ANGRY AS HELL, ENGLAND

You know I like the show Constantine, right? You know I have to rant about the unfairness that is NBC cancelling the show and releasing all of its cast and crew from their contracts, right? Right. Just so we’re under no illusions as to what this post will be about.

Let’s start at the beginning. Imagine you have the rights to make a show based on a comic book. Now imagine that this comic cook has a long-standing, loyal fanbase. Imagine those fans have access to a TV and a cable\broadband connection, and in all likelihood subscribe to some kind of entertainment package to watch whatever they want on said TV. How much of a stretch would it be to imagine that these fans might want to give your new show a go, and if they approved, would talk about it non-stop on social media and to their real life friends?

So you make the show. You do a bit of market research and find that there aren’t that many shows on telly these days that would fall into the same category. One of the copyright owners, WB, turns out to have a show somewhat similar in appearance but completely different in actuality, on one of its subsidiary channels, the CW. You have a think and decide that, because of the time and effort everyone’s put into bringing the show to life - not least of the all the excellent cast including, some would say, the real life embodiment of the main character himself - you’ll bury it in the ‘graveyard’ spot (so named because shows get put in that time slot to die).

The first episode gets mixed reviews; you feel disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that you order the season to be cut from 23 episodes to just 13. After all, you have to mitigate your losses, right? So the viewers and fans are upset. Who cares? What matters is that you’ve just ensured you lose less money that you’ve projected. Now you sit back and watch the ratings, week by week. But you don’t advertise the show, you don’t go out of your way to boost these ratings in any way. It’s almost like you don’t want to do the job you’re paid to do, and certainly looks exactly like you want the show to fail.

But the fans. Ah, those irksome fans. They get together on Twitter, on tumblr, on Facebook. They conspire to get the name of the show, and the fact that everyone needs to ‘save’ the show, trending. And it doesn’t stop there - cast and crew join in, because hey, why not - it’s only their jobs, their livelihoods, after all. Ratings increase episode by episode. Not dramatically, but enough to convince everyone that it’s worth more than it’s getting. So you change the time slot, bring it forward an hour, without advertising it. That’ll confuse the viewers, right? I mean, once they tune in and find out they’ve missed it, they’ll just forget all about it, surely.

You’ve forgotten streaming, my friend, and the revenue you get from it. Now you have to factor that into how successful it’s becoming, not to mention all those secondary ratings from people who hear about it through someone doing a tweet-along and then get snared as viewers too. Damn those social media platforms.

Then you find that someone in Marketing has done for that show what they do for all your other shows; they’ve gone and made some merchandise. Granted, it’s only two shirts, and granted, they’re only for men, but look at how many they’ve gone and sold! Idiots. Now you have to stop any more merchandise being produced lest you generate income from that, too. Who wants the merchandise to become popular so that you end up not only making money from it, but advertising the show as well? It’ll have to be stopped otherwise you’ll never get this show cancelled.

Did I say cancelled? I meant buried.

Now then, knowing that the (shortened) season is coming to a close, you keep a steady eye on the ratings. Once they’ve out-performed several other shows across rival networks, then you can announce that they just weren’t high enough, and give everyone a good reason to cancel the show. But to forestall any fan fury, you just say that the show has been put on the back-burner, that you can bring it back at any time - say, if the new Autumn shows don’t attract high enough ratings before the Christmas break. That will keep the fans happy, right?

Sigh. Obviously not. The fans keep writing in - taking the time to use actual pens and real paper - and they’re emailing, and calling network executives, and they’re sending in weird things like the nine of diamonds playing cards and red ties. It’s all very weird. Basically they don’t seem happy about the show being caught in limbo. But who cares - you can cancel it next week anyway.

And you do. It gets canned. Cast and crew are freed from their contracts. They go their separate ways, like good little soldiers. The network is happy - they’ve got rid of it at last. Now they can concentrate on the shows that will make them money. Because making money out of your shows is how you survive as a network.

But make sure there’s no merchandise to sell, lads. Can’t have us making money out of a show we’ve already cancelled. Wait - who sold it to Amazon Prime and iTunes? Idiots - now people can spend money on it to buy the series. Now even more money will come in. Oh but wait a minute - make sure you don’t, whatever you do, produce or sell a DVD or - gasp! - a blu ray with extras on it. Got that stopped? Phew! Good work, troops. We very nearly ended up receiving more revenue from this show through very little expenditure.

