Dear American television, we need to talk

[bookzombie]

Dear American television, you remember when I had to have words with you about that episode of Covert Affairs, that had scenes in Cambden's 'Warehouse District' (clue: UK cities are not constructed like US cities)?

I'd long forgiven you for this, but now we have to talk about The Librarians.

Now, I know that this is supposed to be a bit of entertaining fluff, but may I point out a few things:

1. The Crown Jewels don't look like that - and isn't just a crown, by the way, otherwise it would be 'The Crown Jewel' or possibly just 'The Crown'...
2. I'm pretty sure you can't just get within touching distance of them
3. No part of the Tower of London is built of modern breezeblocks
4. Buckingham Palace is a - relatively - modern building (built in 1703) and thus does not have dungeons
5. By the way, London has no real association with any particular version of the Arthur legend (that I'm aware of anyway, though I'm happy to be corrected!) If you had set these bits of the story in Tintagel or Glastonbury then you could have got away with the hand-waving

(To be fair, I'm pretty sure that UK series have made equally stupid scenes set in the US, though this does feel like the equivalent of showing the White House in the middle of a field in Kansas.)

I think what irritates me about this is this is something that would take a quick look at Wikipedia to fix, though I wouldn't be surprised if they knew and just weren't worried. And it's obvious that the budget wasn't big (CGI explosions are very CGI), so maybe that had to use what sets they had.

Overall it was a bit of a disappointment; despite coming from the people who made the smart Leverage it was dumb as rocks - like a less intelligent version of Warehouse 13 (which had its own moments of extreme dumb, but had a much more believable and likeable cast.) Maybe it will settle down as it goes to series - I'm willing to give it another couple of episodes before giving up - but my hopes aren't high.

Comments

[taldragon.livejournal.com]

that sums up my feelings about The Librarians too - i wish they'd made more WH13, to be honest :/

while i'm glad Syfy is making more original series, i'm disappointed in the current batch - there's too much Too Stupid To Live/Dont Care About Anyone In This Series.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I checked and while Syfy is showing The Librarians in the UK, it's not a Syfy series (which makes sense: it's way too much like W13 for Syfy to get away with it!)

The Syfy series I like they keep cancelling (I think even Haven, which we've been enjoying, is probably on its last season.) But at least I have the complete W13 DVDs to catch up on (birthday present from Penny!)

[taldragon.livejournal.com]

ah, I thought it was a Syfy series. although it would make sense that W13 was popular, W13 finished therefore they make a similar series that will be popular too.

i didn't realise the complete W13 series was out on DVD, must add that to the wishlist!

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It's TNT. And the made for TV/video films on which it is based are quite fun, if made on the cheap. The concept predates Warehouse 13 by some years. The Librarian: the Quest for the Spear (2004) and Warehouse 13(2009)

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did know that the TV movie series existed and pre-dated WH13 - not that I've seen them so I don't know how they compare.

Out of curiosity, is the Noah Wyle character as hyperactive in the TV movies? 'Cos I can see that that would get old really quickly...

[taldragon.livejournal.com]

Syfy aired all three Librarian movies on Sunday (last Sunday, maybe? not sure), and the series premiered on the Monday.

the first and third are reasonable if very silly. the second one is dire. (imo)

The Librarian isn't as hyperactive in the films, more 'clueless dork'.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

He's just a sort of dork - a bit hyper but mainly clumsy and unsure of himself, though brilliant.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Of course, UK production companies can be as bad if not worse. Series 4 and 5 of Primeval were filmed in Dublin-masquerading as London. This might have been okay, except for the shots of the mountains surrounding the city...

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember that. But honestly, even without that it didn't feel right: all cities have a particular feel to them that can't be mimicked (like all those US shows that are supposed to be set in New York but are filmed in LA) and that series of Primeval _never_ felt like it was set in London.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I think it was some of the places they used - interiors of stadia can be pretty generic, but the buildings didn't look right, and there was something about the street width too and the street furniture...

Yet it can be managed. 'Kojak' was almost entirely filmed in LA, but by clever use of stock footage and studio permanent sets, it even managed to fool some New Yorkers.

Of course, at approximately the same time, the original 'Hawaii 5-O' was showing just how much location filming could add to a series.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

In Geoffrey of Monmouth Arthur holds counsel in London at one point (9.2).

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The Triads of Britain say that the head of Bran the Blessed was buried on Tower Hill to guard against invasion from France, and that Arthur unwisely dug it up. So there's even a Tower of London connection.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Fair enough - I wasn't sure! (And I'm afraid I mis-read that as 'Brian the Blessed'!)

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're that wrong, London never seems to me to be very comfortable in itself when it's mentioned in Arthurian tales. It's like the writers (effectively Arthur fic-fans) feel its existence needs to be accounted for, so they do. At least it's not actually an anachronism, like those legends where London is given a pre-Roman foundation for which there's never been any evidence.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The thing that boggled me about the raccoons and skunks in the live-action 101 Dalmatians (not just scenery, they do skunk-specific things to the bad guys) was that there were British actors and crew all over the place. Didn't anybody say "this isn't going to make any sense!"?

