and made it really dull.

They really shouldn’t have bothered.