Thinking about MEADOWLANDS

There have been a variety of ways to prepare for Meadowlands, Showtime's latest attempt to push the envelope in its efforts to keep up with the bold pace set by HBO. As they did with The Tudors (one of their weakest efforts in my opinion), the released the first episode through their On Demand service prior to its official "launch" on Sunday evening. This meant that some of us had the advantage of reading Tim Goodman's Chronicle review retrospectively, rather than prospectively; and in this particular case I am glad I had that advantage, because I really did not buy just about anything that Goodman had to say about the series.

Perhaps Goodman just wanted to exercise a streak of jingoism:

In that sense [that American television is pale by British standards], "Meadowlands" -- made in England, winnowed from the pack of dramatic offerings and playing out eight episodes on Showtime starting Sunday -- is a little gift of appreciation for the hometown guys. Not only does "Meadowlands" fail to reach the level of any number of shows on HBO, Showtime or FX, but it proves that complicated slices of mainstream fare like "Lost" and "Heroes" are wonderful creations that need a lot more respect than they're getting.

This was one of those cases where, as I read, I had to wonder whether the two of us had been watching the same program. Fortunately, I was able to find a "reading" of the program a bit closer to my own in today's Telegraph, because it turns out that the show is also about to air in the United Kingdom, but under the title Cape Wrath. Amy Raphael's profile of David Morrissey, star of the series, seemed far more perceptive about what the show was and what the viewing experience could be. Furthermore, she could do this without being jingoistic for either side:

Although there are clearly elements of the 1960s British series The Prisoner, Cape Wrath is quite audacious in its homage to Twin Peaks, The Truman Show, American Beauty and Desperate Housewives. It's no surprise that one of the directors, Duane Clark, is an American who made his name on CSI: Miami. "I could see those references too," says Morrissey in his soft Liverpool accent. "It will be interesting to see what the Americans make of it."

Without having seen either article (since we watched the On Demand source a couple of nights ago), my wife picked up on the "family resemblance" to The Prisoner almost immediately; and, yes, anyone who misses David Lynch's devil-may-care approach to throwing everything but the kitchen sink (and a few basic precepts of logic) at the viewer is not going to disappointed with Meadowlands.

Now that both Goodman and Raphael have spilled the beans, it will not spoil anything to say that "Meadowlands" is the name of a community (not that different in appearance from Agrestic, dear to the hard of Weeds viewers), all of whose residents are apparently in witness protection. We follow the protagonist's family, "put into all-too-hip designer eye masks and raced in a van to a bucolic suburban setting," as Goodman put it. Of course you cannot have a bucolic setting in England without sheep; but that just helps you remember the name of the community ("the sheep in the meadow")! So things are weird, in that Lynch kind of way, from the get-go; and the first episode certainly did not have any trouble with keeping them that way. This was definitely my kind of fun.

Even if I disagree with him, I do have to credit Goodman for a bit of trivia that may or may not be relevant. Meadowlands was filmed on location in the village of Maidstone. This may only be meaningful to fans of Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad, his dramatization of Coral Browne's account of her encounter with Guy Burgess when she toured with the Old Vic and performed in Moscow. Burgess wanted her to arrange for his London tailor to provide him with a new suit (with all due discretion, given his disgraced status). So there is this great scene where Browne places the order and then cautions the tailor to "remember, mum's the word." The tailor gives her a haughty glance and declares, "For our customers, Moscow or Maidstone, mum is always the word!" My guess is that the producers were not thinking about this when they selected their location, but it is still an amusing coincidence.