HAVE you, gentle reader, ever picked up a buzz about a particular show – perhaps one you’ve read about online or heard some bloke yacking on about at work? Have YOU then gone on to sit down and actually watch said show?
‘Yes,’ you answer. ‘We all have. It’s a common human experience.’
Well, then… allow me to continue.
DID this television show go on to absolutely deliver? I mean, from the get-go. Episode one; we’re up and running – best thing ever made. You can’t wait to get on the old social media and start recommending it to your family, friends, and that old staple, casual acquaintances.
Good.
Now muse upon this:
UPON discovering your new favourite show, did it then go on to take an incredible (perhaps immediate) nosedive? Did it, in the parlance of our times, shit itself inside out, to the point of being unwatchable? (Causing those casual acquaintances to quietly remove you as a friend on their next Facebook audit.)
Well, I’ve certainly experienced that, and – what’s more – I’ve complied some examples into a handy top five for your enjoyment herein.
PLEASE NOTE:
What I’m presenting here are shows that have manifestly died on their arses after either:
- One full season (or even better)
- One or two episodes
You’ll not find Game of Thrones here, no sir. Nor Lost*. Those things only collapsed at the last hurdle**, rendering the preceding 6 or 7 years retrospectively bad.
I’m focusing here on shows that got your hopes RIGHT up, and then cruelly pulled the rug.
At NO POINT will I mention anything having “Jumped the shark”. That’s a very specific condition where a show is great up until a particular episode. What I’m talking about here is very, very different. Very different indeed.
Anyway, bloody well strap in…
* Unless I decide to add it due to a lack of ideas.
** Or the last three or four seasons, depending.
1: THE BBC DRACULA FROM FIVE YEARS AGO
Arriving in January 2020, mere months away from Classic Lockdown™, the BBC’s Dracula adaptation was heralded as a genuine New Year treat. Steven Moffat – the man behind seven years of arguably pretty good Doctor Who – and Mark ‘Mr Horror Historian’ Gatiss doing Dracula? Bound to be great! No way that can fail.
And it WAS great. For about one and a half episodes.
From the off, it was an engrossing, flashback framed retelling of the Bram Stoker novel. The set designs were fantastic, evoking a real sense of prime Hammer Horror. The performances were first rate – particularly John Hefferman as a venereal Johnathan Harker, and a star turn from Dolly Wells as a genuinely effective, gender swapped Van Helsing (the nun).
Dracula himself – the well named Claes Bang – was also excellent. A real suave bastard who’d be up you like a rat up a drain, and THEN do you in real nasty like. The sheer audacity of the gore and creature effects on display on Primetime BBC One is noteworthy in and of itself. It’s a lot like ‘The Thing’ in several respects – especially the bit where Dracula climbs out of an inside out dog, outside of a nunnery. Bare in mind, this is about 90 minutes after The One Show had been on.
I remember watching it and offering insightful comments like, “Shit off!”
Episode two was a touch less good, being entirely set on a boat and whatnot… but it was still fine. Perfectly watchable even. You had faith that you were in good hands.
And then Dracula plopped in the drink for a hundred years and ended up in ‘present day’ Whitby.
“Ooooh,” you’re thinking. “Great. This’ll be like an updated version of Dracula 1972AD or something.”
Well… it wasn’t an updated version of Dracula 1972AD. It wasn’t like that at all.
What we ended up with was this:
A sudden, jarring tonal switch, and a voyage down Who Cares Lane. Abruptly robbed of the period setting, you were fed this half-baked, mid-noughties, BBC3 teen drama. And Dolly Wells played her own descendant, only now she’s in charge of anti-Dracula UNIT.
Lucy Westenra – a kind of helpless, annoying socialite tit in the original book – is brought centre stage, in the form of Lydia West. In this Dracula, Lucy is updated to a hollow, self-absorbed Instagram influencer type who, for some reason, everybody loves. Dracula included, weirdly. Like, why does Count Dracula give a fuck?
Episode three spent an eternity wallowing in the fate of a character nobody liked or felt any empathy for (well I didn’t anyway). The audience – i.e., Me – would’ve been more than happy with a foggy Victorian gore fest, full of people in top hats getting done in.
I recall the hubbub on social media throughout the entire run. Episode one upset all the boiled headed gammons, what with Dracula being a bit of a whoopsie and suckling on fellas – so online, it was like a double helping of the BREXIT wars, but about Dracula ‘not being into birds no more’.
Episode Two was the same two warring factions, but with a slight wistfulness about it all being set on a boat.
Episode three, meanwhile united the nation in a way not seen since the 2012 Olympics… only forged out of mutual hatred.
Frankly...it was all was very upsetting. Very upsetting indeed.
2: TED LASSO – SEASON 2
“Woah there!” You say. “Ted Lasso’s mint. I won’t hear a bad word said against it.”
