rusty_halo: (lom: simm/glenister: hotness)
[personal profile] rusty_halo
Okay, so more people recommended 24 Hour Party People, but more people said John Simm is hot in The Lakes. So I went with The Lakes. (Don't worry, I'll watch them all eventually.)

The Lakes is a soapy drama from 1997 that lasted two seasons. I didn't like it much, but the first four episodes do open with John Simm naked, so it was certainly worth watching.

Season one actually isn't terrible. It's all about Simm's character, Danny, this fucked-up city kid who moves to the Lakes to try and be poetical, or something. Instead he fucks around, gets a girl pregnant, marries her, moves back to the city, lies to get a job, blows all his money gambling, steals, gets caught, goes to jail, loses the wife and kid, gets out of jail, and follows the wife and kid back to the Lakes to try to redeem himself. And that's just the setup; the show is actually about the local community in the Lakes and how John Simm's character wanders around being snarky and hot and pissing people off.

The thing that makes it good is that John Simm is amazing. He takes this character who isn't just a woobie but is genuinely a walking disaster, and does that whole sexy vulnerable John Simm thing and makes you love him anyway.

There were a couple of parts that totally killed me, where I had to rewind and watch over and over. There's this whole scene where these three girls drown, and Danny tries to save them but can't, and he cries and is wet and broken and gorgeous, and it's just awesome. Then the whole town blames him for the girls' deaths, so he gets to be all angsty, and you watch him transform from hurt and bewildered to bitter and angry. And then there's this trial where the truth comes out (he gets cleared but thinks he'll lose his wife because his alibi involves gambling), and as the verdict is spoken you just get a closeup of his face, in which he goes through about thirty emotions in the space of a few seconds, and he is just so completely amazing that I can't even stand it.

I don't understand why John Simm didn't become a superstar after this. If I was an industry executive when this thing aired, I would've said "Holy fuck, this guy is the next James Dean" and made sure the whole world knew who he was.

So, season one was ultimately worthwhile. Season two, on the other hand, made me want to gouge out my own eyes. What I want to know is WHAT KIND OF BAD CRACK WERE THEY SMOKING WHEN THEY WROTE THIS THING? Apparently they sat around in the writers room thinking "Hmmm, we have a successful show thanks to our charismatic lead actor and his wonderfully complex character. Let's reduce him to five minutes per episode and focus on the incredibly dull supporting cast instead!"

I'm not kidding, here are things that actually happened in season two of The Lakes. I'm going to exorcise them now and never speak of them again.

* There's a priest. He has an affair with a married female parishioner. They're both old and ugly and unbelievably bland. Neither of them can make up their minds about what they want, so they just hang out angsting quietly, not making any decisions, looking miserable, feeling guilty, and arguing vaguely about whether he should leave the church/she should leave her family, but don't have the guts to decide, and OH MY GOD IT GOES ON FOREVER AND EVER AND IT'S THE MAIN "A" PLOT OF THE SEASON.

Oh, and they don't use condoms or birth control, then ACT ALL SHOCKED when she gets pregnant. Actually, pretty much every problem in this damn show would've been solved by birth control.

* The hideously fugly misogynist school teacher (played by the hideously fugly old boyfriend from Blackpool) bludgeons his wife to death for having an affair. He leaves her bloody corpse in the bathtub (which is full of water) for days. People come over and don't notice the smell, apparently because the door is locked. He moves her corpse to the trunk of his car; it attracts flies but NO ONE NOTICES THE REEKING CORPSE ROTTING IN THE TRUNK, despite the fact that people keep having close encounters with the trunk in order to ramp up the drama.

The dead woman's sister comes to visit, falls in love with the incredibly wussy insane misogynist murderer, discovers that he killed her sister, and helps him hide the corpse because she thinks her sister was a bitch. They sink the body in the lake, and she eats a lot of salmon as a cannibalistic thing because she hopes the salmon were nibbling on her sister's corpse. Despite being the most incompetent murderers on the face of the planet, the show suggests that they'll end up getting away with it.

* The asshole hotel chef cheats on his wife, so she runs him down with her car and keeps him crippled and helpless while she tells him about all the affairs she's having with other men. He gets better and stays with her. She catches him cheating again and cuts off his balls. Literally. With the help of the dead woman's crazy sister from the other plot.

