doug-pinkard92

This was like Ed Wood on a slightly higher budget set in London in the Swinging Sixties--the HEIGHT of that era, in fact. To that end, the ONE redeeming quality to this film is performance footage of a relatively obscure but FANTASTIC psychedelic rock band of the period, Timebox.

Otherwise, the acting is WELL below par, the direction entirely direction-less, and the incidental music used to give the illusion of excitement when nothing more is happening than that a car gets stuck waiting for an opening before merging onto a highway. The number of scenes that were clearly first takes in which the actor moves in some noticeably awkward way like they don't really know what to do with themselves is amazing, but they seem to let these stand probably for purposes of staying within or under budget or something.

But maybe the funniest thing is that British Film Institute chose this turkey to spend restoration money on. I'd have tossed all of it but Timebox's three minutes in the early nightclub scene.

I've seen plenty of worse cable series than this one would have been. I wonder whether executives didn't just decide against "modernizing" the iconic central character after seeing the finished product and perhaps disappointing ratings for this pilot. It's easily something I would have given another look were there more episodes unless and until they ran out of ways of making them as seamless as was this one. Mercifully absent cringe-y attempts to recapture either the genre, the period, or both.

Possibly the ugliest story ever told--in a good way! If you don't understand why the 50's French film critics at Cahier du Cinema despised the "prestige" films and valorized those focusing on the nastiest aspects of human existence you will not see why this film of squalid, disgusting, and RAW human emotions and desires is worth seeing. A truly PSYCHOTIC version of Psycho, rather than a polite or "tasteful" one.