Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A: Series 3, Episode 1 (2017)

Onto the third and final series of W1A. Joel Fry is in half the episodes of this season, which obviously makes me happy!

It’s the year of the BBC’s charter renewal, and all the executives are on the lookout for fires that need putting out before then. Their latest crisis concerns Ryan Chelford, a former footballer who’s alleging that the BBC refused to hire him as a commentator because they found out he likes to crossdress. Siobhan’s PR firm has been bought out by a company called Fun Media, and she and her team acclimate on their first day. Izzy’s been developing On Your Bike, an idea Will had for a show, but she’s concerned when David gets his hands on it.

Our character of the week is Tracey Pritchard, Senior BBC Communications Officer. Played by Monica Dolan, Tracey is present at all the big meetings, and her go-to thing is being Welsh and no-nonsense. She tends to preface her dialogue with, “I’m not being funny or anything, but…” Here, she and Lucy are both working with Clive, the head of BBC football. Clive explains that they’d had no idea about the crossdressing—Ryan was just a really bad commentator in his audition. Working together to dispel the discrimination allegations, they hope that giving Ryan a test run following a little-watched match will prove their point for them.

It’s an entertaining plot in general, and things get further complicated when the execs realize someone will have to go out to the BBC studio in the Manchester area. They play hot potato with the unwanted trip—Simon has a particular talent for placing things outside his purview when he doesn’t want to do them—and it ultimately becomes another awkward Lucy/Ian/Anna thing. I don’t know exactly how much time passed between seasons, but for sure some has, and I still don’t know what the actual situation is between Ian, Lucy, and Anna. It looks like Ian and Lucy are still sort of circling each other and Anna is trying to block them without saying anything about it, but like, are Ian and Anna dating? Has she made any romantic overtures toward him, or just prevented anything from starting between him and Lucy? For like a year? It’s a little frustrating that we’re not seeing any progression here.

Now that David doesn’t have Lucy in development to leech off her creativity, he’s glommed onto Izzy instead. As usual, David is chasing credit/clout but doesn’t have any real ideas of his own, so he’s shared On Your Bike with Matt. Because Izzy does want to give credit where credit is due, she makes sure she and Will are both involved at the next meeting with Matt about the show. Unfortunately, Matt is doing his usual thing too, and despite Izzy’s best efforts to keep her hands on the wheel, it quickly becomes clear that the show he has in mind is nothing like Will’s idea or what Izzy has been working on.

Some fun David Tennant narration lines today! Here are my favorites:

• This made me smile – “By 9:00, Ian is chairing a special meeting of the Way Ahead group, in his role as someone whose job it is to steer the organization confidently towards whatever it is that’s going to happen next.”
• Entertaining descriptions here – “Later in the day, it’s the afternoon, and assistant of some kind Will Humphries is hard at work.”
• This does a nice job capturing Matt’s MO – “Such is the sudden buzz around the idea of BBC Me as a possible future for the BBC, that Matt is keen to have been developing ideas in that area for as long as possible.”

We get two scenes with Joel Fry/Karl today, although he only has a few lines between the two of them. The dynamic here has changed up, since the PR folks are under new leadership. Siobhan is now the co-CEO of Fun Media, heading up its London office, and the company’s president has flown in from the Netherlands to greet her and her team. His friendly “happy people are creative people!” welcome speech is hampered by Siobhan’s habit of talking over whoever’s in charge, acting like she’s running the meeting by echoing their words in a confident voice.

During the welcome speech, none of Siobhan’s team say much besides the occasional “yay!”, so Karl mostly just stands listening to that, looking alternately apprehensive and encouraged. He’s wearing a very small cross-body bag that may or may not be a fanny pack, and he’s intrigued by the headphones given to all employees to facilitate a periodic “silent disco” to celebrate good ideas or boost energy/morale.

The second scene at Fun features a twist on the usual pitch session. Siobhan’s team has been asked for ideas for giving the BBC (one of their biggest clients) a “hello present,” but this time they’re pitching, not to Siobhan, but to the president. And Barney and Coco find that he’s not as easy to please as Siobhan. He quickly runs down the line, cutting them off as each of their ideas falls flat. I’d wondered if the new environment might flip the script and let Karl come into his own, but that’s not to be, at least not yet. His isn’t so much a pitch as it is an overly literal interpretation of the notion of a “hello present.” Oh, Karl!

Y tu Luna también: Pan y circo: Season 1, Episode 2 – “#NiUnaMás: Gender-Based Violence” (2020)

This is the first “regular” episode of Pan y circo, the brunt of the season that was shot before the pandemic began. It was interesting to learn more about Mexico’s relationship with feminism and gender-based violence, and shoutout to Diego Luna for recognizing his (limited) role as the only man at the table.

