In Praise of… Daredevil

I clapped and whooped at the final moment of the final episode of series 1 of Daredevil, and whooped again when I read that series 2 was already in development.  It was not the only time I found myself cheering.  Ah Daredevil – Daredevil!  At last the memories of the film-we-do-not-mention is wiped away, and the TV series comes from upon high (or from Netflix) to redeem us!  Bring on your ninjas!  Bring on blind lawyers with supernatural senses, gangsters and corrupt cops!  Bring on beautifully filmed New York at night, and a pervading sense of futility of what we can dubiously dub ‘maybe good perhaps’ against ‘bad but still human sorta maybe’.  Bring on Catholic iconography and courtroom drama, I want MORE.

My only gripe about the entire thing, in fact, is that it is on Netflix, to which I don’t have access, and thus I had to wait for my partner and his subscription in order to watch all thirteen episodes over four impatient weeks.  Netflix in the UK especially, is pretty rubbish.  In Daredevil it’s excelled itself.  Here are a few reasons why….

1.  The writing.

Characters!  Actual characters happen!  Actual characters who don’t leave you screaming at the screen ‘MY GOD YOU’RE SO STUPID!’ in quite the same way much of TV drama does.  I was enthralled – properly enthralled – by Wilson Fisk, and his speech in the back of the van at the end of the series is one of those moments again where I found myself punching the air in joy.  I loved the development of Vanessa, thrilled at the cordially terrifying presence of Madam Gao (and understood…. ooh… 15% of the Mandarin without subtitles, hurrah), might be a little bit in love with Foggy Nelson and yes!  I was totally cheering for Matt Murdoch and his confused Catholic vigilante brain from the word go.  The characters did surprising things, but things that made perfect sense for who they are.  They evolved, made bad choices that you could understand, good choices that were a struggle.  Even the minor characters, even the local priest, had an intelligence you could cheer for, spoke words that made you want to hear more.

And even ignoring for a moment the characters, the story!  There will be greater narrative arcs written, but from very early on there was a sense that you were in the hands of pros.  There was no obvious episodic formula, but an evolution across the entire series that will, I suspect, on a second watching (and there will be a second watching) leave me even more impressed at how they got from episode 1 to episode 13.  They were happy to discard arcs and characters with a shrug, happy to take their time, to charge headlong forward, to digress and spend time building their world and yes, once again, I am sitting here wanting to applaud.  Rejoice, all yea wannabe-ninja-boxer-escrimador-lawyers!  Rejoice and make merry…

2.  The lighting.

Daredevil looked beautiful.  The production design was a delight.  And let’s also give it up for the lighting.  They made interesting, bold choices that in theatre you’d struggle to get past a director’s anxiety.  It was a world of huge changes in intensity and saturation, that managed to smuggle in deep greens and reds, muddy yellows and startling neons without you even feeling that these things were out of place.  It was a pleasure to behold.

Indeed, the only aspect of the production design which could be… interesting… in the long run, is arguably the only bit that you can’t get away from in Daredevil, and that’s Daredevil’s final costume.  I suspect there will be more than a few people out there who lament the transition from black-clad ninja-of-the-urban-night to a guy wearing read with horns – itty bitty wee devil horns – on his head.  Ah well.  We’ll cope.

3.  The fighting.

People moved their feet!  They actually moved their feet!  I cannot express how rare and lovely this is.  Most fights in movies and on TV screens, people stand still and sorta flail around at each other.  Swords hit swords; knives block knives, and that tiny part of me that has been paying attention in escrima class for the last few years gets… tense.  Really kinda tense.

Not so much in Daredevil.  Fights covered large distances as people struggled to get an advantage.  Improvised weapons and the environment were both used – I may have clapped when a microwave featured in this category.  Moreover, people who are knocked down, get back up again.  This gives me a certain medical delight.  Knocking someone unconscious usually results in one of two outcomes – either they’re out for a few seconds, or they’re dead.  Writing a narrative with this extremity of options is difficult, but it was at least lovely to see people who’d merely been hit a few times in the face, fall, recover, and get back into the action.  And even better – people who were hurt, were actually hurt.  Matt Murdoch spends a surprisingly large amount of time recovering from all sorts of injuries, and at the end of fights, you can see the pain and exhaustion in everyone.  Sexy bits of acrobatics were few and far between, and for this, I thank you, fight choreographer.  The fights were infinitely, infinitely more elegant for being something fought between people, not dancing gods on wires.

(A shout-out here is, I think, owed to the Raid, an Indonesian movie heavy on the local martial art, silat.  I watched this movie a few years ago after my escrima teachers informed me it was the only martial arts movie they actually rated in the world ever, and you can very much see its influence on Daredevil.  I can’t speak for the Raid 2, but the Raid has clearly left it’s mark on TV….)

So yeah.

Basically.

Daredevil: it’s awesome.

MORE!!