So… I don’t watch TV. When I moved into my house (4 years ago) it had just been renovated so it didn’t have an external aerial. We picked up a portable booster which gave us a crappy signal and cost us fifteen quid, and y’know what? It wasn’t worth it. TV is shit. British TV is worse. And Welsh TV is the worst of the lot. There’s something about the nature of TV. Films are finite, designed to have a story with a resolution. For the most part, TV shows are designed to keep you coming back for more week after week. There’s no resolution. No satisfying climax. So I gave up watching TV, any TV shows of note I end up catching their releases on DVD.
And none of them are modern British dramas.
American dramas? Sure. The Shield, The Sopranos, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Heroes. Great storytelling, which plays to TV format strengths and do seem to be going somewhere in terms of overall story arcs.
Classic British Dramas? Sign me up. The Stone Tape, Threads, Edge of Darkness. Realistic and yet not gritty for the sake of it, also with finite stories.
Modern British Comedy? Definitely. Peep Show, Spaced, Black Books, The Office. Envelope-pushing and funny. What more could you ask for?
But Modern British Drama.
Pile.
Of.
Cack.
Period Dramas or Casualty or Holby City. No thanks. I didn’t watch those when I had a working TV.
So when my mate Matthew raved about Afterlife, an ITV Drama (don’t get me started on ITV) I nodded politely and promised I’d ask the nice robots at lovefilm.com to send me a disc in the post. When it turned up; I popped it on, not expecting to get past the 1st episode. And you know what? It got interesting. There was honest to goodness character development. Which is rare in TV, a medium designed to keep feeding you the same stock characters and the same repetitive situations and keep you coming back for the familiarity. (Think BBC’s Life on Mars with its 2 seasons of characters behaving exactly the same, week in, week out, despite events which should have had a serious impact on their lives.)
So I was looking forward to the robots despatching me the second series. At the start of the second series we find the previously sceptical Professor Bridge (This Life’s Andrew Lincoln) is now a believer in medium Alison Mundy’s (Lesley Sharp) abilities. Now this has completely changed the dynamic of the show from last season.
This disc contains the 1st three episodes of Season 2.
The episodes of this disc follow the standard Afterlife structure of scepticism, trust and then the twist ending, of which there are two varieties, the downer-but-slightly-hopeful ending or the seriously-depressing-headfuck conclusions. Afterlife works better when it delivers the latter, especially in the context of an evening of ITV programming, sidling up to cosy shows such as Heartbeat and Midsomer Murders.
On the downside, Afterlife does at times follow a disturbing trend in modern British TV, that of ripping off the plots from American movies and hoping nobody notices because its done in a small-scale “British” way. Although Afterlife is not the most serious offender of this crime (that award must go to Dr. Who spinoff Torchwood) there are episodes where the twist endings are spoilt for anyone who has rented out Sixth Sense or The Others.
Overall though, I stand corrected. Afterlife, although not perfect by any standards, does deliver quality TV, in the form of well-made dark little tales in which our recurring protagonists develop in a realistic manner, keeping the show fresh for each new episode. That said, its still not enough to convince me to attempt to hook up my aerial again or cough up the money to switch on to Digital TV, I’ll stick with DVD boxsets, thankee very much.
