Brave-ish Heart by: Patrick Ness directed by: Philippa Langdale: We Can Get That Creature Out of Your Head

Brave-ish Heart stars Greg Austin as Charlie, Fady Elsayed as Ram, Sophie Hopkins as April, Vivian Oparah as Tanya, and Katherine Kelly as Mrs. Quill.  It was written by Patrick Ness and directed by Philippa Langdale with Patrick Ness, Steven Moffat, and Brian Minchin as Executive Producer.  It was originally broadcast on 12 November 2016 on BBC Three.

 

The fifth episode of Class decides to be the second part of a two part story and when aired like the other episodes, it was received with positive reviews by critics.  Considering I liked the first part, if only marginally, I was at least willing to go in with the second part of the story hoping that Patrick Ness could pull off a satisfying second part for the story.  Now the biggest problem with Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart was that it had way too much going on for the story to be fleshed out.  This has crossed over into this episode as for the first ten minutes, one fifth of the run time, is devoted to exposition.  This really shows off how bad Ness is at writing dialogue as the efforts to get April and Ram’s respective parents up to speed, and the dialogue between April and Ram, is really boring.  The dialogue doesn’t feel like anything that a teenager would say and is performed in a way that is very flat.  This problem with the dialogue continues whenever Ram and April are on screen together.

 

Now both Fady Elsayed and Sophie Hopkins have chemistry together as actors and I think it is down to the bad writing of dialogue that makes this cringe and not the acting.  Ness is still writing it like a novel where you have the voices in your head, and not in your imaginary voice for the page.  It just doesn’t work when translated on to the screen as there are moments where the ideas are there, but they don’t really go anywhere.  It could also be down to the direction which is great when it comes down to the body horror of the flowers, but the Shadow Kin stuff still looks really bad even for a Doctor Who budget.  About fifteen minutes into the episode is really when the story gets going with the plotline with the flowers and the temptation of Miss Quill, which was the highlight of the previous episode.  This is really what the episode focuses on as April’s character development, which is at least communicated in the episode, was more the focus of the previous episode.  The flow is still a bit off when it comes to communicating all of this to the audience, but it works well for what it is.  Vivian Oparah has one of her worst performance however as her role is limited to just being exposition, especially after she was the best thing about Nightvisiting.

 

Katherine Kelly as Miss Quill and Greg Austin as Charlie actually have the focus as Dorothea Ames, who is still the best character in the show as even with the mystery of the Governors, she’s got character, is trying to get them to use the Cabinet of Souls to kill the flowers.  The ending has the reveal that oh it would only have destroyed one of the souls in the cabinet, which undermines the moral dilemma, but it is at least interesting to see how Charlie reacts to it.  Sadly the arc is ripped off from Genesis of the Daleks, so most likely I will be able to guess just how they are going to complete the arc with a “Do I have the right?” speech and the Shadow Kin will be allowed to live on their planet.  Miss Quill actually gets to progress as the rest of the group is at least aware that she is Charlie’s slave and he is not in the moral right for the most part of the series.  While Charlie however is still extremely bland as a character we actually get his boyfriend Matteusz, played by Jordan Renzo, gets a little character.  Not very much character, but it’s something.  We find out that he is more than just caring, but is at least quick-witted.  It's not much but it does something to at least establish who he is, especially after he was kicked out of his homophobic parent's house that feels glossed over.  Ask yourself this: Why do I have to wait five episodes for characters to get basic development?

 

To summarize, Brave-ish Heart improves on the foundation for the story with the best bits of Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart, those involving the flowers that multiply and eat flesh, be expanded upon and actually giving just a few more characters something to work with.  I really do like the episode, even if it really won’t go down in the history books as anything remotely special.  65/100