I don't have much to say on the European elections. I'm unconvinced by the 'cataclysm in British politics' line - I'll wait until next year's general election before buying that. And there's clear irony not just in people voting for an anti-Europe party to represent them in Europe but also in a turnout of 30 odd percent when one of the common complaints is that European institutions are not representative of the people.
But the elections have made me consider my own relationship with Europe.
At heart I'm a fanatical pro-European. Looking to Europe takes us out of our little England mentality; it diverts our gaze from looking across the Atlantic for our lead; and I still believe in the core values of enlightenment thinking that were Europe's great gift to the world (we'll leave to one side their unpleasant bed-fellows of empire building, terror and genocide).
And yet I find my instinctive support for the EU eroding by the day. Unlike many this is not down to any objection to the bloated bureaucracy or the lack of democratic accountability. Both open the door to corruption and I don't doubt the EU is rife with it. But no more than most national governments - read the first couple of pages of Perry Anderson's recent LRB article on Italy for the full horror story - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n10/perry-anderson/the-italian-disaster.
And democratic accountability is over-rated. It's all very well saying that the great strength of parliamentary democracy is our ability to vote our representatives out if they don't deliver but that's not much use when the only viable alternatives are exactly the same as the people we've just got shot of.
No, I'm quite relaxed about a group of unelected technocrats having an overarching remit to run the continent. Or I would be if they were working from those same enlightenment principles I mentioned earlier - what Slavoj Zizek calls freedom-in-equality. But this isn't what the EU is about now. It has abandoned those founding principles in favour of becoming nothing more than a giant free trade association, a supra-national cheerleader and facilitator for neo-liberal market-led economics.
So I find myself instinctively supporting the European project against those neanderthals who would turn their back on it while feeling deeply uncomfortable about the institutions I'm defending. Of course, there's further irony in the likes of Farage and the euro-sceptic wing of the Tory Party railing against an institution that by my analysis fulfills most of their economic wet dreams but I think I've had enough irony for one day.
Thursday 29 May 2014
Wednesday 22 January 2014
Egging the Pudding
In a recent feature in the Sunday Times, Mark Gatiss - co-creator and writer of Sherlock - explained what he thought was the central appeal of the series:
“We discovered, quite early on, that what people loved the most is the interaction between the two characters,” adds Gatiss. “It is a bromance. You can’t deny it."
Series 3 of the programme, which has just finished, has come in for a fair amount of criticism: too jokey, insufficient detection, insufficient mystery. I didn't mind the change of tone and suspect the complexities and subtleties in all three episodes will benefit from a second viewing. But Sherlock has a more fundamental problem and it's one that has bedevilled detective series before.
Most of the great TV detectives are cut from similar cloth. A troubled or complicated personal life/back story rubbing alongside the solving of (usually) murder mysteries. It takes a delicate touch to egg the pudding of the detective story with just enough personality to lift the programme out of the mundane whodunnit and into interesting drama.
Gatiss is right to say that the interaction between Holmes and Watson is at the heart of what makes Sherlock so successful. But their relationship is so much more interesting when seen through the prism of a tightly plotted story than when the story becomes about the relationship.
This isn't unique to Sherlock. Inspector Morse was at its finest in its early series when the drinking, the thwarted passion, the essential loneliness of Morse underpinned rather than overwhelmed the plot. The later episodes were operatic and stylish and beautifully written but they were about Morse: the mystery was employed in the service of Morse's character when it should have been the other way round.
And so with Sherlock. In placing the relationship between Holmes and Watson at the centre of the programme the writers have lost the subtelty, the nuance that came from allowing the stories to shed light on the characters. Solving mysteries is the reason these characters are on the screen. Take that element away and Sherlock becomes a formulaic buddy movie and Morse an Alan Bennett-lite study of ageing and loneliness with John Thaw in the Thora Hird role.
As so often, the Danes have it right. For all the focus on Sarah Lund and her jumpers in The Killing, each series was driven by a relentless, old fashioned, edge-of-the-seat story. Lund's character was revealed through her reaction to events; she never became the story. And when, at the end of series 3, she did become the story, they simply stopped.
I hope Sherlock doesn't stop as there's a lot more to be done with a brilliantly realised idea. I just hope that what caused Gatiss and Moffat to fall in love with these characters in the first place - the stories of Conan Doyle - return to centre stage.
“We discovered, quite early on, that what people loved the most is the interaction between the two characters,” adds Gatiss. “It is a bromance. You can’t deny it."
Series 3 of the programme, which has just finished, has come in for a fair amount of criticism: too jokey, insufficient detection, insufficient mystery. I didn't mind the change of tone and suspect the complexities and subtleties in all three episodes will benefit from a second viewing. But Sherlock has a more fundamental problem and it's one that has bedevilled detective series before.
Most of the great TV detectives are cut from similar cloth. A troubled or complicated personal life/back story rubbing alongside the solving of (usually) murder mysteries. It takes a delicate touch to egg the pudding of the detective story with just enough personality to lift the programme out of the mundane whodunnit and into interesting drama.
Gatiss is right to say that the interaction between Holmes and Watson is at the heart of what makes Sherlock so successful. But their relationship is so much more interesting when seen through the prism of a tightly plotted story than when the story becomes about the relationship.
This isn't unique to Sherlock. Inspector Morse was at its finest in its early series when the drinking, the thwarted passion, the essential loneliness of Morse underpinned rather than overwhelmed the plot. The later episodes were operatic and stylish and beautifully written but they were about Morse: the mystery was employed in the service of Morse's character when it should have been the other way round.
And so with Sherlock. In placing the relationship between Holmes and Watson at the centre of the programme the writers have lost the subtelty, the nuance that came from allowing the stories to shed light on the characters. Solving mysteries is the reason these characters are on the screen. Take that element away and Sherlock becomes a formulaic buddy movie and Morse an Alan Bennett-lite study of ageing and loneliness with John Thaw in the Thora Hird role.
As so often, the Danes have it right. For all the focus on Sarah Lund and her jumpers in The Killing, each series was driven by a relentless, old fashioned, edge-of-the-seat story. Lund's character was revealed through her reaction to events; she never became the story. And when, at the end of series 3, she did become the story, they simply stopped.
I hope Sherlock doesn't stop as there's a lot more to be done with a brilliantly realised idea. I just hope that what caused Gatiss and Moffat to fall in love with these characters in the first place - the stories of Conan Doyle - return to centre stage.
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