Category: Directed by Steve Barron

Around the World in 80 Days (2021) s01e08

The season finale for "Around the World in 80 Days" punts pretty much everything except resolving the villain arc for Peter Sullivan. It doesn't give him a character arc—he and Jason Watkins's minor subplot last episode confirmed they wouldn't be going that route—and instead is just about whether or not lead David Tennant's going to lose to Sullivan again. There's some additional backstory on their "friendship," but it doesn't go anywhere; it just makes Sullivan more villainous and Tennant's need to succeed direr.

But Tennant's character development? There are four crucial character moments in the episode, but they're transitory, not conclusive. Ditto Ibrahim Koma and Leonie Benesch's romantic possibilities. It becomes about Koma's character development, and then, when they need to do something with it, the show handles it offscreen. Something else to be dealt with next season, which apparently will involve a different Jules Verne property. It sounds like it'll be fine, I greatly anticipate it, but it's a letdown from where the show was headed for most of the season.

The episode itself is a marvel of pacing. There's time for a cliffhanger resolve, some character development for Koma and Benesch, a big scene for Tennant and guest star Dolly Wells, then an unexpected, excellent fight scene, all in New York. But there's a whole other plot waiting for the cast once they get on the boat, including Koma and Benesch dealing with shitty American racists. The show went six episodes without having overt racism, then throws in Americans, and they're abhorrent. Accurate, both in characterization and circling the globe east-to-west, but the balance is off.

Especially since Tennant, who the show's finally established needs to be more cognizant of racism (having become cognizant of sexism and classism earlier in the series), has nothing to do with the scene. It's a moment for character development, and Pharaoh runs away from it.

The conclusion, which has Tennant suffering one setback after another, is masterfully timed as well. Steve Barron's back directing; it's not his showiest episode, but the way he moves the episode along is extraordinary. It's forty-five or fifty minutes and feels like a ninety-minute two-parter, the way the drama hinges on these actually short scenes from the main cast. Mainly Tennant, who unfortunately gets his season finale character development done through him remembering important scenes in earlier episodes. But when he actually gets to do scenes, they're pretty good.

Especially opposite Wells, who's a delight.

But as for his friendships with Koma and Benesch, the episode skirts dealing with their impact and importance. Actually cuts them from one of the flashbacks. But, again, there's presumably plenty of time since there's another season. And the episode does acknowledge there's been some character development in the last scene. It's not too little, too late, but it's very little, very late. Very little in the last possible moments, actually.

It's a terrific show. Uneven only because it seemed more ambitious early on, and then also deciding at the last minute to address Koma being Black and doing a perfunctory job of it. But excellent acting from Tennant, Koma, Benesch, and Watkins, and an outstanding production. Narrative punting aside, Pharoah's script is spectacularly paced and has some enjoyable twists. Especially for guest star Richard Wilson.

I just hope next season knows where it's going.

Around the World in 80 Days (2021) s01e04

While it’s not the concept episode I want (an hour of David Tennant, Ibrahim Koma, and Leonie Benesch waiting for a train), this episode does a fine job introducing new elements to the show while still sticking to the “formula.” Though calling it, a “formula” might be stretching it. The episodes cover salient experiences during their trip “Around the World in 80 Days.” Unfortunately, there’s just no audience for “Fogg After Hours.”

This time, the trio is stuck in India, thanks to Tennant assuming the cross-continental Indian railway was completed. He read about it in Benesch’s article, but she wasn’t writing a travel guide, instead a feature on technology. It’s day twenty-eight of eighty, about nine days since the last episode. Seems like Benesch’s inaccuracies could be a go-to trope.

In what’s either a Temple of Doom reference or just how the British tell stories about India, Tennant and company come across an Indian kid who takes them back to her village. Reeya Gangen plays the kid. I don’t think her character ever gets named in the episode, but she’s going to have this gentle relationship with Tennant, who trips balls around her, and she thinks it’s funny in a caring way.

