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. |