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NY-LON

 
 
Ganesh
21:28 / 25.08.04
Anyone else seen C4's "groundbreaking new drama series" featuring the guy who played a vampire in Ultraviolet and some American bint, in a transatlantic multi-coincidence dodgydialoguefest?

I can't decide if I like it or not. Yet.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
22:29 / 25.08.04
Taped it, haven't watched it yet, but was particularly taken by the scene in the trailer where Kurt from Teachers asks Mr London if " maybe, just maybe, this could be the one ? " Or words to that effect. Heart-warming stuff, I felt.
 
 
Ganesh
22:35 / 25.08.04
Mmm. I thought the dialogue was stilted and shit - but I do love little Navin Chowdrey, even if he always plays saddo losers.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
06:59 / 26.08.04
Almost on the level of so-bad-it's-good (I've been watching the trailers and cringing for weeks), but in the end plateau-ing out at the level of bad - some truly awful dialogue, pretty obviously stereotypical characters, very dodgy 'plot' developments designed in theory to distract from the fact that there is only one idea here (and it's not a big or clever one). Worst of all, the two leads have zero chemistry: you cannot imagine these two people having sex at all, let alone jetting back and forth across the Atlantic for the chance to do so.

The whole thing felt very dated: specifically it felt like immediately-post-This-Life drama produced specifically to flog a soundtrack album largely full of shit like The Thrills...

That bloke who was Jack Davenport's mate who became a vampire in Ultraviolet specialises in "charming but nasty" (he was also the leader of the pack in not-very-good gang rape drama Men Only), so I kept expecting him to turn eeeevil... No such luck.
 
 
_Boboss
07:48 / 26.08.04
'you'd really travel all the way from london to new york justy for a couple of hours?

well yes. after all, i'm fucking rich aint i?'

oh yes i'm very interested in what these two charmers' love
lives'll be like
 
 
The Strobe
09:12 / 26.08.04
I kind of enjoyed this, even if it is a bit silly. The split-screening was excessive and badly done, and god, the soundtrack; when I was watching it, I said to my viewing companion "you know, there's so going to be a soundtrack CD to buy" and sure enough, at the end of the first episode they plugged it.

It is so irksomely soundtracked; fleeting glimpses of billions of songs, designed to be familiar to the viewers who know them and inspire emotion in those who don't, but in verse-long, rather than song-long chunks.

I like the Navin Chowdrey character a lot. But it is all very post This-Life, really; it's reminding me a lot of Glasgow Kiss, and yet isn't half as well scripted, and the characters are half as interesting. Ex-junkie-flatsitter croaking just seemed tacked-on, really.

Still, next week's episode looks like it'll be thoroughly unpleasant for all concerned - I rather liked the fact the last five minutes fucked lots of things up for everybody - so I'll be watching out of schadenfreude more than anything else.

Oh - other thing - as it starts up, that Channel 4 Original Drama logo seemed to be a euphemism for DRAMA WHICH IS NOT FROM HBO FOR ONCE. I ask you.
 
 
Spaniel
09:19 / 26.08.04
Paleface, the gimmickry and soundtrack alone should have led you to conclude that you were watching a huge pile of shit.

Fark me, it ain't so bad it's good, it's so bad it's bad.

Why, why, why, why can't we make anything approaching ameri-drama goodness.

Yes, yes budgets etc...

BUT...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:21 / 26.08.04
Was Glasgow Kiss the one about the ravers including the gay cop and the rather young lad? And the hard-as-nails blonde woman who worked in the club? No, that was something else, wasn't it... Glitter-something or Wonder-something...
 
 
Jack Vincennes
09:42 / 26.08.04
Am interested in the second episode, if only because as Paleface mentions it looks like it's going to be less about the transatlantic cuddles and more about the unpleasantness of the two main character's lives. In general I dislike anything which features last minute and / or spontaneous rushes to airports, so less of that would be good.

you cannot imagine these two people having sex at all

Especially not when one of them has drunk an entire half bottle of Jack Daniels and the other has not. Come on, scriptwriters! It would be rough! Think about it!
 
