[spoilers] Sir Harry Pearce - Return of the Jedi (#3)

[HellsBells]

I have always thought that Harry should always be in Spooks, but your question, binkie, has made me think more about that. I haven't seen PF in anything else and therefore can't comment on his acting ability. But I think having Harry always there is just 'comforting', when so many characters leave it is good to think he will survive. But maybe Spooks is becoming too much about Harry, he doesn't seem to have anyone to whom he answers to within MI5 and seems to run his department with complete autonomy. We didn't see anything of the JIC in series 9, and when Harry is battling these people he is at his best.
Considering how Spooks like to shake things up, perhaps Harry leaving isn't so inconceivable, but at the moment the other characters aren't strong enough to keep to viewers watching.

[Silktie]

(27-01-2011 04:33 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  But maybe Spooks is becoming too much about Harry, he doesn't seem to have anyone to whom he answers to within MI5 and seems to run his department with complete autonomy. We didn't see anything of the JIC in series 9, and when Harry is battling these people he is at his best.

Hmm, not sure that I agree with this. I think the amount of autonomy he has has changed little over the seasons. What has changed is the face of the control he is answerable to. In earlier seasons it was the JIC in some form or other - think Mace and Juliet. But since season 5 that has mostly changed to the person of the Home Secretary. He has been just as answerable to Blake, and later Towers, than he had been to Mace and Juliet. Think how he was powerless to refuse when Blake ordered him to bomb that train in Tehran in season 6, or how he was unable to refuse when Towers ordered him to let an FSB agent onto the Grid. And he still has to get clearance for operations from the Home Secretary - once again he had to get Towers' permission to send his people to kill that terrorist in 9.1.

[JHyde]

I do miss Harry's bust ups with Mace or Juliet. They've been using the Home Sec as that role in the last few seasons.

[HellsBells]

(28-01-2011 08:05 AM)JHyde Wrote:  I do miss Harry's bust ups with Mace or Juliet. They've been using the Home Sec as that role in the last few seasons.

Maybe that's it, the Home Secretary has replaced the role of the JIC, which seems so odd. That just two people Harry Pearce and (the current) Home Secretary decide on national security, it just felt 'more right' when these sort of decision were made by a committee.

[loladom]

AGree about the committee, but wasn't it disbanded after the attempted coup in S8? Plus politically, the move to eleminate QUANGOs is topical and I'm guessing the JIC would be one. Still, I agree I do miss Harry's sparring with them. I liked him with Jules Verne too.

[DogSoSmall]

Not so easy to spar with the Home Sec. He just has to bite his tongue.

I've just been re-watching 3.7 & 3.8. Two great episodes. Some priceless moments for Harry in both (the "time of the month" horror and the dealing with celebrities). I do miss the moments of humour. It really has all got very serious recently.

[A Cousin]

Hiya, binkie. Slumming it? Your turn to crack out the acetominaphin!

(26-01-2011 10:49 PM)binkie Wrote:  So, my question is this: When did Spooks come to be all about Harry, and should we be worried?

I don't think it has become all about Harry. Despite my blinkered obsession with the Harry character, I think the producers/writers/directors and even the man himself have generally been able to steer away from making it about one character and maintain the ensemble piece I like it to be.

The question is, if I am reading you correctly, is the generally accepted understanding that Harry cannot or will not die/depart led to a watering down of the character and consequently the dramatic content of the programme because the stakes are not high enough? Not in my opinion. Even if I were completely confident in Harry being able to survive from season to season, there are many other devices at their disposal to keep the stakes just as high as killing a character off. There is something to be said for being the survivor and the reasons Harry specifically is the survivor and how he copes with being the survivor - warts and all. Death is easy. Life is hard.

Would I watch the programme without Harry? Yes. One of the beauties of the cast replacements in Spooks is I have always learned to love again. I have known several people who have "sworn off" spooks after Toms exit, after Danny's exit, after Zoe's exit. I find that to be a crying shame. Would I be as engaged? I don't know. I sincerely thought I wouldn't be after Tom, Danny, Ruth, Adam, Ros...yet I still am.

They certainly could have written and developed a completely different character with the moral/physical aspects of Rupert Murdoch, but then it wouldn't be Harry would it? To paraphrase Jane Austen, one could have a ball without dancing, but it would rather less like a ball.

