The Watch - ‘Bodyguard,’ Plus Classic Albums As the New Comic Books | The Watch (Ep. 302)

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the news that Disney shut down production on the stand-alone ‘Boba Fett’ Star Wars movie (3:32) and the idea of basing movies or TV shows on albums (18:37). Then they recap the first episode of the British TV show ‘Bodyguard,’ starring Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes (29:29). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Rigger.com and joining me on the other line, he's just been assigned to the Home Secretary. It's Andy Greenwald! Woo! How you doing? I heard you, your vocal cords are suffering from all this podcast and you're doing. I think it's just like I'm getting to that point in my life where all of my livens catching up with me. Wow, it is true. It is true. The moneymaker is getting affected. I'm so sorry, buddy. It's okay, man. It's great to hear from you. It's Monday. Andy Weird today are going to talk. talk about the first episode, and I know that a lot of people, they love to have been to shows, and they're probably already done this thing, and at least gotten halfway through it, if not.

But we're going to talk about the first episode of Bodyguard, and we'll continue probably to talk about it throughout the next week or two. The new show on Netflix starring Richard Madden, who you may remember as Rob Stark from Game of Thrones. Really interesting show out of England, probably the most popular show, English show in a long time. I checked this, Chris. It has just pure viewers, the most number of viewers of any British television show in 10 years. That's wild. What was the next one?

I don't know. Do you want to know what the number is? Is it something like Hollyoaks Christmas special? It was lunch with the vicar. Yeah, EastEnders going down the off-license episode. 200,000 people watched The Bodyguard. I think that's most of England. My numbers are slightly off.

It was over like almost 11 million people watched this show. Yeah, it was a lot of people watched this. We're going to talk a little bit about bodyguard. Did you make an off-license joke? This is great. I did. I'm going to go deep today. Because I knew you've been in the bunker, quite literally, editing Briar Patch for the last

couple of weeks. So I know that you're kind of behind on some news. So I thought I would just throw out some of the more, you know, it's been a pretty dark time. But I thought I would throw out some relatively interesting entertainment business news for you to react to. I just want to say I appreciate that. I also appreciate you and the rest of the squad holding me down. last couple weeks, I've been in and out. Chris is absolutely right. I have not consumed any media,

I think, for two weeks, which makes me an ideal co-host for a twice-weekly pop cultural podcast. But over the weekend, I did say that I probably had about 60 minutes free. What should I do with it? And Chris, with the strength of the three lions behind him, recommended bodyguard. So I appreciate that. But I am always ready to just pipe off on some system opinions about things that I'm not. last night where you and I were texting back and forth about the 1998 Phillies, and I was like, oh, no, I wonder if this is going to be like why he didn't watch bodyguard. It's because he was looking up Greg Jeffrey's splits from June of 98. I was a believer in, I was a believer in Mike Leberthal since the day he was drafted. I was a big Glanville guy too. We were talking about

Doug Landville. This is probably the least interesting podcast ever recorded. Let's get into some Star horse talk. There's a couple of things I want to talk to you about. One was something that went, I thought largely unremarked upon last week, which was that Disney shut down pre-production, or at least is officially

shut down. I don't even know if they'd gotten to pre-pro on James Bangle's Boba-Fet movie, which you know, is further suggests that that kind of, that storyline, the Bounty Hunter storyline, will probably be a part of John Favreau's live action Disney over

the streaming service television show. The Mandalorian. And I thought it was interesting more because you and I have been watching the kind of tea leaves of the Star Wars cinematic universe for a couple of years now. And it does seem like even if just in the current moment, they are ramping down production on these anthology stories. Without question and with good reason. I mean, I don't know if we ever revisited this after we mostly panned solo this summer. But, you know, all these numbers are always fudged and they are always loose. There's an general estimate that Solo cost Disney.

It was a 50 to $80 million loss. That is, you know, close to one-third of what they spent on that movie, by the way. They spent close to $300 million on that movie. I think you're going to say that's close to one-third of their Sweet Green's budget for a week. But that's true, too. I mean, the scale at which all these things are operating is so insane. You know, when we were railing on Solo was like, just do the Kessel Run, man. You know, like you do the small version of the big movie and then you can potentially make the money back and actually make something good.

They spent $300 million on it. So their whole planning, I think, was called into question. And correctly, they started shutting down these ancillary movies because I don't, there's really no evidence that people wanted them, right? Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I think that there was a hope that the anthology movies would be a little bit of a playground for directors to show their different visions of the Star Wars world. and initially, I think when the script had come in for solo, it was very much going to be this space western, you know, and it was going to be the great train robbery in space,

and they had some elements of that for sure. And I think Ron Howard probably came back and imbued a little bit more of that original vision from the Kazdens in the final version of Solo, but it went through this Lord and Miller, let's try different versions of this on every take vision for the movie, and the Frankenstein Solo wound up disappointing a lot more people than it impressed.

