BOARDWALK EMPIRE: REVIEW – I started watching HBO‘s Boardwalk Empire when it premièred and I’m now struggling to finish the 3rd season. Everything boded well. Martin Scorsese and Terrence Winter, Tim Van Patten, a great cast: Michaels Pitt, Shannon and Kenneth Williams, Stephen Graham, Steve Buscemi and Kelly Macdonald. Sumptuous sets, high production values, the wonderful prohibition period of Once Upon a Time in America, whisky colored interiors and the manic rhythms of jazz. I started fast forwarding the show halfway through the second season.
What was wrong with it? Well, first off when a show boasts about how much it cost to reconstruct something you can bet that the show runners will try to get their money’s worth out of the furniture. I got bored of the magnificent establishing shots which never ever looked like a real place any more than Rome ever looked like Rome. Then there was the central casting of a brilliant bit player. Buscemi is a lot of things, but a romantic lead? No. He has no heft, no weight and no charisma. His bow-legged trot away from camera during the title sequence sets the tone. He looks like a someone you could knock over with a feather.
All the hallmarks of HBO productions now look like hallmarks: the sexposition, the OTT violence, the glossy production values that now get in front of the story. I began fast forwarding Kelly Macdonald’s Margaret Shroeder. Hard to think of a less interesting character lumbered with butt-aching story lines, none of which seem attached to the character as such. From tea-totalling to women’s health issues via a slap of catholic hypocrisy and making jollies with an ex-IRA terrorist, her hair sometimes changes but her pursed lips expression and her obnoxious children remain resistant to any temptation to like her.
But it wasn’t only her. The writers had effectively painted Michael Shannon’s glowering G-Man into one of the most uninteresting corners imaginable. When he turns up at the beginning of season 3 selling irons, you know it won’t be long before someone ends up wearing one as a facial piercing. Everything is telegraphed from a distance, which is at least consistent with the period. The villain obviously villainous; the innocent victims lined up to be despatched. This is the show that makes Al Capone a dull little man.
Anyway, it’s almost over and I shall stop occasionally to find out what happens. Hopefully, I won’t have to see many more naked beauties draped over Mr. Buscemi’s thankfully dressed form. And if you think I’ve been unkind, I’d like to point out, I’ve not used the word Sopranos once. Well, twice.
