Posted by Bonnie on 8 August 2007 at
12:00
Every British show isn't a masterpiece — and shouldn't have to be.
Maybe it's the accents, which in their posher varieties tend to register in American ears as classy, intelligent and hallmarks of high quality. But the truth is that British TV productions, as do their American counterparts, run the full gamut from classic to trash. And some of the trash is actually fairly lively fun, like the BBC America import Hotel Babylon.
Based on one of those scandals-behind-the-scenes exposé books, Babylon is Las Vegas in London, with comparable acting, slightly better writing and vastly less impressive glitz. It could be, of course, that London's high-rollers expect less flashy opulence than their American counterparts. Still, you can't help feeling that the show's reliance on tight shots is in part designed to keep our eyes off the underoccupied and unimpressive sets.
Our guide through the secret passages of this fictionalized ultra-luxury hotel is head receptionist Charlie Edwards (an amusingly rough-hewn Max Beesley), who is best friends with the concierge (Dexter Fletcher) and secretly bedding the head housekeeper (Natalie Mendoza). By hour's end, he will have gained a nemesis, a work rival played by Emma Pierson in a style that is both too cutesy and too aggressive.
Charlie's goal tonight is to become the hotel's deputy manager. But first he must impress his boss (Tamzin Outhwaite), and that means getting a reclusive American rock band to spend some money and make a few outrageous headlines.
As with any show built around hotel guests, from Vegas to the old ABC hit Hotel, Babylon is heavily dependent on the quality of its own. Tonight, the show is nearly done in by Rachael Stirling's overdone performance as the band's harridan manager, complete with one of those exaggerated American accents British actors routinely affect when they want to seem particularly crass. (It might be nice if someday, someone on the American side of BBC America let the British side know how offensive that is.) Things improve next week, however, with a visit by Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as a suicidal musician Charlie is trying to keep alive.
Happily for Babylon, even when the guests and plots falter, the regular cast keeps the hour in painless motion. As a bonus, there are all those purposely dropped tidbits meant to make us feel like we're learning the secrets of the hotel trade — along with a chance to visit London without worrying about the dollar's sorry state.
In the dog days of TV's summer, that may be reason enough to check in.
No Comments
Posted by Bonnie on 7 August 2007 at
12:00
"Hotel Babylon," the new 16-episode series on BBC America that makes its premiere tomorrow night, is inspired fluff — a fast-paced, brightly edited, smartly scripted and performed look at life in a five-star hotel.
Inspired by journalist Imogen Edwards-Jones's novel of the same name, "Hotel Babylon" plays into London's reputation as world capital, a gilded city-state-in-waiting where all are welcome, especially if they have trunkloads of money. The program is an exposé of sorts, revealing how luxury hotels will do just about anything to empty their guests' wallets.
Yet it glamorizes as it exposes, placing us on the side of the hotel's staff — charming, hard-working strivers who want a vicarious taste of what their high-rolling patrons already enjoy. The moral seems to be that if you're wealthy enough to stay at the hotel, then you have no right to complain about being fleeced when you do so. This is troubling news for the rest of us. Effectively, it means not only that we have to be able to afford the room, but that we need to be able to afford it about three times over.
Our hero is Charlie Edwards (Max Beesley), a slick, ambitious fellow with a face scrubbed clean of a shady past and a smile that, if you're a client, tends to last as long as you're looking at it. Charlie, who's 32, mans the front desk but has just applied for a job as the hotel's deputy manager. Whether he gets it is up to Babylon's general manager, Rebecca Mitchell (Tamzin Outhwaite), a 35-year-old blonde with a sinking marriage (her husband has painted "SLUT" in giant letters on her car) and a face that's showing the first signs of heading in the same direction.