There are quite a few guest stars in the episode, which has them interrupting a wedding celebration. Or trying to interrupt a wedding celebration. Matriarch Shivaani Ghai isn’t giving Tennant a guide to get him to their next point of departure until the following day, no matter how much Tennant complains or tries to be a British aristocrat. Her daughter, Rizelle Januk, is the bride-to-be. The groom is Kiroshan Naidoo, a soldier in the British Indian Army. Charlie Hamblett is his commanding officer, who Naidoo told everyone gave him leave to get married, but Hamblett very much did not.

After Hamblett arrests Naidoo, Ghai says she’ll give Tennant a guide if he white guy talks Hamblett out of prosecuting. Except Koma’s really upset at how selfish Tennant’s being about the trip and decides to take matters into his own hands, dosing his tea with a sleeping agent. Except it’s too much, and Tennant trips out, beginning in his meeting with Hamblett.

Meanwhile, Benesch and Januk bond, partially over Januk’s problems, partially over just being women.

There’s a grand finale with Tennant laying bare parts of his reserved British soul. There’s a lot of good acting in the episode, whether Benesch and Januk becoming friends, Koma’s disappointment, anger, and regret, and Tennant and Ghai’s polite but honest conversations. None of it compares to Tennant’s monologuing at the end. It’s excellent writing throughout, especially on that monologue (because it’s got to account for a lot of Tennant’s colonizing bullshit too). The script’s got four credited writers Ashley Pharoah, Claire Downes, Ian Jarvis, and Stuart Lane.

As usual, really good direction from Steve Barron. There’s pretty much no action and a lot more comedy (Tennant’s trip), but also lots of dramatic tension for everyone at one time or another. Barron does it all quite well.

There are seven main actors in this episode—the trio, bride, groom, mom, British officer—all give phenomenal performances. Any single one of the guest star performances would be enough to put it over, so having all four be stellar is, frankly, special. “Around the World in 80 Days” is a spectacular success.

Around the World in 80 Days (2021) s01e03

During the previous episode recap, I had the hope “Around the World in 80 Days” wouldn’t be formulaic—David Tennant gets in travel trouble, either due to historical events or his inexperience and anxieties. This episode’s formulaic. It does indeed involve travel troubles and a resolution—complete with Tennant’s thoughtfulness saving the day. It’d be nice to see an episode do something else, to put the characters in some non-dramatic situation.

Not happening this time.

Tennant, valet Ibrahim Koma, and journalist Leonie Benesch start the episode two weeks since we left them in the previous one. Apparently, nothing exciting happened on their trip from Italy to Yemen. However, upon reaching Yemen, there’s some travel trouble due to pirates. Tennant and Koma can travel across the desert by camel, but Tennant isn’t willing to risk Benesch’s life on the trek. More, he’s not ready to risk his best friend Jason Watkins’s daughter’s life on that trek. Tennant very much only thinks about Benesch in those terms.

Unfortunately, in addition to not vetting the guide he hires to take them across, he also doesn’t think about how being stranded in Yemen will play out for Benesch.

Luckily, they’ve happened across another Brit, albeit a disgraced one, played by Lindsay Duncan. She’s in exile from British society for apparently being a loose woman and then marrying a poor Arab (Faical Elkihel). When Tennant abandons Benesch, she gets help from Duncan and Elkihel; they’re more interested in rescuing Tennant and Koma from the desert than guiding them across, but Benesch isn’t being picky.

She takes the time to send father Watkins a telegram, which turns out to be a problem since it was Watkins who defamed Duncan in the first place. When Duncan challenges Watkins’s account later on, it forces Benesch and Tennant to reexamine truth outside the context of being wealthy white English people. It’s a short little scene with the two of them talking about it, but it’s quite good. Not as good as when Benesch and Duncan bond and bicker, but good. Tennant gets a bunch of action this episode but no real character development. Benesch gets most of it, then Koma gets some towards the end, and Tennant provides slight support to each. It’s just not his place to provide the support, which the episode makes clear. He’s just not the right person to do it.