Done imagining all that? Wow - you have a very vivid imagination, and one to be proud of, not to mention good concentration.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to imagine, because that’s exactly what happened (well, mostly). And here’s why I’m angry:

At any time, NBC, you could have realised that you’d made a commitment and thought about actually backing that up with advertising, with an effort to promote the show and get some good beginner’s ratings. At any time you could have decided that you no longer wanted the show and cut yourself free - by selling it to another network or one of your subsidiaries. The CW wouldn’t have been a perfect fit but it would have been a start. AMC would have been perfect, seeing as they’re currently still enjoying a ratings hit with The Walking Dead. HBO would have turned the show into more of its comic book origins and less about toning it down for the audience - great. Netflix would have grabbed that ball and run with it so fast you’d regret letting it go. But hey, you failed to back your own show and you failed to sell it as a going concern. But see, it wasn’t just your loss - it was the fans’, too.

I shall add the back story of this show to the shelf with the others - Farscape, Firefly, 17th Precinct, the Dresden Files. Perhaps it’s just me - perhaps I have a unerring ability to pick out shows destined to lose, and then invest in them emotionally until they are actually pronounced dead and buried. Perhaps I should watch all the other shit that keep the networks afloat. Then again, maybe I should just ignore NBC and their banal, bland offerings of entertainment and stick to the things I like. Yeah, think I’ll do that.

The funny thing is, that show I mentioned on the CW? Yeah. Supernatural was in danger of being cancelled so many times over the years, and yet it’s now prepping for its eleventh season. The amount of merchandise and fan support is astronomical. Guess where all that money is going? Yes, NBC - not you.

That’s it; I’m done. I’m not even close to over NBC deliberately trying to make no money out of its own show. I’m not nearly over the way they’ve left the end of the season hanging and now we’ll never find out what happens next. I’m not even remotely thinking about forgiving them for letting this show go.

This is one you can’t just let go. It’s not the time.

Constantine: A Feast of Friends

Yes, here we are again. Bumps in the road come and go, but favourite (and obsessive) shows are forever. I’ve done the first three episodes of Constantine, but I’ve fallen behind in so many things. John Constantine will not be one of them. Onwards and upwards, my friends - it’s time for three themes:

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for Constantine series 1 episode 4!



Hellblazer

We start with Gary Lester, and the purr wee lamb trying to get through US Customs (that’s doesn’t look like Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, but whatever) with a reeeeaaaally dodgy bottle from Khartoum. It takes about a minute for it all to go Pete Tong and Hellblazer fans will already recognise the storyline from, funnily enough, Hellblazer #001. And John ‘teaching’ Zed how to let go and use her psychic abilities to travel a network - like John floats the synchronicity highway? We get a mention of Newcastle early on, and the showrunners don’t gloss over the fact that Gary is still a skeevy drug addict. (Excellent casting, by the way - JonJo O’Neill is the perfect hapless shifter who just wants to do good - and if that’s by way of another fix, then all the better.) John comes over as a bit of a hardass on poor Gary - he’s judgemental of his addict ways, he refuses his help at every turn, he tells him to his face that he’s the last person he’d ever want to help him with anything. If this were the comic, it’d be because he either (1) knew he couldn’t trust Gary, or (2) wanted him as far aways as possible in a bid to keep him out of danger. From Matt Ryan’s face and body language, I’m going to go with option 1 here. It works.

Gary gives us the story of Newcastle, and inadvertently shows how everyone - the ‘crew’ they ran with back then - thought John was the dog’s bollocks and no-one could resist ‘a bit of black magic with the John Constantine’.

I like how the whole story has come out of bad luck - Gary just happens to be on the chore for a fix, so that he comes across the boy containing the demon in the first place. It’s typical Hellblazer for some poor soul to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tropes

We get a full-on exorcism, a bug-fuelled rescue of a young lad’s soul - not by John, but by needy Gary. He’s so made up with the fact that he succeeded it’s so sad to see that the complete numptie at the airport smashed the bloody thing and let the demon out. This is what a show about demonology and dark arts should have, right? Ticks a box, and preps the audience for later episodes containing the premise.

