Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Regina King, Jeremy Irons, Andrew Howard, Louis Gossett Jr., Jean Smart, Sara Vickers, Tom Mison, Tim Blake Nelson, Don Johnson, Frances Fisher, Yahya Abdul-Mateenn II, Jacob Ming-Trent, James Wolk, Jessica Camacho, Dustin Ingram, Cheyenne Jackson, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Chris Whitley, Jake McDorman, Hong Chau.
Who watches the watchers, probably the same enlightened people that first flocked to the writing and artwork of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons when the sensational and ground-breaking graphic comics and subsequent novel Watchmen was released, who watches the watchers, arguably those who saw the novel turned into a tremendous, if undervalued by the initial cinema going public at the time, film of the same name…who watches the Watchmen, anyone with sense should.
The superhero genre may have become saturated over the last twenty years, certainly in the last decade the house of Marvel has stolen a march, not only on its main publishing rival D.C., but on cinema itself, films such as The Avengers, Iron Man and Captain Marvel have all left other movies choking on the dust as they speed towards, and beyond, the billion Dollar box office mark. However, what it has so far failed to do, is transfer those ideas directly to television, and whilst there is an abundance of series coming to the Disney Channel in 2020, it could be argued that they will not have the same seismic impact on the viewer’s senses as the Watchmen nine part series.
There is no room for sentiment when it comes to nature of adaptions, even a follow on from a film via other sources can often be viewed as a poor excuse to capitalise on a film’s success, but Watchmen is different, a new narrative unfolds and it is one that is perhaps even more relevant that the original graphic novel could have portrayed.
Nobody would have possibly surmised that American politics would be so polarised as we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, nobody could have foreseen with unnerving accuracy the sense of decline in race relations, a fury on the streets, from the Black power to black lives matter, the anger towards a group of racist white supremacists is growing and rightly so and it is in Watchmen that we have a reflection of that growing resentment, of the war that is being fought, with the enabler at the top as its prime suspect and object of disaffection.
Thirty years on from the events in the graphic novel, Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen is not only a tour de force of television writing, it is one that is vital, a snapshot of the times played out against the realm of our own insanity, and as the story unfolds, as favourite old characters such as Laurie Blake and Adrian Veidt become embroiled in a new fight with Sister Night, Looking Glass and Red Scare, all members of the Tulsa Police force, what is brought to the foreground is the way our lives are a shadow of what could have been and what might still be if we don’t pull away from our current course.
With tremendous and outstanding performances by actors such as Regina King, Tim Blake Nelson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Louis Gossett Jr., Sara Vickers, Jean Smart and Jeremy Irons, Watchmen is arguably and with defiance running through every vein and fibre, one of the television events of the decade. Smart, clever, thoughtful and passionate, Watchmen is worth watching.
Ian D. Hall