Second Generation (2003) (TV)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Jon Sen

Writer:

Neil Biswas (writer)

Release Date:

14 September 2003 (UK)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A modern reworking of King Lear, where a businessman lies in a coma while 2 of his daughters plan to...

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Radhika Aggarwal	...	DJ Sita
Lalita Ahmed	...	Suleka
Joanna Bacon	...	Social Worker
William Beck	...	Nick
Shelley Conn	...	Amba
Sonnell Dadral	...	Uzi
Amita Dhiri	...	Rina
Danny Dyer	...	Jack
Derek Ezenagu	...	Psychologist
Learie Foster	...	Paul
Nitin Ganatra	...	Firoz Khan
Shiv Grewal	...	Arun
Davina Hemlall	...	Parminder
Perveen Hussain	...	Asha
Kaleem Janjua	...	Mohammed
Ashwin Juneja	...	Arijit
Graham Kent	...	Security Guard
Anupam Kher	...	Khan
Aziza Kurtha	...	Flight Attendad
Parminder Nagra	...	Heere Sharma / Sonali Sharma (as Parminder K. Nagra)
Selina Parmar	...	Sue
Om Puri	...	Sharma
Kate Russell-Smith	...	Naomi
Chris Ryman	...	Parv
Aftab Sachak	...	Mr. Kapoor
Roshan Seth	...	Mohan
Christopher Simpson	...	Sam Khan
Jay Simpson	...	Jez
Paven Virk	...	Gurpreet
Rita Wolf	...	Pria Sharma

Runtime:

UK:120 min | UK:180 min (2 parts)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Filming Locations:

93 Feet East Club, Brick Lane, Shoreditch, London, England, UK

Company:

The Oxford Film Company

Reasonably good drama let down by poor dialogue and delivery

When her father falls into a coma, Heere ends her self imposed exile from her family to return and see him. She finds her sisters planning to turn off the life support machine and take over the family business. When Sharma recovers, Heree tries to make her peace but she and her white fiancée are rejected by him. Heree falls in with an old lover, Sam, while the rest of her family continue to be deceitful and manipulative behind each other's backs as secret dirty laundry is aired.

I taped this miniseries rather than watch it in two parts as I felt three hours would be an OK sit time. As it was the film surprised me because the time went quite quickly. The main reason for this was the fact that the film had quite a complex thread of relationships and characters to follow and there was never really a moment where it really dipped. The main plot is weak by itself and actually gets annoying in the way we are constantly given blurry flashbacks from Sharma. However the many other threads feed off this one and support it.

The problem sadly is that the plot has not been delivered as well as it deserved to the screen. The first thing that hit me was just how clunky the dialogue was at times. Words didn't always sound natural and too much of it was lacking a real touch or a genuineness to it. This was quite a big issue for me as the complex character issues didn't work as well when I wasn't able to accept the characters as real. Of course part of this lies with the actors but some of them are hampered by words while others just do badly. Nagra is good but her lines don't sound right out of her mouth at times. Puri has almost a cameo role in the film, but Simpson is quite awful. He has no character to speak of and simply bops round the place beaming and being so angelic and kind that I never fully understood why he and Heere had split up in the first place.

It's a shame, because the family plot had been designed quite well and was complex and interesting enough to hold me for three hours without me every really feeling like it was dull. However the dialogue is not as natural and flowing as it needed to be – it needed to convince me that these were real people, often it didn't. This may be to blame for some performances not being all that they should be, but even with this excuse they are mostly good. Not a fantastic miniseries but one with a good plot at it's core – blurry direction, flashbacks, poor dialogue and some iffy acting don't kill it but they do take a lot away.