The Deep- the worst big budget TV series ever made. Possibly.

I make no pretense about being a film or TV critic- or any other critic really- but sometimes something comes along that you simply cannot help but talk about. I am currently utterly hooked, obsessed, addicted (and several other participles along those lines) to BBC1's big budget drama The Deep. Not because it is brilliant, but because it is so hysterically dreadful in absolutely every way. It is a combination of the car-crash phenomenon (so bad you awful you cannot bring yourself to turn away) and schadenfreude of unhealthy proportions. It's not an attractive thing to see in yourself, but I cannot help but imagine James Nesbitt's feelings as he watches this total tripe at home and realises "Oh god! What the fuck were we thinking?".

First up, let me point out I am in no way attacking the BBC here. I love the BBC, for all its flaws. A corporation will inevitably have flaws and herculean failures by its very nature, so delivering a televisual atrocity like The Deep is entirely forgivable (although with a small caveat, which I will come back to). For every sinking ship (yeah, there's probably going to be more than a fair share of nautical analogies from here on in) like this there are triumphs that no other TV network would have the courage to even attempt. The recent brilliance of Sherlock and the current superb historical documentary The Normans are shining jewels in Auntie's crown, and would be more than worth my license fee even before we mention Test Match Special (cricket nut, sorry). Anyone using The Deep to beat the Beeb over the head with should be ashamed of themselves, particularly when it is compared with the interminable tripe the commercial terrestrial stations churn out, let alone the near-total absence of original programming on Sky. With that clear, let us get to the leviathan submarine shitfest itself.

In case you haven't seen it, here is a brief summary of what you need to know, spoiler free. You need to imagine this being read by that American chap with a deep gravelly voice and an overly dramatic delivery:
On a mission of amazing discovery below the Arctic ice, a submarine vanishes without a trace. Now, one man [it's always "one man". It's Jimmy 'Adam From Cold Feet' Nesbitt this time] joins a second quest bound to complete their work, and to honour the memory of his wife, lost on the first mission. At the last minute, a mysterious man from the Powers That Be arrives, ordering them to discover what happened to the previous expedition. Coming this Fall... starring Goran 'I wish I was still in ER' Visnjic... Minnie 'Why don't I get parts like Good Will Hunting anymore?' Driver... Toby 'That bloke from Rome' Menzies... and James 'appeared pissed on Buzzcocks' Nesbitt. THE DEEP.

And I've possibly made it sound better, more original and more exciting than it actually is. Oh, the other thing you need to know is that, pre-credits scene where the first lot vanish, we see Jimmy's Mrs. You probably won't be able to name her but you're sure to recognise the actress playing that character, which should immediately tell you a fair few of the upcoming plot twists. There's also a few other berks (who you immediately think should be wearing red shirts) along for the ride, all played by people you've never seen before. One of them- the charming but slightly dappy young lady- knows a secret about two of the main characters. Another is Russian. Another is the token chap with dark skin. If you cannot immediately tell me large portions of the plot just from that, you need another shot of espresso.

The list of flaws with this whole farce is very long, but the one that is utterly unforgivable is the plot. It is totally cliched, and every single twist is telegraphed hours before it comes along. To say there is no dramatic tension would be like saying there are no world class footballers playing for Grimsby- it does not quite convey how palpably unexciting the entire escapade is. No matter what else is going on, if your drama is based on events they have to be dramatic when they arrive- if you see them coming (and if they are things you have seen done many times before) they have no impact.

The unoriginality is a rather insurmountable part of this whole disaster. It looks for all intents and purposes like it was written by someone with a very limited range of inspirations. There's a rather obvious nod to The Abyss (mysteries of the deep and shizzle), another in the direction of The X-Files (shady goings on, mysterious bloke from "The Admiralty", big powerful organisations, weird happenings that seem impossible et cetera, et cetera) and possibly a touch of Lost here and there (I'll not explain that one as it involves a spoiler... oh fuck it, you'll see it coming anyway- they get stuck in "The Deep", and weird unexplainable shit happens). And most of the ideas have already been recycled ad nauseam. Add in a few more (dour ship captain who seems unusually unhelpful, overly friendly American working for the UN, Japanese computer wizard, extramarital entertainments) and it just gets even worse. But that's not even the worst bit about the problems with the plot. There are two even more awful.

