PLUS Big Mistakes

0:07Pilot TV Team:Welcome to Pilot Plus, your extended guide to every show that matters. And today, last week, something very bad happened. This week, it's a big mistake because we are covering big mistakes on Netflix. And this is the Dan Levy and was going to be Rachel's Senate show. So this is a sitcom that was written and designed to showcase the pair of them as an acting powerhouse except rachel senate is a little show called i love la which got picked up to series by hbo and has been renewed that has now become a thing uh and so she is no longer a part of this series i think she's still down as obviously co-creator she's not co-showrunner but i guess she has creative input but she was replaced in this series by taylor ortega who plays dan levy's sister in the show he is a priest she is his sister laurie metcoff is their mom their family is dysfunctional and then there's a necklace uh which is about as much as i'm going to say about that who wishes to talk about big mistakes kay you have the look of someone who has stolen a necklace from a store at one point in your life how dare you um yes so i mean obviously i'm a huge fan of uh dan levy because shits creek was huge for me during lockdown and so i was very excited about this and actually james that's a brand new information to me i didn't realize that's why rachel senate um because she is a co-creator and she's done a lot of you know they did an event i think in la recently talking about it and i didn't realize she was down to play the sister which feels like her doesn't it you can totally see it it feels like a rachel senate role yeah but i have to say taylor ortega is really good in this role as well um and what's great about this is that it It does what Dan does best and obviously Rachel, which is like documenting these dysfunctional relationships and particularly families, which obviously he did in Schitt's Creek.

1:56And particularly the sibling squabbling and that kind of fractious nature of this pairing of Dan with Taylor Ortega. They are brother and sister. He is a pastor, as you said, and she is sort of a bratty actress turned teacher. And he is perpetually frustrated. He's very highly strung and he's anxious and he's always irritated and frustrated by her behaviour because she's essentially, she's just never grown up and he's left to deal with the ramifications of her actions, which include, as James alluded to, the fact that they acquire a necklace which sets off a chain of events that sees them forced into a life of crime.

2:38and I can say that because that is the premise of the show and what's brilliant about this is that it incorporates I mean the dialogue is so I think so good and it's so sharp and witty and as I said it's it's caustic there's this back and forth between them but all the characters all the characters are well developed including Laurie Metcalf who I mean she's the standout in this she's so funny as the mum who is really strong she owns a diy shop she's also running as um the local mayor and she's helped in that with her other daughter the golden girl daughter um played by i think abby quinn and um but laurie is just so good at being this kind of again highly strong emotional trying to keep everyone together irritable um um she's in a state of grief her mum's just passed and um you can kind of see where the kids get their various issues from um but yeah it's fun it's it combines farce with as i said witty dialogue and it's just like this kind of series of increasingly stressful situations they find themselves out but it is so funny that it stops it from being like it's not i don't think it's cringe humour I think James hopefully was okay with this but it is tense and stressful and very funny so I enjoyed it and I watched all six episodes oh no is it eight six or eight I watched them all um yeah pretty much in one sitting I really I really like Dan Levy I really like um Rachel Sennett who gets a co-writing credit on the first episode we should say so yeah she's not completely removed herself from the show um i i just slightly disappointed if i'm honest yeah sorry a lot i think i know clearly it's fine um i didn't dislike it don't get me wrong and i enjoyed it to to a certain degree my issue with it is a little bit that everyone in it every almost every character in the show is operating at a kind of very high register of interaction, shall we say.

4:59So everyone's kind of shouting at each other. It's that kind of family, Boyd. I know, but like for me, if you compare it to Schitt's Creek, obviously the absolute classic Dan Levy show. There's the dad, you know, his dad, who's played by his real life dad, is like a funny, lovable, eccentric doofus, right? And so the brother and sister are squabbling all the time I mean, the mother's just like Catherine, played by, of course, the late great Catherine Nahara, is an eccentric, crazy woman. But they're not all shouting at each other. They're kind of – sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. And I felt this – with this, it almost seemed like all the characters were, like, doing Dan Levy dialogue, but I wasn't quite sure why they were all so kind of annoyed with each other.

