Blackpool...

[fajrdrako]

I finished watching Blackpool this morning. I loved it. As a genre, it pretty much defies description: murder mystery, soap opera, black comedy, musical, psychological drama - bits of all of that mixed together, and I'm not sure it wasn't a morality play more than any of the rest, though what the moral was, I'm not sure.

My only complain is that I wanted it to be the story of DI Peter Carlisle, played by David Tennant - imagine a sexy Columbo with a ruthless edge, who likes ice cream.¹ It was, in fact, the story of Ripley Holden, played by David Morrissey, who runs a games arcade in Blackpool and has dreams of creating a big-time Las Vegas-style hotel-casino complex. But his dream reaches a stumbling block when a man is found murdered in his establishment. Bit by bit Ripley Holden's life takes a turn for the worse: his daughter wants to marry a man his own age, who has hated him since school; his wife is having an affair with the homicide detective, his son is dealing drugs, his business is badly in debt, and his shady past comes back to bite him.

A couple of days ago, maaseru said something to the effect that British TV is always about horrible people, and I found myself remembering this. No one is all good, and though at first I thought Ripley Holden was pretty much all bad, by the end of the series the story was making every effort to make him sympathetic - which is basically to say he stopped abusing his wife and kids. On a 'Have you stopped beating your wife yet?' basis, I didn't find this much to write home about.

My interpretation of the ending was that Ripley Holden felt cocky and triumphant because he had successfully manipulated events to the betterment of his family, and had come to terms with his relationships. So was he then going to kill himself? Or leave town and start again somewhere else? Did he have a future, and if so, what?

I had very much wanted Natalie to decide to leave Ripley for Carlisle, which would have given me a romance. But though she loved him, she lacked the courage or conviction to change her life, and in the end practically had to be forced by Ripley to go to Carlisle - a reunion we never see, which, given the nasty parting scene we did witness, seemed a bit of a cheat to me.

The subplot about Ripley's daughter Shyanne fell rather flat for me, but had a few good moments.

The subplot of the relationship between Ripley and his son Danny was somewhat more interesting, and I really liked the performance of Thomas Morrison as Danny. From the beginning it's hinted that Danny might be gay; I was a little disappointed that we saw nothing of it. And a little horrified, in fact, that Daddy Dearest, in the end, outs his son as gay (in a joke) to all the guests at hi sister's wedding. This, when they were happily reconciled.

The most interesting relationship of all was between Carlisle and Ripley Holden, playing a game of hunter and prey. Their scenes together had the electricity of angry wolves snarling at each other. The dialogue between Ripley and Carlisle was more interesting that the dialogue of either with Natalie. Though perhaps my favourite scene in the whole series was when Natalie admits to Ripley on the phone that she 'betrayed' him, and then we discover that he and she are talking about completely different types of betrayal. A brilliant scene.

But that was the kind of interpersonal ambiguity the movie was full of. Was Carlisle a bent cop from the beginning, or was it that he was so desperate for Natalie's love that he'd do anything to get it? If DC Blythe was as earnestly upright as he appeared, how was it that Carlisle could corrupt him so easily in the end?

I ask these kinds of questions, but the answers don't really matter: I found the story engrossing even without the answers. I wanted more Tennant and less Morrissey, certainly, but what I really liked was that I couldn't guess from minute to minute (let alone episode to episode) what was going to happen. I was convinced half a dozen times that Ripley Holden was the killer, and then changed my mind another half dozen times. Oddly, it wasn't a case of "Who Killed Lily Kane?" being an ongoing theme - I could barely remember the victim's name and he, and his story, were irrelevant. The murder was a catalyst for the rest of the story - though perhaps only insofar as it brought CI Carlisle in to the picture.

I'd say: forget the town of Blackpool, forget the story of the unfortunate Holden family, and make a series about the sexy, ruthless, ambitiously twisted DI Carlisle.

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¹ It was great to see Tennant doing sex scenes, even if some of them were wonky. Made me wish they'd stop aiming Doctor Who at kids.