I think that the idea that they can get away with letting people play in this sandbox is over, right? Like, John Favreau is the ultimate studio hand, and in a good way, he knows how to make entertaining fair, but you're not going to let James Mangal go all Logan on Boba Fett. You're not going to let Gareth Edwards do, you know, saving Private Ryan or Zero Dark 30 in space with Rogue One. They're going to recut these things. They're going to bring different directors in. they're going to have five, six versions of the screenplay. And that's what it is.

Yeah, I think you're right to say that they're not going to let Gareth Edwards do it, because as we've discussed many times when talking about Road One, they didn't. And at a certain point, the conventional wisdom that every director wants to get his hands on the Star Wars action figure, and notice I said his hands, because that seems to be the only type of director they're interested in servicing, at a certain point, that no longer really seems true, right? because it just, it seems like, I'm sorry, I know I'm quoting a recently deceased Octopus General, but it seems like a trap.

These are not movies to play with. These are movies, this is a whole franchise to be treated with kid gloves. And with extreme, you know, it feels extremely fragile all of a sudden, quite honestly. And you can see that in the conservative moves they've made since opening up the shop for business, including returning to J.J. Abrams after what I think was a successful outing with Ryan Johnson. but, you know, clearly was, I don't even know, I don't want to say problematic, but they don't appear inclined to let people chase their muse anymore with this stuff, you know, which, frankly, maybe they shouldn't have.

You know, I don't know. We've argued about this. We've talked about this. We've been excited about it. We've been disappointed by it. Ultimately, these are corporate decisions. And if you put on the corporate cap, I don't know what that cap looks like, some sort of bowler hat, perhaps, then they should never have let people play with their most valuable.

asset, right? They should have just delivered what they think people want in safe increments, and that appears to be what they're reverting to do. And I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Kathleen Kennedy, who is the one making these decisions, just re-upped to continue in her position for the next few years. So she will have a chance to course correct if that's really what this is. Yeah, and I think that they must have come up with some sort of multi-year plan for the franchise in general if that was the case, which, you know, they have been a little less forthcoming about even the bare bones. of where things are going than the Marvel universe was.

And in fact, I think Marvel actually did a very good job of salting the pot a little bit to be like, yeah, you know, and then in 2020, this is going to happen. Whereas Star Wars has been a little bit more like we're going to see where this goes. The people who are in Solo signed up for three movies.

They're probably not going to make them unless there's a really, really, really intriguing take on where to go with it next. Whereas, you know, the Marvel universe has been plotted out for the next probably five to nine years, right? I mean, that's the assumption. And perhaps even more importantly, that's the perception, right? I think Kevin Feigy appears to be completely bulletproof in the way that he makes his tea and his team makes movies. They really haven't taken a hit yet, you know? So, because they've all been hits. And that perception matters more than anything else because it keeps people signing up for these things. It keeps the media machine running and the cover stories and even people like us using them as the positive example. Who knows what's really going on behind the scenes? You know, I remember hearing about elements of the development of a DC movie. you know, and this is part for the course, I think, with these big pictures these days, where, you know, they have screenwriting teams competing to write better versions of each act of the movie.

I mean, it's almost antithetical to what we think of as a creative enterprise. And I'm sure Marvel does the same thing on some level. But if it works, then it works. And people only comment on the success. So the other half of this story is The Mandalorian, the John Favro television show, which has like an incredible lineup of directors, including Tycho Waititi and Deborah Chow, who did a really excellent episode of Better Call Saul this season. A couple of maybe.

I think she may even directing more than one. And this kind of, Disney's also now thinking about things in terms of how are they going to draw attention to this over-the-top app, which, I mean, they're not going to have to work too hard at it because they'll have the Disney library inside of it. You know, Fantasy and I talked a little bit on Friday about the closing of Filmsruck and more largely the shifting sands of media libraries and where they're being played. and how people are going to put walls around some of this stuff to say, okay, you know, we're not just going to, like, license this stuff out unless it's, like, a huge money driver for us. Instead, we're going to build our own services. I'm kind of curious, though, because there was another story that came up,

which was kind of one of those, like, gotcha moments where Steve McQueen was talking about widows, his new film that's coming out shortly. And he was just kind of like, I'm not going to do TV. Because in TV, I just feel like there's too much of it. It's too hard to make kind of an in-road there. you don't get to really make the thing you want to make. And then, you know, he was even talking about it as a viewer. He's like, I don't even know how people keep up with it

because you're being told, oh, you got to check out Ozark and you watch Ozark and it's just bad, breaking bad. He said, when you get Breaking Bad, it's amazing. But then you get Ozark, which is a rip off of that. It's unfortunate right now. There's so much money and so little ideas. The problem is when you have no money, you've got to think. I guess the larger question I wanted to ask you about was this

this interesting interplay between the quote-unquote television industry and the quote-unquote movie industry. Right. Some of the dissolving borders between the two, but also this kind of, if you're kicking, if we thought, oh, they're going to kick all the mid-tier, good ideas, adult dramas, they're going to get kicked to TV.