 
The Strobe
10:04 / 26.08.04
Fly - Glasgow Kiss was Ian Glen as a widowed sportswriter with an endearing six-year-old-son trying to get it on again, and ending up going after Dervla Kirwan. It was all really quite endearing, and held up by the fact its leads could act and the script wasn't rubbish.
 
 
sleazenation
10:05 / 26.08.04
Certainly this thread seems to have confirmed my prejudices against this show inspired by the trailers alone were largely correct.
 
 
The Puck
10:32 / 26.08.04
I just got the impression they thought of the clever name first and then wrote a drama to fit it ala alan partiridge chat show items
 
 
Ganesh
13:19 / 26.08.04
Why, why, why, why can't we make anything approaching ameri-drama goodness.

Oooh, it really annoys me when this chestnut is trotted out. There's been some truly superb British drama in recent years, easily as good as US output. What the UK tends not to produce is lengthy, ongoing multi-season drama; we seem better at shorter, self-contained gems.

Having said which, NY-LON (and even the look-how-clever name is starting to annoy me now) is not one of these. I agree with pretty much all of the criticisms (yeah, I also half-expected Michael Antonionionioni to 'go feral'), particularly the lack of sexual chemistry. I thought the dialogue was especially shite, though: they seemed unsure whether they were reflecting a romantic-to-the-point-of-being-magical Richard Curtis-styled reality or a grittier needle-in-the-vein pseudorealism. The end result was a sort of sub-This Life without the honesty, all the rough edges smoothed to a bland sheen. I lost count of the times I thought, 'people just don't speak like that'.

And the heroin overdose, stuck on the end of all that cheesy coincidencemongery, felt both incongruous and gratuitous. Bleh.

I felt that, beneath the shiny gimmickry, NY-LON was saddled with some of the clunkiest, most heavy-handed plotting I've seen for a long while: the aforementioned coincidences (at least three this episode), the hackneyed use of friends-as-framing-device (not-as-attractive saddo best friend for the male lead; Superego Career Bitch and Kooky Id-Girl flanking the female) and the lazy spontaneous-run-to-airport cliches.

Unpleasantness ahead - good. I'm guessing not good enough, though.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:09 / 26.08.04
The 'clever' name's starting to annoy you?
 
 
Spaniel
14:18 / 26.08.04
Okay, So we've produced some good drama - some great drama, even.

But I just love those ongoing, glossy expenseathons that we do... well... very, very rarely (if ever).

And, yes, before anyone says anything, I'm aware that we get the best of the American bunch.
 
 
Ganesh
14:24 / 26.08.04
But I just love those ongoing, glossy expenseathons that we do... well... very, very rarely (if ever).

Fair enough. I like some of them; other times, I find the much-vaunted 'high production values' actually stop me engaging. There's probably a whole separate thread in this...
 
 
Ganesh
14:25 / 26.08.04
The 'clever' name's starting to annoy you?

I know, I know. I was trying to give it a chance...
 
 
Spaniel
18:57 / 26.08.04
To qualify further. I actually like very few of those glossy expenseathons, but, the ones I like, I really, really like.
 
 
Spaniel
18:59 / 26.08.04
Although even the shit ones tend to out-do NY-LON on ALL fronts.

Mumsy worked on it. Poor cow.
 
 
Benny the Ball
19:08 / 26.08.04
I didn't like it at all. In fact I stopped watching soon after the scene with the ladies in the bar (umm was drifting off a bit at this point as well, there was a Black woman and the main lady mentioned the main man lending her money). It was stilted and...cold I suppose, I just couldn't like anything about it. The scene where she asks for a cigarette just annoyed me. I really thought I'd like it, being in a LA-Lon relationship of my own, thought that it would tug at some easy feelings, but alas, no, it just irritated me...altogether too smug for my liking.
 
 
Warewullf
20:52 / 26.08.04
Well, the hell with youse guys. I liked it.
Fuck the how-the-hell-did-he/she-afford-that? bollocks. It doesn't matter. By the end, I actually wanted to know what happens next. Fine, it's not West Wing quality but so what?

And it's got Suze in it! SUZE! (Though she hasn't shown up yet.)

It did feel a bit like a grown-up As If, only not nearly as good.

