Blue Man Sings The Whites

While laid up with a dodgy leg a couple of weeks ago I found myself strangely compelled to catch up with the last couple of series of Hustle that I missed, in the same way that when you’ve got a broken tooth throbbing in your gum you feel strangely compelled to poke your tongue at it.

Somehow in the eighteen months or so since I last watched it I forgot how much more-or-less everything in Hustle gets on my pecs. All of the individual missteps it makes could be forgiven, but they come together to create something fundamentally disagreeable. In the rather spiffing recent Screenwipe special on writing for television, Hustle’s creator Tony Jordan said that when writing the scripts for the series he’d start with a premise but have no idea how it would end. Instead, he’d just follow the story until something suggested itself.

Frankly, this explains a lot.

Too often, Hustle plays – I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry – a con game, talking fast to try and rush you past a plot point or story conclusion that seems to superficially make sense but falls apart if subjected to the slightest scrutiny. It’s also painfully formulaic – every week, about two thirds of the way through it seems that everything’s gone wrong for the team but by the end it’s revealed that the trap they were seemingly caught in was just part of a wider con and, aha, actually they were in control the whole time. House gets away with repeating the same basic episode structure over and over again largely because its antihero central character is unusual, engaging and well-written. Hustle doesn’t because its antihero central characters are either cataclysmically dull or brain-detonatingly irritating. Even the more likable personalities (that’d be Ash, a combination of the Faceman out of the A-Team and a bulldog licking a nettle) are forced to transport levels of weapons-grade smugness far in excess of government-mandated safety guidelines. It desperately, desperately wants to be Ocean’s Eleven but succeeds only in being Ocean’s Twelve. Damningly, the characters look to be having a far better time than the audience ever will.

Top tip! If you’re writing a series about a group of con artists, whatever you do don’t rip off The Sting which is, y’know. Only the most famous movie about con artists ever made. And really, really, don’t do it twice. And when you’re having one character explain the con to another, really really really don’t have them say “you know, like The Sting.” Because that’s not funny, it’s not clever, it makes no sense. If you acknowledge that The Sting exists in your setting, then apparently your con artists are banking their life, wealth and liberty on the fact that their mark and anybody he happens to talk to haven’t ever seen a film that won SEVEN FLIPPIN’ OSCARS. More than that, it’s probably not a great idea to remind your viewers that they’ve seen this story done before with better writing, better acting, better directing, better costumes and better music. In The Sting, for instance. And to anyone who considers watching that episode like I did, thinking to yourself all the way through “actually, this is really clever, they’re following the plot of The Sting almost line-for-line in order to spring a massive unexpected twist at the end that works because I think I’m familiar with the story” – don’t bother. Because they’ve followed the plot of The Sting almost line-for-line in order to spring a massive unexpected twist that’s exactly the same as the end of The Sting.

Grrrrr.

Top tip! If you’re writing an episode that focuses on poker and you don’t know anything about poker, why not try not writing an episode about poker? Otherwise, you just end up in a situation where Evil Max Beesley flat calls a pre-flop raise heads-up with pocket kings (perfectly reasonable in itself, of course), calls again after the board comes down ace-high and he’s facing a pot-sized bet (um…), calls another big bet after a blank on fourth street (eh?), then flukes into one of his – count ‘em – TWO outs, catching trips on the river to beat the raiser’s top two-pair. Which would be bad enough, but then he’s got the nerve to smirk “Call me sometime and I’ll teach you how to play poker!” as he scoops a pot that he’d have lost 23 times out of 24 after the call on the turn.

Top tip! If you’re a team of high-class con artists who repeatedly bang on about how you only ever take money from people who deserve it, why not try not constantly conning the poor Scouse sap who runs the bar you always meet at? Not only does this make you look like a bunch of complete hypocrites and remove any last lingering traces of sympathy I might have had for you, but it’s also spectacularly unwise to systematically antagonise someone who’s seen and heard the planning of about 75% of every criminal act you’ve ever committed, you enormous idiots.

Wow. 800 words on the hatefulness of Hustle and I haven’t even had to mention Marc Warren and his stupid squinty smirky Mockney hamster fizzog.

Next week in Blue Man’s Timely Telly Reviews Of Large, Slow Moving Targets we’ll be covering Day 6 of 24 in a feature entitled I Feel Like I’m Taking Crazy Pills or: I Know What Jack Bauer’s Dad Looks Like And You, Sir, Are Not Jack Bauer’s Dad.

