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Hard Sun (new Neil Cross drama)

Started by Ballad of Ballard Berkley, January 06, 2018, 11:35:36 PM

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Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Billed as a "pre-apocalyptic drama", it started tonight on BBC One. I enjoyed it. In typical Neil Cross style, it's lurid, violent, pulpy and borderline stupid, but he carries it all off with his usual penny dreadful audacity.

With Cross, I always get the impression that he bangs out the likes of Luther and Hard Sun fueled by too much coffee, while cackling to himself. His enjoyment is contagious, he's an inspired, superior hack.

Yes, the first episode was crammed with clunky exposition, but I can just about overlook that as he set up enough intrigue, introduced some ambiguous characters, and orchestrated a few gripping set-pieces.

Like Luther, it appears to be another load of semi-parodic, entertaining, propulsive tosh. We all need a jolt of that in our lives sometimes.

Anyway, the first episode is on iPlayer.

biggytitbo

This sounds like something I might be interested in.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

It could all fall apart, as these things often do, but the first episode was fun. If nothing else, I'm tickled by the fact that a violent, pessimistic conspiracy thriller is being shown on BBC One at 9pm on a Saturday night.

biggytitbo

I'm a sucker for end of the world stuff so I have had my eye on this for a while, despite the fact I completely eschew modern TV drama. But I will give this a go, it sounds a bit like the last train.

Dr Syntax Head


Dr Syntax Head

Yay a dark falling body death on Brandon Estate (my favourite tower blocks ever). Good start.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Plus a bloke being stabbed in the face with a fork. I do like Neil Cross' work, he's a mainstream BBC One dramatist who crams in loads of weird, dark, violent craziness and political paranoia into the laps of yer everyday viewer.

Dr Syntax Head

The part with the two cops trying to get away from the mob was nicely anxiety inducing. This show I think will be a nice slice of light entertainment for a while.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

No depth, but very entertaining. As you say, that set-piece was gripping.


Dr Syntax Head

Quote from: bgmnts on January 07, 2018, 01:26:58 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jan/06/hard-sun-overcaffeinated-blood-soaked-nonsense

I'm glad it mentioned Last Night because that is one of the most affecting end of the world films I've seen. It's how it should be done.

Alberon

Watched it and found it entertaining. More than a bit silly that everyone seems utterly convinced by 30 seconds of flashy graphs on a smartphone though. The whole series is up on the iplayer so I might plow on through it tonight.

I've always been somewhat intrigued by end-of-the-world stories. The best in recent times was a trilogy by Ben Winters called The Last Policeman, about a cop who realises his dream to become a police detective just as, and because, the end of the world due to killer asteroid has been announced. The three books chart the collapse of society as the inevitable and inescapable end comes. It was optioned as a TV show pilot back in 2016, but I've not heard anything more about it.

Dr Syntax Head

Quote from: Alberon on January 07, 2018, 11:06:40 AM


I've always been somewhat intrigued by end-of-the-world stories. The best in recent times was a trilogy by Ben Winters called The Last Policeman, about a cop who realises his dream to become a police detective just as, and because, the end of the world due to killer asteroid has been announced. The three books chart the collapse of society as the inevitable and inescapable end comes. It was optioned as a TV show pilot back in 2016, but I've not heard anything more about it.

Is it very bleak and grim? If so it sounds up my street.

As for Hard Sun, seems it's kind of a stand alone episode kind of deal and I'm quite bored halfway through episode 3.

JesusAndYourBush

Just watched the first 2 episodes.  After seeing episode 2 I hope every episode isn't just about them dealing with different conspiracy nuts' extreme behaviour.

And the graphs we saw in episode 1 showed a gradual change over the course of 5 years (presumably they plan on making 5 series then?) so they've got about a year or less before other scientific people notice the changes and make the same observations as the people who discovered the Hard Sun phenomena.

Dr Syntax Head

I'm bailing. On episode 3. This is really boring actually.