John’s speech about Gary and himself as younger men - people who use, people who run away, people who lose their way after shit hits the fan. This sets Gary up as both the story’s everyman who couldn’t take the big time (which is fair enough, considering what that actually was back in Newcastle) and also the waster character who just wants to be redeemed by coming through for once in his life.

Zed: she wants to see the good in people, she wants Gary to turn over a new leaf and impress John, I think so Zed can show she’s right and John is wrong about people being unable to change. It’s an interesting thought from both sides - even though she appears to be hiding out with John and Chas from her ‘real life’, she still thinks the best of people until proven wrong. John is used to the shittier side of people’s natures though - he’s fully prepared for everyone to be bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling (something I have to agree with).

And Nommo is the mysterious shaman dude with all the answers. (I like this character, and the actor, Charles Parnell. It’d be nice if he were to come back at some point.)
We have Manny and his sudden appearances, to first of all check that John is still on the path to tracking down the series arc the Rising Darkness, while simultaneously giving us some insight into Zed’s abilities and where they may or may not stem from. Sowing the seeds for much later on, as it turns out.

Using

Gary: being the addict is obvious. But he’s also using people to find some way to atone for running away and hiding at Newcastle. John, the manipulator of people, using small victories to make himself feel some tiny amount of satisfaction that he’s managed to erase a little of the red in his ledger. Zed, the psychic, using her abilities to help, but also perhaps using Gary’s presence to get some answers about John’s past. Mnemoth the hunger demon is the only straightforward one here, who isn’t using someone or something else for ulterior motives. You could argue that it’s the only pure character here. Even Nommo uses psychotropics to get his answers, and in doing that perhaps cements John’s trust in him and what he can do. I’m sure Nommo would have no qualms about leaning on John for a favour in the future based on this episode.

But who is Manny using and how? During his second appearance he’s apparently not convinced that John is up to the task of what he’s planning for the demon. Funny how he’s not at all against John’s actual plan (that will be revealed in the last act). Odd that an angel would have no problem with what he knew John to be planning. It appears to be the first indication that Manny either doesn’t understand or doesn’t believe that John would actually go through with it. Of course, it’s good that Manny didn’t say anything to that effect or The Big Reveal would have been ruined.

When we do get to the last act and we see what John’s got up his sleeve, Gary is not angry. In fact he seems appreciative; is he awed by John’s offer of a point to using Gary’s life (and death) for good, or is he just glad of a way out, a way to be off the hook for Newcastle, in a way that makes him a hero?

The third time Manny appears he comes to sit with John over the agonising death that Gary is going through piece by piece. Does he want to help John, or does he want to be there at the end for poor Gary, to maybe take his soul when it’s freed? Perhaps he’s just using this opportunity to see what John is capable of, for future adventures? It certainly is ambiguous, and anyone who grew up on Farscape will see the potential for mass mood whiplash around the corner.

Obligatory quotes

Zed: People can change, you know.
John: Bollocks. We are who we are. Eventually.

John: You know what I always say, Gaz. Everyone has the capacity to change.
Gary: I’ve never heard you say that before.
John: Exactly.

Zed: Gary loved you and you betrayed him!
John: You think I wanted this? I told you: people around me die. If you can’t handle it, then go.

It was a full episode, and it was a well-planned one. This was not a procedural drama in the sense that it did not seek to solve the problem of the demon Mnemoth, but rather open up the can of worms that was Gary’s life and John’s part in it all. Gary was a very welcome addition to the mill house, and JonJo O’Neill was very well used. We got a range of pissed-off expression from John, and the oh fuck no face that is starting to become a warning that he’s about to lose patience with the turd-burp part of his universe. He also unleashes a few new epithets (and I am enjoying the Englishness of his swearing. It’s so nice to hear it being used in US telly) without being a stereotype. I liked Zed’s two cents, questioning John where other people may not have felt educated enough on the context, or perhaps intimidated by all the shit he pulls with magic (like randomly having the original Taba’at Shlomo at his disposal to carve the seal of Solomon into a handy glass bottle). When she feels she has to step in she’s not afraid to do so, and I like that about her. She also has to deal with Gary’s come-downs first-hand, and she copes pretty well for someone who’s never ‘dabbled’ with drugs. She continues to challenge and question, and that’s forcing John to evaluate things more clearly. I like it.

