Other Doctor Lives: The Smoke: Episode 8 (2014)

Well, that was a thing. As with many episodes of The Smoke, there are some things here that I really like and others that don’t work for me that well. On the whole, I think I’d call this a miniseries with a lot of potential that was never fully realized, but the good parts are enough to still make me glad I watched it (a few vague spoilers – no details, just impressions.)

Everyone struggles to pick themselves back up after the fire last week in the tunnel. Some of the watch landed in the hospital, while others are wrestling with trauma from horrible things they experienced there. The watch is planning a rooftop celebration at the station, a way to unwind from their ordeal, but Kev still has unresolved issues from the arson that he has to face.

We’ll start with stuff I liked. The cast chemistry throughout is very good, and even when certain writing things happen with individual characters that don’t make sense to me, the actors sell the connections between this makeshift family of firefighters, who get on each other’s nerves and argue and fall out but who have stared death in the face together and are ultimately there to pick one another up when they’re struggling. I fully buy them as a tight-knit workforce who literally walk through fire for one another. Also, some of the supporting characters get nice resolutions to their mini-arcs – nothing’s tied up in a neat bow, but there’s at least a prevailing sense of “we’re gonna be okay.”

I’m mixed on the stuff at the estate where the arson happened. I like the subplot with the woman whose flat had been set on fire – she’s returned to plant a tree in honor of her baby who was killed in the arson, and the storyline brings strong emotion as well as interesting tension in her interactions with the other tenants. Mostly, it’s Kev’s part of the plot that doesn’t work for me. Honestly, I’m surprised at how things shake out for him. The end of the story, where Kev is concerned, leaves me feeling, “Really? That’s how you want to end things?” Once again, I wonder if The Smoke was initially intended to be an ongoing series that got relabeled as a miniseries after its cancelation, because although some aspects of the plot are brought to a reasonable close here, Kev’s storyline just feels like such a strange, unsatisfying point to end on. I’m not sure what they’re going for with it.

A so-so end for Trish. Overall, I like how things end for her, but I’d have liked to see Jodie Whittaker get more to do in the finale. It’s an episode where she’s a bit more a function of Kev’s storyline than a character in her own right, which, as I’ve said, can be frustrating. Still, Whittaker brings a nice, solid presence to Trish’s scenes, especially in an early heart-to-heart with Kev.

And that wraps up The Smoke! Final thoughts:

Accent Watch

Northern.

Recommend?

In General – A cautious maybe. I wish this miniseries was better than it is, but it still has aspects that work so well for me.

Jodie Whittaker – I think I would. Even though she isn’t always as well-used by the plot as I would’ve liked, this is an interesting character for Whittaker, and she tears it up each time she’s given half a chance. Countdown to Thirteen taught me that Whittaker has played a lot of thankless roles in her career, so I’m not apt to turn down something where she has some more intriguing challenges to meet.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, disturbing images, sexual content, violence, drinking/smoking/drug use, language, and an able-bodied actor playing a character with a disability.

Other Doctor Lives: The Smoke: Episode 7 (2014)

I do enjoy a good penultimate episode, and this one is pretty intense. It centers around a major call the watch is responding to, and as the characters face the danger, the issues that have grown between them are brought into greater perspective.

Kev isn’t in a good place with multiple people on the watch, due to personal conflicts that have boiled over in recent episodes. But when they’re called to the site of a multiple-car collision involving a tanker that’s leaking flammable material, Kev and the rest of the watch need to have one another’s backs and trust each other absolutely. As they desperately try to assist the injured before the tanker ignites, they’re also deathly aware that they’re in a tunnel and hundreds of motorists are caught in the backed-up traffic behind them – including Trish.

Obviously, this is a tension-filled episode. The watch has to deal with multiple ticking time bombs at once – severely-injured drivers from the accident, the leaking tanker, updates over the two-way radios on the evacuation of other motorists in the tunnel, even the overhead fans whose air circulation will feed the impending flames – and it requires everyone to be at the top of their game. While Kev and the other more prominent characters get the showiest (and foolhardiest?) displays of heroics, each firefighter on the watch is shown to play a critical role in the crisis.

