Review: Atlantis 1.4: A Twist Of Fate

Topics inappropriate for younger readers, from the outset. And spoilers, if any of you actually care.

The new sitcom from the guy who brought you a plotline
where a male character's dilemma was that someone had
used their magic superpower to steal his penis.

Howard Overman wrote a series in which one of the brick jokes was about using a Fisherman's Friend in order to enhance oral sex. In which one of the main characters had sex with a gorilla. In which an Immortal character set up a TV event in which he repeatedly shot himself in the head. And yet, despite that abject vulgarity, despite the silliness and over-the-top appeals to a Skins/Inbetweeners audience, it was still some of the most hilarious television of its time. It was a show that moved me, that created six well-developed, flawed yet likeable characters and had awesome sci-fi enriched plotlines. That series is called Misfits, and it is not the subject of this review.
      The subject of this review is of the most recent episode of Atlantis, a show which is Misfits' antithesis in every point I made above and yet, painfully, is written by the same person.
      This week saw Atlantis' take on the great drama of Oedipus, of course inserting its unlikely ensemble into the mix for reasons which are currently unknown to science. The three dumb heroes find a baby in the woods and Hercules (Mark Addy, the only member of the main cast worth talking about) grows attached to it, returning it to the city and having the other two help him take care of it. Turns out it's a visiting King's deliberately rejected son, who the asshole Oracle foretold would become Freud's wet dream by killing his dad and marrying his mother. The three, on behalf of the mother and of an awesome servant named Tiresias (Donald Sumpter, Game of Thrones and Being Human), smuggle the baby out. Medusa gives Hercules a peck on the cheek and Queen Pasiphae grows angrily like a hungry bear.
     I was ready to give up (as I always am with this show) when the lazy jokes aimed at "three men and a baby" humour turned up, and that thin sliver of plot took up the vast majority of the first half of the episode, only developing into something mildly juicy whenever Donald Sumpter's character arrived on the scene. He's the first character in four weeks that I've actually taken seriously, seeing as everyone else feels like they're in a poor Merlin spinoff show and are very aware of that fact. Mark Addy again got some of the little character development on offer, while Pythagoras and Jason are bostinate in their refusal to move from their positions as mildly amusing idiots. Which would be fine, if Mark Addy's character wasn't the simple comic relief who gets constantly belittled when, all things considered, he's the most rational and sympthasable one there.

Maester Lewin is too good for this shit.

     We're settling into a nice little routine now, and I am somewhat used to watching a scene with a group of people, thinking "I Don't Care" and not having that opinion changed by the end of the episode. Ariadne, Pasiphae, Minos - I don't really care about anything they're doing or why they're doing it. Meanwhile, ignoring the main three, I'm wondering why Medusa is still here, especially as I was expecting her to be a momentary fascination and not, I am bewildered to say, Hercules' main love interest. Wowzers. This show might have some decent plot next.
     Ha. Fat chance.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: I was wrong! Well, maybe. Some plot might actually happen as long as Jason can tell some White Lies.

Review: Atlantis 1.3: A Boy Of No Consequence

What's the point of writing funny captions any more, eh?

Okay, I give up on being a serious critic on this show. There's just no point, it's clearly not trying to actually do anything or say anything, and it falls into so many cliches that despite the few attempts at plot we glimpsed throughout this week's debacle, it never came to anything because of the show's faith in its super-mega-awesome protagonist and its refusal to write any character who isn't a cardboard cutout. It's effortlessly sexist in the way that it only presents women who fit into the four great archetypes of "innocent, evil, matronly or sexy" and, most annoyingly, uses certain female characters simply as devices rather than imbuing them with any actual agency.
     So, the plot, of what there was. Jason gets in trouble doing daring do and Pinky and Perky get thrown in after him for no reason. Alexander Siddig's phoned-in performance (a perfectly understandable one given what a fantastic actor he is) tells us that Minoan justice is trial-by-bull, where prisoners are required to use greenscreen to pretend to leap over a bull which is unnecessarily angry in an oddly Roman arena. A plucky young girl named Elpis gives a lock of hair to Morgana-expy Queen Pasiphae in exchange for her freedom, but she's evil evil evil so it doesn't happen and Hercules is forced to use his masculine wiles to convince his girlfriend to get Medusa (from last week) to foil the old Queen's voodoo magic and save the day. Pasiphae is evil, Ariadne is boring, Jason is boring, Pythagoras has no reason to exist and I think my favourite character was the bull.
     I am a veteran of the Merlin years, when in 9 cases out of 10, the show would confirm whatever cliches you could predict, be it within seconds of your predictions or, in my unfortunate case, years. Atlantis brought that painful feeling back as I was able to see exactly what developments would happen as soon as they were mentioned, with the sole exception of the return of Medusa, which for me serves very little purpose beyond the BBC's clear attempt to appeal to the Tumblr crowd and get everyone "shipping" when in reality trying to imagine Mark Addy as a fantastic casanova is more difficult to imagine than him accomplishing the Twelve Trials. 
     The lack of mythology in this week's story was not in its favour, as the wonderful shiny glow of classroom nostalgia about learning Greek Myths and Legends left actual characterisation in its stead, resulting in a series of ill-thought-out guest characters and a focus on our main cast which made it painfully clear just how underdeveloped they still are. The crappy greenscreen effects for the bull-jumping was okay for the most part, but on occasion the mixture of the hilariously bad effect and the fact that this was an attempt by the show to appear epic left the episode a laughing stock, and not in an enjoyable way. In the crappy, why am I still watching this show sorta way. Then I remind myself that I watch this show to write angry articles about it, and I shut up.

