HBO is a television network that anyone can reason with sensible logic, must have a secret machine deep down in its basement where you insert a few million dollars and it pumps out a brilliantly written, acted and directed hit TV series. Furthermore, and as I am sure that you are aware, the issue has been raised more than once that us British certainly do not have one of these machines trundling away in the depths of Wood Lane. But we are trying!
Yes, trying we are. Earlier this week saw the BBC's new sci-fi thriller Paradox land in our living rooms. A show based around the rather tired concept of people receiving mysterious images from the future. However, Paradox has a clever twist - the images are of future dead people and the people receiving them are detectives. Well you cannot get much more Hollywood than that!
What is more is that it knows its born of modern American cinema. They have held no punches back here. Police speed about the place in jet black cars, they come back and sit in offices that have 3x3 high definition television grids displaying only one image. The mad physicist taps away on his keyboard whilst the viewer is unsure of his true motives. There's even a convenient countdown timer available that allows the interspersing of nail biting shots of it ticking towards "00:00:00" milliseconds after the heroes save the day. And all of this played out to a dramatic soundtrack of an orchestra backed with heavy tremolo synths - a piece undoubtedly inspired by Hans Zimmer's The Dark Knight score.
Yet with all the ingredients in the pot it still doesn't meld. The concept and aesthetics are overblown, the story is dramatic, and the acting is sound but still, I am not looking forward to the next episode of Paradox as I do The Wire. So where lies the fault?
The answer is simple; its just not American. Whether it is factually correct or not, we look at America as the land of bombast, hyperstyle and excess. The cynical amongst us may say that products from over the pond are "all style and no substance" and anyone who has been to a basketball or American football game knows where that stereotype derives from. There are cheerleaders and fireworks, jets flying overhead and cannons blasting every time the home team score - and that's just at college level. Entertainment in the States must be as grandiose and bold as the patriotism that drives so much of the country.
A culture which is not reflected by our own. In fact, much to the contrast of American sensibility the British Zeitgeist can be summarised as doubt, pessimism and the suppression of emotion in public. All of these qualities are exaggerated attempts to appear realistic. We act as if we realise the American dream is never going to happen because it probably will not, where as Americans openly strive towards it hoping it will.
So when this fantasy world is injected into our television shows a gloopy, yawn inducing mess of blandness is the result. It just does not seem right to have people with Scottish and midland accents shouting overly aggressive dialogue whilst speeding to the scene of a precrime before the big red timer beeps to zilch. The zinger, "You're out of your goddamn mind!" was not intended to be said by a blonde forty year old from Ilford, it is inherently American. I imagine the BBC to have got their hands on the blueprints for the HBO machine and they made one. They put all the ingredients in except they changed "Chicago" to "Manchester" and "Laurence Fishburne" to "Tamzin Outhwaite" and out comes Paradox; a pithy Anglicised imitation of a truly American staple mark.
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