* The chef (prior to getting his balls cut off) decides to get revenge on the idiot his wife was sleeping with by making him seduce the snotty older woman who runs the hotel. If he fails, he'll get his balls cut off. He fails... and inexplicably does not leave town. (He doesn't get his balls cut off, though; the chef's in the middle of it but gets distracted by the crazy misogynist school teacher trying to kill his son in revenge for the chef sleeping with the school teacher's dead wife). Apparently this plot is supposed to be the comic relief (!?!).

* There's a random predatory lesbian who stalks the town doctor for no discernible reason. They share a boring unsexy kiss, which we only see in a wide shot reflected in a mirror because OMG LESBIANS HOW SHOCKING!!!!11!1 Then the evil lesbian sleeps with the doctor's husband in an attempt to get close to her, but it fails, so she leaves. Their story goes nowhere and has absolutely no connection to anything else that's going on in the show.

* John Simm's character moves in with his wife and her crazy family. Despite the hilarity that you assume would ensue, NOTHING HAPPENS, because John Simm's apparently only allowed five minutes an episode now.

* You'd think these insane things would at least be amusing, but they're so tedious and humorless and drawn out, and the characters are so bland and uninteresting, that it really isn't even the good kind of entertaining crack. It's just painful and bad.

* The only story that I thought wasn't completely awful: John Simm's nemesis (a spoiled rich girl, pathological liar, and sex addict who lied to make him seem responsible for the girls' deaths after he rejected her sexually) gets gang-raped by three men, one of whom is John Simm's character's brother-in-law, and another who is Chris from Life on Mars. (This is not the part I liked. *shudders*)

She turns out to be badass and awesome, because she immediately goes to the police, tells the truth, and resists pressure from the entire town and her own horrid parents to drop the case. Meanwhile John Simm's character is the only witness who can support her, which he chooses to do even though she totally fucked up his life in the first season, and even though supporting her alienates him from his wife and her family.

They end up having an awesome love/hate overflowing-sexual-tension type relationship. They're actually kind of perfect for each other, because they're both arrogant and depressed and self-hating and screwed-up and artistic and way smarter than they let on. It was cool to watch the two of them go from hate to hate/attraction to some kind of tension-ridden-almost-love type thing.

Anyway. Their relationship was good. But it's not going to stop me from deleting season two from my hard drive and never thinking of it again.

Also, I've concluded that there must be only fifty working television actors in Britain, and that every time the BBC wants to do a new production, it just shuffles the deck and pulls out a new array of the same old actors each time. How else to explain that in both The Lakes and State of Play I already recognized half the cast from another show?

So that was The Lakes. If you like John Simm, watch season one, and whatever you do, if you value your sanity, stay as far away from season two as possible.

***

[livejournal.com profile] jaydk came over Friday night for another Doctor Who-and-related marathon. We didn't manage to squeeze in any Who; instead we watched David Tennant's episode of Who Do You Think You Are (which is so cute; he gets all angsty when he finds out that his Irish Protestant ancestors weren't adorkable enlightened modern Liberals like he is) and then the entirety of State of Play. [livejournal.com profile] jaydk got really into it and had to know what happened. >:) And then she called me at 1am on Saturday night asking for Life on Mars fic recs, because she was in a John Simm mood. Hee!

I love State of Play. It's a six-episode political thriller from 2003 in which John Simm plays a reporter investigating the death of his friend's mistress. My thoughts:

* John Simm has this amazing ability to make me love the characters he plays. It's something about the way he imbues them with vulnerability even when they're doing terrible things. This guy sleeps with his best friend's wife and while I know it's wrong, all I can think is "Oh, the poor darling's going to get his heart broken." Which he does, and boy is that fun to watch. I don't know who came up with the idea that John Simm should cry in all of his roles, but I heartily approve.

* This show is so well-written. Every character is morally ambiguous, they all have something at stake, and they all go through arcs that leave them different at the end. The writer could've so easily split it into "obvious good guys" and "sleazy bad guys" and he never did. Everyone had a justification for what they were doing and believed that they were right, and nobody was perfect. I love that it even questioned the morality of the heroes; are reporters just vultures feeding off of other people's problems for financial gain? It certainly looked that way at times, and their methods were pretty damn sleazy.