So, marks out of ten? I’d give this one an eight - for not shying away from doing what it had to in the end. I wish it could have gone a little further, but this is NBC not HBO (or AMC). Pity. Still, we have plenty more episodes to go. I may even do another one tonight.

Peach and lube, everyone! Peach and lube.

Constantine: The Devil’s Vinyl

I told you I was doing the entire series, didn’t I? I know it’s not Monday yet but I’m just not prepared to wait that long. So here we go - another Constantine review, organised under three headings. Hold my tea, it’s time for:
Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for Constantine series 1 episode 3!

Deserving

Where do we start with this one? Why not Jasmine, the woman who made the contract in the first place, with the ambulance chaser in the hospital. Did she deserve to have her contract end and her soul sent to Hell? Yes. Oh don’t look at me like that - she knew what she was doing and she signed it anyway. I’m not judging her for it, I’m just saying, she understood completely what she was getting into. The fact that it was for the whole ‘I’ll gladly sell my soul if it gets rid of my husband’s cancer’ thing is unfair, but so’s life. The fact that she wasn’t the one trying to get out of the contract was interesting - and a nice twist to bring in a favourite ‘villain’ of the comics - but that’s for later.

She segues us into Bernie - and mate, when someone tells you not to listen to a record, YOU DON’T LISTEN TO A RECORD, so yeah, he deserved what he got. Yes, if he hadn’t done it we wouldn’t have had a climax to the episode teaser and John wouldn’t have had anyone to question later. But still, Bernie - judging you.

How about Zed? Does she deserve to be trusted yet? She helped John gain access to the morgue (like he wouldn’t have picked someone’s pocket himself five minutes after she’d done it), she found Moonrise Records in about three seconds on Google where John was seriously considering going to a library. She smacked a dude over the head before he could knife John. She knows and uses American SIgn Language to get the actual story of what happened at the crime scene. Everything she does seem to come from a position of wanting to help - but why? Is she really that compassionate or is she trying to atone for something? John doesn’t seem to be totally on board with her yet; she invites herself along on the case and his reply is a dour “Knock yourself out, MacDuff”. Does this mean he’s expecting Zed to find out what he’s really about and harm him?

Matt Ryan deserves an Emmy. I’m just going to say it now and get it out of the way. There, I feel better already.

History

We had a few points of insight here - we meet Bernie the record producer. Why is this important? John shares something about himself with Zed: “Back in Jurassic time I fronted a punk band called Mucus Membrane. Yeah, that’s right - I wasn’t always an upstanding warlock. Bernie here produced our first and only record. He tried his best, but… to tell you the truth we were just a bunch of wankers trying to get laid.” We get one of John’s mates, dead, and him a little unsettled by it - but this is ‘first friend dead’. How many more will we see over the series? Well I’ve seen it, so I already know, but basically the death toll is more Hellblazer and less Star Trek.

The singer set down in acetate for future generations to be haunted by was called Willie Cole. How close this was to the legend of Robert Johnson, the real-life blue singer who may or may not have ‘sold his soul’ to the devil, we will never know. Those of you who’ve watched the Supernatural episode Crossroad Blues will be familiar with the rumoured tale of Robert Johnson; he was a pretty good harmonica player but a terrible blue guitar player. He was alleged to have gone to a crossroads and sought the help of the devil, who promised him ten years of expert guitarmanship before he would return and claim his soul as payment. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Johnson actually died of syphilis, or of being caught by a jealous husband. But then the Faustian myth is much more exciting, innit? This episode draws on this and makes you think you know what’s behind it all - until it shows you that it’s not.

Papa Midnite, then. It seems him and John have something of a professional history, even if they don’t appear to have met face to face before. John describes him as a voodoo priest, and seems to have a good idea what the man is capable of. Papa Midnite knows John by reputation, it appears. And the two of them clearly don’t like each other, much less trust one another. Something of a departure from the comics, but then, this is set early on in John’s sordid career, so perhaps we’re looking at how they came to be wary of each other. Nice.

