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dreamerinsilicoI have an occasional habit of watching things because of gifsets. Usually gifsets with The Gay.
So when I saw Gillian Anderson kissing Archie Panjabi on Tumblr, I (correctly) assumed that it was really just "ambiguously bi/pan woman kisses straight woman to get an annoying man to go away" but nevertheless since 1. it was Gillian Anderson and 2. the show was only three British seasons long, I impulse-watched it. (Or, well, most of it.)
Premise: Rockstar cop (Gillian Anderson) comes to Belfast to catch a serial killer (Jamie Dornan) who's been preying on successful young women in high-powered fields.
(Hilarious thing: Gillian's character here, Stella Gibson, looks exactly fucking like her Hannibal character, Bedelia du Maurier. Blonde hair, icy demeanor, pencil skirts and all. But this time she's a cop!)
My takeaway, I think, is that I appreciate the show's major themes and Gillian's performance, but think she was underutilized as an actress and that the show really suffers from the assumption that Jamie Dornan's character, Paul Spector, is actually interesting.
He isn't. He really fucking isn't.
Maybe Jamie Dornan can give an excellent, nuanced performance when the character he's playing has more depth than "misogynistic abuser with great abs," but since that's all I've personally got to go on, I'm really not fucking impressed. (Apparently he won at least one award for his performance in this? Which is a travesty. He demonstrates maybe three facial expressions, and the one he's wearing 80% of the time is "brooding stoicism." This character is such a cliche it's embarrassing.) The show spends approximately equal screen-time on him as with Gillian's character, and that was a mistake, as far as I'm concerned. I applaud the obviously very intentional decision to make him "normal" - he has a wife and two kids and he loves his daughter very much - but it lingers so fucking much on his day-to-day life hugging his daughter and lying to his wife and it's just... boring and unnecessary.
The fact that he's a believably normal guy is central to one of the themes - Gillian's character gets to call that out when one of her male colleagues calls him a "monster," and she says no, he's just a man who's taken his misogyny a bit further than most do. That's good and important. But his angst and his family drama isn't actually interesting, because he's not interesting. He's just another fucking misogynistic piece of shit who lies to his wife a lot and kills women who are more successful than he is because he gets off on it. Very few of the scenes focusing on him give the audience information we don't already know.
Gillian's character is largely interesting because she's both a badass and so untouchable in ways women aren't conventionally expected to be, while showing nothing but solidarity and empathy toward other women who don't have her brazen disregard for cultural norms. (No whiff of "I'm not like other women" from her, which is fucking refreshing.) There's a whole otherwise-superfluous side-plot in the first season that really only serves to slightly flesh out a one-night-stand that other characters repeatedly attempt to slut-shame her for. But it almost actually works because she gets to drop some serious truth bombs about gendered double standards without it coming across as shoehorned in.
The second biggest problem in the show, to my eyes (the first being how much time and cinematographic energy is spent on a boring antagonist), is how little she's given to play off of in terms of other characters. Her scenes with Professor Reed-Smith (Archie Panjabi) and Farrington (Niamh McGrady) are the most dynamic and deep-feeling in terms of character interactions, yet both these interactions with Stella in a colleague and mentor position, respectively, are few and far between. Stella's direct superior is a weak man who can't remotely match her personality or competence. The challenges internal to the police that she faces feel toothless, manufactured, because there is no credible same-side antagonist. Her interactions with the main antagonist are very limited, and always (at least up to S3E2, where I stopped) obviously under her control. Gillian is a spectacular actress, but she doesn't have very much to work with, throughout the show, in terms of rapport with other actors. I don't think that says anything about the other actors around her so much as it says the writers should have given her a character whom she could consistently be on the same, or similar level with.
Anyway. I stopped watching and just read a summary for about 2/3 of S3, because S3 (after a pretty great extended emergency medicine sequence!) introduces an amnesia subplot for Spector. Which.... as I already was bored by him, I am even less here for mooning over the fact that he suddenly can't remember being a serial killer. I just... no. I read a synopsis of the rest.
I can semi recommend the show for Gillian Anderson fans and crime drama fans, with the caveat that there are serious weak points. It's certainly been an interesting study in contrasts for me, in terms of what defines good drama and good dramatic tension, and how the writing can either enable or confine the skills of the actors.
So when I saw Gillian Anderson kissing Archie Panjabi on Tumblr, I (correctly) assumed that it was really just "ambiguously bi/pan woman kisses straight woman to get an annoying man to go away" but nevertheless since 1. it was Gillian Anderson and 2. the show was only three British seasons long, I impulse-watched it. (Or, well, most of it.)
Premise: Rockstar cop (Gillian Anderson) comes to Belfast to catch a serial killer (Jamie Dornan) who's been preying on successful young women in high-powered fields.
