DANCING ON THE EDGE
Monday and Tuesday, BBC2, 9pm
BEING HUMAN
Sunday, BBC3, 10pm
Paul Whitelaw
Listen. Can you hear it? That hushed collective murmur. That crackle of furrowed brows. It can only mean one thing: maverick auteur Stephen Poliakoff has descended from the heavens with yet another lofty drama heaving with prestige.
One of British television's only prominent writer/directors, Poliakoff is renowned – and in some quarters, reviled – as an idiosyncratic purveyor of discursive narrative and mannered style. His dramas are often wilfully opaque and burnished with a sort of straight-faced eccentricity which, for me at least, makes him one of the medium's most intriguing artistes (for make no mistake, the man is an artiste).
And yet despite having worked in TV for over 30 years, Poliakoff has never created a drama series. That is, until now. Spread over six episodes, DANCING ON THE EDGE focuses on a fictional black jazz band caught in web of dangerous intrigue in early 1930s London.
It begins arrestingly with the suave yet hunted figure of band-leader Louis Lester (the strikingly charismatic Chiwetel Ejiofor) seeking desperate refuge at the headquarters of a popular music magazine edited by rogueish critic Stanley (Matthew Goode, seemingly channelling the winning, edgy charm of a young David Bowie). It then flashes back to eighteen months earlier, where we discover how they met amidst an aristocratic circle of seemingly well-meaning white liberals who, despite professing a sincere love of Lester's thrillingly modern music, appear to be partially attracted by the shock-waves it causes throughout sniffy high society.
The more enigmatic members of the group include a powerful American tycoon played by John Goodman, whose ambiguous motives drive much of the plot, and a benevolent playboy played by Anthony Head. The impressive cast is rounded out by Jacqueline Bisset, Mel Smith, Caroline Quentin and new Doctor Who companion Jenna Louise-Coleman.
One of the more interesting things about Dancing On the Edge is how it merges thriller fiction with little-explored historical fact, as The Louis Lester Band, under the auspices of the ambitious Stanley, suddenly find themselves rubbing shoulders with royalty (in reality, Edward VIII was friendly with the Duke Ellington band) while struggling against ingrained prejudice and Britain's fierce immigration policies.
It's also interesting to see Poliakoff attempt a drama with a potentially more populist appeal – indeed, it's vaguely redolent of The Hour - although the downside of this is that some of his more distinctive traits are compromised in the process. His approach at times is clumsily heavy-handed, with characters prone to articulating their inner motives in unnecessarily helpful detail (in episode one alone, Head's character seems to spend most of his time excitedly looking forward to Britain's future. Oh, if only he knew, eh viewers?). It feels rather condescending, as if the great artiste doesn't trust his audience with nuance of meaning. And having watched the entire series, I can report with some authority that he spreads too little story over too many episodes.
Furthermore, it's little wonder that the first two episodes are screening over successive evenings, given that very little of note actually happens in part one. It's only in part two that the stakes are ramped up, thus drawing you in for more. Because once it gets going its central mystery exerts a fairly solid grip – the gnawing question of who Lester can really trust among his new friends is effectively sustained throughout – and the cast never put a foot wrong. The original period score by Adrian Johnston is appropriately lively, and Poliakoff has lost none of his knack for creating unsettling moods within the artfully oppressive confines of grand houses and hotels. That's one of his “things”, dontcha know.
Similarly obsessed with the horror of hotels, albeit of a tattier three-star persuasion, is writer Toby Whithouse, who delivered a memorable episode of Doctor Who in 2011 which owed much to Kubrick's The Shining. He's at it again with the fifth series of BEING HUMAN, which positions two of its central characters – Hal the vampire and Tom the werewolf – as lowly employees at a hotel in which all manner of blood-caked supernatural mayhem inevitably ensues.
This is the first series of this black comedy-drama in which the original trio of house-sharing ghouls don't appear at all. Fortunately, actors Damien Moloney, Michael Socha and Kate Bracken – a Scottish actress who would've been a far more effective Amy Pond in Doctor Who than Karen Gillan ever was – are capable, likeable replacements. But the problem now with Being Human isn't that the cast has changed, but that the format feels tired.
The personal (if you will) demons and emotional dynamic between the three characters are essentially identical to those of the original line-up. It feels like we've seen it all before. Also, the conceit of introducing a powerful new antagonist every year, who must always be bigger and badder than previous foes, now feels rather rote and strained. All ongoing dramas are bound by formula to an extent, but Being Human appears to have exhausted itself.
You know it's getting desperate when even the addition of Phil Davis in his grizzled, scowling pomp can't add much juice to proceedings. I'd like to be proved wrong, but I don't hold out much hope.
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