Titanic: Blood and Steel

Starring: Kevin Zegers, Liam Cunningham, Alessandra Mastronardi, Derek Jacobi, Neve Campbell, Chris Noth, Billy Carter, Ophelia Lovibond, Branwell Donaghey, Martin McCann

Creator: Ciaran Donnelly

Genre: Drama, Historical, Miniseries

Rating: C

I have really mixed feelings about this show.  On the one hand, it wasn't poorly acted and a lot of elements of the plot were actually really interesting.  I enjoyed the ongoing labour and religious disputes between the different levels of people building the Titanic.  The struggles of protagonist Mark Muir (Zegers) are really interesting too, both in terms of his personal and work life.  That having been said, however, Titanic: Blood and Steel has very little to do with the Titanic, despite being about the boat.  It misrepresents history in such a way that I can't help but feel it's rather an insult to the real history here.  To the real people who built the Titanic.

Titanic: Blood and Steel is not your traditional Titanic show.  Rather than focus on the events of the sailing and its disastrous ending, Blood and Steel looks at the building of the ship and the people who invested in it before its maiden voyage.  Here we see some of the classic figures in a Titanic story, the big names that we've come to know - Thomas Andrews (Carter), J.P. Morgan (Noth), and Lord Pirrie (Jacobi).  What takes more of a focus, however, than these actual people, is the account of the very fictional Dr. Mark Muir, an Irish immigrant and American engineer who specializes in studying steel.  We also see struggles of the Irish steelworkers, lead by the McCann brothers, Michael (Donaghey) and Conor (McCann), and the Italian artisans, who worked on the boat.

Once again, the thing that really got me here was how much the focus was on highly fictionalized events.  Blood and Steel was at its best when it was looking at the very real problems that Titanic had to overcome in her making, and at its worst when it was focused on Mark complaining about the impurities in the steel.  If this series is to be taken seriously, then it's to be believed that it was these impurities that caused the Titanic to sink and 1,502 people to die, and not the whole hitting an iceberg.  In my opinion there are a lot of really interesting stories that can be told about the Titanic, both during its building and its sailing, that look a lot more at the actual history of the boat.

That being said, I don't think you need to use real people when constructing a work of historical fiction.  There is that "fiction" element to it, and it can be a lot easier to use fictional characters to depict real events.  James Cameron's Titanic is a great example of how this can happen, and I think the other miniseries out this year from the minds of Nigel Strafford-Clark and Julian Fellowes is another good example.  Both works use a basic story that we already know in order to tell us a new story.  They interweave characterizations of real people, that are largely based on documentation about them, and fictional characters, and base it around one very real event.  Jack and Rose were not in themselves real, but the way their story is told gives us an idea of the real Titanic.  Neither Jack nor Rose are elevated in their importance, they are very much the everyman type character (although, in the case of Rose, with a highly elevated class).  The 2012 Titanic is even better in this regards because it spends a lot more time looking at people who actually were real.  Blood and Steel, however, takes the name of the Titanic and a few events that occurred during its making then weaves together this very fictional story, degrading the historical figures in order to elevate the fictional ones.  In the end it just kind of struck a nerve with me.

Speaking of endings, there is also the problem of Blood and Steel's actual ending.  The miniseries ends where most Titanic works begin, with the boat embarking on its doomed voyage, leaving the viewer to wonder just which of the cast members who happen to be on the boat survive.  While I liked the idea of some of the cast being on it, the way they did this was, in a lot of ways, really contrived and a bit forced.  The speculation itself is also rather fun, in a way, but it also leaves the question open as to whether or not there was supposed to be some sort of follow up to this series - Titanic: Blood and Steel part 2.  Because of the way that they did it, it really felt like they weren't ending the series.

Titanic (2012 Miniseries)

Starring: Linus Roache, Geraldine Somerville, Celia Imrie, Toby Jones, Perdita Weeks, Lee Ross, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Sophie Winkleman, Steve Waddington, David Calder, James Wilby, Antonio Magro, Stephen Campbell Moore, Noah Reid, Lyndsey Marshal, Mark Lewis Jones, Ruth Bradley, Peter McDonald, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Glen Blackhall, Dragos Bucur, Maria Doyle Kennedy, David Eisner, Linda Kash, Brian McCardie, Peter Wright

Creator: Nigel Strafford-Clark

Genre: Miniseries, Period Drama

Rating: B-

I'm still a bit undecided on this show. There are elements that I really enjoyed - particularly in the way they ended it. I don't just mean in that the boat sank and some people died while others didn't, I mean that after three rather disjointed and confusing episodes they still managed to make it suspenseful and make me care about who lived and who died.

