Thanks to the good people at Netflix I was able to watch all of season (I guess they say "series") 8 of Spooks (listed as "MI:5" on the Netflix discs for everything except the bonus features, where the original name is used). I continue to like the show very much (though they do seem to have started repeating themselves even more than the 24 guys did). I look forward to series 9 (which has not yet made even a "coming soon" appearance on Netflix).
But that's not why I called. Series 8 continued, but also epitomized, the tendency of Spooks to cast British actors as American characters with horrible (really, horrible) American accents. I am not at all a language snob (I like The Closer, and did not realize until well into my adulthood that Dick Van Dyck had a bad accent as Bert), but even I get completely thrown out of my suspended disbelief by the absurd American accents they use on this show. The worst, by far is by Genevieve O'Reilly, who plays American CIA agent Sarah Caulfield. I have not looked GR up yet on the google, but I am going to take a leap and assume that she is British, not American (unless she is diagnostically schizophrenic). The character moves promiscuously, and without warning, from a Boston to a New York to some kind of flat midwestern to sometimes a hint of southern American accent (and none of them very convincing). I have to believe that even UK audiences recognize how bad this is, and I wonder why a show that otherwise seems so dedicated to quality would do this. Prior to this season I suspected it was part of their anti-Americanism, and the bad accents (and often, bad acting) helped them make their point that Americans are assholes. Sarah Caufield went over the top, even for this (unless it was just their attempt to bend over backwards and show that they hate Americans in the Obama era as much as in the Bush era). Or is there some union rule that UK television can not use American actors? Another trend series 8 continued, and this is delicate and again may be offensive (I think I have mentioned it before here), is illustrating how different the standards for female beauty appear to be in the UK. As far as I can tell the young male actors are all quite good-looking in fairly conventional, if sometimes somewhat more ethnic than we might see here, terms. But the women are plain looking, even for just regular women you might see on the street in the US, and even more so by the standards of US television. Ros, and Caufield, are supposed to be sexy blond beauties, but would never have been attractive enough to get an audition for the Counter Terrorism Unit on America's 24. I am still not sure if this reflects a different standard of beauty in the UK, or a higher level of maturity, where women are valued more for their intelligence, competence and character than their looks. I did look the actress who plays Ros up on google this summer, and found that in the UK she is considered a real looker. With the exception of Dr. Who (which has managed to hire several very beautiful companions, including the current one), it seems that this difference in what constitutes female beauty shows up in several other British television shows I have seen in recent years. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
