The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance

For most of this year, my entire personality could be aptly described by the phrase “buying a flat.”  I lost any sense of self and became a wreck of completion dates, solicitor’s enquiries and a desperate need to exchange contracts.  Throughout my life, friends have become homeowners, home renovators and home sellers, but I never showed an interest.  They’ve also married and procreated, and still my interest has been at best dutiful, bopping along absent-mindedly at their wedding disco or holding their child aloft after they’ve thrust their firstborn into my arms, commenting that, yes, well done, you seem to have added a human to our overpopulated planet.  Over the years, my self-obsession should have repelled all of these people, yet they still politely ask how the new flat is going, seeming to permit me to launch into various monologues about the John Lewis website or how to find the most expensive kitchen bin.  Two months in, though, and I’ve really got a tale to regale them with.  Sure, little Johnny might have learnt to walk at a precocious age, or the wedding video might be undergoing final edits (in an effort to remove me and my inappropriate attire from all the main shots) but this all pales in comparison to the fact that I now have a 55” TV.

I feel a bit whack using inches.  As a top-end Millennial, I’ve come of age with a blend of measurement systems – gym weights in kilos, bodyweights in stone, furniture sizes in metric, but my penis in inches.  But yes, TVs are always measured in inches diagonally across the screen; this isn’t me being some sort of Brexiteer (I’m not an idiot) but simply following an archaic norm.  The point is: I have promised myself a 55” TV since 2010.  Ten years later and there’s my LG OLED wall-mounted on my pristine newbuild living room in absolute pride of place.  When I was still fun enough to attend every media industry event, I ended up at a Bauer Media event by Bloomsbury Square.  Truth be told, I was supposed to be at the Company Fashion Awards across time, but student rioting at the Tory Party HQ had seen that cancelled, so I had tailgated along.  Each room brought to life a different Bauer brand.  I remember telling the Deputy Editor of Empire that I hated Lord Of The Rings, but my recollections end there.  Until a point when we were all ushered into a room.  Making media people do anything is nigh-on impossible, yet some firm security staff must have forced the assembly.  Nobody wanted to go as we knew we would have to entertain an audience with Duffy to promote Bauer’s Magic brand.  Nothing against Duffy, mind, she had some ok songs (Warwick Avenue) until she committed career suicide in that Diet Coke ad, but I would rather have stood about chatting and drinking than having to watch Dr Fox ask her questions about singing and that.  Nevertheless, a brief encounter on the way in saw me hand over some personal details for a competition whose prize I didn’t even enquire after.

Next day in the office and it turned out I’d won a 55” telly!  This was monumental to a poverty-wage grad saddled with uni debts.  Of course, there was no point getting the huge appliance delivered to the flat I shared with four other broke young people, so off it went to my parents’.  But then they were moving house and wanted this huge box shifted.  I finally found a buyer and, by netting £1,500, paid off my overdraft.  Yet my heart broke.  Surely one day I could afford to get a massive screen back in my life.  Well, let me tell you, as an amateur TV blogger, nearly ten years of solid office work, climbing the ladder of the media world, have all proven worth it in order to enjoy fully 55” of my very own.

But what show did I select to test out my new tech?  Well, I was hanging on for the third series of Stranger Things, but it’s not really gripping me.  Then I thought the third season of Dear White People would look great up there, but the storylines only seem to have become apparent in the final episodes and the show has really suffered from a lack of the urgency that propelled its first two instalments.  No, instead I have allowed pure joy to abound into my eyes through the awe-inspiring The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance.  And yes, this is the longest the blog has rambled on for before announcing the week’s subject.

The Dark Crystal was a Jim Henson film from 1982.  We had it on VHS in my sister’s room and dared ourselves to watch the slightly terrifying tale of the dying world of Thra on more than one occasion.  Henson was known for his puppets, but this was less Sesame Street and more Game Of Thrones.  Either way, it was an instant cult classic at a time when fantasy was far from cool.  Thirty-seven years later and Netflix have returned to the rich subject matter for a ten-part prequel series.

The first thing I have to say is: puppets.  The primary characters in our story are the Gelfling – partly elfin, partly equine-looking humanoids divided into seven clans across Thra.  Over the series, we meet a great number of individual personalities.  At first, you might wonder why we rarely see their legs or why dialogue seems to get acted out behind rocky outcrops that obscure their lower halves, but before long, you completely forget these things have been knocked up in a workshop (apart from, maybe, the synthetic-looking hair) and fall for their charm.  You need to believe in them for the story to work and I openly admit to being willingly convinced.

Our baddies are the Skeksis: bird-like extra-terrestrials from the man-in-a-suit school of puppetry.  They, too, blow minds with the creative lengths to which the production teams have gone to make them seem real.  Hours after watching, you’ll still hear the creepy and constant “mmmmm” of Simon Pegg’s Chamberlain as the dastardly Lords of the Crystal cross and double-cross each other.  And, on that note, the voice cast is stellar – it’s as much a who’s who of British luvvies as Harry Potter, with Helena Bonham-Carter, Lena Heady and Taron Egerton all lending credibility to the project.

The rest of Thra is populated by a menagerie of other races and creatures, from the Podlings’ comic relief to the land striders’ feasibility as a transport solution.  In fact, every frame of every scene is a feast upon which human eyes can seek months of sustenance.  And there’s me, on my new sofa, in my new flat, drinking it all in on a 55” OLED.  Telly never looked so good.  And by telly, I mean puppets.  This is fantasy beyond any normal imagination.  It helps to know the plot of the originating film, as this adds a dimension of narrative tension that certainly propelled me through each instalment desperate to find out the action.  But even without, this Netflix programme promises and delivers nearly an hour of pure, eyeball-awakening escapism with each instalment.  I’m aghast at the labour that must have gone into every single shot.  I can’t even be bothered to watch the behind-the-scenes documentary, yet these people must have laboured for years to craft everything that has gone into this show.  By way of showing gratitude, we all need to watch this.  Right now.  I promise it contains no references to me buying a flat.