TV SHOW MEME (Part 2)
Jul. 5th, 2015 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI could not resist doing this again.
1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some tv show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to your own journal.
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smhwpf gave me period drama and initially specified pre-1815, but my burning period drama idea takes place in 1907, which is nearly 100 years ago so ought to qualify in terms of lavish costumes and set design.
Apologies in advance for the profusion of British white dudes playing Russian white dudes. This is a Beeb production. It's 90% dialogue and largely an excuse to get really talented actors to shout at each other. Russian and French dialogue is in English with the actors' actual accents; dialogue in German and Polish is subtitled.
The show is called Common Cause (Общее дело).
It's 1907. The first attempt at revolution in Russia two years ago was a miserable bloody failure; the movement's surviving leaders are scattered in exile throughout Europe or rotting in Tsarist prisons. Lenin's just declared that it'll be twenty years before they have another shot at overthrowing the Tsar. Some elements are trying to reunite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as the Social Revolutionaries and anarchist groups in a common struggle; other forces work behind the scenes to undermine any cohesion or unity.
The one group that does take the revolutionaries seriously is the Okhrana. In an attempt to prevent a repeat of 1905, the Tsarist secret police has dispatched agents and infiltrators to destroy the various revolutionary movements from within; in fact, as in Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, the Parisian emigré community has more informants than actual activists, and they've been entirely successful in hobbling the movement.
Until now.
The Cast:
Cillian Murphy as Vladimir Burtsev
(If I were doing a Russian production, Burtsev would be played by Vyacheslav Tikhonov, but he's dead, and anyway, Beeb production.)
Burtsev is an anarchist and a former member of Narodnaya Volya, the group that assassinated Tsar Alexander II. Soft-spoken and socially awkward, he is not taken particularly seriously by his comrades and is certainly not let in on any of the terrorist conspiracies that have made the group infamous, but this does not spare him from arrest and exile in Siberia after an Okhrana agent exposes him. After escaping, fleeing to Switzerland, getting arrested again, fleeing to London, then back to Russia, and then finally to Paris, he's tired, disillusioned, and bitter. He has little remaining faith in his original revolutionary ideals, but he does have one burning desire: to find and expose the Okhrana agent who destroyed his life.
Burtsev is neither a great leader nor a decent terrorist, but as it turns out, he is an entirely brilliant detective. Dubbed "The Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution" (yes, for real), he uses cold logic and deductive reasoning to take down the enemies of the revolution one by one, while clashing with both the local authorities, the secret police, and the Bolshevik leaders who may appreciate his methods but have an entirely different vision for the future.
Sadly, Cillian needs to grow some facial hair for the role:
OK.
Richard Ayoade as Maurice Leroy
(Completely historically accurate casting here.) A French detective that Burtsev hires to help him. Leroy is a former Okhrana agent himself, but was fired for spending all of his funds on booze and entertaining his lovers. If he can't rehabilitate his reputation, he'll take revenge on the uptight twats who drove him out of stable employment, so he makes common cause (title drop!) with the weird Russian anarchist to take down his former colleagues. The comic relief of the series, his motives start out selfish but become increasingly ideological as he grows closer to the revolutionaries.
Anna Chancellor as Vera Figner
Burtsev's comrade from the Narodnaya Volya days, Figner is much more of what you'd expect from an anarchist revolutionary: fiery, eloquent, and passionate. A writer and organizer who has also done hard time as a result of the Okhrana's interference, she's the one person he definitely knows is not a mole.
Charles Dance as Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist formerly known as Prince
The closest the Parisian exiles have to a leader, Kropotkin is a scientist, philosopher, and writer who gave up his noble title for the revolution. As the person ultimately responsible for deciding the guilt or innocence of the accused infiltrators, he is critical of Burtsev's motives and methods even as he is reliant on him to root out the various traitors.
