Alcatraz

Yesterday I blogged about an Italian art house series on BBC4. Today, it is about something altogether more gritty - the wonderful series 'Alcatraz' being shown on Watch (Sky channel 109) starring Sam Neill.

There have only been two episodes so far with eleven more to go. The premise that is that when Alcatraz closed in 1963, the inmates were not transferred eleswhere as we were all led to believe but mysteriously disappeared into thin air with 45 of their guards. Now, in 2012 almost 50 years later, they are reappearing one by one all over America looking exactly like they did when they disappeared; not aged or changed in any way. Naturally, being bad lads, they are getting back together to cause mayhem and Sam Neill plus one maverick young female San Francisco detective are all that stands between us and them.

This series is very promising - well acted, cinematically well shot, an original storyline (although something of a cross between the X Files and Life on Mars) and a highly charged slow burn to a dramatic climax. And, of course, it has Sam Neill in it who is one of those actors with latent sex appeal and compelling eyes.

There is something about Alcatraz which always catches the imagination. I cannot comprehend the pain of being incarcerated at all, let alone on an island where you can see civilization getting along without you perfectly well instead of being insulated from it. You may have deserved your incarceration, but being so poignantly reminded of it on a daily basis would surely make it infinitely worse.

It is the same with all island fortresses. Near where we have our apartment in Crete is the island of Spinalonga. For many years this was used by the Greeks as an isolation area for those unfortunates that contracted leprosy. It was only decommissioned as such in the late 1950s when a cure for the disease was found. Lepers lived there in a fully functioning community apart from one thing - they had all been forced to go there and were never allowed to leave. They could see the Cretan 'mainland' little more than one kilometre away across the Mediterranean; their children, if born healthy as many lepers' children were, were taken away from them and housed in the Cretan village they looked at every day. In summer it is hot as hell on Spinalonga, and they had nowhere to go to escape the heat. It must have been appalling. 

I hope that Alcatraz doesn't disappoint in its later episodes after such a promising start. It's unusual to find really quality drama on the trashy Sky channels  and this would almost be a first (Game of Thrones on Sky 1 a little while back was also good). Why not give it a go - you might be pleasantly surprised.