Can Different Actors/Cast 'Improve' a TV Series?
Jun 3, 2020 10:19:05 GMT
Gene Hunt, Sam Tyler, and 2 more like this
Post by Dirty Epic on Jun 3, 2020 10:19:05 GMT
Can a TV programme/series improve when a new actor or even cast comes in? 
I know a TV series can go on too long, has a particular actor/actors associated with it and perhaps doesn’t feel the same when older, established cast members leave and get replaced by new ones. However I’ve noticed a few examples where a particular TV programme/series – for me at least, seems sometimes much, much better when the new cast members come into it (new broom) and/or the programme improves with age... production techniques, scripts etc.
I’ve not including reboots nor bringing a much loved TV programme back after many years away more so when a programme pretty much continues on but the cast and general feel of it changes significantly. My examples of seeing this happen include:
Special Branch
The original Thames series (1969-70) with Derren Nesbitt (DCI Jordan), Fulton McKay (DCS Inman), Morris Perry (Moxon) and Wensley Pithey is okay. However and perhaps it suffers from the first 9 episodes being in Black & White and/or the mixture of film and studio footage they do feel stuffy, rehearsed and clunky and sometimes the acting partnerships simply lack the chemistry and believability to move it beyond an enjoyable 45-50 minutes or so.
I know he can be a bit a Marmite character but I generally don’t mind Nesbitt and his portrayal of Jordon and the series does improve when we get the colour episodes and Fulton McKay as Inman. The problem is the episodes just seem to plod along without any sense of urgency and as I may have said in the Special Branch thread before the Jordan - Christine Morris (Sandra Bryant) love triangle goes on for much too long and for me the first two series feel a relic from another era rather than how Sepcial Branch would feel with the Euston series. It’s not to say it’s no good and some episodes are enjoyable pieces of retro TV.
When Euston Films rebooted Special Branch and got George Sewell (Craven) and Patrick Mower (Haggerty) on board it just seems to work so much better than the Jordan, Eden/Inman and Moxon version.
Craven and Haggerty’s initial abrasive/hostile relationship develops very well during the course of the Euston series as too with the introduction of ‘spook’ character Strand (Paul Eddington) in the 1974 series. The supporting cast Paul Antrim (Sgt Maguire), Susan Jameson (Sgt Holmes), Sheila Scott-Wilkinson (Pam Sloane) are also reasonably good too and most of the episodes do have more of a urgency and drive to them and you can certainly see where things were leading to… The Sweeney.
The only thing/character which doesn’t really work in the 1973-74 series was Roger Rowland’s (Sgt North). No disrespect to Rowland who had a bit part in the original series and perhaps it’s more to do with how the character was written and scripted but for me the North character feels stuffy and wooden and simply doesn’t work, perhaps it explains the quiet writing out of the North character early on in the 1974 series. Instead of North perhaps the one character from the original series I’d have brought over from the original series would have been Keith Washington’s (DC Morrissey), but on the whole a few duff and clunky episodes aside the 1973-74 series works well with Craven and Haggerty forming a uneasy to good partnership together and a good guest cast featuring Dennis Waterman, Garfield Morgan, John Bindon, Stephanie Beecham, Janet Key and Rula Lenska along with many a Euston Film’s face in there too!
Taggart
Don’t get me wrong Mark McManus was iconic in the role, perhaps too natural in it. The original McManus series do have their moments but some are much better than others and considering it’s meant to feature Glasgow… surprisingly very little of the ‘real’ city or it’s characters seem to be featured in it’s earlier episodes for want of a better word it seems to be a slightly grittier copy of Inspector Morse, Adam Dalgliesh etc.
Mark McManus’s sad passing did give the opportunity to reboot the series and it carried on fairly okay with James McPherson as Jardine in the DCI and the moving in/introduction of characters like DC/DS Reid (Blythe Duff), DC Fraser (Colin McCredie) and later DI Robbie Ross (John Michie), although it still doesn’t quite grip me and draw me in…
What did grip and draw me in to Taggart was the introduction of Alex Norton’s DCI Burke in 2002. For me Norton’s introduction gave Taggart a shot in the arm and perhaps his addition made the cast/crew as a whole gel together much better, in my opinion than what had gone before. It’s also arguable but the scripts/episodes from the 2002-09 period seem the best as a whole too and do have some notably good episodes like – Fire, Burn, Watertight, Atonement, Running Out of Time, Cause to Kill, Dead Man Walking, The Thirteenth Step, Crossing The Line and Grass being particularly so I feel. The Burke character just works so much better than even the original Taggart or Jardine for me and maybe due to better production techniques 10-20 years on, better scripts etc. Taggart works for me when viewing the episodes from that period so much so you simply forget Norton had a earlier one off role in the episode Knife Edge and instead you think of him as Burke in the series.