As mentioned in a previous life, Blue Man’s First Law Of Comic Adaptations is this: just get the big stuff right. Work out what makes a comic worth reading, find the foundations that it’s built upon and make sure that those essentials come across successfully on screen. The corollary to Blue Man’s First Law Of Comic Adaptations therefore is this: change as much small stuff as you need to.

The first two X-Men films keep the mutants-as-an-oppressed-minority and family vibes from the comics, along with the iconic powers of Cyclops, Wolverine, Magneto and Professor X but change the costumes (“What, you think we should be wearing spandex?”), turn the Xavier Institute For Gifted Youngsters into an actual school, and re-interpret both Magneto (as a Holocaust survivor) and Rogue (as a teenage runaway). Batman Begins shows us Bruce Wayne’s double life, keeps Batman’s ambiguous relationship with the law and portrays him as a figure of superstition and terror to the criminal classes. However, it also gives us an on-again off-again romantic dalliance, the Batmobile as a military vehicle and Batman being trained as an actual no-fooling ninja. My very favourite comic movie ever, The Crow, retains almost nothing from the comic - about one-and-a-half scenes (Eric visting Gideon’s pawnshop and his confrontation with Fun Boy), plus the basic look, origin and mission of the central character, a bunch of villain names and that’s your lot.

I reiterate this to make my attitude clear – I’m a huge fan of Watchmen, but I don’t regard the book as a sacred text from whose holy writ deviation is not to be tolerated. I understand that what works on the page doesn’t necessarily work on screen. In fact in the case of Watchmen this is doubly true, it being  a story that is structured specifically to take advantage of the strengths of the medium it was written for. Sin City may have basically treated the original comic like a storyboard with more-or-less successful results (mind-bendingly rampant misogyny aside), but in that case you’re talking about a very simple plot and books that were intended to be a film noir in comic form. Try the same thing with Watchmen and you’d just end up with a sprawling mess, albeit one with some great characters, nice set-pieces and interesting visuals.

Watchmen is a sprawling mess, albeit one with some great characters, nice set-pieces and interesting visuals. It’s not a very good film at all. I enjoyed it very much, look forward to seeing it again and would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who’s read and enjoyed the comic.

(Anyone who hasn’t read the comic I would recommend to, er, read the comic – it’s about the same price as a cinema ticket, can be read in about the time you’d invest in a visit to the flicks and is better than the film in every respect).

Let me attempt to explain.

The Phantom Menace is a terrible film by anybody’s standards. It’s got a rotten script, dodgy performances, it’s bloated, baggy and filled with characters I couldn’t give a flying hug about. But the first time that Qui-Gon O’Jinn The Oirish Jedi and Awful Alec Guinness Impression drew their lightsabres with that ssssccccchvooom! sound and began cutting loose with them I started grinning like I had a flip-top head. There are things that I’m just programmed to enjoy, that are hard-coded in my Nerd DNA to give me pleasure.

The sight of a giant Doctor Manhattan creating a glass palace of cogs and gears is one of these things. So’s the Comedian’s costume. So’s Archie the Owlship. So’s “You don’t get it! I’m not locked in here with you! You’re locked in here with me!”

Director Zack Snyder is obviously a fan of the comic, and he’s pretty good with cool images, with cool lines, with cool props, with cool fight scenes. He’s not so good with anything below the surface sheen. To coin the excellent phrase that m’good friend Lori used while we were comparing after-action reports last night, he’s respectful but not insightful. Almost without exception,every problem with Watchmen as a film can be traced back to one of those two traits – too much respect or not enough insight.

SPOILERS FOR BOTH FILM AND COMIC FROM HERE ON OUT. FAIR WARNING GIVEN.

The scene near the start of the film showing Dan Dreiberg visiting the first Nite Owl, Hollis Mason, is a decent example of showing too much respect for the source material. In the comic, Hollis plays a much bigger part, largely via the excerpts from his autobiography that make up the last few pages of the first three issues. We know him, we empathise with him, we’re upset when he gets killed, a shocking, saddening piece of collateral damage from Rorschach’s crusade. In the movie, Hollis gets that one short scene and is never heard from again. So if you’re not going to develop him as a character why include him at all? We don’t learn anything from the scene that couldn’t have just as easily been included in the (excellent) title montage that sums up the rise, fall and replacement of the Minutemen. The scene doesn’t serve any dramatic purpose so why does it exist? The answer: because it exists in the comic.

