At the weekend, I finished watching the first series of The West Wing. It’s a series that hits the ground running, but even so you can see it evolving. The top-billed characters of Sam and Mandy begin to fade early on: although Rob Lowe is the notional star, he quickly becomes an equal part of the ensemble, while the annoying Moira Kelly is sidelined with little to do and disappears entirely after this season. The charismatic President Bartlet, meanwhile, brought marvellously to life by Martin Sheen, takes centre stage from the moment he silences a roomful of arguing people by proclaiming the First Commandment.
It’s my impression – although until I’ve made my way through the next few box sets I won’t be able to confirm it – that the writing is a little rawer to begin with. Issues – and particularly moral ones – are dealt with less subtly than in future scripts and very occasionally a character gives a slightly unrealistic speech (of the sort to which characters in Babylon 5 were regularly prone). The humour is there throughout though, proving not only that you don’t have to be a comedy or a “comedy drama” to be funny; indeed, good drama needs humour. The whole season stands up well seven years on and it’s immediately clear why it was such a hit.
I’ve mentioned before the crossover of actors between 24, Lost and The West Wing, so my Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Kiefer Sutherland brain was on the look out for more. The most notable in this season is Reiko Aylesworth – Michelle Desslar in 24 – who pops up in the penultimate episode playing a fellow student of “Sam’s friend”. Also making an appearance – in “He Shall, From Time To Time…” – is Harry Groener as the Secretary of Agriculture. He later appears in Inauguration Day Part 2, in which he turns into a giant snake and eats everyone. (“I’m suffering from relapsing-remitting gargantuan snakeitis.”)
One other actorly observation: in “20 Hours in L.A.”, Donna spots Matthew Perry at a party; apparently in season 4 she is too polite to mention to Joe Quincy that he’s the spitting image of the Friends actor.
Best episodes: “Six Meetings Before Lunch” (if only for CJ doing “The Jackal”), the recently much-cited “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet”, and the excellent finale, “What Kind of Day Has It Been?” (which, in retrospect rather ominously, features a problem with the Space Shuttle Columbia).
Watching Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe on BBC Four last night, I was reassured that my DVD collection isn’t as unfashionable as I thought: Brooker praised Columbo, possibly the least hip box sets I own. He also rightly recommended Monk, a marvellously amusing (if not too intellectually taxing on the Whodunnit scale) US series about an obsessive-compulsive detective.
But the highlight of this week’s Screen Wipe for me was his description of Elizabeth Estensen off of Emmerdale Farm (call it by its name) as
“Elizabeth Estensen from The Liver Birds and T-Bag.”
There is no logic to it; it just pleased me.
Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet was, as Alex says, a bit hit and miss, but the Doctor is worth the monsters hits were worth the misses and the combined average was well above par.* My favourite bit (as picked out too by Paul Evans in Alex’s comments box) was Stewart Lee’s line
What is more disgusting, a girl singing with her guts hanging out and her intestines slung over her shoulder… or the institution of the monarchy?
Roll on next Thursday.
*”Above par” is in golf, of course, a bad thing, but here I’m using it to mean a good thing.
This week’s excitement was a trip to rainy Glasgow for a quiz show audition – my ninth, I reckon – for a programme called 1 vs 100. It will be the new Saturday night lottery show so if I get on (no guarantees – they’re seeing about 2,000 people but it wasn’t clear how many they need) it’ll be my first foray into primetime BBC1 telly. (ITV1 is the only terrestrial channel I’ve not been on, but I can’t say it’s something I aspire to, TV snob that I am.) You can read a bit about the show in this press release. Like Deal or No Deal, it’s being made by Endemol and the format has been successful abroad.
The three-hour audition was the longest I’ve ever been to. There were sixty of us and we were given written tests (which were fine) and then short interviews on camera to show our personalities (trickier). I talked about blogging and generally sounded like a geek, but fingers crossed I came across OK. I should find out in September if I’ve got on.
Next Wednesday I have the second of my two auditions, for which I’ll be making my first trip to Leith. You go without for years and then two come along at once. This one will be for Countdown.
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