For Benesch, the right person is Duncan. For Koma… well, he gives Tennant the chance to step up, but Tennant’s still British, after all. I’m not sure the show’s intentionally pacing out Tennant’s character development to have him become more sympathetic to a white British girl over a black Frenchman, but it does ring frustratingly true. Moreover, the indifference puts Koma in a quandary; with fellow white woman Duncan around to provide counsel, Benesch doesn’t need Koma’s.

The episode doesn’t talk about any of it, of course—well, except Duncan, it goes into length about Watkins’s assassination of her character, and then Elkihel will get a great monologue about the repercussions—but there’s so much frustrating tragic subtext.

This episode has some terrific director from Steve Barron and probably the series’s most successful effects sequence (a sand storm). Great support from Duncan and Elkihel, and Benesch’s best performance so far.

Hopefully, they’ll stop threatening to send Benesch home because she’s a woman after this episode. They promise they will, but I think they promised it in both previous episodes. And hopefully, there will be time for a relaxed episode at some point.

But even with adhering to its formula, “Around the World”’s truly superb.

Around the World in 80 Days (2021) s01e02

Last episode, it seemed very much like David Tennant, despite being top-billed, was just going to be “Around the World in 80 Days” ’s monied catalyst. He can afford this great adventure, but it’s going to be Ibrahim Koma and Leonie Benesch’s story. Koma’s a working-class (Black) Frenchman on the run from at least responsibility and maybe some other things; Benesch’s a woman in the Victorian world, where no one thinks she can do anything. Together, they’re going to help foppish, incapable Tennant accomplish his task while talking crap about him behind his back. Including Benesch going all-in on the era’s toxic masculinity, at least when it comes to Tennant. He’s a fraud, they’re sure, and Benesch has hung her ambitions on him.

Only in this episode it turns out Tennant’s very much going to be the lead. And the show’s going to directly interrogate the toxic expectations.

Tennant, Koma, and Benesch start the episode by crash landing their hot air balloon and catching an Italian train, where Tennant runs afoul of a self-made industrialist, Giovanni Scifoni. Scifoni doesn’t like British blue bloods, and he doesn’t like his son, Cristian De Vergori, bonding with Tennant. So a lot of the episode is just Scifoni browbeating Tennant into feeling like this “Around the World” adventure will inevitably fail. Koma and Benesch agree—amongst themselves—with Benesch embracing that toxic masculinity dismissal of Tennant. It makes Benesch unlikable, which the episode evens out with all the workers on the train hating her because she talks and she’s a woman. She’s hanging out with Koma, who’s hanging out with the train drivers and conductors, who like her when she’s decorative and not at all when she speaks. Well, except maybe conductor Simone Coppo, who ends up being compassionate. Mostly because Coppo’s really good.

After the initial dustups with Sciofoni, Tennant spends the episode pensive, making brusque observations about himself—while avoiding giving Benesch the background into his personal history she desires—and it’s all about the performance. Tennant’s captivating in his brooding silence. It’s an exceptional performance given the constraints of the project—it’s a TV adaptation of a Victorian novel, after all, and Tennant brings a whole new layer to it.

Of course, there are some other layers, thanks to Koma not really fitting in with the Italian working class. He’ll eventually win them over (and then reject their friendship thanks to his self-loathing). “Around the World” has layer upon layer, the eventual Tennant arc coming as a surprise, with the narrative distance gracefully shifting a quarter of the way into the episode. Again, Steve Barron’s direction is excellent.

Also, the technology aspect. There isn’t much in the way of expository dumps about how new technologies are changing lives. Instead, the show just shows the characters experiencing it and its newness. It’s very cool.

Of the main stars, Benesch gets the least material. First, she’s decorative to Tennant’s initial plotline—she’s allowed to socialize with the first-class passengers while Koma’s off with the workers. Then she’s support to Koma’s character development. Finally, both she and Koma are support to Tennant’s arc, as an unexpected crisis allows him to excel. There’s some foreshadowing with the crisis, just not with it being Tennant who’ll get to do anything with it.

