Any Other Business: Part XXXVIII

As the title suggests, so forth.

The End of Elementary

Seven seasons have come and gone, and now Elementary is no more. I was unsure of it at the beginning. Did we really need another modern Sherlock Holmes when Sherlock was in its pomp? The casting of Lucy Liu, fresh from her terrific turn in Dirty Sexy Money, brought me to the show, where I was less sure of its casting of Jonny Lee Miller as a tattooed junkie Holmes than Liu as Dr. Joan Watson. But the fact that show-runner Robert Doherty had worked on the great Medium suggested this would be worth sticking with it. And so it was. And for all the initial misgivings this turned out in the long run to be the better of the duelling modern Sherlocks. When the shows went head to head in adapting Arthur Conan Doyle story elements it was Elementary that won time after time. The most egregious example being Doherty and his merry writers room outfoxing the entire third season arc of Sherlock concerning the Master Blackmailer in just 40 minutes. Sherlock long ago disappeared into an unwatchable sinkhole of self-regarding self-indulgence. Elementary by contrast went out verily banging a drum in the battle of wits at the highest stakes between Holmes & Watson and the villainous tech billionaire Odin Reichenbach.

Notes on Yesterday

Richard Curtis’ Beatles rom-com Yesterday was the film of the week much earlier today on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

Danny Boyle may be the director but this is a Richard Curtis film, and it would be much better if it weren’t. A world in which The Beatles have been erased from existence save for the memory of one struggling musician is a high concept comedy, but Curtis insists on making it a ho-hum rom-com. Kevin Willmott’s CSA showed that you have to rein in the butterfly effect for alternate history because everything would become unfamiliar. Would the Beach Boys be as important without Pet Sounds, their riposte to the Beatles? Curtis displays no such interest, save an Oasis joke, in exploring the butterfly effect of his own bloody high concept. Kate McKinnon is the most reliably comic element of this film, and she is lip-smackingly playing a caricature record executive – Hunter S Thompson’s famous jibe mixed with notes of her SNL Hillary Clinton. But then all the characters in this film are caricatures. This poses a problem when Curtis wants you to care about the romance as if it involved characters with some humanity.

The romance is already scuppered by Jack (Himesh Patel) and Elly (Lily James) patently having the chemistry of hopeless dreamer and dutiful girlfriend in the opening scenes, until it’s bafflingly revealed they’re just friends. They do not hold themselves as fast platonic friends like Holmes and Watson in Elementary. When she complains she always wanted more, and Curtis writes improbable scenes doggedly making this fetch happen he, like Nick Hornby in Juliet, Naked, defies the felt experience of human nature. But this aggravating drive to the grand romantic gesture reaches a new low for Curtis. GK Chesterton once quipped that art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. I draw the line at Curtis; in the vein of his Doctor Who episode in which he shamefully zipped Van Gogh to the future to hear Bill Nighy valorise him then returned him to the past to kill himself to general hand-wringing; resurrecting the murdered John Lennon as septuagenarian sage giving Jack a pep talk to make the finale’s grand romantic gesture. No… No. No. No!

Listen here:

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the ones that the Feds give you make you Sherlock Holmes for twelve hours

 

INT.HILL OF BEANS PRODUCTION OFFICE, BROOKLYN-DAY

 

CRAIG SWEENY, writer/producer, clenches and unclenches his fists as he walks along a corridor. He slows as he approaches the office at the end of the corridor from which we hear two loud voices. He gulps. Sweat trickles off his unclenched fist.

 

TITLE: 18 MONTHS AGO.

 

Sweeny slowly pushes open the door, and hovers in the doorway while ROBERT DOHERTY jumps to his feet to bellow at a phone on speaker emitting a dial tone.

 

DOHERTY: AND GOOD DAY TO YOU TOO, ‘SIR’!

 

Doherty picks up the phone and throws it off the desk. The receiver lands on the hard wooden chair on the supplicant side of the desk, while the body dangles in mid-air as the cord is attached on the other side of the desk.