It looks a little bit like a chronically untalented GCSE Drama student wrote the screenplay- obvious cliches from insanely famous shows/films, clunky and predictable plot twists etc- immediately after doing a weekend screenwriting course. There are some horribly crude plot devices.

The first ("The MacGuffin", the object which essentially does nothing but is the motivation for all involved) is a vague thing, a microorganism which will apparently change the world. It's never explained what the bloody hell it really is, how it could be found, what it could do or anything else really, which tells you immediately how unimportant it is in the plot- the writers couldn't even be arsed to work out what it is, let alone tell the audience. But hey, it doesn't matter, it's just a tool to get them to be where you want them to be so the events can take place, right? Wrong. The whole premise is that the mission is extremely dangerous, so dangerous that a previous attempt resulted in a loss with all hands and no evidence of what happened to them, not a trace. So why are this new lot going after them? It sounds bloody important. Yet we're not really told (at least we haven't had it adequately explained in the first three episodes, which is when it should be done) so why do we care about the mission? In short, we don't.

There's another huge one ("The Chekhov's Rifle", an object that immediately catches your eye at the beginning of Act I Scene I that must be used by Act III or not be there at all) in the shape of Jimmy N's better half. If you cast an instantly recognisable actress in an ensemble with few familiar faces, you instantly tell us this is significant. So when we barely see her apart from a few flashbacks, you make it clear that she isn't dead at all and will be found alive, it's just a question of when and how. It's painfully obvious really, and completely shatters any sympathy you have for the mourning widower.

There is without question a stonking great third one coming at the end ("The Deus Ex Machina", the sudden all-solving arrival at the exact point everything seems doomed to disaster that rescues the situation) that will bring this cataclysm to a conclusion. It really is all terribly amateur, as if written by someone who knows a little but lacks any real understanding or skill as to how that knowledge should be used. The daft thing is how clumsily all these elements are sewn together- the writers clearly had no clue how to tell the story, so a very small set of events take an epic length of time to happen. You wish there had been some immature bloke on the team who just wanted some big explosions and some shagging thrown in to liven it up a bit- given how tediously slow and relentlessly dull this all is, some accelerating of pace with some action (of either kind) would be a refreshing change. But no, the snail's pace endures. And in the yawning gaps between events, you realise just how many things are wrong with The Deep.

For a start the script is truly hopeless- clumsy, clunky, obvious, witless, without guile and lacking anything which resembles characterisation. The direction is equally shocking, and the way you realise this is the woeful nature of the acting. Minnie Driver and Goran Visnjic (and even big Jimmy) are good actors (yes, Goran's good- watch Deep End if you don't believe me) yet both appear absolutely useless here. When good actors look shite, it's either the script or the direction that's wrong. In this case, it's both.

The camera work is shite, again probably to do with the direction- no properly trained cameraman would be as wonky and crass as this (at times it's so bad it looks like outtakes) so it can only be because the director told them to do it. The costumes are bland. The set looks rubbish. The soundtrack is honking and irritating. The special effects are inferior to the graphics in Bioshock. The ditsy girl who knew too much died early on, and I'm quite sure the token Asian guy is about to be killed off soon (if he wasn't going to pop his clogs, they might have given him something resembling a personality- or as close as they could manage, anyway). They even have shady Russians turn up for crying out loud. And it is at this point that I have to take umbrage with the BBC just a little- that little caveat I mentioned before.

You cannot help but wonder how this ever got commissioned. At what point did anyone think this was ever going to be good? The plot and script are so utterly abysmal that you really have to question how it ever got to the point where someone gave the go-ahead for any money to be spent in the first place. Forget the shoddy dialogue and poor characterisation (and the other problems), it should have been obvious to anyone half awake that the premise was bad. Far too little happens- the events of the first three episodes could have been put into one and instantly become better, as there would be some pace and drama to it. This is a project that should never have got to pre-production, so without redeeming feature is it.

Yet I am completely hooked. It is totally awful in every imaginable way- I cannot think of a single thing that is good about it. But I will watch again next Tuesday, and the finale the week after. I have to see every episode to be completely certain that it does not get good at the end. I am taking a genuine pleasure in how dreadful it is, and would hate them to ruin it by turning it around- I want to be able to hold this up for years to come as a monumental Colossus of terribleness, and to remember it as possibly the worst big budget TV series ever made. It's so dire it almost goes full circle- it goes beyond shit to the point that its shitness becomes enjoyable.

Although it's probably just me.