Un home triste en costume.
Sometimes you come across a show that is so good that you want everyone you know to watch it. Patriot is one of the best shows out there. My top pick for 2018.
Smart writing. Pitch perfect casting. Fantastic Cinematography. Pathos, Bathos, Comedy, Drama. I could gush forever. The first two seasons of Patriot are so good that the withdrawl after finishing each season is, dare I say it worse than post Downton Abbey let down. In a different way of course.
Staring Michael Dorman, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Chernus, Kathleen Munroe, Aliette Opheim, Terry O’Quinn and supporting cast who are all amazing. There are no small characters in this show. Even roles with limited dialogue contribute to the richness of the Patriot universe.
According to iMDb:Patriot follows the complicated life of intelligence officer John Tavner, whose latest assignment – to prevent Iran from going nuclear – requires him to forgo all safety nets and assume a perilous non-official cover. But that precis barely hints what makes this show so brilliant. Aussi actor Michael Dorman plays John Tavner as a moral man who has made compromises for the greater good that have so strained his psyche that he is barely holding it together. While this sounds grim, the depiction of Tavner is so nuanced that we feel his pain all the while laughing with him at the absurdities that life continues to throw at him. All the characters in Patriot are flawed. From John’s father and handler Tom (Terry O’Quinn) who loves his son yet repeatedly puts him in harms’ way, to John’s “cover” boss (Kurtwood Smith), who rides John unrelentingly. Moreover, everyone is rendered in hues of grey. Even the bad guys encourage empathy.
John has so many balls in the air that there are moments that filled me with “I Love Lucy” anxiety.
You know the famous scene: Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory wrapping chocolates. You just know that things are going to get out of hand. But like Lucy, John doesn’t just watch the disaster happening. Lucy says, “I think we’re fighting a loosing game.” But she stuffs those chocolates down her uniform, in her cap,in her mouth. The supervisor comes in, clearly Lucy and Ethel are barely hanging in with their hidden chocolates. Instead of recognizing the conveyor is too quick, she says tells them they are doing splendidly and calls for the line to be speeded up. That’s Patriot in a nutshell.
John manages his high anxiety with a secret career as a folk singer. Tom explains John’s songs, he: “records folk music under an assumed name because he says it helps him with his feelings. …they’re pretty good. I mean, I’m his dad, so maybe I’m biased, but they’re pretty good. But they’re becoming honest, which is probably a good thing for folk singers in general, but not a good thing for one who works in intelligence.”
In fact the songs are brilliant. We hear John performing these songs in a local coffeehouse, where the lyrics describe his under cover exploits. The audience takes the songs as absurd analogies. We’re in on the joke though.
Perhaps one of the most poignant scenes is after John encounters the daughter of the Luxembourg police woman who is investigating him, she draws picture of him and describes him accurately as ” un home triste en costume.” Frankly, this sounds sadder in french, but means a sad man in a suit. That’s John Tavner.
Jennings' Pennings 