Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Flash Forward flash in the pan

I must say, I've been dreadfully disappointed by 'Flash Forward', the most heralded American TV import since 'The Bionic Man'.

With a brilliant 'Lost'-like idea, of everyone falling unconscious for two minutes, and then waking up with premonitions, it soon tailed off into the usual cliches of 'Government is Good', 'Heroic FBI officers saving the world', predictable dialogue, awful tinny music, and the more senior the person in the US government machine, the more female and the more black they are.

Indeed, you can almost work out someones seniority on sight, in the glorious mankind-saving machine that is the US government in American TV, by their skin melatonin content and their X-chromosome ratio.

It's the white guys at the bottom, then the black guys above them, and then the black women above them. And all of them use the same corny lines taken from the authorised US scriptwriters' book of cheesy phrases. "You gotta do what you gotta do", "I just wanted some me time", "Suck it up", etc, etc, ad nauseam, in that brutal mechanistic way typical of "Fringe", "Stargate Universe", and all the other "Government is Good" twaddle that passes for 'cutting edge' entertainment on our TV screens.

It makes you realise just how good 'Lost' is, when you endure such tedious state-loving rot. What was funniest was when the most senior government drone appeared (a black woman) and complained about the FBI men having spent too much money on their research. Since when did anyone in Mordor-on-the-Potomac ever complain about their people spending too much of other people's money? At that point I just switched off.

No doubt in Flash Forward the FBI will eventually save the world and the evil people will turn out to be some white men in some rogue part of some private "free market" corporation.

Well, maybe. Fortunately I won't be sticking around long enough to find out.

Poor old Joseph Fiennes. Although his American accent is much better than Hugh Laurie's, fancy having to deliver such dreadful dialogue after having been so wonderful in 'Shakespeare in Love'.

As the Great Bard himself may have put it, if forced to listen to such appalling script writing; "That it should have come to this!"

No doubt Fiennes' pay cheques are making up for the disappointment. So good luck to him on that front, at least.

I wonder if he'll make as much as Hugh Laurie? And don't get me started on 'House' having been forced to give up his opiates by the genuflection of his own scriptwriters to the DEA.

A plague on all their houses.

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