 

DOHERTY: (looks up at Sweeny) Telemarketer.

SWEENY: Oh. Uh, hey, uh, Robert, do, uh, do you have, uh, a minute? Maybe?

DOHERTY: What? A minute? Oh, yes, certainly. Take a seat. In fact, it’s great that you’re here, Craig, I want to explain to someone a fantastic wheeze I just concocted.

SWEENY: Well, actually I-

DOHERTY: I said sit down sir!

 

Sweeny dives into the supplicant chair, and ends up sitting on the receiver. He tries to subtly move it out from under him while Doherty relaxes back into a leather armchair.

 

SWEENY: SO… I got this offer-

DOHERTY: If we get cancelled I have come up with a golden parachute to beat the bank. Have you read any of the Game of Thrones books?

SWEENY: No.

DOHERTY: Ah! Neither have I, and one of us needs to, so that means you. Read them all in the next week and report back to me then. Also make some character notes. And some notes on the house style employed.

SWEENY: I-

DOHERTY: Don’t interrupt! Now, George RR Martin is a decrepit old man. We all know this. What we all know but are too hidebound by bourgeois niceties to say is that, like Robert Jordan, he is going to die before he finishes writing the novels. Indeed he may well die before he even finishes the next book as he clearly has no interest in actually writing it. But, and how many times have I tried to impress this on you Sweeny, never present just a problem, always present the solution too. So! The solution – we pull a Patterson.

SWEENY: What?

DOHERTY: Would you stop interrupting me?! Now, if James Patterson can come over all medieval craftsman and give anonymous people 50 page treatments which they then flesh out and he later okays before putting it out under his own name, then why can’t we do the same for decrepitly old George RR?

SWEENY: What?

DOHERTY: He tells us, verbally, so that he doesn’t have to strain himself with the idea of committing something to paper, his ideas on what happens next, be they e’er so vague. We secretly record it, as the whole occasion will happen in front of a roaring fireplace as we get him roaring drunk. You transcribe it, I read it, work up a treatment, give it you, and you write it all up with the help of whoever we can keep on from the writers’ room.

SWEENY: Alright…

DOHERTY: And everyone’s happy. A new novel appears, it seems RRish enough to be going on with, and it’s been done fast, so nobody’s dead, and nobody’s left millions of fans howling at him for wasting a good chunk of their lives.

SWEENY: Right…

DOHERTY: Now we just need to pitch it to his publishers. If only I had the requisite confidence you need in these situations… (gazes abstractedly at the roof)

SWEENY: Um, Robert?

DOHERTY: Oh, I thought you’d gone. Why haven’t you gone?
SWEENY: I’ve been offered another gig.

DOHERTY: What? You traitor! Where??
SWEENY: CBS.

DOHERTY: You double-dealing traitor! I have nursed a viper in my bosom! (He goes to throw the phone at Sweeny, realises he’s already thrown it, makes a few attempts to lean over his desk and grab it, but grabs only air, and slumps back in his chair)

SWEENY: They want me to develop Limitless.

DOHERTY: … The Bradley Cooper film?

SWEENY: Yes.

DOHERTY: I don’t see it as a TV show.

SWEENY: Well. I thought it might make for a good procedural.

DOHERTY: How so?

SWEENY: Well, suppose that we have Cooper appear in the pilot as a Senator. Suppose he wants NZT kept on the down-low, but suppose the Feds know about it, and then suppose that he cultivates a guy inside the Feds to keep them guessing.

DOHERTY: A healthy amount of supposition! So, set-up. What’s the week by week?

SWEENY: Why would the FBI keep a guy around? NZT makes you smarter. So he can see patterns nobody else can, the drug makes him the best analyst they have!

DOHERTY: (lilts) One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the ones that the Feds give you make you Sherlock Holmes for twelve hours. (mutters) Haha, said the title.

SWEENY: What?