What appears to be an averagely busy day at the hotel is suddenly transformed by the news that the Junk Dogs, an American rock band with a reputation as serious partiers, wants to stay at the Babylon for the last two days of their five-night stand at Wembley Arena. This is a chance for the hotel to make money far beyond the exorbitant cost of the rooms. Unfortunately, the hotel is booked solid, though that doesn't turn out to be much of a problem at all. Rebecca wants to give the Junk Dogs an entire floor, and dispatches Charlie — undergoing trial-by-fire for the possible management position — to get rid of the guests on the seventh floor.
How do you do that? You fake an electrical fault by expediently cutting off the power on the floor. Then you apologize profusely and promise to find your guests similar accommodations elsewhere, as well as special favors on their next visit. Only one room proves difficult to empty, since its occupants are too busy making screeching love to notice that the power's out. So Charlie and another staff member slip a rat into the room, after which the screeches are predictably replaced by a single, highpitched, room-clearing scream. Mission accomplished.
Or so it seems. Tony Casemore (Dexter Fletcher), the hotel's suave, expertly obliging concierge, has tipped off the paparazzi to the Junk Dogs' imminent arrival, so the hotel will get plenty of press when the superstars trash the place, as rock stars will. Accordingly, the barman has stocked up on some absurdly expensive booze, such as a 1796 Napoleon cognac going for 750 pounds a shot, along with a Cuban cigar, half of which was reportedly smoked by Fidel Castro.
There's only one problem, and it comes in the deliciously menacing form of Nina Bailey (Rachael Stirling), the band's personal assistant or, more accurately, dominatrix-like attack-dog chaperone. Ms. Stirling, who had a starring role in the BBC's Victorian lesbian drama, "Tipping the Velvet," is the daughter of Diana Rigg, and she proves herself an Avenger to be reckoned with. Nina knows every bill-padding trick in the hotelier's book, and she's determined to get the Junk Dogs in and out of the Babylon without their record company being charged a dime more than necessary.
The Junk Dogs, it turns out, have given up both wine and women, leaving them only with song, which Charlie can't charge them for. He sends some call girls up to their rooms, hoping they'll succumb to temptation, only to have them turned away by Nina, who marches them downstairs and into the hotel lobby, bellowing at them all the way: "That's right, ladies, keep walking! Back to the filthy London gutters you just crawled out of!"
At the staff meeting following the group's catastrophically ascetic first night, Rebecca can barely contain her outrage. "Three peppermint teas and a ginger cake," she sputters, itemizing the rockers' orders from room service. "What about the fights, the fire, the sofa through the window, the dead hookers in the bath tub? Aren't we supposed to be under siege by a rock band?"
In her role as guest star, Ms. Stirling only intermittently masters an American accent, but everything else about her performance is a delight. The sober "Junk Dogs" are a highly amusing invention, mutely trailing after Nina as if on an invisible leash. They may have turned into clean-living vegetarians, but they still manage to look like hirsute, flea-ridden animals from an abandoned zoo. You never doubt for a moment that their music must be truly awful.
It's also noteworthy that the people not blowing satisfactory quantities of money at the hotel are American. Perhaps, with the sinking dollar, this is indicative of our new reputation in Europe's pleasure palaces, where the televisions are awash in commercials for "the world's only five-star airline" (Qatar Airways — "the runway is honored"), and five-star hotels play host to knife-brandishing Gulf State sheiks who slaughter sheep in their suites.
"Hotel Babylon" is full of nicely turned scenes and sly bits of satire. It doesn't hesitate to expose the ugly underbelly of the "hospitality industry," where undocumented chambermaids are paid minimum wage and get slapped around by bad-tempered guests, but I don't think we're supposed to be up in arms about it.
For the chambermaids, apparently, it's all part of the privilege of not having to live in Poland or Lithuania, and so we must assume that those at the bottom of the ladder will take their licks and carry on clawing their way toward the light of the almighty British pound. For as frequent overhead shots of the Thames River snaking its way through the twilight show, London is a city of surpassing beauty. Location is everything.
No Comments
