26 THE NEW REVIEW | 01. 1 0. 17 | The Observer
Now Klingons
are speaking
my language...
N e t fl ix continues its coquettish bid
to, if not exactly inherit the TV world,
then just buy it instead. Its fi nance
chief spoke recently of the chances,
soon, of making a series cost ing $20m
an hour : HBO is already looking at
$15m an episode for the forthcoming
endgames in Game of Thrones. This
time, though, it’s not the tawdry cash
stuff that excites me about Netfl ix:
in a joyous fi rst, surely indicative of
overpaid staff who might want to get
out and splaff their money in cocktail
bars more often, it is now off ering
subtitles in Klingon.
Thus it falls to me to inform you,
whether you like it or not, that “ghoSll’
chaH!” was the thing belched, by
an angry Klingon, at the very start
of the latest Trekkie incarnation,
Star Trek: Discovery. It translates
as “they are coming.” And, indeed,
coming they were, although in peace,
which for some reason tends to
make Klingons very warlike: a new
batch of humans, Vulcans, and also
a new thing, a Kelpian , seemingly an
inscrutably bright, kind but timorous
cross between (somehow) Spock
and the twerpish Dobb y from Harry
Potter , who’s now set to become
the go-to poster Kelpi an for the
snowfl ake generation.
It’s all rather good, though. Set a
decade before the events of the original
series, it stars Sonequa Martin-Green
and a stylish handful of expendables- the word is that, having taken a
lesson from Thrones, the showrunners
are newly unafraid to kill off some
big names early. And it is fi lmed on
what looked suspiciously like actual
Mars , which must have eaten into
the budget like nobody’s business.
Quite importantly, it continues Gene
Roddenberry ’s yearning 60s vision of a
more equal world for all: the Klingons
are, if not exactly misunderstood
wallfl owers, at least given a hefty
backstory, and there are handsome
chunks of screen time vouchsafed - gasp – to non white people and to
women. Not to mention Kelpi ans. (As
opposed to the Star Wars franchise,
which simply continues George
Lucas’s yearning 70s vision of making a
lot of money.)
Also making some money back
in the America of the 70s were the
pimps, chancers, bagmen, scoundrels
and whores who were in on the fl oor
of the porn industry: 42nd Street,
New York, also known as Th e Deuce.
This is their story, and thrillingly,
viscerally, it is told. It is not a handsome
tale. It is a fi lthy and a spattered one,
and funky in exactly the wrong, as in
rancid-smelling, sense. David Simon ,
creator of The Wire, and his longtime
collaborator George Pelecanos look to
succeed in precisely the milieu where
the entirely unlamented Vinyl failed
so dismally.
“I want to be able to be read by the
guy cooking in the kitchen, with my
paperback in his back pocket. I don’t
write for the critics,” Pelecanos told
this paper (told, in fact, me) many
years ago: that sentiment, Pelecanos’s
love for the streets, for fl awed human
greed, blooms here. New York in 1971 ,
its smokes and browns and jets
Th e new Star Trek
made perfect sense,
while David Simon
captured the smell
and the sleaze of
1970s New York
TV^ +^ Radio
RADIO
Sunday wake-up call
Some readers felt I was rather harsh
on Radio 3 in my 50th anniversary
piece last week. So I would like to
point out that – though I have a
problem with the madly high falutin
tone of the station – there are many
programmes I enjoy. The arts-based
Sunday Feature is one of these, with last
Sunday’s, on American writer James
Baldwin, an absolute corker. Produced
by the consistently excellent indie
production company Falling Tree, this
was a 45-minute soundscape of edits
of Baldwin interviews, interspersed
with statements from contemporary
thinkers. It was both dreamy and
shocking. Dreamy, because of the
delicacy of the production; shocking,
because of the power of Baldwin’s
truth. Every time he spoke, in that fey,Radio 3 can be highfalutin – but it’s also capable
of programming that can shock and mesmerise
educated voice (one that he admitted
he had acquired in order to survive
in a white world), he said something
utterly shocking and entirely profound.
“Safety is an illusion and artists are
there to disturb the peace.” “In order
to know your name, you need to know
mine.” His words struck hard and
true. And this inspired the mostly
writers and critics who spoke with
devastating articulacy about how our
contemporary life is built upon racism,
on “gratuitous violence on black and
brown bodies”. “We believe that racism
is something that bad people do.
[That idea] gaslights you,” said one. A
mesmerising, vital programme.
If James Baldwin inspires you
to search out audio from the black
experience, then may I recommend
Th e Nod, from Gimlet. (The brilliant
Mogul , the story of early hip-hop
through one man’s life and death,
which I reviewed a few weeks ago, is
also from Gimlet.) T his week’s episode
was fantastic. Michael Twitty (right),
a black Jewish American, recently did
a cooking tour of the southern states
of the US. A culinary historian, he
dressed in original slave clothes andof dirty golden bourbon and sweaty
do-rags, and new moral ambiguities, is
lovingly recreated – somehow even the
twin towers, in one half-second shot,
seem to have been got up and running
again – and I mean only the highest
praise when I say that parts of the
visual palette are most reminiscent, in
their squeam, of a used condom fi lled
with old coff ee grounds.
Maggie Gyllenha al , who takes a
producer credit , excels as hooker
Candy : it’s a brave, warty performance.
James Franco plays twin brothers ,
for some unexplained reason: surely
America has too few actors in the
same way it has too few lawyers. But
he plays the more sympathetic sibling,
Vinnie , intriguingly, with all Pelecanos’s
hallmarks of a good man fated to go
accidentally bad: this is a winner, and
Scorsese and Jagger should rightly
cringe for what Vinyl could have been.
