hamish-25851
Joined Sep 2015
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Reviews15
hamish-25851's rating
At last, it's happening. Preacher. They're finally going live action with one of the weirdest, strangest, most imaginative works of fiction - in any genre or format - I've ever encountered.
The good, in order: Dominic Cooper, as Jesse Custer, titular Preacher. He's managing to wear the role, something that very few actors could pull off. Ruth Negga, doing a better Tulip than the one in the comics (and that is saying something). Joseph Gilgun, whose turn as Cassidy is spot-on, truly the comics brought to life.
The sets, the costumes, the effects, the support acting are all first class too. The direction is nicely understated; they keep shots simple, with lots of use of nicely framed setups.
The humour is occasionally outright hilarious. Unfortunately there isn't nearly enough of it, and that's where the bad times start.
They've made some big mistakes with this series. Now, this is not just a fan of the comics talking... they've been putting minor characters and minor plot lines through the blender. Yes, initially I found this profoundly offensive, and it took some work to get past it. Someone who hadn't read the comics wouldn't notice the changes. The trouble is, they don't improve things.
Presumably this chop and change was done in an attempt to create workable TV. I think it was a strategic mistake, a case of missing the wood for the trees. The best thing about Preacher, hands down, was Garth Ennis' hyperactive imagination. Anything went, and frequently did. The original story was absolutely mental. Catlin, Goldberg and Rogen do the best they can (and they're no lightweights) but the goings-on in the TV series are a pale shadow of the fun and games in the comics.
The second major mistake was to make it sexually safe. The comics had every kind of oddball, weirdo, creep, and flat-out pervert imaginable. It was messed up. Sometimes it was shocking, and not in a good way either. Mostly, though, it was cry-while-reading hilarious, not least because the characters came across as real people. Not so the TV series. This is Preacher as overseen by studio execs and marketing teams, watered down to appeal to middle America, or at least to not incite too much hate mail. It is, frankly, tame.
There are the usual TV series problems - bogging down in one location (they spend way too long in Annville), throwing hooks in simply for the sake of luring the audience further along, undeveloped characters and plot lines - but that's just me picking threads at this point.
It's OK. Honest. It was diverting enough that I finished the whole first series, despite everything. It's just that it could have been great and it isn't.
The good, in order: Dominic Cooper, as Jesse Custer, titular Preacher. He's managing to wear the role, something that very few actors could pull off. Ruth Negga, doing a better Tulip than the one in the comics (and that is saying something). Joseph Gilgun, whose turn as Cassidy is spot-on, truly the comics brought to life.
The sets, the costumes, the effects, the support acting are all first class too. The direction is nicely understated; they keep shots simple, with lots of use of nicely framed setups.
The humour is occasionally outright hilarious. Unfortunately there isn't nearly enough of it, and that's where the bad times start.
They've made some big mistakes with this series. Now, this is not just a fan of the comics talking... they've been putting minor characters and minor plot lines through the blender. Yes, initially I found this profoundly offensive, and it took some work to get past it. Someone who hadn't read the comics wouldn't notice the changes. The trouble is, they don't improve things.
Presumably this chop and change was done in an attempt to create workable TV. I think it was a strategic mistake, a case of missing the wood for the trees. The best thing about Preacher, hands down, was Garth Ennis' hyperactive imagination. Anything went, and frequently did. The original story was absolutely mental. Catlin, Goldberg and Rogen do the best they can (and they're no lightweights) but the goings-on in the TV series are a pale shadow of the fun and games in the comics.
The second major mistake was to make it sexually safe. The comics had every kind of oddball, weirdo, creep, and flat-out pervert imaginable. It was messed up. Sometimes it was shocking, and not in a good way either. Mostly, though, it was cry-while-reading hilarious, not least because the characters came across as real people. Not so the TV series. This is Preacher as overseen by studio execs and marketing teams, watered down to appeal to middle America, or at least to not incite too much hate mail. It is, frankly, tame.
There are the usual TV series problems - bogging down in one location (they spend way too long in Annville), throwing hooks in simply for the sake of luring the audience further along, undeveloped characters and plot lines - but that's just me picking threads at this point.
It's OK. Honest. It was diverting enough that I finished the whole first series, despite everything. It's just that it could have been great and it isn't.
Banshee spends its first five minutes telling viewers exactly what they're in for: hyper-fast plot lines, action, sex, criminality... and the unexpected. The pace slows down to something more normal after that hyperfast introduction but it's still very quick compared to most television plot lines. They don't waste a second of screen time.
It's also extreme compared to anything else I've seen on TV. The violence is frequent, graphic and brutal, sometimes even hideous. The sex is the counterpart to that: there's a lot of flesh on display and a lot of people getting their game on. Sometimes the sex isn't nice or happy either. The thing about both of these isn't the quantity (there's a lot), it's how they're both done.
Extreme but believable, in a nutshell. The sex might be almost a drinking game at times (who isn't the main character going to get with?) but it feels real in a way that I haven't seen in a TV show before. It's rough, it's raw, and just because people have been lovers, it doesn't mean that they love each other. The negotiation doesn't stop on the morning after.
The fight scenes are expertly choreographed. The moves are correct and they're not shy about improvising weapons with whatever they can get their hands on. One of the things that impressed me most about the fights is something understated: there are frequent shootouts, mostly with pistols. People miss. A lot. The entertainment industry is plagued with the cliché of the impossible pistol shot, but it doesn't happen here.
There has to be more to it than sex and violence, and this is where the show really does excel. All the main players are caught in a tangled, interlocked web of lies, secrets and history. The acting is uniformly good to excellent - and the two leads are fantastic. Characterisation gets better as the show progresses, and characters evolve and change. It'd work without the graphic material, the obvious stuff is simply the icing on the cake.
Great dirty, nasty, rough escapist fun. It's a bit cartoonish at times, a fair bit of suspension of disbelief required, but never a dull moment. This is basically the best show I'd never heard of.
It's also extreme compared to anything else I've seen on TV. The violence is frequent, graphic and brutal, sometimes even hideous. The sex is the counterpart to that: there's a lot of flesh on display and a lot of people getting their game on. Sometimes the sex isn't nice or happy either. The thing about both of these isn't the quantity (there's a lot), it's how they're both done.
Extreme but believable, in a nutshell. The sex might be almost a drinking game at times (who isn't the main character going to get with?) but it feels real in a way that I haven't seen in a TV show before. It's rough, it's raw, and just because people have been lovers, it doesn't mean that they love each other. The negotiation doesn't stop on the morning after.
The fight scenes are expertly choreographed. The moves are correct and they're not shy about improvising weapons with whatever they can get their hands on. One of the things that impressed me most about the fights is something understated: there are frequent shootouts, mostly with pistols. People miss. A lot. The entertainment industry is plagued with the cliché of the impossible pistol shot, but it doesn't happen here.
There has to be more to it than sex and violence, and this is where the show really does excel. All the main players are caught in a tangled, interlocked web of lies, secrets and history. The acting is uniformly good to excellent - and the two leads are fantastic. Characterisation gets better as the show progresses, and characters evolve and change. It'd work without the graphic material, the obvious stuff is simply the icing on the cake.
Great dirty, nasty, rough escapist fun. It's a bit cartoonish at times, a fair bit of suspension of disbelief required, but never a dull moment. This is basically the best show I'd never heard of.