Sadly the final episodes from 2010 where we lose Fraser (McCredie) and a general feeling of everything being rushed and going through the motions kind of wisely brings everything to an end but Taggart’s (relatively) modern period was a good one for me with well scripted, acted episodes I still quite enjoy re-watching again.
Rebus
Again John Hannah is good in the Rebus role although he’s outshone by James Cosmo – as Morris Caferty, and the initial 4 episodes in the early 2000’s feel more like separate features rather than a coherent series.
Like with Taggart and Alex Norton’s introduction, the introduction of Ken Stott as Rebus makes things much more believable, perhaps due to the series being made by the same production team doing Taggart at that time. You can believe Stott is Rebus in these episodes, he truly looks the world weary… almost burnt out copper that’s depicted in Ian Rankin’s novels rather than the slicker, anonymous everyman portrayal of him by John Hannah. Stott also has a brilliant chemistry with Claire Price (DS Siobhan Clarke) as well as supporting cast members Jennifer Black (DCI Templer) and well known Scottish actor Ron Donachie (DCS Gunner).
I don’t want to sound clichéd but the 2006-07 Rebus episodes have a very cinematic feel to them the earlier ones don’t. You can argue the TV adaptations may not faithfully follow Rankin’s novels, however I feel Fleshmarket Close, Let It Bleed, Strip Jack, Resurrection Men, The Naming of the Dead and Knots and Crosses being very good pieces of TV from the 2000’s.
There’s been many on/off rumours of Rebus being reprised with Stott and Price again and based on Rankin’s newer Rebus novels. However these rumours seems to come around every couple of years and fizzle out and I do feel 13 odd years on too much time has passed for it to be as successful as it was in 2006-07?
I sure there’s many more examples where this has happened but these three for me do point a TV show can still be a success – even more of a success, with a new main cast. I know soaps do this on a regular basis but I’m not really considering them and some shows – like Regan & Carter in The Sweeney, Oz and the boys in Auf Pet, Bodie and Doyle in The Pro’s etc. certinaly wouldn’t be the same with different actors in these roles and/or they carried on with different characters!
It raises the interesting question when to carry on with a successful series and when to end it and as these programmes show sometimes tweaking a few things/changing characters/actors doesn’t always but sometimes results in a big improvement on what went before.
Any thoughts?
I know a TV series can go on too long, has a particular actor/actors associated with it and perhaps doesn’t feel the same when older, established cast members leave and get replaced by new ones. However I’ve noticed a few examples where a particular TV programme/series – for me at least, seems sometimes much, much better when the new cast members come into it (new broom) and/or the programme improves with age... production techniques, scripts etc.
I’ve not including reboots nor bringing a much loved TV programme back after many years away more so when a programme pretty much continues on but the cast and general feel of it changes significantly. My examples of seeing this happen include:
Special Branch
The original Thames series (1969-70) with Derren Nesbitt (DCI Jordan), Fulton McKay (DCS Inman), Morris Perry (Moxon) and Wensley Pithey is okay. However and perhaps it suffers from the first 9 episodes being in Black & White and/or the mixture of film and studio footage they do feel stuffy, rehearsed and clunky and sometimes the acting partnerships simply lack the chemistry and believability to move it beyond an enjoyable 45-50 minutes or so.
I know he can be a bit a Marmite character but I generally don’t mind Nesbitt and his portrayal of Jordon and the series does improve when we get the colour episodes and Fulton McKay as Inman. The problem is the episodes just seem to plod along without any sense of urgency and as I may have said in the Special Branch thread before the Jordan - Christine Morris (Sandra Bryant) love triangle goes on for much too long and for me the first two series feel a relic from another era rather than how Sepcial Branch would feel with the Euston series. It’s not to say it’s no good and some episodes are enjoyable pieces of retro TV.
When Euston Films rebooted Special Branch and got George Sewell (Craven) and Patrick Mower (Haggerty) on board it just seems to work so much better than the Jordan, Eden/Inman and Moxon version.
Craven and Haggerty’s initial abrasive/hostile relationship develops very well during the course of the Euston series as too with the introduction of ‘spook’ character Strand (Paul Eddington) in the 1974 series. The supporting cast Paul Antrim (Sgt Maguire), Susan Jameson (Sgt Holmes), Sheila Scott-Wilkinson (Pam Sloane) are also reasonably good too and most of the episodes do have more of a urgency and drive to them and you can certainly see where things were leading to… The Sweeney.
