Roadkill by David Hare Archived Message Posted by scrabb on October 26, 2020, 2:53 pm This is possibly the clumsiest, most embarrassing drama to be shown in a long while. If it wasn't written by a Labour luvvie (and a Sir) it would have been kicked out by a competent editor for its lazy ludicrous plotting. Poor Hugh Laurie. What was he thinking? Fire his agent for a start. A female journalist goes to Washington to investigate a shady group called British-American Consortium (a thinly disguised pressure/propaganda outfit like the one that Epstein, Starmer and Kissinger belong to — Paxman is a member of another similar Anglo-American group). She goes to a bar and sits alone with a drink, catching the eye of someone. Eventually he approaches, they chat, he takes her for dinner to a restaurant. And wouldn’t you know it, he turns out to work for Brtish-American Consortium! How lucky is that? Later he invites her to his office, plies her with vodka (does he suspect her motives?), and she leaves drunkenly and walks through a seedy part of town late at night (as you do) with strange men calling after her. This is a red herring to make you fear for her welfare (what in dramatic terms is called “misdirection”) and then she’s run down by a van no one saw coming. There's a feeble sub-plot involving Hugh Laurie's daughter who manages to trail her dad late at night to his mistress's flat (yes, a taxi turns up on a deserted street just in the nick of time for her to hail it) and by means we're not privy to, discovers she is a librarian academic of some sort. The daughter then tells her mum about dad's affair etc etc. The whole thing is full of gaping plot holes and incredible (literally) coincidences that any other writer would have been shown the door and told not come back for such amateurish efforts. Along the way are slabs of agitprop exposition to educate us that there are these sinister pressure groups working by proxy under benign titles -- someone even explains to the astute experienced journalist in a basic ABC primer (so us dimwit viewers can follow) how such groups operate. And then you get the hard-bitten cynical tabloid editor who after firing the journalist takes her back providing she can nail the story within a THREE-WEEK DEADLINE!!! Wow, never come across that tension-ratcheting-up device before. 5-Star A-Plus for blinding originality. It's hang-your-head-in-shame time for anyone involved in this mess of a drama. Actually, it could be used profitably as a catalogue of every lazy cliche and shambolic structure mistake in the book and to teach new screenwriters what to avoid. Message Thread: Roadkill by David Hare - scrabb October 26, 2020, 2:53 pm Re: Roadkill by David Hare - Mary October 26, 2020, 3:07 pm Re: Roadkill by David Hare - scrabb October 26, 2020, 3:20 pm   Searching