Judgement

This was a big week for television enthusiasts. Last Sunday saw the return of Mad Men, Monday brought us the finale of Better Call Saul and tonight sees the premiere of season five of Game of Thrones. Sandwiched between those blockbuster, monster shows, Netflix also released the first fruits of their partnership with Marvel Entertainment; Daredevil. By making all thirteen episodes public in the same week as the Better Call Saul finale, Netflix has managed a smooth transition from one popular show to another, keeping its subscribers hooked for another few weeks. Or at least a couple of days.

The story of Marvel’s Daredevil, in case you’ve blocked the Ben Affleck adaptation from memory, focuses on Matt Murdoch, a small time lawyer operating out of Hell’s Kitchen who was blinded by radioactive materials as a child. Borrowing from the popular myth, instead of blinding the kid, the loss of his sight elevates his other senses to the point where he can hear a person’s heartbeat just by standing nearby. His enhanced balance also allows him to execute martial arts techniques flawlessly. Murdoch, following the death of his boxer dad who refused to throw a fight, uses these newly developed abilities to fight crime and clean up Hell’s Kitchen.

So, Daredevil plays into a lot of the superhero tropes that we’re all familiar with by now; powers caused by exposure to an outside source, dead parent. But the Netflix series is very aware of that. While the show opens with a scene depicting Murdoch as a child having his sight destroyed, when we catch up to Charlie Cox as the adult superhero, he’s already fighting criminals and stopping human trafficking deals. It’s clear he has only just started but this isn’t his first outing in the costume. Which is nice. By now, viewers are getting bored with origin stories. It’s in the best interest of superhero media to show the origin in as succinct and concise as fashion as possible, which Daredevil does.

“It’s ok, I just bit my lip.”

Later episodes do develop Murdoch’s relationship with his father but in some senses this show was made for fans of the character. It doesn’t dwell much on the origin and comic book readers will recognise some of Daredevil most anti-heroic actions from Frank Miller’s run. But then it baffles me why Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin is treated as a secret for three episodes. Fans of the comics, especially those reading post-Miller, will recognise Kingpin as Daredevil’s biggest and most notorious foe. And Marvel already announced that he would be in the show. Therefore the only reason to hide his face is to make Vincent D’Onofrio’s appearance a surprise. But it’s just not. We’ve already seen D’Onofrio bald as Private Leonard Lawrence in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. And Wilson Fisk just looks like Gomer Pyle stole a few too many donuts.

Along with the lack of focus on audience, there is also a lack of focus on character. While the show is predominantly about Matt Murdoch and his adventures as Daredevil, he also has to share screen time with Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson, Debrorah Ann Woll as Karen Page and Fisk’s romantic storyline with Ayelet Zurer as Vanessa Marianna. It’s good to develop supporting characters, and I actually like Foggy because he manages to be Murdoch’s partner without playing a wholly comic relief role, but at 50+ minutes, the episodes could benefit from being trimmed back slightly.

It’s not that I want the characters to be two dimensional or every scene to include Charlie Cox. However, I am sitting down to watch a show titled Daredevil so I do expect the character to be at the centre of the show. Instead I’m watching Fisk court his future wife. Yes it gives him a human side so that he’s not just evil for the sake of evil but it still detracts from the main character. Daredevil suffers from this in the same way that Fox’s Gotham devotes a lot of screen time to The Penguin and Fish Mooney as well as Jim Gordon. Gotham at least has the advantage of being about an entire city rather than just one man, but the problem is the same. I don’t want to see what the bad guys are doing. I want to see the good guy figure it out.

Not shown: a lot of recurring side characters.

Daredevil also suffers from a second structural issue but it’s one that seems to plague other Netflix original programming too. Daredevil, like House of Cards, and other shows that have all of their episodes released at once, episodes tend to lack a hook to entice the viewer to watch the next one. It doesn’t seem like a big deal if the viewer doesn’t watch another episode right away when all of the episodes will be available for months. But they’re looking at it wrong. Not watching the next episodes reflects a lack of interest. I can tell you now, if HBO released all of Game of Thrones at once tonight, I’d have the entire season watched by sunrise.

With Daredevil, I’m just not that eager and I don’t feel that the show is demanding to be watched in the same way other shows do. Even if the episode itself isn’t exciting a hook can still entice the viewer. Person of Interest does it all the time. A particular case might be dull but often the episode will end with a revelation or twist that will make me desperate to tune in next week. On demand shows are relegating this device, treating it as a remnant of weekly televised shows but its not. It’s a tool to draw the viewer into the next episode. Remember, there’s only a few seconds between episodes. The hook only has to stall them for that long and then the next episode can do the rest.

Most of the problems are structural. The acting is good, with Charlie Cox as the clear standout, and the choreography is great. It’s a joy to see a fight scene where the camera doesn’t move with every punch. I can actually see what’s happening. I like the neo-noir theme too; it fits the moral quandaries of the character. I’m hoping that the problems are due to producers or writers, as the series is created by Drew Goddard, the man who will direct the next solo Spider-Man. Otherwise I’m expecting good fight scenes but I’m a little worried that Aunt May might end up with as much screen time as our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.

