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scottam
Reviews
Dark Season (1991)
High concept, low budget - both typical of its predecessors and ahead of its time
After having seen Dark Season for the first time now in mid-1999, it's amazing just how relevant it seems. Made for children's TV, it looks more like story from "Doctor Who" without the eponymous hero, and deals with neo-Nazis, mind control and millennial angst in quite a humourous way.
The six episodes are split into two three-part stories, a device which further provides comparisons with Doctor Who. It's not altogether successful - the two stories would have worked better as a whole (they are connected, but the events of 1-3 are all but forgotten in episode 4 onwards).
Spirited performances from Jacqueline Pearce and Brigit Forsyth (in a criminally underwritten role - one that seems designed for an actress about twenty years older) help to detract from some of the less than convincing child actors on display. Still, it's an interesting chance to watch a pre-Titanic Kate Winslet in a spirited supporting role as the red-haired rebel, Reet.
An Ideal Husband (1999)
Far from ideal production
The first twenty-five minutes stand out as possibly the worst in modern British film. Director/adapter William Cartlidge has treated Wilde's original with such reverence that he seems to have completely ignored the needs of a cinematic audience. Thankfully the quality of the direction and editing improves significantly after the first half hour, but by then the damage has been done. Of the actors, Prunella Scales and Robert Hardy wipe the floor with the rest of the cast every time they are on screen. The other exceptions are Jonathan Firth's Arthur and Karen Hayley's Mabel, who are given enough latitude to deliver their lines with the true comic sense which Wilde intended. The ostensible leads, James Wilby and Trevyn McDowell, are in comparison lacklustre and wooden. In an obvious attempt to eke every penny out a meagre budget, the play has been nominally updated to the 1990's, but in conjunction with the original script the effect is more of a badly script 1970s TV drama. True moments of comedy are few and far between, but when they arrive are highly amusing - a sign, maybe, that more judicious pruning of the rest of the play might have led to a better paced, more even film.