5:48Do you know what I mean? like every single scene almost from, you know, the guy, the guy surprising his girlfriend with, with a, you know, proposal of marriage with the ring and him not letting her out of the car and everything, everything is, I don't know. And the people showing each other in the shop when they get the necklace, the, the, obviously, you know, all of these things are the, the, the one who in the end, the criminal person they get involved with, the mother, Laurie Metcalf. Have you seen Laurie Metcalf? I love Laurie Metcalf. She's absolutely brilliant. She's a legend, going back to Roseanne and beyond.

6:23But they all are the mother who dies, the grandmother who dies. Everyone's kind of yelling at each other quite a lot of the time. And once you notice it, it's one of those things, right? Once you notice this is happening, I couldn't get it out of my head. So I almost think that maybe when you're watching it, Kay, it didn't particularly occur to you or you just went along with it. I think maybe I was it just happens to be the mood I was in or whatever I just suddenly noticed why are all these people having yelling at each other in quite a quite an exaggerated way and then once you notice it's too late and you're like oh my god stop everyone someone needs to just calm down I think the boyfriend is that and also the the golden girl daughter Natalie she's quite calm I think in comparison passive aggressive more than more than actually aggressive yeah whereas most All the rest of them are just aggressive, yeah.

7:14But do you know what I mean? That was my issue with it. I still enjoyed it. I just, yeah, I just thought it was a bit much all round. I think you're a bit much all round. And that is my very intellectual response to that. I'm sorry that I've dissed your boyfriend, Dan Levy. I'm going to try and not get too defensive of this. And it's just because I'm… Drag him, drag him. You're very personally invested, yeah. Yeah. God, I wish I was invested. The only thing I'd say is that all the situations they are in are highly stressful. Dealing with a criminal is very stressful. Even the proposal that you talk to, it happens, okay, not the actual proposal itself, but when you talk about them being locked out of a car, that's a very stressful situation she was in.

8:02I think you're, yeah, I don't know. he's a really good example the fiance who um is quite malic what he didn't need to be so malic i think he's he's like the of all of the major you know this is an ensemble show you know they've got like five people in it being quite malic and also him and why is he always what is he got what is his issue you know or what is her issue with him you know it's like everyone's got issues with each other, which is kind of the point of it, I guess. This is life. Yeah. This is this podcast. I guess, and beyond that, the premise, which is that the segments get involved with the criminal element via the necklace story.

8:43I don't know. It felt like, hmm, is that enough? I keep married to Schitt's Creek, but I think it's fair enough because that is his iconic show. Schitt's Creek has an instantly kind of eccentric, kooky premise that you buy into that, that kind of turns into a long-running sitcom as it ended up being. I can't see that this feels like a cross between a sitcom, as James described it, and a kind of limited series comedy thriller thing. And I'm not sure if that was interesting or believable enough to overcome my issue with all of the people yelling at each other. Anyway, yeah. I'm slightly dissing it more than I intended to, but I absolutely did have this experience of watching it whereby I was like, okay, now someone needs to just calm the fuck down.

9:33Pilot TV Team:With the caveat that this is a sitcom, I should say I had a very similar reaction to you, Boyd, actually, in that it's just so, it's very, I see weirdly the term I originally was thinking was it's very caricatured, but I actually do think it is. There's an emotional extremism all the way through this and I was exhausted by the end of the first episode because from the very beginning everyone is exactly as boys are just yelling and operating they're all at level 10 all the time and halfway through this i was looking at watching oh my god how how am i struggling to get through a 30 minute episode of television but i did find it quite tricky because i found all of the characters just quite wearing on my nerves and then you get to unfortunately a problem which i do tend to have with shows which is when there is a really simple solution to the plot and yet all the characters don't take it because they need it to be a tv show it really fucking irritates me because it's just like because i'm just like all it requires is a little bit of clever writing to make it more difficult for them to extract themselves like that's all it needs but they don't they just have the characters being just overtly stupid or overtly incompetent and therefore unable to take the incredibly simple thing all it takes is one character to say to another character this is what's happening end of series and it's like of course you can't do that because it's a series but like with a little bit of clever writing i think you can get around that but that weirdly was something that i it just i found it so intensely frustrating because the whole thing could have been so easily diffused and in number of occasions and it just yeah i found it quite maddening but as i said i am not the arbiter of all things sitcom I'm the first to admit that.

