How to Do (or Not to Do) Re-makes

Remakes are a mixed box. Naturally, there's always the risk of creating something worse than the original. At the same time, they offer the chance to add a different perspective which can be awesome.

So, when Fox announced to remake Boradchuch  I was curious of what they'd turn it into. A 23 episodes/season long TV series (something the BBC/ITV cannot even start to imagine)? A zombie apocalypse wild western style in which neighbours are threatening each other with guns? A media-company thriller? More guns? Let's involve the government by making Danny's dad being an important member of the Republican party. Have I mentioned guns? It's a cliche, but the biggest difference between an American and a British crime-series is that the American series always feature an irresponsible amount of guns.

I simply wanted to see Fox taking the story's basic (actually already very American) set-up and turning it into something different. After all,  it's the differences which make a good remake live. 

However, when it became obvious that Chibnall is part of Fox's production team, and what's more, he's writing scripts, my excitement started to fade. Sure, he promises to make things different:

I’m very, very fascinated to see this story in a different landscape with an acting ensemble that’s just as strong but taken from really great American actors. The DNA of the original is absolutely intact and filtered through a new prism, so it should still feel just as vibrant, and interesting, and strange, and unique, and beautiful, but just in a different setting — and then it’s exploring the dramatic opportunities that that offers up. We’re not gonna do the terrible version. We’re gonna do a great version.

But getting him on the team makes the 'out of the box' thinking process a lot more difficult. It's like involving Doyle into BBC's recent adaptation of Sherlock. As Moffat mentioned in an interview, Doyle would probably hate what he and Gatiss have made of his stories. But this does not stop Sherlock from being an immense success.

And some days later, just as if the world would have wanted to prove my point, EW announces that Fox got David Tennant to play the lead. So much for Chibnall's 'great American actors' comment from the quote above. We know the British are great, but it's as if someone over there wasn't understanding the basic idea behind remakes. One clue: getting the same actor doing a different accent is not exactly the way the big successful remakes have started. Well, then again, there's always a first time for everything.

Chibnall on Broadchurch

Even though Chris Chibnall seems to have taken lessons from the Mighty Moff on how to keep informations to himself, EntertainmentWeekly has still managed to talk a bit about Broadchurch with him. Of course, if your only motivation to read that rather longish interview is to find some hints dealing with season 2, then save your time and don't read it. The only paragraph in which it gets mentioned reads: 

Literally, as I stand here talking to you now, I am standing one foot away — I’ve now moved, just for the theater of it — in front of the board which has the whole of the first episode plotted out on it. Every single bit of the first episode, I’m looking at now… And that’s all I’m gonna tell you. [...] We know what we’re doing. And I’m really excited about it. For people who are wondering, I promise we have interesting stories still to tell.

The biggest part of the interview features some fascinating production stories, explaining the idea behind certain scenes and why he wanted to do and to shoot some of them in a certain way.

The only point which some may think of as news is that Chibnall is going to be pretty much involved into the American remake.

I’ve written the first episode and I’ll be an executive producer on it. There’s a whole team coming into place on that, and Fox will decide whether they go forward with it. [...] I think there’s a really great opportunity to make something that is hopefully as good if not better than the British version. I’m very, very fascinated to see this story in a different landscape with an acting ensemble that’s just as strong but taken from really great American actors. The DNA of the original is absolutely intact and filtered through a new prism, so it should still feel just as vibrant, and interesting, and strange, and unique, and beautiful, but just in a different setting — and then it’s exploring the dramatic opportunities that that offers up. We’re not gonna do the terrible version. We’re gonna do a great version.

Thousand Little Secrets Part 7 & 8

'Broadchuch' starts to be one of the best crime series out there (and we're getting another season, whoo-hoo). And they're right to do so, because episode 7 and 8 were just awesome. It had pacing, it kept us thinking and finally the police started to investigate, something they could have done several episodes earlier. Still, the last two parts were pretty exciting, so let's forget about the really long-ish middle part.  And I for my part would have never guessed Danny's killer. So Chibnall did his best to compensate the audience for episode 2-6.

Maybe the most outstanding thing about 'Broadchurch' is that it did not end with the police getting the killer, as the big who-done-it mystery was resolved right after 15 minutes into the last episode. Because of this the biggest part of the final story was about how the people were coping with the fact that Joe committed the murder. And this is something you do not get to see often in a crime series. Besides, it was not too dramatical, at least not if you take the usual standards for crime-dramas into account. Even the most dramatic scene, when Ellie learns that it was her husband, was done in a rather realistic way. It fit. The emotion, the way her boss breaks the news to her, her refusing to believe it, and her reaction when she sees that it's true after all. You could see how the information was sinking in and numbing her. Or Danny's family. Well, actually it was numbing the whole community, somehow. In the end everything came down to an accident. Ironically, only minutes before killing Danny, Joe prevented him from committing suicide... By this, Chibnall didn't need to come up with a plausible motive. There simply wasn't one, which is the best explanation for a murder case, because it's the most difficult to investigate. To be fair, without Joe's confession there would have been a good chance of them never solving the case.

So, ITV agreed to a 2nd season. And I'm happy to hear that Chibnall had plans for this all along. Let's hope that him saying  "I mentioned that if people liked it, there was another very different story we could tell afterwards" does not mean that we'll get only one additional season. Well, I guess it's difficult to explain why all of a sudden Broadchurch's crime rate should rocket sky. They are a pretty small community after all, and an additional murder case (or another sort of crime) must have a huge impact on their statistics. Of course there's still the unsolved Sandbrook case which needs investigation, so that might be an option without affecting the local crime rate... But maybe Chibnall is also up to something else.

