Telly Talk: Played off
Oh jeepers, this guy is a dick. I wasn’t sure to start off with, I thought he might just be a bit arrogant and overly sure of himself, but no. I am, or course, talking about the main protagonist on the new Channel Five crime drama Played, John Moreland as portrayed by actor Vincent Walsh.
Usually I get on very well with all of Channel Five’s crime dramas. Sometimes I’ve found them a little weak, a bit by the book, but gently reassuring as they put together the jigsaw puzzles of the case using the big clues as the corner pieces and working inwards until they’ve got the entire picture in front of you and it’s all done and ready for the next one. The characters are usually ensemble casts, even with the big star players of Ted Danson and Laurence Fishburne of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, it’s still been about having a good cast pull together. Almost as if this is what the guy from Sesame Street did next once he’d finished explaining ‘co-op-er-ation’ to pre-schoolers and thought it was time the adults learned how to play together.
Clearly programmes like Shark and Castle have a primary focus, someone there’d be real difficulty in continuing the show without, but they’re still a central role to an ensemble cast. Played thinks it has this. It so hasn’t. Played is what happens when an ensemble cast programme is written, and focused around an interesting premise of a group of elite cops moving from focus to focus to plan undercover stings to catch the bad guys. Like BBC1 did with By Any Means last year. Except after it’s written a massive ego lands smack bang in the middle of the script and scribbles in a huge hissy fit all over everyone else’s rather nice characters and lines. This ego is called John Moreland. And he thinks he’s Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon.
This is normally the point where I give a measured counter argument to my initial opinion.
I really won’t be. It’s like we can see the pub conversation that sketched out this idea and then kept going while the beers were flowing. And didn’t go any further.
John Moreland is a maverick, about to be suspended, his team are devoted to him to the point where it looks like one of team – Daniel Price – might even have a big old metrosexual crush on him.
“Daniel wants to be just like John. Swoon”
“Whatever you want I’ll do, just tell me who to punch out.” Such devotion when punching someone out is exactly what John did to almost get suspended. Daniel wants to be just like John. Swoon.
John and his team are picked to join the elite new group by boss Rebecca. Why did she pick him, he wants to know. “Because you’re extraordinary and I want to work with the best.”
But he’s not extraordinary, everyone just keeps saying that he is. He’s not original – he has an ex wife and a teenaged daughter whom he keeps letting down but seems so much more mature than he is (I refer you back to the previously mentioned Shark and Castle for those already tired traits). He’s a wild card with no respect whatsoever for the skills of his team or his superior, barging in and interrupting an interrogation, texting: ‘GET DRESSED’ to his undercover wife as shorthand that seems to apply to all of his communication not to acknowledge the person.
John’s a proper bull in a china shop, risking everybody’s lives, behaving rashly, and not living up to the respect and downright baffling adoration bestowed upon him. I stand by my opening statement: he’s a dick. ’Nuff said.
Played, 5USA, Friday 17 January 2014
Follow me: latestvicky