11:13Pilot TV Team:But yeah, I found it a bit a lot. It's also not quite, I would say, my sense of humour. It leans into the kind of larger-than-life archetypal character trope for comedy. It's not cringe comedy, you're right, but its character is just being very big and expansive and loud. And there's a lot of that. So not for me, is what I'm saying. Your mileage may vary. Yeah, I don't think for me either, in the end. But it is for Kay! So that's good. Very much. I enjoyed it a lot. Yeah. I think it's not a patch on I Love LA, I have to say, which is obviously the thing that records her not. No, but I don't think it's trying to be, is it?

11:51I mean... Well, I'm comparing it to another comedy. People, you know, I'm just... I'm not saying it's trying to be like that show. I'm saying, in comparison, she did the right thing.

12:02Pilot TV Team:I Love LA has teeth, doesn't it? Like, it's a show with teeth. This is a very gummy show. It is a show without teeth. It feels like he had this bunch of characters. that he wanted to create and turn it and some of them were quite funny but and then he came up with this convoluted plot to kind of shoehorn them into and yeah that i can see yeah and and and then it ends up with them all kind of compensating for that by being kind of over the top yeah it's just like again could to compare it the the the dude in i love l.a the boyfriend everyone in i love in l.a to some extent is is really kooky and over the top and that was one of the things a lot of critics you know i mean i think a lot of critics are like oh you know everyone's everyone's a bit horrible in this but the boyfriend character in that you know he is a kind of a normie figure to use james's you know kind of he's he's like i think you've got to have an in you know for me you've got to have like someone relatable i didn't think there was anyone to use that horrible word it felt surprisingly unrelatable to me this show so i mean i find it interesting that you know you'd think a big Dan Levy new series would get a big kind of fanfare from Netflix.

13:12They don't seem to be ignoring it a bit. Really? Yeah, I just get that. I may be wrong. I don't know. I just haven't hasn't felt that. You know, it's embargoed, reviews are embargoed right up to the day it comes out. This comes out on the day first. That may be unfair of me, but I don't know. I just don't get the sense that they're... I think you guys are being a bit too harsh on it, I have to say. I mean, I'm the other extreme, of course, but I think there's a middle ground in between this.

13:41Pilot TV Team:Well, I think it's like comedy. Sitcom, really, I would say almost more than any other genre of television is incredibly subjective. Because fundamentally, what they're asking you to do more than with a drama is, do you enjoy spending time with these people? Like, is half an hour with these people going to make you feel better? Is it going to make you laugh? Is it going to be like a fun time for you? And that's a really subjective thing. Whereas with a drama, is this a well-told story? You know, am I going to see the pieces falling into place? whereas you know sitcoms are about hanging out with people and people have different tastes and friends right like these are people that you obviously enjoy spending time with do you know what i enjoy spending time with the the brother and sister and even though it is stressful of course right it's not like i would want to necessarily be friends with them or but i just find their dynamic and that kind of getting at each other in the same way with succession right and that kind of fractious the fractious relationships obviously a very different kind of show and different writing but those those dynamics interest me yeah i think yeah even though they stress me out massively yeah i mean it's what on to to you're probably right i am being too harsh on it there are scenes that are funny and in fact the scene in the shop because he's so over the top as a it's like the shopkeeper and you're like what's he's he's he's you know that i found that scene quite funny and that scene everyone's kind of behaving going a bit over the top of Dan Levy's the one trying to you know calm everyone down and the voice of reason um and there's funny stuff about I thought the stuff about when when his dad was going on about him his walk and his you know his kind of campness let's face it the dad was was always pointing out that was funny there's kind of funny observations all the way through really um to to to acknowledge the fact that I'm being I have been too harsh on it so yeah I mean he's really you know he's a he's a brilliant talent he's really funny he's a great you know all of that i agree i just felt this was it needed to be tempered down is that a word is that a phrase slightly i don't even think it's a sitcom by the way i mean these things are i think it's like a kind of i think i bet this is a limited series almost comedy caper rather than a sitcom i i my guess is it's not you know i i my guess is it wouldn't be a returning show you know where schitt's creek was an ongoing show a returning show a sitcom that went off for five or six seasons.