Rather than opening with narration from Luna, we begin with footage from a massive women’s march in Mexico. In the U.S., the Women’s March has covered a wide variety of issues relating to gender equality, but this protest is more squarely focused on violence against women, for being women. Ten women in Mexico are murdered every day, and killing a woman on the basis of her gender has its own legal designation: femicide. One of the chants we hear in the footage is, “They took them alive! We want them back alive!”

The five guests (and the chef) are all women. Three are activists, two are attorneys, and one is a government official, the national commissioner for the Prevention and Eradication of Violence Against Women. They hand their phones over for the duration of the meal, sit down at the table together, and discuss gender violence in Mexico. “#NiUnaMás” means “not one more.”

All the women at the table have experienced misogyny and fought for women’s freedom in different ways, and each has their own perspective to bring to the discussion. They talk about where the misogyny that leads to gender violence begins, looking at cultural traditions and sexist media elements that view women as objects rather than people. They debate whether it’s enough to address the role of “institutions,” such as gender roles taught in the family, or whether the problem must be faced head-on with laws. They acknowledge that, as with most issues, poverty only exacerbates the problem. Different guests take the government official to task because they feel her department only pays lip service and isn’t doing enough to bring about meaningful change.

Since this is an episodic nonfiction talk show, I figured I’d structure this similarly to the way I used to do my News Satire Roundup posts and share some favorite quotes from the episode.

• One of the activists, also a sports analyst, talked about how much resistance there is in the culture for men to embrace feminism – “There is a total dismissal of those who want to recognize us as people with wills and differences and the right to be free from violence and the right to live.”
• One of the lawyers highlighted why femicide requires its own separate categorization – “What happens to women isn’t the same as what happens to men, in terms of the violence they are subjected to. The cause and consequence is discrimination due to the social constructs of what a woman should be, right? So society condones women being controlled.”
• Another activist, one whose own daughter was murdered, discussed the motivation for family members like her – “We prefer, like many other families, not to mourn them, but to say ‘no’ for them. Because they no longer have a voice.”
• The third activist was also a rapper, and between the second and third course, Luna asked her to perform a piece for them – She rapped in Spanish, and I’m sure the translation couldn’t capture her words entirely, but I loved the line, “You butcher my heart / And muzzle my trust.”

As I said, Luna recognized that, as the only man at the table, his voice was the least important. And so, he was a little more hands-off in his hosting duties. He brought up topics for the group to discuss at different points—I liked his list of both the large and small ways violence against women manifests in Mexican culture, “including the violence we let slide in the name of humor”—but he also just listened a lot, letting the guests follow where the discussion took them.

But even though he took a bit of a step back during the discussion, that didn’t make him less present as a host. He helped the chef with the meal prep beforehand, asking her about her perspective on the topic as well. (Side note: the chef joined the table and the discussion during dessert, which I thought was nice.) He was personable and disarming with the guests when they arrived, freely admitting, “I always need a drink before I start, because I’m really nervous right now.” And near the end of the meal, he proposed a moment of silence for the victims. Still an effective host, even if part of that entailed knowing when to take a backseat.

Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A special – “W1A Does Red Nose Day 2017” (2017)

W1A did a couple short specials after the series ended—while I was looking to see if they were available online, I came across this one from between seasons 2 and 3. And to my surprise, it’s one with Joel Fry in it! It’s only about four minutes long, but it’s amusing.

Ahead of Red Nose Day, Comic Relief has asked the BBC for help with branding and promotion for the charity event. Siobhan is on the case, which, as usual, might not be the best idea.

Eh—it’s short, it’s cute. When Ian is telling Siobhan about Comic Relief’s request, he explains, “Apparently, the big thing is that this year, it will actually be funny.” There’s a bit with Lenny Henry, who co-founded the organization, and Siobhan has some terrible marketing ideas. The worst is a plain ratty T-shirt to “[put] the ‘Tee’ back in ‘pover-tee.’” Oh, Siobhan! :shakes head:

Not a whole lot for David Tennant to do in such a short piece, and what little narration he has is more functional than funny. But I do like this lead-in to the Lenny Henry scene: “With the big day fast approaching, it seems like the right moment to fly the big thoughts up the flagpole and share them with a very special guest.”

Joel Fry comes in when Siobhan’s team pitches ideas for comedic things people can do to raise donations. Karl’s “secret selfie” idea is predictably nonsensical, and it’s kind of sweet to see him on pins and needles waiting to hear what Siobhan thinks of it. Meanwhile Barney’s idea is to switch clothes with someone else, explaining, “So maybe you wear, like, your mother’s clothes.” Not missing a beat, Karl agrees, “Yeah, finally.” Hee!

 

Y tu Luna también: Pan y circo: Season 1, Episode 1 – “Chronicles of the Pandemic: COVID-19 and Its Consequences” (2020)

Diego Luna wears a lot of hats on this show. In addition to creating it/originating the idea, he hosts the series and has also produced and directed the second season. His hand is especially apparent in this episode, which, by its nature, draws attention to how it was made.