I also like seeing occasional scenes back at the fire station, where other staff are listening to the chaos over the radios. Throughout the miniseries, the fire station has been portrayed as a comfy, familiar place, a space where the firefighters eat, joke, and unwind between calls, so it’s interesting to watch the support staff listen to these messages of their coworkers in danger, feeling powerless to help (I like one man leaping up and heading into the kitchen intent on making bouillabaisse, because all he can do is make them something sumptuous for when they eventually, hopefully, all return.)

Meanwhile, Trish is caught adjacent to the main action. Her situation for being there in the first place is an odd one, as she’s with people who mean a great deal to her but whom she doesn’t know very well (I won’t get into the specifics to avoid spoilers.) As such, it’s awkward and difficult, and even what seems initially to be a minor traffic delay increases the discomfort within the car. But as the situation intensifies and the danger grows, she’s bent on following Kev’s safety recommendations to the letter but feels unable to protect the people she’s with when her advice is crowded out.

I think Jodie Whittaker does a nice job here as an ordinary person thrust into an extraordinary crisis. Her personal relationships with firefighters give her a slight leg up on knowing what to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle mentally or emotionally, and she wrestles not to fall apart in the face of what they’re up against. But I think in terms of acting, my favorite scenes for Trish actually come before the crisis, when she’s in the car trying to connect with these people. The go-to description that, for me, has often come to mind with this character is “self-possessed,” but in this circumstance, she’s really at a loss. Whittaker captures how much it means to Trish to get these relationships right while simultaneously fearing that she’s completely blowing it. It’s a very relatable kind of awkward, and she nails it.

One episode to go! Conclusion next week.

Other Doctor Lives: The Smoke: Episode 6 (2014)

Plotwise, a big episode. I’ve mentioned before that the structure and pacing of the story sometimes feels more like a TV show than a miniseries, but here, it feels more like a miniseries. This is the ramp-up, important threads of the story coming together that will build to the climax and ensuing conclusion. It feels more purposeful, which I like.

It’s a slow day, and the entire watch is stuck at the fire station waiting for something to happen. It’s the middle of a heat wave, and as personal issues between different watch members have been bubbling up, they’ve found themselves without the focus of their work to distract them. Major issues come to a head. It’s an especially hard day for Kev, as it’s also the one-year anniversary of the fire. Grieving what was lost that day, he can’t put aside his longing for revenge.

A bit of a bubble episode, with everyone hanging around the station and nerves wearing thin. It’s a good mix of drama, like the stuff with Kev, and comedy, like Al’s ex unexpectedly dropping their kid off for Al to watch (and the resulting havoc the young Batman-clad boy wreaks around the station.) We get major movement on a couple of main plots, and I enjoy the give and take, with some conflicts reaching their boiling point and others showing signs of a resolution to come. I won’t get into too many specifics for the sake of spoilers, but I like all of the following: 1) a nice scene between Mal and Al, 2) a subplot involving a group of women on a hen do (aka bachelorette party) stopping by in search of sexy firefighters, and 3) a small story for Rob (David Walmsley, who played Rick on In the Flesh,) the one firefighter who’s gotten hardly any focus so far.

I have mixed feelings about the Kev plot. While I like most of the way the story goes here, the acting takes me out of it at points. I liked Jamie Bamber on Battlestar Galactica, but in this miniseries, there have been different episodes where he just hits the drama way too hard for me. I’m not sure if it’s the dialogue or the direction or what, but it just gets laid on too thick and makes it hard for me to buy it. On the other hand, Taron Egerton’s Dennis is also in this plot and, while his material gets very dramatic as well, I think he pulls it off 100%. It’s heightened, but it still feels genuine. The contrast is palpable, which is unfortunate since Bamber is the lead and Egerton is supporting.

That storyline is also where Trish’s main involvement is. She comes by the fire station in the hope of being there for Kev on the anniversary and subsequently gets pulled into the stuff that goes down. Admittedly, there’s one scene where I feel Jodie Whittaker acting just a bit too hard, which suggests there might be more of an overall problem with the writing or direction (after Broadchurch, I know she can pull off intense drama without it coming across as overbaked.) Apart from that, though, I really like her work here. Trish is most interesting to me when she’s self-possessed and clear-eyed, and we get a good portion of that in this episode. In an environment where a lot of emotions are running high, she becomes a steadying presence, and that really works for me.