Box Set Match
Love Hate - Series 4
Love/Hate is Ireland’s answer to Breaking Bad. It is our most expensive programme. It is about crime. It is highly addictive. Oh, and it makes me wince when I watch it.
While the season opener of Series 3 featured a rape and a murder, this years reintroduction to the world of Nidge and his motley crew showcased a much less horrifying episode: a cat was shot dead by a young boy. Sure, that’s grand.
The uproar caused by this incident made many front pages over the past week, including a shaming from ARAN (Animal Rights Action Network).
There is something rather perverse going on here. No one seems to complain when a human is shot dead on screen. But a little pussy cat? That’s just too much. Beyond that, ARAN believes that showing this sort of abominable behaviour on screen can only add to the problem of animal abuse. One of the functions of good televsion and film drama is that it casts a light on what is going on in our society, but which we may not be aware of. Surely Love/Hate has brought to our attention the horrendous things that people do to animals rather than encouraged us to take a rifle to little Felix?
What makes the scene so powerful is the fact that it is a child who perpetrates the crime. He laughs afterwards. Writer Stuart Carolan is making a point here; a child may begin shooting a cat but it is the first rung on a ladder which reaches up to the ignominy of Nidge.
Tommy is brain-damaged from the beating he received from Nidge at the end of Series 3. Killian Scott does a great job of portraying the infantile naivety of Tommy, with his line, “Can I have a fizzy orange”, now gone viral.
Nidge is a haunted man in this opening installment. The episode begins and ends with his visits to the grave of Darren. He has a new nemesis in the guise of DI Moynihan, played by acclaimed Irish actor, Brian F O’Byrne. Things are threatening to spiral out of control for Nidge as he attempts to keep a handle on the ever-increasing complexity of his relationships.
He is a different man to previous series. Before, there was something likeable about this character. He was a sort of clown despite his ever present menace.
What we have now is a man who is clearly miserable and disillusioned. In one scene he is using the services of a prostitute. He lies there, motionless, his thoughts a million miles away while his prostitute rocks back and forth on top of him. A part of him has died.
This has the effect of removing our sympathy for him. Is he just a killer now? What is the point of his life?
One of the successes of Breaking Bad is that it makes Walter White normal and human and steeped in the context of domesticity. We need more of the domestic in Love/Hate and less of the gangland violence. Otherwise what is the point? We need to see glimpses of the normality of their lives in order to justify and heighten the criminal aspects.
Keepin’ it Reel
Blue Jasmine goes up in smoke
Woody Allen has pulled his latest movie, Blue Jasmine, from the Indian market, just before its much anticipated release. Censorship laws in India are very strict. Any films which show characters smoking cigarettes are required to have a scroll running at the bottom of the screen throughout the scene. This warns viewers of the negative effect of smoking on their health. The film would also require a graphic anti-smoking advertisement at the beginning of the film. Not only that, but the film would need to be interrupted half way through for another anti-smoking advertisement to ensure that the viewers are quite clear of the most obvious message in the world: Don’t try this at home, kids!
What sort of precedent is this farcical endeavour setting? If this is happening, should there not also be a warning scroll during a violent scene (“violence is bad for your health”) or a sex scene (sex is bad if you’re underage”)? What about if a character uses a knife to cut a birthday cake (knives are sharp and can be dangerous”). Eventually the entire film screen will be filled with warnings..I can envisage a giant flashing text warning now…”EVERYTHING IS BAD! DON’T DO ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THIS MOVIE!
New drama about Charlie Haughey
RTE’s production on Charlie Haughey’s political career goes into production this week. Aidan Gillen of Love/Hate and The Wire fame will play the late Fianna Fail leader, while Tom Vaughan Lawlor, AKA Nidge, will play PJ Mara, Haughey’s political adviser. The show is written by Dublin man Colin Teevan. It will be a trilogy of 90 minute episodes. The current working title is ‘Charlie’...while other sources say its going to be called ‘Citizen Charlie’. The show has a budget of 3.7 million Euro.
David Jason and Bridget Jones: a match not made in heaven
David Jason’s autobiography, My Life and the new Bridget Jones novel, Mad about the Boy, both came out on the same day last week. Fans of the Helen Fielding series will have been surprised half way through the book however, as there are forty pages of David Jason’s book accidentally inserted in the middle. The publisher, Vintage Books, said, “The printers have had a Bridget moment”.
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