THE FADES, 1.6 - series finale

"In the beginning there was the word, and the word was shit." -- Mac

Now The Fades has come to a close, I feel happier about its existence, but I still don't think it was close to as thrilling and intelligent as most people believe. It recovered well from a post-premiere slump, ending with a finale that had an entertaining mix of dilemma, drama, action and a few surprises. But was I on the edge of my seat? Not really. One of the indubitable strengths of the show has been its grey areas, as the heroes and villains aren't so delineated, and that's led to Paul (Ian De Caestecker) being more of a mediator between the forces of Good and Evil. In this finale, estranged mentor Neil (Johnny Harris) became the principal villain in many ways; kidnapping Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) and Anna (Lily Loveless) to use as leverage and force Paul into becoming a one-man exterminator of the reborn Fades.

One annoyance with the finale was how it separated Paul and Mac, who've been the show's dynamic duo all these weeks. It made sense to put Mac in danger and have Paul trying to save the day without his friend around to help (well, comment on the situation), but it still felt like the show missed their chemistry together, and ultimately wasted Kaluuya by keeping him in a shipping container for an hour. Nevertheless, I really liked Mac's story about how he and Paul would create superheroes as kids, now realizing they were imagining replacements for their fathers—whose absences they excused by believing they were busy saving the world elsewhere.

Paul instead teamed up with Alice (Ruth Gemmell) to try and reopen the woodland Ascension point, hoping that doing so will drag all the reborn Fades into the afterlife before they overrun the planet as "zombies" who can only survive by eating human flesh. Elsewhere, the newly-resurrected Sarah (Natalie Dormer) was reunited with her husband Mark (Tom Ellis) but started to feel a compulsion to kill, and John (Joe Dempsie) made the mayor's office his base of operations as he plotted a global takeover.

I don't have too much to say about this episode, strangely. It resolved some things, or appeared to, but left the door open for a second series I can't see being refused. One of the most shocking moments was when Neil callously shot Paul's girlfriend Kay (Sophie Wu) in the head, to make it clear he's not fooling around, and in some ways that moment overshadowed the rest of the episode, because no amount of special effects could best it. Even though we're dealing with a world where ghosts exist and resurrection's possible (meaning Jay's probably due some form of comeback if series 2 gets commissioned), the moment still felt very final and unexpected.

The actual finale was a slight cheat, considering we'd been led to believe that Paul and Sarah's visions were truly apocalyptic, when it turns out they were just seeing the abandoned shopping centre covered in ash from a reopened Ascension point. But it provided a decent final brawl between Paul and John, now the latter's decided he wants to live more than he wants to ascend. The chintzy special effects for a winged Paul hovering aboard the Ascension point's geyser and shooting energy into its abyss didn't unravel the tension too badly, and I was pleased by the denouement... with something very bad happening in the atmosphere over the city, as the defeated Neil remarked "I told him... you don't fuck with ascension". It seems that Paul's plan to save the day has backfired in ways yet to be explained, and I rather like how The Fades appears to have let its hero do more damage than good. Paul may have good and noble intentions, but he's ultimately a naïve teenage boy with incredible powers and no clue what he's doing. To be fair, he's in good company with the Angelics, who are a dysfunctional bunch of idiots.

Overall, The Fades ended on a high and I'm not reluctant to see more. Over its six episodes I was pleased to see a few problem areas were ironed out as the writing and focus improved (Anna's unwarranted bitchiness, the bludgeoning geek-speak, less Sophie Wu), its trump card was how it blurred the lines between good and evil, and in De Caestecker they found a great actor who brought a lot of humanity and sensitivity to Paul. It definitely had its moments, but there was something about The Fades that just didn't connect with me deeply; possibly because it bit off more than it could chew, and too many irritations got in the way of the good stuff in my head. The Sarah/Mark storyline was so shortchanged it needn't have existed to begin with.

What's your abiding feeling about The Fades? Are you one of the many people championing the show as a worthy companion to the likes of Being Human, or was it just a load of hogwash knitted together from a variety of sources?

