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From: blp
Category: TV
Date: 15 January 2006
Steven Poliakoff is the last survivor of Serious TV Drama from the seventies, a crocodile himself according to the symbolism here, where crocodiles matter because they survived whatever killed the dinosaurs. Add to that that the survivor in the story is an entrepreneurial figurehead for 'the last days of Seventies style anarchy', whatever that means, and it could be a sort of self portrait. Anyway, he seems to like these genius guys and they're always business geniuses, but sexy ones with something inscrutable and swashbuckling about them. Other things he likes are cute English eccentrics and people wandering through posh English gardens amid the debris of parties as a way of representing not just the end of the party but, you know, something bigger, more zeitgeisty, with the ashes of some fire floating picturesquely by. He also has a weakness for lavish interiors, which means he uses them even when they're totally inappropriate, like for a strip joint where old codgers drink and you sense constantly that he's interested in some sort of cold modernity - something like Brett Easton Ellis or the Tod Haines of 'Safe' or bits of David Mamet - but can't quite bring himself to stop believing in the inner loveliness of people or the potential for magic moments where everyone comes to gether and is simply quietly happy in the lights of another fire and party enough to really do the freeze-out. Anyway, the problem in the businessy mileu he depicts isn't anything fundamental, it's just that some of the people are cold hearted and stupid - and some of those only temporarily until they have a lovely epiphany - and anyway, eventually the genius guy is going to make it all alright. So what I want to say is, look, Steven, if you think capitalism is so great and you know how it works so well, why don't you go into business for a bit? At least then if you do make another of these baroque modern fables it'll deal with some real issues and have a chance of looking right and not just like some grotesquely prettified, seventies poster pre-Raphaelitish fantasy of what modern life is really like.
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