Blue Man Sings The Whites

The Living God-King Of Genre Television is back! Huzzah! Three series created to date, all three stone classics (for four seasons, two seasons and until its vastly premature cancellation respectively).

You know what to expect from Joss Whedon (for it is he) – women kicking ass, wisecrackery, appealing characters, rollercoaster writing that subverts tropes to entertaining effect and the slight uncomfortable sense that he’s trying to have his cake and eat it regarding the whole feminism thing. It’s a bit of a surprise then that the first episode of Dollhouse only hits the last of those bullet-points.

The titular Dollhouse is one of these Top Secret Quasi-Governmental Agencies Far, Far More Secret Than The CIA that are so popular these days. Its agents are assorted ne’er-do-wells who’ve had their memories erased with mind-rubbers. When they are called upon to undertake a task, the agent has a new persona downloaded into their brain with a suitable personality and skillset for the job at hand, before being returned to a tablua rasa state to await the next mission. Our protagonist is Echo, a ne’er-do-well who’s had her memory erased with… you get the idea.

Dollhouse is a conscious move away from the comedy-drama that Joss Whedon is best known for, and some people will take against it simply because it’s not what they were expecting. Which is a shame and somewhat unfair because there are plenty of more legitimate gripes to choose from. The most fundamental issue is that there’s not a single engaging character in the whole of the first episode. Echo, by dint of the programme’s central conceit, is a cipher – you can sympathise with her situation, but not directly with her. The supporting cast meanwhile is made up entirely of stereotypes. You’ve got Echo’s handler, who’s not sure that the ends of the Dollhouse justifies its means. You’ve got Helo out of Battlestar Galactica, who’s the Rogue Cop convinced that the Dollhouse is real despite everyone telling him it’s just a conspiracy. You’ve got the geek who created and maintains the mind-rubber technology who’s more than a bit emotionally detached and inhuman There’s nobody who appears to be anything other than a cog turning to keep the plot moving forward.

From Buffy through Serenity, you might have been able to say that Joss Whedon’s writing is a bit smug, you’ve been able to say that perhaps all his dialogue sort’ve sounds the same no matter which character’s saying it, you’ve been able to say that he often goes for the cheap funny over actual character development. Before now, you’ve never been able to say that he’s predictable. His usual MO is allowing you to make yourself comfortable in familiar surroundings before suddenly kicking the bed over (see: the evil ventriloquist dummy in Buffy, the end of the deeply funny Angel-turns-PC episode, Mal negotiating with the crimelord’s agent in The Train Job, the end of Dr. Horrible). Nothing of the sort happens here. The story ambles from A to B to C without the slightest deviation from its expected path, with the notable exception that Echo’s first persona isn’t a deadly assassin or elite soldier but rather a bookish hostage-negotiator with asthma.

I don’t mean to sound too down on Dollhouse. It’s early days of course, and the episode was passably entertaining in a sub-La Femme Nikita sort’ve way, certainly enough that I’m interested to see where Whedon’s going with it. It’s still possible that this is a massive headfake, that it’s not going to just plod through Echo discovering that she’s not who she thought she was and escaping the Dollhouse with the help of Helo and her handler at all, and that there’s a far more interesting and less overdone story waiting for us down the line.

I’m not sure if I’ll be more surprised if there is or there isn’t.

While you’re waiting for Dollhouse to become any good, you’d be well advised to have a look at Being Human, a new series on BBC3 that doesn’t so much nod in Joss Whedon’s direction as bellow at him across a crowded room waving its arms in the air. Its central premise is easily summed up – a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house in Bristol, each of them trying to engage with but protect themselves from the general mass of humanity. If the first series of Angel had been about 50% grimier and 500% more British, it would have looked something like this.

For all the justifiable cynicism that this is some sort of focus-group box-ticker, Being Human is actually terrific fun. It’s a bit rough around the edges but it’s funny, it’s tense, it’s well-written and it’s convincingly dark in places. My only serious reservation is George, the werewolf. Obviously the idea was to make him slightly geeky and socially inadequate to throw the bestial nature of his transformation into relief, but it doesn’t quite work. The nerdiness is just writ a touch too large, and the actor goes to the shrill-and-squeaky well a little too often. It’s particularly noticeable because the other two leads both give very strong, assured performances.

Being Human pretty much manages to do what Torchwood’s been failing at for the last two years – tell contemporary fantasy-horror stories for grownups, and the first four episodes are all available for viewing on the iPlayer. If you like Joss Whedon, I’d wholeheartedly recommend you give it a try.

Which is sadly more than I can say for Joss Whedon’s new series.