Tom Hardy as Yevno Azef
A prominent and respected organizer responsible for the assassinations of the Tsar's uncle, a popular Orthodox priest, and one of the Okhrana directors, Azef is above suspicion, even when he orders the death of a fellow revolutionary believed to be a spy. Burtsev suspects he's also in the pay of the Okhrana, but no one believes him, and the mystery around his guilt or innocence is the first season arc.
Paul Higgins as Mikhail Bakai
A Warsaw Okhrana agent who defects to the revolutionaries' side—kind of—Bakai is Burtsev's main informant. No one actually trusts him, but his Liga Politsii ("Police League") is instrumental in providing the information that takes down Azef and eventually others. Like Leroy, he's less interested in politics than in satisfying petty grudges.
Rose Leslie as Tatiana Tselin
A member of the Socialist Revolutionaries' Combat Unit, Tselin is a badass assassin on a mission to kill the Tsar. Like everyone else, she's hiding a dark secret.
Peter Capaldi as A.A. Lopukhin
The director of the Okhrana and the Big Bad for the first two seasons. The bastard lovechild of Inspector Javert and Cardinal Richelieu, he's in charge of running the foreign agents and playing a long game with the revolutionaries. He's a dark mirror to our heroes, using many of the same methods to root out terrorist conspiracies and clashing just as much with his superiors back in Russia.
I feel like I need to put in another "this is a real thing that happened" but at the end of season 2, he does a face-heel turn after being dismissed and ends being an informant for Burtsev as well.
AND STARRING:
Alexei Sayle as Leon Trotsky
Look, I don't care if he doesn't look a thing like Trotsky and is entirely the wrong age. You want this to happen and know it should happen.
(Spoiler for something that happened over nine decades ago: Trotsky arrested Burtsev, making him the first political prisoner after the revolution.)
AND
Tom Baker as the Spectre Haunting Europe, a.k.a. Karl Marx's ghost, who appears in the hallucinations and dreams of several of the characters. You're welcome.
I expect it would run for two or three seasons (with six episodes each) and then get abruptly cancelled. There is also a made-for-TV movie, set during the Berne Trial, that reunites the surviving characters and ends the series.
1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some tv show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to your own journal.
smhwpf gave me period drama and initially specified pre-1815, but my burning period drama idea takes place in 1907, which is nearly 100 years ago so ought to qualify in terms of lavish costumes and set design.Apologies in advance for the profusion of British white dudes playing Russian white dudes. This is a Beeb production. It's 90% dialogue and largely an excuse to get really talented actors to shout at each other. Russian and French dialogue is in English with the actors' actual accents; dialogue in German and Polish is subtitled.
The show is called Common Cause (Общее дело).
It's 1907. The first attempt at revolution in Russia two years ago was a miserable bloody failure; the movement's surviving leaders are scattered in exile throughout Europe or rotting in Tsarist prisons. Lenin's just declared that it'll be twenty years before they have another shot at overthrowing the Tsar. Some elements are trying to reunite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as the Social Revolutionaries and anarchist groups in a common struggle; other forces work behind the scenes to undermine any cohesion or unity.
The one group that does take the revolutionaries seriously is the Okhrana. In an attempt to prevent a repeat of 1905, the Tsarist secret police has dispatched agents and infiltrators to destroy the various revolutionary movements from within; in fact, as in Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, the Parisian emigré community has more informants than actual activists, and they've been entirely successful in hobbling the movement.
Until now.
The Cast:
Cillian Murphy as Vladimir Burtsev
(If I were doing a Russian production, Burtsev would be played by Vyacheslav Tikhonov, but he's dead, and anyway, Beeb production.)
Burtsev is an anarchist and a former member of Narodnaya Volya, the group that assassinated Tsar Alexander II. Soft-spoken and socially awkward, he is not taken particularly seriously by his comrades and is certainly not let in on any of the terrorist conspiracies that have made the group infamous, but this does not spare him from arrest and exile in Siberia after an Okhrana agent exposes him. After escaping, fleeing to Switzerland, getting arrested again, fleeing to London, then back to Russia, and then finally to Paris, he's tired, disillusioned, and bitter. He has little remaining faith in his original revolutionary ideals, but he does have one burning desire: to find and expose the Okhrana agent who destroyed his life.