The conceit of Pan y circo is simple. In each episode, Luna brings together five people to discuss a particular topic through the lens of their areas of expertise, the conversation happening over the course of a sumptuous meal prepared by a talented chef.

COVID hit after the filming but before the release of the first season, so Luna and his team decided to pause, innovate, and figure out how to create a new first episode that would take place in quarantine. As became so familiar to us in 2020, the dinner guests now meet over Zoom and the chef is Luna himself, who cooked the meal according the COVID protocols and had it delivered to the guests before filming. In that brave new world of the 2020 COVID era, Luna and his guests discuss the wide-reaching effects of the pandemic.

I feel like the early days of COVID caused many in the entertainment industry to want to pull back the curtain a little on their process. Rather than the usual movie/TV magic, there was a sense of “we’re all in this together” and a desire to let the audience see the strings a bit more, as it were. That’s true here, where part of the episode includes clips of Zoom meetings between Luna and his team prior to filming the dinner, brainstorming how they can make this work. We also see Luna asking a chef for advice on how to prepare a meal in a COVID-safe manner.

Once the Zoom dinner begins, it’s the same “artificial digital togetherness” so many got used to and later discarded as people decided they were cool with the pandemic. That quarantine feeling of, “This is weird, and it’s definitely not ‘normal,’ but I’m so glad to see other people’s faces I’ll take it!” Once Luna instructs them on how to reheat their various courses, the ball gets rolling and the discussion starts.

(A quick side note about the meal: the dishes—homemade soup and vegetarian lasagna, with fresh bread and guava rolls from a bakery—make my mouth water something fierce. Also, Luna and his team go all in on the boxes they prep for the guests. In addition to three courses, bread, and wine, the boxes also include salt and pepper shakers and a bottle of olive oil.)

The guests in this episode include an activist, an author, a social psychologist, an epidemiologist, and a chef. Together with Luna, they discuss all sorts of aspects of the pandemic, from the personal to the professional to the societal. Just a few topics that get pulled into the larger discussion of the pandemic are Mexico’s economic disparities, the fate of restaurants, increases in domestic violence, and access to abortion under travel restrictions.

The author initially thought he’d do well in lockdown, since he writes from home anyway, but now the rest of his family is home with him. “And that changes the environment,” he observes. “And I live my lockdown, and I live their lockdown, too.”

The chef wrestles with public safety and looking out for his employees, closing his restaurant due to government mandates but worried if there’ll be a restaurant to go back to at the end of lockdown. He also talks about the need to reinvent how they do things in light of the pandemic. He says, “If we did not make these changes from the bottom up at this time, we were going to be spending all the emotional and economic effort to keep things the same as before, instead of really rethinking it and making this fundamental reassessment.”

Interspersed amid the conversation are clips from political press conferences, infographics, and footage of the quiet world outside. Additionally, we see footage from an interview Luna had with the undersecretary of prevention and health promotion.

The whole thing offers a nice mix of facts, debate, and more personal observations. This isn’t the sort of show that features people from different “sides” talking about an issue. While the guests all come from different fields, their ideologies are more aligned, and so it’s more about a group of likeminded people bringing their own experience to a particular problem. It’s like these are the guests Luna chose for a dinner party—the point is to inform and collaborate, not prove anyone right or wrong.

I will say that the subtitles can be a little difficult sometimes. Because this is a show that uses onscreen text in different ways, from infographics to guests’ occupations/titles, there are times when the English translation for a graphic cuts off the translation for what one of the participants is saying, and vice versa. I have no doubt it works perfectly well in Spanish, but the show is so packed with information, both visually and auditorily, that the subtitles don’t always know which thread to follow.

Luna makes for a good host. In his opening narration, recalling the before-times with, “We were happy and didn’t know it,” he brings a soft compassion, and the building-the-episode scenes are relatable as he works to navigate COVID with everyone else. I enjoy watching him instruct the guests about the different parts of their meal (the author needs a little direction just to open the box!), and in his interview with the undersecretary, he’s friendly and personable without throwing softballs.

This was a really interesting question he had for the epidemiologist, in response to a discussion about globalization and how nations will sink or swim together:

“Invoking that speed or that connectivity or that globalization, doctor, right now some vaccines are being developed and we are seeing a certain international cooperation to get that vaccine. Is there a world where that cooperation could happen in prevention? Or will that coordination always come from disaster?”

On the whole, a nice first episode, and I think going back to address COVID, knowing the rest of the season was filmed prior to the pandemic hitting, was the right call. Here are my first impressions.

Recommend?

In General – If you’re interested in informative/talk show-type series, I think I would. I like how it’s set up as a dinner, and the conversation goes in some interesting directions.

Diego Luna – While I definitely prefer seeing Luna act, this is a neat project, and I like his ethos behind it. If you’re interested in Luna as a person beyond just his work as an actor, I’d say it’s worth a watch.

Warnings

Thematic elements, language, and drinking.