A smaller example is Bubastis. In the comic she’s a tiny bit of foreshadowing, an example of the genetic engineering that Ozymandias later uses to create the Space Squid Of Doom. In the film, she’s just a cool (and quite badly animated) pet. Why is she there? Because she was there in the comic.

Ozymandias was a major problem in general, in fact. In the comic he’s portrayed as a cross between John D. Rockerfeller, Bill Gates and Bono. He’s a media star, he’s a philanthropist. Yes, he’s a genius but he’s also approachable and down-to-earth. When the “assassination” attempt occurs, we hear a character saying “Who’d go after a guy like Veidt? He’s a real hero.” When it’s revealed that he’s behind the “mask killings” and then worse – much, much worse – it’s a kick in the gut that’s all the more savage for being totally unexpected.

In the film, he’s a stereotypically superior corporate kingpin. If he’s using his riches to do good works we never see it, beyond one rather nice little speech early on where he’s talking about infinite resources meaning an end to war driven by envy and hate with the twin towers of the World Trade Centre silhouetted behind him. We see him using people as human shields to avoid an attacker’s bullets. When it’s revealed that Veidt is behind the “mask killings” and worse our reaction is “yeah, he seemed the type”.

It feels almost as if the director’s started from the premise of Someone Capable Of Killing Millions To Save The World and worked backwards from there rather than appreciating the nuances of the character as written. In the book Ozymandias is a reflection of Rorschach – the latter is a character who we initially see as a despicable right-wing psychopath but gradually gain a measure of respect for. The former is a character who at first seems noble and sympathetic but who is revealed to be capable of unthinkable atrocity. That symmetry is lost in the film, as are plenty of other subtle parallels and juxtapositions and it’s the poorer experience for it. I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining that too much has been taken out in the transition from stage to screen, that’s not the issue at all. Almost the opposite in fact – the problem isn’t that Stuff Has Been Taken Out, it’s that the director’s primary concern appears to have been getting as much Stuff into the film as possible, with the structure that that Stuff hangs on a secondary concern.

This is a film that seems to have been made by someone who loves the book too much and understands it too little.

The director’s big stampy bootprints are uncomfortably visible all over the place, making sure that any layers are properly smashed flat. There’s no room for subtext, nothing’s allowed to be hinted at or implied. I could nit-pick any number of examples but I think one sums up Snyder’s approach perfectly. He’s perfectly fine with allowing Rorschach to speak the iconic line;

“No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.”

So long as he then adds:

“That’s the difference between you and me, Daniel.”

For CRYING OUT LOUD. YES. We KNOW that’s the difference between them, you’ve just spent TWO AND A HALF HUGGING HOURS SHOWING US that that’s the difference between them, this line is coming at the end of a scene where they’ve practically specifically DISCUSSED that that’s the difference between them, you’d need to have a MAJOR CONCUSSION not to realise that that’s the difference between them so WHY ON EARTH do you feel the need to SPELL OUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM, you ENORMOUS HACK?

Honestly, it’s “from my point of view the Jedi are evil!” all over again.

For all that, there was plenty of stuff to like. The look of the film is almost perfect, a couple of dodgy costumes and some extremely dodgy makeup aside. Rorschach is utterly fantastic, and his incarceration is one of the few sequences that the film abridges almost completely successfully – a lot of the detail is gone, but the shape is still right, it’s tense but romps along at a good pace and is comfortably the best section of the movie. Dr. Manhattan comes across as properly unearthly, the Comedian as properly brutal, Nite Owl as properly diffident. The Silk Spectre is OK, but didn’t display anything like the hatred for the Comedian that she shows in the book which rather undermined the Luke I Am Your Father revelation on Mars. The change to the ending is perfectly acceptable. The action scenes are pretty good, albeit over-reliant on slow-mo and maybe erring on the side of “whoa, cool!” a bit too often. 155 minutes shot by amazingly quickly.

I just wish I could have seen a Watchmen movie made by someone who didn’t seem as scared of the source material and the fanbase. I wish I could have seen a Watchmen movie that was more interested in the book’s themes than its look, with its steak rather than its sizzle. I wish I could have seen a Watchmen movie that complimented the comic rather than just trying to duplicate it. I wish I could have seen a Watchmen movie made by Paul Greengrass, basically.

Until that happens, we could do an awful lot worse than the Watchmen movie we’ve already got.

