Other Doctor Lives: The Street: Season 2, Episode 4 – “Taxi” (2007)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

Looks like I was right that characters who are featured in an episode of The Street get seeded into the preceding episode. Matt Smith/Ian Hanley is a major player here, although I wouldn’t necessarily call him the clear lead of the story. And it turns out that quite a few of the characters in this episode appeared briefly in “Demolition”—I just didn’t realize it because Smith was the only actor I was looking out for. I’m guessing they were probably there with Smith in the background of a pub scene. Anyway, here’s the episode.

The Hanleys are doing their best to keep everything going while their dad awaits trial on drug charges. But oldest son Ian gets into trouble when he and his cousin Gary have a night out—Gary winds up battering a taxi driver in a drunken rage, but Ian is the one left holding the bag. With Ian in custody, his mom tries to believe in his innocence while Gary’s mom tries to make sure her son doesn’t have to pay for what he did.

It's an interesting story. Like “Demolition,” it’s fairly heavy-handed, but in a different way. I like seeing how this one horrible decision and one lie cause so much havoc for two families. Gary is supposed to be joining the military in a couple weeks—if the truth gets out, his future is over, but Ian is terrified that if Gary leaves for training, he’ll be left to go down for a crime he didn’t commit. Gary’s mom will do whatever she can to protect his secret, and Ian is merely a function of that. If getting him off assures that Gary won’t have to come clean, she’ll do what she can to get him the best lawyer, but if he endangers Gary’s freedom, she has no use for him. Ian’s mom was already struggling with her husband in jail, so Ian’s troubles nearly break her. She wants to believe he’s not capable of hurting someone so badly, but as the police investigate, she isn’t sure what to believe anymore.

A couple familiar faces in the cast today. I couldn’t recall where I’d seen Lorraine Ashbourne, who plays Ian’s mom, but IMDb tells me she played Mrs. Fairfax in the Ruth Wilson/Toby Stephens Jane Eyre. And Gina McKee, who plays Gary’s mom, was in In the Loop with Peter Capaldi (wonder if she’s acted opposite any other Doctors?)

Even though the story revolves around Ian, he’s more of its object than its subject. The episode is at least as much about his mom, Gary, and Gary’s mom as it is about him. So there’s not as much screentime for Smith as I would’ve expected, but he does a nice job with it. Ian is a pretty basic lad who’s been thrown into an enormously difficult situation. Throughout much of the story, you get a sense that he doesn’t quite know how to respond because he can’t fully believe this is happening to him. He can’t believe that one night out could’ve gone so wrong, he can’t believe he got nicked for something he didn’t do, and he can’t believe that, for all of Gary’s promises to stand by him, his cousin might actually leave him twisting in the wind.

As such, Smith’s performance is frequently bewildered, agitated, and defensive. Ian is reaching for anything that might even look like a lifeline. He knows his story (which he’s amended to leave out Gary) sounds flimsy, but it’s all he has so he’s clinging to it as tightly as he can.

Accent Watch

Northern.

Recommend?

In General – As I said before, a soft maybe. It’s interesting but doesn’t pull me in all the way.

Matt Smith – Maybe. Even if Ian is less of a protagonist in this episode than I expected, Smith turns in a solid performance. Not to mention, he was so young when he started on Who that his pre-Doctor performances are always intriguing to me.

Warnings

Violence, language, drinking/smoking/drug references, and thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: The Street: Series 2, Episode 3 – “Demolition” (2007)

*Episode premise spoilers*

The Street was an anthology series, with each episode telling the story of a different house on a particular street in Manchester. A quick peak at IMDb tells me that it’s featured actors ranging from Jim Broadbent to David Thewlis to Liam Cunningham, along with an assortment of actors from the U.K. Shameless. This is the first of two episodes with Matt Smith in it, and based on this one, I’m going to guess that each episode features a brief appearance of characters who are going to be important in the next episode, because his appearance here is almost conspicuous in its irrelevance to the story.

Charlie, a working-class family man, meets Tom while he’s away on a demolition job. Tom picks up a vibe and comes onto him—at first, Charlie vehemently denies that there’s anything between them, but as the job goes on, he’s less sure about that. Although he’s on the cusp of unlocking something important about himself, he’s terrified of how that will affect the life he already has.

The fear that pervades the whole story is palpable. When Tom first comes onto Charlie, there’s something frantic about his insistence, “You think you can see something in me, but you can’t. 100% normal, mate. 100% normal.” When his first experience at a gay bar goes horribly wrong and he gets mugged in the bathroom, he can’t tell his wife any single part of the truth. “I went to the casino,” he says, preferring her to think he’s gambled away his entire pay. And when he tries calling a support line, he scoffs at the suggestion that he could come out, protesting, “No one’s gay ‘round here.”

It's certainly a story that’s very much of its time, complete with homophobic insults (both from other characters and tangled up in Charlie’s own internalized homophobia.) But for what it is, I think it does do some interesting things in exploring the predicament of a working-class guy with a wife and two kids who’s realizing he might be bi. This whole thing is really thorny for Charlie, and he spends most of the episode either guarded, confused, or actively freaking out. Tom doesn’t offer nearly as much help in that department as he’d like.

All of the other actors do a nice job. We have Vincent Regan as Charlie, a conflicted man who’s perpetually on the ropes. And I wrote this review a while ago, so I didn’t recognize him back when I watched the episode, but Tom is played by Will Mellor, a.k.a. Ollie from White Van Man! Tom is much more secure in himself but isn’t all that concerned about the mental minefield he’s just pulled Charlie into. And then there’s Julia Ford as Roz, Charlie’s wife who’s quick to suspect that Charlie’s excuses don’t add up, even if she doesn’t understand what’s really going on.

Like I said, Smith barely pops up here. He plays Ian Hanley, one of Charlie’s neighbors. After Charlie is mugged, he borrows cab fare from Ian, and that’s about the extent of his contribution to the story. Ian pops up here and there in a few other scenes, like having a raucous night out in the background when Charlie goes to the pub, but he’s not really meaningful to the episode at all.

At the same time, though, he feels just a bit too prominent to be a one-off bit player, which is why I suspect that the protagonist of the following episode typically makes a quick appearance in the current one. Just enough to say, “Hey, here’s this guy! Remember that face, you’ll learn about his deal next week!”

First impressions, though there’s little to say at this point:

Accent Watch

Northern, which is fun. So many Smith characters are just varying degrees of posh, so it’s neat to hear a different accent from him.

Recommend?

In General – A soft maybe, while acknowledging that this episode handles its subject matter in a dated way. Looking at the cast list for the rest of the series has me mildly interested in it, but I’m not sure if it’d be enough to get me to watch the whole show. Then again, since it’s an anthology, I could watch just the episodes I want to.

Matt Smith – Too early to say. Ian is hardly a character at this point.

Warnings

Language (including homophobic insults,) sexual content, drinking, violence, and strong thematic elements.