Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordan5
Yeah, I'm a long-time tube watcher, and it's rare I've seen a successful show just squander all its assets. 🙄 Just found out the BBC is under severe attack from the current Tory government, so one can see a reason for the cost cutting and general programming weirdness. But FB is a clear example of a showrunner/producer/new writers that are simply not up to the game; have no real feel for the material--or in the showrunner's case, might have gotten this gig because he could bring eps in under budget no matter what. 😡
Yep, Tom Chambers is extremely talented. He's got amazing range in addition to his dancing skills. Heh--his villain on Waterloo Road was so viciously calculating and awful, one wanted (as my grandmother would say) to jump into the set and punch him out. 😂😂 One of the tragedies of these two seasons is how he's been wasted here. Sullivan is a fascinating mix of by-the-book reserved-British steel and underlying vulnerability, and the trash-job that's being done on him is straight-up horrible. And John Burton is wonderful. Goodfellow could be given a lot more than he has, but since the show is all about panto crap--and swearing that Devine is all that and twenty bags of adorable chips and giving her endless undeserved airtime, well...😡
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Warning, all, a longish ranty not-very-coherent post...you've been told.
Indeed. the entire "let's promote Devine and Brenda" and forget all these horrible eviiiiil WHITE MEN...it's just so
over for me. You're absolutely right, they have
NO feeling for the material. Brenda is nearly a sight-gag. Devine...I mean...she's just someone. She's not some beauty queen that is Mother Theresa in her spare time, for crying out loud.
The mysteries, the nostalgia (I mean, let's face it) and all that. They're just gone. Trying to turn it upside down on its head (a la what they keep doing to the Christies--I was rolling my eyes at "Murder is Easy," which, sadly, is one of my
fave Christie books) just to make
this point or that one or whatever...it's
just sucking the life out of it.
Is it too much to ask that entertainment simply entertain?
I'm
done contributing views, watches, buys, subscriptions, whatever, to Hollyweird so that they can feel free to
lecture me about whatever latest PC thing is up their asses.
Think of the utter sheer
hypocrisy of it—they have Lady Montague (cough, Lady Felicia) in one episode—holding up the
aristocracy, mind you—and then they just throw shade on the male characters (Goodfellow, FB, Sullivan, even to some extent our resident villain, Flambeau) because well, they're white and male. But hey, Lady Felicia is okay, b/c
she has girl parts!!!
Just a comment, not really a spoiler at all, about Tom Chambers/Sullivan:
I'm just so over it. If you rummage through BB (BritBox) or Acorn, try to find ONE lousy thumbnail that
doesn't feature 1-2-3 female characters as the protags. Just TRY. I'll wait...hmmmm, sings herself some songs....
It's nearly
impossible. It's...it's everything that's wrong with the entertainment industry. Sure, fine, you have 50% women in the world. Hell, let's even say that you have 50% women in a cop shop (You won't, not now, not ever, most likely). That does not mean that every goddamned top cop is a woman, a woman of color...it's like the beginning of the Netflix (?) show "The Bodyguard," which starred (a male) one of the GOT bunch. Same thing.
[U]Every single important character in the cop shop/anti-terrorism unit, sniper, you-name-it--was a woma[n/U]. Every. single. one. It was so bleeding off-putting that I turned it off.
I've been there. Done that. Marched for equal rights, fought the fight myself by hiring and promoting women, but what is represented on TV, especially UK and USA TV is
ludicrously absurd. And highly unrepresentative, a bunch of silly wishful thinking and just...bad. Just bad.
(sorry for my rant). And doing that while
at the same time ruining the FBs of the world--I'm sitting here holding my breath for the next "fish out of water" inspector for Death in the Caribbean. You know they're gonna Jodi Whittaker-Doctor Who that sucker (blergh) and ruin
it too.
There ought to be some intelligence test or familiarity testing for new showrunners. To some extent, the same thing happened with Midsomer Murders, when Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) left, but FAR more importantly, the show-runner/producer that initiated the series also left, (Brian True-May). That show has
also been effectively destroyed, but it's tottering along yet. (Mostly due to vapidity, but hey...)
Hitch