Well, okay, yes. Fair point. Season one – or, in old money, the first series – was like a breath of fresh air. Like Tiger King, it came along at just the right time, i.e., Immediately post Classic Lockdown ™.
Season one took the concept of a fish out of water / stranger in a strange land comedy, and invested it with an incredible, timely warmth. Here is a man, it said, who makes people better – just through sheer force of niceness. Jason Sudeikis infects people with niceness.
It’s also a solid ten episodes, chock filled with well written characters, genuinely funny dialogue, and a nice balance of light and shade, e.g., Ted has panic attacks occasionally, and his wife’s left him. There’s your pathos, lads.
Ted Lasso deservedly won a wheelbarrow full of awards – add detail here – and received universal acclaim.
So, what went wrong with what the Americans would call its “sophomore” year?
For me, it’s a combination of factors:
- Hannah Waddingham stops being a secret antagonist. Her niceness infection is too severe. Also, once the ‘Hannah Waddingham can sing’ cat is out the bag, that’s it. She’s banging out that one off of Frozen all the fucking time. Hastag exaggeration.
- The sodding Christmas Episode was the second worst thing I’ve ever sat through. 30 odd minutes of unbelievably cliched, overly saccharine, sub-par guff that, were it any longer, may have given me type two diabetes. Still, at least it’s not the FIRST worst thing I’ve ever seen. No, that would be:
- ‘Coach After Hours’. I don’t know… maybe going to 12 eps rather than 10 in its second year created the need for filler. And yes, I get that the story acts as a little format stretcher and a wee firebreak before the season finale, but Jeeeeeeesus Christ: ‘Coach After Hours’ is
Essentially, it’s a riff on the Martin Scorsese film ‘After Hours’, only starring Coach Beard - Lasso’s hirsute yet taciturn assistant – in what can only be described as a cast pantomime. The plot revolves around a dejected Coach having a most unusual, borderline surrealist evening around town, with a supporting cast of series bit players coming off the subs bench (to make a useful footballing analogy).
It's just an odd, odd episode, both weird AND dull – never an ideal combo.
Now, does that mean the whole show is irreparably knacked? Is season three a write off? I don’t know, I didn’t bother watching it… Perhaps it RE-jumped the shark?*
*HAAAA! Got you! I did mention it!! Haaaaa! Look at your face, man. Haaaaa!**
**Re-jumping the shark is when a show is great, turns shit, and then recovers some of its former glory over a period of years.
Regardless, I’ve now written enough paragraphs to fashion an argument – possibly too many paragraphs. I’ll move on.
3: WEST WORLD
Man, that first episode was great.
Just take a moment to recollect that pilot… Go on, close your eyes and have a think. Nobody will know what you’re up to.
Nice.
Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan took Michael Crichton’s 1973 film, and just HBO’d the balls off of it. The series retains all the choicest nuggets from the original – namely sex tourists in robot whore cowboy town run amok, plus a black clad antagonist – and adds heaps of nuance, and, like… substance. Weighty substance at that.
The first episode in particular – hoo boy, remember that? – was tip top. Before the plot of the series started tying itself in chronological knots, that first fun out was an incredible hour or so of television. Ostensibly, its B plot is a remake of film’s first act, where we follow two tourists (one a sleazy, seasoned pro; the other a nervous newcomer) into the theme park. However, our focal point this time around is not the tourists, but the attractions – of which there are a few of considerable note: Delores, the farmer’s daughter who uncovers evidence of the outside world, and starts to break character; Mave, the madame with memories of a hidden life, and buried trauma; Teddy, the doomed hero.
Our sympathies lie almost entirely with the invaded and abused automatons, with few human characters coming off well. As it were. The backroom staff, especially the rank-and-file maintenance staff, come across as horrible greasy chumps.
So, at what point does the show go wrong?
Take your pick.
Once the plot moves outside of Westworld and into other locations, the rot sets in. The feudal Japanese sector looks nice but doesn’t offer much; a medieval world gets hinted at; WWII has a look in at the start of season three – the series starts to lose focus. Even worse are the corporate machinations of ‘present day’, which I for one couldn’t give a flying fig about.
For me, as soon as every other character started being revealed to be a secret robot, and weird, mental holodecks came on the scene, I checked out big style… If you can have people just imagine crap, why bother building kill bots in fancy dress?
However, I’d argue that the central flaw of Westworld is that it’s a ‘one and done’ series. In its heart of hearts, it has enough about it – as a concept – to fill a mini-series, or a very, very long film. It had its natural conclusion as soon as Anthony Hopkins shot himself in the nut.
Was that a spoiler? Quite possibly, sorry.
4: STAR TREK - DISCOVERY
With the ‘Kelvin timeline’ series of films ebbing to a close with Star Trek Beyond, the franchise returned to the small screen in 2017. Star Trek: Discovery bought itself some fan fervor early doors by releasing a teaser trailer that prominently featured the Discovery itself.