Quotes

Yes, I’m going to shoe-horn a few in here. Quick-fire comebacks that characters slip under the radar they may be, but one of the reasons I like this show is the way they’re not waving their arms and being as cool-as-shit as possible about everything. We don’t get slow-mo moments, we don’t get Hollywood glossy action scenes, but we do get Johnesque lip and backchat:

Chas: “Let’s say hi to his Satanic Majesty.” [They get inside and John is naked, covered only in blood, learning a new spell.]

“You’re going to have to respect my boundaries. I don’t do zip-ties without a safe-word.”

[As John is tied down and left to die - and then it starts to rain:] “Yeah, great. Why not.”

When Manny the angel appears to speak to John, but of course, not get ‘involved’ and actually help him:] “Cut me loose and I’ll show you - you celestial wank.” “ Next time I see him I’m going to punch him.”

[Zed orders them to go do the next act; Chas says they should follow her. John isn’t so sure:] “Alright but we don’t have to just jump when she says.” Beat. “Ok that’s long enough; let’s go.”

So what’s the verdict on the episode? Solid, made sense, tied up loose ends, gave us something to think about before the next show. Zed is starting to eclipse Chas in her usefulness to John, and if they’re not careful, I am going to like her just as much as John himself. She’s not pushy, she’s not in your face ‘feisty’, she just quietly gets shit done. Every show should have a Zed. This episode gets a steady eight of ten, for setting us up with new characters, for doing established characters right, and for giving us a good twisty story whilst showcasing some of Matt Ryan’s best reaction faces.

And there we have it, folks. Thanks for reading, and if you’ve taken part in any of the Save Constantine activities at all recently or repeatedly, then I thank you from the heart of my bottom. We need a season 2, and I’m not stopping with the voting and petitioning and e-mailing until we get one, on any network.

Peach and lube, everyone. Peach and frelling lube.

Constantine < Hellblazer?

Back in the dim and distant, I had a few issues of Hellblazer. To be honest, I was too young for them. Not in the don’t look at the nudity and smoking and blood and slashy knives and naughty words kind of way, but in an I don’t get it kind of way. I was barely twenty, and the comic was just about four years old at this stage. I wasn’t ready.

Skip to about... Ooh, five years ago. I happened to catch sight of a cover to Hellblazer #300 (the last ongoing issue) on Tinternet. And I thought, wait a tick, that bloke looks familiar. It wasn’t till a while later that I realised it was the end to something I had started long before.

Skip to last year. I was doing the Thursday Shop, otherwise known as Comics Wednesday in the States. (With the time zone as it is, I shop for new comics on a Thursday.) What do I see? A new collection of the first nine issues of Hellblazer, which may or may not be considered Jamie Delano’s best work for the title. He did pretty much invent it, off the back of an arc in the Swamp Thing.

I was older, I was more cynical, I was deep into comics and constantly looking for ‘new’. Bored of the usual straight white American dude saving the world, my weekly Thursday Shop consisted of titles like Saga, NextWave, Captain Marvel, Trillium, Young Avengers, and the like. Faced in this climate with the prospect of finally getting to grips with John Constantine, I thought I might as well.

It’d be more accurate to say that John Constantine got to grips with me. The sweeping story arcs, the way he was so down-to-Earth Scouse, the one-liners that covered a desperate lurch for salvation, the constant threat of losing everything if he just let the facade slip enough for people to realise he didn’t actually have all the answers; it was intoxicating. I went through nothing less than five issues in a sitting. Sod work and getting back late from a lunch break - there were literally hundreds of issues on my iPad, goddammit, and John wasn’t going to read himself (except that one time with Ellie and the priest with the talking door).

As poor John lurched from one skin of the teeth pyrrhic victory to the next, I slowly fell in love with the comic. So many issues, so many artists, so many writers, so many subtle differences in how they saw his character - there was a never-ending Pandora’s Box of adventures. Once it was opened, and I ripped through three hundred issues, I realised that one thing had indeed been trapped inside: Hope. All I wanted was to believe that there was more, that what transpired in Hellblazer #300 (the last scene of which I still debate), was not the end. It couldn’t be, right? There had to be more.