And then one of the things that I've been thinking about recently is I was kind of like, man, you know, I have a very efficient kind of top-10 list running right now for TV, and then there's a really big drama. drop off when it comes to anything that wasn't good. You know, there was, I think that there was like good TV this year, but the drop off is pretty significant, and the drop off a lot of the shows have the same problems,

which is that I don't know if the idea was fully cooked, and I certainly don't know if it was cooked specifically for a restaurant that serves television. It just started getting me thinking about some of these situations, some of these, the environment we're in right now, where we have identified television as like, well, this is where everybody can play, and this is where all the interesting stories live.

And then we've identified movies as, well, this is where franchise IP happens. But in fact, those two things are kind of collapsing now. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the, you've just picked up the thread that we were playing with when we were talking about the big push into genre fantasy stuff on television. That's right. A couple of weeks ago,

we did that fantasy recap thing, yeah. And all the big investments that Amazon is making and Netflix is making into these enormous, enormous, some quite old franchises. Part of that is thinking that when you speak about, movie franchises and IP factories, we've constantly said that the reason the Marvel movies are successful is because in many ways they're aping television, right, in terms of the continuing storyline and the way characters come in and come out and how everything is deeply, deeply

serialized. I don't know anymore, you know, and I say this from the depths of the editing bay where I'm trying to make something that I hope people will watch, but it's very, honestly, it's very confusing out there right now. I think that most things... Is that why you keep trying to put Boba Fett in your show? Well, here's the beauty of VizEffects. I could. And relatively little cost, except for the legal bills, once the Windows actually aired. I'm curious, before I say any more, what specifically you're talking about when you say,

if you're looking down your top 10 list, and I don't want to step on your top 10 list, because we do have our annual top 10 list sharing party festival podcast episode happening with the usual cranky guest. that's all scheduled that's going to happen. So I don't want to step on that. But I'm curious specifically what you mean when you get into the 7, 8, 9, 10 range of your list, what ingredients that are TV to you just aren't on the menu?

There's just, I think that I've been thinking a little bit about some of the Netflix shows and some of the conversations around Netflix movies and just the sheer volume of the stuff that's happening right now. And it's not that I think that there's anything particularly wrong with anyone in particular show, as much as you wonder whether or not movies being highly selective

and only making things that they think have viability for either a lot of awards or a lot of money, if not both. And TV kind of being like, give us everything you got. And you get something like Romanoffs, which has some intellectually stimulating passages thrown into what seems like, frankly,

like a wild, wild ego trip with no checks. and I'm just like, could this show have been like much more helped if it just had like commercial breaks, you know, and it got chopped up into more episodes or something happened here that was almost more like, let's have some checks and balances put in here? And then on the same time, I just think that the more you read about Apple and the more you read about some of the other services that are coming and how they're going to be drawing so much from their own libraries, I just wonder whether or not this idea of movies good or movies are where like superheroes are. TV is where all the real stuff happens is going to change. Well, look, I think you made a good example of the Romanoff's a show. I hope neither of us have watched, but we're going to continue to talk about. Complete, complete authority. In fact, I'm not even sure the show exists.

I have watched two episodes of it. Ah, damn. Oh, you're always ahead of me. I know. That is, this is movies. The thing about movies, believe me, everyone listening knows I'm the number one authority on the topic. There was a path, right, where, you know, certainly in the, 60s and 70s as the autore idea of American cinema came into full flower is that you would come up

with a scrappy, hungry kind of movie that made your name, and then they wouldn't be able to say no to you, and you would make your big movie. And sometimes that movie turned out to be Heaven's Gate, and then you didn't get to make another movie, right? But it was almost the cost of doing business, is that the studios would be on you, but you know, you'd either be scrapping outside the system, then you'd come into the system. But basically, if you prove something once, they couldn't stop you the second time. and they would make you pay for it after that. And honestly, like the Romanovs, it's not just the Romanoffs itself.

