Bowie reaches out from beyond
Continuing to be heard from beyond the grave, musician David Bowie offers the live album, “Ouvrez le Chien (Live Dallas 95).”
Previously included as part of the six-album set available in the ’90s as “Brilliant Live Adventures,” this is just one of numerous sanctioned releases/remasters from the legend’s estate that began famously with Bowie’s postdeath plan. Before succumbing to a lengthy battle with cancer on Jan. 10. 2016, two days after his 69th birthday, he personally mapped out “at least” a five-year outline for his cataloged material.
French for “Open the dog” and in reference to a song of his from 1970, “Ouvrez
le Chien” chronicles his mid- to late-’90s era. Typically working in Rock, his music was ever evolving, this period particularly under the trendy influence of drum and bass Electronic music, as well as Jungle, an Electronic subgenre birthed in England.
When an artist tours for multiple decades, they often get into a rut playing the same songs, nightly, to the crowd — usually their most-known hits. Thankfully for the benefit of posterity, Bowie’s live shows usually contained a balanced mix of newer material, back tracks and a few hits.
This set opens with a cut from his Berlin trilogy, “Look Back in Anger” (1979), with the band to no surprise commanding a tight, well-rehearsed sonic train. From Mike Garson’s artsy, schizo piano runs, to Reeve Gabrels’s undoubtedly Nine Inch Nails-esque slicing guitar attack, this group really flexes their musical chemistry. The breakdown about halfway through this song showcases rhythm guitarist
called. Worse yet, they thought it sounded too high-brow for Americans.
But in 1985, there was suddenly “somebody else in the game” besides PBS and the A&E channel, said Eaton, now executive producer at large for “Masterpiece.”
“HBO pounced on doing ‘Elizabeth I’ with Helen Mirren, which was a very rude shock because we considered rather comfortably that we owned Elizabeth I,” she said. “Masterpiece” had aired “Elizabeth R,” the 1972 miniseries with Glenda Jackson as the monarch, a perceived stake that HBO blithely ignored.
“Masterpiece” can’t compete with Netflix- or HBO-sized budgets, Simpson said, relying on corporate sponsors Viking and Raymond James and big and small viewer donations (specific figures were not provided). But she said it makes the most of its relationships with producers such as Colin Callender, whose “All Creatures Great and Small” reboot kicks off the new “Masterpiece” season Sunday.
The Public Broadcasting Service also ensures that its programming is reaching viewers, especially younger ones, where and how they watch TV, which increasingly is anywhere but on a stuck-to-the-wall screen. While PBS may be viewed primarily as a traditional broadcaster, its programs (and educational initiatives) are available online.
“Masterpiece” streams on PBS.org and the PBS Video app to an audience that skews younger than its broadcast viewership, with nearly 40% under the age of 55, according to PBS.
The showcase also is responding to the growing call for inclusivity in Hollywood screen projects, Simpson said. That would seem daunting when it comes to
ethnic diversity, given that the series’ period dramas traditionally skew white, but she said it can and is being done.
That requires the cooperation of British TV producers, whose industry has faced its own sharp criticism for long minimizing people of color as actors and creators.
“I’ve had some terrific, serious conversations in which it’s clear to me that our UK producers are as committed as we are” to adding diversity across the board, including in writing, directing and acting, Simpson said.
Callender said the call for change is being heeded, even with “All Creatures Great and Small,” which is based on semi-autobiographical books by a veterinarian practicing in a rural
English community in the late 1930s.
“The thrust of diversity meant several things,” Callender said, including making the female characters fully dimensional, casting actors with physical challenges and creating a character inspired by the family history of Black actor Clea Sylvestre, who plays the role.
“Masterpiece” is doing its own work, Simpson said. That includes taking an active role in fostering diversity in projects as they’re being developed, she said, and discovering authentic ways to reflect inclusivity in period dramas, among them 2019’s “Les Miserables” miniseries.
David Oyelowo, the English-born Black actor who starred as the obsessed police inspector Javert, felt
comfortable taking the role after he looked into 19th-century French history and found that there were Black police officers, Simpson recounted.
“What I learned from him is that it’s really our obligation as the writers and the producers to look more deeply at history in terms of what people of color were authentically, and to take more effort to find those stories,” she said.
“The Long Song,” a three-part drama debuting Jan. 31 on “Masterpiece,” exemplifies what is hiding in plain sight. Based on Andrea Levy’s historical novel of the same name, a finalist for the prestigious Booker literary prize, it tells of a young Black woman’s life in the final years of slavery in Jamaica and its aftermath.
Pandemic uncertainty
brought it to “Masterpiece,” when taping on some of its UK shows paused last March and Simpson sought available programs as a safeguard. Already familiar with the late Levy’s work because “Masterpiece” had aired an adaptation of her “Small Island” novel in 2010, Simpson said she found “The Long Song” to be “powerful and moving.”
Tamara Lawrance, who stars as the main character, said every generation believes “things are changing, things are different,” but sees a welcome energy in the British creative community that is building on the past.
“I’m so proud of ‘The Long Song’ and being in a cast of people like that, of amazing older Black actors that I grew up watching,” Lawrance said.