I mean, the lack of effort put into Ariadne's character is just
appalling. Seriously. This is disgraceful.

     Still. Within fifteen minutes of this week's episode, I had resolved to never watch Atlantis again. I go on and on and fucking on in my pre-written reviews of other TV shows about how the first few episodes are about getting it right and hooking the viewer in. Atlantis could have pushed the Time Travel aspect, it could have actually made reference to injustices (and justices) in Greek society that are different from Jason's supposed home, there could be background manipulations and political intrigue and a million different plots more interesting than the three we've been left with over this fortnight. Instead, we are given a show with boring characters, cliched plots, an atmosphere broken by repeated obliterations of my disbelief and a publicity drive which is more interested in getting people to "ship" these bland archetypes than it is actually engaging them.
     I haven't been this entertainingly angered by a TV Show since Pramface.

Thanks, I suppose.

NEXT WEEK: In an epic Twist of Fate, it turns out that reference to Pramface is a damn-sight more accurate than I ever, ever wanted it to be...

Review: Atlantis 1.2: A Girl By Any Other Name

I'm trying desperately to imagine Mark Addy as the great hero who completed the 12 Trials. The hero who held up the sky as well as Atlas did, who used a fine mixture of strength and cunning to capture Cerberus, the three-headed hell-hound at the gates of Hades. It's a task almost as difficult as trying to place my feels about Atlantis, which continues to fail to justify its existence beyond mere visual chewing gum for a Saturday evening. Greek Mythology is brutal and gory, more suited to HBO dramas than the family audience that Atlantis is so desperately trying to appeal to.

Hercules and Medusa. From the BBC

     This week's plot was a little more original, mixing and matching the tale of the Gorgons and of the Dionysian cults native to Crete (where this series seems to place Atlantis.) Being the perfect little hero that he is, Jason agrees to help an old man find his daughter, who they discover has been inducted into the man-hating cult of Dionysus. Travelling through what looks suspiciously like Albion, the three protagonists sneak in with the help of Medusa (pre-transformation), who then helps them escape with the guy's daughter. Because Jason forgot that women are allowed to have free will, she decides to kill herself rather than leave the environment in which she feels valued and loved. Jason goes back and lies to the Old Man and he dies happy.
     Atlantis is very, very fond of Historical name-dropping, which is a bit like having historical guest stars except that they never actually have to live up to their famous appearance. What exactly is the point of having Medusa in this episode? Seriously, this episode could have been done with any other random girl in her place. With the name Medusa being the only thing that actually makes this episode sound interesting, you'd expect to see a Gorgon or two around, but no such luck. It's probably a good thing, really, considering that in the mainstream myth, Medusa becomes a Gorgon when she's cursed by Athena for being sexually assaulted in her temple.
     This episode put some more focus on Hercules, whose role as plucky comic relief for the vast majority, almost frustratingly so. As off-putting as Merlin's formulaic nature was (and you're gonna keep hearing me comparing this show to Merlin), it at least managed to establish its core characterisations very quickly. The characters in Atlantis are hollow archetypes with no backstories or identifiable traits which are realistic in context. Give me a Hercules who's bitter about not being remembered as the valiant hero he was, a Pythagoras who's slightly mentally unhinged. Give me a Jason who's actually close to either his mythological namesake or the "fish out of water" guy we've been told to expect instead of a boring all-powerful never-has-any-problems standard bland protagonist.

