Posted 12/19/2024
having been a fan of Pentiment, i remember Josh Sawyer mention on twitter that Cadfael and Name of the Rose served as inspirations for the game. a short time after that after my grandpa had passed away, i found Name of the Rose in the stack of books that were being cleared out of storage. i took it home and then remembered that physically reading books is hard for me, so i got the audio book off the libby app and i read it in less than a week.
Name of the Rose is a fantastic book and also focuses on mysteries and murders that occur around a monastery to be solved by outsiders. it provides a contemplation about religion and a personal place within it, something also found in Pentiment. i highly recommend the book and i kind of want to read it again.
i didn't touch Cadfael though, its a tv show so it struck that wall in my brain about watching shows.
i say i dont watch a lot of tv shows or movies. the truer answer is that i don't watch a lot of modern or currently airing tv shows or recent movies. i can say a lof of them don't interest me, but also there's fundamentally a different approach to the art form that was done in years past to how it is done now, whether through the transformation of craft… or through the limitations imposed upon by our shite capitalist structure and vampiric media industry.
i think the truth is though is that in all forms, i really do prefer episodic, serialized media. i want to be able to pick up and put down any piece of media and come back to it when i am ready. i'm a Sherlock Holmes freak, the idea of something you can understand the premise of and then run with whatever is the plot of the week. this is what i'll cite as the success of things like x-files or CSI, even Columbo. from the opening scenes you understand the names of the characters, the presentation of the premise from zeitgeist or through inference in the show, and then the plot of the episode gets rolling.
because of how limited the number of episodes that tv shows can get now a days that aren't just more runs of a longstanding pillar of a tv station, most episodes end up being about the overall plot of the show. i'll cite Only Murders In the Building as something else i've been watching recently with some friends, but entire seasons are used to unravel the mystery and at a point i do get exhausted with watching it even if i want to know what happens next.
a single episode as a single unit of media to be consumed, is my favorite. the amount of time used to tell the story is a lot shorter so it has to get smarter and more concise, for better and for worse. but i sure don't get exhausted with a plot if i watch more than one episode in a row because the three act structure always has to play out whether the show wants to or not because thats what audiences of the era are expecting.
anyway, Cadfael.
i started watching Cadfael last week and watched all the episodes in 3 days. i sat on it for 4 days, and then couldn't stop thinking about it so i started watching it all over from the beginning again. its fucking awesome.
Cadfael is a tv show about a Benedictine monk named Brother Cadfael in 12th century Shrewsbury, England, based upon a series of books by Ellis Peters, aka Edith Mary Pargeter. Brother Cadfael is a worldly monk, once a solider and sailor, only having entered the cloister in his 40s. he's Shrewsbury Abbey's herbalist and oft medical examiner. there are many murders and deaths that occur within the vicinity of Sherwsbury, and only he is the one equipped in order to solve them. every episode of the tv show follows the plot of a book of the same name (save for one episode apparently that doesn't follow the plot of the book at all), all 90 minutes long.
i'll talk about Cadfael again some other time, but that show is enchanting to appeal to my special interest in Benedictine monks. every episode is great, Derek Jacobi who plays Cadfael puts in amazing performances in ever episode, it kills me that only 13 episode were ever made, but it makes easy to just rewatch them, huh?
in one of my "things ive been listening/watching recently" posts i talked about "The Prisoner's Dilemma" podcast, about The Prisoner. i said that i would eventually watch it before the podcast concludes. i got to the episode about the episode "The General" before the content relayed to me by Brendan and Matthew convinced me i should watch the show. at the start of the episode, Brendan is not really sold on "The General" as a narrative and Matthew doesn't share that position, but Brendan at least sounds like he eventually comes around to feeling more positive about it in the end.
The Prisoner is a tv show starring and created by Patrick McGoohan, of Danger Man fame (also i learned he did a lot of work on Columbo, and it feels like The Prisoner and Columbo do share some DNA). The Prisoner stars McGoohan in the role of a man only ever called "Number Six" as after he resigns from his job, presumably MI6, is drugged and kidnapped and finds himself in a place only called "The Village". The Prisoner chronicles Number Six's attempts to escape The Village or combat with the trials posed to him by the apparent leader of The Village, Number Two.
i watched the first episode of The Prisoner, and honestly i think Brendan and Matthew undersell how fucking scary Rover is as an entity in the Village.
