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| It's no summer holiday for the unfortunate Brits of MAD DOGS. Image: SKY TV |
Brilliantly blurring the lines between black comedy and crime drama, with a touch of the surreal, and a dash of eighties pop video style decadence thrown in for good measure, MAD DOGS proved to be one of the best things to have come out of SKY ONE’s continuing drama output in a long time, mainly due to a fine script written and produced by Chris Cole, great direction from Adrian Shergold and, of course, the four terrific British actors who played our over the hill, up the creek, blackmailed, framed and victimized, and highly unlikely, heroes caught up in a nightmare scenario that quickly gets above all of their heads and is totally out of control by the end of the first episode and threatens to tear their friendships apart. Yes indeed, all four leads were well showcased, and this was one of the best projects Max Beesley- playing the dependable if a little thick ex-drinker, with a sad secret, Woody- has been involved in for a long time, but I think Marc Warren, as the often stupid but cockily charming Rick (who mined some great comedy gold in places, like when he was trying to saw off his late friends hands and feet so as to hide his body in the freezer!) and John Simm, wearing his broken glasses in a style reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman in STRAW DOGS, playing failed ex-banker Baxter with the kind of intensity and breaking madness only he could uniquely brings to his role, between a range of sympathetic victim and head-case to be, were the stand-outs, though Philip Glenister, who played against his more recent Gene Hunt hard man type figure as Quinn, a thinking he’s past it at 41 type figure, embittered with life and lonely after separating from his wife and family, got the last word visually with the story’s memorable finale scene at the swimming pool and the approaching hit man!
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| Friends re-united. Ben Chaplin as ex-pat Spanish businessman, Alvo. |
Skillfully navigating comedy, violence and bleak horror is not easy in modern TV, but MAD DOGS made it look so. The overall way that the series main characters, at first stereotypes, sun burnt and often environment challenged, quickly unpeeled to reveal their faults and insecurities, and secrets with each other, was well handled over the course of the stylish four episodes, and we all knew things were never going to be the same again for the foursome from the moment they discovered a dead mountain goat in their friend Alvo’s swimming pool –a gruesome moment indicating the shocks to come...
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| A face guaranteed to bring terror to any normal person! The hit-man Tiny Tony (Tomas Pozzi) |
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| Some days you just can't get rid of a body! |
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| Complications arrive with the feminine wiles of Maria Botto as a a dedicated police woman. |
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| Maria Botto waves her badge, but she may not be what she seems... |
As anarchy, botched plans, over cooked histrionics and chaos develop, the four friendships come to the point of disintegration and finally crack open in their locked in house claustrophobia by the last stages of the series finale, leading to their leaving the house completely loony-like, their faces made up in the best warrior painted tradition, a la LORD OF THE FLIES meets BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, so as to go down fighting their hidden enemies. It was a brilliant sequence, and pitch perfect acting and direction-wise.
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| Rick (Marc Warren) gets some revenge on Tiny Tony! |
The smaller secondary cast proved equally good and necessary to the tale, especially Maria Botto as Maria, the sexiest Spanish police woman I’ve seen yet, and Tim Woodward, son of the late Edward, as the aforementioned hit-man, plus special singular praise for the littlest star of the show, Tomas Pozzi, playing the frightening gangster in the Tony Blair mask: his scene where he took on Glenister, Simm and Beesley inside the estate, finally felled by a shovel hit from an heroic Warren, and their subsequent trying to lock him up in a cupboard, was one of the funniest sequences I’d seen on television in ages. And we mustn’t also forget Ben Chaplin, who certainly made his mark in the series opener as the foursomes loathing and duplicitous self-made millionaire friend and holiday invitee Alvo, whose cocksure Spanish lifestyle, knifing and antagonistic banter/ jibes to his poorer friends leads up to his all-important death in front of them, at the hands of the Mob!
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| Not your average holiday for Messrs Beesley, Warren, Glenister and Simm! |
Against all the trust no one complexities, and within this hot and picturesque Spanish locale, where blood and sangria seemed to mix most causally, there was no need to be reminded of the fact that MAD DOGS was indeed another type of SEXY BEAST, one re-imagined for television, as had been hinted at it in the pre-press releases, but done just as well. One of the best definitions of modern drama, MAD DOGS hit the mark as a distinctive, challenging, exciting and funny production, and definitely worthy of being KOOL TV!
KOOL TV RATING: 4 out of 5.
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