A WHITE DOG

... comes into the garden, foraging and defecating. Small, wiry, dirty-white. It wears a tartan collar. It barks loudly, permanently on-guard. It doesn’t believe the world takes it seriously enough.

The garden is a source of vegetables. The dog can’t know that. It is not welcome in the garden. I shout to drive it away.

Birds come into the garden, in their hundreds. They have a dedicated feeding station with nuts, seeds and fat-balls. They forage and defecate everywhere. Small ones flit and flurry, jostling for the best vantages.

Pigeons can’t use the food station. They bob about on the ground, snaffling the scraps and leavings of the nuts and seeds. They benefit from scraps that fall on the patch of grass beside the greenhouse or along the concrete path, that runs under the length of clothes-line.

The dog ignores the birds. They scurry off if he appears. Their food does not interest him. 

Meat scraps, such as out-of-date sausages, entice the dog. He arrives too late. Magpies and seagulls swoop early and devour them promptly. Anything they leave goes to the starlings, who arrive in grand cavalcades.

None of the birds bark. They coo, squawk, chatter, whistle and chirp. They are welcome, even on the vegetable patch. What waste they leave gets dug in. What waste they leave on the concrete path gets swept up and thrown on the compost heap. What they leave on the patch of grass lies there until it seeps in and the worms get it.

The dog is neither welcomed nor tolerated. He is barred. His access via the fence is blocked with an old roof-slate. He barks but cannot enter.

A cat comes to forage and to defecate, like the other animals. It is welcomed with titbits of sliced cooked ham, placed on the kitchen window-sill. It visits most days. It has seen off a number of rivals. No doubt it defecates somewhere, but not in our garden. It learned the lesson early on. 

“Don’t shit in your own nest” 

It was scolded early on and now comes only to forage.

The dog barks from three gardens away. It is an anxious creature.

WATCHING VIGIL SERIES 2

A hit on BBC TV, though made in ITV Studios by World Productions, Vigil is a British cop drama, which tells stories involving an ODC (Ordinary Decent Cop) investigating crimes committed on British military bases. Series 1 is set on a Trident nuclear submarine named Vigil and was well-received by viewers and most critics. Series 2 is still called Vigil, though there is no sign of a submarine on the airforce bases where the action occurs.

The principal airbase is in Scotland, suitably picturesque in the chase and rescue scenes in the Highlands and typically grim or corporate glass-and-steel in the urban locations. The second setting is the fictional oil-rich sheikhdom of Wudyan. Locations in Morocco serve the story well; plenty of sun and sand, high-rise buildings more or less completed and densely fenced-off military installations.

The story takes off when a new drone weapon system goes wrong, killing squaddies on the ground and frightening the bejesus out of visiting Arab military and political dignitaries, as well as RAF and arms-manufacturer grandees. The key dramatis persona are gathered and the plot ignites properly when a civilian police investigation gets underway. 

That’s a hump for a viewer to get over – why is the incident not handled by military police? - but once swallowed, there’s plenty to admire in the persistence and daring of the same duo we met in Series 1, Detective Chief Inspector Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) and Detective Inspector Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie). They live ‘home and away’ lives, with Longacre working in Scotland and Silva working principally in Wudyan. As well as working together, they are a domestic couple, in a relationship as lovers and parents to Silva’s fourteen year old daughter and expecting a new baby boy, borne by the heavily pregnant Longacre. 

The action very quickly opens out to encompass driven military personnel, earnestly committed police, shady spooks, genuine dissidents, half-hidden arms’ dealers, a traumatised war veteran and a cast of Wudyani top brass keen to get their hands on the latest UK-produced kit with which to further pummel their near neighbours and potentially suppress dissent in their own country.

The move from the underwater confines of the submarine in Series 1 to the expansive outdoors of Series 2 greatly helps the characters, giving them the chance to breathe, quite literally. The ‘love at a distance’ between Silva and Longacre, by text messages and phone calls, manages to hold up despite separation and physical danger. Both leads are high on rizz and carry each episode gamely, no matter how ludicrous their actions become. The viewer shouts at the tv: “has no one ever heard of ‘back-up’?” No need. You know who the goodies are, who the baddies are and who will prevail. What matters is how the dramatist brings it off.

Meanwhile, the occasional glimpse of ‘the boy in the womb’ brings welcome ooh! moments.

The striking feature of Vigil Series 2 is that the core crime is white-collar corruption, rooted in the criminal enterprise that is the international arms’ trade. The crime is framed within military violence and efforts to subvert parliamentary democracy, as an arms company colludes with senior airforce officers. For money, of course. Towards the end of Series 2, Longacre makes an impassioned speech which could have been gleaned from a Campaign Against Arms Trade analysis.

London newspaper reviewers divide on well-known political left-right lines. The Guardian loves Series 2. The Daily Telegraph is less enamoured. They cry ‘implausible’ and ‘inauthentic’. 

Charges of implausibility miss the salient point about the work of a dramatist. The work doesn’t have to be plausible (there are whole genres given over to utterly implausible action). It has to be dramatic, that is, credible as a fiction with conflict, not an accurate portrayal of life, as if such a portrayal was possible. And the characters actions have to be genuine, as fiction, not fact. Credible, not true.

Here are two film anecdotes in response to such cries. 

Sidney Lumet, a master of tension, lowered the ceiling in the jury room as the drama progressed, when he directed Twelve Angry Men. He had a whole room to play with. Vigil Series 1 only has a corridor in which to fit actors and a camera crew.  It’s a set, not a sub.

Neil Jordan, who directed Michael Collins, reportedly used tilt-switch explosives in the film, even though they hadn’t been invented. He advised critics to seek historians if they wanted history. If they wanted drama, they should seek dramatists. 

The Daily Telegraph and The Financial Times find the lead unconvincing in Series 2. Much of those critics dislike of the series is down to their discomfort at the drama focussing on the nefarious collusion involving the military and arms’ manufacturers. 

These critics have a go at the lead character because she is dour and steadfast. They are uncomfortable with such traits in a woman tv cop, which flies in the face of the laudatory puff piled on many male tv detectives such as the irascible Rebus, the downbeat Jimmy Perez and the morosely affable Christopher Foyle. She should be odd like Vera, deeply troubled like Catherine Cawood or chipper like Miss Marple. The character Amy Silva is dogged, active, logical and believable. That’s her key attribute. Believable. It’s a tv drama, a cop show, occasionally preposterous but mainly credible. It’s not real. She’s not real. She’s a character in a fiction and does a good job as such. 

The other cast members play well also, including Silva’s boss, the taciturn, arch-Scot Colin Robertson (Gary Lewis).

Both series of Vigil are watchable. Series 2 is better than Series 1. Will Series 3 be set among soldiers on an infantry base? Not a sub in sight? Will it still be called Vigil?

Recommended. On BBC iPlayer and elsewhere.



Vigil
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11846996/?ref_=tt_mv_close
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) 
https://caat.org.uk/about-caat/
Twelve Angry Men (dir. Sidney Lumet)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEN-2uTi2c0
Michael Collins (dir. Neil Jordan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jErbT03WXc



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