They get later every year.
Last Saturday (21st March) frog spawn in the pond. For one day the frogs went absolutely mad. Burping and croaking and motoring around, showing off to a garden full of humans without a hint of their usual timidity.
Video to follow!
Law & Order: Unsafe vs American Dream & Buried vs. In Memory Of…
Two further comparisons, and I’m ready to reach a verdict.
One thing that is evident is that the pace of the UK episodes is verging on the slothful. In Unsafe, while Stone is trying to persuade the judge to deny the appeal, the camera cuts rapidly throughout, with reactions conveyed in a couple of seconds. When Steel conducts the counterpart argument, the camera lingers on a long shot at the end of the argument to underline the strength of his emotion. And in Buried there was even an establishing shot (of the Thames). The folks behind the BBC’s Bleak House understood the Law & Order style far better than Kudos does.
In the UK version, both cops and lawyers are irritatingly unimpeachable. The empathsise, constantly. Steel sends flowers annually to the victim of a man he failed to prosecute. Brooks loses sleep over a mothers’ distress at the lack of resolution to a case. The UK cops take time to denounce a former cop’s bigotted attitude. But in the US versions, the protagonists are allowed their own prejudices; though rarely without being challenged within the script. Debate is a regular feature, especially in the DA’s office, and the cops’ black humour helps them deal with the daily trauma. The lawyers daily balance the life changing decisions they make for victims and defendants with their chances of success. Cynical, perhaps; but their compassion is still evident.
The performances in the US version are exceptionally strong. While in the UK version, when facing down his “nemesis”, Daniels has to throw a box down in the street to show his anger, Moriarty gives such a contained performance he can convey ten times the emotion by barely appearing to lose control at all. The UK version is blessed with great actors, but the performances are mediocre to poor.
It isn’t working. Let’s hope it’s not renewed.
But for ITV whether it continues will depend on whether the changes they have made appeal to the audience that they are seeking. They clearly have a strong vision of the audience they are appealing to: they think they are morons. In comparison to the US version, the UK scripts are dumbed down melodrama and the performances lack all of the strength and subtlety of the original. Wherever the US version requires the viewers attention, the UK version makes especially sure to spell everything out SLOWLY. Oh yes, and Brits?Acting is NOT the same as overacting.
Series Verdict: The court finds that the original Law & Order is being copied without merit. Why watch the new versions when the episodes made 15 years earlier are so much better?
Add Geotagging to Your Non-GPS Camera
Once in a while something comes along that is so cool that you can’t believe it. When Martin Varsavsky blogged about an SD card that included wi-fi I was impressed, but when I read that it can also add geotags to your pictures using wi-fi skyhooks (as the iPhone does, when not using GPS) I had to check the date. It’s not April yet. How do they get all this functionality onto such a small card? (It can also upload to photosharing sites via hotspots. Oh yes, and it has up to 4gb of memory. Currently pre-ordering at $99.)
There’s a rumour of an Apple iPhone service that will pass iPhoto your movements and sync those with your pictures to add geotags taken on cameras that don’t support them; iPhoto ‘09 and its Places features makes whichever solution actually materialises first something of an essential upgrade for your kit.
Law & Order: Unloved vs. Born Bad
From the opening of Unloved, the UK version of Born Bad from the original’s fourth season it’s clear all the rough edges have been knocked off. There’s a soup kitchen, but there no street workers. Every character is cleaner and more sympathetic. The victim’s biological mother, who is presented as if she wandered into Holloway rehab by accident and never delivers the tirade against social services (“they took him away from me to be safe and look what they did to him”). The perpetrator’s mother, who no longer smokes her way through her new pregnancy. The police officers, who now don’t threaten a witness that they will jail his foster mother to get him to talk. Even Stone’s callous and illogical denunciation of the accused’s mother is delivered by Steel as if to spare the boy.
In adapting Michael S. Chernuchin and Sally Nemeth’s story, Terry Cafolla seems to have a little less faith in his audience. A subtle shot of the victim’s mother in the gallery becomes a melodramatic confrontation with the defence barrister. The latter becomes an old flame of Steel’s (why? what did that add?) Worst, and most unforgivably, we have a tacked-on scene which offers some hope of the boy’s redemption. Even if the UK version had bettered the original in every other respect, that would have damned it.
That’s not to say the UK version was poor, but unlike the previous week’s episode it has comprehensively failed to improve on the story it was adapted from.
Week 2 Verdict: The court finds in favour of the original Law & Order
In the interests of full disclosure, this week I watched the US version before the UK version, last week I did this the other way round. Next week’s episode, Vice, is adapted from season 7’s Working Mum. If I’ve watched that then it was years ago, so the court will be in recess for a fortnight.