The basic story behind this is obvious, and because of the sheer volume of characters within it I'm not going to really summarize things too much. Basically, the show is four episodes long with each of the first three episodes introducing the audience to the characters as they embark on the Titanic and leading up to the hitting of the iceberg. Each of these first episodes ends with this moment, and as such each episode introduces things differently and largely covers the same span of time. The final episode is the sinking and we find out the fates of the characters we've kind of gotten to know.

Because of the nature of the show things get a bit confusing. There are characters in the first episode who seem to disappear until the fourth, and there are events that happen multiple times in the series, with each repetition being altered to follow a different point of view. I really like what they tried to do here overall, but it gets a bit bogged down after awhile. The short length of the series doesn't mesh well with the sheer volume of the cast. The creators were trying to tell too much of a story in too little of a time.

That being said, because of the nature of the show I did still manage to get attached to the characters, and as the boat sunk I was anxious about who would survive and who wouldn't, particularly among the male and lower class characters. If you think about it, that's what a show about the Titanic is supposed to do.

Political Animals (Season 1)

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Carla Gugino, James Wolk, Sebastian Shaw, Brittany Ishibashi, Ellen Burstyn, Ciarán Hinds

Creator: Greg Berlanti

Genre: Drama, Miniseries

Rating: B

I'm a bit undecided about this show.  On the one hand, I really enjoyed it and found it fun, but on the other hand if that's how it ended I'm going to be really annoyed.  The entire season/series is really well written (albeit a bit soap opera-y), but the problems aren't wrapped up in the end.  If this was intended to be a mini-series then it's annoying that there isn't any real resolution in the end - if you know your show is only going to last for six hours then wrap the plot up at the end of that six hours.  If the show wasn't meant to simply be a mini-series and happened to be cancelled then that just sucks but I'll forgive Berlanti and Mark.  That being said though, I really hope there's a second season.

Sigourney Weaver is Elaine Barrish; former US First Lady, ex-wife to former President Bud Hammond (Hinds), and Secretary of State to the current President Paul Garcetti (Adrian Pasdar), and mother of two, Douglas (Wolk) and TJ (Shaw).  After leaving the White House Elaine ran for the Democratic nomination for president and lost out to Garcetti; now two years later, after divorcing her husband and being a very successful Secretary of State Elaine has decided to run for the Democratic nomination for president again; the show follows her and her family in the very short period after she makes this decision.  Her family is one of controversy; Bud is a womanizer, TJ a promiscuous, gay, drug addict, and her mother (Burstyn) an alcoholic and former Vegas showgirl.  The only one who appears to have it together, beyond her, is Douglas, her chief of staff, although even he and his fiance Anne Ogami (Ishibashi) have their share of secrets.  Looking into these secrets, and the family at large, is Washington Globe reporter Susan Berg (Gugino).

I really liked the characters of this show. The core is the family and Susan, and each individual has really good characteristics as well as really bad characteristics.  Even when the plot ideas might be a bit stale the way that they do it is still enjoyable.  My favourite character by far is Margaret Barrish, Elaina's mother.  She's just such a gem.  She seems to understand the other characters the best, and has this nice eccentric way about her.  She's totally the cookie grandmother.  I love it.  My second favourite would be TJ, who I was rooting for the entire time.  I don't usually root for the character on drugs, so that says something.

As for the politics... honestly, I don't really have the best understanding of the American political system.  I never have, and not being American I don't see all that much of a need to understand it.  As such, I can't really comment on how the show portrayed the situation there, although I do have to say as an outsider it looked believable.  I bought into most of it although I do kind of question how far some issues went.  I liked the idea of Elaine being somewhat of a backstabber and the way that they tried to approach it - I thought they nicely handled both her being politically ambitious and also trying to do the best for her country.  I also loved the way she paired off with the current president - Adrian Pasdar, by the way, was amazing - and the other members of his administration.  Overall, I thought it was really well done and I really hope that it gets a second season because, as I already mentioned, it didn't feel like it ended.