Having been more incapacitated than I would have imagined by the Broken Wrist Incident over the past month, the one thing I have been doing – other than whining and moaning, obviously – is watching a lot of TV. And when it’s me saying that, you know I mean a lot. The downside of this is, I am really, really boring at the moment. The upside, I’m catching up on a lot of shows.
One of these shows is
Sons of Anarchy. Recommended to me by K, my TV twin, and bought for me by a friend who has known me long enough to know that, whatever my situation, I am shallow enough to be cheered up by random giftage (you know who you are, you know I love you), this is a show that’s been on my radar for a while but that I just somehow never got round to watching. Now I’m three episodes in and, I have to say, it looks promising.
The show has been variously described as ‘Hamlet in black leather’ and ‘the Sopranos on two wheels’ by critics, both of which are punchier and more accurate summaries than I can come up with at the minute (c’mon, I’m on a lot of drugs!). It’s certainly not for the faint-hearted – the opening episode has beatings aplenty, along with the sight of a heavily pregnant woman injecting herself with drugs – nice – but it feels like a realistic portrayal of a violent, testosterone-fuelled world rather than gratuitous gunplay. At its heart, SOA is about families and power; the struggle for the motorbike gang to keep its established place in the world, the struggle between gang ‘president’ Clay and his young vice president – and stepson – Jax.
These struggles are made compelling thanks to some great writing and a top-notch cast. Charlie Hunnam as Jax is almost unrecognisable from his breakout role as a cocky, skinny gay teen in Queer as Folk, and is completely convincing as a rough ‘n’ ready American biker; Ron ‘Hellboy’ Perlman finally gets a character role worthy of his talents in Clay, and as Jax’s mother and Clay’s wife, Katey Sagal might be more Lady Macbeth than Gertrude, but she’s a revelation. Best known for her comedy and voiceover work (she is, of course, Leela from Futurama) here she stands out even in this strong cast as the motorcycle matriarch tougher than any of the men around her. The cast is rounded out by recognisable faces: Drea ‘please forget Joey and remember the Sopranos’ de Matteo as Jax’s junkie ex-wife, Mitch ‘Skinner from the X-Files’ Pileggi continuing the stint of truly creepy bad guys he started as the demon-possessed dad in Supernatural and Tommy ‘yes, those are real scars and yes I was in Gladiator’ Flanagan, to name but a few.
Like the Sporanos (or, for that matter, Hamlet), the show doesn’t deal in moral certainties or absolutes. Egged on by his father’s newly-discovered memoirs, Jax might be questioning the hard line of the club, but he’s also a man that can on the one hand push for a ‘bloodless’ solution to a crisis but the next minute beat someone to a pulp for cutting him off in traffic; the hunt for a rapist becomes a power contest between gang and police; law enforcement has as many secrets to hide as those they are hunting. It’s a show that makes plain both the allure and the cost of allegiance to the club, and it’s all the better for it.
It’s not completely without flaws. Some of the lesser characters veer close to caricatures, and some of the accents are all over the place (because yes, of course, there is an Oirish connection, though I suspect the ‘terrorists’ were driven out of the country not for atrocities against people, but against their ears). Also – and I’m willing to accept this doesn’t bother anyone but me – Charlie Hunnam seems suspiciously smooth of chest, which you know is a pet peeve of mine, so every time he takes his shirt off – which is quite a lot – I’m thrown out of the moment and thinking, ‘What, he doesn’t shave or cut his hair but he waxes? C’mon!’ Still, these are small niggles in an otherwise fantastic show. So why not join
Sons of Anarchy for a ride?
Quote of the Day
Anyone else feel like the last feisty wife in Stepford?
Lorne, Angel
