Quiz: And My Verdict Is ...

Last night was a good night for mini-series finales.  I just reviewed I Know This Much Is True.  Here now a review of Quiz, which ended its three-episode run on AMC yesterday, and tells the true story of Charles Ingram, who in 2001 won £1,000,000 on the British television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and was promptly brought to criminal trial along his wife and an accomplice for his success on grounds that he and they were cheating.

First, a bouquet of provisos from me.  I didn't see the series in the U. K. or anywhere in 2001 or after, and have no idea what Ingram and his wife were really like (actually, are really like - oops, am I giving too much away, implying that neither received a death sentence?).  In fact, I haven't read a word of the two books upon which the series is based.   So my impressions and conclusions of the Ingrams' innocence or guilt are based entirely on the little series.   And this is also a good time to repeat my frequently voiced advisory about docu-dramas: don't mistake them for anything like the entire truth, maybe not even the essential truth.  Indeed, even a documentary can't be expected to convey the entirety of any matter, so we certainly can't expect that from a docu-drama.

So, Quiz is a little docu-drama series about a very big matter - well, £1,000,000 is not as much in American dollars as when I was boy coin-collector in the late 1950s, but it's nothing to sneeze at.  Certainly the Ingrams, real and portrayed, were happy to get it.   But did they lie and cheat to get it?

Well, based on what I saw i.e., the testimony of the three episodes, I would say ... no, they did not.  Their defense attorney, well by portrayed by Peaky Blinders' Helen McCrory, was utterly convincing that the plethora of coughs in the studio made it highly unlikely that Charles benefitted from coughs from his wife and accomplice signifying yes and no to possible answers to questions on the show.  And Charles certainly didn't cough his way into Mensa.

And speaking of fine portrayals, Matthew Macfadyen was just perfect as Charles, as he's been in everything from MI-5 (aka Spooks) to Succession.   And Michael Sheen, another actor who's great in everything he does, was just outstanding as host Chris Tarrant (and again, I have no idea what the real Tarrant was like).

But I do have an idea about the mini-series, and that's that it's eminently watchable and enjoyable television.  See it before you research the real Ingrams, if that's your inclination.

 

Prodigal Son 1.4: Ainsley

The big step forward in Prodigal Son 1.4 is Ainsley coming to see her serial killer father at the very end of the episode.  He was certainly very happy about that, favoring her and us the audience with one of those Michael Sheen smiles.  As for Ainsley...

Well, we really don't know much about her.  She's played by Halston Sage, who did such a good job on The Orville.  So that in itself makes her character Ainsley ipso facto appealing.  In fact, that's one of the calling cards of Prodigal Son, with Sheen and Sage joining with Tom Payne and Lou Diamond Phillips to make one four-of-a-kind powerhouse of a leading cast.

But what's Ainsley's story?  Unlike Malcolm, she was apparently untouched by her father's psycho killings and her mother's acquiescence, which we also received confirmation of, tonight.  If it's indeed the case that Ainsley was shielded from what her parents were doing, that gives her a unique advantage in this narrative, a blank-slate counterpoint to Malcolm and everything he remembers, almost remembers, and one way or another knows.

But I have a feeling Ainsley knows more than that.  Her father's smile, I think, was more than just the smile of a father who is psycho glad to finally see his daughter again.  The bad good doctor likely knows something about Ainsley, someone we in the audience don't yet know, that is vitally important to his and this story.

Prodigal Son is already showing itself to be a complex drama with a lot more people in motion than just the son.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories? ... Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform

 

Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer

Continuing my sampling of new shows on traditional network TV, my wife and I tried Prodigal Son, which debuted on Fox earlier this week.  We're going to keep watching it.

It continues a now well-established tradition on network television: the serial killer, and the hunt for (usually) him, well represented by everything from The Following to Criminal Minds in recent years. Prodigal Son offers a new twist: the father (Dr. Whitly) is the serial killer, and his son Malcolm is with the police (first the FBI, now NYPD) hunting them down.  Malcolm good at it because he may have inherited some serial killer tendencies himself.  Or, at least, he understands them not only from knowing his father all too well, but because he feels them from the inside out, i.e., in himself.

The cast is outstanding.  Malcolm is played Tom Payne (no relation to the patriot, and spelled differently, anyway), who played no less than "Jesus" (or, to be clear, someone by that nickname) on The Walking Dead.  His father is played by Master and Johnson's Michael Sheen.  And just for good measure, Malcolm's sister Ainsley, a broadcast reporter, is played by Halston Sage, who was great on The Orville (and now we know why she suddenly left that show).  And, hey, Lou Diamond Phillips (last seen by me in Longmire, a great series) is Malcolm's superior, and goes back a ways with both Malcolm and his killer dad.

The first episode was fast, suitably complex, and surprising at times - like when Malcolm chops off a guy's hand to keep him from getting blown up by a bomb he's strapped to.  The family dynamics are effective - Malcolm doesn't want to even see his father, but he's drawn into seeking whatever guidance on serial killers he can get from him (my wife said this reminded her of the Silence of Lambs motif).  More than enough to keep anyone with a pulse's interest.

I'll be back with another review soon.

 

Thomas Maier: Masters of Sex and Biography Come to Life

I had the pleasure of seeing Thomas Maier - author of the Masters of Sex biography upon which the Showtime drama of the same name is based - interviewed at Fordham University tonight.  This is becoming a delightful and informative regular occurrence here at Fordram - interviews of people behind great contemporary television - and thanks go to my colleague Beth Knobel, who several weeks ago arranged for House of Cards creator Beau Willimon and tonight Thomas Maier  (a Fordham alumnus - it was also great to see some of my former students at this event) at our Lincoln Center Campus.  Thanks as well to our Department's Artist-in-Residence Jim Jennewein, who twice conducted excellent interviews - i.e., interviews that  allowed their subjects to really expound upon significant facets of their work.

Let me say, right up front, that my wife and I are devoted fans of the Showtime series, set to begin its third season this July, even though I haven't reviewed it here or anywhere.   Why not, if I like it so much?   Good question and I'm not sure sure of the answer.  It's almost and maybe that I like Masters of Sex a little too much to focus on reviewing it, though loving a series hasn't stopped me from copiously reviewing Dexter, Homeland, Ray Donovan, The Affair, and other notable Showtime shows.  But something about Masters of Sex has bid me so far to keep it a guilty pleasure.  Hey, maybe it's the sex - but who really knows, I'm after all no Freud.

Speaking of whom, Maier's description of the real Virginia Johnson really struck me - "Freud meets Ava Gardner".  In other words,  Lizzy Caplan's excellent portrayal of Johnson is visually as well as emotionally and intellectually on target - something you can't always say about portrayals of real characters, in which the performance can be much more compelling than the original.

Maier's description of the real William Masters also rang true.  As we've seen in the series, Masters portrayed by the masterful Michael Sheen was not happy or comfortable with publicity.   The real Masters, Maier mentioned, would likely have done everything in his power to squelch the series and not cooperate with Maier's biography before it

But my favorite moment in the interview came in Maier's response to a question about how it felt to see his words come to life on television, when he spends most of his time writing them for print on paper and screens. Maier said he loved it!   This was a great corrective to something one of my science fiction editors had told me, years ago, about the "soul deadening" impact of Hollywood on a writer.   There's nothing like hearing an assessment such as Thomas Maier's - from someone who's been there, done it, and finds it one of the glorious experiences of his life.

See also Beau Willimon at Fordham