It's where Matthew Weiner was in his career coming off of Mad Men. And then where the industry was in terms of these enormous companies who have limitless cash wanting to lay down markers in terms of public perception. And in terms of not just public perception, but the industry saying, we're going to reward this great talent and we're not just going to reward it. We're going to take them off the board and let them do what they want to do. And now I would say they're paying the price for it. But, A, I have not seen the television show.

So do not trust me on it. But B, there's no such thing as a price, right? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much money Amazon spent on it or how much it loses or wins because there's no accounting for it, right? So that's, in that sense, I think TV has become movies. But it's also, it also feels absurdly inflated. Like in the 80s when everyone was all the, you know, everyone's on steroids,

the movies were jacked up and big and very aggressive. And then there was that whole thing when Sony bought Columbia Pictures, right? So there was all this foreign money just flooding the marketplace. That's kind of what it reminds me of when I see the press release. And again, Apple, their television department, just Italian chef's kiss, the best press releases. Frigan Steve Correll is in that morning show with Jennifer Anderson and Reese Witherspoon. We have this show, supposedly, that's going to run two seasons supposedly, about a book, except it's not really about the book. The book was a nonfiction book about NBC during the last dramatic kerfuffle involving the today's show.

So it's not really that. It's just sort of inspired by that world. It's already switched creator showrunners once, despite not having put anything on camera. Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston are committed to two seasons where they're each being paid a million dollars each. And then for the third lead,

why not get Steve Carell? Right? So it's just funny money and press releases. I don't know. You know, we constantly on this podcast, Marvel and wonder at this stuff. It honestly has no effect on the consumer except when they see it

think it's good or not, or it has an effect on the consumer if, you know, that, the financial disparity between an Apple who can just throw all of the money at these people, and not just in front of the camera, but potentially behind the camera and, you know, down the line, too, if that has a negative effect on lower budgeted shows or lower budgeted networks that people love. I have no idea. As far as I can tell people, just watch the Chicago shows, you know, I mean, on NBC. I, it really increasingly feels like we're just talking about two completely separate realities. Yeah, I guess you're right. You know, we talk a lot about intellectual property on this show. In fact, you know, it's basically like a national pastime for us. But for the most part, what we're referring to when we talk about that is people making television of movies out of previously made television movies, board games, video games, obviously novels, obviously comic books, a huge resource. Nobody ever makes movies or TV shows about albums. And that's why I think I was so surprised and interested to see that Luca Guadonino was talking about making his next movie to base it off of Bob Dylan's blood on the tracks.

This sounds incredible because he's a great director. It sounds like he wants Richard Lagravenez, who wrote behind the Candelabra and the Fisher King to write the screenplay. It's obviously an incredibly tormented, rich, interesting, and involving album about the dissolving of a romantic relationship. and it could be just, you know, it could be a dynamite movie. But I was wondering whether or not albums are the new comic books, man. Could we think of some albums that you would want to see made into movies?

Well, first of all, my first reaction to this is rolling my eyes very hard. Because you're like, why not make John Wesley Harding into a movie? But why is it always Dylan? I mean, the last one that, you know, there was the I'm Not There Movie, right? The Todd Haynes said a bunch of actors played Dylan. But I'm not talking about biographical films. I'm talking about basing it specifically off of an album. But what does that mean?

Like they're going to act out the lyrics, or this is inspired by what Luca thinks the album is about it? You just sound like a dude who's mad that he can't put Boba Fett in his television show, honestly. Listen, I just told you that I could, and now I feel like I will. But please, explain this to me. I have some thoughts. Boba Fett stars in the Blood on the Tracks movie. How about that?

Getting warmer? Is there a part of it? for Django Fet, or is that in the expanded universe? That's the expanded Dylan universe. That's when Jake Dillon shows up, and the wallflowers are actually in the same universe. Chris, just explain to me what you mean by a movie inspired by an album. Okay, so clearly you could set it during the time of the album itself. You're drawing from it thematically.

You can have all sorts of Easter eggs for the lyrics. You could have the album itself be the soundtrack. I'm going to let Luca and Richard Lagravonais decide all this stuff. I'm just saying that there is if you say hey here's a movie it's called Sergeant Pepper's

people probably be like what's that movie about you know what I mean they'll be like they'll be interested in it the whole point of intellectual property it started the

it started the Bee Gees and it was terrible I'm not yeah I know I'm saying we're trying to come up with the guy there's a movie about a guy named Sergeant Pepper and he's like a sad sergeant

and he's like when I'm 64 he's singing about that stuff by the way yours. You're just killing the Hollywood game today. All right, I'm only being difficult for one reason, which is the literal translation of albums and lyrics strikes me as a very, very, very bad idea. You know, I think that even in the case of so-called like rock operas or or, you know,

