In which Dr. Robert Jekyll begins to investigate his past, with a little help from two family retainers, and his younger brother Ravi answers a "Call to Adventure".
ITV undoubtedly had to take stock of the eight hundred or so complaints made about last weeks episode, given the slot it was broadcast in. I found the second episode less shocking, the special effects somewhat less garish, and wonder if more than a few frames of those CGI special effects (and here I'm thinking of Captain Garson of the translucent skin) didn't meet with a delete button.
In Episode Two Charlie Higson takes a pinch of Angel The Series, a slice of Torchwood and more than a little flavour from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's - and shakes well. The cocktail? I'd say it's fun, flavoursome, but not gripping. In fact, I rather regret the fact that Ravi (Rupert Jekyll's adopted younger brother) wasn't our/the audience's way into the adventure.
The point of view here is predominantly Rupert Jekyll's: anti-hero with more than a few of Angel's attributes. The hair may be darker and less curly, the brow less prominent and the brooding constrained by a stiff upper lip, but Jekyll has undoubtedly been drawn from Whedon's template. There can be no doubt after this episode. Fights in alleyways, complete with long billowing black coat, are perfect proof. Helping Jekyll on his journey to self understanding (and undoubtedly later heroics) is his late grandfather's scientific assistant Garson (now tending bar in the East End) and his familial lawyer Mr. Utterson. Complicating matters and/or possibly trying to choreograph them are Lily Clarke and Bella Charming.
Whilst Robert Jekyll leaps off buildings into London's underbelly, chases down alleyways and rescues Garson from Cyclops thugs paid to do away with him (and really, Higson may be telling any reporter who'll listen that he's after the Doctor Who audience but using the eye patch, trademark of the Silence really?) his younger brother Ravi's surviving wrongful imprisonment, and taking advantage of a prison break.
Having escaped, Ravi crosses half of Ceylon, walking past temples, treking through jungles, to find the 'X' on a pristine white map (still pristine, white and legible) hidden, folded, in his shoe. Obviously his late father also doctored his younger, biological, son injecting him with some serum or other allowing the teenager to travel such distances without feeling thirst, hunger, or dizziness. Arriving at the spot in question Ravi unearths a pad-locked cellar door leading to a basement laboratory dug beneath the jungle floor. Years have apparently passed since someone last entered, but the key entrusted to Ravi fortuitously fits, monsoon rains in no way having rusted the lock.
In heeding his late father's words, protecting Robert's secret, and finding his way to treasures of a bio-chemical nature (which will, no doubt, later unlock the mysteries of Robert's nature) Ravi's adventures directly mirror those of his elder brother. Ravi is, of course, answering the "Call to Adventure" (from Joseph's Campbell's Monomyth) whilst Robert, with little help from Utterson and Garson crosses another threshold into the belly of the whale: "the final separation of the hero's known world and self", at least in this episode if not the series as a whole. That threshold? The secret passage in the Jekyll's familial Gothic pile, leading down to a basement laboratory all victorian bottles and bunsen burners. Here, according to Garson's recollections, Dr. Jekyll downed a potion of his own making (interestingly blood red in colour) and turned himself into a monster: Edward Hyde. The laboratory is as much womb as incubator, the metamorphosis chemical vampirism. To stretch the metaphor further, whatever Robert Jekyll's grandfather took can be read as Victorian viagra with monstrous side effects.
It's not just Ravi and Rupert crossing thresholds into the extraordinary.
Sackler, the newest recruit at M.I.O (Ministry Information Other) is taken down in the lift to see M.I.O security cells housing demons and monsters, having had his doubts about the pervasive nature of the supernatural. The cells? They're almost identical to Torchwood's holding cells, only M.I.O's seem to be in tunnels reminiscent of Churchill's WWII wartime bunker. I shall say nothing about Sackler being a dapper young Welsh man, working directly under his boss at M.I.O - nothing - even if he ever makes his boss a cup of coffee. I presume Sackler will, at some point, become an informer for Jekyll, if Higson follows Whedon and Greenwalt.
