Constantine- (TV Series)- REVIEW: Stale cigarette smoke lingers.

Available on: Amazon Prime

Original run: October 2014- Present

Starring: Matt Ryan- (As John Constantine)

Website:
http://www.nbc.com/constantine


I’ve been wasting my time on Amazon Prime, and trudging through the hypnotic, poisonous dross that is mainstream entertainment. Whilst there I stumbled across the new Constantine television show, and after watching almost six episodes of the programme I feel that I should at least say something about the experience.

Old Contantine look, needs updating for post 9/11 world

To me the character of Constantine is a rebel, but he’s a rebel stuck in time, and he has yet to be updated for the post 9/11 generation, probably for the same reason that many other characters haven’t been updated. That reason being that the post 9/11 world cannot be portrayed in the mainstream media without the mainstream implicating itself and admitting that it has been subjecting the masses to wave after wave of propaganda and disinformation ever since that false flag event was allowed to take place.

The corporate whore distraction and disinformation system (aka ‘the mainstream media’) fears mirrors more than anything else. If it puts up a mirror to it’s own face it will be disgusted, so no mirrors are allowed. To quote Kurt Cobain:

‘I’m so ugly, that’s okay because so are you. We broke our mirrors. Sunday morning is everyday for all I care.’ 

Kurt Cobain looked at himself in the mirror, saw the world, hated it, complained, hid in addiction, didn’t try to change it, or himself, took a gun and checked himself out, for good.

Kurt’s lyrics advocate living in blissful, doped out ignorance rather than facing an uncomfortable truth. The junkie wimps out, preferring to anaesthetise him/herself from reality in the soothing cocoon of addiction. The mainstream media viewer is living the same life, the only difference being that it’s ‘programming’ as opposed to heroin that is shielding addicts/viewers from the painful mirrors of reality.

More smoking in actual show please?

The Constantine television show is not as strong as Nirvana. It’s a weak drug, not very addictive, but it offers the same cocoon of non-reality that all drugs offer. It took me almost six episodes to get fed up of it, and that’s quite a lot for me.

The main actor (Matt Ryan) is a bit wobbly, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. His accent isn’t really Constantine, it’s a Welsh guy trying to sound like he comes from the 1970’s London of old Sex Pistols documentaries. I know he’s supposed to be a con man, but this con man wouldn’t fool anybody. His con fails because he’s out of date, he hasn’t updated his schtick for the I-generation, and he looks and sounds like a character from the 1990’s pretending that it’s the late 1970’s, but actually living in 2015.

Occasionally he slips into something that resembles authenticity, but he doesn’t stay there for very long, especially when he interacts with the younger characters on the show.  He’s too old to be considered ‘cool’ by teenagers, and he wears strange clothes, a uniform that looks completely out of place in a contemporary context. He looks like a character, not like a real-life character, more like somebody who is dressing up for a television programme or stage show about a detective.

X-Files

I can’t imagine any guy dressing like that today, perhaps a hipster, but even then it would be a hipster at a comic-con, and not a guy who actually goes to pubs and clubs looking like that.

Constantine would scare women, not attract them. His clothes make him look like a sexual deviant, and I can’t image any man wanting to put out that message, especially a man who is supposed to be the ultimate con man.
I know it’s the Constantine look from old comics, but it needs to go. No man of his age these days wears what he is wearing, so change it.

As for the script, it’s pretty much identical to your average, statist cop-show, but with added ‘supernatural’ elements, so rather than tracking a serial killer they are tracking a supernatural serial killer. There’s no criticism or questioning of the status quo and societal norms as programmed through the deceptive lens of the mainstream media. Constantine chases ghosts with his team of cute girl and quiet helper mate. He bumps into old friends, they help out, then it’s back to the beginning just in time for next episode and the latest ghostly serial killer, or whatever.

It’s not all bad though. If it were terrible I wouldn’t have sat through almost six shows. I would have seen one, and been done with it. So what did I enjoy about it?

Constantine's outfit looks very fake outdoors

Perhaps it’s because I am old, and I remember when Constantine was a super cool cutting edge character as written by Watchmen icon Alan Moore. I watch the show and get occasional glimpses of that old rebel, but he’s not as tortured, not as dark, not as interesting, and certainly not in touch with the zeitgeist of our times.

Yeah, it’s that smokey old memory that keeps me coming back. I want something to be there, and I get occasional flash-backs to fond memories of the comic books that hooked me into the genre over twenty years in the past.

It’s that memory that has me. It’s the memory of reading about a fascinatingly tortured and complex man. That’s the key to Constantine, he felt like he could actually exist. This television character feels constructed, it feels false, but occasionally, just occasionally it gets tantalisingly close to the old comic books and a feeling that this bloke is not Batman, he's not Iron Man, he’s living in something that resembles the real world, and yes, he could be real.

Hair looking too perfect

I watch the show and it’s fake, and it’s silly, and I know that this man does not exist. The spell is broken, Constantine is just an actor with carefully coiffured hair, in an old-man detective/flasher mac, and he’s talking in a weird Welsh/London hybrid accent, and it’s a bit ridiculous.

But then I get a look, a moment of dialogue from the character and he’s real again, and I’m reading a comic book, and it’s raining outside, and it’s 1992. I get a whiff of cigarette smoke, Alan Moore is writing him again, it feels real, but almost as soon as I get the feeling, the scene changes, and it’s gone.

What must contemporary American television audiences make of it all? I guess to them it’s just another television show with a funny accented ‘British’ character that makes them think that living in the UK is more eccentric and fun than it actually is. I can watch the show in short blasts for the nostalgic promise of bittersweet old memories, but I have to be honest and admit that it’s kind of crappy. It’s a bit blah, very mainstream, and just another heroin laced brick in that blood encased corporate sponsored wall of non-reality, compliance to authority, go to work, sleep away your lives, avoid mirrors, don’t question, vote for war and pay your taxes. Constantine still smokes, but he’s forever stubbing them out. Danger lurks, memories linger, but so far, after six episodes, this has been a predictably tepid affair.

Rating: 4/10