concept albums, the album is still the thing. And maybe it used to be with videos as well. Like, my chemical romance had a great album called The Black Parade. and I'm very happy that Gerard Way, who, you know, friend of the podcast, great creator in a number of mediums, he's, you know, now one of his, he writes comic books. One of the comic books is coming to Netflix next year, the Umbrella Academy. I'm very happy that he kept that idea as a musical idea just through videos because I think it wouldn't withstand the narrative scrutiny that we would put other types of stories through and it's better for it. But, but if you are talking about a move, towards making movies or TV shows

based on the sense reaction that we have. Use your imagination. I'm not talking about doing rock operas. I'm talking about making a late 60s LA movie called On the Beach. That would be dope. Okay, now I'm ready. Let's make a movie based on shootouts from it was written by Nas. Come on. Now I'm ready to have this conversation with you because I think that all writers of any type of medium have in their heads generally the sound of the thing they're doing

often before they do the thing. Or the vibe. Everything from this is based on a Steely Dan album or everything is based off of like a full specter album or something. Yeah. I knew what Breyer Patch sounded like before a year or two before we produced it and then we made it and it doesn't sound like that anymore because it's a different thing. But to get to the place to understand how you translate the emotion, the song is the thing. No question. So, I wrote down some thoughts for you. Okay. Because I prepare for podcast. That's all I wanted. That's all I wanted.

So here are four records that I would like to be taken, you know, I'd like to see them adapted in some form. For me, the white whale has always been Fleetwood Mac's rumors. Okay. What's the vibe?

So we know it's, there's a lot of heartbreak and cocaine. And going of one's own way. Yeah? I'm going to stop you there. I don't really understand what else you would need in a movie. Speaking of heartbreaking cocaine, I have two more albums that I would like to be turned into. Yeah.

Is this providing any insight into what the editing process is like going into week three? Chris, do you remember a record from a decade ago called The Fix by Scarface? Yeah, I do. Yeah, so I was listening to that record a lot again. recently. It's so good, but it is, and I used to hate this adjective when I was a music critic, but at this point, and in this conversation, it seems appropriate, it's super cinematic, and the character that he plays, and I feel like, look, Scarface is like, what is he 60? How old is this dude now? I think that he embraces the fact that he's playing the character. Yeah, that's his

unforgiven. That's his unforgiven. Exactly, exactly. You feel me. even when he come, even when the old gunslayer goes up to New York to record with the young bucks, right? To record with Kanye and Beamy Mac and Lachasy wasn't young. But you know what I'm saying. That album.

Okay. Now, that's the South version of it, the southern version of it, Houston, Texas version. What about, speaking of Friends of the Pod, what about powder burns by the Twilight Singers? Well, then, of course, if you're going to do a Greg Dooley album,

Black Love was sort of envisioned as a movie. Yeah. Yeah. And I think he may have written the screenplay about that. I think he talked about that when he came on the pod. But Black Love has that arc of a guy who's like basically like, this is my last night on the streets, on the edge of society, like, gun in hand, fur coat. It's very like this combination of like black exploitation and punk rock and, you know, subway trains rattling by. If you listen to it, it is told as a movie.

I also think that there is something that. that filmmakers and creative people are always chasing, especially now, especially because the world is apparently falling apart, a certain kind of, like, post-tech dystopia that is a default setting for a lot of filmmakers, a lot of big-budget filmmakers, and a lot of big-budget genre storytelling. And yet, when it's put into practice, somehow, maybe with the exception of, like, Strange Days, the Catherine Bigelow movie, and maybe a little bit of last, oh, was this year, it's Blay-Roy, runner sequel. Yeah. It kind of always ends up feeling like the rave scene in the second Matrix movie. So I wish people would revisit a favorite album of ours just purely for the sonic experience of it and what it might say about storytelling, which is primal screams 2000 album exterminator. Jesus. Yeah. Right? Yeah, that's right. It's kind of like that has like a mad max meets the stooges feel. Exactly. It sounds like the party that you're forced to

throw at the end of the world. And that pretty much, and it felt prescient then, and it feels weirdly appropriate now. Yeah, so I think my two would be on the beach by Neil Young, make it like a late 60s, early 70s, kind of Manson turnover into the

darkness of the 70s, although that is, by a large what, I think once upon a time in Hollywood, the next Quentin Tarantino movie is going to be about. Or specifically this one song off of it was written, but I think the storytelling on it was written the second Nass album is, you know,

really uniquely suited for a screenplay. And if I was really, really, really trying to just go full the raid with it, I would say Only Built for Cuban Links. Ooh. Yeah. And Only Built for Cuban Links also has kind of like a color palette already. And, you know, that cover has got that red and yellow feel, that spectrum right there, you know? That's the purple tape.

