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In the last few years, there's been a collection of BBC shows that do small scale human stories, with a gritty feel, and cleverly distressed set design. The ones that make it over here, at any rate, have been brilliant. Being Human is the most obvious of them, the realistic feel, the shittiness of the jobs, the slightly rough camera, the naturalistic acting all work together to make the supernatural elements feel real, in the way an overly slick American production with actors that seem chosen by a focus group instead of people you'd expect to just see wandering around. (I'm not saying that the Being Human actors aren't attractive, because they are, but they are normal people attractive instead of supermodel attractive, and it changes the feel entirely to have it feel real and not surgically perfect, especially for someone like me, who actually prefers realistic beauty to the manikin grown in a vat Hollywood ideal.)

To me the contrast between the extremely clever and intricate human scale Outcasts with Hollywood slick Falling skies and Terra Nova. They are all doing sort of similar things ion the surface. Outcasts is about a crumbling space colony formed when earth is dieing facing a variety of internal and external threats. Falling skies is a remnant of humans trying to survive an alien invasion while dealing with internal and external human threats. Terra Nova is a colony on a prehistoric alternate earth dealing with threats internal and external while the earth they came from is dieing. I gave up on the two American productions after a few episodes, I watched every single episode of Outcasts and am fascinated to see what they will do with series two. Outcasts works because it's human scale and gritty and intricate. Falling skies is typically Hollywood grandiose, sentimental, cliche, and had plot holes you could drive a planet through. Terra Nova forgot to include likeable human characters and instead centered on an incredible self centered and arrogant family of hypocrites and was irritatingly sentimental and self satisfied about them. Outcasts has a lot of grey characters. It does things like set up some people to be villains, then shows you how much worse it could be, but it also has characters like Fleur, who's desperate attempts to simultaneously hold things together and figure out what is going on are very sympathetic without being sentimental or annoying. Watching the struggle of characters like that helps make other characters not initially sympathetic look sympathetic because they are pretty clearly striving for something similar in the face of vastly more complex problems. Outcasts has a whole lot of complex things to say; falling skies and Terra nova conntain nothing new and from the samples I watched had nothing much to say outside of a handful of boring things said one way or another for centuries.

So now I'm looking at Bedlam, which debuted over here the same week as American Horror story. You'd think the match up would go the same way, but that's not how it worked out for me. American Horror is seriously problematic, but it's mesmerizing and there is enough going on that it's fairly easy to give them the benefit of the doubt that what they are doing is deliberate and hopefully clever. I won;t know if they are doing what I think they are doing until I see more, but it's coherent and entertaining enough for now. I've watched Bedlam every week it aired, but it's just not jelling for me. It's a similar design formula to the gritty human scale shows that worked, mostly, but somehow, the characters aren't distinct enough personality wise for me to care. It's also doing a new ghost story every week and slowly building cast, but there's just nothing much to hold on to, and despite hints of arc, there is less feeling of forward motion towards a goal, less feeling of burning questions, less... there, there. I want so much to like it, but I keep forgetting to pay attention while it's on. i may, at some point get so pissed off at AMS that i will stop watching, it may let me down, but i know the acting won't and there is potential to say some really interesting things. If I give up, it will likely be because they don't deliver on the potential or betray one of the key elements that work or find no way to redeem the problematic elements. They are taking some real risks and risks can bring massive failures. Bedlam... I can't put my finger on what's wrong. Maybe it's a little too bland for it;'s premise. Maybe the characters aren't interesting enough. Maybe the plotting or the editing isn't quite tight enough. Maybe they aren't taking enough risks. I can't tell. It's just not enough somehow, so I pick at the scab, trying to figure out why this show can't engage me, when on paper it really should.