Asides

• John's retelling of the Bible story about Lot dissuading some townsfolk from gang-raping angels, by offering them his own daughters to abuse, is a story I've heard before... and it remains an astonishingly sick and morally-bankrupt piece of scripture.
• I had to wonder if director Tom Shankland was paying homage to Quentin Tarantino with the "trunk shot" when Neil opened the boot of his car to reveal Mac inside.
• Another influence on The Fades appears to be Night Watch, which itself is a pick n' mix of other movies. The use of birds is prominent in both.

written by Jack Thorne / directed by Tom Shankland / 26 October 2011 / BBC Three

THE FADES, 1.5

The Fades rattled along with episode 5, buoyed by an impressive set-piece in a school, with Paul (Iain De Caesecker) helping mentor Neil (Johnny Harris) slay "reborns"—ghosts who've regained corporeal form by eating human flesh, led by Jason Bateman-alike Polus (Joe Dempsie). Not much happened to push the story forward, so I'm still conviced there's only perhaps three hours of story stretched across six weeks here, but the hour was thick with incident and enjoyable to watch. It helps that the show's awkwardly-written comedy and cringemaking geeky references have been reduced in recent weeks (although those "nanu-nanu's" still make me squirm with embarrassment), and I find Paul to be an interesting and believable character in terms of how he behaves and operates.

It's a shame that the story has no clear idea what to do with Sarah (Natalie Dormer), who's spent most of this series as the "fade" ghost of husband Mark (Tom Ellis), only to now come back in physical form after drinking blood and spinning a bathtub cocoon for herself. And Mac's father, DCI Armstrong (Robbie Gee) literally gave up on his investigation here, telling everyone to just leave town because the police have no clue what's going on with all the murders. But for every mistake that still remains, a few have been rectified: like Anna's (Lily Loveless) evolution away from one-note bitch to a member of the ghostbusting team. It was also a nice touch this week to have Paul realize that the Angelics and the Fades are almost as bad as each other, so it's up to him to come up with a plan that will please everyone. I just wish we knew why the Fades are villains (can't they just hang out peacefully as ghosts?), and why the Angelics started to believe the Fades were bad news (they can be killed so easily in their natural form, after all). I guess these are just nitpicks with the underlying mythology of the show, which doesn't make total sense to me.

I'm still not totally in love with The Fades, which I feel many people are (judging from other reviews), but it's certainly a worthwhile enterprise for BBC Three and there are moments that leap off the screen, or have some intelligence to them. (This week's allusions to the Columbine tragedy, for example.) But there's also a lot that drags with the story, not every character's been given good material, the grungy amber-black atmosphere can get tiresome, and witer Jack Thorne's attempts to lighten the mood (usually with Mac's geeky asides) rarely work for me. A simple thing like noticing Paul and Mac are wearing identical pajamas is funnier than any amount of lame Matrix and Lord Of The Rings references. Still, next week's finale will hopefully bring the story to a conclusion that makes sense of Paul's apocalyptic visions and leave us wanting a second series, provided the team take a critical look at what worked and what didn't.

written by Jack Thorne / directed by Tom Shankland / 19 October 2011 / BBC Three

THE FADES, 1.4

I don't mind admitting it: after two underwhelming hours, episode 4 may have rescued this supernatural series from the brink. It helped that it fixed most of the irritations I think have dragged The Fades down: characters started to behave more realistically in response to the weirdness, irrationally bitchy Anna (Lily Loveless) showed a different side to her character, the overall story started to come together in interesting ways, the hour didn't drag (although, like most BBC shows, it would be improved immeasurably by losing 15-minutes), Jay (Sophie Wu) didn't get much screentime, and there was almost no unconvincing "geek-speak" from Mac (Daniel Kaluuya). It suddenly felt like the show I wanted The Fades to be from the start.