Alright. Alright. I promised not to bang on any more about how awesome Rock Band is. But when I said that, I had no idea  what songs were going to be made available for download next week.

Richard motherhugging Thompson. Oh, HELL YES.

It’s a slightly odd choice of song on the face of it – The Way That It Shows probably isn’t even one of the three best tracks from a fifteen-year-old album that most RT fans don’t regard as a classic (although personally I like it a lot). But it’s a decent selection for playing in Rock Band – it’s got a great bassline, I think that vocal will be surprisingly good fun (particularly the practically-clenched-teeth wailing in the second chorus) and it’s one of the relatively rare Thompson studio tracks to feature a big guitar solo.

There really seems to be a difference in the approach to downloadable tracks for Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band. Neversoft seem to think it’s more important to chase “scoops” and grab brand new songs of the new albums of name acts. Harmonix tend to focus more on having a wide representation of musical styles and, y’know. Good songs.

Obviously it’s a business decision above all, but to my eyes it’s a good one. Harmonix understand music and care about music. Between them, the first two Guitar Hero and Rock Band games must have introduced me to a dozen bands who’d previously either passed me by altogether or that I’d ignored because they played music I didn’t think I was into. It puts a huge smile on my face to think that someone, somewhere, is about to get exactly that same experience with a semi-obscure sixty year-old folk-rock guitarist who just happens to be one of the finest songwriters British music has ever produced.

Seriously. How cool is that?

(Although would a three-pack with Shoot Out The Lights and Can’t Win or bitterest-song-in-history When The Spell Is Broken have killed you? Also: seeing as you’re now apparently putting out tracks specifically to please me, can we have Another Girl, Another Planet next? Or a three-pack of monumentally stupid eighties stadium-goth shoutery by The Mish with Tower Of Strength, Wasteland and Deliverance? And some Up To Here-Fully Completely era Tragically Hip PLZKTHNXBAI!)

On rare occasions I’m accused of being just a little arrogant.

(Pauses for sounds of shocked disbelief).

Some people labour under the misapprehension that I’m incapable of seeing anyone’s point of view but my own, that I will generally respond to the assertion that it’s not possible for an opinion to be wrong with “Of course an opinion can be wrong. You’re in the process of proving it. Besides, if you held the opinion that gravity had stopped working and the moment you step ouside the door you’re going to float up to the ionosphere, that’s empirically and certifiably wrong. Stop wasting my time with this wishy-washy, well-on-the-other-hand, everyone’s-opinion-is-worth-the-same, walk-a-mile-in-the-other-fellow’s-shoes, being-right-isn’t-the-be-all-and-end-all claptrap.” 

In reality, this is only true ninety, maybe ninety-five percent of the time tops.

Obviously most of the time only a fool or a lunatic would disagree with my position – that anyone who can hear Higher And Higher by Jackie Wilson without smiling needs to be removed from the gene pool for the benefit of future generations for example, or that Jeff Sinclair was a far superior commander of Babylon 5 than Smilin’ John Sheridan. However, there are many, many (actually, not that many) subjects that I’m perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that my stated position could potentially be wrong and the rest of the world might be right.

For reference, please find below a full and complete listing of those opinions that may under the correct circumstances be negotiable:

• Seinfeld isn’t funny.
• The three best films directed by a Scott brother are, in order, Blade Runner, Top Gun, and Alien.
• Gladiator is at least an hour too long.
• The Lord Of The Rings trilogy is at least four hours too long.
• Street Fighter II is boring.
• And so is Halo 3.
• Deep Space Nine wasn’t that bad. Certainly better than Next Gen.
• Johnny Mnemonic is better than the last two Matrix movies.
• Poison’s “Flesh & Blood” is one of the five best albums of the eighties.
• Teen Wolf has one of the five best final scenes in cinema history.
• Kebab pizza is lush.
• It’s A Wonderful Life, but it’s a rubbish film.
• Led Zeppelin’s music is by and large ponderous, self-indulgent tosh.
• Battlestar Galactica is filled with hateful characters and takes itself way too seriously.
• Independence Day is filled with awesome characters and takes itself not even slightly seriously.
• Playing king-three suited is lucky.
• The Pylea story arc at the end of Angel’s second series was terrific fun.
• Supporting more than one football team after the age of 9 is an indicator of weak moral character.
• Rocky III is the best film in the series.
• Empire Strikes Back is the worst film in the series, if you take the natural and sensible position that Episodes 1-3 didn’t happen.

