The BBC must be hoping no one watches this duff Discworld dog's dinner
Mid August when everyone is away is TV’s version of a good day to bury bad news, which must be why the BBC have snuck The Watch (BBC Two) into the schedules. This loose adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels went out on BBC America at the beginning of the year and has been available on iPlayer since the beginning of last month. It’s not immediately clear why it is now being granted a terrestrial berth – presumably something contractual – because Pratchett fans will already have watched it, for good or ill. For everyone else it might have been better if The Watch went unseen.
If you ask people in television why such-and-such was a hit they’ll tell you about magic in a bottle, alchemy and happenstance. It works both ways - you can have a top-notch ensemble of actors, great source material and a healthy budget, and yet still extrude a proper stinker. It’s certainly the case with The Watch, which assembles so many great ingredients – Richard Dormer, Anna Chancellor, Ruth Madeley and Paul Kaye working in Pratchett’s fictional city of Ankh-Morpork and playing out a CSI-style punk police drama under the stewardship of the usually excellent director Craig Viveiros – and yet serves up a dog’s dinner.
Dormer plays Sam Vimes, Captain of the City Watch, the anarchic city’s police force which, owing to criminals having been organised into professional “Guilds”, has nothing to do. Vimes is an alcoholic waster, but, inevitably, a waster with a heart. He has made the Watch into a safehouse for loners and misfits who he has brought under his wing. They soon find themselves with a mission that finally gives the Watch purpose. It’s something to do with finding a missing library book and an illicit drug called Slab, but there, I confess, my interest parted ways with my intellect and I completely lost the thread.
This would be a dereliction of duty in a TV critic were it not for the fact that The Watch has no central thread. In trying to channel Pratchett’s love of whimsy, irony and bad jokes, it ends up a complete tonal hash. Vimes is a lead who Dormer plays like a cameo, his face contorting like he’d bitten into a stealth chilli. The world of Ankh-Morpork is vividly created, but nothing that happens in it is in the least bit compelling. The dialogue is cliched, the comedy-drama less drama-dy than co-ma. I would make another joke about not watching The Watch – but I suspect that’s why they put it out now, best soon forgotten.