Naturally, it helped that episode 4 started answering questions and explaining the whole situation in a clearer way. The spectral Fades only came into existence around the time of WWII (assumedly because the deaths of so many people "broke the ladder"), and the "Angelic Killer" Polus (Joe Dempsie) only discovered he could grow flesh after the blood of his suicidal mother touched his lips (still makes no sense that blood could touch a ghost, but never mind). Having Polus achieve human form also gave The Fades a much-needed villain to focus on at last, and Dempsie's performance of a man learning how to exist in corporeal form again was fantastic (croaky voice, vomiting goo). It was also very interesting to have Paul (Iain de Caestecker) be pronounced "brain-dead" after his road accident last week, and consequently become a Fade for most of this episode—until the Angelics realized they could revive him with a bizarre woodland ritual involving a mirror and his twin sister. The final moment of Paul dying in hospital when his life-support machine was turned off, only to sit bolt upright and spew countless moths in front of his astonished mother and doctor was one of the most memorable moments of British telefantasy in some time.

So yes, I was much happier with this episode's content and tempo. It's unusual to have a protagonist like Paul who, let's face it, is so naïve he's often of a liability to the Angelics (here, good people die because Paul's stupid enough to believe Polus' lies and help him), and this episode took some big steps forward with the narrative. Polus has rescued his lover Natalie (Jenn Murray) from the Angelics' torture, and Sarah (Natalie Dormer) has decided to reacquire physical form by drinking human blood herself—so a reunion with widowed husband Mark (Tom Ellis), now cleared of her murder, appears very likely.

Overall, this was the best hour of The Fades for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it wasn't so clouded and sluggish in its storytelling. Many of the performances were also great this week, especially Kaluuya's shell-shocked response to his friend's situation, best shown with his quiet pleading to Paul's mother about not turning her son's life-support machine off. It wasn't a truly great hour, as there are still some areas of the story I'm not interested in, or don't feel have been written very well, but it was great to finally have a firm handle on this show. The preview of next week's episode looks just as promising, so I hope hindsight will show The Fades to be a good series with an awkward period immediately following its tantalizing premiere.

Asides

• Polus is close to the name "Pollux", one half of the twins from Greek mythology, the other being Castor (Paul?) Theirs is a myth revolving around twins and immortality, which are familiar elements of The Fades.
• Remember when Neil told Paul that Fades like rooftops because there's less chance of being damaged by touching living people? Turns out they're all just locked outside, as Paul found himself, right?

written by Jack Thorne · directed by Tom Shankland · 12 October 2011 · BBC Three

THE FADES, 1.3

This show just isn't working for me. I enjoy Iain de Caestecker's introverted performance as Paul, the show's basic idea has appeal because it touches on lots of fantasy staples, but The Fades lacks many things that go into making a compelling supernatural drama. Perhaps the biggest issue with the show is how its two halves (the social life of outcast Paul and his fantastical role as an "Angelic") don't sit well together. You spend half of every episode suffering through Sophie Wu's amateur line readings as Paul's girlfriend Jay, the baffling hatred Paul's sister Anna (Lily Loveless) has towards her brother (explain why she's so difficult and despicable!), and the show's unnatural and outmoded geek references. The opening of every episode has Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) recapping events to a webcam, singing of with an excruciating "nanu-nanu" (a quote from '70s alien sitcom Mork & Mindy). Who references Mork & Mindy in 2011? I feel sorry for Kaluuya, who shows some raw talent, because the scripts continually make his character look idiotic, unrealistic and quite creepy, when he should be none of those things.

This week, what even happened? Paul discovered he sprouts angel-like wings when he ejaculates, but didn't seem especially horrified and concerned by that. Neil (Johnny Harris) gathered a gang of fellow Angelics to fight the Fades, and his severe stomach wounds were healed by Paul. Paul's apocalyptic vision was extended to include the appearance of a handsome man walking through the haze of falling ash. Neil played Whoopi Goldberg to Mark's (Tom Ellis) Demi Moore, passing him a message from his dead wife Sarah (Natalie Dormer), but I'm still perplexed by this storyline. You could remove Mark and Sarah (Natalie Dormer) form the show completely and, right now, it wouldn't matter one jot. Paul also used "magic" to seal Annar's mouth close, Matrix-style, which his sister was implausibly calm about, before losing his virginity to Jay after wooing her with talk of a British-made space satellite. The leader of the Fades (i.e the one they can afford full-body makeup job for) cocooned itself, to emerge as the man from Paul's vision, just as Paul was hit by a car and hospitalized.

