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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Edge of Darkness- spoilers

Our Lady of The Two Towers

10:31 / 22.06.03

Just noticed this for tonight, BBC4, at 2200. I know very little about this except that it's about the nuclear industry, stars Bob Peck and is supposed to be extremely briiliant and a genuinely shit-yer-pants scary TV series.

So I'll be watching...

10:51 / 22.06.03

Was just going to post this myself. Best TV drama ever. Shittiest DVD release ever. Hopefully the repeats'll see a new edition coming out.

Union strikes. Corrupt government. Nuclear waste. Massive conspiracy. Bob Peck. Joe Don Baker.

Anything else will be a spoiler. Just watch it.

21:49 / 24.06.03

Well, my freeview box decided to pack in at exactly 10PM, so I ended up watching the first ep on DVD.

There's a fair bit of foreshadowing going on in the first fifty minutes. Quite a few dead ends, too. What strikes me, watching it again now, is how slow the introduction is. It's also a fantastic portrayal of early 80s' Britain - The Filth And The Fury manages a similar thing with the dull colours, the old film stock and the bloody awful weather lending a sense of place and time, except here we're not watching a documentary. I don't think EoD has aged in the sense of feeling out of place nowadays, either.

No real pointers as to how the series builds up and ends up somewhere completely different from where we started yet. There's an elemental, supernatural good vs evil battle going on here that plays out in the feel of the program rather than ever being a stated plot device. Craven's conversations with his daughter are just the start of it.

What did you think of it Flowers, not having seen it before?

17:41 / 28.06.03

Unfortunately those of us with "council telly" have to rely on the dvd's.

Fortunately, it was one of the best examples of telle-drama I've ever seen and well worth the fifteen quid.

Please let me know when you're all a few episodes in, I really want to talk about this, but avoid spoilertising, 'cos it's worth being surprised by...

18:28 / 28.06.03

Duncan: the BBC have finally released their own DVDs of the series - here.

18:48 / 28.06.03

I think we're talking at cross purposes here pal, thats the one I bought a few weeks ago, hence the fifteen quid well spent, I possibly didn't put that well...

But aside from that it reminds me why I still think the bbc is worth the fee, especially after "state of play" recently, where else would you find a character as flawed as Bob Peck in this, especially with all those inferences...

Our Lady of The Two Towers

19:30 / 28.06.03

I haven't actually watched it yet, though I'll have the time tomorrow probably.
And, in my best continuity announcer stylee, the second episode tomorrow is at the earlier time of 9:10.

19:09 / 15.08.03

So, spoiler ah0oy
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topic starters, presuming anone actually watched it

Peck - Incest - kissing the vibrator?

Replacing her mother in ep 3??

Bad man in modern view r.e. N.I.

Be with "me", not "us".

Jedburgh's view of himself as an agent of god, not a dying man hitting back and taking his vengance? If so, What's the difference?

Black flower hypothesis, has that ever been ventured/true? Surely that is irrelevant once the radiation/energy is within earth's atmosphere.

And don't cal me shirley

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19:22 / 15.08.03

Well, as far as the incest hints go there's a fairly major one in the ep where Craven & co. break into the MI5 computer rooms - he escapes, gets saved by Zoe Wannamaker's character (Claudia? Chloe?) who smuggles him into a play. Craven: "What's it about?" Chloe (Claudia?): "Incest."

Jedburgh's belief that he's an agent of a higher power is stated well before he has any need of vengeance. To him, Grogan's "part of the dark forces that would rule this planet." Craven's working for the same elemental power as Jedburgh (or that power's working through him), as shown by the well springing up where Emma died.

19:52 / 15.08.03

And you know, that may be why i like it so much.

Theres no "Basil Exposition", there is a "Gaia" myth, and thats why I think it is only matched by "State of play" recently "although that needed some closure".

But the conflict between jedburgh and craven is aledged in the last scene, jedburgh bites it, craven wanders to the moors and goes out screaming ()did i mentioni love willie nelson???), apparently acorrding to "SFX" he turned into atree, but not on my dvd's.

And the question is -- s raven a good man working for the good, or a bad man working for vengance, or-- like most of us, just a man, giveing his best?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

20:11 / 15.08.03

A 'good' man that becomes a 'bad' man who does good...

I've got to buy the DVDs so I can watch it again properly, I was just completely unprepared for the series taking a sharp right-turn into 'seriously weird shit' in the last two episodes. I can understand Craven going down that pit unprepared, but Jedburgh knew there's be shitloads of radiation down there, why wasn't he adequately kitted out?

In the end I'm not sure if I didn't understand it or, like the Invisibles, I just think I don't understand it and need someone to articulate my feelings for me. As it is, Bob Peck= fucking underrated actor and seriously RIP.

Jedburgh created Gaia, even though he was only following orders when he did so he ends up following their beliefs seriously in stealing the radioactive material to show the world what nuclear fusion actually would mean (though what happened with that little flash going off when he brought the two pieces together at the conference? How was that enough to give Grogan radiation poisoning without incinerating Jedburgh on the spot? Someone possibly using a bit of dramatic irony or sumfink).

