Given that it’s a heinously long time through the first episode before anyone who can even pronounce ‘Zeitung’ correctly turns up, it’s not really surprising that Armitage speaks faux American English all the way through the first episode. Not even Americans pretending to be Brits, but Americans who are supposed to speak excellent German, Armitage being an army Brat who grew up in Berlin. It’s hard to put your finger on one individual problem as being the root of it all, since there are so many small problems and they all add up into one big problem.įor starters, there’s the cast, with Armitage and Ifans both playing Americans. (TV-MA) Is it any good?Įpisode two is better than episode one, but it’s all still pretty laughable. The talented ensemble cast also includes: Richard Jenkins, Michelle Forbes, Leland Orser, Tamlyn Tomita, Caroline Goodall, Bernard Schütz, Mina Tander and Sabin Tambrea. As Daniel gets closer to Shaw, his quarry reacts in murderous fashion. They’re watching pure cargo cult TV arse.ĬIA Officer Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) arrives in Berlin on a clandestine mission to unearth an anonymous whistleblower, alias Thomas Shaw, and reunites with his old friend Hector DeJean (Rhys Ifans). And they’ve hired a proper European film director for the first two episodes – Michaël Roskam ( The Drop)Īll of which is designed to fool the viewer into somehow thinking they’re watching a top, premium cable TV show.Įxcept they’re not. They’ve even done what every other political show has done of late and ‘stolen from the headlines’ – and, of course, since there are very few headlines about spying these days, that means Yet Another Edward Snowden whistleblower plotline. They’ve found a German co-production partner, hired some actual German actors and flown all the way to Berlin to film everything. They’ve got Michelle Forbes ( Homicide, The Killing (US), In Treatment), Rhys Ifans ( Elementary, Twin Town), Tamlyn Tomita ( Babylon 5, The Joy Luck Club) and Richard Jenkins ( Six Feet Under), too. The hero of the piece is our very own Dick Head, Richard Armitage, who’s no stranger to spying thanks to Chris Ryan’s Strike Back, Captain America and Spooks. They’ve recruited a great big, top notch cast. Like other cargo cultists, Steinhauer and Epix have done their best to emulate TV producers. Something intrinsic’s missing from it, preventing it from being either a spy show or a good TV show. Now Berlin Station goes through all the motions of being both a proper spy show and a proper TV show. The first to make it out of the gates is Berlin Station, created by spy novelist Olen Steinhauer and set in… well, you can probably guess. Until recently, Epix like AMC – aka American Movie Classics – before it, was content to air other people’s content before suddenly deciding to make some TV shows of its own. I’d like to expand that to encompass the idea of people making TV but not really getting TV. As a result, it’s missing something essential. However, there’s only so much talent in the world and it’s starting to get spread pretty thinly, particularly around the world’s media industry, which means that there’s a lot of bad TV made by people who don’t actually know how to make good TV.Ī while ago I came up with the idea of ‘ cargo cult TV‘ – TV going through all the motions of a genre but without really understanding the rules of that genre. As a result, that means there’s an awful lot of TV out there being made by an awful lot of people. Thanks to the Internet, cable, et al, it’s a lot easier for a company to ‘transmit’ content also, more and more people want to make content. ‘ Peak TV‘ is the name given to the idea of there being too much TV for us to consume.
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