As usual, most of the interesting stuff happened in the dying minutes, with tedious and unconvincing drivel coming before it. Three hours. That's how long this show's had to tell its story so far, but there's only been perhaps 80-minutes of plot. Having perused other reviews online, and even browsed Twitter for immediate audience response last night, I'm clearly in the minority here! I'm a champion of good British SF/fantasy on television, but I just don't see what everyone's so excited about with The Fades. (Then again, most sites reviewing it are naturally biased towards the genre.) For me, it's dreary, slow, unconvincing, has few original ideas (maybe they seem fresh to the target demo?), the dual life of reluctant hero Paul doesn't work, and writer Jack Thorne is incapable of capturing contemporary geek-talk. There are undeniably some fun elements, and the climax of every episode usually contains a few eye-opening events to draw you back for more, but none of that excuses how the majority of each hour's a struggle to sit through. It lacks the flair and excitement its excellent opening titles suggest this show is all about:

Am I alone in thinking The Fades is little more than a half-decent idea, poorly told by someone who likes the genre but doesn't "get it"? Maybe the show's resolution will be good, but even if that proves to be the case, a two-part special feels like the better format for what I've seen so far.

written by Jack Thorne · directed by Farren Blackburn · 5 October 2011 · BBC Three

THE FADES, 1.2

I admire elements of The Fades (it's stylish, fairly creative), but I wish I could love it. It's just not coming together for me, yet. Skins writer Jack Thorne seems more comfortable with the teenage angst than the supernatural selling point, as the best scenes are ones where Paul (Iain de Caestecker) and best-friend Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) simply try to get through a day at school and improve their social standing. The stuff with one-eyed Neil (Johnny Harris) showing Paul the ropes, playing Hagrid to his Harry, is currently too obscure and sluggish. This is one of those shows where you hate the characters for being so pointlessly enigmatic, as it's just insulting. There's really no need for Neil to be so guarded about what's going on, if he's supposed to be teaching Paul.

Paul's now having nightmares about his family being slaughtered; the ghostly Fades are getting stronger and can now touch things (an ability they get from eating people, so you have to wonder how they managed to eat their first person!); an elderly reclusive mystic confirmed that Paul is "special", meaning he'll have to leave his family to join Neil's fight against the powers of darkness; teacher Mark (Tom Ellis) is aware his missing (actually dead) wife Sarah (Natalie Dormer) had a secret life he never knew about; Jay (Sophie Wu) kissed Paul at a party organized by his irrationally hateful sister Anna (Lily Loveless); and we learned that Mac's dad is the DCI investigating the case of Mark's missing wife and two schoolboys bullies eaten by the Fades.

There are times when the show reminds me of a British Donnie Darko (Paul's a pariah, bed-wetting replaces sleepwalking, he has an annoying sister, he's destined to stop the end of the world, he even visits a psychiatrist), and The Fades is at its best when it's mixing the ordinary with the extraordinary. There's a brilliant scene where Paul, testing his newfound ability to heal wounds by cutting his forearm, is interrupted by his mother—who mistakes the act as self-harming. It's when the show goes into full-blown supernaturalism that it feels very clichéd (lots of shadowy figures rushing past the camera), or downright silly (Paul shooting fireballs from his palms that somehow managed to accidentally incinerate two birds). There's probably a more interesting show here about a schizophrenic teenager who's hallucinating ghosts and superpowers, encouraged by his fantasy-prone friend, and actually needs to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Donnie Darko meets Heavenly Creatures, perhaps.

Daniel Kaluuya's probably the most captivating actor as Mac, but his character's also hard to like without caveats. The way Mac keeps making tiresome references to Star Wars is lazy shorthand for letting us know he's a geek, and there was a weird moment when Mac's taught Paul how to dance at 2 o'clock in the morning. There are times when Mac's amusing and delivers welcome comic relief, but he's also so strange and self-loathing that it's sometimes uncomfortable to watch him.

