Suburban Tales IV: Durham County, Season 3

"For God's Sake, someone love me"

Out this week is Canada’s Durham County: Season 3 (Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada / Muse International), probably the final time we’ll see how worse things can get for the Sweeney family unless the series creators go for a fourth season, or a possible feature-length film (which, quite frankly, is possible, since there’s only one really big loose end left).

Suburban Tales I: Durham County

The wonderful world of the suburbs has gone through several subjective optics since the fifties, even though one could argue suburban life was present in the Little Rascals shorts of the thirties: the kids lived outside of the downtown core, had vast fields and newly developed areas to play around, not to mention older farms from where they could commandeer unused shacks and oddities to create a clubhouse and a new car.

There were also the Blondie films of the thirties and forties, which focused on the trials of Dagwood Bumstead’s life as married man, supporting his family with lots of humorous ups and downs.

It wasn’t until the fifties when the burgeoning culture of nuclear families in starter homes found further idyllic reflections on TV, both in TV series like Leave It To Beaver (1957-1963), as well as commercials where housewives in housework suits or flowing dresses vacuumed in style and felt proud to have shiny new streamlined appliances.

The commercial imagery was sexist to the core, but it represented an ideal: perfect homes, streets, driveways, lawns, gardens, and great neighbours with whom one could BBQ on weekends and knock back a few beers (when drinking on screen was no longer taboo in networks’ Standards & Practices rulebooks.

Suburban life is a very, very broad subject which some might hard to believe. It’s loathed by townies because it’s out in the middle of nowhere - or as friends David & Mike would call it, ‘a far away yonder’ known colloquially as Bumblefuck, because you haphazardly bumbled into some insular pocket that begged the question: ‘Why the hell would anyone want to live here? And how the hell do we get outta here?!?!?!’

Green fascists hate the ‘burbs because it’s based around a car culture that goes against the more logical city/small town scheme of work/shops/homes being within 5-10 mins. walking distance, and being walkable.

You could bike in the ‘burbs (as I did to spend $1 on 4 specific snacks my mother never bought: chocolate bar + gum + chips + more chocolate), but depending on the development scheme, you probably required a car to get anything, as was dramatized in the Steven Spielberg’s eighties suburban fantasies E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Poltergeist (1982).

(I’ll have reviews of the three Poltergeist films later this week, since Warner Home Video recently released the first film on Blu-ray.)

Burbanites (of which I was one, and still am, due to a quirk of genetics, if not a warped spirituality) tend to be split along black and white lines: they either hated the experience and fled, or they retain a fondness for the environment that to them wasn’t evil at all, and remains a great place to raise families and/or retire with a big yard for roasting meat, fish and sausages. My memories are really, really good, but I’ll save that blather for the Poltergeist column.

The suburbs have never gotten their due in film and TV because the people who live there are portrayed as buffoons (The ‘Burbs), slapstick morons (Neighbors), or catty bitches (Desperate Housewives). In Viva (2007), set in the sleazy psychedelic late sixties/early seventies, the perfect lifestyle masks sexually repressed characters who sometimes delve into some swapping and ‘escorting’ – a bit of experimentation while Money Earning Husband is away for the day or out of town on ‘business.’

None of the clichés or off-beat portraits are wrong; they just represent a satirical poke at the ‘burbs where the characters never feel real.

Perhaps that’s what made the first season of Durham County such a striking shocker. It’s set in a suburb outside of Toronto, and the incipient malaise from past demons, potential health risks, and dysfunctional families are kept shuttered behind immaculately maintained monster homes / snout mansions – the ugly, ersatz chic budget estates that pepper areas outside of the older suburbs (which during the fifties and sixties included modest 2-level homes and bungalows, and in the seventies largely consisted of semi-detailed homes with big yards).

Durham may not represent the weirdness of my suburban childhood, but it’s plausible because the characters are utterly ordinary. A burnt out cop, a cancer mom, unhappy children, an ex-teen hockey star, and yoga mom. The dramatic events are compressed and the unraveling of repressed rage unfurls like a tight soap opera, but the unhappiness of the Sweeney family is more believable than the Klopeks of The ‘Burbs (much as I like them), or the stupid characters that deserve far worse fates in Disturbia (2007).
         
Season 3 of Durham County is already underway – it debuted Oct. 25 on HBO Canada – but prior Seasons 1 and 2 are readily available in Canada as a 2-pack from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada / Muse International). (Well Go USA has released Season 1 in the U.S., and Season 2 streets Nov. 23rd.)

For the first part of this peek at the ‘burbs, we have interviews with series writer/producer Janis Lundman, writer/producer/director Adrienne Mitchell, and Seasons 2 and 3 composer Peter Chapman.
        

Mark R. Hasan, Editor

KQEK.com

Durham County and Other TV News

Uploaded is a review of Durham County: Season 2 from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada (the series is distributed by Well Go USA in the States), the Gemini-winning series that once again shows how weird Canadians are, and why we shouldn’t build our suburban snout-homes close to hydro wire towers.

