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Friday 17th February 2017
TRELI ON THE TELLY WITH ALEX TRELINSKI
I’ve never forgiven Dan Stevens for destroying my Christmas Day in 2013 when his character Matthew Crawley met his maker thanks to a shocking Downton Abbey episode finale featuring the infamous car accident. Life was never the same again, but for Stevens, he’s been based in the States and has found a new starring role that is a zillion miles away from the Downton lifestyle. This comes on a show called Legion that has started on FOX UK and countless channels across the globe. If you think that American Horror Story and Fortitude are strange, they have nothing on Legion for creating confusion and wondering what the hell you are actually watching. That’s not bad incidentally and weird is good, especially as Legion is the baby of Noah Hawley, who has brought Fargo in triumph to the small screen (series three starring Ewan McGregor is on the way). If I tell you that Legion comes from the Marvel stable, then you start thinking of superhero, but we are in
Dan’s Resurrection
X-Men mutant territory here as we meet the Marvel character of David Hallant (his dad apparently is Professor Xavier…now you’ve got it!), played by Dan Stevens, who is banged up in a mental hospital as he is apparently suffering from schizophrenia and violent tendencies. To say that I couldn’t work out what was going on early doors is something of an understatement as I thought I was watching a mix of Clockwork Orange and The Prisoner, with some sixties tunes, drugs, and some strange folk. We even got a female ally of David called Syd Barrett, a straight lift from the drug-taking member of Pink Floyd in the sixties, as she convinces him that there’s a lot more to him than schizophrenia, as we see his telepathic skills amongst other things. David escapes in Syd’s body as they switch minds and then meets some other mutants, and that’s it for episode one! The opener for Legion hits you in the face and looks visually stunning and Stevens gives a great performance, as well looking
really young! But there were a couple of times early on that I nearly gave up as I just didn’t get it, but things became clearer, perhaps like David’s mind, and I’m glad I stuck with it, because you cannot accuse Legion of being boring. It will be an acquired taste but Noah Hawley has insisted on just eight episodes for the first series to avoid “padding”, and this drama should be applauded for daring to be different as opposed to the conveyor-belt production line of crime and police procedurals that US TV produces a lot of. If Dan Stevens looks about early twenties in Legion, then Lucas Till seems like a teenager in the reboot of MacGyver on Sky One. Gone are the chiselled features of Richard Dean Anderson from the original series, as Till, who costarred with Miley Cyrus in the Hannah Montana movie a few years ago, brings a young look to the show. The older stuff comes from ex-CSI favourite George Eads (Nick Stokes of course), as he and
MacGyver lead a secret US government team to fight baddies. Fans of the original hate it, but there’s nothing wrong with this “Mission Impossible”-style hokum, and it’s getting good numbers for CBS in the States, so it will be around for a few years, I can’t believe that No Offence finished series two this week on Channel Four, and it is a no-brainer that it
will return for another run. Putting aside the stratospheric Line of Duty, which is another beast, this is the best UK cop show for years, with strong female characters in the forefront. Wouldn’t be great if we could get a dozen or so episodes a year, but I wonder if that happened whether No Offence would lose the high quality in a similar fate that befell the
other Paul Abbott creation, Shameless. No Offence also delivered a better second series than the first back in 2014 and I order you to catch up and enjoy, if you have not caught this gem already. Talking of strong female characters, a massive thumbs-up to the second and final part of The Moorside on BBC 1 on Tuesday in an utterly absorbing hour of drama.