I mean, it's the purple tape, but the cover of the album is red and yellow. Yeah. Yeah. All right. man. Okay, great. Chris, I remember the color of the CDs that I used to buy. I remember.

I feel like we've got a couple good ideas there. All right. If you guys have ideas, hit us up at the Watchpot on Twitter. Maybe we'll talk about them on Thursday. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, and we'll be right back to talk about Bodyguard. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by ADT. ADT can design and install a smart home just for you backed by 24-7 protection.

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Take the keyboard off and draw on it easily or snap it back on and type on it like a laptop. With up to 13 and a half hours of battery life and the new 8th-gen Intel Core processor, You can work how you want to for as long as you want to wherever work takes you. All right, Andy, the bodyguard or bodyguard, as it is known. It was a very, very popular English show starring Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes. Netflix put it up last Wednesday.

I talked a little bit, actually, with Matthew McFadden about this on Friday's episode, Matthew McFadden, obviously Tom from Succession, Henry Wilcox from Howard's End, a veteran actor in England and in Hollywood. And we talked a little bit about how the English television industry and Hollywood are basically the same now, that there is really no lag between these things getting released. Little drummer girl came out last night in England. The first episode, it'll be up on, I think, Sundance in a couple of weeks, Sundance or MC, in like two weeks. So these things are no longer, like, in a year or two, you might get to see this cool British show. I mean, we're doing

co-productions. We are doing global releases now. So something like Bodyguard, which is a sensation in England, hits America pretty soon after the fact. I want to get your initial impressions off this first episode because I think because of its success, you can't help but watch it and be like, why was this so successful? Which is a different way to sort of watch a show, I think. I actually have a different take on it. I watched it. I watched the first episode because I'm old and old fashioned, I guess, not the whole thing.

And I immediately knew why it was successful. I mean, it actually connects quite well to the content. conversation we were having before the break about the mixed DNA movies and TV and what's what. This is TV. This is pure TV. This is slightly classier 24 with accents. And of course it's successful. You know, and it had that kind of delicious manipulation that if you are willing to give

into, you are probably going to be rewarded if you're in the hands of people who know what they're doing. And I say that with respect, but that's the type of level of entertainment that people like Shonda Rhymes and Ryan Murphy, people who not coincidentally received, you know, $100, million, deals in Netflix, that's what they do best. And for me and for I think for a lot of viewers who are just not just, it's not discerning, but limited in their time and tend to only invest in the highest quality, whatever, or what we perceive to be the highest quality, whatever.

the real question in watching a show like Bodyguard is, are you going to submit or not? And if you do, I think you'll probably have a better time of it. Yeah, I think that it's interesting that you brought that up because Bodyguard is what I was thinking about when I was asking an admittedly convoluted question about the crumbling boundaries between TV and movies, because I thought Bodyguard had some of the best elements of both.

And to open up your series with, I think, a 25-minute set piece, essentially, which is the suicide-bombering situation on the train, is a movie gesture. Like that doesn't happen usually in television shows. Usually in a TV show, that would be five minutes, and then it would get into his home life, and then it would get into his office life, and you would get through the 42 minutes or whatever.

This dedicates itself. It almost is working from it. This is going to be a six-episode season immediately uses the landscape in a different way than I think most television shows would. I don't think you would open up with something like that, but you learn a lot about the character in that situation still. I mean, it's got that economy,

that television economy, exposition that I think is useful where you find out what he does, you find out where he's been, you find out how he feels about where he's been, and you find out about the state of the world right there. Also, and this is a network note that I think is probably a smart one for television, you find out if you can trust him or not. You know, you find out if he's a hero or not. And despite the episodes feints in the other direction at the end of the hour, the first 10 minutes I've already told us what we need to know about this character. Yes. And I think the one thing that I would say, and I guess I do have some

I do think I have some anglophilia, residual anglophilia from being raised by an English man, but like I think... An English man who was your father he was my father. It wasn't like a Dickensian thing where like I was raised in a like by a chimney sweep. No,

I think I have like just a kind of benefit of the doubt that I give a lot of English TV, but I would say that this has way better, this is way better than it has any business being. The level of performance and the level of writing for what is essentially, like you said, 24, it's like a 24-style show, and it is even a little bit more procedural than 24 is. I mean, I think it's a little bit more straightforward, at least formally,

because 24 at least had the frantic kind of, is the world going to end every minute feeling to it and the compressed time. This just feels like a bunch of people who are almost overqualified to be, Keeley Haas is just an incredible actress. She doesn't need to play the Home Secretary, but like, even in these moments where it's like the trading shirts moment or her offering him the wine that's seen in her kitchen, there are these little human moments where really great actors are able to imbue not pedestrian moments, but genre moments with actual humanity. I guess so, and I don't disagree with you. I was impressed by the production, but I was also a little bit flattened by it.