* I love that the plot indicts the government and the oil industry, but instead of going off into massive-conspiracy X-Files land, ultimately it comes down to a very basic human story. It ends with what you really care about: Cal and Stephen.

* I think the theme is disillusionment. Everyone discovers that something or someone they believe in isn't as perfect as they thought it was.

You really get the sense that the only two people Cal believes in are Stephen and Anne. He idealizes them both, and otherwise kind of drifts through life, unable to really connect, terrified of committing or of believing in another person. And then Anne breaks his heart and Stephen turns out to be a murderer. And by trying to help Stephen, Cal ends up bringing him down and ruining his own relationship with Anne. No wonder he's so broken at the end. (Though I do like the hint of hope, that maybe in the end he'll be better off for seeing the truth.)

* David Morrisey's character is a lot more interesting on rewatch. The first time around he seems a decent man struggling with the overblown consequences of an affair. The second time around he's a tragic hero, and the clues to his fatal flaw are woven throughout. His obsession with loyalty, his quick temper, his violent outbursts. It's such a shock when you discover that he's the killer, but it's one of those wonderful shocks that fits perfectly with your existing view of the character. (Like when you find out that Methos was a mass murderer and you're like "OMG!!! And yet... yep, he'd totally have done that.")

* Philip Glenister! It was so weird to see him not beating up suspects. And the scene where "Gene" arrests "Sam" was nifty.

* Bill Nighy is snarktastic. I love him so much in this. I love the writers who gave him such hilarious lines, and I adore his dry delivery. I'm also glad that his character had struggles and vulnerabilities too, instead of just being the typical screaming newspaper boss that you usually see.

* Marc Warren is so damn creepy. He's fine as an actor but he makes my skin crawl. I won't be rewatching his scenes.

* Actually, a lot of this show failed on rewatch, since the plotty mystery bits are only interesting the first time around. However, there's always the John Simm eye candy, and the character stuff between him, David Morrissey, and Polly Walker.

* The ho!yay was awesome in this. The chemistry between Simm and Morrissey was amazing. They're both great actors and Simm especially really made me believe how Cal idealizes Stephen and how increasingly disappointed he is with him. God, the big final confrontation scene is like the epitome of the Big Final Confrontation Scene. (Why didn't the Doctor and the Master get a proper one???!!!) It's got confessions and heartbreak and yelling and tears and betrayal and everything. It's so perfect.

* Apparently this thing was going to be a Hollywood movie with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. I normally roll my eyes at Brad Pitt (and always roll my eyes at Hollywood), but it might've been good. Fight Club redux. If you're going to reunite those two actors, you can't get much better than the off-the-charts ho!yay of State of Play (not to mention the darkness and ambiguity).

Unfortunately it got recast with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. WTF, Hollywood, WTF. *will not be watching*

***

A couple of John Simm pretties: young, goofy hair, supercute, semi-pr0n and singing with New Order in front of a zillion people.

I am completely jealous of people who live in the UK. Why do they get this awesome Doctor Who season three DVD cover? I'd almost buy it anyway (yay region-free DVD player!) but it's £48.99. That's almost $100! Maybe I'll just print out the picture and paste it over the US DVD set that I have....

[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 12:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] writteninstars.livejournal.com
I swear I could watch John Simm youtube clips all day...and have actually. Also? You hit it right on the head-all the many, many problems with season 2 of The Lakes. Not the least of which is the utter lack of Danny. Stupid people. Harumph.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 05:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com
I am sincerely trying to resist doing the YouTube thing, because I know that I'll lose days and days, and because I can't stand the blurry pixelated video quality.

Which isn't to say that I'm not filling up two hard drives downloading higher quality versions of everything Simm-related that I can find....

The Lakes season two just blows my mind. I watched season one and was all excited to start season two (not that the show itself was good, but it was full of John Simm being hot and brilliant) and ... it was like the pale cracked out nightmare version of S1, with everything good removed. *shudders*

The internet tells me that this show was critically acclaimed, which I can sort of see with season one, but I was expecting to find a lot more OMGWTF?!? reactions to season two. I mean... violent rapes, corpses rotting in bathtubs, wives castrating their adulterous husbands... did no one notice that this show became incredibly stupid and crazy?

