Sunday 24 September 2017

More Electric Dreams

It's been a week since my last post about the Channel Four series Electric Dreams and I've thought a bit more about that whole anthology series thing and how they are received.  Electric Dreams seemed to get a rough ride last week - my damning praise of the opening credits aside - and that brings us back to Out of the Unknown.
I mentioned Out of the Unknown last week, a science fiction anthology series from the 1960's on BBC 2.  What survives, because often little survives, are clusters of episodes from the four series - including their choice of an episode one.  With the nature of filming schedules, the turn around of episodes and the general timing of things, their choice of the first episode was more constrained than maybe Electric Dreams was.  Far fewer episodes were complete prior to transmission, so the choice was more predetermined, in theory.  There was some disagreement about which episode should lead the series.  But, to some degree, a dud was less their fault, more that of their schedule.
And Out of the Unknown chose a bit of a dud.  No Place Like Earth based on the John Wyndham story isn't great.  I have a fondness for most episodes, barring the final series which is pretty vile, but even I can't help but smile at the first episode and say... bless.  The story is very out of date, even for the time, the production is a bit creaky and the script... often not the best.  But there were Martian space dogs (actual dogs with extra furry costumes - one for the RSPCA) so it wasn't all bad.
Out of the Unknown grew to be a well respected series - a bit too adult and serious to be properly mainstream, but well liked.  The first episode, however, was gently savaged.
The reason I ramble on about this is because Electric Dreams got a rather mixed response to its first episode.  On twitter the reactions veered from hate to love and back again.  The papers were largely... snooty I think is the best word.  Not enough like Black Mirror, not quite up to date enough, too much money spent making it look grim etc.  I thought it had a lot going for it, but I can't say it set my world on fire - why else would I write a blog about the opening credits?
My questions prior to watching the next episode tonight are:
Was The Hoodmaker indicative of the quality of the whole series or is this first episode a one off?
Will the rest of the series be written off, or will the modern fast moving world allow it time to grow?
Was Twitter right, and it's both terrible and amazing at the same time?

We'll have some clues shortly, as, with the anthology series, you're only ever as good as your next episode.

No comments:

Post a Comment