{"id":3147,"date":"2017-09-20T16:26:41","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T16:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spiffingwebsites.com\/douglas-watkinson\/?p=3147"},"modified":"2022-08-16T15:50:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T15:50:28","slug":"taking-the-ssip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/post\/taking-the-ssip\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking the ssiP…"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a drama series on BBC1 at the moment called Rellik and it\u2019s hit the deck in spectacular fashion. Far from being a scandi noir offering, as the title might suggest, it\u2019s simply \u2018killer\u2019 backwards, which makes you groan before you even get to the opening scene. Or in this case the final scene. You can just hear a gaggle of execs, carbon copies from the brilliant spoof comedy W1A, gathered round a table and coming up with a brilliant idea – let\u2019s tell the story backwards, no one\u2019s ever done it! No, and for a bloody good reason. If the story ain\u2019t worth telling start to finish, it sure won\u2019t be made better by telling it in reverse.
\nBut telling a story back to front kills it dead not simply because you know how it ends long before you commit to it. Something pretty obvious happens to the writing if every detail is mapped out in advance – which presumably the writers of Rellik did before they put pen to paper. Following a detailed, but heavily detailed, plan doesn\u2019t allow the writer to add anything original or surprising or memorable as they trundle their way back to the beginning. It has to follow the route they\u2019ve laid out or it falls to bits.<\/p>\n

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\nStephen King reckons that he doesn\u2019t work from a plan for fear of ruining the book. He says it\u2019s like writing the story twice – first the storyline, then filling the words in – and second time around he\u2019s fed up with it. I\u2019m pretty sure he knows roughly where he\u2019s taking us before he starts but he likes the story to have a life of its own, in some measure to write itself. This allows for all kinds of off the wall stuff to bring the story to life, to make it slightly rough around the edges.
\nAnd that\u2019s what storytelling should be – especially television dramas – they should be rough around the edges in order to gain traction from an audience. Like Doctor Foster does, same channel, different writer, no gimmicks. You just don\u2019t know what the main character is going to do next. With Rellik it doesn\u2019t matter – they did it yesterday anyway – and with the writers\u2019 other offering – \u2018Liar\u2019 on ITV it doesn\u2019t matter either. The lead actress gave away in interview that the doctor\u2019s the liar, so who cares.<\/p>\n

Douglas Watkinson’s crime thrillers, The Nathan Hawk Mystery series are available on Amazon in eBook and Paperback now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a drama series on BBC1 at the moment called Rellik and it\u2019s hit the deck in spectacular fashion. Far from being a scandi noir offering, as the title might suggest, it\u2019s simply \u2018killer\u2019 backwards, which makes you groan before you even get to the opening scene. Or in this case the final scene. You…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":3148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}