Lots of good acting in the supporting cast, particularly Sciofoni. De Vergori’s a reasonably likable kid, but it’s because he’s sympathetic, not because he’s good. Instead, because Sciofoni’s an exceptional asshole of a dad.

At the end of the last episode, I was impressed with “Around the World in 80 Days”’s presentation of the time period and thoughtfulness in its characterizations, but at the end of this episode… the show’s going even more places. Particularly with Tennant. It’s probably too early to say, but this performance might be the best one of his I’ve ever seen. There’s something singular about it, which is even more impressive considering he’s doing it in an adaptation of a 150-year-old novel. Albeit an excellent adaptation.

The show’s gearing up to be something special.

Around the World in 80 Days (2021) s01e01

“Around the World in 80 Days” immediately showcases why adapting Victorian novels is a good idea right now. You can do whiz-bang CGI effects for them, but you can also make a white guy the hero and then have marginalized people in the supporting roles and get away with it. The white man was the inarguable king of the Western World. In “World” ’s case, the white guy is David Tennant, and the marginalized folks are Black guy Ibrahim Koma and white woman Leonie Benesch. However, no one really craps on Koma for being Black since he’s also French, and Frenchmen are much more shitting-on-worthy (according to “World”). Meanwhile, Benesch is busting ass to establish herself as a journalist, and her own father (Jason Watkins) is erasing her, giving her a male pseudonym.

Meanwhile, Tennant’s generally incapable and only survives thanks to Koma. And mercenary nuns.

The episode opens with Tennant receiving a postcard with a single word—“Coward”—with no postmark. We’ll find out he’s got a series of these postcards, though it’s unclear if they all have “Coward” written on them, and his fellow rich men think he’s, well, a coward. Koma is a waiter at Tennant’s club, which is why he’s in the story, and then Benesch’s there because dad Watkins is one of Tennant’s fellows at said club. The other important guy at the club is Peter Sullivan, who spends his time trying to humiliate Tennant whenever possible.

Benesch is upset with Watkins because he took her name off an article about how it’s now possible—thanks to technology—to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. Tennant reads that article and, full of piss and vinegar from the postcard, declares he will attempt such a journey. Sullivan mocks him and publicly bets against him, setting Tennant up for failure. Thanks to some poor personal choices, Koma finds himself in need of a new position and becomes Tennant’s valet—unaware they’ll be traveling the globe—because Tennant’s existing butler, Richard Wilson, is old and useless.

Once Benesch finds out Tennant’s going to attempt the trip, she tells dad Watkins she’s tagging along, and he better not give her a dude’s name in her column recounting the adventure.

All this setup is rapid, and the real action of the episode happens once they get to Paris. The French people getting screwed over by their government. Koma’s been out of the country for some personal reasons—on the run from responsibility—so when they get there, and the police have closed the train station, stalling their trip on the first day, no one’s happy. Tennant’s incapable of fending for himself, Benesch doesn’t realize it’s actually dangerous, and Koma’s just trying to survive seeing revolutionary brother Loic Djani again.

Tennant spends much of the episode passive, only getting his steam going when he realizes Benesch is in danger and he can’t get friend Watkins’s daughter killed. Koma hasn’t been honest with Tennant about his history (or his present situation), so Tennant’s mostly unaware of that angle. But Benesch gets the whole story, which creates an interesting relationship between her and Koma.

It’s all solidly acted—Koma’s the best here, getting to be flashy and proactive while Tennant and Benesch are reactive—with superb production values and surprisingly strong direction from Steve Barron. I’m saying “surprisingly strong” because I only know Barron from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I don’t remember being well-directed at all. Quite the opposite. But “Around the World in 80 Days” is well-directed, combining a nice sense of humor with harsh reality. I’m not sure what I was expecting—I haven’t read the Jules Verne novel, and if I’ve ever seen another adaptation, it’s been literal decades—but this one is a somber look at classism, sexism, and politics in the late nineteenth century.

The show’s off to a great start.