Could another actor have been cast as Harry? Yes. Could they have been just as engaging? Yes. Would the role have developed the same? Absolutely not. But it would start from the same kernel PF was handed in S1E1. PF was just smart, skilled and experienced enough to recognize the potential and build on it. An actors characterization comes as much from the person who is playing it as the person who is written on the page. That is why King Lear or Hamlet can be played by several different actors equally as brilliantly repeatedly for 400 years. Each characterization will be inherently different and individual because each actor is inherently different and individual. PF is in the very lucky position of being the right actor for the right role at the right time. I suppose for that reason, I am more than thrilled to watch this particular actor in this particular role more than just about any other just to see where it goes.

I think the popularity of the character has only strengthened the character and instilled it with more meaning by virtue of being the survivor. They kill characters off like crazy, granted for contractual reasons, but Harry is the only one to stay. Why? How? At what cost? That in itself is an interesting difference to all the other characters that have come before or are to come. It is a singular character aspect specific only to this character.

I probably could have said all this in a much shorter post. Sorry for that. I hope you enjoyed a good bluster from an American!

[DogSoSmall]

I think that pretty much nails it. Bravo!

[binkie]

(29-01-2011 05:30 AM)A Cousin Wrote:  Hiya, binkie. Slumming it?

Ha ha! “Slumming it” Life is such a trial! I’ll just have to force myself to carry on through this unfamiliar territory...

(27-01-2011 12:27 AM)DogSoSmall Wrote:  Peter Firth took a small role and created a character that inspired admiration and devotion.

Oh, I quite agree. I watched season 1 again a couple of months ago, and it is certainly striking how quickly and confidently Peter Firth re-drew the part of a committed but tired desk officer as a sharp-witted, still very much switched-on, utterly invested leader with any number of diamond-hard facets of real experience just below the surface calm.

I have absolutely no quibble with the performance, with the presentation of the character, or with the actor (who was a big part of the reason I started watching the show in the first place). My questions were motivated by two things: my inability to leave a thing alone just because it is functioning as it always has, and a persistent interest in the logic of a continuing function. The fact that Spooks in general, and certain characters in particular, are able to withstand this kind of constant (over-)analysis while still allowing me to enjoy the show at face value is one of the reasons I so enjoy the show

(27-01-2011 12:27 AM)DogSoSmall Wrote:  You can't really speculate on whether it would be the same if you had a different actor playing a different type of character (Norman Tebbit? - god forbid!!). Of course the good will or lack of it would be entirely different.

Yes. Sorry about that horrible mental image. I apologise if anyone now has visions of Harry-as-Norman. I do think it is valid to consider, though, the part played by the perception of an actor’s popular persona in the reception of characters played by that actor. An interesting recent example of this can be seen in the character of Gene Hunt (Life on Mars; Ashes to Ashes). Here was a character presented in classical narrative terms as largely unsympathetic and almost entirely without moral merit. However, he was played by an actor whose CV is stuffed with Good Men. The redemption of the character was a lot easier to obtain when he looked and sounded like Mack and Edmund Carter than it would have been if he had been more reminiscent of Elliot Mantle or Claus von Bülow.

(27-01-2011 06:41 AM)Silktie Wrote:  I think it only becomes problematic if the creators actually want to get rid of a character, but is afraid to because they fear that the actor is too iconic to do so.

This is a good point, and one which I suspect is seldom considered in terms of the good-of-the-character. How sad it is to see dramatic characters drawing attention to themselves by their obsolescence and absurdity, rather than by the brilliance and intrigue which made them so compelling in the first place. I would hate for this to happen to Harry. I do think the production perhaps needs to be circumspect about what it needs from Harry – and what it needs Harry to be – as the show moves nearer to a natural end.

(27-01-2011 06:41 AM)Silktie Wrote:  Harry's appeal for me lies to a great extent in that he is not a perfect man; a one-dimensional knight in shining armour who always does everything right. He fails, he makes mistakes, but always with good intentions.

(27-01-2011 12:55 PM)loladom Wrote:  Harry is the backbone, structure, consistency and to some extent the moral (or imoral) compass. He sets the ethos of the team. He also sets the heart of the team and the viewer.