It is an incredibly surface-y show, which again, there's something wrong with it. So is Grey's Anatomy. And Grace Anatomy does Grey's Anatomy really, really well. You know, everyone is a little too good looking. Everyone's hair is a little too perfect. When she opened her glossy refrigerator in that wine scene you're mentioning, there were like four cherry red tomatoes just perched on the edge of the shelf. You know, like, that's not a real person's refrigerator.

And these are the level of detail that I'm looking at now, because now that I've lived through set decoration and stuff, I know that someone was thinking about that choice or they weren't. And you go home and all you see are these grotesque tomatoes that have just been unused by you as you. Because I live here now, everything in my actual home is in decay. It's just like half a bag of goldfish and a fig Newton. This entire podcast is a cry for help.

So it's just a question of which you prioritize, right? Like are we championing little moments of humanity in a sea of gloss or vice versa? I think that for me, I thought that the opening was that level of delicious manipulation, you know, that even though you know that you know that. your lead character isn't going to be exploded in the first 10 minutes of the show. It was well directed. It was well-paced. It had enough misdirects to make it thrilling.

It's really well-made filmmaking. But I got to say, the young wolf, the young king in the north, seems a little bit overwhelmed here. I think that that's part of the plan, though. Maybe. I think he's very good at flexing his cheek on. Andy, I just want to have a shot.

I just want to have a chat, Andy. I call you have a chat. All he wants is to have a chat. It seems quite reasonable. I have to say he's not asking for too much. I also seems like she's like you've been drinking. And it seems like he has two bottles of cider in front of him. And if a guy has done time, like he's served in Afghanistan,

can he not like hang with more than two bottles of Magners? Also, again, please feel free as a Dickensian street urchin, born and raised. Maybe you have a better perspective on this. But in my experience in the UK, like two small bottles of export lager, that is not drinking in the UK. No, that's what I'm saying,

but he seems like he's just like, Mickey, I would have a bit of a taste of them. I'm on the last, lodd. He's hammered. He's a bit of a lightweight, you know? I guess so. I mean, I don't think, yeah, he's not, I don't know if he's the biggest chap,

you know, I think that might be part of it. But look, the other thing that kind of took me out of this show was the fact that it's called bodyguard. Now, you can take away the participle. But if you call something bodyguard, they're going to be boning, right? Like, that's what it's about. Am I wrong? Like, I only watched the first episode. So when it suddenly was like, he might kill her.

I was like, he's not going to kill her. They're going to fall in love. No, they're not. I mean, look, Kaya's looking at me because Kaya's watched most of this episode. There's obviously, I think this is a much twistier show. then maybe we're reading it as initially. I did not get the impression that this was a... Okay.

Then they need to call it something else. She's a hawkish government minister, and he's a peace-loven ex-soldier. Right. Record stretch. I feel good comes in. You'll never believe what happens next. I'm saying, you call something the bodyguard.

I will always love you starts playing in a loop in my brain, right? You've been so corrupted by IP, man. There is a movie coming out by Alex Ross Perry, very interesting filmmaker, who I think we're both fans of, starring Elizabeth Moss. And it's about a destructive young singer-songwriter in a band, played by Elizabeth Moss. And it's called Her Smell. If he had called it a Star is Born for the UK release, people would be confused, right? I think if you did that two months after a Star is released, yes, but you can still use the word bodyguard.

A lot of people have had their bodies guarded since Whitney Houston. Ask Kaya, is she familiar with the Kevin Kossner? Whitney Houston classic film The Bodyguard? No. There you go. What? Yeah. What is this world even?

What are you talking about? Kaya's just, she's like not beholden to the legacy of Kevin Kossner? Ask Kaya, who her three favorite. You can ask Kaya, she's listening to the podcast. Why do I have to relay this message? Go ahead. Honestly, after seven years of this, I didn't know our producers listened to it. And I wouldn't blame them if they didn't.

I always assume they're just listening to how to it. how did this get made and having a great time? What's your question? You answered it. She's never seen the film The Bodyguard. But I thought you had a second one. It was about Dickensian Street Urchin. Okay.