I found graphic novels. I found specials. I found DC’s attempt to fit him into their Justice League line-up. Sadly, for me, these DCverse comics were just not right. They did not gel. It was the fact that John was no longer the focus of the book - now it was him against a pantheon of DC people, set against DC places and names. Gone were my trips to Liverpool, or Australia, or Northern Ireland. Gone were my Kit, Epiphany, Gemma. In their places were things I did not know because they were not of Hellblazer; the comics took me twice as long to read, as I spent equal parts reading the comic, and searching Wikipedia to find out who the apparently famous person was that John was up against. It became a chore - like their New 52 Constantine title. It wasn't John; it was a shiny ret-conned blonde bloke who occasionally talked like him, but shared none of the actual real secret of magic with him at all.

It was not my John.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Let me just say in my defence: my favourite Doctors are Two, Five, Nine, Ten, and the beginnings of Eleven. It’s true that I have turned my back on New Who, but that is not down to the change in actor or personality, it’s down to my hate-hate relationship with Steven Moffat’s writing. I like Star Trek the original series and The Next Generation, while my first love is DS9. I liked the 2009 reboot of Star Trek (Into Darkness not so much), because in my head it was a compromise - if you liked the original and not the reboot, the original had not been overwritten. Conversely, if you like the reboot but had tried to watch the original but not liked it, you still had your own version that did not overwrite the original. That’s why I’m perfectly fine with Into Darkness failing on a lot of levels; Wrath of Khan still happened (and is still better), just in the other timeline. Long and short: I like change. Change is good - mostly.

So back to John Constantine.

Still reeling from the ending of Hellblazer, and finding that there were no more issues, I heard a rumour that Warner Brothers were looking at making a TV series called Constantine. I was intrigued. Then I was worried; would they be able to pull off some of the storylines from Hellblazer? Were they even going to bother? And who the bloody hell were they going to get to play John? Because if it was another Keanu Reeves, pretending to be English or not, then I was definitely out.

Skip to late last year. I had seen new series come along - caught up with Game of Thrones, tried watching The Flash (no-go - who wants yet another secret identity secretly in love with his best friend but can’t tell her oh and did I mention they stuffed his mother in a fridge to give him daddy issues about rescuing him from prison? Blah blah blah.), tried Arrow (yeesh - but I have been told to ignore season one and head straight to season two. Seeing as I stuck with it for about seven episodes and then decided I was done torturing myself, I don’t know if I’ll bother) and Forever (really good, but in such a nice quiet way, it’s sure to get cancelled). Gotham started, and I’ve enjoyed that more and more. Agents of SHIELD continues to improve, so I’m glad I stuck with that one. Supernatural has come back with a triumphant tenth season, which I’m still addicted to and still enjoying. So what was I going to get with Constantine?

Firstly, the pilot was pretty bloody shaky. I’m glad that they decided to drop the companion-cum-storyline there and go with Zed a few episodes later. However, two things struck me from the outset: one, they’d picked a winner with Matt Ryan, and two, they weren’t going to shy away from certain subject matter, even on their timeslot.

I was intrigued. They even went with one of the best story arcs from Hellblazer a few episodes later in the form of Gary Lester and the hunger demon. It was racking up to be a vast improvement, but pretty much nothing was going to stop me watching it once I’d got used to John’s somewhat clean trenchcoat (part of me is begging them to do a version of The Devil’s Trenchcoat story arc. I would die happy). They were making it a little darker without sacrificing colour; where Supernatural tends to bleed the colour out and whack up the contrast, Constantine is all about colour and bright spillage of blood and make-up. One thing I do like is the cinematography and the way the editing is handled. A lot of gore is performed offscreen for your imagination, and even if it just to get round the programming rules, it’s still a neat way for you to get your gore on without getting taken off the air. They may have changed a few elements about the characters - I thought Chas was darker in the comics, and obviously his penchant for Jack Harkness’ing his way out of permanent death is a new one. But hey, they’re rolling with it and they’re making it more interesting. Take Zed Martin, for instance. Not the bird we were given in Hellblazer, past her ‘gifted’ roots and her talents, but definitely a change for the better. They’ve developed a women on screen who, one, is not white, two, is not dependant on anybody, and three, can literally take care of herself, despite hiding that side of herself. Her attitude and the fact that she’s a capable character, instead of being just a hanger-on or a sidekick, makes me watch for her - the woman with her own life and agenda - as much as for John. Try saying that about any other series.

