I still remember Brideshead Revisited and not just because of the script (an adaptation of a novel by Evelyn Waugh). Everything seems magical, unreal. And the places, Brideshead, Venice, Tangier... The second generation of the family is divided between rigid religious values and the call of real life, for love, friendship, adventure. The eldest daughter returns to her comfort zone of purity and God's forgiveness. The youngest one can never free herself from this influence. And the son ends up in Tangier drinking and smoking his life away. The main character finds hope in the end, after all the experiences that life gave him: love, friendship, pain, hope. He is not a believer and has seen how rules can destroy a person devoid of affection. Only love can save and heal. Finally he understands the rejection of his lover and her choice for God and peace of mind.
Another tv series that I won't forget is The jewel in the Crown. Again, it's not just the script. The place is also magical... India in the fourties. So much love and so much pain. So much madness and prejudice. There is hope in the end, even with the scars... More recently, Parade's End and War and Peace. All these tv series are adaptations of novels. And then there are tv series designed directly for television:Law & Order, criminal intent,Menphis Beat, Person of Interest, Borgen, Homeland.
Homeland is becoming better every season. :) Carrie defends young students caught up in the fine line between a natural revolt of free speech and the intention of violence, the real threat. The challenge is huge: how can we draw the line? In Homeland we learn to accept human nature, its strengths and its weaknesses, suffering, dependencies, self-destructive behavior. We won't find prejudice or disgust. Humans are fragile. Hope is still alive in all of them, above suffering and lonely days. This is the message. Humans mess things up but have the ability to fix them.
Pleasantville is a film about fiction and reality.. In a world in black and white everything happens according to a script, there are no surprises and things never go wrong, there are rules that everybody knows and respect. Pleasantville is like a perfect world, where people are young and beautiful, streets are clean, everyone is polite, families live in harmony, good always wins in the end. Reality is about injustice, pain, surprises... and colors. We have no script, rules are not respected, things go wrong. The world is not perfect, bad wins sometimes and villains are powerful. Neverthless in its imperfection, reality is about life and living things, love and passion, curiosity, adventure, future. Europe was presented to european citizens as a Pleasantville with a script and rules, where countries are equal and live in harmony, with respect and fairness... a perfect world. Reality showed them a very different Europe: there was a different script for the powerful, rules were only applied to the weak, citizens were punished for the financial sins. Villains won, good people lost Now Europe is facing a new phase without one of its 28 stars. UK was the first star to flee. Nobody expected such a result, but.now... that it happened... we can understand why. Reality is different from fiction.
This new year brought me a nice surprise: Borgen. Danes are very good actors, I'll never forget Ibsen's The Wild Duck by a danish theater company. Borgen has it all: good actors, good characters, and a very good script. It's almost as if we were watching a real life documentary. Politics, democracy, different parties, the elections, the government, new laws, social issues, international relations, the press, journalism, public and private life, the family. How does democracy work? This is the challenge, everyday. Hard decisions, the consequences, avoid the worst scenario, think fast, be bold and sometimes... just bluff.
The importance of good scripts: "When the script is good, I'm good" (Vincent D' Onofrio).
Since I've watched the first episode of "Law & Order: criminal intent", I became addicted. The stories, the characters, the actors, everything is in place.
The investigation is a teamwork: Goren examines the place and the victim, then tells us what happened there and begins to define the psychological profile of the murderer, the story behind the scene. Eames is more careful with details, who was where and doing what, how and when. She is very pragmatic and straightforward. Impulsive or premeditated, the murder case reveals obsessions, emotions, possessiveness, but also predictability and patterns, habits, culture, beliefs.
Recently I am spending my late afternoons watching Person of interest with Jim Caviezel. The script is based on a screenplay developed by J. J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan (IMDB). Thank you all, writers, producers, actors, designers, for the nice moments I'm spending while Winter is welcoming Spring. It's comforting to believe there is justice in this world and to see the best of mankind showing up in these episodes.
