“At least until they kill Sean Bean in episode 8,” said the other. “Eh, that could be fun,” said one of them. It may not be enough: at Comic-Con, I passed two guys staring up at the enormous “Legends” ad plastered across the side of my hotel, with the hashtag in lettering almost as big as the show's title. (*) TNT is even trying to turn the audience's knowledge of Bean's career arc to its advantages, attaching the hasthag #DontKillSeanBean to all its “Legends” advertising. It's a basic actor's exercise, filmed in tight close-up, but an effective way of demonstrating how Odom does what he does. And the pilot does have one strong scene where he explains the backstory of his latest legend to Larter and the team, as we see him slip on the character, layer by layer. He never disappears into any of his cover identities, but you can imagine a world in which he might be plausible as a recruit in a white supremacist militia, or as a successful arms merchant. He has a very distinct look that's hard to disguise, though he and the show's costume and makeup people do what they can with props, wardrobe and accent choices. He's known as the sturdy guy who comes in, gives your project enormous gravitas, and then dies so that you can get to the actual story(*). Bean is not known as a chameleon of a performer. The only one not cast to type in this way is Bean himself. So Tina Majorino from “Veronica Mars” again plays a computer genius, Zeljko Ivanek turns up in the first episode as a charismatic villain, Steve Harris is the stern authority figure, and, as Martin's handler, Ali Larter even has to put on one of her old “Heroes” stripper outfits midway through the very first episode. It is unapologetic about this, and about how it casts every regular and guest actor so ruthlessly to type that they may as well be going by the names they've used in previous roles exactly like these.
The explanation for how a man with this accent ended up working for the FBI is utterly ridiculous, but it's also one line of dialogue that never has to be dealt with again, and it's an approach that I wish many more shows would take when hiring actors from the UK, Australia or New Zealand.įor a show that is about a man who is never who he appears to be, “Legends” winds up being exactly what it appears to be in every possible second: a generic crime procedural tricked up with a convoluted mystery meant to add intrigue to the various Undercover Assignments of the Week. Because Odom is a master of assuming undercover identities (the “legends” of the title), Bean gets to try on various semi-convincing accents the rest of the time, but at least “Legends” doesn't waste time trying to convince us that Ned Stark doesn't sound like Ned Stark when he's not playacting. I will say this for “Legends,” the new TNT drama (it debuts tonight at 9) starring Sean Bean: it does not attempt to hide Bean's native accent behind some bland non-regional American dialect, at least not in his main identity as FBI agent Martin Odom.
0 kommentar(er)