Obviously, should you hold a dissenting position on any subject not covered   above then I regret to inform you that you’re completely incorrect and should adjust your thought processes accordingly.

You’re welcome.

Good news, everybody! Being Human has been picked up for a second series! Being Human is the only home-grown telly I’ve bothered setting the Sky Plus for (alright  other than TV Burp and, um, Total Wipeout - alright, alright, it’s not something I’m proud of) and by and large I’m still enjoying it very much. There are a couple of nits of differing sizes to pick, mind.

George remains the cast’s Achilles heel. Every other performance in the series is so easy and natural his peculiarly mannered nerdiness is really starting to grate. Playing a geeky character who’s socially awkward while remaining sympathetic and not descending into sneering caricature is obviously difficult, but I’m currently watching the first series of the thoroughly enjoyable Big Bang Theory which pulls the trick off (with admittedly varying degrees of success) four times. So, y’know.

My main gripe is with the series’ treatment of women, however. In episode 4, the only recurring female character who wasn’t almost wholly defined by their relationship with a man – Annie’s obsession with Owen, Lauren’s with Mitchell - was clobbered with the “if you’re a strong, intelligent, independant woman then you must have been damaged by your past” stick.

Grrrr.

Come on, Being Human. You’re well-written, mostly well-acted and more intelligent than 95% of the drama we’re subjected to on British TV. You don’t need to be indulging in such an overdone and frankly offensive cliché. You’re better than this.

I hadn’t been to the Royal Air Force Museum in the better part of twenty years, and the fact that I’d never taken the boys there before borders on unforgivable. This sorry state of affairs was rectified at the weekend, with a happy afternoon spent wandering around assorted airbourne purveyors of destruction, death and misery.

I particularly enjoyed getting a close-up look at an English Electric Lightning. Like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, the Lightning has features that are a bit odd or even offputting taken in isolation – the over-under engines, the beer-belly fuel-tank, the strange positioning of the missile hardpoints just below the cockpit, the big wide stupid chin and hamster cheeks, the over-wing drop tanks, the air intake around the nosecone, the weird lips - but the overall effect is stunning. The Lightning looks like the designer dropped a paper dart on the table and said “Tell you what. Let’s make one of those fly at Mach 2.”

As you might expect given the gap between visits, there were a number of changes and additions to the last time I was there. Getting to walk right under a Vulcan bomber was a highlight, and one that really brought home the sheer monstrous size of the thing. The fact that it even got off the ground boggles the mind, it’s quite literally bigger than the whole row of three terraced houses that we live on. Flying it must have been like trying to pilot a medium-sized Baptist church. Of doom.

My favourite addition was the brand new Milestones Of Flight hanger, though – a light, airy space filled with aircraft of varying degrees of historical significance. One of the first things you see as you enter the hall is an extremely cool juxtaposition – a Bleriot XI monoplane of the type used to make the first crossing of the English Channel and the RAF’s current state-of-the-art fighter.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Between the year 909 and the year 1009, technology advanced from the sword all the way to the slightly fancier sword. Between 1909 and 2009 we’ve gone from a machine that’s basically a big t-shirt wrapped around a couple of cheap photo-frames with some bicycle wheels lashed on the bottom and an engine that we’d laugh at if it were powering a scooter, to the Eurofighter Typhoon. We’ve gone from the Model T to the Bugatti Veyron. We’ve gone from candlestick phones and manual switchboards to the Internet. We’ve gone from TS Eliot to Dan Brown. We’ve gone from workhouses to child labour in the Far East. We’ve gone from cities choked with smog to impending global environmental cataclysm.

Sorry, sort’ve lost where I was going with that toward the end.

Still – crikey, Charlie. The acceleration of technological progress, the sheer pace at which humanity is churning out life-changing innovations staggers me. In less than a century, we’ve gone from 37 minutes to fly the Channel to less than a minute. What on Earth (or beyond) do you suppose we’re going to manage in the next hundred years?

In “Confessions of a Winning Poker Player” Jack King said, “Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.”
- Mike McD, “Rounders”

Second hand of my regular Tuesday night pub game, starting stacks of 2500 chips, blinds at 25 and 50. First position raises to 100, gets a caller from fourth position and it folds round to me. I peel up the corners of my cards and see two kings staring back. About three quarters of the time in this spot I’d reraise and try to either narrow the field to two players or take it down there and then, but my good position and the meagre pot persuades me to flat call. The small blind folds but the big blind calls, meaning there are four of us playing for 425 chips.

