The other week it was the season finale of Spooks , a show that I rarely get to watch because the ABC puts it on at such ridiculous times. I decided to stay up and watch it this particular Friday however as the plot involved the Thames Flood Barrier – a feat of engineering I’ve always generally approved of, and the flooding of London, something I’ve generally approved of (at least in fiction) ever since I started reading FreakAngels.
(And yes, readers in the UK will at this point be scoffing and making general noises of disdain about how the Thames Flood Barrier episode is old and how the UK has got much better episodes now and Australia is so backwards. Well, when it comes to the ABC’s showing of Spooks I wholeheartedly agree.)
Anyway at one point during the episode one of the characters – the one who lost his wife a while back (I see the show so rarely that I don’t know the names of any of the characters so that description will have to do) – is having a nervous breakdown in the bowels of the Barrier (do flood barriers have bowels?). This is indicated by the well established trope of fixing the camera on his face, and having him go spinning around and around, so his head remains stationary while the background whirls around wildly. An effective visual metaphor for a mind gone out of control.
Except that it didn’t do that for me. All I could think of while watching it was “da dadada da dadadada da da dadada da da dadadada da DA DADADA DA! These are the surprising adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar featuring me, Sir Digby Chicken Caesar in my ongoing quest to find my nemesis, some bastard who’s presumably behind it all…”.
Another perfectly good cinematic communication method ruined by comedians. Curse you Mitchell and Webb! 😀
