Neverwhere: box set review.
The headline of the article is "Neverwhere: box set review". The author of the article is Marc Burrows The article was published on the web site www.guardian.com on Thursday May 02.2013. The article provides the information about Richard Mayhew is a hangdog office nobody who comes across an injured girl in the street and finds himself drawn downwards into a place called London Below. In this murky underworld, a parallel city to the one above, we encounter a strange array of characters: the Earl of Earl's Court, ruling his fiefdom from a tube carriage; the Black Friars, guarding their secrets in their abbey; and the shepherds of Shepherd's Bush, who terrify everyone.
In the beginning of the article the author states that Part Alice in Wonderland, part Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Neverwhere was created by Neil Gaiman and (wait for it) Lenny Henry. Gary Bakewell, who played Paul McCartney in Backbeat, is the Alice/Arthur Dent character and it's all appealingly bonkers: a world of talking rats, brutal assassins and an angel called Islington, who interact with the near-invisible beggars and buskers of the "real" city above.
Marc also notes that plotwise, the series, which aired on BBC2 in 1996, is your basic whodunnit: a hunt for, and an escape from, the villains who massacred the family of the injured girl, who goes by the name of The Lady Door (handily abbreviated to Door). In the course of six episodes, heroes become villains, principals are killed off then resurrected, as all the while Mayhew stares goggle-eyed at a succession of British character actors having an absolute ball.
The author believes Neverwhere has dated a little, not least because it was lit for film but shot on video, the budget running out before a planned "filmising" in post production. So the show occasionally has the feel of a weird EastEnders omnibus. But Neverwhere's ideas, fizzing energy and weird characters more than compensate, with Brian Eno's atonal score adding to the delightfully queasy vibe.
Marc Burrows later states that gaiman was raised on Doctor Who and mentored by Douglas Adamsand there are traces of both here, as the tone shifts from eccentric to scary often in the same scene. One of the darkest moments – in which a near-suicidal Mayhew must endure a mysterious, ritualistic "ordeal" – begins with the solemn and equally ritualistic offering of "the nice cup of tea". It isn't too hard to imagine Hitchhiker's Arthur Dent saying, as Mayhew does: "Is this the kind of ordeal like going to visit a rather elderly, ill-kempt and female relative is an ordeal? Or like a plunging your hand into scalding hot water to see how fast it takes off the skin sort of ordeal?"
In conclusion he states although hardly a big success at the time, Neverwhere was one of the most imaginative British TV dramas of the 1990s. The show has achieved a satisfying afterlife, however, via a bestselling novelisation, a comic book serial, and most recently a radio drama starring James McAvoy and Benedict Cumberbatch.
In my opinion that it was always intended for the small screen though – and that's still the best way to enjoy this creepy, funny and deeply odd gem.
The headline of the article is "Neverwhere: box set review". The author of the article is Marc Burrows The article was published on the web site www.guardian.com on Thursday May 02.2013. The article provides the information about Richard Mayhew is a hangdog office nobody who comes across an injured girl in the street and finds himself drawn downwards into a place called London Below. In this murky underworld, a parallel city to the one above, we encounter a strange array of characters: the Earl of Earl's Court, ruling his fiefdom from a tube carriage; the Black Friars, guarding their secrets in their abbey; and the shepherds of Shepherd's Bush, who terrify everyone.
In the beginning of the article the author states that Part Alice in Wonderland, part Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Neverwhere was created by Neil Gaiman and (wait for it) Lenny Henry. Gary Bakewell, who played Paul McCartney in Backbeat, is the Alice/Arthur Dent character and it's all appealingly bonkers: a world of talking rats, brutal assassins and an angel called Islington, who interact with the near-invisible beggars and buskers of the "real" city above.
Marc also notes that plotwise, the series, which aired on BBC2 in 1996, is your basic whodunnit: a hunt for, and an escape from, the villains who massacred the family of the injured girl, who goes by the name of The Lady Door (handily abbreviated to Door). In the course of six episodes, heroes become villains, principals are killed off then resurrected, as all the while Mayhew stares goggle-eyed at a succession of British character actors having an absolute ball.
The author believes Neverwhere has dated a little, not least because it was lit for film but shot on video, the budget running out before a planned "filmising" in post production. So the show occasionally has the feel of a weird EastEnders omnibus. But Neverwhere's ideas, fizzing energy and weird characters more than compensate, with Brian Eno's atonal score adding to the delightfully queasy vibe.
Marc Burrows later states that gaiman was raised on Doctor Who and mentored by Douglas Adamsand there are traces of both here, as the tone shifts from eccentric to scary often in the same scene. One of the darkest moments – in which a near-suicidal Mayhew must endure a mysterious, ritualistic "ordeal" – begins with the solemn and equally ritualistic offering of "the nice cup of tea". It isn't too hard to imagine Hitchhiker's Arthur Dent saying, as Mayhew does: "Is this the kind of ordeal like going to visit a rather elderly, ill-kempt and female relative is an ordeal? Or like a plunging your hand into scalding hot water to see how fast it takes off the skin sort of ordeal?"
In conclusion he states although hardly a big success at the time, Neverwhere was one of the most imaginative British TV dramas of the 1990s. The show has achieved a satisfying afterlife, however, via a bestselling novelisation, a comic book serial, and most recently a radio drama starring James McAvoy and Benedict Cumberbatch.
In my opinion that it was always intended for the small screen though – and that's still the best way to enjoy this creepy, funny and deeply odd gem.
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