As one of our development team put it, "it is like All The President's Men got drunk and tried to seduce Basic Instinct but instead ended up in bed with Dumb and Dumber and then nine months later had a mutant baby."
The main problems with Shades Of Brown, we all felt, stem from the characters you have chosen to tell your story. Quite frankly, there is not a plausible one among the lot of them, from the television show host, failed mayoral candidate to the cliched tabloid hack. It was widely felt, among our team, that this is a collection of characters who would fail miserably at organising a piss-up in a brewery, let alone mastermind a political coup, so to craft a TV series around them would inspire incredulity rather than engaging an audience.
Also, with the characters, it was felt that none of them were in any way likeable and, therefore, watchable. Characters can be good or evil, but the audience still have to want to invite them on to their TV sets and into their houses. With this lot, however, you would let the dogs loose the moment they set foot on your property, rather than spend even a single minute's viewing time with them.
As an example of this, we know it is fashionable to portray bloggers as lonely social rejects who let their bitterness ooze across the internet, but there are limits to how far you can push this stereotype. To literally have the word "oil" in the name of your blogger was, we felt, an example of how far your story pushed things beyond the bounds of what would be credible, even on television.
While we are in this general area it would help a lot if you gave your characters believable and realistic names. For starters, Bevan is a Welsh name meaning son of Evan, so to give this name to an Asian woman character just adds to the fog of confusion. And Luigi Wewege? Really? The name Luigi Wewege is the sort of name you would give to a character in a children's video game, not to a scheming back-room political fixer. Mind you, given his degree of success as a political fixer his name may very well be the most authentic thing about his character.
In terms of plot, dialogue, subtext and every other conceivable level there are many aspects of Shades Of Brown that are equally deeply dissatisfying. For example, to have your mayor character go on and on at every opportunity about trains and tunnels, and to then have an affair with a much younger woman really overloads the sex metaphor to the point where it makes something inherently icky even more icky.
Yet for all the ickiness, it is the mayor who comes out of this whole mess of a story looking the best of this sorry bunch of characters. This is the core problem with Shades Of Brown. When the adulterer, the cheat, the man who used the Ngati Whatua room for the passing of things other than council remits, emerges as the most morally upstanding character, then you know there are big problems with the world of the characters. The world of Shades Of Brown, we felt, is one where the moral compass is not so much facing the wrong way, as one where the moral compass has been run over repeatedly, by the train, as it heads in and out of the tunnel.
In conclusion, we have decided not to option Shades Of Brown, as if we did put this story on television the audience would not know whether to laugh, cry, throw things at the TV set or feel a deep and abiding shame at the state of the human race.
We would, however, like to talk further about your idea about Norse gods living in New Zealand, as we feel this is a much more plausible concept.
Regards, David Kahane, Head of Development.
