DVD Review: Edge of Darkness (BBC mini-series)

On a rainy Yorkshire night, police Inspector Ronald Craven,, a widowed father, played by Bob Peck, picks up his young daughter at a political meeting. They drive home and on their way to the front door, they are confronted by a shouting, mysterious figure who lets go a shot gun blast that kills the young woman. Thus begins the 1985 BBC six part mini-series, Edge of Darkness now available on DVD.

At first the assumption is that the killer was looking for revenge against Craven. But very quickly, it becomes apparent that this may not be the case at all. First as Craven goes through his daughter's things, he makes some strange discoveries—a map, a radiation detector, and most mysteriously a revolver. Then he learns that the girl may have been a member of a subversive anti-nuclear group along with her socialist boyfriend boy friend; moreover she may well have been involved in some kind of terrorism. In London, he discovers that she has been under investigation by at least one government secret agency. It is entirely possible that the killer was really after her.

Haunted by hallucinatory visions of his daughter both as an adult and as a child, Craven embarks on a search for the killer, and more importantly for the truth about her activities. Slowly he becomes entangled in political machinations involving British secret agents, the CIA, and upper level government ministers. He enters a Machiavellian world of pragmatic politics, where ends justify means, one time friends turn into enemies, and where it is never easy to tell the guys in the white hats from those in the black.

Indeed that is the key to the success of Edge of Darkness. It is an adult thriller. Unlike the blockbuster action flicks which deal with a simple world where there is good and there is evil and they are fairly easily recognized, that have come to define the form, its world is much more complex. Good and evil are not always recognizable. Good and evil may not even be relevant considerations in this world. Morality may well be subject to pragmatics.

In keeping with this complexity, there is more emphasis on character than on car chases. The story moves slowly, at a snail's pace compared to the typical film in the genre. Director Martin Campbell lets his camera linger over silent close ups of his actors caught in moments of introspection. He especially follows the distraught Craven as he sometimes wanders aimlessly, pursued by his visions of the past, his emotions bottled up in a vain attempt at the stiff upper lip so admired by the Brits. Peck's brilliantly understated performance leaves the viewer no doubt of the turmoil within and gives the inevitable eruption of passion that much more emotional truth. This is no stereotypical superman of the Liam Neeson in Taken variety. This is a man driven, but a man who might well fail.

Most of the performances emphasize subtlety of character and shy away from scenery chewing. Perhaps Joe Don Baker's Darius Jedburgh, a wise mouthed American agent with country boy façade, comes close to the top, but even he doesn't really go over. Ian McNeice and Charles Kay as British secret agents are suitably subdued and ironically unflappable. At times they seem more concerned with food than with their political problems. Joanne Whalley plays Emma Craven, the daughter, with wide eyed sweetness and innocent optimism. Zoe Wannamaker has a brief moment or two as a secret agent and a love interest. Hugh Fraser as the head of a British nuclear facility turns in an effective performance as the face of institutional villainy.

The series' BAFTA award winning score was composed by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen. The DVD provides a music only option to isolate the score as one of the special features. Also included is an alternate ending (which seems only slightly altered). I must admit neither my wife nor I could tell the difference on first viewing. There are interviews with cast and crew in a section called, "Magnox—The Secrets of Edge of Darkness," as well as an interview with Bob Peck from a BBC morning show.

This two disc DVD set of the original series offers audiences who may have been somewhat disappointed with Campbell's recent big screen remake with Mel Gibson something they may well find more palatable.

DVD Review: The 39 Steps(2008)

Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 adaptation of John Buchan's The 39 Steps has been praised by many critics for its witty dark comedy, its atmospheric handling of different settings, and for some fetching performances, especially that of the star, Robert Donat. Donat plays an innocent man accused of a murder on the run from both the police and the group of spies who are actually guilty. While the plot borders on the silly at times, the film has a kind of innocent charm—with Madeleine Carroll and Donat chastely handcuffed together in an old Scottish inn and its dark scenic shots of the chase through the Scottish countryside, not to mention Donat's bravura impromptu speech before a political rally and the shooting at the Palladium with the villain jumping to the stage a la John Wilkes Booth. And, of course there is the iconic image of the woman's scream merging into the whistle of the railroad train carrying the fleeing Donat.

Still despite the fairly positive criticism of this early work by one of filmdom's great directors, The 39 Steps is a film ripe for remake. Although the plot does have its moments, it has its problems as well. Character motivation is an issue. The plot can be somewhat confusing, and the climactic revelation is something of a letdown. Moreover, the script is quite an embellishment on the actual source material. So it is not surprising that it was revisited in 1959 in color and then again in 1978. The latter is the version that is credited with being closest to the source.

Now comes a 2008 BBC adaptation newly available on DVD. This version stars Rupert Penry-Jones as the innocent on the run and Lydia Leonard as his companion in flight and unlikely love interest, and while closer to the novel than the Hitchcock, it probably takes more liberties than the 1978 film. Overall this new adaptation emphasizes the thriller aspects of the story; there is a lot more gunplay, an airplane attack, and some tumbling down hillsides in front of oncoming cars, just the kind of thing we have come to expect from modern action heroes chasing spies. There is less of the dark comedy that distinguishes the 1935 adaptation, and what there is lacks the Hitchcock charm. There are certainly some beautifully filmed scenes of the Scottish countryside. Location shots of Scottish castles and manors are excellent. Most importantly, the plot is not quite as farfetched, and most of what is most difficult to swallow is explained by surprise revelations, which is better than nothing.

