Julian Wadham as John Steed

[Spaceship Dispatcher]

I'm going to start off this thread by saying that Julian's interpretation of Steed does work for me; it's not the same performance as that of Patrick Macnee of course, but this is not a 'missing story' type of series where the plays are intended to fit within what was on television. Rather, this is more like a reboot in production terms. There is the added bonus that the use of original stories and scripts gives us an element of recreating the past, but it's also very much a new production by a new company in the same way that plays are staged many times yet never exactly the same. Julian has a grip, in my opinion, on the enigmatic nature of Steed as a member of the secret services even if some of the charisma is missing. His rapport with the other regulars certainly makes up for any shortcomings elsewhere for me.

[Lhbizness]

Is It acceptable to talk about drawbacks or problems in this thread?

[Spaceship Dispatcher]

Is It acceptable to talk about drawbacks or problems in this thread?

Yes, that was the reasoning behind creating separate threads for the character interpretations and the episodes. Feel free to debate away!

[Lhbizness]

OK, moving beyond the fact that Wadham is not Patrick Macnee (no one can be, of course), here's my problem: Wadham's Steed is not likable or, more importantly, believable. He veers between a rather one-dimensional foppishness and an attempt at being hard-boiled and harsh that never comes off. When he does Steed's "harshness" (as in Brought to Book, where he's supposedly posing as a villain), it does not come off. He sounds like he's playing a part, and would be unlikely to convince even the dumbest of stereotypical Cockney toughs. (Wadham has a very clipped, very posh accent that honestly grates on my ears - reminds me of the Yahs I went to school with). So I don't find his version of Steed convincing for the part that he has to play. He lends no soul to a character who was pretty scantily drawn to begin with.

I do disagree with the assertion that this isn't a "missing series" concept. It is exactly that: it's doing the episodes that no longer exist. There is a sense that this is as close as we're ever likely to come to "seeing" these episodes. As such, I simply wish (again, for my own personal feelings about the show) that the Steed here sounded more like the Steed I read in the scripts, or see in Macnee.

[DerekD]

I quite like him and he's become more relaxed as the series has progressed. If you listen to the making of pieces (at the end of the episode on the first set of disks), he makes the point that he didn't want to try to impersonate Patrick - and I agree that would have been a mistake. We don't have much surviving Patrick to go on from season 1 so it would be a mistake to assume he's like the Patrick of later seasons (I'm not suggesting that anyone here is doing that).

[Lhbizness]

Admittedly I have not listened past the first volume, entirely because I didn't much like the first episodes and saw no reason to drop another twenty bucks on something I'm not in love with. However, I am tempted to give the second volume a shot just because it contains some of my favorite scripts (based on the info in Alan's books).

There's nothing wrong with Wadham not wanting to impersonate Patrick - though if he could have done it WELL, I would have been all for it. It's that his interpretation of Steed grates on me because it comes off as very one-note and unbelievable. Whether or not Patrick's performance was different can only be projected, with assumptions based on what we still have of the performance from Series 1 and then the later series. But even in The Frighteners, Patrick's Steed has a believable edge. I am willing to buy the hard-boiled attitude coupled with the charm and even the slight foppishness. Steed feels like a full-blown character and not a very shallow simulacrum. I don't much care why Wadham plays Steed the way he does - he's either misinterpreted the character or isn't a good enough actor to carry it off (in my view, of course).

[Spaceship Dispatcher]

The 'one note' comment is an interesting one, and I'm not saying at this point that I agree or disagree with the validity of the observation; merely that it's an interesting angle in itself. Have any of us here actually listened to a television episode without the pictures? How would Patrick come across if you took away every visual aspect and element of his performance? Is it a direct comparison being made, when actually much of what makes the original performance unique and identifiable was down to a range of artistic skills that cannot be expressed in the audio medium? True, many of the skills are indeed the same. But if saying one performance is 'superior' to another, is it only those talents common to both film and radio arts that are being considered?

[Lhbizness]

Well, television is not radio, is it? You bring different skills to a visual performance than you do to an exclusively aural one. Patrick may not have been a good Steed on the radio, but then he didn't have to be. Wadham DOES have to be a good aural Steed. And, to me, he's not. He has no depth. (And this does come around to another one of my problems with this radio series: the attempt to translate one medium to another that does not come off well. But I won't derail the conversation on that one).

I do say that Patrick has greater warmth and laughter in his voice in general. He also made the character to a large degree, but I was trying to move away from comparing the two and simply remarking on what I think is seriously lacking in Wadham's performance.

[Spaceship Dispatcher]

I do say that Patrick has greater warmth and laughter in his voice in general

Would that have been the case with the s1 scripts that the current cast are working from? Having now listened to twelve of them, my impression is that the show was much more deeply rooted in the pure crime genre with limited opportunities for the levity that the cast exploited in later series. Where JW does have a chance to exchange humour with AH or LBO in an episode, in my opinion he does okay. But the 'humour in the face of danger' style of later series feels to me as lacking in the scripts as the performances. Having said that, there are one or two lighter episodes; but early on these seem like the exception rather than the rule.

[Lhbizness]

Entirely based on 1) the scripts I've read from Alan's book and 2) the still existent episodes (including The Frighteners), yes, Steed has more humor. PATRICK has more humor, just as an actor.

Wadham's performance is very lacking in charisma. I am not interested in his Steed - he is not charming nor is he particularly a hard-boiled anti-hero. I'm not certain we can just chalk it up to "well, the episodes were different" or even that the character was different. That's not the issue. Characters still have to be interesting at some level.