15:57I can't imagine this doing that. This feels like a limited series kind of comedy. It's a comedy, but it's a subtle difference between the caper element I think makes it feel quite different, I think.

16:10Pilot TV Team:Anyway, I'm just rambling now. Because what you're saying is that it has a finite lifespan because of what's happening. And it's not like they're in a situation now which can then continue. Well, having watched all of it, they have teed it up. Have they? Oh, okay. Fine. Okay. That doesn't surprise me. I get what, like, in a kind of an Ozark-y type-y way, where you've engaged in this criminal enterprise, and now you're just going to make a go of it. Yeah, kind of. Okay. Interesting. Well, Big Mistakes, then, which may or may not live up to his name, depending on who you ask, is available on the Netflix now?

16:45Pilot TV Team:Yes. Now. Exciting stuff. Right. Let's move on to this week's postbag.

16:58triage it's the post bag this week's first message comes from paul the wine guy and paul

17:07Pilot TV Team:the wine guy says having previously prompted a discussion about abuse of myself now crucially when he says abuse of myself myself is in inverted commas which means abuse of the word myself he is not abusing himself i'm talking about it on the podcast i think it's really important that i clarify that up top yeah i was like how much wine does paul have yeah he's had a lot of wine he's engaging in self-abuse and he's messaging the podcast and it's just look paul we don't need you to share that much we don't need to know you that well it's okay anyway the abuse of the word myself in the language what verbal tics either specific to particular fictional characters or more generally annoy the pod crew my other particular bait noir is to be honest which featured heavily in monday's episode 380 which is actually a couple of weeks ago uh am i to discount everything not so prefaced in all previous pods as made up oh you wag paul yes everything unless i say to be honest at the beginning it means i'm lying that's that's what i'm saying so everything else is fiction boy don't know i've always had that thing because i've seen boy do you say it and then i'm always be honest always be honest yeah it's a hilarious play on that overused phrase I tell you the one word, this is particularly pertinent to me right now.

18:24Is it going to be something I say? No, I've been transcribing a lot of stuff that someone says, right? And the word literally, oh my God, honestly. It's fine when it's used correctly. Yeah, right, yeah. I would say 30 % of the time maybe it is used correctly, but there's a lot, there's like 70 % of like, it's just every, it's just basically, literally now means for lots and lots of people, I think most of the population, actually, most of the English-speaking population of the planet, literally is like just a way of emphasising... Yeah, it's an intensifier. It's an intensifier. That's what people are saying.

19:03But it's so funny how often it's used. And sometimes it's used entirely the wrong way, which makes it really funny. I was literally on an elephant run. No, no, you mean figuratively. well you even mean fantastically yeah you know so so yeah that is the one word it's not a phrase

19:22Pilot TV Team:but it's an absolute terror that word we i i'm absolutely certain we've discussed that particular word of the podcast before because it did get the definition of literally was was adjusted in the dictionary to reflect the fact that it's used as an intense the hill i will die on is that if you change the meaning of the word literally which literally means literally then language has no fucking meaning anymore so that of all the words of the dictionary that is the only one you should not be allowed to change because it that's what it literally means so no absolutely not not having it no no no no no no okay what what is it that we say that annoys you come on tell us now it's a safe space no i don't think i'm trying to think probably the to be honest thing would you say allude to allude alluding to oh yeah we get emails about that we're misusing the word allude I still maintain that the definition of that word is changing as we speak single-handedly leading a crusade to change the definition of a lewd not so single-handedly he literally won't stop oh god we could really go down a rabbit hole here and of course the other one single one unique people say it's very unique that drives me mad it's so unique it's very unique it's a binary state it's either unique or it's not unique by definition.