(Hilarious thing: Gillian's character here, Stella Gibson, looks exactly fucking like her Hannibal character, Bedelia du Maurier. Blonde hair, icy demeanor, pencil skirts and all. But this time she's a cop!)
My takeaway, I think, is that I appreciate the show's major themes and Gillian's performance, but think she was underutilized as an actress and that the show really suffers from the assumption that Jamie Dornan's character, Paul Spector, is actually interesting.
He isn't. He really fucking isn't.
Maybe Jamie Dornan can give an excellent, nuanced performance when the character he's playing has more depth than "misogynistic abuser with great abs," but since that's all I've personally got to go on, I'm really not fucking impressed. (Apparently he won at least one award for his performance in this? Which is a travesty. He demonstrates maybe three facial expressions, and the one he's wearing 80% of the time is "brooding stoicism." This character is such a cliche it's embarrassing.) The show spends approximately equal screen-time on him as with Gillian's character, and that was a mistake, as far as I'm concerned. I applaud the obviously very intentional decision to make him "normal" - he has a wife and two kids and he loves his daughter very much - but it lingers so fucking much on his day-to-day life hugging his daughter and lying to his wife and it's just... boring and unnecessary.
The fact that he's a believably normal guy is central to one of the themes - Gillian's character gets to call that out when one of her male colleagues calls him a "monster," and she says no, he's just a man who's taken his misogyny a bit further than most do. That's good and important. But his angst and his family drama isn't actually interesting, because he's not interesting. He's just another fucking misogynistic piece of shit who lies to his wife a lot and kills women who are more successful than he is because he gets off on it. Very few of the scenes focusing on him give the audience information we don't already know.
Gillian's character is largely interesting because she's both a badass and so untouchable in ways women aren't conventionally expected to be, while showing nothing but solidarity and empathy toward other women who don't have her brazen disregard for cultural norms. (No whiff of "I'm not like other women" from her, which is fucking refreshing.) There's a whole otherwise-superfluous side-plot in the first season that really only serves to slightly flesh out a one-night-stand that other characters repeatedly attempt to slut-shame her for. But it almost actually works because she gets to drop some serious truth bombs about gendered double standards without it coming across as shoehorned in.
The second biggest problem in the show, to my eyes (the first being how much time and cinematographic energy is spent on a boring antagonist), is how little she's given to play off of in terms of other characters. Her scenes with Professor Reed-Smith (Archie Panjabi) and Farrington (Niamh McGrady) are the most dynamic and deep-feeling in terms of character interactions, yet both these interactions with Stella in a colleague and mentor position, respectively, are few and far between. Stella's direct superior is a weak man who can't remotely match her personality or competence. The challenges internal to the police that she faces feel toothless, manufactured, because there is no credible same-side antagonist. Her interactions with the main antagonist are very limited, and always (at least up to S3E2, where I stopped) obviously under her control. Gillian is a spectacular actress, but she doesn't have very much to work with, throughout the show, in terms of rapport with other actors. I don't think that says anything about the other actors around her so much as it says the writers should have given her a character whom she could consistently be on the same, or similar level with.
Anyway. I stopped watching and just read a summary for about 2/3 of S3, because S3 (after a pretty great extended emergency medicine sequence!) introduces an amnesia subplot for Spector. Which.... as I already was bored by him, I am even less here for mooning over the fact that he suddenly can't remember being a serial killer. I just... no. I read a synopsis of the rest.
I can semi recommend the show for Gillian Anderson fans and crime drama fans, with the caveat that there are serious weak points. It's certainly been an interesting study in contrasts for me, in terms of what defines good drama and good dramatic tension, and how the writing can either enable or confine the skills of the actors.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 02:26 am (UTC)But all in all, the show was kind of forgettable. I also watched for Gillian Anderson.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 02:58 am (UTC)The more I think about it the more grumpy I am that they seemed to really be onto something with the whole "he's not a monster, he's completely on the expected continuum for shitty men who still manage to show love to women and women-to-be who are utterly under their power and influence," but also seemed to think that made him interesting. It didn't. It made a point, but it didn't make 70% of his screen time worthwhile to watch, because it was just more of the same, him doting on his daughter and flailing at trying to convince his wife he gives a fuck.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 03:04 pm (UTC)It was kind of inevitable that Stella looks like Bedelia. They were shot at the same time, so she was literally flying back and forth between the US and the UK to shoot her first season scenes as Bedelia in between filming The Fall. Sometimes she'd fly to the US for a weekend to shoot one or two Hannibal scenes then fly back before Monday! So obviously her hair was pretty much identical, and the pencil skirt is largely ubiquitous in TV for 'sexy, confident professional woman'.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-09 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-12 04:42 pm (UTC)