Those of you attending Rue Morgue’s upcoming Festival of Fear can also meet series creators and cast on Saturday Aug. 28th at 12:30pm. The hour-long panel discussion (hosted by CTV’s Richard Crouse) will feature actress Michelle Forbes, co-star Greyston Holt, series-co-creator & director Adrienne Mitchell, producer Janis Lundman, and co-creator Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik.

Other TV news:

Some may have heard that the legal headaches surrounding the original Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man series for DVD release were sorted out, which is why there will finally be Region 1 releases of both series.

This far, Season 1 of Woman will debut Oct. 19 ($39.98 SRP), whereas the full run of Man will be available first as a Time-Life exclusive, much in the way Get Smart debuted. Hopefully it won’t take an eternity for the series to trickle down to standard retail outlets, because for those not willing to make that exclusive leap for this 40-DVD set, well, it’s not fair!

Coming out Aug. 31 is the complete series of Thriller (also Universal), starring Boris Karloff, and featuring some isolated score materials.

Image, who recently announced the Blu-ray debut of the original Twilight Zone: Season 1 for Sept. 14, will release Season 2 on BR Nov. 16 (also at $99.98 SRP).

Like Season 1, it’ll contain the same extras (including those isolated scores) from the DVD set, plus new material: 25 commentaries by author Marc Scott Zicree with some of the series writers, additional interviews (some archival), and 15 radio dramas.

Getting Zicree to provide commentaries makes sense, given the author / historian wrote the definitive series guide in 1982 (my copy is quite shop-worn by now), and each episode is a microcosm of the top talent that was around during the late fifties / early sixties, spanning composers, directors, writers, and actors.

Coming out via Shout Factory is The Complete Larry Sanders Show, which, like the bionic Man and Woman series, demonstrates video rights and legal bickering eventually get tempered with time. After the debut of Season 1, further seasonal Sanders sets were in limbo, so this is great news for fans of the acidic satire of late night talk shows. The monster set debuts Nov. 2 ($149.99 SRP), whereas those who sprung for Season 1 around 2007 can take gradual steps at the series’ acquisition via a separate Season 2 set ($34.93 SRP).

Shout Factory is also releasing something called The Psycho Legacy in a 2-disc DVD set Oct. 19 ($19.93 SRP), which is apparently a 90 min. doc on the franchise by Robert V. Galluzzo. I wonder if he acknowledges the TV movie / laughable attempt at a series, Bates Motel (1987), and the unrelated TV movie Psycho 4: The Beginning (1990) as part of the Psycho universe?

Lastly, Paramount will release a full series box of Tales from the Darkside Oct. 19, and War of the Worlds: Season 2 (sold separately, and in a Season 1 + 2 combo) Oct. 26. That may be the longest wait between seasons for any TV series. Season 1 of War came out around 2005, so that’s 5 years fans of this gory, mediocre show have had to wait.

I doubt Season 1’s been remastered, but it would be nice to see it cleaned up for DVD. Both War and the companion series Friday the 13th: The Series were shot on film and posted on video, and look terrible on DVD, which is either due to cramming too many episodes per disc, or broadcast masters that, during the TV’s evolution towards higher resolution, now look wringy, noisy, and smeary. That is the frank legacy of cheap eighties production budgets.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Six Degrees of Seething Pain

The makers of Durham County borrowed the British model of crafting lean TV, spread over a tight 6 episode arc, but they also transcended the premise of suburban malaise by focusing on developing engrossing character arcs that tread into some familiar terrain, but avoid the clichés that usually turn great concepts into wildly uneven hybrids, or predictable fodder.

One can cite elements from American Beauty (emotionally dislocated teens who loathe their wonky parents), Desperate Housewives (a series of strange crimes that unearth past conflicts and dark secrets on a single street), Twin Peaks (brooding visual tones and grim characters), No Way Out (a detective steering a crime investigation away from his potential involvement), and Slaughter of the Innocents (a teen/child, fully versed in the nomenclature and behavioral patterns of serial killers, emulating the detective father) as influences, but in almost every case, there’s a turn that ensures Durham County can’t follow those plotlines.

What the filmmakers have chosen to investigate is a whole series of human conflicts with a murder backdrop, and a location that’s slowly driving suburban inhabitants crazy – or at least goosing stressors to their breaking point. And once detective Mike Sweeney arrives in Durham County, he discovers close associations that are destined to change his life in ways he never wanted.

The finale of Season 1 is cathartic, but we’re left hungry for more adventures, if you will (which will apparently happen in 2009, when the show continues with Season 2 on TMN and Movie Central).

Durham County may get lost among the more obvious crime series on DVD, but for fans of tight crime tales set in the ‘burbs, it’s a superb treat.

Next: [REC]. You know, the Spanish film remade as Quarantine, because we need more Anglo remakes.



- MRH

Visit KQEK.com’s Main Page HERE!
Technorati Tags: DVD Reviews