Shows I’ve Watched: | Shows I’ve Added: |
Adventures in Paradise New York: A Documentary Film Sherlock Holmes | Danger Man |
Holmes is aided in his sleuthing by his loyal comrade, Dr. Watson, played by David Burke in the first season and Edward Hardwicke in subsequent seasons. This is a Watson who is very smart indeed, a far cry from the bumbling Watson we see in Nigel Bruce's portrayal; he's not at the level of Holmes, of course, but he's learned well from his compatriot, and each episode contains a bit in which Watson demonstrates how he's picked up on the art of observation, often listing the very same clues that Holmes has seen. The difference, of course, is that Watson frequently fails to come to the same conclusion—that is, the correct conclusion—as Holmes, and the cutting retort from Holmes can sometimes be painful, to us as well as to the good doctor, who is the most loyal of friends. Holmes is always quick to temper his remarks, though, and there's no doubt that when he compliments Watson, it is no mere flattery. The chemistry between Brett and both of his Watsons is excellent; it makes them a truly compatible, and formidable, team. Throw in literate, even elegant, scripts (many by John Hawkesworth) and period details that create a perfect atmosphere, and you've got just the thing for those nights when you're looking for a break. Oh, and did I mention that since plugging the Holmes repeats into the schedule, I haven't had to spend even one evening working on the blog? No mere coincidence, I suspect.
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It's not a WB show, however, but one from 20th Century Fox, and the man responsible for it as co-executive producer was Dominick Dunne, who, prior to reinventing himself as a true crime author and raconteur par excellence, was a television executive looking to cast the lead in his new series. As Dunne tells it, the studio had been screen-testing "all the best-looking young actors in Hollywood" for the part, and Ron Ely had the inside track. Then, along came Gardner McKay:
One day in a coffee shop, I saw, sitting at a nearby table in a languid pose, reading a book of poetry, a startlingly handsome young man with attitude, whom I later described to Martin Manulis, the head of television at Fox, as "a little Gary Cooper, a little Cary Grant, a little Ty Power and a lot of Errol Flynn." He was at the time, in the parlance of the town, nobody, absolutely nobody, but his attitude declared that he was somebody. I dropped my Fox business card on his table and said, "If you’re interested in discussing a television series, call me." He did, and we tested him. Gardner’s test was certainly not among the top three or four in the acting department, but as the production staff sat in the projection room, we’d keep going back to it, and one of us would say, "This guy’s got something." Finally, we gave him the part.
That's exactly it, I think; it fits my perception of the series perfectly. Watching it, you come away with two things: McKay's not a great actor, by any stretch; and there's something about him, a presence that makes you certain of two qualities that all television heroes have to have: everything's going to turn out right in the end, and the villain of the piece is going to be sorry he tangled with him. He also comes across as a very interesting person—McKay, I mean, not the character he plays, Captain Adam Troy, although Troy is a pleasant-enough character. And indeed McKay was an interesting man: he wrote books and plays, was a newspaper drama critic, and taught a writing class. He didn't really like acting, although, as Dunne says, he liked being a star, and he was good at it.
The point is that, while Adventures in Paradise is not great television, it is fun television, another reason I make the comparison to the WB detective shows. Each week Captain Troy and his schooner Tiki III, sailing the South Pacific "looking for passengers and adventure" and finding it; else, where would the series be? I don't know if your life is going to be dramatically enhanced by watching the episodes available on YouTube, and you're not going to be taxed if you do something else while you're watching it, but I've never found it less than enjoyable, and sometimes you just aren't in the mood for hate-watching a series.
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In 1999, PBS premiered a documentary series called New York, which was about the history of the city so nice they named it twice. It was directed and co-written by Ric Burns (brother of Ken), and at the time of its premiere, it was far behind schedule and was shaping up to last far longer than its scheduled 10-hour duration. Finally, the decision was made to release the first five episodes (ten hours in all), covering the years 1609-1931, on five consecutive nights in November 1999; the concluding episode (which quickly ballooned to two episodes) would air at a later date.
As fate would have it, those two episodes, dealing with the city from the Great Depression to the present, aired on September 30 and October 1, 2001: 19 days after the destruction of the World Trade Center. The final episode was quickly edited to include a reference to the terrorist attack, and then, in September, 2003, came yet another episode, a three-hour special that focused solely on the Twin Towers and their own history. In all, the series ran for eight episodes and 17½ hours.
Watching it again for the first time since its original run, I'm struck by several things. First is how overwhelmingly unlikeable the city is, and how exaggerated in importance it is. Note that I said "importance" there, not "influence," because there's no question that New York City pulled the strings in this country for many years, for good and ill. What hits you, though, is how much ill there is to it: not only an obsession with democracy and diversity that even the series can't convince you has been successful; but the sheer arrogance of it all, the idea that the rest of the country really is "flyover" territory, good only for providing tourist dollars. (And wouldn't it be great if one could get the dollars without having to deal with the tourists!) For decades, people have looked at New York as not really being a part of the United States at all, but something separate, strange, alien. New York serves to reinforce that attitude two, three, four times over. When you see the famous "Ford to City: Drop Dead" headline from the 1970s, you want to stand up and cheer.
And yet.
New York: A Documentary Film is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating, compelling documentary series I've ever seen. It comes by that honestly, with a cast of colorful characters that rivals any fictional series television ever came up with, from Al Smith to Fiorello La Guardia to Robert Moses; an architectural history that spans Central Park, the Empire State Building, and the aforementioned World Trade Center; a history that does seem to encompass the whole of American history; a remarkable place, all in all, with something that other places just seem to lack. Even the hatred one might have for the city has to acknowledge this.
And the series, for my money, is the equal of anything brother Ken ever produced. David Ogden Stiers's overall narration is superb, neither cloyingly emotional nor deadly dull; the voice talent, provided by well-known actors and personalities reading letters, newspaper articles, and speeches, is completely appropriate, letting the written words speak for themselves; the commentary, from noted historians and public figures, is both knowledgeable and articulate, and even if you disagree with what they're saying, you can't stop listening to them. The combination of paintings, still photographs, and video (some of it quite remarkable) is riveting, and the score, primarily that composed by Brian Keane, is heart-rendingly evocative.
The final three episodes, which cover New York's fall into disrepair and disgrace, its recovery and rejuvenation, and the horror and heartbreak of September 11, are the most outstanding parts of this series, but without the previous five episodes to set the stage, they wouldn't be nearly as good, which is one reason why the entire 17½ hours need to be consumed. And at the end—or is it? Another two episodes have, for some time, been said to be in the works, bringing the series up to date—a viewer comes away from it exhausted and exhilarated, inspired and disgusted, and understanding that great cities, like great people, can inspire both love and hatred at the same time. And why shouldn't that be the case? After all, a city remains, ultimately, a collection of people: good and bad, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, admirable and dissolute. In the case of New York, it just seems to have more of all of it than anyplace else. And perhaps that's just the way they'd have it. TV
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