I know this all sounds stupid, I'm no good at defending things like this.
All I know is I watched it, smiled in all the right places and liked the characters.
 
 
Ganesh
21:11 / 26.08.04
it's not West Wing quality but so what?

It's barely Attachments quality...
 
 
The Strobe
09:02 / 27.08.04
Ouch.
 
 
Looby
12:08 / 27.08.04
Our 'hero' was such an arse! The whole business with the ciggie really annoyed me, and I felt that if I'd met the character irl I'd absolutely hate him. Plus, it was clunky. The split screen/different perspectives device felt awkward, and often unnecessary as you didn't really learn anything more about the characters than was already patently obvious.
 
 
Ganesh
20:24 / 31.08.04
Well, so far even the sadism of watching our unlovely heroes suffer (in hamfistedly contrived double-ex-partner reappearances) hasn't done it for me. Think this may be the last episode I try to catch.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:15 / 01.09.04
When you find yourself thinking "that little fella from Teachers is really too classy for this kind of thing", you know there's something seriously wrong with a show.

Watched the first 15 minutes or so, then switched it off only to catch the very end before 6FU. There is nothing good about Enn-Why-Lon.

"I'll be a father to this baby if you want to have it, thus displaying a moral integrity that transcends my obvious misogyny."

"That's okay, bloke from Ultraviolet. I'm not going to have the baby after all. Also, please never call me again: thus handily wrapping up this entire plotline!"
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:20 / 01.09.04
I managed ten seconds of the first episode before hurling (our heroine awakes in bed with merchant wanker). This time I managed about two minutes (funeral, then GOLD BLEND MOMENT: woman he is obviously not going to shag going into hotel room with him as heartbroken - and moronic - Americaine turns on her heel). So, it is obviously improving at a rate of knots. Or knob.

Has the bloke actually acted yet? Can there be a "bloke acting" clock?
 
 
Ganesh
09:50 / 01.09.04
When you find yourself thinking "that little fella from Teachers is really too classy for this kind of thing", you know there's something seriously wrong with a show.

Indeed. He's a peculiarly sensitive banker, is he not, if rather inconsistent? Winningly cheesy bloke-emoting 'she might be the one, you have to go after her' speech, barely five minutes after recommending abortion clinic in 'that's where we went to get the little fucker ripped out; can't have 'er walking around with a mini-version of me inside 'er' terms.

Gotta admire the fact that both heroes have definitively non-Caucasian friends for whom they frequently have to 'stand up', thus demonstrating their impeccable in-no-way-racist credentials.
 
 
Warewullf
09:54 / 01.09.04
Damn you all and your "We can spot shite shows form a mile away" hyper-sensitivity.

I admit it, this was rubbish.
I watched a bit but then the channel-hopping began. What was with that guy who took his acting straight off of Brad Pitt in "12 Monkeys"? He had the exact same mannerisms! Right down to the pinch-between-the-eyes-then-flick! Awful.

And does Banker-bloke only have one set of clothes? Is that, like, his thing?
 
 
Ganesh
11:42 / 01.09.04
I still can't quite understand the necessity for split screens when the two individuals pictured are not merely in the same city but in the same room. Arsebucklers.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:56 / 01.09.04
you cannot imagine these two people having sex at all, let alone jetting back and forth across the Atlantic for the chance to do so.

Well I've got a massive problem with this show- namely, what the fuck is wrong with this woman? I mean she used to love a gesticulating musician with a smackhead brother but she freaks when she wakes up next to a man despite both of them being fully dressed? THIS DOES NOT WORK.

After suffering mildly through the first show I excused the bad of the whole thing. First episodes are often not very good. Unfortunately my contempt has been sealed by the black kid in limo scene and the fact that both of the leads have clearly graduated from the Joey Trebiani(sp? Well you get the idea) school of bad acting. If only they'd cast Kurt from Teachers in the lead role- he would have been believable as a city worker with a romantic soul. He could have pulled off flying to his love in NY while being utterly contradictory.

I like Snow Patrol, I have done for years and the truth is that I can't watch NY-Lon ever again for fear that the show will destroy a perfectly good band for me.
 
  
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