There must be something about a bunch of dudes locked up in a hotel that encourages either sex or murder. Wrth cwrs, it’s got to be an old hotel – all big entrance halls and real wood panelling. It wouldn’t work in a Travelodge. Episode 2 of 35 Awr is dripping with both. That’s sex and murder yeah? Not wood panels. Get me on the couch as soon as you want, but throughout Episode 2, all I could think of was ‘Professor Plum with the Lead Piping’ and, knowing the writer of this show, it’s probably going to involve a library somewhere.
What the second instalment does very wisely is focus more on characters than plot. Well, totally on characters, in truth. Fabulous move. Who remembers the second episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION? Ok, just me. But anyway – everybody got pissed. That’s right, even Jean Luc Picard ihimself got pissed up on the Starship Enterprise. That’s why I always choose a drinking session for a second date. It sets up characters very, very well (in ST:TNG, very well for another 6 years). 35 Awr has only got 6 more episodes, but I feel that putting the jury into a claustrophobic. slightly tipsy place is going to bring out the best horrible bastard in all of them. The story itself takes a backward step this week as our jury gets a little bit more uncomfortable with each other, and many of our jury get a lot more desperate.
Desperate for what though? At least a few of them have got the Pot Noodle Horn, big time. They’ve now been moved to a Hotel in the country. Peredur (the most proactive Carwyn Jones Wales has ever produced by far) is a right slimy get – constantly looking to play the situation to his groinal advantage as he decides which vulnerable woman to try and pump next. There’s something dodgy in that man’s eye. Excellent. Rhiannon has somehow smuggled a phone past security into the hotel and she is communicating with someone on the outside world, and the episode ends as she discovers that Hayden is also hanging round the hotel despite having some kind of heart attack at the end of Pennod 1 and thought to be out of the picture. Check me out with my Cymraeg use. This show normalises bilingual Cymraeg effortlessly.
What the feck is going on? I haven’t got a Scooby. 35 Awr wastes absolutely NO time on unnecessary details. As you may be able to tell, I only even know a few of the characters names at the moment – Peredur, Val, Rhee, Hayden – but something tells me I’ll know them all by the end of Pennod 8. What 35 Awr is so far very good at is telling a compelling story despite not letting you know what is happening. That can’t be an easy writing job, but its secret is in good, identifiable characters. And mystery, plenty of mystery.
Awaiting a serious bit of escalation in Pennod 3,
Nick
WALES in the MOVIES 