It might have been because the scene requires skunks that a re-write wouldn't have worked at short notice (but why would it take until short notice to... notice?) but the raccoons were just scenery, and could have been quickly replaced with badgers or something.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

There was a joint BBC/CBC serial made of 'The Magicians House' in which there is a supposedly very localised sub-species of badger, which was referred to as such throughout. Unfortunately, they cast raccoons.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I remember it as having honey badgers. Which do not look at all like British badgers.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

No. The term used in the book is, if I remember it correctly, "golden badgers" and it certainly wasn't honey badgers, which would be as out of place as a raccoon (indeed, even more out of place than a raccoon even in period, as there are feral raccoons in Europe - escaped pets) in a book written by an Brit. Honey badgers are a real species native to Africa and parts of Asia and known for being one of the fiercest animals on Earth. However, it is unlikely they would survive the British climate or the hue and cry from the general public about a 'dangerous animal' on the loose.

Also, if the author had used 'honey badger' the first book would have ended up in my waste bin.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I think we are violently agreeing.
The TV had honey badgers.
The book had British badgers.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The TV had bloody raccoons.

And it was set, supposedly, in the UK.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Sorry to spoil a promising argument, but you are both wrong - though the TV series is too! Some very kind person has uploaded the series on YouTube and roughly 21 minutes into the first episode the badger appears.

It's not a Honey badger, a raccoon or a British badger: what it shows is an American badger. So still completely wrong, but a different completely wrong...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Well, that is extremely odd, unless it was edited later - the badgers don't interact much with the people - because there were letters to the Radio Times and on Points of View all stating that it was a raccoon. And I know a raccoon when I see one...

Not that the American Badger is actually a badger, just as the American Elk is not an elk, or the pronghorn an antelope.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I guess it's possible that the raccoons may turn up in later episodes? I'll be honest: it's not a series I am fond enough of that I'd want to bother watching the whole thing again...

[del-c.livejournal.com]

UK cities are not constructed like US cities

I've had the eye-roll before from US fans who wanted to know where a UK city's "downtown" was, because a) I'm supposed to know what "downtown" refers to, b) I'm supposed to know the specific meaning in the current context, c) I'm supposed to be able to translate that into whatever weird Brit name we call the exactly-analogous phenomenon in a UK city.

Funny enough a) and b) work out okay, it's the assumption behind c) where the whole thing falls over: we *don't* have an exactly-analogous phenomenon. We don't have a caravanserai or a souk, either. It's like asking where the basilica is in Chicago, or the kremlin in Los Angeles.

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

I was JUST WATCHING that and was smugly considering that I had SEEN the Tower of London and NUH UH. But obviously their WRITER had NOT.

[heathergalaxy.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it's a completely accurate description of what my job as a librarian truly is. ;)

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I believe you! All librarians are superheroes by definition :-)

(How are you, by the way? Haven't seen you for ages...)

[heathergalaxy.livejournal.com]

Hah! I'm pretty good. I haven't been able to make it out to a WisCon in ages (I hope that will change soonish) and I'm reading LJ but just not posting at all. Still a librarian, now working at a museum... things are pretty the same. :)

Oh, btw, US TV will mess up pretty much anything. There are few contemporary shows that actually look like the places that they say they are. Anything historical is especially bad (e.g. Salem).

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I've been skimming the io9 reviews of 'Salem'. It sounds like a complete train wreck. I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with the way it's setting public understand of what actually happened at Salem back 20 years.

(For some reason the ahistorical elements of 'Sleepy Hollow' doesn't bother me so much. Maybe because it treats it as a 'Secret History' that doesn't undermine the actual historical facts. Or maybe it's just that I don't know enough US history to notice the more egregious problems!)

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

And we all hope that you use your Librarian powers only for Good....

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Then there is the Guy Ritchie 'Sherlock Holmes' where Ritchie and the set designers go to a lot of trouble in their recreation of late-Victorian London, and insert quite a lot of good ADC canon -- then we reach the end set piece in which our villain and hero start off in the basement of the Houses of Parliament and suddenly appear, not in the least out of breath, 150 foot up in an under-construction Tower bridge three miles away.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

My mum reads a lot of historical novels and was tickled by one where the author describes hearing the sound of Big Ben. Which is quite clever given it wouldn't be built for 150 years or so...

(I can't remember the author or book: it was a good 30 years or so ago)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Of course, us SF fans have our very own version of that particular problem in Connie Willis...

(And the moment that broke me in 'The Mists of Avalon' was, oddly, when someone entered stage right carrying two rabbits he had just apparently trapped - in 6th century Britain. Nope.)

However much details are pointed out to them, they never learn. So people are still depicted in books and film and TV riding with stirrups long before that device was invented - it didn't arrive in Europe until long after the fall of Rome...