There are some nice little bits of homage to Hitchcock: some shots of running legs, a shot of the two killer spies from the rear dressed in coats and fedoras, and a merging of a little girl screaming and the attempts to start cranking a car motor (which seems to echo the classic railroad whistle/scream). But for the most part, this is its own movie. It does a fine job of evoking the feeling of pre-WWI England, beginning with the stuffy London men's club and the Scottish manor house to an accurate portrayal of the British attitudes to the Germans before the beginning of the war. Although as it was pointed out when the film first aired there were quite a few historical blunders in the film's use of planes with machine guns and trains which were not available in 1914.

Performances reek with BBC restraint. Penry-Jones is dashing and noble as Richard Hannnay the bored engineer newly returned from Africa unhappy in stuffy old London who learns, under duress, to value his country. Every once in awhile he meanders towards James Bond, but he never really gets there. Lydia Leonard's Victoria Sinclair is a modern woman looking for a greater role in the world and capable of taking on that greater role. She is less a damsel in distress than a reliable partner in crime. Although some complain that she is an unnecessary addition to the original. Patrick Malahide is the gentleman villain, ruthless but understated. Eddie Marsan, Inspector Lestrade in the new Sherlock Holmes film, plays Scudder, the spy who sets everything in motion when he runs into Hannay's apartment and gives him the code book before he gets killed.

While there is nothing especially memorable about this remake of The 39 Steps, there is no Mr. Memory shot at the Palladium, there is no one hanging from the hands of Big Ben, the DVD does provide a pleasantly entertaining hour and a half.

I might add, although it has nothing to do with the film, the DVD does contain a very clever advertisement for BBC America. Don't skip it.

My iPod Addiction Meets My Book Addiction

A week or so ago I published a news brief on the demise of The Washington Post 's Book Worldpodcast. It was a podcast I had been listening to religiously almost from the day I got my first iPod. The books and literature section of the iTunes podcast directory was the first set of pages I visited, and what I found there was a veritable cornucopia of delight for any book lover with ear pods. This, before I even had a chance to get a look at the audio books pages. I began subscribing to everything that was there: The Guardian Books Podcast, Authors on Tour—Live, The Classic Tales Podcast , and on, and on.

Some of them I unceremoniously dumped after a few weeks. Book Lust With Nancy Pearl never quite delivered the titillation its title promised. KCRW's Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt was much too impressed with his own voice that more often than not his questions seemed to go on longer than the poor author's answers. Podcasts from Yale University were aimed at scholars with different priorities.

Some of them I kept around a little longer, the BBC's Book Reviews With Simon Mayo for example, and this despite the facts that for some reason he regularly had his panel of reviewers take the time to describe in detail the book jackets under discussion but even more importantly that they hardly ever found anything to dislike in any of the books they were talking about. Some like Book World disappeared of their own accord. The CBC's Talking Books, a feisty irreverent review show unfortunately called it quits after eleven years.

There were, thankfully, always replacements waiting on the bench to take their place. The serialized novel reading podcast Between the Covers replaced when it seemed obvious we were getting abridgements was succeeded by Magdalena Ball's Compulsive Reader by way of Australia courtesy of Blog Talk Radio. The overly erudite Harvard Press: Author Off The Page gave way to the BBC's World Book Club.

Now as I take the time to search for a replacement for the late lamented Book World, I count nineteen separate podcasts devoted to books and literature. This includes readings of poetry, short stories and novels, author interviews, book club discussions, and reviewers. It doesn't include theatrical podcasts, although to omit Shakespeare from the category of literature seems something of blunder, to say the least. It doesn't include podcasts that regularly feature authors and literary reviews in their more eclectic formats—podcasts of shows like NPR's Fresh Air and the BBC's Arts and Ideas. Nineteen despite the fact that often when a new book comes out, its author becomes ubiquitous. When Richard Price was on the road touting Lush Life, it was almost impossible to escape him. Recently, it's been Michael Chabon and Paul Rudnick making the rounds for their newly published essays. Repetition is one price of addiction.

As I look for number twenty, I try to define some criteria for the many candidates still out there. I look to those podcasts that have stood the test of time for models. Number one: I want a host who loves books, knows something about them, but is willing to allow the author the spotlight. I want someone like Terry Gross, whose guests are always taking the time to tell her how wonderful her questions are. I want someone like Eleanor Wachtel, the hostess of Writers and Company who seems to have read everything everyone of her weekly guests has written, yet never seems to pompously pontificate a la the Bookworm.

I want to hear what literate readers think about what they have read. The Slate book club discussions are always lively and informative whether they're talking about Tolstoy or Evelyn Waugh. The World Book Club opens up the discussion to ordinary readers, ordinary but perceptive, and allows them to ask questions of authors they admire. This is a scenario sure to appeal to any book lover.

Intelligent, dynamic readers, like those on PRI's Selected Shorts, with the capacity to bring life to the printed page, would be welcome. There is something exciting about hearing the poetry of Robert Burns in the native dialect that overwhelms the fact that the American ear might not always understand what is being said. There is something to be learned from hearing an author read her own work. One thinks of a writer like Dickens enthralling audiences with his readings Bill Sykes'death and Scrooge's transformation. Podcasts that give us the opportunity to hear modern day Dickenses are something to be cherished.

Finally, I want a podcast that is adventurous, that is willing to take its listeners beyond the tried and true, the popular novel that everyone is reading—not that I don't want that too. I want a show to make me aware of the writer I haven't heard about, the book that has gone under the radar, the new voice. I want to hear about the Dickens they'll be talking about in ten years.