I love the idea of a TV series set in the last days of British rule in Aden - it's such an awesome period, with the declining empire, guerilla warfare, stone-age Arab tribes, communists, arab nationalists, sexual revolution, 60s music, kids killed at birthday parties, assassinations in the streets, desert patrols, bagpipes and Operation Stirling Castle, terrorists vs freedom fighters.
On paper this should totally work - the pitch document must've sounded great. The five main women are very clear types: a local Arab who falls for a British soldier, a long-standing dutiful military wife, a new girl, a journalist and a party girl who's cheating on her husband.
The men are less clearly defined but have potential - there's the cuckold who's kind of sympathetic to the arabs, a burly sergeant, a new soldier who takes over a beloved one, a long-experienced officer.
The first episode is also full of promising dramatic situations - the Arabs are being restless, one takes a pot shot at a base, an intelligence officer who is sleeping with a married woman is killed and the married woman is pregnant, . It looks fantastic - the sets and locations are superb, production values are high, the acting pretty good.
But it's undercooked, and not particularly well written. By killing off the intelligence officer you've got a good end of first ep but not many other places to go - the guy is dead, so you can't have any conflict with him, and the husband is forgiving so that's that. Instead you've got lots of Jessica Raine acting - she tries to get an abortion which goes no where and she drinks and has all these "scenes" where she's unhappy and very quickly gets monotonous and repetitive.
The good girl tries to be a bit naughty and finds out her husband has a Past. The kid is kidnapped (something which didn't happen - plenty of kids were killed but not kidnapped). Footage is taken of the Arabs almost chopping the kids' head off (something which didn't happen - filming executions is a modern phenomenon. But where did they get the camera? The film? How did they develop the film? It was just thoughtless hey-let's-make-a-parallel-with-our-own-times writing).
There's no attempt - nil - to show the complexity of the political situation. No look at the divide in Arabs at the time - or the Arabs who were genuinely allied with the British, or the local shiekhs who used British arms to keep them in power. It's simply British occupiers-Arab rebels and that's it.
There's a massive battle where all these soldiers are killed, some horribly... and it seems to have hardly any impact on the people back at base.
I think they needed to keep alive the guy the wife was cheating on and work on the male characters more. Use more action sequences. Have an Arab family as leads, not side characters, and tell some of the conflicting agendas from their point of view.
This could have been awesome, should at least been good and as it is, is just passable.
No comments:
Post a Comment