Chips That Pass in the Night.
So, what do you think of Force Majeur?! An excited long-term acquaintance asked me following the first sip of his third double espresso.
“Pardon?” I responded, glancing up casually from a gorilla glass screen strewn with alerts emoji’s and angry fingerprints.
“Force Majeur” My colleague repeated. “The new smash hit legal drama series on Purgostream?”
I set my small rectangular spouse down on surface of cheap walnut veneer between a noxious sticky deposit and a half consumed flat white before enquiring,
“What’s Purgostream?”
“Oh please!” He exclaimed, taking a another slurp. “It’s literally supplanted my cable box. Just 30 quid a month for unlimited access to over 300 premium content commercial free hyper definition streaming services.”
“Sorry Mark, I’m still slacking on Mega definition.” I interjected, hoping to steer the discussion onto a subject which didn’t oblige me to fake feign fascination.
“Oh, it’s available in extreme and mega-def too”. Came an all too predictable reply. “Actually, you’re still with Corneology right, they provide all Purgostream’s popular stuff on demand, you could get with them. Trust me just do it. I’m on the fourth season, it’s stunning, Grab the first three and do a binge this weekend, I’ll come over, I could watch the whole lot again and not be bored, honestly, it’s the best thing I’ve seen since “Hyde Inside”.
“What’s Hyde Inside?” I enquired, sounding as interested as an arms dealer at a pacifist’s convention.
Mark uttered a contrived gasp. “Oh my God! You’ve not seen Hyde Inside? The universally acclaimed crime drama series on Purgostream based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel?” He was talking so loudly that a lonesome gentlemen at the next table peered up from the space grey soulmate whose touch bar he’d been tickling and frowned in protest. Mark ignored him and went on. “It’s about this detective, he’s super intelligent, can solve cases that take his co-workers days in hours but he suffers from OCD, bi-polar, agoraphobia and paranoid schizophrenia”
“Sounds over qualified for a policeman.” I interjected to no effect.
“The thing is,” Mark continued, “When he has these attacks, you know, like, psychotic episodes, after he comes to the previous hour of his memory is completely erased.”
“How fascinating.” I observed.
“No that’s not all.” Yelled Mark, finally sensing my indifference. “The clever thing is, during these fits he also develops telepathic abilities. He can “enter” the minds of all the criminals, burrow into their sub-conscious, see, hear, feel, even dream exactly what they are and let the department use it all to track them down.
“A psychic detective? I groaned. “God knows how much Sci-fi has exhausted that concept. Books, movies, television. It’s as original as a coffee franchise.”
“Aha! There’s more.” Insisted Mark undeterred. “The longer he’s “synchronised”, right, the more likely it is for his brain to mimic their urges. So eventually, he’s compelled to commit exactly the same crimes.
“Why don’t they just keep him locked up or under house arrest?” I asked, knowing there would be a contextually plausible yet logically stupid explanation.
“Because he has to be within a certain distance of either a crime scene or the offender for the “attacks” to occur.” Mark explained.
I was right, as stupid as ever.
“Seriously, there’s five seasons, just stash em all and do one a day next week. I’ll come over, the plot is so dense it’s impossible to digest in one viewing, I’d enjoy it even more a second time.”
“You know the rules” I sighed, as the cobbled street outside began to shimmer with drizzle. “Shared viewing for panel shows, live sport and general elections only, everything else is too subjective. Even if we both like it we’re on different wavelengths. We can’t digest fiction in unison, you’re a stickler for plot detail, I prefer small casts and tight scripts.
“But this is the perfect synergy of all three” My companion insisted. “Can’t we make an exception?
“It wouldn’t work.” I asserted “We’d get half an hour in, I’d start complaining how there are too many characters, that I don’t care about any of them, I can’t hear the bloody dialogue, the story is full of logic errors and the music sounds like it’s been composed by a tone deaf manic depressive .
Meanwhile you wouldn’t be able to limit yourself to four units of alcohol per episode, become too smashed to explain what I can’t be bothered to understand and crash out on the sofa. I’d stagger upstairs, you’d stagger off home, eventually, and the next morning, your memory would be as blank as detective Hyde’s.
“That’s not his name” Mark chuckled, polishing off his beverage.
“Oh pardon me, Jekyll then.” I said, assuming the obvious.
“No, wrong again, actually it’s Poole, detective Poole. They named the character after the butler in the novel to make him morally ambiguous.”
“Well fancy that.” I said, using my faceless secretary to settle the bill. “At last something mildly innovative.”
“So you’ll give it a go yes? Pleaded Mark, evidently deaf to my sarcasm. “Trust me, we’d be enthralled throughout. There’s this incredible episode where a cyber terrorist is trying to nuke the FBI. He kidnaps the detective, unaware of his abilities. Then, as a captive, the detective’s sub-conscious starts to align with the terrorist’s, like his inner demons prevail, that’s the notion behind the name you see? We all have a “Hyde hiding Inside”.
“Look!” I began firmly, pocketing my plastic PA and sliding one arm into a tastefully distressed raincoat my father had bequeathed me. “I appreciate you’re obsessed with this series since you’re normally quite perceptive when it comes to my tactful reluctance.”
Mark lunged for my free arm before it could enter the other sleeve. “Just Listen!” He barked. “Then, when the terrorist discovers the detective’s condition, he reveals his plan to hack a mainframe that controls swarms of drones armed with nuclear weapons knowing that if the detective does his dirty work neither of them could be convicted.”
I paused and gave him a piteous look that only the closest of friends would take in good humour. “Should I indulge your enthusiasm yet further and ask why?”
“See, I knew you’d come round, sit down, have another macchiato on me.