Ultimate Farce

Well some 48 hours have now elapsed since I watched ITV's Ultimate Force, and finally I feel able to write about a quite singular televisual experience. Let us begin with the basics for those as yet uninitiated into the show. After poaching Ross Kemp from the BBC some years ago, ITV had absolutely nothing worthwhile for him to do, a few "Drama Premiere" vehicles in which he played worthy family men, misunderstood detectives, amnesiacs (the same interchangeable characters that appear in all such things) were aired to general disenthrallment. Then he got a series commissioned called Ultimate Force, the first series of which proved rather popular but slipped right under my radar; a friend used to tell me anecdotes about the show, but I dismissed them as exaggerations: "Nothing could be in such poor taste" said I, how wrong I would prove to be.

The episode that I bore witness to (the second in the new series) centred around an Al Qaeda attack on the Italian embassy in London. The terrorists park a van of explosives outside, rigged to a mobile phone, ready to detonate at a pre-arranged time; they then walk into the embassy armed to the teeth and shoot pretty much everyone in the lobby then hold the few survivors as hostages. Who could one turn to in a time of such desperate need than the ULTIMATE FORCE! Said conglomerate consist of Ross Kemp's brooding Sgt. Henry 'Henno' Garvie, a woman, a black guy and a load of other cunts who, at a moments notice can slip into any or all of the Vietnam movie clichés: From "You weren't there, man" wisdom, "I can't handle this shit, Sarge" rookie nerves right up to "INCOMIIIIIIIIING" heroics.

For the moment I will gloss over the bulk of the episode and skip to the big pay-off. For reasons that are at best unclear, "Henno" is driving the aforementioned van towards a quarry "near 'eafrow" where it can be dumped in safety. The innovative twist is that THE BOMB COULD GO OFF AT ANY MINUTE and that A TERRORIST IS FOLLOWING ON A MOPED TRYING TO DETONATE IT. "Henno" enters the quarry after one quick radio conversation "cleared the M4" for him (yeah, fucking right). The camera cuts back to a long, frontal shot of the van which falls into the quarry and explodes with the kind of phutt that made you wonder why he didn't just park it round the corner in Waitrose. A Jeep containing some of the Force in hot pursuit pulls up and it's occupants LOOK OUT MOURNFULLY at the quarry. The seconds tick by before, to a rousing swell in the score, "Henno" climbs out of the quarry looking like Wile E. Coyote after his dynamite prematurely explodes; If he was wearing a top hat, it would probably have been missing its roof. He staggers towards the camera, which then pulls away on a crane showing the entire scene, the credits roll.

This illustrates the first point of interest that Ultimate Force holds for the discerning viewer; it is the only 'action' series that I can remember British television producing. I seem to recall rocket launchers in Bugs but that doesn't really count. For the most part, there seems to be an overriding wish to intellectualise the subject matter resulting in Spooks and the like. For all its patina of realism, Ultimate Force is a reaction against this and is an argument both for and against British television treading this path.

Let's look at the positives first. I sat enrapt by the show, sadly, were it not for Peep Show, it would be the programme I have most enjoyed for some time. The fascination lies, however, in the essential and complete crapness of the thing. To gain most enjoyment, one must locate the large gap between what the makers were trying to achieve and the product itself, settle in and wait for the belly-laughs. However much money you throw on the screen, it's still Grant Mitchell and Taggart extras loping around gormlessly on it, and, in the same way that Casualty will never compare to ER, Britain just doesn't produce the kind of actors or directors to competently pull it off. This isn't really a criticism, paradoxically, if was done well, it would be worse.

Ultimate Force creates several of these conflicts, not least in the way it boorishly tramples over culturally sensitive area. The terrorists are as much caricatured as the Force themselves: "Murder is wrong," says the 'nice' terrorist at one point "but this is Jihad". By this point I was half expecting "Henno" to swing through the window holding a rocket launcher, say "Jihad THIS, Raghead" and blast him to pieces, but in the event he seemed content to just shoot him in the face whilst unconscious on the floor. The terrorist leader, as one should rightly expect, is a maniacal zealot spouting lines like "I am ready for death... ARE YOU"? or "Your wife and mother will weep tears of sorrow at your funeral... mine will weep tears of JOY". Naturally, by the end the Force shoot him to shit and "Henno" approaches him on the floor, his AK47 (or whatever) aimed at him, "kill me...please kill me" he moans, "Henno" cocks his gun, waits a few seconds then lowers it and in tones of chipped gravel says "Get this man a medic".

Naturally the terrorists have a man on the inside, because Al Qaeda have positioned hundreds of thousands of their men in important governmental positions around the country, all just waiting for a text message to spring into action. The chump in question passes himself off as a hostage until the last moment when he suddenly starts acting as nutty as the leader; he was not far off attaching a false beard and camouflage beret. Now this seems to send a worrying message to the nation, that any Islamic person anywhere is poised to assassinate the Italian ambassador at any moment. Perhaps this character was meant to 'humanise' the terrorists, but it moved the show one crassness unit too close to outright abhorrent for my taste.

The very fact of the shows popularity (this is the third series) raises some interesting questions - is this the kind of television we want or the kind of television we deserve? Is it the worst show on television (yes) or one of the best? (Hmm, maybe) The only possible acid test will be viewing the series as a whole; perhaps it was an aberration. I'm told the first episode centred around the Force taking on a huge Zulu-esque army of black South Africans who eventually surrendered to the might of the East-End’s own dirty dozen and this bodes well. However, there are only so many minorities one can fuck up in any given series, so I guess my interest will decline but the shock and impact of my first viewing will be with me for a long time.

By J.L. Cranfield