Tuesday 4 January 2011

Behzat C And the anti-hero seduction

For the past month or so I’ve found myself engrossed in a T.V. series with a gruff but interesting anti-hero at its’ core: the rule book does not apply to him and under no circumstances would you consider him ‘good’ – but he is a true man – bound by a strange set of ethics and moral code.

No the series in question is neither House nor Luther – in fact this show is not even in English.

After years of complaining that my native country Turkey did not produce any quality television I found myself with a program which seemed determined to disturb any soap-box attitudes I had.

The program in question is called Behzat C and it focuses on a detective in the murder squad in Ankara – Turkey’s capital.

This is the first point the program scores – by setting it somewhere other than Istanbul or the rural Anatolia. Ankara albeit being the capital somehow gets looked down upon most of the time. It’s right in the heart of the country and its’ association with politics and bureaucrats has not done the reputation any good – most people refer to ‘Ankara’ as dull.

Now, I’ve never visited the place so am not really in any position to pass judgement. After all each city has its’ supporters and detractors and I’m sure ‘Ankara’ is no different.

However as a member of the audience, I find great joy in seeing an unusual location – especially in a procedural series which is heavily reliant on location.

Moving on, the second point ‘Behzat C’ scores is in its’ characters: a motley crew of anti-social, semi-educated coppers who solve crime by using an old-fashioned mix of brutality and intellect. Not everyone in the team is such – there’s a younger policeman, a woman policeman and even a university graduate. However these characters exist only in the sidelines – more as fodder than anything else to our team of four.

The relationship between the police and the public in Turkey is a very curious one: there’s a lack of trust on both sides due to a long history of incidents and so the police PR department fires on all cylinders at all time trying to project a clean-cut image.

Up to this point the depiction of the average policeman on T.V. has been unrealistic to say the least: and if you have an unrealistic central character then everything you build upon that base falls also.

Not Behzat. He represents a policeman all of us have seen or encountered at one point. But the writer takes it one step further and makes Behzat a strangely decent man, too.

The ying-yang of his personality is perhaps the biggest attraction for the audience. In Turkey the question of whether the series excuses police brutality has become a hot topic – however the question of the anti-hero is skimmed over rather easily.

From my point of view, Behzat represents a character like Alex in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ or Gully Foyle in ‘The Stars My Destination’ – a complex man both repulsive and attractive. And encountering such a character on a show put on prime time Turkish television represents something of a coup for me.

He drinks, swears, goes to the equivalent of strip clubs, has a prostitute for an occasional lover. His interests lack refinement, books, films these are all lost causes – however football remains a one true love.

We’re not up to episode 14 and although the quality of the episodes varies greatly, I know that this is something I’ll stick through until the end.

It’s a shame it’ll be a guilty pleasure only ever available to a Turkish audience.

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