I recently took out a subscription to Britbox.co.uk. A joint venture by the BBC and ITV (Channel 4 may 'come on board at some stage') to rival such services as 'Netflix'. While the BBC (iPlayer) and ITV ('itvhub') have their own streaming services, this tends to be somewhat limited; mostly showing, 'on catch-up', orogrammes, which have been aired recently on terrestrial TV on the broadcasters' multiple channels 'Bitbox' gives one the opportunity to view the entirety of multiple seasons, for little more than the cost per year of an eight or ten season on DVD, from the very beginning. I thought this 'worth a punt'. No more buying 'on spec' or by Amazon reviews of quality; I could make up my own mind. However, at the back of my mind, is the promise of all seven seasons of 'Hill Street Blues'; only the first two are on DVD.
I spent much of the nineties and subsequent decades devoid of a TV set. Why would I buy a £500 'consumer durable', purchase a licence every year (required by UK law) to watch one (or maybe two at a push) programmes a week? No; I had no time for this! I watched the DVDs that I had bought (mostly 50's or early 60's), a few streaming, low-quality porn videos on-line in miniscule 240 windows and a plausible, yet unattainable, vision of my future.
And then I watched 'Spooks' ('MI-5 in America) as my 'guide' to what might be on 'Britbox',
The first episode confirmed my worst fears about how low 'British' drama could sink; a hackneyed remake of 'The Sweeney' with 'Counter Terrorism' replacing Regan and the Flying Squad. However, I wanted, needed it to be better and so I persevered. Happily, it seemed to improve, although perhaps I lowered my expectations unwittingly.
What struck me was how leading characters, characters that the audience had perhaps invested in, were routinely killed off (literally); actors were lucky if they survived a season without being killed! Was this intentional from the start? Or just something that grew out of an actor's wish not to continue with a role beyond a limited 'run'.
(An aside, Hermione Norris is both an accomplished actor and still, despite her age, absolutely drop dead gorgeous! And Nicola Walker, equally talented and strangely, equally attractive to me, although I have no idea why. She is no 'beauty' in any conventional sense! Perhaps her talent is more than enough for a 'hard on'!)
So why the interest in prime-time, 'vulgar' television?
Because of what it says, despite itself perhaps, about lies and deceit!
Spies, undercover cops, anybody pretending to be not what they are because of their job, has to be a potential victim of their job. Can one live with the deceit that one ladles out to all and sundry including those closest to you.
We are all guilty, to a larger or lesser extent, of 'fabricating' events in our lives; embellishing some real event with a degree of artistic licence or simply making the whole thing up as one goes along. Memory is a fallible thing and, unwittingly, one can often be seduced by how events play out in memory not the actual reality of that event and the more you tell yourself or others the 'story', the more 'fixed' it becomes so that you can 'tell' it in no other way.
However, what happens when you fabricate an existence, which you know to be untrue; can you ever go back to being 'yourself'? Someone you might recognise from a previous time? Somebody that embodies the 'real' you? Surely, the longer that the duplicity becomes 'your life', the greater the chance of losing 'yourself' in the 'lie'.
This happens to most of the major characters and even when they try to 'come clean', it invariably ends badly. Cynical scriptwriters or just an observation on life and an admonishment to always tell the truth. Sometimes, even prime-time and 'vulgar' television can be more 'intelligent' than we give it credit for.
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