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HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND GOOD LUCK!
- amid the ghosts and Simony-timey-wimeyness – you'll remember that
there was a feeling that an era was coming to an end: that with plots
sutured and so many of the main cast gone, the show could have feasibly
finished after three solid series of community service superpowers. But
while Series 3 seemed prepared for oblivion, Series 4's last episode
gives a middle-finger to closure.
In places it feels like Episode 8 is too preoccupied with gestating
tantalising new plot threads for (the just commissioned) Series 5, than
actually providing a satisfying conclusion to a bumpy run. The mystery
of Abbey's personality, Finn and Jess's relationship, the heartbreak
behind the Probation Worker's unexploded bomb of a face...All three are
difficult to engage with this late on when we're annoyed at the thought
of having to wait a year to find out how they'll develop.
Most egregious of all is the idea that Geordie boreman Alex might
return with a power that's more interesting than talking about his cock,
thanks to a handy transplantable lung lying around like an abandoned
bagpipe. We hope it's merely a joke, but from the prominence he was
given on the operating table we suspect not. Maybe he'll come back like
Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen: big and blue and with his prized dick gently swaying in the chilly estate breeze like a broken wind-chime.
When not worrying about its own future this is actually a solid, but
not spectacular, finale filled with more blasphemy than a Frankie Boyle
gig at The Vatican. That's because it's smart enough to focus on its
best asset, Joe Gilgun, and gives him opportunity to rise magnificently
to the challenge of creating some depth to Rudy. It's a performance that
infuses his carefree cheek with real pathos and heartbreak and Nadine's
death would feel cheap were it not for the emotional side that the
writers and Gilgun have carved from Rudy's seemingly unalterable
vulgarity.
So ends a series that has, on reflection, been a mixed bag. A
collection of good story ideas undermined by a change in cast that the
show always seemed uneasy about. Yet we have hope for the fifth series,
because the finale does manage to capture the peppy group dynamics of
the show's early days. You wouldn't call Series 4 a triumph for the
show, but based on the gang we're left with it might be that Misfits' fifth year will be something more special. We're already praying hard for it.
When it comes to casting his films Peter Jackson has a fail-safe way of ensuring he gets the right actor for the right role; he steals them from his favourite British TV shows. “I was really pleased to be able to cast my all-time favourite Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy, in the role of the wizard,” the director has admitted, adding, “I’m a huge Doctor Who fan.”
And it seems that isn’t where his love of British broadcasting ends. Aidan Turner, best known for playing vampire Mitchell in Being Human, got a call from Jackson because he “dug” the show. Looking at the rest of the cast, it seems Jackson might also be a fan of Sherlock, Spooks and Cold Feet…
So, Aidan, how did you land the part of Kili the dwarf?
Peter requested a meeting. A couple of months later I got a call out of the blue asking if I wanted to spend a year and a half in Middle-earth? There was a fair bit of screaming on my balcony at half-eight in the morning in Cardiff: “Yes! Yes! Oh yes!”
How did it compare to working on the set of Being Human?
I’ve never been on any set like it before and yet it was exactly what I expected: absolutely gigantic. You could have skydived from the top of the sound studios. And I would happily have lived in my Winnebago. When you walk onto a Peter Jackson set, you can see straightaway that money isn’t an issue.
The slightest thing could be wrong with the look of something – Peter might not take to a particular prosthetic or a weapon and filming stops for a fortnight while it’s revamped and re-approved. It’s got to be perfect for Peter or else it just doesn’t go ahead. There’s no compromise. That’s something I’ve never really experienced before. On every other job I’ve done, from fringe plays to TV shows, budget was always an issue: what can we afford and what can we afford not to have? That question was never asked with Peter, which was kind of cool.
You haven't been uglified like your fellow dwarves. Why not?
Because I’m just too damn pretty! No, seriously, I did wear prosthetics in the early days but it made me look too old. So I got away with a sliver of fake nose and a mere 90 minutes in hair and make-up, whereas the other dwarves were coming in at three hours.
What happened in dwarf boot camp?
There were movement classes to teach us how to walk like a dwarf, and a lot of weight-training to bulk up. Historically, dwarves are miners and live underground, so they have a low centre of gravity and are very heavy in the legs. Peter used a lot of different tricks to shrink us – some really hi-tech CGI stuff, or in other scenes we were simply walking in ditches beside Gandalf, or closer to the foreground of the camera.
Does Kili get involved in any romance?
Not in the first movie. There’s a possibility that Kili might get his end away in the second, but I can’t say anything or I’ll get in trouble – Peter’s people will kick my ass from the other side of the world.
Were there any thrills off set?
On a beautiful clear Sunday morning, myself and James Nesbitt jumped out of a plane together at 18,000 feet. That probably wasn’t in our contracts but we weren’t going to tell anybody!
What was your personal highlight?
Wrapping the last scene: we were at the top of this hill and everyone just looked at each other and said, “That’s it?”
Sometimes you wonder whether you’ll ever see the end because there’s so much to cover, and things went wrong all the time, as they do on any film set. Then you get to the end and you wish it could all just start again. The movie is about a quest for so many things and it felt like we had gone through that journey as well – like we’d really conquered something.