The Prisoner is a really fascinating piece of art, and i would not hesitate to call it that. The Prisoner feels like a puzzle box that you keep turning in your hands to try to understand, every episode a single side of the box that you witness to try to understand the mechanisms of the internals so that you can open it.
i haven't finished watching The Prisoner, and The Prisoner's Dilemma hosts haven't reached the end of the original run of the 17 episodes either.
the thing is, i don't know if i will ever be able to open the puzzle box called The Prisoner, but that's attractive isn't it? that's what contributes to fanworks, the time in between able to be explored, understood, theorized, and discussed. answering everything in the end is not conducive to producing fanworks. after the first episode of The Prisoner, i wanted to draw McGoohan's face, but more than that i wanted to draw a comic about The Prisoner, something that i haven't felt like doing about anything in a long time because there felt like so many places that my own creativity could fill in the gaps, to supplement my own understanding.
i've watched 5 episodes now, within the same day, and this show gets in your head because of how few things it answers. there's a strength that those 5 episodes had of carrying "a plot" full of surreal things that you have to just accept because getting caught on the logic nail will just halt you dead. but, i'd argue, there aren't many things to get caught on because the entire premise already asks you to suspend your disbelief of the situation that Number Six is placed in. at the start of an X-files episode do you remind yourself that Mulder is an idiot for thinking that aliens are real when within the text of the show the characters are presented with evidence and situations that not even the you viewer have a real world explanation for? suspension of disbelief is a very strong narrative tool that is used a lot in The Prisoner and i fucking love it.
The Prisoner is also episodic, with in place of some kind of opening sequence it plays out the opening of the first episode where Number Six drives a stupid little car around London(? i think), drives to his boss's office, slams down a resignation letter, a machine elsewhere files his photo away into a file cabinet labeled "resigned", Number Six goes home and starts packing his bags presumably to go on a vacation, then his home starts filling with gas and he passes out, and finally he wakes up in the village and runs around where we are introduced to this episode's Number Two.
also, the designation and actor of Number Two changes to a new person every episode, even sometimes within a single episode. in the first episode two different people play Number Two with the change between them acknowledged but not fully explored because there are more pressing matters to address (like Number Six trying to escape).
i've talked about this to coworkers and friends, but they really don't make tv like they used to. there's a lot of reasons for it, but the X-files ran for what, 8? 9? seasons? right now, its lucky if a tv show even gets 2. or if they even get more than 10 episodes.
serialization and spaced out releases feel intrinsic to the rise of tv as a medium within the 90s and 00s, at least in the US where i live. it became a phenomenon to know how the story progressed in the new episode of Lost (a tv show i have not watched) and watch the performance of your favorite on American Idol (my first concert ever was going to an American Idol tour concert. it was bad. and i did not want to be there lol).
what i feel like is a really important factor is time. we did not binge tv shows until streaming services, having to wait until when the network released the next installment. it made it harder for continuous narratives to thrive as well, but it made episodic media fucking thrive in a way it could not otherwise.
i don't think the magic is lost, even when my modern viewing habits lead me to watch more than one episode per day. i mentioned "fatigue" in keeping up with a long running plot. is it good that my energy and attention can move with the ebb and flow of a single episode, and then ready myself again in the span of the 2 minutes used to play the ending credits? i don't know, but i feel like i've come to dislike the "skip intro", "skip recap" and "skip credits" buttons on stream players. i want to experience this as seamlessly as possible, what is the full broadcast (a lofty word when applied to today's tv) intention of the show?
i've watched the opening sequence to all 5 episodes of The Prisoner when it came up. i admittedly skipped the credits because it felt superfluous and it would just play the opening song again but instead of seeing McGoohan's pretty face being smug i had to look at basically the still image of a penny farthing for 2 minutes.
a minor thing, i grew up when tv started following film and moved away from a 4:3 screen ratio to the current standard of 16:9. i will not deny that i have a nostalgia for the 4:3, but there is a magic i feel that happens in the framing of a shot in The Prisoner. how does the camera move and follow Number Six as he moves around an ostensibly real space, like the main fairway of The Village, versus the command room that Number Two occupies, a strange circular place that makes the audience feel off balance with its construction? there is an artistry there i think. my roommate argued that establishing shots are better well executed in 16:9, and i will agree, but i will favor intentionally designed spaces fit into a smaller frame will win my affection far more than a 16:9 shot showing me a scenery and expecting me to be "awed" by an expanse of space.
tv is so different now.
if you've made it this far to read my diatribe about tv and the shows Cadfael and The Prisoner, please go watch them. they're really fucking good pieces of tv media.
thanks for reading
oh also, if you're playing Pokemon Pocket, add me as a friend if you want, my friend code is 4939-1478-8201-5600. how about that new expansion huh.