The State Within

Some of the best things we've seen on DVDs we've borrowed from the Library have been TV series we never caught up on when they were first broadcast.  If they were broadcast here at all.

Over the last couple of days we've watched the six hour-long episodes of The State Within, in which Jason Isaacs plays the British Ambassador in Washington, a man of considerable integrity and honesty, and an unwillingness to play the warmongering game that the current Secretary for Defense is playing.

The series had innumerable twists and turns - some of which, in hindsight, seemed to be there for no reason more than to cast suspicion on a character - but it was well written, very well directed and presented, and had a solid cast of Brits and Yanks. And a big budget, too; early in the piece a passenger plane is blown up over a motorway, and this is only one of a number of large set-pieces.

The series was written and directed by Daniel Percival, and co-authored by Lizzie Mickery, a writer with a great deal of television experience behind her.  Percival began his career as a documentary maker, and his eye for the right detail shows throughout this series.  Michael Offer also shared the directing credits. There'd need to be a co-director: taking on the mammoth task of directing more than six hours of film would require the stamina and brain of a workaholic.  However the work was shared out (they claim three episodes each on imdb.com) there's no sense of this not being all of a piece.

Isaacs more regularly plays suave villains, some more evil than others (The Patriot, Harry Potter), but here he brings his talents to a role that requires him to be hero, substitute father, solid friend, lover and whatever else he has time for. He's on screen for a great deal of the time, and makes a considerable impact, and gives a solid centre to the series.  His offsider is played by Ben Daniels, who is required to keep us guessing throughout (even after it's been revealed which side he's playing on).  Daniels manages this difficult task well, especially as in a couple of instances there seems to be a bit of a puzzle in the scriptwriters' minds as to how far into the double-dealing game he's gone.  There are a host of other characters, many of whom stand out, but it's great to see Sharon Gless, Cagney from the 80s Cagney and Lacey series in a role that allows her some wider leeway for her talent.

The series, which was made in 2006, hasn't dated at all; warmongering with smaller nations, which plays a strong part in the plot, is as rampant as ever, as is the hyping-up of terrorism as an excuse. 

Keaton and Chaplin and all

Someone has put a Buster Keaton montage up on You Tube. It's been set to the music of the Can Can. Whoever put it together had a good sense of the rhythm both of the movie clips and the music, and the thing works very well. There are moments from Keaton movies I've never even heard of, and an endless series of falls, spills, tumbles and slides. Was the man made of rubber? Or else he was a medley of broken bones.



A longer clip, from Charlie Chaplin's Limelight, is also on You Tube, and contrasts the two artists to the benefit of neither. Limelight was produced in 1952, by which time Chaplin was 63 (almost as old as I am now) and Keaton only a little younger at 57. Chaplin drags out a not-particularly funny scene, with him as a violinist and Keaton as his accompanist on the piano, to an almost enormous inordinate length. Everything is overdone and repeated, until you want to scream for help. Chaplin had always dragged things out - it was only in his big setpieces that he really became funny. Keaton built his sequences over dozens of scenes, in which he spent his life struggling against the forces of gravity and the cussedness of machines, houses, and all manner of other paraphenalia. The grand climax was a climax of dozens of little moments, all of them hilarious, and all related to the story overall. (Jacques Tati also built over a long stretch, but required his audience to wait with him until the sudden climax of things - which sometimes was over almost before you knew it - before giving us the sudden belly laugh.)

Keaton is much more generous, and his movies remain more watchable as a result. In the Limelight, he plays second fiddle (as it were) to Chaplain's main role; this means he gets to do the same thing several times as the camera cuts back to him, to do the obvious (standing on Chaplin's violin when it's left on the floor) or looking perplexed when the piano reacts against them both. He has one spectacular moment - wiggling around on the piano stool leads to it flinging him off - but Chaplin tops that by falling into the orchestra pit - landing out of sight, whereas Keaton does his fall in full view.

Chaplin can be redeemed, however, by watching a piece of silent movie nonsense in which he, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Larry Semon, Fatty Arbuckle and Dizzy Daniels all appear. There's no story to it; just a bunch of inept players causing havoc out on a pretty scruffy golf course. Here Chaplin is only seen in short scenes in which his timing with a bunch of golf balls is impeccable.