M.I.O aren't the only body hunting Doctor Jekyll. Captain Dance (accompanied by his sleekly dressed paramour who the IMDB have listed as Fedora) is travelling to London, no doubt to kill or capture Jekyll and siphon off the secrets in his blood. Translucent skin and a box full of pet-skeletons, which act more like piraña than wraith, Captain Dance is probably both a man possessed (two men, like Jekyll later assumes himself to be) and the personification of true evil in this drama. His Paramour? Fedora - (named for the quintessential hat worn until the Sixties?) is played by Natasha O'Keeffe, probably most known for Misfits, but soon to be seen in the forthcoming Sherlock Christmas Special The Abominable Bride. Her role as dark-haired temptress, who neatly helps dispose of corpses, can be seen as a nod to Spike and his Dark Princess, despite Dance's the upper crust English. Shades of William the Bloody, before Punk Rock.
Jekyll and Hyde obviously takes place in an alternate universe where an Art Deco revival is in style. If this were really the Thirties well…
I have more trouble suspending my disbelief that a well bred young lady, with an invalid mother, would be living in a terrace house in London, devoid of any staff. Oh and answering her own front door, in her silk pyjamas no less! Harbingers of doom are more likely. Whilst there are some costumes worn herein that I adore (Bella Charming's brocade smoking jacket - if that's what it was - worn over an evening gown) some of the sets are incongruous to say the least. Here I'm thinking of Bella's nightmare of a four poster bed, complete with ceiling height deep buttoned wall covering as headboard. And, her pink dressing table which I assume dates from the 1950's Art Deco revival period, or is an original now upcycled. Original twenties and thirties Art Deco furniture (if anyone is interested) is predominantly decorated with real wood veneer and inlays. Oh and Bella's flapper girl mural? I saw Nagel rather than Lempicka. That said, Bella Charming's bedroom does accurately create a sense of opulence and, given the Empire illuminated sign on her balcony, calls to mind Satine's bedroom in Baz Lurhman's 2001 film Moulin Rouge,for all that the colour scheme here is mint and pink (accurate Art Deco colours) and not the red velvet. Jekyll's quip about Bella being a naughty girl is telling, even without the correlation to Satine, and hopefully went over the heads of younger viewers.
I'm still puzzled as regards the target audience for this show. Stereotypical boys will no doubt love the stylised violence, and may thrill at the monsters. Other children? I'm less concerned (given the level of violence this episode) that this is the stuff of nightmares, and more perturbed as to increasing subtext regarding sex and prostitution. Jekyll obviously feels desire for Bella, but there's no love here. Not yet, and possibly not ever. Add in his quip about the money she's hiding in her bedroom safe, and the correlations are distinctly shady. But, to be fair they're in keeping with women's roles in Film Noir where women were either angels or whores.
Bella Charming doesn't live up to her surname, this episode, and not only because watching her down a pint of beer didn't appeal. It may have work as a signal that Bella is hard living, a tough woman of independent means, but I found the move totally off-putting. So too Lily Clarke's overt wiles which manoeuvre a distraught Robert Jekyll straight off her sofa, and towards his grandfathers pile of a mausoleum, via his lawyers office. Dr. Robert Jekyll is (as played by Tom Bateman when he isn't Hyde) a man hunted by the women of his acquaintance, as much as by his enemies. Even Hills was utterly delighted to find Robert Jekyll safe and well, before her expression changed and she looked as if she has bitten into a lemon. This, upon introduction to Miss Lily Clarke.
It's a wonderful little moment of acting genius by Ruby Bentall, who is conspicuous by her absence each episode, more often than not. Bentall is fantastic. You may remember her from Poldark or The Paradise. Tom Rhys Harries, who plays Sackler, was once Dakin in a a later run of Alan Bennett's/The National Theatre's History Boys. Richard E Grant (Withnail & I, Downton etc.) seems to be having a fantastic time hamming it up as the occult secret service's version of 'M' and Tom Bateman has now stepped off the set of Jekyll's Gothicesque Twenties London, straight onto Kenneth Brannagh's Garrick London stage and will probably be holding his own acting with theatrical greats such as Dame Judi Dench. Acting wise this show is a gem. And let's not forget Donald Sumpter, who will no doubt become the equivalent of Rupert Giles to his heroic charge.
Given the rather stellar cast, and the plethora of complaints received by ITV regarding the violence at such an early broadcast hour, I wonder if a second series isn't already out of the question.
It is incontrovertible that this drama is derivative. But, to be fair to Charlie Higson, it is so in a clever manner and - more so - it benefits hugely from having such a talented cast.