I'm probably wrong to expect something more feminist from
the writer who made Alisha deep-throat a drinks bottle.
From the BBC

     And as I said before, the switching between the dry dustiness of the Morroccan deserts and the lush forests of South Wales present some of the most jarring scenery that I've ever seen - especially when I recognise the same damn areas that were used over and over again in Merlin. My suspension of disblief has been stretched enough by ancient Greeks using Modern English, and my temperment stretched by all of the female characters being servants, mad or blindly in love with our empty-minded protagonist. A series can very well look great, but that means diddly squat if I'm not invested in the characters.
     The series is just flashing warning signs at me constantly, and I don't know whether to take them on board and give up on it or to ignore them and see just where it goes. As it stands, I have very little investment in its bland archetypical characters, nor any of the gradiose mysteries which require vast re-writes of understood mythology in order to incorporate our out-of-place characters. Prophecies and grand plans tend to work best when they actually promise something, or suggest something that the present would contradict. As it stands, it's just grand posturing and the show really needs to start showing me actual characters and dilemmas instead of the vapid run-arounds that it's shown thus far.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Doctor Bashir gets all arsey and decides to throw our protagonist to the Bulls. He and I agree that The Boy Must Die.

Review: Atlantis 1.1: The Earth Bull

I'm beginning to wonder if all this "Saturday Teatime Drama" business is particularly worth it any more. Steven Moffat's "cool" scheduling has done its best to remove the genre's arguable originator from its lofty position, and historical series trying to match that position have all been fundamentally flawed. A year after the horrendously misguided Merlin ended its five-year run, two of its producers and one of its better writers have come together again to mangle Greek myth, what with the entire mythological history of the British Isles having been totally and completely mined out.

JASON! JASOOON! From The BBC

     The premiere began by giving me hope, setting us up in the present day with Jason (Jack Donelly) going underwater to find the remains of his father's expedition. We were then placed firmly in Merlin's "just go with it" methodology as we were expected to hold our suspension of disbelief as our Jason was dragged through a time-portal into Ancient Atlantis, which was apparently occupied by Caucasian or slightly-Asian-looking people who all spoke perfect English in a variety of regional accents. Amongst the misplaced historical celebrities to be found in the cast are Pythagoras (Robert Emms, War Horse), Hercules (Mark Addy, Game of Thrones) King Minos (Alexander Siddig, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and his daughter Ariadne (Aiysha Hart).
     The episode rips its plot from Theseus and the Minotaur, wiping our poor old Theseus from the mythological timeline and replacing him step-by-bloody-step with Jason, who doesn't seem to question the odd world around him. The plot itself was a fairly standard adventure affair, with a few attempts here or there to hint at some overshadowing mysteries which couldn't be more obvious if they tried. (Such as the fact that Minos is most definitely Jason's father, and the Oracle his mother.) What bugged me the most about the whole affair was how quickly our premise was delivered. It was so haphazard and silly that it hardly got a chance to breathe before our valient heroes were off re-writing the bloody Plutarch.
     I may be expecting too much of a premiere, but what felt very lacking was any actual characterisation beyond the same archetypes that allowed Merlin to rattle on without doing anything for a good three seasons. We have our dashing hero who is the son of the King (in my predictions at least), assisted by a vaguely nerdy dude and an old mentor, guided by a mysterious magical being and who must use his skills to fight mythological beings. The only difference is that the Arthur/Merlin dynamic of master/servant and the mystery provided by the Fascade are instead replaced by Jason being just wonderful and brave and having no real character flaws at all.

Let me guess, the obvious love interest is the obvious
love interest. From The BBC

     Most of all, I think one of my biggest pet peeves with the episode is its lack of self-awareness. Great mythological background or no, Jason is still a 21st Century guy - that's supposed to be used in order to allow the audience to identify with him as he journeys into this strange new world. He should know what's going on, have some vague knowledge of the myths he's re-enacting. Yet the only references made to the fact that he's from the future come very early on, are used for cheap jokes about how maths is boring and fat people are funny, and then are thrown completely aside for useless heroic daring do.
     I missed Merlin over this gap, you know, if only because it's so rarely that I get something so genuinely disappointing week after week. It makes the good episodes better and the worse episodes more tolerable, something that Atlantis seems to have mastered far more quickly than its Arthurian brother. At the present rate I do wonder if Atlantis is really what anyone needs at the moment, and whether it's even possible with its loose set-up for it to match the few highs that Merlin actually managed to reach, but it certainly wasn't a boring 45 minutes and I'd much rather have something to complain about for 13 weeks than be left without.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: A girl named Medusa... I certainly hope they're not going to try re-enacting how she got her snakes. (Look it up.) It's A Girl By Any Other Name.