The flop comes down 4, 10, king with two clubs. The proverbial fireworks are going off in my head because I’ve just hit the nuts – top set (and incidentally a backdoor king high flush draw). The big blind – a strong and solid player – bets about half the pot, the original raiser calls and the other player in the pot folds. With straight and flush draws a possiblity, I’m happy to take the thousand or so chips that are out there and so raise another 750. The big blind, who’s got me out-chipped thanks to his pocket 7s turning into quads on the first hand, immediately re-raises me all-in. Obviously I call without hesitation – best-case scenario he’s got two pair or ace-king and I’ll win the hand 99% of the time. Worst-case scenario he’s got queen-jack of clubs (unlikely given how he’s played it, but hey) and I’ll only win two hands in three.

As the cards are turned over it’s closer to the first scenario than the second. A lot closer. He’s got pocket fours, giving him bottom set and meaning I’m about 95% likely to win. The turn’s a second ten that helps him not a jot and so there’s only one card in the deck that’ll knock me out on the river,  the last remaining four. It’s a pure and simple 2% shot.

Yeah, you can see where this is going. Did the title give it away? Or the Rounders quote? Or the fact that I’m unlikely to have bashed out the better part of seven hundred words talking about a hand that played out in routine fashion?

To confirm the crushingly inevitable, then – my opponent hits four of a kind for the second time in two hands and I hit the rail.

Sometimes you just have to laugh. Arguably I should have re-raised before the flop and driven his poxy small pair out, most of the time I probably would have done exactly that. Better to win a small pot than lose a big one is generally my mantra. But the bottom line is that I got my money in the middle of the table as a 20-1 favourite. If I’d actually known the cards my opponent was playing, I’d likely have made the exact moves I did. But the beauty of poker and one of the reasons I find it so compelling is that even playing a hand perfectly isn’t always enough. Sometimes David beats Goliath. Sometimes you given a short, sharp lesson in how probablities work (Hey kids! Remember, massively unlikely <> impossible! Huh-huh-huh HEH!). Sometimes the board decides that you’re going to be knocked out and that’s an end to it. Poker is a constant reminder that mutability is our tragedy but also our hope, that neither success or faliure are entirely within our power to achieve, that you have to meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. I love this game. I love the very special blend of psychology and extreme logic. I love what it teaches you about other people and what it reveals about yourself. It should be on every primary school curriculum in the country. Seriously.

Um.

Sorry about that. I have a tendancy to wax insanely pretentious when the cards strap on their Doc Martens and dance a passionate fandango on my gentleman’s area.

In summary, then: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

That is all.

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.

 
More fun from BEtEO, this time via Twitter and The Internet’s Famous Richard Gaywood – the collision of great literature and base commerce. It’ll come as no suprise to some that this is an idea I’ve not been able to leave alone since it crossed my path. My best efforts to date:

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
 ”My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
 Nothing beside remains: round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
 The lone and level sands stretch far away.
 Next time, use Ronseal Double-Action Wood Preserver.”

“To imagine the future, imagine a boot smashing into a human face forever. Ooh, nice boots! http://www.clarks.com.”

“This is not just a liquor never brewed,
 From tankards scooped in pearl;
 This is M&S liquor.”

“The barge, like a burnished throne burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold, purple the sales and so perfumed that the wind was lovesick with them. Then it hits you – this is way more than a cruise! Royal Caribbean International.”

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all
 Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
 Maybe she’s born with it – maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Talk to Frank.”

“I grow old! I grow old!
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled!
Unless I take advantage the great menswear bargains available in the BHS winter sale.”

“So twice five miles of fertile ground
 With walls and towers were girdled round:
 And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
 Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
 And here were forests ancient as the hills,
 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
 Visit Centre Parcs – for a British holiday the weather can’t spoil.”

“Because I could not stop for Death
 He kindly stopped for me
 The carriage held but just ourselves
 And Immortality.
 We’d have been able to fit four kids and the family dog in as well if Death had been driving the new Vauxhall Zafira.”

In this thread on amiable nerdhaven Be Excellent To Each Other, the splendid Dr. Lave from the doubly splendid Skeptobot questions the established wisdom that it’s a rarity for the average player to see a game through to the end. After a little consideration, I realised that on the FunSquareSuperPlus alone I’ve finished about a dozen games to Lave’s eminently sensible “If You’ve Seen The Credits It’s Finished” criteria in the last twelve months. Which I feel is pretty decent going.

