Friday, July 28, 2006
Pure Shameless Mule Walking
Now don't ask me how my mind works or what brings me round to thinking these things. Pure Mule was probably the best bit of serialised television drama our national broadcaster has contributed to the airwaves. Some might quote Paths To Freedom or Batchelor's Walk but I was never very impressed. Now Pure Mule wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but it certainly had a lot going for it. So what's my point? Well, when I google a show like Shameless, I get a channel4 microsite dedicated to the show, a wikipedia entry, an imdb page and a section on BBC America - all on the first page of results. Pure Mule gets an imdb page and this. No episode guides, no character biogs, no background, no interaction - just an outline of the last episode of the series. Now I'm sure there's plenty of effort made to sell the show abroad at all the markets and such but, considering the extent of the Irish diaspora alone, you'd think somebody might avail of the chance to create a bit of a buzz around the show. There are plenty of people in the States or in Oz who would have gotten a kick out of Pure Mule, if anyone really made an effort to tap into the market. We've just made a short film (I might have mentioned that before) and we've already set up a blog to promote it and chart it's progress. Plus we've no intention of just stopping there. That's just what we feel we need to do for our five minute animation. How can someone let a whole series slip by without taking advantage of all this relatively cheap promotion? You see the girl in the image above, her names Charlene McKenna. She's a talented actress, not to mention quite pleasing on the eye, but I had to put in so much effort to find out her name, I feel like she should be taking a restraining order out against me. I will add here that The Lisa Richards Agency isn't at fault here, it's just entirely because my only point of reference was Pure Mule.
6 Comments:
Fair comment Bif, but all the same, Pure Mule, as well as the other productions you mentioned, lacked immediacy, integrity and relavance.
It was a show about 'working class' people written and produced by an upper class crew.
And that's the problem with these so called true to life programmes-they're not true to anybody's life.
They look good to middle class audiences only because they show a slice of life the middle class can feel comfortable with.
That's the whole dichotmy of media production-jobs for the boys, a self supporting, self important industry massively subsidised by state taxes etc.
I would expand Bif, but right now I'm heading out to have a good time on the Reeeperbahn in Hamburg.
Zion!
Pure mule wasn't entirely about working class people. It was about a midlands town and did get alot of that right. To the best of my knowledge the writer was from that sort of background and has written a number of plays centred around it. It wasn't perfect but showed signs of moving in the right direction. Beats Fair City, at least.
Either way my point was that anyone making television today should be making the most of the available tools to promote it. And alot of that lies with the jobs for the boys culture, as you mention.
Pure Mule represents a new dawn of Irish TV drama. Far from the 'send it to the BBC' days of Father Ted, RTE are increasingly aware of the atractiveness of born and bred drama. Pure Mule has an epic value that only comes with greatness. 'My names Bomber and I drop bombs' ... no truer words! The stuff of legend.
JP
I wouldn't quite go that far but it was definetly a step in the right direction. But what people have to start realising is that thre is an international market to be exploited and they shouldn't just resting assured in the knowledge that RTE will commission another series.
Martin seems to have very high standards. Is this want you demand of television - immediacy, integrity and relevance? How can you achieve these? I'd agree that they are central to decent television. However I disagree that Pure Mule is some kind of smug, calculated middle class project, carefully crafted to appeal to a demographic.
Eugene O Brien's (writer of Pure Mule) play 'Eden', 2001, possessed these characteristics. Much of this was due to the fact that it was theatre. He seems to be a writer simply intent on exploring and writing strong contemporary drama.
He attempts to make this leap of visceral drama onto the small screen. Of course they're not entirely true to anyone's life, it's bloody television. And it's not a sanitised working class set. It's simply a group of characters of a vague rural/urban contemporary background playing out a magnified set of events. What would you like Martin, the Royale Family without the humour? A live 24 hour Eastenders following Ian Beales every move?
Anyway I thought it was good enough. And I disagree with your analysis.
Tah.
I actually watched through again recently and was quite impressed by how it improved in the later episodes.
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