Angélica Celaya, then, should be headed for big things. When this series is cancelled, as inevitably all good shows are by large networks who worry too much about instant ratings gratification and not enough about long-term merchandising rights and blu-ray sales, then I look forward to seeing what she does next. Charlie Halberd, the ever-present Chas, is also going to become a staple of US TV, I hope. Harold Perrineau, as the argie-bargie angel Manny, already has a long list of telly credits under his belt (not least of all the wonderfully sublime The Unusuals), but I know he’ll be back.

Matt Ryan, though. He’s the best not-John that ever John’d. They may have had to bleach his hair and they haven’t bothered covering up his own tatts, but he fills John’s shoes like they were made for him. He was seven years old when Hellblazer first started, but that hasn’t stopped him from apparently being told by his comic-shop-owner-mate that if he gets John wrong, he runs the risk of not waking up the next day. He seems to have taken it to heart - the swagger to his walk, the shoulders that pin themselves back when he’s about to cast a spell, the sneaking-in of the network-forbidden cigarettes, the borderline dodgy/creepy look he gives people when he’s working through how to get out of the jam he’s in - he is to John Constantine what David Tennant was to the Doctor for many people. When I go back to read Hellblazer comics now? Yep - he sounds like Matt Ryan’s soft Scouse / hint of his own Welsh.

One thing I will say is that he’s Shakespeare trained. So when you ask him to act like he’s possessed by a demon and just wants to terrorise and hurt people, then that’s what you get. He is a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin kind of actor. He puts his back into every scene he’s got without having to chew scenery, often accomplishing more with a single shifty look than lines of dialogue. I cannot stress enough how much he deserves an Emmy for his performance in episode nine’s ‘Saint of Last Resorts, part 2’.

The episodes themselves do not back down: you will see kids possessed and people in the wrong place at the wrong time dying, and other people scammed into a plot twist you didn’t see coming. You will get more bodily fluids than a Farscape snot-fest. You will get John giving people lip (apparently insults like ‘wanker’ and ‘tosser’ and ‘pile of wank’ get past US censors. It makes me wonder if they know what they mean), you will get Angry!John raging at people, and Zed being quietly amazing, and Chas just trying to hold everything together. You’ll probably enjoy it, too.

Understandably, I’m upset that it’s going to get cancelled. We can vote online and petition and beg and make noise about this show as much as we like, but I know it’s going to get cancelled. Because the good shows always are. I will still keep making noise and telling NBC how much I want the show to continue, but seeing as all they look at is instant ratings, I have my doubts about it working.

My parting shot? Watch this show. Watch it before it disappears. You’ll be glad you did.

Where There's Smoke

Yeah, done some more writing. I’m still polishing my own original fiction novel, which I took to the Writer’s Workshop in York and got some very good feedback for. I’ve got some time off later this month so I’ll be working even harder on that to get it up to spec, and then it’s going out to agents.


Anyway, I digress. I’ve just completed a Supernatural and Constantine crossover story - eleven chapters - that I’m polishing as I put it up chapter by chapter.

Ladies, gentlemen, boths and neithers, I give you:

Title: Where There’s Smoke

Rating: T \ Teen and Up for adult themes, slightly horrific things that go nom-nom-nom in the dark, sinister tones, a bit of rumpy-pumpy, and John’s swearing.

Summary:
Sam and Dean find an unlikely ally in the war against… library books. John Constantine? All he wants is a quiet life. That’s not the canon way though, right?

Disclaimer: 
I do not own John Constantine or Supernatural (if I did, there'd be more Hellblazer and less New 52, and Crowley would have his own spin-off). I DO NOT condone smoking anything in any form. This is all for fun, not for profit. Unless you add me to any favourites lists or leave comments. Then I profit in the knowledge that someone thinks it’s pretty good. 

Characters:
Dean Winchester. Sam Winchester. John Constantine. A demon or two, and maybe some faerie folk.

Linky-link-link: HERE at An Archive of Our Own under my name TozaBoma (because they don’t re-edit your stuff later) and HERE at Fanfiction dot net under my name Mardy Lass.

If you even visit the page, I thank you.

Tags:
~ fan-fic ~ Constantine ~ Supernatural ~ Hellblazer