The only thing/character which doesn’t really work in the 1973-74 series was Roger Rowland’s (Sgt North). No disrespect to Rowland who had a bit part in the original series and perhaps it’s more to do with how the character was written and scripted but for me the North character feels stuffy and wooden and simply doesn’t work, perhaps it explains the quiet writing out of the North character early on in the 1974 series. Instead of North perhaps the one character from the original series I’d have brought over from the original series would have been Keith Washington’s (DC Morrissey), but on the whole a few duff and clunky episodes aside the 1973-74 series works well with Craven and Haggerty forming a uneasy to good partnership together and a good guest cast featuring Dennis Waterman, Garfield Morgan, John Bindon, Stephanie Beecham, Janet Key and Rula Lenska along with many a Euston Film’s face in there too!
Taggart
Don’t get me wrong Mark McManus was iconic in the role, perhaps too natural in it. The original McManus series do have their moments but some are much better than others and considering it’s meant to feature Glasgow… surprisingly very little of the ‘real’ city or it’s characters seem to be featured in it’s earlier episodes for want of a better word it seems to be a slightly grittier copy of Inspector Morse, Adam Dalgliesh etc.
Mark McManus’s sad passing did give the opportunity to reboot the series and it carried on fairly okay with James McPherson as Jardine in the DCI and the moving in/introduction of characters like DC/DS Reid (Blythe Duff), DC Fraser (Colin McCredie) and later DI Robbie Ross (John Michie), although it still doesn’t quite grip me and draw me in…
What did grip and draw me in to Taggart was the introduction of Alex Norton’s DCI Burke in 2002. For me Norton’s introduction gave Taggart a shot in the arm and perhaps his addition made the cast/crew as a whole gel together much better, in my opinion than what had gone before.
It’s also arguable but the scripts/episodes from the 2002-09 period seem the best as a whole too and do have some notably good episodes like – Fire, Burn, Watertight, Atonement, Running Out of Time, Cause to Kill, Dead Man Walking, The Thirteenth Step, Crossing The Line and Grass being particularly so I feel. The Burke character just works so much better than even the original Taggart or Jardine for me and maybe due to better production techniques 10-20 years on, better scripts etc. Taggart works for me when viewing the episodes from that period so much so you simply forget Norton had a earlier one off role in the episode Knife Edge and instead you think of him as Burke in the series.Sadly the final episodes from 2010 where we lose Fraser (McCredie) and a general feeling of everything being rushed and going through the motions kind of wisely brings everything to an end but Taggart’s (relatively) modern period was a good one for me with well scripted, acted episodes I still quite enjoy re-watching again.
Rebus
Again John Hannah is good in the Rebus role although he’s outshone by James Cosmo – as Morris Caferty, and the initial 4 episodes in the early 2000’s feel more like separate features rather than a coherent series.
Like with Taggart and Alex Norton’s introduction, the introduction of Ken Stott as Rebus makes things much more believable, perhaps due to the series being made by the same production team doing Taggart at that time. You can believe Stott is Rebus in these episodes, he truly looks the world weary… almost burnt out copper that’s depicted in Ian Rankin’s novels rather than the slicker, anonymous everyman portrayal of him by John Hannah. Stott also has a brilliant chemistry with Claire Price (DS Siobhan Clarke) as well as supporting cast members Jennifer Black (DCI Templer) and well known Scottish actor Ron Donachie (DCS Gunner).
I don’t want to sound clichéd but the 2006-07 Rebus episodes have a very cinematic feel to them the earlier ones don’t. You can argue the TV adaptations may not faithfully follow Rankin’s novels, however I feel Fleshmarket Close, Let It Bleed, Strip Jack, Resurrection Men, The Naming of the Dead and Knots and Crosses being very good pieces of TV from the 2000’s.
There’s been many on/off rumours of Rebus being reprised with Stott and Price again and based on Rankin’s newer Rebus novels. However these rumours seems to come around every couple of years and fizzle out and I do feel 13 odd years on too much time has passed for it to be as successful as it was in 2006-07?
I sure there’s many more examples where this has happened but these three for me do point a TV show can still be a success – even more of a success, with a new main cast. I know soaps do this on a regular basis but I’m not really considering them and some shows – like Regan & Carter in The Sweeney, Oz and the boys in Auf Pet, Bodie and Doyle in The Pro’s etc. certinaly wouldn’t be the same with different actors in these roles and/or they carried on with different characters!
It raises the interesting question when to carry on with a successful series and when to end it and as these programmes show sometimes tweaking a few things/changing characters/actors doesn’t always but sometimes results in a big improvement on what went before.
Any thoughts?