DOHERTY: Some day, Sweeny, you may join myself and Deadpool in an elite club. Yes, I think I can see this working qua show.

SWEENY: So, are you okay with me working on it?

DOHERTY: Yes! I see great possibilities. I was talking to a network lawyer and he said that he’s fairly sure that with a bit more screen-time he can get Clyde the turtle a SAG card, and then we can all share the health benefits with a nod and a wink to a tame doctor. Do you think you can give your hero a pet turtle that he uses for expository purposes?

 

Before Sweeny can answer BORIS sticks his head in the door.

 

DOHERTY: NO! THAT LINE REMAINS! DAMN TASTE AND DECENCY! YES! WATSON CAN DIRECT ANOTHER EPISODE IF SHE REALLY MUST! AND IT HAS TO BE PURPLE! PURPLE! PURPLE! PURPLE! IF HE CAN’T DISTINGUISH BETWEEN PURPLE AND MAUVE HE SHOULDN’T BE A PRODUCTION DESIGNER!

 

Boris nods at the answers to the three questions he didn’t get to ask, and sidles away. No matter how many times Sweeny sees Doherty do this, he is always amazed.

 

SWEENY: How did you?

DOHERTY: Do you need to ask? Honestly, Craig, this is the level you need to be at to ascend to show-runner. Incidentally I have an idea for a Ferris Bueller episode.

SWEENY: That sounds more like a season six conceit.

DOHERTY: AHA! I’m so proud, I knew you had it in you. My tutelage is second to none. Well of course it’s a season six conceit, but I have no confidence in getting that far so let’s put it in your show.

SWEENY: WHAT?! I haven’t written a final draft pilot script! I can’t start putting nonsense conceits in the show from the get-go.

DOHERTY: Nobody’s saying make the pilot bonkers, or the first regular episode barmy, wait till about episode 7. Also, I’ll be coming aboard your ship if mine sinks.

SWEENY: (suspiciously) As what?

DOHERTY: It’s nearly Thanksgiving, I might come as a turkey. (beat) (beat) (Doherty waits for raillery from Sweeny) (beat) (realises it’s not coming) Sorry, my mistake I thought we were doing something there that we weren’t actually doing. Creative Consultant.

SWEENY: Will you actually just be a creative consultant? Or will you try and be a backseat show-runner.

DOHERTY: Creative Consultant. Advise and Consent. A hopeless yes-man. I am a shy and retiring individual, as you know.

 

Boris sticks his head in the door again.

 

DOHERTY: F****** LILAC?!!! IS THIS SOME ILL-CONCEIVED APRIL FOOLS’ DAY PRANK?!!

ADIFF: Aidan Quinn in town for Michael Collins

ADIFF has announced that Irish-American actor Aidan Quinn will attend the 20th anniversary screening of Michael Collins. Aidan Quinn played Harry Boland in Neil Jordan’s biopic charting Collins’ struggle for independence.

“I’m thrilled to be a part of honoring this remarkable film,” said Quinn; currently playing Captain Gregson on CBS’ Elementary. “It was an absolute privilege to work on, and with this extraordinary group, and remains one of my favorite film making experiences.”

The film will have its 20th anniversary premiere on Saturday, February 20th at the Savoy on O’Connell Street, which will also be attended by writer/director Neil Jordan and cinematographer Chris Menges, followed by an on stage Q&A hosted by Harry McGee. The event will also be attended by some of the many volunteer extras who took part in the film.

Michael Collins will also be available for the first time on Blu Ray from March 4th in a 20th anniversary edition, re-mastered with the addition of a new specially recorded introduction and director’s commentary by Neil Jordan. This new anniversary edition will also be available on regular DVD.

And if you have fond memories of its controversial 12s rating [or PD-13 rating (Patriotic Duty to go see it) as I once dubbed it] you’ll be glad to hear Michael Collins will be re-released nationwide in cinemas in a new digital format from March 18th.