Reviews
Harry and Cosh (1999)
A hidden treasure: healthily anarchic fun for teenagers
Daniel Peacock may be considered something of an auter (ooh get me!) in the distant future. He has been involved in UK shows such as Diary of a Teenage Health Freak, Harry & Cosh and Cavegirl and all have something of a unique feel (more Larry David than Peter Engel in quality and style thankfully). They are all shows for teenagers that absolutely hit their target audience where they live, with their shockingly realistic portrayal (albeit exaggerated for fun) of the gleefully nasty anarchy of raging adolescence.
The sad thing is that the show is broadcast on a Saturday afternoon on UK's Channel 5 which, whilst a terrestial channel, is not very well promoted, thus neither is "Harry & Cosh" . If the show was on Children's TV (BBC or ITV) it would surely be at least a cult hit (even as a TV addict, I only came upon it this year, 2002, it was so well hidden). However, if it was more well known it would doubtlessly garner many a parental complaint, due to the nihilistic and erotic obsessions of Harry, Cosh and friends. Seen as Peacock's latest show "Cavegirl" has similarly been broadcast on a new digital channel, maybe the subversive writer/director is deliberately keeping low-key, like the trojan-horse of kid's TV.... no it's probably just those damn controllers/schedulers.
Stickmen (2001)
sometimes cliched, sometimes sexist but always enjoyable.
Rather than the Lockstock comparisons (con-tricks in a seedy pub-world of nicknames and an eccentric Mr. Big villain), I was more worried about this film becoming a kiwi take on Doug Lihman's "Swingers" - this worry compounded by the match-cutting of a pool ball been potted and a couple reaching orgasm in the opening minutes of the film.
The visual flashiness and misogynistic small-talk soon subsides and the film becomes a rather sweet sport-film (underdogs in the tournament of their lives, betrayal, self-doubt, physical incapacity before 'big game' etc.). The acting certainly helps, as does the novelty of each pool team representing a deliberately cartoonish tribal-stereotype (similar to the fun of the various 'gangs' in Walter Hill's "The Warriors").
The makers show they are a clever bunch making a competent mass market film that veers the right side of indulging rather than insulting the viewer's intelligence. (I especially liked the underplayed fact that if the stickmen win the final it will give the pub-landlord money to do up their seedy watering-hole and turn it into the sort of flashy pub they hate!)
60 out of 82.
Room to Rent (2000)
Unique film, uneven in tone but plot goes off at some original tangents.
Very British film comedy-romance-drama about immigrants trying to 'make it' in Britian. In the same way that 'My Beautiful Launderette' was hard to categorise as straight romance or straight comedy, so is this, but perhaps it lacks the political bite of the earlier film. However it does feature a likeable lead performance and a plot with enough inertia to keep thickening.
The rather linear and limited appearance of Juliette Lewis is a bit of a mystery. I would suggest she was placed in the film, in the same way that 'Four Weddings And a Funeral' wanted an American actress in order to boost box-office. The trouble is: Juliette Lewis has spoken at length about her enjoyment of the script and how seriously she took the role. Yet her role seems very slight and a little bit of a blind alley. If the Mariyln Monroe impersonator looked and sounded little like Marilyn off-stage (perhaps with a Birmingham, England accent) it would have made more sense and the lead character's love of her would have made his character even more sweetly innocent and endearing.
The last half hour of the film seems to have come from an entirely different script, more fantastical and yet more serious at the same time. Perhaps this is the influence of the literary genre, magical-realism but regardless, it does make for a film that goes somewhere you weren't expecting and how often can you say that about a film?
Prisoner (1979)
The text-book perfect soap-opera coupled with mad storylines.
I have a unique affection for "Prisoner: Cell Block H". It was first shown on English TV in 1984 (Yorkshire Region only), directly after the olympic games of that year had ended. In previous weeks to stop people watching said games, ITV put on sci-fi show 'V' for the first time, and it was my love of 'V' which made me tune in to see its mysterious replacement, cryptically called : 'Prisoner' in the one line programme listings ITV served up after midnight in lieu of 24 hour programming. Within weeks I was hooked and from '84 - '87 I saw it once a week. Then I moved to Stoke (Central TV region) and was overjoyed to find Prisoner beginning its first showing in that region, what's more it was on three times a week! Two years of bliss till I returned to Yorkshire region and had to put up with a miserly 2 episodes a week. The up-shot of my moving locations in Britain being that I was probably the only person in England to have watched the majority of episodes twice! When by the mid to late nineties Yorkshire finally showed the last episode I had been avidly watching it for 10 years. Ahh, bless!
The reason it works so well is because it solves 2 of the many soap-opera's trickiest problems. WHY DO THE CHARACTERS KEEP MEETING EACH OTHER? No silly pub, postbox or neighbours been good friends, simply because they have no choice. They've all got to be together all of the time! WHY DO THE CHARACTERS HAVE SUCH MELODRAMATIC LIVES/WHY DO SO MANY OF THEM DIE? Prison offers us a uniquely brutal demographic, 1000s of ways to leave the series. Anyone could be killed off, and the joy of it been a 5 year old series by the time it reached England was that there were no spoilers in the press, only me and a cat in Durham watched it - or so it seemed!
To top it all, the machinations of the dreaded 'department' were very like 'Hill Street Blues' in showing the politics of the workplace and the corruption of the state - gave a sinister sense of panic while you were watching, no one, from the minister down to the new inmate could ever be completely trusted.
OTT Storylines ruled: terrorism, mafia, serial killers (at least two), deranged hypnotherapists, bomb disposal experts blowing up... those were the days! 'Bad Girls' never really has that escapist excess!