I don't know, maybe I'm being too harsh. I'm certainly not bored, and obviously The Fades is still laying groundwork, but the marvelous opening titles suggest a show that's far more energetic, fun and compelling than what I've seen so far. I'm intrigued by things, and there are a few good moments and surprises to keep you happy, but I just want the clouds of mystery to dispel so we can start attacking this story head-on.

written by Jack Thorne / directed by Farren Blackburn / 28 September 2011 / BBC Three

TV Ratings: THE FADES (BBC3) & FRESH MEAT (Channel 4)

BBC3's new supernatural drama The Fades started its six-week run with 732,000 viewers on Wednesday night at 9pm, making it the third most popular free-to-air digital programme on Wednesday night, just behind BBC3's War Of The Worlds (746k) movie and a repeat of Benidorm (850k) on ITV2.

Later at 10pm, Channel 4's new student comedy Fresh Meat (above), from the writers of Peep Show, launched with 1.5m viewers, rising to 1.6m if Channel 4+1's audience is included. This beat Channel 5's Big Brother (1.32m), BBC2's Never Mind The Buzzcocks repeat (1.1m) and Newsnight (600k), but wasn't enough to triumph against BBC1's comedy panel show Ask Rhod Gilbert (1.69m).

But both shows did well considering they're brand new. Word of mouth may help increase ratings in week 2, especially if the majority of the target youth audience are catching up later in the week.

Review: THE FADES, 1.1

written by Jack Thorne; directed by Farren Blackburn
starring Iain De Caestecker, Johnny Harris, David Kaluuya, Natalie Dormer & Tom Ellis

Having found huge success with Being Human (which even resulted in a lucrative US remake this year), and perhaps half-inspired by the grittier success of E4's urban superhero drama Misfits, The Fades marks BBC3's next foray into the subgenre of the youth-skewed horror-fantasy, co-produced with BBC America.

Created by Jack Thorne (Skins, This Is England '86), The Fades uses the familiar hero's journey as a backbone, focusing on social pariah Paul (Iain de Caestecker), a 17-year-old bed-wetter who's been having disturbing apocalyptic nightmares of an ash-covered wasteland where a geyser spews a strange, dazzling energy. One day, while snooping around a derelict shopping centre with his geeky best-friend Mac (Psychoville's Daniel Kaluuya), Paul encounters a delirious man called Neil (Johnny Harris), whom he witnesses being attacked by a naked, skinny creature in a dark corridor. Henceforth, Paul is drawn into a strange underworld when Neil recognizes the boy's ability to see ghosts (colloquially known as "Fades").

When you get down to it, there's not actually much here that hasn't been done many times before, in various forms. It's a fairly standard idea to have a young hero with a supernatural gift, who's recruited by a mysterious people fighting a clandestine war against Evil. Remember ITV1's appalling Demons? But what it lacks in originality it just about makes up for in style. Thorne's background is with realistic teen dramas, and The Fades brings some of This Is England '86's production aesthetic to his story. The nighttime world is stained by amber street lamps, and there's a fun weirdness to everything. Even the local newsagent was born a thalidomide baby, so has undeveloped short arms.

What let The Fades down was a growing feeling that, while agreeably mysterious for awhile, you soon found yourself suspicious the script's trying to conceal the fact it's just a relatively straightforward teenage Sixth Sense with some Clive Barker-esque visuals. The first episode is focused on explaining the show's big premise, but it did so in a rather confusing manner at times. This much we do know: The Fades are ghosts who haven't crossed over to the afterlife, who turn to dust when they're walked through by organic matter, so tend to haunt places with few humans (like rooftops or abandoned buildings). There's the suggestion that both planes of existence are going to converge, which will be bad news for the living, but not everything's very clear at the moment. We know there are humans with special powers who aim to stop this apocalypse from happening, like Neil's friend Anna (This Life's Daniela Nardini), a vicar who can heal people with glowing palms. One of the best scenes involved Anna extracting poison from Neil's infected eye, with the venom seemingly being transformed into a moth that crawled out of Anna's mouth after the procedure. There were actually quite a few sequences that had some visual flair and wit to them, which helped keep interest levels above average. In particular the fantastic opening titles (in many ways more exciting than the show itself), the creepy abandoned shopping centre, and a final Harry Potter-esque sequence where various lonesome spirits were found wandering in a forest looking for a place to "ascend".

