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) s01e06

Outside the way too quick resolve to last episode's cliffhanger and either a continuity gaffe (or a lousy narrative choice), nothing is wanting about this episode. However, given its simplicity, it should be a slam dunk. And it is a slam dunk. It's maybe just not an exciting slam dunk. But, given the setting, the actors, and the character dynamics, our three heroes stuck together on a tropical island while angry at one another and having to work it out… it's going to be successful. It's got to be successful. There are the right amounts of drama, danger, and friendship, and then good acting.

Of course, it's going to work.

However, the episode's got more than just the tropical island castaway plot; it's also got a London plot. And the London plot is unexpected and ambitious from a character perspective.

Okay, the main plot is David Tennant, Ibrahim Koma, and Leonie Benesch stuck on a tropical island. The continuity gaffe involves how far they were from Yokohama when they went off-course. The end of the last episode suggested it was all immediately following the main action, so there were no two days to play with. Unless Tennant moped around the bar for forty-eight hours straight, which is possible, actually.

Given their close proximity—and Tennant beating himself about getting Koma and Benesch stranded in the middle of the Pacific—pretty soon, Koma breaks down and tells Tennant the truth about some things. I don't think even all the things, though some of the confessing happens off-screen, but enough Tennant's outraged. Tennant and Benesch take one part of the beach, Koma takes another. Only Koma knows how to survive, and he's trying to make amends, so he's always present in one way or another. Even if it's just Benesch considering the situation and how hard to try to influence Tennant.

There's excellent acting from all the actors, but no clear best. Tennant gets a great monologue, but his character would be a partial fail overall if it wasn't a great monologue. Koma gets some excellent scenes but not the arc. Benesch primarily supports the two men but does raise some of the more challenging questions. For example, she and Tennant have a great scene talking about privilege, mirroring the one they had a few episodes ago. In that one, Tennant did the talking; in this one, Benesch does it.

The main plot has a good resolution, the right amount of gentle humor, and some burgeoning character drama (but positive drama).

The B plot, with Jason Watkins and Peter Sullivan in England, has character drama but all negative. Even when it seems optimistic—against all odds—it's actually harmful. Because the heroes are castaways long enough to be reported dead. So Watkins thinks daughter Benesch and friend Tennant are dead, while Sullivan thinks he's indirectly responsible for the deaths. I mean, he'd be directly responsible for it, but Sullivan's not going to take on that kind of guilt.

So it's this very British mourning stuff, which then gets referenced in the A-plot when Koma and Tennant have it out over British friendships and French friendships.

Superb acting from Watkins and Sullivan. There's a chance Sullivan will have the second-best character arc in the show. There's the potential for it. And then Watkins is mired in regret. Very, very heavy stuff, even knowing the characters are alive (for now).

Excellent direction again from Brian Kelly and another good script (credited to Peter McKenna). This episode might be "Around"'s most straightforward—or at least its most traditional—but they do an exquisite job with it. Thanks mainly to the actors, sure, but the production's marvelous as well.

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) 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.

Des (2020) s01e03

So, now we get the episode about how sad it makes Daniel Mays to bring harm to people but he does it anyway. It’s the joke about Americans making movies about how sad we are we had to kill a bunch of BIPOC civilians. Only here it’s Mays forcing attempted murder victim Laurie Kynaston to testify against David Tennant and defense attorney Pip Torrens tearing him apart. It stands up for a couple reasons, one it’s entirely predictable Torrens is going to tear him apart because it turns out Tennant has seemingly engineered his entire prosecution and is prepared for all the witnesses against him. Second, Mays ought to know something’s up.

This episode comes the closest to thinking Mays is giving a transfixing performance, with director Lewis Arnold frequently cutting to Mays for reaction shots only he never has any reaction shots because Mays has one, sad expression. Oh, and also all the manipulations of the episode don’t actually matter once it gets to the conclusion because of how the verdict goes. There’s the story and there’s where writer Kelly Jones (Jones’s sole entry is this episode) takes it instead.

Though having a trial episode where Tennant is mostly silent is another thing; why watch “Des” if not for Tennant. He’s got a couple good scenes, but he’s a diabolical mastermind here. “Des” has melodramatic theatrics but it doesn’t have a lot of tangible reality anymore. Even if it does awkwardly open with footage of the actual Dennis Nilsen at his trial. Because… they want show how close they got Tennant’s hair, I guess. It does nothing else for the episode.

There’s also a lot more of Mays and Jason Watkins together, which is just a chemistry vacuum.

I’m not sure what “Des” needs, other than some recasting, rewriting, and maybe a better director. A point would probably help. The big question is whether Tennant’s got some undiagnosed mental health condition explaining him living around dead bodies for years at a time or if he’s just a master planner who wanted an insanity plea. The show doesn’t make any decision—it ignores the question as best it can—and Tennant’s intentionally cryptic too.

