Deja Vu

Watching old shows is a way of reminding ourselves that nothing ever really changes in this world

 

The more things change, the more they remain the same. I was struck anew by this thought as I began re-watching Homeland, as part of my resolution to revisit all my favourite shows to see if they still resonated with me. And even though the show premiered ten years ago, it really could have been made this year. The Americans were enmeshed in an endless, seemingly futile war in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s ISI was playing both sides before betraying the USA in a spectacular fashion, the war in Syria was raging, young impressionable Muslim girls were being brainwashed to go join the global jihad, and much more in this vein. 

 

It was almost as if the writers of the show had time travelled to the present, read all the headlines in the newspapers, and based their scripts on them. The Americans were negotiating peace with the Taliban. The refugee camps were overflowing with people fleeing the conflict in Syria. Israel was attacking Iran’s nuclear scientists with magnetic bombs.

 

That same sense of déjà vu ensued while re-watching my other all-time favourite series, The West Wing, the first season of which was released way back in 1999. But even though we are now in the third decade of a new millennium, the themes of the show still seem current. One of the earlier episodes focuses on the border tensions between India and Pakistan, with the American President, Josiah Bartlett, feeling worried about the prospect of a nuclear confrontation between the two South Asian neighbours. Season five ends with violence on the Gaza Strip, which prompts President Bartlett to try and persuade the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to come to some sort of settlement (spoiler alert: he fails!).

 

It’s much the same story with the British spy drama, Spooks, which premiered in 2002. There is an ongoing conflict with Iran, because of its nuclear ambitions, that threatens to escalate into a full-on war, with the US planning air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The Saudis are under suspicion of being involved with or giving succor to Al-Qaeda. And, with a certain inevitability, the two nuclear neighbours, India and Pakistan, are on the brink of war (yes, again!).

 

But, in case you think this feeling of déjà vu only extends to actions dramas and involves the themes of terrorism and war, well, think again. Re-watching the early seasons of The Crown, as I wait for the latest season to be released, I was struck by the parallels between the saga of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Both Edward and Harry fell in love with and married two American divorcees, Wallis Simpson and Meghan Markle. Both couples gave up on royal life in the United Kingdom and left for foreign shores, the Windsors to France and the Sussexes to America. Both couples became immensely unpopular with the British media and public. And both seem consumed with anger and resentment at their treatment at the hands of the British royal family.

 

Last but not the least, there is that old classic, Yes Minister, and in its later incarnation, Yes Prime Minister. Even though the first episodes aired way back in 1980, the series speaks to us with an immediacy even today, with its portrayal of the general uselessness of politicians and the canny way in which they are manipulated by the bureaucrats who seem to be actually in charge. 

 

And then, of course, there are the one-liners that land with a zing even so many decades later. Here is Sir Humphrey: “Well, almost all government policy is wrong but…frightfully well carried out.” And in answer to Bernard saying, “But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know,” Sir Humphrey goes: “No, they have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity.” And when Prime Minister Jim Hacker asks what he can do to continue the “run of success” of his government, Sir Humphrey replies, “Have you considered masterly inactivity?”

 

As I said, the more things change, the more they remain the same!

 

HIt me baby, one more time!

Here are just some iconic TV shows I would love to see in a brand new avatar

You cannot imagine my delight when I heard that Murphy Brown was going to be back on our television screens, with a much older (and presumably much wiser) Candice Bergen making her comeback on fictional TV network. For those of you who were born too late to know what I am talking about, this was a TV series that created a fair bit of controversy in its day (in the Ronald Reagan-Bush senior era) when its lead star, a TV anchor called Murphy Brown, decided to become a single mother. 

Well, the first two episodes of the Murphy Brown reboot just dropped and I have to say that the new series is quite as good as the original. Actually, if anything it is even better. I don't want to post any spoilers but any show that has its lead character getting into a Twitter battle with President Donald Trump in the very first episode has my vote. 

But even I chortled and chuckled at the best lines, I couldn't help but think of the various other shows I had enjoyed in my childhood and my youth, which I would love to see recast for my middle age. Here is just a short sampling of them. 

The West Wing

This rates as my favourite TV series ever. I have seen some of the episodes so often that I know the lines by heart. Earlier, I used to dip into the box set I had bought of all seven seasons. But now that it is available on Amazon Prime, I binge on it even more often.

Most fellow fans who would also like to see the series revived - ideally with Aaron Sorkin as the lead writer, producer and director - tend to favour Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) as the new President of the USA. But my money is on C.J. Cregg (Alison Janney) as the first woman American President. It's about time, wouldn't you say? And if it's never going to happen in reality, then I will happily settle for fiction instead.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who plays the President. The original West Wing derived its strength from the strong ensemble cast, its overarching story line, and of course, some brilliant writing. Who can forget the banter between Josh and his loyal secretary Donna? Or the acerbic Toby's sarcastic asides which often stole the scene effortlessly? Or indeed, President Bartlet's tendency to bore everyone to death with his endless prattling on about facts and figures.

But more than anything else, I do wish the West Wing would come back with its bracing idealistic vision of a world in which liberal values are the lodestar. If nothing else, it would provide a strong counterpoint to the goings-on in the actual West Wing!

Yes, Minister

My second-favourite political show of all time. Here again, the writing was of such superlative quality that the original series hasn't dated at all. But wouldn't it be fun if someone like Armando Iannucci (of The Thick Of It and Veep fame) recast Yes, Minister - and later, Yes, Prime Minister - in the times of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and, of course, Donald Trump.

My personal preference would be to have a blond buffoon like Boris Johnson (albeit one with hidden depths of cunning and chutzpah) in Number 10, Downing Street, setting off crisis after crisis both in domestic politics and international polity. Just the thought of it makes me giggle. 