It's perhaps too early to really know what The Fades is all about, but there was enough goodness here to draw me back for more. Iain de Caestecker is good in the lead as Paul, despite his character being very clichéd (the outsider with a dead father who just wants to be rid of a supernatural gift, who meets with a psychiatrist every week to talk about his mental state); Kaluuya was far better than he was allowed to be in Psychoville, although I hate the trope that all geeks can't resist name-checking movies every minute; Harris gave the standout performance as Neil, being such a compelling actor who attacks every script with gusto; and I enjoyed Sophie Wu's subtle performances as idiosyncratic schoolgirl Jay, Paul's love-interest. Less interesting was history teacher Mark (Miranda's Tom Ellis), whose estranged wife Sarah (The Tudors' Natalie Dormer) is missing presumed dead—whom we know was helping Neil track Fades before she was killed in action. Did Mark know his wife could see the dead? Was Sarah having apocalyptic dreams like Paul while living with Mark? Hopefully we'll get some clarity soon, as this was one area I don't think the first episode did a particularly good job explaining.

Still, the show's aesthetic was rich and the premise is something I'm hoping will go down interesting and unforeseen avenues, even if there's little that feels unique. I have a feeling The Fades will take a few episodes to come together, and it'll either be a style-over-substance wasted opportunity, or a compelling supernatural drama that breathes new life into hoary ideas. As of right now, I thought it was good and had some promising elements, but I wasn't completely won over because of some confused elements and the occasionally sluggish pace.

Asides

• The Fades shares some similarities with Sky Living's recent supernatural drama Bedlam. Skins actress Lily Loveless, playing Paul's twin sister Anna, even appeared on that show.
• If you're not already aware, actress Natalie Dormer recently signed on for season 2 of HBO's Game Of Thrones, playing Margaery Tyrell.

21 September 2011 / BBC Three

'The Fades' taking shape for BBC3

Iain De Caestecker & Daniel Kaluuya

A BBC press release confirms that BBC3's new supernatural drama The Fades (previously known as Touch) has started filming. The six-part series, written by Jack Thorne (Skins, This Is England '86), concerns a young man called Paul (River City's Iain De Caestecker) who's haunted by apocalyptic dreams and starts seeing spirits (or "fades") in his everyday life; phenomena his best friend and therapist Mac (Psychoville's Daniel Kaluuya) struggles to help him cope with.

Jack Thorne, on show's origin:

"The Fades was born from a trip into executive producer, Sue Hogg's office -- she asked me what drama of the last ten years I wished I'd written -- I said the American cable show Freaks & Geeks -- I was wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt, she said 'what about Freaks & Geeks meets Ghostbusters'. And I smiled and nodded enthusiastically. But the further we've gone along, and it's been five years since that meeting, the more seriously we've taken the fantasy and the mythology and so the comedy is subtler and a newer, fresher, hopefully more exciting show has emerged. I feel so lucky to be part of the team that's bringing it to the screen -- everyone from our location manager to our FX supervisor are so committed and we have such an amazing cast -- I'm quite literally in dreamland right now."

Kate Harwood, BBC Controller of Drama Series & Serials:

"The minute I read Jack Thorne's script I realised we were in exciting new territory. This is a vision of great imagination and I am thrilled that we have such a talented cast and that we have director Farren Blackburn and a brilliant team who can bring this vision to life... or half life!"

The Fades will co-star Miranda's Tom Ellis (a teacher suspected of killing his missing wife), This Is England '86's Johnny Harris (a mentor when it comes to tackling the forces of darkness), This Life's Daniel Nardini (a woman with an extraordinary ability), Skins' Lily Loveless (Paul's twin sister Anna), Ashes To Ashes' Claire Rushbrook (Paul and Anna's mum), Theo Barklem-Biggs (a policeman), Day Of The Triffids' Jenn Murray and Kick-Ass's Sophie Wu.

The Fades will arrive on BBC3 later this year, as a co-production with BBC America.