Chimera: Part 1
I know I posted about the first ever episode of Sapphire and Steel and am now onto another show without completing that assignment, but I am morally certain that I will return to Sapphire and Steel sooner rather than later. This series has caught my eye in a big way and so my blogging attention has alighted on it.
Chimera (1991) is a four-part mini series based on a 1982 novel by Stephen Gallagher. Gallagher did the adaption and also made an earlier radio play of his novel. The series was broadcast in 1991 in the UK and 1992 in the US, and is about genetic experimentation being carried on in a fertility clinic which is run as a front.
This first episode is about a nurse who gives up her busy job in accident and emergency and takes a job as a staff nurse in the fertility clinic. Most of the first episode is about her life before, the nature of this change in her circumstances, and how she settles in in her new job.
I really should stress that this is in no way a criticism if I say that the amount of description and depiction of her starting a new job, makes this episode sonewhat slow.It feels as if this is going to be a very slow series indeed and you begin to think that she might possibly have got as far as giving them her National Insurance number by the end of the whole series.
However, in a genius move, the slow and sedate start of this show is deliberate. Every single review of this show I have ever seen describes the same experience of the show that I'm describing: that the first part seems incredibly slow but there's a reason for it.
We do get hints that all is not what it seems in the clinic. Considering the nurse is bored off her head with looking after her handful of patients who since they're undergoing fertility treatment aren't unwell as such and don't need much in the way of nursing care, the tiny hospital seems to have a HUGE number of men in white coats running round doing mysterious things and feeding the chimpanzees which are for some reason kept there. Speaking as an ex-Catholic, I can certify that this show is about Certified Catholic Nightmare Number 1 and if you're about to say it somehow does include an abortion, well just see what they say about fertility treatment.
In a genius move, after this incredibly slowly moving first episode which sets up so much background, in the final few minutes of the hour-long episode there is, shall we say, an incident (not going into more detail so as not to give it away). As a result of the incident almost the whole cast of the first episode is killed off, so having got to know all about the nurse we now don't need to worry about her working the night shift ever again. The incident and the effect is genuinely shocking, and I have to say this is a really unusual plot device, which in fact I can't think of being used in any other show.
If you're a fan of old TV you may not have heard of this show, and that's because cathode heads don't seem to talk about it. Because of the lightning plot twist at the end of this episode and the way everyone gets killed off, though, it has a HUGE number of wildly appreciative reviews on the internet, a massive following, but this is all among horror/slasher fans. It's essentially appreciated by them rather than TV of science fiction fans. In fact I have seen it described as the only British slasher (all I can say is, they should try living here before they say that). This means this is one of the most unusual TV shows you could ever wish to see, and that alone makes it worth seeing.
I don't have any real criticism of the first part, although I haven't watched the whole series to the end yet.
Apparently the show has had a region 2 DVD release, although I've never seen it around, but let's just say that if you're reading this blog post I'm sure you have the means to find the show in your hands. I'm not completely sure of when or in what country, but apparently the show is also available edited into a film (called Monkey Boy). I haven't seen that either, so can only repeat what I've read in reviews that the film version isn't as good as the four-part TV version because it cuts out the lengthy build up to the incident at the end ot part 1, the shock of which is an essential part of the experience, as well as attracting the slasher fans.
On a completely superficial and personal note, I've gone with the book cover as an illustration, but one of the few characters who survives the first episode features on the cover of the DVD and has the 'curtains' style of hair which is so quintessentially nineties and which I was so annoyed that my hair was always to curly for that style. That alone places the show in a particular time for me personally.
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