Guest blogger: STATE OF PLAY

April 16th, 2009 at 12:55pm Will Pfeifer

Normally, every blog post under that Movie Man sig is written by yours truly. But today, we’ve got a special guest. Register Star reporter Sean Driscoll is here to share his thoughts on the new movie STATE OF PLAY … and the British miniseries it’s based on. Take it away, Sean…

If you’re tempted to check out STATE OF PLAY at the theater this weekend, I can’t stop you. But I will ask, if not outright beg, that you check out the six-hour BBC miniseries that is the source material for the flick.

The original story was a sprawling, six-part series that aired in the U.K. in 2003. BBC America aired it in the states later the same year. Regrettably, I didn’t have cable fancy enough to carry that channel but it got rave reviews from my mother, who talked it up to me over the next five years.

After the movie adaptation was announced, BBC finally announced a DVD release. One weekend I sat down, intending to watch the first hour. I was hooked and shot through all six episodes with barely a bathroom break.

The miniseries is a great mixture of intrigue, sex and money. It starts off with a fairly straightforward mystery – a staff member of a Member of Parliament is pushed from a subway platform and killed. The same day, a young man is shot to death in the streets of London. It doesn’t take long for reporters to figure out that the two incidents are connected, but by the end of the first hour-long episode the story already has taken a sharp left turn. After six episodes, there have been so many surprises that, while the central mysteries remain intact, the story has become more complex and twisted.

I’m not saying the movie will be bad. In fact, with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck on board, I’d be willing to bet it’s not horrible. Add Helen Mirren, who can class up just about any stinker (I’m looking at you, NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS), and it might just be a good movie.

But compared to the original, it can’t help but suck. It won’t rival the complexity, the humor and the intensity of the miniseries. It just doesn’t have a chance. Whittling six hours of story into 118 minutes (including the credits!) will naturally mean some plot lines will be dropped and characters changed. But the original story has some quintessentially British elements to it (including the liberal use of the paper’s checkbook for the reporters to get what they need) that I just don’t see translating well into an American film.

Do yourself a favor. Watch the miniseries first and then check out the movie. If you don’t, then go see the film, but add the miniseries to your Netflix queue posthaste. Judge them separately, but don’t do yourself the disservice of not catching the miniseries. Not only will you have a fun ride, but you will immediately want to quit your job and go be a newspaper reporter in the
U.K.  

Entry Filed under: tv