20:39Pilot TV Team:That's what it literally means. But this is edging closer towards Boyd's top films. Boyd just has a very long list of favourite films. It includes all films. His ultimate film. Except for The Lord of the Rings, which he hates. Yes. Do you know what? It's Americanisms. And again, no disrespect to our American listeners. And if you are American, then it's fine for you to use them but it's the absorption of americanisms into the kind of english lexicon which annoys me ever so slightly like the use of the word gotten which is and i cannot emphasize this enough not a word uh if you are outside america uh and like pronouncing new as new and obviously it's because american culture is so ubiquitous we watch so many american shows that people have especially younger people they absorb all this stuff through netflix and then they you know that it becomes part of their language so i think like the kind of very specific britishisms of speech are gradually being eroded and becoming more generally American.

21:37Wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's the expression that James regularly uses that we take the piss out of?

21:42Pilot TV Team:Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I'm not saying I'm immune to this. Wait, wait, what was it though? My pronunciation of the word. It was, it was, do you know what? I've forgotten. Well, I was just going to say, listeners, if you remember, please get in touch. Yes, that's fine. Yes, I know there is that word, that word that I always do the American pronunciation, although I've stopped doing it now. I do now make a conscious effort to only use the british pronunciation um but uh but no there are a number of words that i mispronounce because my mum is dyslexic and as the person who largely influenced how i talk as a child i still find myself occasionally saying a word and then realizing i'm mispronouncing it because my mum always mispronounces it and i've just absorbed it that way it's really funny and there's there's quite so someone recently pointed out that obviously the word is mischievous where loads of people say mischievous but it's never been spelled or pronounced mischievous it is mischievous and that's something that's massively mischievous as did i as a child as well so i've had to self-correct as i've got older but uh yes we're all grammatical pedants in our own way and also massive grammar hypocrites you know such is the nature of things paul so you can go back to uh abusing yourself and we will move on to the next question this comes from annika and annika says i'm loving babies after your recommendation like steph i too have experienced fertility issues and this drama was heartbreaking and significant viewing it portrayed so accurately the loneliness and emptiness of infertility having said that the show also contains a ridiculous number of instances in which you wish characters would just say how they feel talk back or scream at others i'm not sure if i've ever felt so frustrated what shows have made you feel frustrated this is interesting because this kind of ties back to big mistakes where that is a bug of mind where like if characters talk to each other if they just communicated all of these problems would just instantly go away and i find it very frustrating but you say i do understand what you mean but in life we spend the majority of the time not saying what we feel true that is true that is just a reflection of life and how people are because everyone's repressed everyone doesn't want to start a fight so i think actually it is accurate and especially in highly intense emotional situations where you can't find the words or you're just going trying to process through much so much i mean i haven't seen babies i don't i can't speak to that but i think even more so in those situations people don't say what they truly feel well absolutely and also i think babies is all about that that's what that's partly what it's about is is the inability of couples put in this extremely distressing emotional situation trauma if you like to um to then have a dialogue about it you know what do you say what do you say you know to your partner when you're going through such a such a horrendous situation so i i know what i know what i know what you mean that that in a way yeah it's you you want to go come and just say but but i actually and in a way this program is also about I think as you carry on watching it I'm watching more and more episodes of it it's not one to binge on I don't think but you know and the longer it goes on you see actually that they're kind of in different ways better at communicating than you might think in a way and they might not be doing it directly but it's yeah it's interesting but it's definitely about the writing and the characters and what they're going through it's definitely about how do you deal with it how do you communicate when you're dealing with such sadness if you like i think it can be frustrating for us because we're in a not necessarily with that show in particular but we're in this very unique we're in this unique position so unique it's the most unique we're in this position where we have this third person omniscient viewpoint where we can see everything that everyone is doing so we can independently arbitrate this is what you need to say but you don't have that information when you're on the ground you only know what you know you don't know what the other person thinks or what they know so that's where the frustration comes from and i remember normal people which of course i loved there's a massive plot strand in that where the two of them break up because they're having a conversation and they're both saying different things and neither one of them is hearing and it's and it's just it's the most mad thing they break up because he is terrible at articulating his feelings and he's being all sort of like sort of like monosyllabic but he's trying to say one thing and she hears something different and the whole relationship falls apart.