Friends

Yes, yes, I know all the cast members have announced at various times that they have no intention of doing a reboot of the series. And on the rare occasions when they have conceded the possibility of a revival, it's always to add that it will never happen because Jennifer Aniston will never agree.

Well, frankly, much as I loved Rachel Green, I would be happy to settle for a Jennifer Aniston-less Friends. They can pretend that she's gone off to Paris to work in the fashion world (maybe have her call in occasionally) and let the rest of the cast get on with it. 

Monica and Chandler would be living in suburbia, bringing up their teenage twins (we don't have to be chronologically accurate, do we?), with Joey living in the garage flat, after he's lost all his money after an acrimonious divorce. Ross could be on his fourth wife and a new set of children. And Phoebe would have her own spa empire, with Mike playing house husband. 

I can't wait to see what the friends make of the 21st century, of Twitter and Instagram, and the woke Millennials that their kids are turning out to be. 

Could I be more exited? Nah, I don't think so.

Boston Legal

As legal dramas go, this one was in a class of its own. A superbly talented cast led by William Shatner, Candice Bergen (yes, her again) and James Spader, this show has both dramatic intensity and comic relief in equal measure. I suspect that in the #MeToo era, Shatner could not possibly get up to some of the politically incorrect stuff he did in the original series. But then, he did marry Spader in the last episode (for tax reasons, not because they belatedly discovered they were homosexual). And he would probably be a hundred years old in the reboot, anyway.

So maybe a new, younger cast, led by Spader and some of the other familiar faces, may make sense. So long as the law cases remain as tricky, the characters as eccentric and the writing as quirky, we could be on a winner. 

Blast from the past

Sometimes just an image, a sound, or a smell, can take you right back to your childhood

It is the strangest things that remind you of your childhood at times, evoking memories that lay long buried in your brain. It could be anything really: an image; a touch; a smell; or even a sound. And before you know it, you have been transported back in time to relive those childhood moments that you had thought lost forever.

Last week I had one such moment of déjà vu. Aimlessly channel-surfing, I stopped at FTV because the clothes on the ramp looked mildly interesting, when my eyes were caught by the shoes of one of the models. The square toes; the little strap across the ankle fastened with a buckle; the shiny patent leather; it all looked so familiar. If you ignored the high heel – as I did – the shoes were a dead ringer for the Mary Janes that I had worn to school all through my childhood.

That one image took me back instantly to the Bata store on Chowringhee, Calcutta’s busiest thoroughfare, where I would make an annual pilgrimage at the start of every year to buy the school-mandated black shoes that made up my uniform. There was no agonising over styles, dithering over alternatives, or pondering on colours. There was only one option that I could choose (if choose is the right word) but that didn’t detract from the shopping experience one bit. The thrill of buying a new pair of shoes; the joy of seeing that my feet were finally growing to adult size; and the knowledge that I was going into a new class with all the possibilities it represented; all of this combined to make this trip to the shoe shop one of the highlights of my year.

That same feeling of déjà vu struck me on a recent visit to the local Marks and Spencer store. One entire rail was devoted to leggings with stirrups, a style that I had last worn when I was 10 years old. Now of course, I would not be caught dead in them, so I quickly moved on to the next rail. But quite without volition, an image jumped up and took possession of my brain: the pair of olive-green leggings with sturdy stirrups that I had refused to get out of for an entire year (and which are immortalised in several family photographs taken over the period). And with that image came the memories: of visits to the zoo; of raucous birthday parties where everyone ate far too much cake (and which, suffice to say, not everyone managed to keep down); of picnics with friends; of family weddings where I was the only one not in the regulation ghagra-choli.

Of course, it’s not just clothes or fashion that reminds me of my childhood. Coming across a re-run of Yes Minister on BBC Entertainment has much the same effect. In the days before satellite television arrived in India and we were all at the mercy of Doordarshan programmers, this was the one show that I would hurry home to watch. The opening credits of Chitrahar, which was pretty much appointment viewing in those days; the notes of Abide with me, which we sang every morning Assembly; the sound of a tolling bell, which punctuated my day at school; all these sounds double up as aide-memoires.

And then, there’s food. There are some things that always take me back to the nostalgia-tinted meals of my childhood. Cupcakes with old-style frosting and sprinkles (rather than the new-fangled dollops of cream) remind me of the pastries that I bought every lunch-time from the school cake-wallah. I would carefully consider his two layers of cakes (I could buy only one every day, given my meagre pocket-money), each in a different style and colour, before buying the vanilla cupcake yet again. Clearly, even at that young age, I felt a certain comfort in the familiar.

Of all things, home-style finger chips – rather than the new-fangled French fries we all scoff down these days – conjure up memories of my childhood almost instantly. Cut in chunky bits and deep-fried to a lovely golden, crisp on the outside and moistly crumbly inside, these were served up every Sunday lunch-time, right after Mahabharat, with a side of blood-red ketchup. The aromas wafting from a cup of steaming black tea take me back to holidays spent exploring the grounds of my aunt’s tea estate in Assam, the gardens redolent with what I only later discovered to be the smell of drying tea leaves. The taste of an orange bar, the ice-lolly on a stick that was a staple of my growing years, reminds me of evenings spent hanging over the balcony waiting for the ice-creamwallah – with his colourful van teeming with goodies – to hove into view.

And then, there are the images. The sight of scraggly rows of roses always takes me back to the lawns of the old-style dak bungalows; the good old Ambassador – a rare sight on the road these days – reminds me of road trips taken as a child; and a bouffant hairdo reminds me of the styles my older sister sported in her youth, and which I longed to replicate when I grew up. Of course, by the time I grew out of pigtails, the bouffant was long gone, having been replaced by the gamine crop – but that, as they say, is quite another story.