Also the text epilogues reveal some information they should’ve baked into the narrative. And, based on the text, they completely got Watkins’s person wrong. But whatever, it’s over, who cares?

“Des” is okay for a Tennant stunt cast and it has moments of genuine interest but… nah. Mays and Watkins are just too flat. Especially Mays, who’s somehow more tedious in his performance than the same Droopy Dog cartoon on repeat.

Des (2020) s01e02

While David Tennant is baring his broken soul to biographer Jason Watkins, DCI Daniel Mays is trying to identify Tennant’s numerous victims so they can properly charge him. There are also more attempted murders, with people coming forward.

And even though Tennant says he’s got fifteen victims—and the morgue says possibly twenty—and there are the seven confirmed attempts, Scotland Yard is threatening to shut Mays down. They don’t want to keep paying for the missing person identifications. Gives Mays a lot to mope about. He’s in an especially bad mood when Tennant asks him to find about his dog, then tells Mays he killed a famous missing person.

Said famous missing person is a Canadian tourist and Mays reopening the investigation pisses off Ron Cook because Mays didn’t ask him. Why didn’t Mays ask him? Unclear. Cook starts his yelling saying he would’ve okayed it or something so… it’s just Mays not doing things right. While Luke Neal’s script is ostensibly trying to show Mays’s diligence, all we find out about him this episode is he ignores things and is a disinterested partner, husband, and father. I’ve been waiting to find out the reason for his divorce is he’s closeted, hence his reactions to Tennant—we find out right at the end of the episode Watkins wants to write about him because he’s gay and Watkins is gay and Watkins doesn’t want the book being done by some homophobic piece of eighties shit—but no. Mays isn’t divorced because he’s gay. He’s on his fourth marriage because British women love apparently Droopy Dog cops who whine about wanting to see their kids but don’t do anything about it.

He also misses clues. Chanel Cresswell, who’s rather good for “Des,” like… there isn’t much in the way of standout supporting performances but Cresswell comes close—she thinks her ex might be one of the victims and drops a major clue in her statement and if it ever registers with Mays, we don’t find out. Though he is the only cop smart enough to think if you kept a murdered person’s possessions you might clean off the fingerprints.

Then there’s a brief thread about Scotland Yard being pissed off about Watkins writing a book and Mays never acknowledges he heard about it and didn’t follow up. Not even to himself.

The stuff with Watkins and Tennant’s good—Tennant’s got a lot of musing on his motives and the source of his murderous impulses–and Watkins is definitely a bit better than last episode. Not enough. And Mays is still a wet towel.

The ending’s a surprise (though also not really because Neal ties it to another twist). So… effective cliffhanger, let’s call it.

But with only one more… “Des” has pretty clearly hit its quality ceiling. The missing persons stuff is fascinating? A documentary would probably be better.

Des (2020) s01e01

“Des” opens with contemporary news footage from 1983 with Margaret Thatcher talking about how she’s Thatchering people and then something about an influx of young men to London who find it’s not what they thought.

This opening is going to have nothing to do with the story. It’s not even a good stylistic match for the narrative style of the show.

“Des” is about serial killer Dennis Nilsen, based on a book by Brian Masters; the opening titles gives the title of the book and the whole “at the request of the survivors… out of respect for the dead…” bit. Obviously not the Fargo bit but you know. The true story crap.

It’s important to pay attention because otherwise when Jason Watkins shows up towards the end of the episode and is fascinated with the case, it initially played to me like he knew the serial killer, played by David Tennant. Mostly because I didn’t pay attention to the name of the book author in the opening titles.

The show centers around Droopy Dog sad copper Daniel Mays, who’s having a hard time with his fake subplot about his divorce and sons. He gets a nuisance call about bones in a sewer drain; the caller thinks they’re human, Mays thinks they’re chicken bones.

Nope.

They’re human and the suspect is Tennant. He’s only technically a suspect because he immediately confesses upon encountering the police, though it’d be hard not to confess since his apartment’s filled with cut up dead bodies. Except there are only three in the apartment, he’s killed at least fifteen.

Only Tennant doesn’t remember any details for identifying his victims, he didn’t get their names, so the cops aren’t sure he’s really a serial killer or something. Well, Mays is sure, but he’s not very authoritative as he mopes. His boss, an effective with nothing to do Ron Cook, tells him to tread carefully.

As a procedural, a lot of it is good. Tennant’s pretty good in a “cast against type” part. He’s closer to fascinating than not, which is good. Unfortunately, Mays and Watkins are both blah.

Luke Neal’s script manages to be simultaneously well-paced and draggy. Lewis Arnold’s direction is fine. It’s okay, good for the Tennant. Mays and Watkins need to get better fast for it to be anything more.