I’m probably fractionally more persistent than most in this area – an unfinished game will niggle at me for an extended period (it took over a month of regular attempts to polish off Flirtin’ With Disaster and finish Rock Band’s solo guitar tour on Hard, f’rinstance) but particularly capricious or tedious game design can easily see me off, and with so many other shiny distractions available it seems ridiculous to endure frustration for any length of time. I feel no guilt at all for dipping into the marvellous resource available at GameFAQs to get me past particularly obtuse puzzles or aggravating difficulty-spikes. If that fails, well, there’s a wonderful feeling of liberation that comes with the realisation “hey, I’m just not enjoying this” and switching the offending game off for good. Mirror’s Edge and I are currently undergoing a trial separation based primarily on its fondness for unfair and irritating combat, f’rinstance. And I never got past the end of the first chapter of Neverwinter Nights after it was clear to me that a double-cross was about to take place but I was given absolutely no way of warning the party primarily involved. When said party then wanted to send me on a long-winded errand arising directly from said double-cross, I uninstalled the game in a fit of pique.

So. Here’s the full list of every EggBox game I’ve conquered over the past year then, with micro-reviews appended for your delectation, delight or at least fleeting distraction. Ranks are assigned on a Capcom tip, with a scale that runs from F for games which are functionally broken through to A for a slice of fried gold. The elusive S-rank is reserved for works of transcendent excellence, genuinely essential experiences that I’d recommend to anyone without qualification or hesitation.

In rough chronological order, then:

Crackdown
(Completed the story)
Still only got 99 of the 100 bloody agility orbs, though, and this generally excellent sandbox-em-up was marred slightly by the not-fun vehicle bits, unreliable camera, one-trick missions and touchy cops. Still, bounding from skyscraper to skyscraper like a heavily armed cyborg facist super-kangaroo was hours of fun, and “popping up” from behind terrain like an Apache gunship never got old. When dealing with large groups of n’er-do-wells, I’d hide behind cover then jump thirty feet straight up, lock on to an enemy, fire off a sniper bullet / missile at the top of the leap then drop back to safety giggling like a loon before their mates could shoot back. Triffic. Rank: A

Virtua Tennis 3
(Ranked 1 in World Tour)
The best thing about VT3 is that when you manage to set your feet and pull off a full-power groundstroke, the resulting shot genuinely feels like it should have a verb like “rips”, “unleashes”, “thumps” or “crashes” attached to it. It’s a game that repeatedly, pathetically drove me to make Tiger Tim fist-pumps at my TV as, f’rinstance, my heavy serve would see my opponent forced to float a diffident return allowing me to punch a volleyed winner into the open court. It’s a satisfying, nicely tactical game of tennis, it’s stuffed with fun, borderline-bonkers minigames and it had cutscenes featuring famous players who all looked absolutely terrifying. The cold, dead eyes of Zombie Lindsay Davenport haunt my sleep to this day. Rank: B

Ace Combat 6
(Completed all operations of all missions on Easy and Medium difficulty)
And I’m about halfway through Hard. It’s Outrun: The Dogfighting Game. All the thrills of barrelling about the sky at Ludicrous Speed blowing stuff up, none of the tedious realism to get in the way. Tearing through canyons at several zillion miles an hour chucking rockets at stuff with Cheap Trick or Gustav Holst in the background put a coathanger-wide smile on my face. Stupid, portentous, unintentionally hilarious cutscenes aside it might be my favourite game on the Eggbox outside of the towering monolith that is Rock Band. Rank: A

Guitar Hero III
(Five-starred all songs in main tour on medium difficulty)
If I never hear Raining Blood again it’ll be too soon. Could have done without so much forum-kiddie-pleasing heavy metal rubbish, could have done without the maHOOsive difficulty spike about 8 songs from the end, could have done without the casual misogyny, could have really, really, really done without the boss battles. Great guitar peripheral, though. Rank: B

