Diplomats and spies, oh my!
Mar. 7th, 2009 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charloweenThe State Within is an enjoyable series from the UK, which has an equal number of American and Brit characters. It's definitely a product of Bush-era paranoia, with the British Ambassador to Washington (played by Jason Isaacs) as the hero. It's got a nice and twisty plot, meaty acting and lots of people in hushed voices speaking with great gravity.
It's quite good! I enjoyed it. Ben Daniels was quite excellent. Jason Isaacs makes a great action hero, too. :D
I'm finding it entertaining for a few reasons:
1. Speaking American The dialogue written for the American characters was not written by Americans. There are a few little things that stick out. I have to snerk a little when a guy with an American accent demands, "Why did you let them video that?" On this continent, video isn't usually a verb. There're also a few times where Americans refer to their country as "the US", not "America". In my (admittedly limited) experience, it's mostly non-Americans who call that country "the US".
2. Locations! It's set in Washington, DC but mostly shot in Toronto. The location scouts did a really good job, and it's shot quite well to disguise the locations, but Canada Post mailboxes have a distinctive shape, and I'm fairly certain that the Boston skyline doesn't have a building that looks like the CIBC hq. They did a lot of filming around the Royal York hotel, which is distracting when Toronto's Union Station doubles for DC's Union Station.
See, there's one part where Jason Isaacs grabs a cab at Front and University (you can see the Casey's in the background) and dramatically demands to be taken to Union Station (which is right there in real geography), and there's a flashy bunch of establishing shots of the Union Station in DC, and then they cut to the interior of Toronto's Union Station. Heh.
Knowing all that, it's funny when they mix inset shots of DC with bits of Toronto near City Hall. Or when a character drops a letter in a US Mail mailbox and the shot pans away past a TTC bus stop and a shelter with an ad for Zipcars.
3. Nerds? I'd like to think the producers are slight nerds. There's a redheaded female FBI agent, a hotel room 1013 and a hopefully-intentional reference to Forever Knight (Nigel Bennett, saying "Nicholas" in that tone of voice).
EDIT: And to give full credit (because I failed to mention it in my original post),![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fides recommended the series. Many thanks! Now I'll be watching Ben Daniels in Law & Order:UK with a much greater appreciation for his abilities. I can't quite describe how he did it, but by the end of the series he made even the most seemingly-innocuous entrances into something of great gravity and importance, while still playing it as innocuous. Thank you, fides!
It's quite good! I enjoyed it. Ben Daniels was quite excellent. Jason Isaacs makes a great action hero, too. :D
I'm finding it entertaining for a few reasons:
1. Speaking American The dialogue written for the American characters was not written by Americans. There are a few little things that stick out. I have to snerk a little when a guy with an American accent demands, "Why did you let them video that?" On this continent, video isn't usually a verb. There're also a few times where Americans refer to their country as "the US", not "America". In my (admittedly limited) experience, it's mostly non-Americans who call that country "the US".
2. Locations! It's set in Washington, DC but mostly shot in Toronto. The location scouts did a really good job, and it's shot quite well to disguise the locations, but Canada Post mailboxes have a distinctive shape, and I'm fairly certain that the Boston skyline doesn't have a building that looks like the CIBC hq. They did a lot of filming around the Royal York hotel, which is distracting when Toronto's Union Station doubles for DC's Union Station.
See, there's one part where Jason Isaacs grabs a cab at Front and University (you can see the Casey's in the background) and dramatically demands to be taken to Union Station (which is right there in real geography), and there's a flashy bunch of establishing shots of the Union Station in DC, and then they cut to the interior of Toronto's Union Station. Heh.
Knowing all that, it's funny when they mix inset shots of DC with bits of Toronto near City Hall. Or when a character drops a letter in a US Mail mailbox and the shot pans away past a TTC bus stop and a shelter with an ad for Zipcars.
3. Nerds? I'd like to think the producers are slight nerds. There's a redheaded female FBI agent, a hotel room 1013 and a hopefully-intentional reference to Forever Knight (Nigel Bennett, saying "Nicholas" in that tone of voice).
EDIT: And to give full credit (because I failed to mention it in my original post),
fides recommended the series. Many thanks! Now I'll be watching Ben Daniels in Law & Order:UK with a much greater appreciation for his abilities. I can't quite describe how he did it, but by the end of the series he made even the most seemingly-innocuous entrances into something of great gravity and importance, while still playing it as innocuous. Thank you, fides!