Demand

Britain’s Got Talent has only been back for two weeks and already it is getting a lot of criticism for numerous reasons, such as scheduling and apparently inappropriate acts. It is all of the same obscenity that the show is criticised for year after year, and yet it continues to get high ratings that mean year after year people continue to enjoy or at the very least watch the talent show. While it might be true that ratings are lower than when the show first started or that the show may have seen better years, it was still the highest rated show on launch night. That would seem to indicate that it isn’t simply that less people are watching Britain’s Got Talent but that less people are watching television on a Saturday night overall.

The criticisms of the show appear rather baseless anyway when you really look at it. Many media outlets reported that ITV were actively attempting to compete with BBC One’s The Voice UK by moving the show forward to seven o clock in the evening despite having always been shown at eight in years prior. In this age of television on demand, I’m not sure that moving a programme earlier in the schedule should really constitute as competing. I guess there might be a certain matter of pride involved in saying that your show was watched on the television screen on the night rather than a couple of days later.

Are the BBC trying to hide away Doctor Who?

That said, the type of show generally affects who watches what when. Britain’s Got Talent is a entertainment programme that you can imagine groups of people gathering around to ridicule the hilariously bad performers and watch with awe at the genuinely talented. Given The Voice UK’s more serious approach to singing and the contest as a whole, it is harder to imagine people gathering around to do the same thing. It feels like the type of show that you would watch later when you might be alone and capable of focusing.

However, I have to say that ITV’s scheduling makes a hell of a lot more sense than BBC’s. In past years, Britain’s Got Talent hasn’t always been preceded by other entertainment programmes such as Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. It certainly wasn’t last year. This year Ant and Dec’s show had returned and was rating well, even beating the second season premiere of The Voice UK on launch night. It makes sense that ITV would follow through with that and place Britain’s Got Talent in the exact same time slot. In that case, if someone tunes into ITV at seven o’ clock, even if it is purely out of habit, ITV will have given themselves a vital opportunity to engage the viewer and draw them in. It does seem slightly hypocritical because Simon Cowell previously stated that it was a ‘silly game’ and he preferred when reality shows didn’t overlap. That said, we don’t know how much of the decision to move the show forward was up to Cowell or whether it was ultimately made by ITV.

On the other hand, BBC’s programme organisation and scheduling has been much more sporadic. Doctor Who returned at 6.15 on Saturday 30^th of March, with The Voice UK airing directly afterwards from 7 until 8.35pm. The following week was the same, although The Voice UK ended five minutes earlier. Last Saturday, however, Doctor Who aired at 6 pm rather than 6.15 and ended at 6.45pm whereupon The Voice UK aired until 8.20 pm. Although I had read about the change, I tuned in at 6.15 pm out of habit and was one of the unfortunate viewers who missed the beginning of Cold War. Last night the schedule changed yet again. The Doctor Who episode Hide aired at 6.45pm until 7.30 pm and wasn’t immediately succeeded by The Voice UK. Instead the national lottery separated the two programmes by almost an hour, moving The Voice UK almost completely out of Britain’s Got Talent air time. If nothing else, ITV is much more consistent.

Sing for your Nan…on national television.

The BBC recently condemned the clash, suggesting that ITV wasn’t acting in the best interests of the viewer when they moved the programme forward. I guess the BBC thinks that they are acting in the viewer’s best interests by moving their programmes around constantly. Honestly, I just find it frustrating. As previously mentioned, this is the age of television on demand. Networks should have the confidence to place their shows on the schedule that best suits them with the assurance that even if a few people choose to watch a different programme it will all be made up with on-demand ratings. The Voice UK obviously got enough ratings on demand last year to warrant a second series since the programme bombed once it hit the live stages. That will be the real test for this second season and that’s really what the BBC should be focused on if they are more concerned with what the viewers want.

Conversely, ITV because they are funded differently, probably aren’t quite so concerned about criticisms and complaints that viewers have made. One such example would be that the programme is constantly admonished for allowing strippers to be shown when the show airs pre-watershed. Really, though the strippers are barely risqué, I saw part of Keri Graham’s performance and it was really quite tame. Another act, Arisxandra Libantino got a lot of flax for singing ‘One Night Only’, a song from Dreamgirls. It was called inappropriate but if anyone has seen Dreamgirls they would understand the context and, furthermore, the song was meant to demonstrate her vocal ability. It was not a declaration of her personal beliefs or actions. Some news papers called it controversial but a week that includes the Boston Marathon explosions, and the capture of dangerous suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, really puts that into perspective.

So far my favourite acts have been Attraction and MC Boy (not MC Roy, as many thought) . I particularly liked Attraction’s shadow dancing performance as I thought it was uniquely creative and powerfully emotive. It is still a little early to say if there have been any winning acts. Some are good but in this show, as with many things in life, consistency is vital. The acts not only have to perform well at the audition but will have to improve and inspire again at the live voting stage. It is a hard road but for one talented, not lucky, act it will be life changing.