“Oooooh!” said the watching Star Trek fan. “Why, that ship looks just like concept art for the Enterprise from the cancelled 1970’s ‘Planet of the Titans’ feature film! Consider my interest piqued!”
Well, what that interest piqued fan didn’t know was that the Discovery itself wouldn’t feature until two episodes in. In fact, the appearance of that ship and its crew is arguably where the wheels fall right the fuck off. BIG style.
Star Trek: Discovery instead begins with a kind of elongated prologue to the series proper. Sonequa Martin-Green’s weirdly named – but it’s fine – Michael Burnham, the series main protagonist, accidently starts a big budget space war and gets her mentor killed in the process. Yes, the fact that she’s called Michael makes one think of the film ‘Moonwalker’, but again that’s fine. Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou is great value for money, as is Doug Jones’ Saru. I didn’t even mind the weird Klingon redesign.
The problem with Discovery, once we actually get onboard and get going, is that the characters are nearly all arseholes. Now, in the case of season one’s Captain Lorca – Jason Issacs – this is fine. He’s the best thing in it. It’s everybody else that’s the problem. Case in point: The annoying ginger roommate; the catty chief engineer; Lt. commander Klingon in disguise… Michelle Yeoh again, playing a Mirror Universe Georgiou, apparently fashioned out of ham. All horrible to look at and listen to.
The show probably isn’t helped by the streaming format, something that all modern Star Trek struggles with. In the case of Discovery however, you’re locked into this depressing dirge of a main story arc for, what, 12 episodes? Then you have to dust yourself off for another flat as a fart season, and uuughhhh… No thanks.
I mean, Discovery deserves a lot of credit for its casting, and creating characters from the LGBTQIA+ community – well done all round – but having done that, you can’t just stand back and nod at them, approvingly. This is a Star Trek series, remember? Have them get into a moral quandary over some weird living rocks or something. ‘Strange New Worlds’ has an episode with a sassy, flirty Transgender character, AND it’s about hokey sci-fi Space Pirates. See?
The fact that Discovery made it to a fifth season, quite frankly, staggers me. Maybe I’m an old man, with itchy arse grapes… But maybe, just maybe, Start Wrek Discovery was very bad from the get-go, and everybody who liked it was wrong?
I certainly believe that to be the case.
5: RAISED BY WOLVES
Finally, and at long last, we get to the reason I wrote this article. Other than to show off.
Episode one of Raised by Wolves might be the best thing Ridley Scott has directed since Blade Runner. Or if not Blade Runner, then Black Rain. One of them.
The memory fades, but as best I recall it’s about a couple of robots left in charge of raising a kind of United Colors of Benetton gaggle of babies. Unborn babies to boot, neatly gestating away in those little cubes that jelly comes in before you pour boiling water on them and turn them into actual real-life proper wobbly jelly. By the way, I’m not advocating pouring boiling hot water on babies in-utero – in fact, I’m against that kind of thing. Not afraid to say it, neither.
Everything about the pilot screams quality: the performances (especially Amanda Colin’s floating, shrieking, pixie cut haired, murder machine Mother); the lovely shit brown cinematography, the design – which looks like the director’s patented “Ridleygrams”, pre-vis storyboards he famously did for the likes of Alien – made real.
It’s interesting; it’s intriguing, and it has a lot to say about… like, theology and theocracy and that... PLUS it’s fucking festival of extreme gore, with lads getting their eyelids torn off and people exploding into clouds of red mist.
All in all, it’s an absolute treat for Ridley fans, especially those upset by the weird disappointment of Alien colon Covenant.
…So, what ruined everything? What spoiled the Raised by Wolves broth?
In a word, every single thing – every occurrence, every story decision, and every individual bit of acting – that happened from episode 2 onwards.
I mean, it’s a bit of a blur now, but here’s some bullets that go somewhere to capturing the feel of how the rest of season one panned out:
- Atheists in disguise, changing allegiance mid-way, upon gaining superpowers or something.
- Some kind of mumbling murderer with a bucket on his head.
- A magic puzzle box that farted out fire? I forget.
- A mysterious scuttler, scuttling about.
- Amanda Colin giving birth to a big snake that was – and I can’t stress this enough – absolutely coated in spunk.
Granted, some detail and subtlety might have been lost to the mists of time. I’m 45 years old.
Anyway, from my perspective, it was like wor Ridders had fashioned enough story to bang out a great first ep, and then abandoned ship.
“Here,” Sir Ridley Scott, MBE may have said. “Yeez finish the rest. Am 80 odd and a cannit be arsed.”
Then presumably sparking up a cigar and riding off on his rickety old Hovis bike. Who knows? I wasn’t there and, crucially, neither were you.
Conclusion
And there we have it.
I could’ve written five more of these, but would you have read them? Quite possibly.
Either way, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed your extended trip to the toilet.
Lots of love,
Tony Clark
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