26:01There's a bit, do you know what's actually, it just struck me, is this, have you watched the most recent episode of The Capture, episode 5? I have, yes. There's a bit in that, there's a segment in that, right, where two characters are in an extreme situation, they're on their own, right? Yes, I do. They're underground. I know what you're talking about. And she's like, and all he needs to do is just take 30 seconds to explain to her, something to her. Yeah. And he just doesn't do it. No. And then one point she's like, just tell me. She's like, let's just tell me what you, and he's like, we don't have time.

26:35Pilot TV Team:It's like, it would have taken you less time to explain it than to tell her why you didn't have time. Exactly. And I love the capture. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love it. I love this series almost a lot. But at that point I was like, this is exactly what you were talking about, actually with the Dan Levy show, which is that there's just an easy way out of this. Improvio you've got yourselves in, and you're not taking it because you want this episode to carry on for another 25 minutes. You know, I did feel that. It sounds like a frustrating scenario. Yay! She's remembered! Mic drop. Let's just end it there.

27:13It came into my head a few minutes ago, but you were talking about the babies and I didn't think it was appropriate to shout it out.

27:19Pilot TV Team:My scenario scenario thing. Yes, you're quite right. I too have been infiltrated by the Americanization of the English language. Oh God. we did have another baby's message this one came from martin we should say and martin said no question just wanted to say a huge thanks to steph for her review of babies i can't imagine it was easy for her sharing her story and reviewing the show in the first place yeah which we had quite a few messages like that which was lovely um question here from mike reed presumably not that one uh i've just started the revival of scrubs and read that it disregarded the poorly reviewed series nine what are your feelings on tv shows doing this and are there any shows you would do this for should they be revived so this is the excision from the canon of stuff that didn't go well uh i think the most i mean is it the most famous i don't know it's the most famous in my empire world is highlander 2 the quickening which has been completely excised from the highlander mythology if anyone enjoyed the uh 1980s um film ross and k who film highlander uh series two resurrects the dead sean connery and has them all as aliens from the planet zeist and it has this massive alien plot and then when they when that was done they were like yeah that was terrible so when highlander 3 came along also terrible but in a different way they just pretend the second film never happened and they just that none of that is true we're just moving on so yes i guess that's what they've done with serious they are films yes so what's happened with Scrubs?

