Monday 7 November 2011

Page Eight - not much of a page turner

WARNING: If you have not seen this programme for yourself, please be advised my review contains a number of spoilers.


When I first sat down to write this review, I thought my ‘issue’ was with the Masterpiece Contemporary branch of the 40-year-old Masterpiece brand. I confess I did Contemporary an injustice in that assessment, due in large part to the drivel that was The 39 Steps under the Masterpiece Classic banner that aired on my PBS affiliate earlier this year, but I digress.

Page Eight began the Masterpiece Contemporary season last night on my PBS affiliate. The one-line summary was “Accompany an aging spy who stumbles on an international scandal that could bring down the British government”. It sounded promising.

  • Aging spy: Bill Nighy, check.
  • Stumble upon: no. The file with potentially explosive information was distributed during a meeting by Michael Gambon’s character to those of Bill Nighy (spy), Saskia Reeves (Home Secretary), and another character who revealed to be Johnny’s most recent lover at the end, but is only seen in that scene and again at the end.
  • International scandal threatening to bring down the government: well, the Page Eight bit is the TNT, but there’s no cloak-and-dagger element, no screws get tightened causing the hero any kind of consternation/conflict/crisis - there IS no threat - Bill Nighy gets a talking-to by the PM, played by Ralph Fiennes. That’s about the extent of it. Johnny finds out (because Judy Davis’s character tells him) he will be the scapegoat for the Page Eight thing after Michael Gambon’s character dies. Is there any consternation/conflict/crisis there? No. He takes a painting off the wall, travels to a former lover, sells her the painting for as much cash as she can spare him, returns to England. That little storyline didn’t even get close to interesting.

The term “pure intelligence” is thrown around quite a bit; it’s apparently what sets Johnny Worricker apart from the other 21st century spies. That also translates to his interpersonal relationships: those with his daughter, the lover he sells a painting to, the lover he leaves when he’s about to disappear, his ex-wife, his neighbour with whom he shares a farewell kiss – Bill Nighy is known for the understated delivery, but this character had about as much passion as fish on ice on display at the fishmonger’s.

When the neighbour drives Johnny to his ex-wife’s farm and introductions are being made Rachel Weisz looks as awkward as her character’s presence requires. There’s no point to it, unless you factor in the only cloak and dagger move Johnny, the experienced MI5 operative, does is in Cambridge when he makes a show (for the operative watching outside) of getting into his car on one level of a parking structure and departing, only to park the car one level lower and take the stairs out the back where his lovely neighbour is waiting. The result is merely that he is without his Saab for the remainder of the film. Enter the neighbour as chauffeur? Not terribly riveting stuff.

Humour was not easy to come by either: when his daughter Julianne tells Johnny the father of her unborn child was a conceptual artist and Johnny says something about him being able to conceive something, I managed a tired smile. We were around the 90-minute mark of the programme by that time, after all.

At the end of the programme, I did not feel I had arrived at any kind of destination. Johnny is at the airport looking at the departure board. It is not clear where he goes, the viewer is left to infer he has chosen a destination at random based on departure time. He and his Waitrose shopping bag full of cash and a case walk towards customs. He has said his impersonal goodbyes, left a painting for the neighbour – maybe the harbour depicted in it is where she’ll be able to find him someday (or not), and has chucked the file with the oh-so-important information into the bin. Or MAYBE the explosive information was the by-the-way revelation that the neighbour’s brother was intentionally killed by Israeli forces in Syria although he was waving a white flag at the time. Not so much – he gives the super-secret file to the neighbour, gives a copy to the press, gives them the go-ahead to air the information, and the PM gives a statement to a reporter. Yawn. I think I most enjoyed the Waitrose bag – that’s one great grocery chain of stores.

I was not expecting the Bourne trilogy. I did not think it would be like a two-hour episode of Spooks (their one hour has more spy drama, adrenaline-fueled plots of bombs and ways and means by which the government du jour could be collapsed than Page Eight could even contemplate much less muster). Just because the story is about an aging spy doesn’t mean it goes the pace of an OAP taking the bus to the High Street for the week’s groceries. At least there’d be a point to it! This was a dawdling two-hour meander into I don’t actually know what. This is not a cerebral programme as it necessitated no brain activity. This wasn't a visceral programme; my heart rate remained constant throughout, it may even have slowed at times. As examples of what I mean, I offer State of Play (2003 BBC 6-part mini-series with Bill Nighy, not WGBH) as cerebral gold and The State Within (BBC 6-part original mini-series from 2006) as a visceral nail-biter. Page Eight does not register as a blip in either category.

I have higher hopes of The Song of Lunch with Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson (what could go wrong?). The only other programme billed this season as part of the Masterpiece Contemporary series is Framed with Trevor Eve as a poncey art museum guy who ships the most valuable pieces of the National Gallery’s collection to a little town in Wales where he meets Eve Myles and a young boy in a somewhat predictable cockles-of-your-heart warmer in which the viewer learns that just because you’re from a mining town in Wales doesn’t mean you are incapable of appreciating art, and just because you’re from the big city doesn’t mean you have a clue about life. Why do I know this already, you ask? It's a repeat. Sorry, "encore presentation". Enjoy.

Image from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/pageeight/index.html