Details

The requested details of last night's show. ;)

Well, it was interesting. It wasn't Rent quite the way I was hoping for - they'd interpreted it and changed it to suit 'today' (I can only assume that was the idea). It was set in Malmo (most of them even sang in 'Malmoitian'), Angel was a girl, a D-celebrity from Big Brother, there was no HIV at all (which made for a different death for Angel - intervening in a brawl between Roger and The Man and getting stabbed - and a sort of strange finale, in my opinion), and Life Support had turned into a job-seeking course at the employment agency.
Mark was called Max, Joanne became Susanne, and Maureen turned into Pauline, who was involved in Reclaim The Streets. Santa Fe became Stockholm - the line 'We'll open up a restaurant in Santa Fe' went 'Så ska vi dra till Stockholm för att bli nånting' (heh). Collins (whose name was explained by his father being from the US) had been teaching at LTH in Lund, but was now returning to teach the 'schmucks' at Malmö Högskola. That particular bit was quite amusing, really. But seeing that Rent isn't actually about being amusing, I sometimes felt they played on the fun parts a bit much.
Also, they'd given the adults larger parts, and put in a few scenes were the kids went to see their parents. For all the changes, though, they used the actual original version of the finale and not the original Swedish version. I was curious as to whether Mimi would wake up or not, but she did.
Angel was the bit I couldn't really accept. I don't understand why they had to do that to such a wonderful character.

It was a bit odd in places, and like I said it wasn't really Rent, but they were really, really good. Seeing it from a non Rent-head's point of view and remembering that they were college kids, it was a great performance. The guy who played Roger? Sofa king awesome voice, his One Song Glory was totally one of the highlights of the night. And he was a surprsingly good actor as well, totally had me in a few scenes. Mark (well, Max) also convinced me with a really good Halloween, and the two guys worked so well together. I've always loved the Mark/Roger friendship. Other than that, the ensemble numbers worked best - Rent, Will I?, La Vie Boheme, Seasons Of Love were all fab.
It was definitely worth the money, but I'm still looking forward to seeing the real Rent in the fall. Göta Lejon, here I come! This, I decided, was a show based on the musical Rent by Jonathan Larson.


Other things... The Bedford Diaries. A bit disappointing. I want to like Milo's character, I really do, but it's hard to do so when he's playing Jess only without the charm and visible vulnerability, and added Logan's money and smugness. Although he did have the best line of the pilot:
"Drunk? At the time, yeah. Rich? Not my fault. Brat? Yeah, okay."
But there were no characters to make me care about them. They all just managed to annoy me. Natalie, okay, a little, but mainly because I'm a bit intrigued by her relationship with Richard. Penn's character? Cute, but also annoying and a bit creepy - he's turned on by the fact that a girl is mentally unstable? Twisted, twisted boy. And the girl playing his sister reminded me too much of Anna from s2 of OTH. Bad, bad thing.
The concept of the show is interesting, but poorly executed. I'm hoping it gets better, pilots aren't really to judge from.

I'm longing to re-read Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down. There are lots of reasons why I love this book, and this quote is one of them:
"When someone uses the phrase 'the prick one', and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word 'metaphorically', you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker to well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should know her at all."

I really am good at rambling, aren't I?