28:49Pilot TV Team:Is he saying that? He is saying, and I don't know if this is true, but he's saying that Series 9 of Scrubs no longer is part of the canon. Has been scrubbed? It's been scrubbed, yes. It has been scrubbed from the record. Yeah, what does that mean? It's no longer available? Like, people are not acknowledging it ever happened? I think what he's saying is, like, everything that happened in it is no longer canon. Like, it's as if Scrubs ended with Series 9 and then went to the reboot and nothing happened. So everything that happened literally hasn't happened. Yeah, so it ended with Series 8, went straight onto the revival and series nine is now almost like a dream it didn't happen it's not real it's a bit like when they did it quite literally in dallas where it was a dream and bobby gets out the shower and it turns out he's not dead after all yeah right it's a reset i can't recall i can't think of a tv show no it's the nuclear option isn't it i don't think it's i don't think it is utilized particularly often but it definitely does happen where people are like you know what none of that works we're gonna have to start again we're gonna have to excise it we're gonna have to pretend it didn't happen and you know you get you get soft versions of it like when something happens but then no one ever just speaks of it again and the example i would always use for that is series two of lights where landry and uh uh is it tara i can't remember it's adrian palecki's character um they commit a murder just out of nowhere and then they try to cover it up and he's one of these things where let's not talk about this let's pretend it didn't happen let's never speak of it again so they have a kind of resolution to it and then nobody acknowledges it ever again and it was a murder this this is not quite the same but what about recasting characters because that often will happen for example in soaps yet none of the characters or you know are reckon you know acknowledging that it's a completely different looking person yeah that's just a weird kind of um accepted oddness isn't it when you think about it it is odd oh god no completely it's ridiculous yeah but it's like if they got Harry Hill or someone who vaguely looked like you it's Tucci to stand in for Boyd and we just didn't acknowledge it on this podcast and we just talked to him as if it was completely normal well I actually in a way at least you'd be trying to find someone who looked like me whereas in the soaps often they don't even give a shit it's just someone completely absolutely not even remotely yeah obviously you know I like to think they'll look like Stanley Tucci but they'll probably get the late Bob Hoskins in instead or something like that I think it's quite complicated when you have slightly sort of like twisting canons because if you look at sort of like the mcu so daredevil is now technically canon or at least most of it is technically canon because daredevil born again is part of the mcu whereas daredevil was marvel netflix but agents of shields feels like that's actually still not official canon i mean someone might correct me say actually i think you find it is but i'm not i mean at the very least it's kind of low level alternate canon like it doesn't feature as part of the main timeline so and and if you talk in star wars when dave feloni took over the clone wars genji tartakovsky's short clone war series before that was excised from the canon completely right none of this happened none of that is real so it can get quite it can be a sticky wicket is what i'm saying yes i thought we were in for like a 10 minute explanation of clone wars you know if you want it i mean it technically as i've understood it discovery star trek discovery is disco disco that's right uh may no longer be canon because i think star trek lower decks essentially made it an alternate timeline like i think they almost non-canoned it themselves as i recall um and they did that with the films with the star trek films as well like they have the kelvin timeline so when jj abrams took over star trek they just made it an alternate timeline so they actually came up with a sci-fi reason for the fact that the canon is now different to the previous stuff i i'm thinking k's losing the world to lose no the second i said the kelvin timeline she was like that's it i quit podcast you're all red full no in my head i was just thinking i wonder if james would go to a star trek disco and would he dress up as a character that is that is really what i was thinking okay i'm disappointed that you don't assume that i already have done oh yeah that's have you james have i been to a star trek disco yeah i can neither confirm nor deny there's stories there to be told yeah we'd have been singing klingon k-pop right right uh russell has a long thing here but it is pertinent because it mentions the capture and russell says just like you guys i'm absolutely loving the new series of the capture i look forward to sunday evenings and the release of each weekly episode and find the tension created by the writing and performances so engaging i agree with whoever on the pilot team compared this line of duty in terms of quality that comparison got me thinking about the subject of plausibility in shows i have heard people in the past criticise both the line of duty and the capture for not being believable with twists that would never happen in real life.

33:34Pilot TV Team:They're not referring to the subject matter here. As you mentioned on the pod, the capture actually feels uncomfortably close to reality in terms of subject matter. What they refer to is more the plot twist taken by these types of fast-paced shows and the fact that credibility is often stretched in order to move the plot forward. Personally, I don't find this a problem. When I'm watching these shows, I'm completely locked into their world and I'm not really thinking, would this happen in real life? Often, I read in a review or comment online afterwards that a certain plot point was unrealistic and even if they're right it doesn't spoil my enjoyment i'm not watching a documentary when it comes to shows like the capture and line of duty i love the fact that they keep the suspense up throughout and limit each series to around six episodes i much prefer they stretch plausibility a bit in order to do this rather than pad things out with another three hours just to make it less far-fetched i think the thing for me this kind of thing only becomes a problem when a show has the tone of trying to be really true to life and reality-based, only to suddenly throw in a far-fetched plot twist out of the blue.

34:30Pilot TV Team:What does the team think about this subject? Is believability important to you in TV dramas? Does it depend on the specific type of show? Or are you willing to overlook all plausibility as long as, overall, the show is well-made and engaging? I remember interviewing Jeb Mercurio. I've interviewed him many times. One example stood out. I think it was for the last series of Lion of Justice, a long time ago now. And it was his office. I remember very vividly going to see him in his office, which was just across the road from our old office in Camden. Do you remember when we were in Camden? And yeah, his production company was just literally over the road.

35:02I try not to remember that. I know. It was like, I think I can make it there in five minutes, yeah, because literally it's 10 feet away from... Anyway, I digress. I remember talking to him about this whole topic, and he's really interesting about it. And he was like, people always say there's plot points, plot holes in my work. And they complain. And some critics complain about cordulity being stretched and, you know, plausibility flying out the window. And his thing was, the whole point of making Line of Duty, as thrilling as it is, would not happen if you didn't take those risks, whereby you build a storyline into something that is always on the verge of being implausible.

