The Scott family of movie fame tries its hand at television with “The Hunger,” a series for the Showtime cable channel that borrows the title and some of the macabre themes, but not the story, from Tony Scott’s 1983 film.
Also involved are Ridley, Tony’s brother, and Jake, Ridley’s son. But to call these programs family fare would be stretching the meaning of that term. Almost by definition, a series for pay cable like Showtime has to be a little risque, and in that regard, “The Hunger” does not disappoint.
Sunday’s debut, the first of three introductory episodes airing in succession in what will be its regular time period (8 p.m.), is about a woman who gets money to let people run her through with a sword, a feat she likes to perform in her underwear.
The second episode (8:30 p.m.) gives us one who takes a job as a nurse for a psychically supercharged woman in a wheelchair, for whom she accomplishes such tasks as shoe polishing in her underwear.
For all the artful flesh display, their success as drama, though, is another matter. In an interview for the series, Tony Scott admitted that the movie “The Hunger,” his first, was “very slow, esoteric, boring.”
Exactly the same adjectives could apply to “The Swords,” the episode he directs here. Balthazar Getty stars as a troubled young cosmetics heir shipped to London to learn the family business. He’s got the predictable rich brat ennui, and the predictable suggestions of a passionate soul underneath it all, if only people would understand his pain.
But the half-hour length doesn’t allow much time to develop matters and when he becomes taken by the mysterious pierceable woman–and she by him–you fail to see any reason for attraction beyond a mutual interest in swordplay.
Although it is, in the Scott manner, beautifully filmed, and although there is a twist at the end–one of the apparent thematic links in this anthology series–it’s not enough to justify giving this vacant little tale even a half-hour of your time.
The second episode, directed by young Jake, is a touch more intriguing. Karen Black plays a wheelchair-using matron whose life is reduced to morphine shots, cigarettes and attempting to manipulate the passions of her hired help, a nurse and a handyman.
Soon enough, she has them doing things that give lie to the maxim about not being able to get good help. They are frantically good at their choice of free time activities.
But while the characters’ inner workings are brought out with a touch more aptitude in this edition of “The Hunger,” again all the flailing away doesn’t amount to much.
A series of explainer phrases during the title sequence is meant to clue you in about the hunger to which the title refers: “for power,” “for sex,” “for life,” “for money,” “for blood,” they say.
After seeing the first two episodes, I was hungry, too: for a sandwich.
– Hi, Bob: You may know Bob Sirott as a just-cheery-enough local morning host. His “Fox Thing in the Morning” on WFLD-Ch. 32 offers a winning, deliberately low-key, blend of humor and information.
As part of Sirott’s latest contract, which will keep him in the “Fox Thing” chair for two more years after this one, he gets the opportunity to produce two “pilot-slash-specials,” in his term, for the Fox network each year.
The first of them, “45’s with Bob Sirott,” airs Sunday at 10:30 p.m. on the local Fox-owned station. It’s a half-hour visit with three 1960s recording stars: Donovan, Gene Pitney and Lesley “It’s My Party” Gore.
As with the morning show, there is nothing fancy here: Sirott interviews the one-time hitmakers, one on one, and illustrates the conversation with a strong selection of old clips.
But the conversation is lively. One of the things that makes Sirott work as a morning show host is that his curiosity seems sincere, and here he draws such interesting tidbits as Gore allowing that when she left her label after a string of Top 10 hits, the company claimed she was still in debt to them for $175,000.
“It’s just a simple kind of show where we just hear these records we’ve heard all our lives,” Sirott said. “It’s more like a memoir than a full-blown biography.”
It is geared most specifically to the people who grew up with the music, said Sirott, people who, like him, are in their 40s. (He is 47.)
“If you’re of the right generation, it’s a gas to see the old clips,” he said. “It’s fun to see them age 35 years in two seconds.”
He has hopes that a VH-1 might be persuaded to pick it up, or something like it, as a series, perhaps focusing on one artist instead of three.
But on its own terms, the pilot works well, offering a pleasant jolt of nostalgia to people who remember when they danced the shag. Or should that be the swim?
