Favourite Mini-Series / Drama Serial

[DanaC]

Yes it's another telly thread!

I don't often watch mini-series - I tend to prefer dramas that are ongoing (or are at least intended to be!) But now and then a self-contained, serialised drama of 2-8 episodes just really hits the spot.

Not sure what you guys would consider a short series really - over here recurring series are often fairly short anyway. I don't include things like Sherlock in this, despite being very short series (3 eps a time) nor series that were intended to run to further series but weren't picked up (like Fades). But the single story told across a fairly short number of episodes (usually 2-4 but if intended as a single story, then more eps).

So, which mini-series have rocked your world, floated your boat or otherwise left their mark?

I'll start with what I consider to be one the best single series dramas ever produced on Brit tv: Holding On. Written by Tony Marchant and told across 8 episodes, this was a real game changer for British drama in the 90s.

Here's what the BFI site has to say about it:

Holding On (BBC, 1997) was Tony Marchant's first significant project for television, an eight-part drama set in London, following disparate characters and exploring in complex detail personal responsibility and how it becomes threatened in a society which has been told by Margaret Thatcher it no longer exists. It remains just as relevant after years of New Labour rule.

Holding On turns a critical eye on modern British society: Alan's (Sean Gallagher) story emphasises the lack of provision for mental health patients; bright DJ Chris (Razaaq Adoti) and his sister Janet (Diane Parish) highlight the lack of facilities for bright black youths; all the characters reveal the gap between what people say and what they do; what happens when urban isolation meets a 'me first' mindset. Marchant's characters are joyously complex human beings and the actors who play them are thoroughly convincing. It's unusual in such a large cast not to have one false note.

The series' core themes are blame and responsibility, but the drama is not without humour, provided most obviously by restaurant critic Gary Rickey (Phil Daniels) as he travels the capital, spitting bile and saliva at all the top gastronomic eateries in town. Everyone is looking for something - or someone - to blame for the position they find themselves in. But just when we think a situation is black and white, Marchant reveals the grey area which that makes us question our judgment. Werner's (David Calder) tax fraud case, for example, seems cut and dry until Shaun's wife (Caroline Harker) turns a blind eye to her childminder's petty fiddling. Where do you draw a line between good, bad and really bad? Shaun's (David Morrissey) collapse reminds us that we are all self-deceivers who are susceptible to corruption.

Adrian Shergold's direction is masterful, swooping and rolling around London, making the city a central character. A stream of plausibly conceived coincidences allow a fluid shift of focus as the plot moves from one character to an unconnected other within the same scene. The camera is often placed in unusual positions to challenge our perspective but the drama's visual style never becomes more important than its characters. Holding On deservedly won an RTS award for Best Drama Serial in 1998.

What made me think about this again, was watching David Morrisey in the first ep of a new 3 part mini series (The Driver - highly recommend). His character and performance in Holding On were absolutely compelling. As was Phil Daniels as a bulemic food critic.

There aren't many youtube clips unfortunately. But I highly recommend seeking this one out if you haven't seen it.

A couple of clips though to show how the flavour ofthe drama shifted and changed throughout:

In this we see one of our key characters, a tax man who is starting to lose his grip. He's a by the rules, highly moral character - but he's living in a shitty flat in a shitty area and has just been burgled. And he spends his working life investigating millionaires. he truly believes in what he does - but that belief is starting to crumble. There's something in his past that we don't know about yet - something from his youth. We know it plays on his mind, but that's all we know. His descent from moral arbiter to something else is one of the most memorable storylines for me.



Tonal shift - to our occasional narrator, the food critic and writer. As far as I recall, he is the only character that breaks the fourth wall, and to an extent he ties all the disparate stories together:



And the wrap up from the final episode, narrated by the food critic:



I haven't done it justice really, with these clips. There were so many character stories all intertwined and connected mainly by location and theme - as much a love affair with London as anything else.