Th e Child in Time was scrupulously
well acted, but woefully unsatisfying.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Kelly
Macdonald , as the devastated
parents of a missing child – snatched,cooked in the same way the slaves did,
chopping wood, wringing chickens’
necks, plucking them , digging a fi re pit,
lighting it, letting it go down, cleaning
the pots, and then eventually cooking
for those who had bought a ticket. He
was interviewed by The Nod’s Brittany
Luse, who asked all the right questions.
From the UK, the genial Mandem
Podcast has been going for a while.
Like eavesdropping on a Sunday
night round a friend’s, this
show has a beautiful casual
intimacy and humour.
You just don’t hear young
British black men talking
like that outside of real
life. I do often fi nd it too
long for me, though, as
I do the otherwise great
Melanin Millennials, presented
by Imrie and Satia. Though I know
many who like their podcasts loooong
(apparently it’s “good for a proper
workout”: me neither), I lose patience
with one that lasts almost two hours.
Sometimes, too, I feel the Millennials’
guests need a slightly tougher ride:
the occasional tricky question might
give them the chance to really sellMirandaMiranda
SawyerSawyer
@msmirandasawyer@msmirandasawyer
Sunday Feature: Nobody
Knows My Name – Notes on
James Baldwin Radio 3
Th e Nod Gimlet Media
Th e Mandem Podcast
Melanin Millennials
ShoutOut Network
Th e Essay: Five Poems I Wish
I’d Written Radio 3
their work and approach. Still, with
these podcasts ambience is all, and
both boast welcoming intelligence as
they discuss the contemporary black
experience in the UK. I should point
out that Melanin Millennials is part of
ShoutOut Network of podcasts – “the
UK’s fi rst diverse podcasting network”- which has plenty of others to choose
from, including the interesting book
show Mostly Lit.
Back to Radio 3. Th e Essay
is a particular favourite
of mine (15 minutes per
episode!) and I enjoyed
poet Don Paterson’s
“Five Poems I Wish I had
Written” this week. The
fi rst episode on Seamus
Heaney’s The Underground
was a real revelation, as
Paterson pointed out all the
classical allusions I knew nothing
about. The following programmes, on
poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Michael
Donaghy, Robert Frost and Sylvia
Plath, were stimulating and funny.
Paterson has a deadpan delivery, which
can be a little lulling, but his mind
sparks like electricity.
somehow vanished, in broad daylight- could hardly have been out-nuanced
in their very separate ways, neither
over the top nor anything less than
haunted. But great gobbets of Ian
McEwan’s clever novel didn’t make
it into this adaptation or, far worse,
were shoehorned in with zilch
context, relevance or hinterland: the
time-travel nuclear physicist stuff ,
the politician’s breakdown stuff , the
whole Thatcherite backdrop.
That the BBC chose neither to spread
this over three or six weeks, or simply
concentrate on the child loss and
eventual near-salvaging of sanity,
left me ultimately head-scratching,
waiting for the other shoe to drop (or
the next episode) and, actually, mildly
vexed at its lack of ambition.
Similarly with Front Row , which
began on television last Saturday. I
always struggle to fi nd any adjectives
for Giles Coren other than “amiable”
and “professional”, though perhaps I
should struggle a little more. But the
opener, a doppelgänger of the smart
nightly R4 beast, which, heavens
be thanked, remains inviolate, was
quite horrid in its lack of ambition.
A so-so Gilbert and George thing, a
Harry Potter “discussion”, in which
the ever wise Nihal Arthanayake was
given criminally little airtime... at the
moment it’s the Boden catalogue of arts
shows, the National Trust of arts shows.
The Dido of arts shows, in which it’s
safer to play that CD than risk anyone
squeaking or covering their ears or
throwing up. When might the BBC
ever have the cojones to present an
arts show that might challenge us to a)
watch something diffi cult, possibly four
times out of 10, immensely rewarding,
or b) just bloody switch channels?
The confi dence shown, say,
in two phenomenally promising
new series from that apparently
increasingly dysfunctional corporation.
Billion Dollar Deals , from the impressive
Jacques Peretti , had the power to make
one genuinely, spittingly angry. His
revelation of how Pfi zer carved up the
anti depressants market (with its own
patented GPs’ questionnaire, which
set the bar gigglingly low) ... the disaster
of the 1980 psychiatrists’ paper, which
introduced more than 200 “nameable” - and thus, crucially, treatable, with
manufactured pills – mental illnesses.
Basically, how billionaires have
profi ted, in billions, from giving pretty
sweeties to treat mental health.
And, of course, the forensic
Vietnam War , Ken Burns and Lynn
Novick ’s quite startlingly even-
handed second treatment of history,
more of which very soon. No whizzy
graphics, a few talking heads, chilling
insights and, as with Peretti’s, a tale
of disaster, simply told. How can the
BBC have the foresight to buy this, an
unashamedly cerebral, ungimmicky,
Big Number from PBS, and, as with
Peretti, get so much so perfectly right,
yet get so much else hamfi stedly,
timorously, wrong?
Top: Michelle Yeoh, left, and Sonequa Martin-Green in Star Trek: Discovery, and, above,
Benedict Cumberbatch in The Child in Time. CBS/Pinewood Television/Sunny MarchMaggie Gyllenhaal,
who takes a producer
credit, excels as
hooker Candy in a
brave performance
Star Trek: Discovery Netfl ix
Th e Deuce Sky Atlantic/nowTV
Th e Child in Time BBC1
Front Row BBC2
Billion Dollar Deals and How
Th ey Changed Your World BBC2
Th e Vietnam War BBC4
EuanEuan
FergusonFerguson
@euanferg@euanferg