35:48and it's up to the viewer to decide whether they go along with it or not, but not to even attempt it, not to get to that line, if you'll pardon the pun, and sometimes crossing that line for some critics and viewers alike. It's pointless. His whole point is, yeah, I go there. I push it right to the edge, and that's the whole point of why it's exciting, is because I'm doing that. and you know you take it or leave it whether or not you're going to go along with it, with the ride if you like but he absolutely thinks that that is the best way of writing his stuff is to take it to a point where some viewers might go oh no no no that's too much so yeah and I'm with him basically I agree with both the correspondent and him that in that genre particularly in that genre of thrillers you know crime thrillers cop shows etc I think for me by far and away the most exciting versions of that genre are when they dare to kind of tread that line of plausibility so yeah I'm fully behind it I think in other shows like Russell T Davies talks about how he doesn't really do he's never done he once did one episode of a on running back in his early days as a writer that Robson Green thriller what was it called Touching Evil Touching evil, thank you.

37:13Yeah, exactly. And he just wasn't comfortable in that whole world. He found it all a bit ridiculous. And I think he's right. Some people just don't find all that kind of thing implausible. And stupid things happen all the time in that genre. But you either go along with it or you don't, if you see what I mean.

37:32Pilot TV Team:Okay, I'm interested for your perspective on this, because speculative fiction, which obviously does stretch the boundaries of credulity, it's not something you naturally gravitate towards. So how do you feel about it? I feel like with dramas you know Line of Duty and what Jed was saying and even our correspondent is it Martin this is Russ Russ I agree with all you know what they're saying I'm not watching when I'm watching a drama I know I'm not watching a documentary I know that certain creative decisions have to be made to make it more exciting and pacey and yeah just thrilling to watch so I'm I don't have any kind of issue with it I suppose you could have an issue with it if For example, a show like Babies, which for a lot of people is so personal and there's such an emotional connection with it that if they made some real leaps of, you couldn't believe what they're doing because you're like, that definitely wouldn't happen.

38:26And actually, it's quite hurtful and harmful for someone who's watching it who's gone through that because it just makes no sense or wouldn't happen. And that's a distressing thing. But with dramas like Line of Duty, I don't see it like that. I just see actually this is an exciting police drama that is going to make necessary creative decisions to ensure that it's high octane.

38:49Pilot TV Team:I think it's all relative. I think every story has its own set of rules and it sets out its stall. And I think if they are consistent within the laws that they create and the rules that they set, then it's all fine. so if you are set in space if you're on the enterprise if your foundation all of that is believable as long as it is consistent with the laws that they have set out it follows its own rules it has internal logic and consistency therefore it is believable it doesn't matter whether you think oh actually magic doesn't exist the wheel of time is nonsense as long as it is consistent and it pays its own rules i can go along with it i think the problem i have is when people break their own rules for the sake of expediency or sort of narrative simplicity where they set out a load of rules and then they think oh god now we've written ourselves into a corner are we just going to break this rule that drives me fucking mad and oftentimes it's more a human rule than it is a narrative one so the boy's example i think is spot on with the capture so the most recent episode of capture and i'm loving the capture the most recent episode of the capture is the one i enjoyed the least and the reason for that is because i didn't believe it but it's not that i didn't believe the mad plot twist and let me tell you there are some mad plot twists in it I was on board with that because it's within the internal logic of the show.

39:59Pilot TV Team:So I'm there. It's the human honesty that I wasn't believing. Like these two characters are interacting a way that no two human beings would ever interact. It's just people don't behave that way. It didn't ring true. It felt dishonest. It's only one scene and it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the show. But in that moment, it annoyed me because like people don't behave that way. We understand people. We interact with people. People don't behave that way. Like in that situation, they just wouldn't have done that in my opinion. and therefore it annoyed me because i didn't believe it but actually the other mad plot thing that happened in that episode i was like yep i'm i've got it yeah no problem at all yeah i completely agree yeah exactly yeah it takes a massive leap um yeah in terms of the story you're like yeah all right yeah but yeah it was just the amount of time it was taking for them to communicate with each other in that it's imagining it's yeah it really someone that so that was a note that that's an example of you know you know you get notes when you're writing something someone should have given I think, who am I to say?