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 01:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] txvoodoo.livejournal.com
You pretty much nailed The Lakes

AND State of Play

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 04:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com
Thanks. Is there maybe some kind of machine I can use to scrub the memories of The Lakes season two out of my brain forever?

I'm so glad I saw State of Play, though. :)

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 03:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jaydk.livejournal.com
I enjoyed State of Play a lot, but I liked different aspects of it -- other than John Simm, of course. He was fantastic -- such a fun actor to watch. My favorite part of the story was the ensemble at the newspaper, the whole Bill Nighy/Kelly McDonald/James McAvoy crowd. I wasn't as into Cal's relationships with Anne and Stephen, especially not Anne (that affair completely dragged for me). I loved the reporters piecing the mystery together, and Cal continually being torn between his friendship with Stephen and his drive as a reporter to uncover the truth -- that was the heart of the story for me. I wasn't into the friendship itself between Cal and Stephen, but I was invested in what that friendship meant to Cal, if you see what I mean. I agree that Mark Warren was just sooooo sleazy -- he's a very good actor but it's not like I want to watch his scenes again either! And Bill Nighy is such a gem of an actor to watch -- he was so fun in this series. I totally agree on appreciating the layers given to his character, rather than the standard cliche editor.

I saw the first episode of Ashes to Ashes, btw. OMG so bad. They not only lost Sam, they lost the ability to see Gene Hunt as anything but a superhero. It was kind of unbelievable. UK TV giveth, and UK TV taketh away, I guess.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 04:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com
Oh, you and your ensemble obsession! ;) I'm surprised you're so into Doctor Who, actually--where is the ensemble???

I did enjoy the State of Play ensemble, but... not enough to squee about it in my LJ, I guess. It was good and all, but it's not what I loved about the show.

I liked Cal and Anne--it was just so fucked up and obviously doomed, and I liked both of them as people. I agree that the most interesting part of Cal's friendship with Stephen was what it meant to Cal.

Man, that sucks about Ashes to Ashes. I'm glad I was right to avoid it. All the buzz about how awesome Gene Hunt is pretty much tells me what I need to know. :(

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 05:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jaydk.livejournal.com
I am a big ensemble fan -- but if I've got David Tennant to watch, I don't need no stinkin' ensemble ;-). He's enough for me! Seriously, I love him to bits and he's more than enough to keep me entertained.

See, the thing is, I love Gene Hunt -- but it's not an uncritical love. I love him as a very flawed anti-hero, because he has a few very good qualities amid all the bad. But AtA is basically celebrating him as a Dirty Harry -- a superhero who is the only one you can depend on amid all the weak-kneed political correctness. It's just kind of awful to see happen to an interesting, layered character.

I guess the only bright side is that if you're looking for something to snark on, this show would be right up your alley!

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 06:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] queenofthorns.livejournal.com
I think you and I had very similar reactions to 'State of Play' - I actually wanted to smack Cal on multiple occasions during the course of it for being so boneheaded bout Stephen.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 06:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com
I think the fact that I usually want to smack them is one of my favorite things about the characters John Simm plays. >:)

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 06:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] queenofthorns.livejournal.com
I loved Bill Nighy in "State of Play" too :) Here's what I thought about the whole thing, if you're interested. (Although I think I was more into James McAvoy than John Simm :P)

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 10:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com
I still don't really know who James McAvoy is. I guess I must've seen him in those "Last King of Scotland" trailers, but that's it. I couldn't really take my eyes off of John Simm, to be honest, but I'll admit that McAvoy was cute.

Thanks for linking me to your review!

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 08:57 pm (UTC)
herself_nyc: (Default)
From: [personal profile] herself_nyc
I am enjoying your Simm fangrrrlery.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-12 10:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com
Thanks! I'm certainly enjoying fangirling him. The man sure knows how to pick dark angsty parts.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-02-13 12:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] queenofattolia.livejournal.com
24 Hour Party People is marred by the horrible Steve Coogan (I have no idea why he's so huge in the UK) - go rent Winterbottom's Wonderland for a good Simm fix. His character is sort of a tool, but he's very cute in it.

rusty-halo.com

I blog about fannish things. Busy with work so don't update often. Mirrored at rusty-halo.com.

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