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nigeltdeThe best thing about The Queen is of course all that delicious Received Pronunciation, the second best thing is Helen Mirren, and the third best thing is the awkward conversations, but I did also enjoy it as a snapshot of a country transitioning from a culture of restraint to a culture of spectacle, and all the value judgements and historical reconstruction that implies. Indeed it is so composed and precise that all that news footage really spills out the edges in quite a jarring way, perfectly capturing the destabilising influence that the mere image of Diana provokes. Nicely done but not as top tier as I was lead to believe.
It makes an interesting companion piece to two shows I have been catching up on recently, contrasting sharply with Rome, a show that embraces the excess its setting and channel permits to absolutely no useful purpose except excess itself, a noble enough purpose but one that hardly makes for compelling viewing. Especially since they have no handle on camp at all, which is jarring seeing as all the sets look like they came from Xena, a show with a beautiful understanding of how to marry camp and character.
And then there's Mad Men, a show I find myself liking but being incapable of loving because the restraint it practises is so emotionally disengaging. Nevertheless I continue to watch and find myself thinking about it quite a bit. A real stroke of inspiration/inevitability to meld this workplace and this time with this drama, these people obsessed with label, status, lie, in their personal and professional lives. So what we have is a show about the disconnect between the people we want to be and the people we think we are, the cost of artifice, the hollowness of the modern condition, but come on: not even Patrick Bateman was in advertising.
Of course it is the way in which these characters are affected that is meant to be revealing: the most sympathetic character, Salvatore, whose closetedness is the most straightforward and understandable secret in the show; Joan, whose perfect construction of womanhood moves rapidly into the subsuming and terrible sublime; Campbell's desperation and inability to ape that constantly backfires and spends him into deeper spirals of anger and desperation (and it is his inability to construct a facade and his desperate need to do so that makes him both the most human and one of the most repellent characters); and John Hamm is so perfectly expressionless and emotionally distant as Draper that he could literally be anyone in there (the way he finally walked a direct path between Draper and Whitman in in 3.11 was an astounding piece of acting). And it's lovely they're letting their characters be self-indulgent, abusive, despicable people.
But I can't get past the facade of the whole thing; even the meticulous, gorgeous production design feels like part of the game, part of the set-up; I keep waiting to find out its private hubris (there! in the corner! A kettle from 1971!). It must be a matter of personal taste because I can't help but compare to Deadwood, which has a similar production-design-level dedication to historical accuracy but which is about the messiness of humanity, about people with their guts spilling out on the floor at your feet, people so desperate to form community and make a human connection that even the most repressed of them reveals himself a man of destructively deep feeling with the barest of twitches. The characters of Mad Men are so affected and mannered that I find them ultimately hollow and only imaginable, which is in that frustratingly Ouroborisian way one of the central, meticulously constructed themes. The way this show has been received and talked about had me expecting more but LUCKILY I have avoided having to restructure my carefully illustrated list of Favourite Things, because then I would have to find a whole new way identify myself with the things I like.
It makes an interesting companion piece to two shows I have been catching up on recently, contrasting sharply with Rome, a show that embraces the excess its setting and channel permits to absolutely no useful purpose except excess itself, a noble enough purpose but one that hardly makes for compelling viewing. Especially since they have no handle on camp at all, which is jarring seeing as all the sets look like they came from Xena, a show with a beautiful understanding of how to marry camp and character.
And then there's Mad Men, a show I find myself liking but being incapable of loving because the restraint it practises is so emotionally disengaging. Nevertheless I continue to watch and find myself thinking about it quite a bit. A real stroke of inspiration/inevitability to meld this workplace and this time with this drama, these people obsessed with label, status, lie, in their personal and professional lives. So what we have is a show about the disconnect between the people we want to be and the people we think we are, the cost of artifice, the hollowness of the modern condition, but come on: not even Patrick Bateman was in advertising.
Of course it is the way in which these characters are affected that is meant to be revealing: the most sympathetic character, Salvatore, whose closetedness is the most straightforward and understandable secret in the show; Joan, whose perfect construction of womanhood moves rapidly into the subsuming and terrible sublime; Campbell's desperation and inability to ape that constantly backfires and spends him into deeper spirals of anger and desperation (and it is his inability to construct a facade and his desperate need to do so that makes him both the most human and one of the most repellent characters); and John Hamm is so perfectly expressionless and emotionally distant as Draper that he could literally be anyone in there (the way he finally walked a direct path between Draper and Whitman in in 3.11 was an astounding piece of acting). And it's lovely they're letting their characters be self-indulgent, abusive, despicable people.
But I can't get past the facade of the whole thing; even the meticulous, gorgeous production design feels like part of the game, part of the set-up; I keep waiting to find out its private hubris (there! in the corner! A kettle from 1971!). It must be a matter of personal taste because I can't help but compare to Deadwood, which has a similar production-design-level dedication to historical accuracy but which is about the messiness of humanity, about people with their guts spilling out on the floor at your feet, people so desperate to form community and make a human connection that even the most repressed of them reveals himself a man of destructively deep feeling with the barest of twitches. The characters of Mad Men are so affected and mannered that I find them ultimately hollow and only imaginable, which is in that frustratingly Ouroborisian way one of the central, meticulously constructed themes. The way this show has been received and talked about had me expecting more but LUCKILY I have avoided having to restructure my carefully illustrated list of Favourite Things, because then I would have to find a whole new way identify myself with the things I like.