Project Sylpheed
(Completed story missions, medium difficulty)
Or “Project Slaphead” as it rapidly became known. It’s a space-based action flight-sim – Ace Combat with lasers. To say that PS is a visually busy game is like saying that the England batting lineup is a bit below par. It looks like an explosion during a Jean-Michel Jarre gig at a disco ball manufacturer’s convention. That’s being held in a fireworks factory. Run by Martin Fry, still wearing his gold lame suit. On November the fifth. During a thunderstorm. Whilst seven volcanoes are simultaneously erupting in the background. In a… you get the idea. It’s also very anime. Very very anime indeed. This may be a selling-point for some people, but I’m not one of them. Within 15 minutes I sincerely wished lingering, painful death on every moronic, wittering, whining, mopy, stupidly-haircutted fourteen-year-old character in the game. Still, when you’re barrelling around space launching umpty-thrumpty thousand missiles in one eye-shattering salvo Project Slaphead is great, if a bit up-and-down in terms of difficulty. Rank: B

Call Of Duty 4
(Completed single-player, medium difficulty)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Game. For all that sandbox gaming is en vogue, there’s still a lot to be said for a really well-done rollercoaster ride. And that’s exactly what CoD4’s single-player mode is, so many ups and downs and loops and spins and adrenaline-pumping thrills only a pedantic moron would complain that it’s completely on rails. It’s got a strong story told in a novel, arresting way with several tremendous set-pieces – the entire sniper level and the eerie, weirdly affecting turn as the gunner on an AC-130 gunship being particular standouts. Rank: A

Dead Rising
(Completed main game, overtime mode, achieved “true” ending)
The first game I played on the 360 that would have been genuinely impossible on the previous generation of consoles. When it’s good it’s very very good. When it’s bad it’s horrid. The brilliant setting – a shopping mall teeming with zombies – and by-turns hilarious and terrifying mood is thoroughly undermined by a mental save system, rubbish controls and several baffling design decisions. The sequel’s just been announced, and with a bit of a nip and a tuck and an annoyingbitsectomy it could be a stone-cold classic rather than just a very good game. So long as it still lets me dress up my burly macho chump of a character in a teddy bear mask, floral print dress and slingbacks I’ll be happy. It certainly made all the puzzled looks NPCs kept throwing at me in cutscenes 300% funnier. Rank: B

Guitar Hero II
(Five-starred all songs in main tour on medium difficulty)
Its existence is justified by the presence of Sweet Child O’ Mine and the glorious final level with Freebird followed by just the perfect game-ending cutscene but the tracklist isn’t quite as good as the original game taken as a whole. This year I’m going to take my newly Rock Band-honed fifth-button skills and finish this bad boy on Hard. Rank: A

Conan
(Completed, medium difficulty)
It’s God Of War, but nowhere near as good. Bought for about seven quid to tide me over for the three days of my week off before Rock Band arrived. Featuring the delightful combination of slightly stodgy, imprecise controls and ledges that’ll happily let you plummet to your death without pause or warning. Further featuring comfortably the cheapest, most hateful, most hair-tearingly frustrating final boss I’ve encountered in 25 years of gaming. Rank: C

Rock Band
(Completed solo drum tour on easy, vocal tour on medium, guitar tour on medium and hard, band inducted to Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame)
“We’ve been The Red Winkiez, you’ve been terrific. Thank you very much and goodnight!” Rank: S

GTA IV
(Completed story missions)
A game I admired more than I liked. The story generally didn’t mesh well with the mechanics, the cars were uniformly horrible to drive, it wasn’t as funny as previous games in the series, the mission checkpointing was a bit of a mess and my GOD, did the clingy whiny friends thing needed to go. However, the gunplay was generally good, there were a couple of storytelling moments that genuinely stirred the blood and it’s impossible not to be impressed by the depth, scale and spectacle of the gameworld. On balance, it’s a good game just nowhere near as good as it might have been and nowhere near as good as its two immediate predecessors. Rank: B

FIFA 09
(Finished Be A Pro mode, won International Cup with England to become a National legend)
I’ve spent the majority of my time with FIFA on the play-as-one-bloke Be A Pro mode, and the longer I’ve played it the more niggles and irritations have revealed themselves. Chief among them is a crippling bug that seems to make players disappear from your club side over the course of a season. This got so bad that at the end of my year in Milan I was playing two reserve strikers and seven defenders, because Kaka, Ronaldinho, Pirlo, Ambrosini, Emerson, Gatusso,and Antonini had all inexplicably gone walkabout. And contrary to all expectation, Manchester City weren’t involved. Despite promises there’s no sign whatsoever of a patch to sort this out, which is hardly a surprise given that the Madden series had lingering issues that would last for 3-4 years at a time despite every forum dedicated to the game anywhere ever being chock-full of justifiably hacked-off gamers grumbling/screeching about it. Rank: B