I've just noticed Mrs Syntax has added Malcolm in the Middle to our Sky planner thing. That's a nice surprise.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Yep, it doesn't deliver on the promise of its crackerjack first episode. It quickly degenerates into a mad killer of the week procedural. The personal plights of the two protagonists aren't strong enough to sustain interest - although Agnyess Deyn is a charismatic actor - and the sinister MI5 woman cropping up every now and again just feels silly instead of adding to the overarching storyline.

I was hoping that Cross had devised a mad, bleak, intense and compelling apocalyptic drama spread over just six episodes, something along the lines of the only Torchwood worth watching, Children of Earth. But nah, it appears to be an open-ended cop show loosely knitted together with a high-concept hook.

Alberon

Just watched the second myself. I'll give it to the end of this series to see if develops. The graphs shown do suggest things will get steadily worse as opposed to the sun suddenly going bang at the end of series five. So, hopefully, that will mean it should move beyond the lone crazy of the week.

Cross has said, somewhere, that he has the final scene of the final episode already borrowed from another source. My betting is that if it gets to a fifth series it will recreate a shot of a baking London from The Day the  Earth Caught Fire.

Dr Syntax Head

Remember Utopia? I was hoping it would be more along those lines.

Alberon

Has anyone persevered to the end of the first series? Just reached the last episode myself.

If you gave up after the first couple of episodes then the rest of the series has been much the same - two insanely emotionally damaged cops careening around London while being menaced by a softly-spoken government woman being all softly-spoken and menacing the whole time. The two cops get badly beaten up every episode or so, if there isn't anyone around to do it to them they beat each each other up.

So a load of tosh, basically, but entertaining tosh.

The finale shakes things up a bit and not just by having a Watcher from Fringe show up. The visible effects of Hard Sun have appeared, and the sun seems to have a black hole or white dwarf or neutron star that is pulling a vast stream of plasma off of it and onto its new companion. So if the series returns things will be more out in the open and instead of vague Hard Sun mutterings most people will have heard, if not actually accepted, that the world is ending.


I hope it does come back, though. I'd like to see where it goes now, especially now the scary government woman looks like she'll have to join forces with the two cops, giving them more options for beating each other up.

mothman


Alberon


JesusAndYourBush

I persevered to the end.  I was worried every episode was going to be "nutter of the week" but by the end of episode 6 the sun done a woo woo so the next series should be worth watching.  Presumably we have to wait a year.  A wait made even longer because they released series one all at once rather than force use to watch week by week.

I imagine the opening scene of series two will be one of the cops saying to scary government woman "Look at the sun!!  Here's your memory stick, now fuck off!"

gib

CONTAINS SPOILERS after first sentence


I found this surprisingly alright. In response to Alberon's highly enjoyable and bang on review i'd like to say the ending reminded me of the end of Apocalypto, which i only saw recently. Trio fighting since the start suddenly stop because of huge reveal shot which resets the world.

Much as i liked it, i'm not sure i want to see a second series where all their kids have to deal with everything going all nasty.

The final scene is satisfying but also frustrating. I'll be amazed if Hard Sun comes back for a second series so the cliffhanger is probably wasted. Hard Sun will become yet another series that ends saying "this is where things get interesting folks." Well, thanks for that. What a shame you couldn't actually tell those interesting stories now.

The serial-killer-of-the-week stuff was generic. What's the point of setting up a high concept series like Hard Sun if you are going to write stories that ignore the concept? Richard Coyle was good, but his plot from episodes 3 and 4 could have been told in any Police procedural. The suicide message board b-plot in episode 6 could have been dropped into another series with minimal changes. I can't quite believe that's what they thought would work best as part of the finale.

mothman

I just binged this, and I'm quite glad I did. It's not great, but it kept me watching. I agree I don't see there being more. Why?