Burtsev is neither a great leader nor a decent terrorist, but as it turns out, he is an entirely brilliant detective. Dubbed "The Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution" (yes, for real), he uses cold logic and deductive reasoning to take down the enemies of the revolution one by one, while clashing with both the local authorities, the secret police, and the Bolshevik leaders who may appreciate his methods but have an entirely different vision for the future.
Sadly, Cillian needs to grow some facial hair for the role:
OK.
Richard Ayoade as Maurice Leroy
(Completely historically accurate casting here.) A French detective that Burtsev hires to help him. Leroy is a former Okhrana agent himself, but was fired for spending all of his funds on booze and entertaining his lovers. If he can't rehabilitate his reputation, he'll take revenge on the uptight twats who drove him out of stable employment, so he makes common cause (title drop!) with the weird Russian anarchist to take down his former colleagues. The comic relief of the series, his motives start out selfish but become increasingly ideological as he grows closer to the revolutionaries.
Anna Chancellor as Vera Figner
Burtsev's comrade from the Narodnaya Volya days, Figner is much more of what you'd expect from an anarchist revolutionary: fiery, eloquent, and passionate. A writer and organizer who has also done hard time as a result of the Okhrana's interference, she's the one person he definitely knows is not a mole.
Charles Dance as Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist formerly known as Prince
The closest the Parisian exiles have to a leader, Kropotkin is a scientist, philosopher, and writer who gave up his noble title for the revolution. As the person ultimately responsible for deciding the guilt or innocence of the accused infiltrators, he is critical of Burtsev's motives and methods even as he is reliant on him to root out the various traitors.
Tom Hardy as Yevno Azef
A prominent and respected organizer responsible for the assassinations of the Tsar's uncle, a popular Orthodox priest, and one of the Okhrana directors, Azef is above suspicion, even when he orders the death of a fellow revolutionary believed to be a spy. Burtsev suspects he's also in the pay of the Okhrana, but no one believes him, and the mystery around his guilt or innocence is the first season arc.
Paul Higgins as Mikhail Bakai
A Warsaw Okhrana agent who defects to the revolutionaries' side—kind of—Bakai is Burtsev's main informant. No one actually trusts him, but his Liga Politsii ("Police League") is instrumental in providing the information that takes down Azef and eventually others. Like Leroy, he's less interested in politics than in satisfying petty grudges.
Rose Leslie as Tatiana Tselin
A member of the Socialist Revolutionaries' Combat Unit, Tselin is a badass assassin on a mission to kill the Tsar. Like everyone else, she's hiding a dark secret.
Peter Capaldi as A.A. Lopukhin
The director of the Okhrana and the Big Bad for the first two seasons. The bastard lovechild of Inspector Javert and Cardinal Richelieu, he's in charge of running the foreign agents and playing a long game with the revolutionaries. He's a dark mirror to our heroes, using many of the same methods to root out terrorist conspiracies and clashing just as much with his superiors back in Russia.
I feel like I need to put in another "this is a real thing that happened" but at the end of season 2, he does a face-heel turn after being dismissed and ends being an informant for Burtsev as well.
AND STARRING:
Alexei Sayle as Leon Trotsky
Look, I don't care if he doesn't look a thing like Trotsky and is entirely the wrong age. You want this to happen and know it should happen.
(Spoiler for something that happened over nine decades ago: Trotsky arrested Burtsev, making him the first political prisoner after the revolution.)
AND
Tom Baker as the Spectre Haunting Europe, a.k.a. Karl Marx's ghost, who appears in the hallucinations and dreams of several of the characters. You're welcome.
I expect it would run for two or three seasons (with six episodes each) and then get abruptly cancelled. There is also a made-for-TV movie, set during the Berne Trial, that reunites the surviving characters and ends the series.