The whole think with Craven and the IRA. How heavily were the hitmen involved? It does seem as though they were turned loose to get Craven, yet he doesn't get involved with things until they make their first attack, killing his daughter. And that whole thing with Craven noting that she ran forward as though she recognised him, that doesn't get explained either. Are they recruited to some clean-up squad that goes around taking out the people who know what's going on in t'pit?

It's a dark fantasy pretending to be a political thriller.

I think this was a heavy influence for Garth Ennis in writing 'Unknown Soldier', with the FBI Agent talking to his dead partner, and Craven and his daughter. I just like the non-fussy way it's done, and the way the story is written in such a way as though the writer says 'this is Craven, he is a real adult trying to get to the bottom of a strange mystery involving the nuclear industry in this country and it's role in his daughters death. He talks to his daughter b.t.w, yes, that's right, the dead one'. He probably fulfils some archetype too.

20:39 / 15.08.03

Our LadY >> if you're in Scotland you can borrow the dvds, "complete with pebble mill interviews"(showing my'80's age/ and Bob's BAFTA), from me, as can anyone else close by if they want them, no judgement. Just send me a message, i'm not here very often, but i like it lots, and support the thinkers.

AND, the 'RA were af6ter Emma, all the way, Craven was a decoy, becomes apparent after Ian McNiece and his Pal come in, and "Darling" is in it.

Like i said above, state of play is the only thing i've seen, come close recenttly, it's why I pay the licence fee, over and above east-enders.

20:46 / 15.08.03

That's why I am an advocate of Jeburgh, He knows, bbut he stilll fires
in.

21:43 / 15.08.03

To step back from the b'lith analysis and being a cogent 6 yo , in '85, I was 8/9 years old, and war like aids scared the XXXX the out of me.

Now, I recognise it as a drama, but, the nuclear
threat is gone/ (it reallly has not lessened "oh yeah ,25 lessm,megatons!!)

Fills me with hope../.

21:56 / 15.08.03

I can understand Craven going down that pit unprepared, but Jedburgh knew there's be shitloads of radiation down there, why wasn't he adequately kitted out?

He's a cowboy. And you're right, Duncan - he *doesn't* care. He's so tied into the good vs evil stuff that he sees himself as just a cog in the machine and his sacrifice as just a part of the way things have to play out. That's the main difference betweeen Jedburgh and Craven, and probably the reason they're so fascinated with each other - Jedburgh believes in the big themes like fate, destiny, whereas those notions don't hold water where Craven's concerned.

The whole think with Craven and the IRA. How heavily were the hitmen involved?

Again, like Duncan says, Emma was always the target. The killing's part of an operation to wipe out all of those who broke into Northmoor, the gunman's chosen because his link to Craven will obscure the real reason behind it.

apparently acorrding to "SFX" he turned into atree

That seems like a bit of a stretch, really. Spiritually, yeah, he's a tree, but that's made obvious throughout the series. Physically? Nah, although I can see that maybe you could read the final image of him, silhouetted on the mountain top, as representing a tree if you really wanted to.

The characters I've always had difficulty pinning down are Pendleton and Harcourt. Their motivations are almost completely obscured.

22:12 / 15.08.03

I know what you mean about p&HCOURT, our muscle(craven) is gone, but thhe good men ar estuill with us. "this is not the end"

We dont win by hitting hard, we win yy being resilient.

The best thing is there are many narratives, you can take you're pick and still come out the Hero!!

23:11 / 15.08.03

I still can't believe how much of a threat it was, and really still is, I mean, who stays awake thinking about nuclear war after "Frankie" these days.

I still think Craven was a ""good man", but a "bad human being".

It was Bobs first tv role, and as far as I know, the first Wille Nelson refrence on the BBC.
, (Same reference the G.Ennis made in Preacher "It was the time of the preacher / in the year of /01 -") it holds up the whole story.

01:18 / 16.08.03

I'm not sure I agree about all this good/bad stuff - or rather, a lot of the characters seem to believe in it, but I'm not sure that they're meant to be seen as occupying one position or the other. Jedburgh's a good guy, but he's a cardboard cutout for the first four episodes, a cartoon CIA troubleshooter. The point of the series, for me, is that Gaia is solely interested in self-preservation and doesn't really care how she/he/it goes about ensuring that. That's why Jedburgh's actions towards the end have such power and seem to come out of the blue: he's basically been taken over by the spirit of Gaia, become an angel of retribution and/or death (I mean, how many 'innocent' people are going to end up suffering because of the incident at the golf course?).

I think this stuff's evident throughout, but you really need to search for it at the beginning of the series. Emma says something like "the planet will find a way" at one point - it's the black flowers thing. If anything, Pendleton and Harcourt are the perfect human representatives of Troy Kennedy Martin's Gaia: they have an ultimate aim and don't care if people get knocked about by their attempts to reach it; the planet is only interested in survival, and a few species getting wiped out is neither here nor there unless it adversely affects that survival.

Either deeply depressing or fairly reassuring, depending on your point of view.

Ah, hell. Really want to discuss this stuff, but I've got no Internet access for the next couple of weeks. You'll have to forgive me if I end up pushing this back up the forum (if anyone adds any more posts) when I get back.