Anyway. 'Broadchurch' got me hooked. No matter what Chibnall's plans are for the future, he can be sure I'll be watching.

Thousand Little Secrets

Something the fan girl in me has been wanting to write about for quite a while now is 'Broadchurch'. Yes, it has David Tennant in it, and yes, it's all about crime, and an interesting case, which is a great combination if you're me. And, as the biggest advantage of all, there are (hopefully) no vampires involved. Watching TV has been tough in the past 3 years if you're not into blood-sucking creatures...

Sadly enough, these 4 elements do not automatically add up to a great mini-series by themselves. It also takes a great plot, showing how the interesting case is solved. And this is the point in which 'Broadchurch' fails the audience, which is interesting when you're looking at Chris Chibnall's background. After all, he's a regular on 'Law & Order: UK' (something I've never watched so far, as I have to admit) so one might expect that he knows how to write a crime-related storyline. Then there are his various 'Doctor Who'* contributions, which were usually less spectacular in my humble opinion, with 'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship' being the one big exception...

One thing about crime series is that most writers fail at creating non-stereotype characters, and luckily Chibnall does not fall into this convenient trap. His characters seem to live real lives, all of them. Every resident and non-resident of Broadchurch has a proper background story and it's great to see someone putting this much effort into it°.

And this is also not my actual objection. The only thing, the really only thing Chibnall gets wrong is the police. Unfortunately he makes a big beginner's mistakes, namely, that the crime-related plot of 'Broadchurch' is boring and predictable.

You want proof? First of all, from episode 1 onwards it's so obvious that Danny's dad didn't kill his own son. You only need to put some thinking into it and you'll understand that the reason why he is behaving strangely and not answering the police's questions properly is because he cheated on his wife. And only by looking at the people living in Broadchurch you know whom he slept with, after all, there are not that many attractive, young-ish, single women around there (and single is an important criterion as then you do not need to go into how their mistake is threatening her marriage as well, something you do not want to deal with in an 8 part long story). But the police doesn't reveal this till episode 3.

The next suspects are Jack the newsagent, and Paul Coats the vicar. Well, when we see Jack burning the pictures of Danny and him you know that it wasn't Jack. He's no fool, so it's likely that he'd have burnt them before the whole fuss started happening. Besides, he is the one who gives Danny's mobile to the police. I mean, if it had been him, being familiar with the sea, he could have certainly come up with a nice salty, wet spot on the sea ground where (beside the fish) nobody would have ever found it again.

And the vicar? It's a TV drama, and nobody wants to offend the church. Additionally, it would be far too obvious. And as a good script-writer you're shunning the obvious. So, in a few days we'll watch the last but least episode of this 8-parter and so far the police has only eliminated those people about whom we already have been knowing several episodes ago that they were obviously not responsible for Danny's death. 

Yes, pacing might be an issue here. And that's something crime series (or any other series in general) should never have a problem with. I'm not complaining about them not solving the case faster. But they could have focused on some  more likely people. Like the guy who is constantly complaining about the bad effect the case has on the village's reputation. As a scriptwriter you could get a good story out of that.

Or Susan Wright. Why was noone, no-one looking into her background right after the police found out that she obviously lied to them about Mark. I mean people tend to remember phoning a plumber. After all, it takes a major event to trigger that.

And why are people not focusing on the postman who had an argument with Danny? And even though he denies the whole thing, why didn't they ask if there were any colleagues filling in for him during that time? It's a question people would expect the police to tackle. Or why did it took this long to learn about Danny going paint-balling? What else do they not know about, then? It's not like this would have been kept a secret.Or the money they found in Danny's bedroom? Or Nigle, even though I'm not sure if he'd done it. Chibnball obviously wants us to think that, but he's a pretty bad liar, so I'm not sure. Besides, why should he have killed his mate's son? They seem to be pretty close friends...

In my humble opinion, none of these people mentioned in this post murdered Danny (they might have influenced things, but in the end, I don't think they made their hands dirty). Nevertheless, all of them would have been adequate suspects to investigate and to make an 8 hour long crime mystery appear less boring. Now, one might argue that the borderline boring storyline (as far as the actual inspection is concerned) is part of the reason why the series feels so real. Plus, Chibnall is trying to compensate the slow paceing by adding several sub-plots to the story; like Alec not wanting the police to find out about his illness, the way the news agency is (and is not) involved into Jack's death, the way Mark's family is coping with the new situation and the baby, not to mentioning the whole drug-stuff about Dean (and Chloe?), and then there's Tom and his laptop... and so on. It's almost as if their purpose were some sort of distraction. In the end of the day, it all comes down to appearances. It's a whole village trying to keep their little secrets.

Then again these sub-plots give us inevitably more information on people's backgrounds, which makes things even more real. Well, that and the amazing acting. Talking about it, Olivia Colman and David Tennant are great. The frictions between them add a new (and the only interesting) side to the otherwise rather boring investigation so far. But maybe that's the point. Maybe Chibnall didn't want to write a well investigated crime story. Unfortunately, generally they are those which get all the attention... Besides, if you're good, you can even make a badly investigated crime story appear interesting.
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* You can't write a 'Broadchurch'-review without mentioning 'Doctor Who', can you, although I guess usually it's not because of Chibnall. 

 ° Just compare the characters of any the major crime series to this (except Navy CIS, maybe, they're paying a lot of attention to that too). Chibnall manages to reveal more about his characters in 6 episodes, than 'Criminal Minds' or 'The Mentalist' managed to tell us about their main and less main characters in several seasons.