Veronica Mars: Season One

I wondered something while watching devouring the first season of Veronica Mars this Christmas holiday.

Is there some sort of statute of limitation on how long you have to leave between a TV show being ‘hot’, subsequently cancelled and you finally watching the DVDs and realising you should have been watching it years ago?

There probably should be, though that might put a few people off buying the boxsets.

December 2007 saw those nice people over at amazon.com make me an offer on Veronica Mars DVDs that I couldn’t refuse and seasons one and two arrived a few weeks back.

I’ve spent the last week ploughing my way through twenty-odd episodes of sharp, witty and, at times, heartbreaking telly that I wish I’d watched when it first showed up in the UK on the Living channel.

Previously on Veronica Mars…Veronica (Kristin Bell) is a High School student in Neptune, California. Her dad was once the local sheriff, until Veronica’s best friend, Lily Kane, was found murdered and Mars Snr (Enrico Colantoni) blamed her death on her parents.

Nobody believed him and he was removed from office and Veronica now finds herself a social outcast in a place where she used to be one of the cool kids. Oh, and she’s also a teen private investigator.

That’s the synopsis for season one, but there’s much more going on here. The Lily Kane murder mystery is weaved in and out of numerous stories that end up on Veronica’s desk each week. Missing dogs, cheating spouses and mistaken identities vie for her attention as she continues to try and work out how and why her best friend died.

Although this is ostensibly a ‘teen’ show, it can be watched by anyone who enjoys intelligent television and/or crime drama. Plots twist and turn on a dime. Allegiances, painstakingly built up between viewers and characters over numerous episodes, suddenly vanish, to be replaced by mistrust and confusion.

Kristin Bell is outstanding as cute-as-a-bug Veronica, while Enrico Colantoni is the perfect dad. The supporting cast are similarly good and it’s great to see the odd guest character from early episodes cropping up again to provide consistency.

The show has never been short of supporters, including Kevin Smith and Buffy maestro Joss Whedon(the blonde and petite Veronica is often described as Buffy-like and a few Buffy actors pop up in the series, including Whedon himself in a cameo).

Watching all twenty two episodes in a short space of time is both tiring and rewarding. Just when I thought I had to switch of the portable DVD player and get some shut-eye, another u-turn takes place and I had to watch a bit more, just up to the title sequence this time…

I’d urge anyone who hasn’t seen the show to search it out, whether via repeats on cable or via the boxsets. It’s worth every penny and a few hours out of your life.

I’m five episodes into season two now and it’s as good as ever. Rather tragically there’s only one more season after this and then it’s bye-bye Veronica, as the show was cancelled in America early in 2007.

Only the good die young.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

I came to a conclusion this weekend: Richard Attenborough is one of my favourite actors.

Nothing earth shattering there, I’ll admit, but I thought I’d mention it as this only dawned on me while watching 1964’s Seance on a Wet Afternoon last night.

Previously, the only reference I’d heard to the film was in the title of a 1973 episode of Steptoe and Son, Seance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard.

Like most Steptoes it was, of course, brilliant: Harold still trapped by his old dad in that junk yard while the world carries on outside the gates, oblivious to the tragedy taking place every week…

But I digress.

Seance…stars Richard Attenborough as Bill Savage, husband to Myra Savage (Kim Stanley). We join the film partway into the hatching of their plot to kidnap the daughter of a local businessman, Mr Clayton (Mark Eden, fresh from playing Marco Polo the Doctor Who and years away from portraying tram-troubling Alan Bradley in Coronation Street) and his wife, Mrs Clayton (Nanette Newman).

Their plot – to kidnap the girl and then prove Myra’s clairvoyant abilities by having her carry out a seance where she can then ‘psychically’ reveal the victim’s whereabouts – is technically only Myra’s plot.

Myra’s influence over her husband is seemingly unbreakable, leading to the sort of ‘troubled’ acting that Attenborough does so well (see 10 Rillington Place (1971) for another example). He’s never at ease here, and neither is the viewer.

Director Bryan Forbes (whose translation of the James Clavell novel King Rat (1965) to the big screen I devoured one afternoon recently) had an eye for the mundane amongst the madness, realising that it’s in the detail – such as the spelling mistakes in the ransom note – that the viewer can identify with characters, while the bigger story develops around them.

It’s a superb film, with a haunting performance from Kim Stanley, for which she was Oscar nominated that year (she lost out to Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins), and boasting a fine John Barry score.

As I mentioned above, Dickie Attenborough cements himself in my mind as one of our finest screen actors, while his partnership with Forbes produced some memorable pictures: The Angry Silence (1960), The League of Gentlemen (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961) to name but three.

And I still love The Great Escape every Christmas, even if it is just on DVD.

Torchwood: Series One

Torchwood was announced to the world in late-2005 as a spin-off from Doctor Who, only to stumble, blinking, into the neon-lit streets of Cardiff barely a year later.

It was conceived as an “adult” take on the Whoniverse, starring Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman).

I recently finished re-watching the odd episode on BBC Three, a prelude to the start of series two in January over on BBC Two.

The first episode introduces new recruit Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) to Torchwood, an elite group of alien hunters working based beneath Cardiff city centre, under the radar of the British Government.

Extraterrestrials are fought while the members of Team Torchwood battle their own morals and relationship problems over 13 episodes.

Sadly, the perceived need to justify its post-watershed slot means that what at times seems to be a treatise on what it means to be a thirtysomething in noughties Britain, (how do you maintain a healthy work-life balance while fighting aliens for a living?) is often lost in a mire of soft-core titillation and half-baked plots.

In its defence, episodes such as ‘Out of Time’ and ‘They Keep Killing Suzie’ do punch above their weight, while the performance of John Barrowman is nearly always note perfect.

Recent series two previews have been positive. Here’s hoping they keep up the good work while we wait for Doctor Who series four…