All right, we can take that one offline. All right, so Andy, I think I am a little bit more fired up about this show than you are. Because it's Netflix and because people can't help themselves, I don't think they need our in or out on this. Like, they're going to either keep going or they're not. And because it's six episodes, man, I think that people are really going to,

are going to really inhale this one, are you going to keep watching? Well, at the beginning of this podcast, you told people we would be finishing the series. I'll be finishing the series. I think you're only making cameo appearances at this point anyway, so I can just do a solo show where I'm like, it's me and then I'm interviewing my own impression of Richard Badden for 45 minutes. Wow. Wow, you really, I think you just doubled our subscriber base. Am I being written out of this? No, come on. I just check. I, um, yeah, I'll watch it because you know what I believe in and I believe in I believe in television phenomenons like I love that it's popular I love that there's still a version of a story

that is not necessarily original but is told in a way that grab people's attention you know that has just enough just enough seasoning of either current events or current thinking or challenging or complicated thinking to make it palatable and fresh you know that there there's a nimbleness to this and I know what you were saying when you were talking to Tom, which isn't his name, but I feel so salty. I couldn't be there for it. I'm going to call him Tom.

That there really is no difference between the TV industries anymore, and that's probably true. But you remember earlier this year we were talking about the, oh my God, I'm blanking out, the Carrie Mulligan show. Collateral.

The collateral, the David Hare wrote, because of the length of the series, it's worth the time. You know, it really feels like neither of these shows, neither collateral nor body. bodyguard are particularly experimental, but they do feel alive with possibility of trying things because you're going to get in, you're going to get out, and maybe you'll be surprised.

Maybe everyone involved will be surprised, let alone in the audience. I guess the thing that I was talking about with, like, it seems it's got, it's better than it has any business being is that this show gives me the same feeling I got when I first started watching the fall or when I saw the first season of Broadchurch, which is like, this is pretty recognizable material rendered in a way that is just by like true professionals of what they're doing. So here's the follow-up question is, I guess I was going to say, why isn't anyone? And maybe the question is better phrase more positively, like, is someone, is someone at Netflix and Amazon paying attention to this?

Because these types of shows seem much more sensible for them to be investing not even tens of millions of dollars in to make rather than very, very niche ego trips like the Romanovs. Again, a show I have not watched. But you get what I'm saying? I mean, Netflix, I guess, has the best of both worlds because that's where you can see collateral and the fall and bodyguard. But where is the marketplace? And I'm sure there's a marketplace-based reason

why this doesn't exist, but I'm curious to have it. I think the problem is right now. Why isn't there an American version of this where there are American TV creators who say, instead of thank you, thank you for your generous offer of remaking, you know, Fellowship of the Ring for $500 million. Instead, I'll take 15,000,

million dollars and I'll make five episodes of a medical drama or of a cop show or whatever and we'll see how it goes. So you're saying the problem with New Amsterdam is that there's too many episodes, but if it was just six episodes, it would be the greatest, greatest show in the history of time. I'm not saying it would be, but the central idea of that show, from what I understand, seems to be what if the white supremacist from Black Klansman was ornering? And, you know, that's a million dollar idea right there. No, the central premise, right, is that, something like a guy takes over a hospital and is like, and he's like, let's revolutionize

healthcare from within. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're, I think. Okay. I haven't seen. That's not a bad idea. It's just an idea. And it's where you pivot the idea. So if you, I think, I honestly think so. That's a good example for it.

Instead of making that an open-ended 22 episodes a year going for the largest possible slice of the audience pie, you take that idea to Netflix or Hulu and you say, I'm going to make five episodes. And it's not only is a lot more, interesting, it seems more cost-effective, and then you can extend it because there's no question that will be more bodyguards. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, this is all... Chris, I solved it. You got it. We got all the way, we threw a 45-minute pod and then we saw television.

Greenwald, I'll talk to you on Thursday. Am I right? Did you ever read Bleak House? I was never like super into Dickens and can I tell you why? Yeah, I think this is the place for it. At a young age, when I found out that, that he was like paid by the word? I was like, this is bullshit. Aren't you glad no one ever found that about us when we wrote for spin? But they didn't let us rate more than 300 words.

If I was getting that Dickens rate, I would have written a 400-page book about the Everclear album, but I didn't, you know? In the early days, I think you did. And then our friend John Dolan was like, no, no, I only need 200 of these words. That's right. That's right. Okay, Andy, so we'll talk on Thursday.

there's a lot of good stuff coming, and we might chat a little bit more about Bodyguard on Thursday, and I would like to chat a little bit about homecoming, which debuts this week, our buddy Sam Asmel's show. Chris, I appreciate you've always been a quality over quantity guy. I do. Bye, buddy. Do you want to say it in an Irish accent?

Vicki! I just wanted to have a chat about the Boranskis. That's Irish. What am I doing? Goodbye, Mom. Goodbye. Goodbye, Bernskis. Bye, buddy.

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