Well, first off, the Beeb have ambivalent attitudes towards Science Fiction. For all the fact that some of their most well-loved, best remembered, popular and successful shows have been SF, the BBC by and large is run by people who think it's a genre that's beneath them.

Plus you have the fact that it was put on Saturday night. Now, that;s enrirely the wrong night for it. Saturday night is moron night. It's for cattle fodder like The Voice. Sttrictly. Pointless Celebrities. The X-Factor. BGT. Saturday night Takeaway. Take Me Out. Remembr when ITV tried to have a prime-time Saturday night football highlights show? Nobody wanted it. It's as close as you can get to covertly burying a show - unless you go overt and put it on a Friday.

... and then, to crown it all, they go and release the whole thing straightaway as a Box Set on iPlayer!

Presumably there is - or was going to be - a five year plan. Maybe the show was going to become a very different beast as it progressed; but starting off with some new twist on the gritty urban mismatched-partners buddy-cop police procedural, to overall rather anodyne effect, means it's not puttng its best face forward to sell itself and guarantee continuation. And they're running the risk that people who will watch any old crap detective show aren't going to watch a show about the end of the world.

And then there's the ending...

OK, so you have an esxtablishing first episode, followed by a one-ep Hard Sun-inspired loony of the week wpisode, then a two part Hard Sun-inspired loony of the week episode (gootd work there from Richard Coyle by the way), then what in in effect a two-part finale. Even though part 5 is also a loony-of-the-week show, but this time not a Hard Sun-inspired one, it's just Renko's son.

If the show does progress, it feels like some effective groundwork has been laid for its evolution. Somebody called the bald guy in the suit a Watcher from Fringe. It really does make you think this guy is some sort of otherworldly individual, an alien, or a future human, or an alternate world one. What he actually reminded me of was the aliens from Nicolas Cage film Knowing. But of course, it transpires he's just a - all together now - Hard Sun-inspired loony of the week.

So I think the last scene is a way of ending the show. Hey, it turns out that suspiciously round number of five years wasn't really correct (or truthful? Grace said they "they" lied to her) after all. Oops. But at least the people who own all the stuff got to keep it all for a little while longer, without fear that people with nothing left to lose would come and take all their stuff away from them.

An interstellar object, a neutron star or a black hole, has been captured by the Sun's gravity and is hoovering up solar material. Quite how the powers that be knew this was going to happen is questionable; it may be that their estimates of when it would start and how long it take were a bit shy of the mark. And there's also how this object managed to get where it is without perturbing various other celestial bodies in the Solar System. And also how - despite more than three-quarters of the world seeing the sun come up in the twelve hours before London - nobody has heard anything about it... We're talking serious 2012-level planetary disruptions in the next five years, and I don't think the BBC have the budget for that.

Norton Canes

Sorry, hang on - a neutron star has been captured by the sun's gravity? Isn't that like saying the Earth has been captured by an asteroid's gravity?

Thomas

Thanks, Ballad, I'll try to catch this. Adding this pointless post in lieu of a karmic point.

Alberon

Yeah, a neutron star probably is too massive. A small black hole could have less mass, but it needs to be a certain size to be able to do that to the sun.

But, any object of a mass even half that of the Sun would seriously fuck up the orbits of the planets long before it could eat a star.

Something just the size of Jupiter shooting through the solar system could be enough to bugger the Earth's orbit enough to kill us.

mothman

Yeah, I thought a neutron star seemed unlikely but Alby mentioned one first!

Whatever it is, it presumably was either spotted visually - or the effects of its gravitational lensing was - and it managed to approach in an orbit that avoided most or all of the significant bodies in the system.

gib

Quote from: mothman on January 25, 2018, 03:29:21 PM
And also how - despite more than three-quarters of the world seeing the sun come up in the twelve hours before London - nobody has heard anything about it... We're talking serious 2012-level planetary disruptions in the next five years, and I don't think the BBC have the budget for that.

Yes, the rest of the world pretty much didn't exist for this story. That's something you usually see on american stuff.