Electric Dreams (1984, Steve Barron)

Electric Dreams is a very strange film. And not just because it’s about a computer brought to life by champagne and electric fire. Not even because said computer has the voice of Bud Cort. It’s strange because it has no interest in having a conventional narrative structure, both in terms of the screenplay and the direction.

Lenny von Dohlen plays the lead. He’s a young architect in San Francisco who wants to create an earthquake-proof brick. The whole first act concerns this ambition, along with him meeting his fetching new neighbor. Virginia Madsen plays the neighbor. She’s a young cellist who’s just started with the symphony. Will Electric Dreams have anything to do with her ambitions or von Dohlen’s super-brick?

Nope.

Rusty Lemorande’s script even sets up various opportunities for these plot threads to return or pick up and he just leaves them. Director Barron seems more than comfortable with avoiding them because they don’t figure into what he enjoys doing in the film. He likes having scenes of von Dohlen and Madsen’s sometimes problematic courtship, usually set to music, or scenes with von Dohlen trying to deal with his newly self-aware computer. The computer even has to do with the two subplots–super-brick and symphony success–and Electric Dreams just skips it in favor of a far more audio-visual experience.

Barron’s direction is peculiar without being particularly ambitious. He maintains the awkward narrative tone, filling Electric Dreams not just with interludes between von Dohlen and Madsen, but in its fantastic montage sequences as well. Electric Dreams has spectacular cinematography, just in how Alex Thomson is able to get the camera swinging around the set. Barron loves crane shots and Thomson nails every one of them. Lots of tight focus on close-ups, which Thomson shots perfectly, and Peter Honess edits beautifully. Electric Dreams, even when it’s not trying to be a computer generated imagery spectacular, is always dynamic to watch. Until the end, when Barron’s music video direction instincts go too wild with the last montage.

Except he’s still got Honess’s editing and the fantastic New Wave soundtrack to get it through.

Von Dohlen’s a likable lead; the film doesn’t task him much. There’s an air of unreality to the whole thing–a San Francisco computerized fairy tale–and maybe Madsen weathers it better. Her part is easier; even though she has her own subplot for a while, she’s really just in the girlfriend part. She does get the film’s loveliest sequence though, when she’s playing a duet with the computer.

As the computer, Cort’s fine. Lemorande–and the film–don’t ask many big questions about existence; Cort’s just got to have personality and sympathy. He does both well.

Electric Dreams is a marvelously well-made film. It’s also quite a bit of fun to boot.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Steve Barron; written by Rusty Lemorande; director of photography, Alex Thomson; edited by Peter Honess; music by Giorgio Moroder; production designer, Richard Macdonald; produced by Larry DeWaay and Lemorande; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Lenny von Dohlen (Miles Harding), Virginia Madsen (Madeline Robistat) and Bud Cort (Me).

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990, Steve Barron)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles uses Central Park as an establishing shot for an apartment at 11th and Bleecker. I’ll let you Google Map that one.

The film’s worth talking about for four reasons—the amazing animatronics, the editing, the anti-Japanese sentiment and Judith Hoag. It’s also amusing to watch for Sam Rockwell sightings, but that one isn’t so much a discussion point.

For people who care about puppetry and animatronics, the work the Jim Henson workshop does in Turtles is phenomenal. They create five entirely believable creatures. It’s so effective, in fact, I’m glad Josh Pais both did the voice and the costume work for his character… so I can identify him as the film’s worst performance.

There are some terrible performances from the regular actors here, but Pais is atrocious. His characterization seems like a mix between James Cagney and George Jefferson. If Turtles weren’t a stupid movie with a bad script, he’d be the one ruining it.

Switching up the list a bit—Judith Hoag. While Elias Koteas (as her romantic interest) is okay, she’s great opposite all the costumes and animatronic nonsense. She makes the fantastical nature work… at least until her character disappears to give more attention to the lame fight scenes.

The great editing—in the fight scenes and not—makes Turtles mildly tolerable. The anti-Japanese sentiment is bewildering but captivating.

Awful performances from James Saito and Obata Toshirô—the only Japanese actors—don’t help.

Turtles is terrible. Hoag aside, there’s nothing “good.”