TV Series: Close to the Enemy (2016)

Unlike another reviewer, I didn't make it to the half hour mark. I only lasted twenty-five minutes. In my defence, each minute felt like an hour.

Jim Sturgess has the lead and is particularly awful, putting on an accent and a tone that are horrible to listen to, phony and irritating at once, as if he were copying a Cockney doing a bad imitation of a toff. His voice in this is completely unbearable – and as he was heavily featured in most of the first twenty-five minutes, you'll see why I had to give up.

There are so many actors out there who could achieve a posh accent or already have one (George Blagden, Alex Vlahos,  Clive Standen to name a few) that it seems stupid to cast one who can't deliver (although maybe anyone who could, read the script and said 'No thanks'). And is it me or is Alfred Molina always exactly the same?

It's not all his fault though as I often persevere longer with dramas where there's one annoying character, if the script, plot, other characters hold my interest. This is not the case here.

I've enjoyed Poliakoff in the distant past (certainly not recently) but perhaps he's had his day. It annoys me that the BBC has spent our money on something else so turgid and tiresome.

TV Series: Taken on 5USA

Neeson as Bryan Mills

This is a spin-off from the Liam Neeson film franchise. I gather the films are pretty formulaic, with Neeson’s protagonist, the ordinary-sounding Bryan Mills, a name that is also used in the TV series, but which sounds more like a mail-order catalogue from the 1970s than a moniker for an action hero, tooling up with weapons prior to encountering some cartoon-like baddies and somehow despatching them one by one. You know the sort of thing I mean, the films your Dad and brother love and love partly because they know what to expect. It’s only ever gonna go one way.

Rollo, never without a weapon

The only possible justification for this series is the sex appeal and presence of Clive Standen (who I loved as Rollo in Vikings, let’s face it, he’s not hard to look at) but it’s a poor vehicle for his talents. He does his best, much like Patrick Swayze (Rest in Peace) in The Beast* (I’ve got to say that Travis Fimmel was far better in Vikings than in the latter), with a poorly scripted, poorly plotted show.  I can't fault Standen. Because of his physique, he’s a much more credible ‘special ops’ guy than Neeson, for instance, or even Bruce Willis. He delivers his lines, no matter how nonsensical, with absolute conviction. 

Bryan Mills, ditto

It’s just so hackneyed, the storyline from IMDb says Mills is coping with a personal tragedy as are all the heroes in these shows, from Leroy Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in NCIS to Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) in The Mentalist, to Walt (Robert Taylor) in Longmire. Feel free to comment and add your own.

Jennifer Beals, who is the source of all the missions this elite team take on and for some reason ends up looking like a man in drag, asks to see Clive alone to say: ‘I just wanted to check in with you’. He’s bemused: ‘Ok. Why?’ We say: ‘Because you’re sexy?’  I can completely understand why Standen took the role – a lead in a TV series seems too good to resist, especially when you’ve been playing second fiddle to Ragnar for a while but he’s capable of much more than this.

Carrie Mathison

It’s sort of Homeland without, oh, everything that Homeland has – real suspense, fully developed and engaging leads, believable storylines, quickfire and natural-seeming dialogue and a character you root for even when she's really annoying you in Claire Danes's Carrie Mathison (like Buffy, 'she saved the world, a lot'). For more on Homeland, see Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) and Peter Quinn in Homeland.

What we get is a whole load of on-the-nose dialogue (i.e. dialogue that explains a character’s back-story or tells us what they’re like), something like ‘So you’ve been sent here after your actions in the whatever when this and this happened’. See my review of Ferocious Planet for some good examples. The characters are stereotypes. There’s always a nerdy computer whiz (a boffin, I love that word), often Jewish for some reason, who has trouble making small talk or relating to others.

Patrick Swayze, Travis Fimmel, The Beast

*My favourite line was Swayze’s character, Charles Barker’s comment on a mysterious band of baddies:  ‘It doesn’t  have a name. Sometimes they call it the Outfit.’ Ok, so that would be a name, Patrick.

For more on Travis Fimmel,Clive Standen, etc., see Ragnar and Athelstan. For more on Ragnar, see Travis Fimmel is Ragnar Lothbrok.