Chancer S1


Despite us having 57 Streaming Services, there seems to be nothing on, so I cheekily located my DVDs of Chancer and pressed play a week or so ago. We've made our way through S1 and there's much to recommend about it, as well as much to criticise. It's definitely a creature of its time. 


Firstly - Clive Owen. His character is a complete shit. He repeatedly uses people he supposedly loves, at one point his on-off girlfriend says she has his foot marks all over her back, yet they keep coming back for more. But he's magnetic - you can't take your eyes off of him, every character in the show is defined by how they interact with him, and even though the dialogue is full of cliche "Crane's Law, Rule Number One..." and "Don't you trust me?" he gets away with it on charm. 

As I said, the rest of the characters are defined by how they interact with the lead, and whilst they're generally well played, their stories are obviously seen as a lower priority and so their characters suffer by result. Even Leslie Phillips, chewing up the scenery repeatedly as Jimmy Blake, finds himself tossed around by an episodic structure that feels the need to give Stephen an insurmountable challenge / twist every single week. 

That's the main issue with it for me - maybe at the gentle pace of an episode every Tuesday, you wouldn't notice the joins so much, but if you binge them, you see that (for instance) there's a slow-burn relationship between Stephen and Victoria for about 8 episodes that suddenly gets binned out of nowhere. Robert's long lost son reappears, has a run in with some old gambling chums, kills himself and hands his share of the company over to a colleague. There's a moment or two of grief but then everybody just moves on. And don't get me started about Penny and how she takes back Gavin. 

It all culminates in a ridiculous last episode. For no reason at all, Owen's character, Stephen Crane, has a mad Checkov inspired bet with ruthless financier Tom Franklin (another great turn by Peter Vaughan) whereby Franklin has to go for 24 hours without spending any money, and Crane has to spend 24 hours living life entirely by chance. This sees him firing his best mate Marcus on the toss of a coin, using the same technique to appoint a new MD for the company, and then doing the same to decide whether he should reunite with Franklin's daughter. 

It's ludicrous of course, but seen as a series of set pieces one after the other, it's enjoyable enough, and at least it has the grace to give us a genuine ending. 

Until the tonal shift that is Season 2. 

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