Who Knows Where The Time Goes

I’d be more than happy to blame my recent malaise on the changing season, and in particular the recent Autumnal equinox. But it would be too easy to apportion the blame elsewhere, thereby neglecting any or all the contributing factors involved. To blithely ignore them would no doubt leave the way open for the Black Dog to come snuffling back around, and I can do without that intrusion now or some time in the foreseeable future.

Strangely enough, as we enter the new month things are turning out quite well. Thanks to a new combined zeledronic acid and celecoxib drug trail the earlier bad news from home isn’t as bad as initially thought. If the writing has recently fallen into a rut due to a wayward writing partner, a couple days back I was invited to a party she’s going to be attending, and her assistant is already helping devise a plan where we hold her down and administer Chinese burns until she promises to adhere to our revised schedule.

As a bonus, a producer and a couple of directors it would be worth talking to are also expected to be there, along with a few other industry herberts. No sooner had my RSVP gone out, I received an email from an American jewellery designer I met a long time back in a bar on the Upper East Side and sadly lost contact with over the last few years. Much as I don’t see the point in people posting their Scrabble scores of whatever the hell it is they’re doing with some nonsense called FarmVille, facebook has finally proved useful for something.

So all things considered, things are on the up. Whether everything goes to plan remains to be seen, which I suppose brings me to FlashForward. Gradually purchasing less and less newspapers and magazines over the years, instead reading whatever interests me on the various publications’ websites, I’ve reached the point of pretty where I now only buy The Times on Saturday – and that’s specifically for the Samurai Sudoku, which isn’t available online, and the television listings in the Playlist supplement.

So unless I’ve read an article promoting an upcoming drama, comedy or documentary, it’s only at pretty much the last minute that I discover what’s on the television. That really wasn’t much of a bother during the summer months, where for most of the time turning on the set was the equivalent of staring into a bathtub filled with raw sewage, but now that the nights are started to draw in a few diamonds have begun to appear amongst the usual turds, like the recent chilling three-part documentary series The Last Nazis.

Then there was the return of Waking the Dead and Spiral, both of which I had expected to have at least got wind of in one of the many press releases regularly posted on the BBC website. But obviously they were more concerned with trumpeting the bunch of gormless, leaden-footed D-listers about to be squeezed into glad rags, spunked with sequins, and sent out onto the dance floor to aimlessly clomp around with all the graceless precision of a tranquillized water buffalo. So seeing the pair of dramas suddenly being tossed into the schedules was a welcome surprise.


This past Monday, Five sprang FastForward upon us, less than a week after it had premiered in the US. I knew it was coming but didn’t realise it would be so soon. Missing the initial broadcast because the grim concluding part of Waking the Dead had precedence, I tried watching it on the channel’s website. Foiled by repeated buffering issues, which wasn’t that surprising since the internet here had been playing silly buggers for the best part of the week, I simply waited until yesterday’s repeat.

After stumbling during its third season, when Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof had the smarts to explain to the network that they needed an end date for Lost, asking for two more years, it’s obvious that the suits at ABC got them to agree to the same number of episodes spread over three years just so they had the extra time to find its replacement. Even without the Oceanic Airlines prominent in the background during the FBI stakeout, from just the first act of FlashForward it was obvious that the drama got the green light because it met the brief of being like Lost but different.

To be honest I could have done without the kangaroo and the overdone devastation wrought on downtown LA following the collective blackout. Given the importance of the arterial freeways running through the heart of the city, all manner of car crashes and extensive pile-ups were to be expected. But since the twisted steel of automobiles wasn’t as cinematically sexy as, say, the remnants of a commercial airliner spread across the virgin sands of a tropical island, the programme makers seemed to feel the need to set a fair number of buildings on fire as well.


However briefly the dancing tongues of flame brightened up the screen, they ultimately proved to be a distraction, simply because I found myself taken out of the drama to wonder what had started the more isolated fires, especially since with the enforced smoking bans in the workplace they couldn’t be explained away by a dropped cigarette. Obviously there was the news helicopter that had flown into the side of one skyscraper, proving that either wounds have sufficiently healed or that TV waits for no man. It was just a shame that the company Digital Deeds Done Dirt Cheap seemed to have been hired to carry out the effects work.

With those occasional misfires aside, it certainly appeared to be an intriguing premise. Whereas Lost could take its own sweet time during the first year to establish the connections between the not so disparate strangers exploring the strange land, hopefully FastForward will see the lead characters get on and concentrate more on the investigation of the global event rather than have characters get all touchy-feely as they try to come to terms with the aftermath. With a due date already fixed there’s liable to be less fannying around as the pieces gradually start to come together.

Obviously the characters have to have their doubts and I liked that Joseph Fiennes’ FBI partner didn’t experience a future vision, suggesting that he’ll be dead by season’s end. Of course it could be that the chap finds himself either asleep or knocked unconscious at the time, or it could be that in casting John Cho in the role creator David S. Goyer was on the phone to JJ, asking how long they had before the actor was needed for the next Star Trek movie.

Whatever his outcome, it’s obvious that the answers the first season finale provides will instigate an event that leads into the next year, and that can cause problems with certain plot-driven dramas. While characters on screen indulge in scenes of weeping and rending of garments, for the audience at home there’s always some trepidation investing in a new, untried show.

If viewers tail off further down the line there is always the danger that the ratings drop leads to the show’s cancellation before it reaches its resolution. Not having the prescience to know whether FastForward will be a success, the danger is in buying into the drama now only to find it has all been a waste of time.