Season 29 - Shooting the Past (1999-2000)
If you've ever watched anything written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff you know that he's not really big on plots or logic, he's in it for the vibes. Which, as a viewer, can be quite frustrating. Sometimes you'd like more than to be emotionally manipulated. You at least want a reason why. Well, if you're looking for a reason why you will not find out here. You have to suspend your disbelief and embrace the illogic of Stephen Polikoff or you will go mad. Being so close to the edge already I chose to embrace the madness. Because as the granddaughter of a photographer a miniseries about photography is obviously within my wheelhouse of knowledge so the sheer incorrectness of, well, everything, just drove me mad. But you already know that. What you don't know is that I was yelling at the television and screaming THIS IS NOT HOW YOU ARCHIVE MATERIALS every other scene. So, now you know that as well. Our tale starring Timothy Spall, Lindsay Duncan, and Liam Cunningham is about the Fallon Photo Library. The library is housed in a large Victorian building where instead of everything being kept in acid free boxes out of the light pictures are strung up across aisles and placed willy-nilly. Ah Stephen Poliakoff, going for the aesthetics over the actual. Though I will say that if this was a photographer's actual studio and not an archive this would be accurate. Eerily accurate. The building that houses the collection has been sold and the collection was to be disposed of. The head librarian Oswald, played by Spall, has, FOR MONTHS, kept this a secret from his boss Marilyn, played by Duncan, and the other members of staff. When Liam Cunningham arrives he expects an empty building not a presentation by the staff as to why the collection needs to be preserved. You see, Oswald is "special." And yes, this could, in this instance, mean many things both positive and negative, but here his specialty is that he knows this collection like no one else and can find any picture of anyone. He performs his "trick" by finding a picture of Liam Cunningham's grandmother within the archive. While it's a neat party trick it doesn't sooth the rest of the staff who are hustling to try to find a home for the archive days before Christmas, even debasing themselves to an advertising firm run by Andy Serkis. The real kicker is that Oswald attempts suicide and becomes an invalid. No longer the man he was. So my question is, while the collection is saved to an extent over these three episodes, when the one man whose brain was needed to preserve the collection's legacy basically destroys it what is this series trying to say? He literally wiped the hard drive. It just so happened it was more organic. Turning this character who is infuriating yet full of life as he runs around the collection to a lump on a bench makes no sense. Does he view this as his punishment? To be forever cut off from the collection? Did he view his life as the price to pay to save the collection? Shooting the Past just baffled and annoyed me and made me really want to organize. Not their collection, I do think that was a lost cause. I need to organize my own shit. So I'll go off and do that and you can do whatever you like. I hope, for your sake, it's not watching this miniseries.
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