It is interesting, I think, how often variations on this theme are exercised in relation to this character. I will offer an observation (not a criticism: can you tell how very paranoid I am in this thread?!): it is a curiosity, to me anyway, how indulgent an audience can be of a fictional character who “does what they think is right”. I wonder when this expression of meta-ethical relativism became the standard by which an audience absolves a heroic, or distinctive, character of mis-judgment or moral-cowardice or -compromise. Harry, it is true, operates – from a universal lay perspective - in a singularly murky moral environment. He cannot be expected to refer to a flow chart of righteousness every time he needs to make a decision pertaining to national security. Nevertheless, I do sometimes find myself exasperated at the writers for failing to allow him a less Blairite accommodation for his motives.

(28-01-2011 12:23 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  ...the Home Secretary has replaced the role of the JIC, which seems so odd. That just two people Harry Pearce and (the current) Home Secretary decide on national security, it just felt 'more right' when these sort of decision were made by a committee.

This is a typically astute observation, especially in the context of the previous point. The removal from the narrative, as it is acknowledged by the characters within it, of a review committee (or similar panel of authority) only reinforces the rhetorical implication that Harry, and others like him, are both unaccountable and unsupported in the decisions they make. Of course, the show observes its own shorthand in relation to the mechanics and dynamics of the secret service – and it would be a very different show if we followed Harry into every meeting and PDR session he is required to attend. It may well be that it is the intention of recent seasons to reinforce the extent to which Harry feels increasingly isolated in his professional and personal lives, and that is why these committees are no longer referenced: they no longer form a conscious part of the demands Harry experiences from his job. Those demands have become much more about individual tests and crises; much less about chattering justification.

(29-01-2011 05:30 AM)A Cousin Wrote:  There is something to be said for being the survivor and the reasons Harry specifically is the survivor and how he copes with being the survivor - warts and all. Death is easy. Life is hard.

(29-01-2011 05:30 AM)A Cousin Wrote:  I think the popularity of the character has only strengthened the character and instilled it with more meaning by virtue of being the survivor. They kill characters off like crazy..., but Harry is the only one to stay. Why? How? At what cost? That in itself is an interesting difference to all the other characters that have come before or are to come. It is a singular character aspect specific only to this character.

[ Avoiding the very substantial temptation to launch into some kind of historical review of all the ways in which pre-humanist philosophy has explored and rejected the concept of death as the easier option ]: I’m glad you bring up the specific relevance of survival as a facet of the character, and as an element of significance to and about the character. I would have expected nothing less from you! I like very much the ways in which the show makes clear that the compromises and indulgences which have served to keep Harry alive to this point did not begin with what we know. Harry, as we meet him in 1.1, is already a creature of concession. We have been learning since then just what this means for him, and what it tells us about him.

I find the character of Harry quite compelling. There is a danger, though, that the fallout of season 9 could see him being translated as a kind of martyr looking for – or waiting for - a cause. This would require something of a reduction of the well-rehearsed complexity of the character, and of his rhetorical function in the larger narrative. I don’t want to see Harry become a passenger in his own fortune. That really would be a betrayal too far.

[Silktie]

(30-01-2011 01:17 AM)binkie Wrote:  I find the character of Harry quite compelling. There is a danger, though, that the fallout of season 9 could see him being translated as a kind of martyr looking for – or waiting for - a cause. This would require something of a reduction of the well-rehearsed complexity of the character, and of his rhetorical function in the larger narrative. I don’t want to see Harry become a passenger in his own fortune. That really would be a betrayal too far.

I think it is important to keep in mind that a character’s rhetorical function in the larger narrative, as you call it, is very much a subjective point of view. No two people are going to interpret it in the exact same way. No matter how hard we try, we are all incapable of evaluating a character, his function in a show, or his actions totally objectively. So, what for one viewer might be a betrayal of the established function of a character, might be a fascinating new facet of the same character being developed for another viewer.

Every person that watches the show brings to it their own view of the world, their own frame of reference. It is for this same reason that people find themselves more invested in the fortunes of one character rather than another. One person’s view is not more correct than the other, which is why I, for one, like to see different views expressed. As long as none of us expect everyone else to hold the exact same view that we do.

So Binkie, you can stop apologising for the views you express here. The Harry fans on this forum are quite a friendly bunch.

With regard to season 10 Harry, I agree with you that I wouldn’t like him to become a martyr looking for a cause. But then again, I didn’t expect to enjoy watching Harry experiencing an existential crisis the way he did in season 9, but I did. It’s all in the execution I suppose, so I'll keep an open mind.