I’ve resisted the call to watch Outlander for a very long time, mainly, I guess, because I assumed it would be the kind of lovey-dovey, over-enunciated, hammily-acted, costumed codswallop that’s had me almost breaking my thumb off against the buttons on TV remotes since I was a child. Upstairs Downstairs? Neither, thanks. Pride and Prejudice? Well, I take great pride in my prejudice against Jane Austen adaptations, if that’s what you mean. Downton Abbey? I’ll tell you what would make me ‘abbey’: chucking the TV out of the window before this horse-shit starts.
Still, I swithered. And kept swithering. I was intrigued. Yes, I strongly suspected that the greater part of Outlander would be a sickening, will-they-won’t-they, come-on-of-course-they-bloody-will, swash-buckling romance with a heavy emphasis on deep sighs of longing and forlorn staring that would have me rolling my eyes like a faulty fruit-machine, but there was also the promise of time travel, and if there’s any type of movie or TV show for which I’m a sucker it’s a fish-out-of-water time-travel story. That’s the element that wore me down and won me over.
It’s a long list, but my all-time time-travelling favourites are Bill and Ted, the story of two men – I forget their names – who travel through history kidnapping the great, the good and the ghastly to help them pass a high-school history exam; The Time Bandits, the story of a gang of dwarves on the run from God who kidnap a little boy and take him on time-trotting adventures through fissures in the fabric of reality; Doctor Who, the story of a time-travelling alien who, em… kidnaps… a series of men and women from throughout history and takes them on insanely dangerous adventures across time-and-space; and Army of Darkness, the story of Ash Williams, a former S-Mart employee, who is kind-of… well, em… kidnapped, I suppose… (Wait a minute… is it time travelling I love…or kidnapping?? Probably best not to look too deeply into that one) by Deadites, and hurtled through a portal in time that drops him into the magic-and-evil-infested Middle Ages. Hell, if we’re talking time-travelling adventures, I even loved Goodnight Sweetheart, even though in retrospect it was about as funny as having your teeth kicked out by a donkey.
And, of course, the Back to the Future trilogy goes without saying.
But it wasn’t just the time travel that tempted me. There was also the promise of the familiar; the local gone global. I live quite close to most of the locations in which they’ve filmed – and continue to film – significant chunks of the show, and it’s nice to see your part of the country being the centre of attention for a change. The vast majority of the movies and TV shows I’ve watched throughout my life have been filmed in either the US or Canada, two places I’ve never visited, a fact that has denied me the opportunity to turn excitedly to my family half-way through a 90s action movie and say: ‘Ooooh, see that shop they’re fighting outside in that scene? I bought a fanny-pack in there when I was on holiday with your Aunty Jean’. Thanks to the bulk of Outlander being filmed within a fifty-mile-radius of my home, I recognised my chance finally to join in.
I’m not just familiar with many of Outlander’s filming locations; I’m intimately familiar with them. They’re a part of my life and history: Culross Palace and its gardens; Muiravonside Country Park; Callendar Park; Linlithgow Palace – they’ve even filmed scenes in the park in Polmont, just a few minutes’ drive up the road from me, where we still take our sons to run, explore and play.
So screw you, New York, New York, I thought to myself. It was Scotland’s turn: my turn. I looked forward to pointing at the screen and saying things like: ‘Oooh, I stood on some dog-shit there last week, right there, where that man’s having his head chopped off by an axe,’ and ‘Oooooh, I had my first date there, right next to that tree where that man’s being raped.’
I guess – being Scottish myself – that the production’s Scottishness was also a powerful draw. When you learn that an American authoress and an American production company have teamed up to create something they claim is a plausible swords-and-shagging epic set in the murky, murderous past of your own ancestral culture, you want to check up on its quality and authenticity. You want to know if it’s going to be stirring and emotionally affecting, like Braveheart, or full of screamingly ridiculous historical impossibilities and utter bullshit, also like Braveheart.
And you want to make sure that you and your people aren’t being unceremoniously ‘Groundskeeper Willied’. Scottish people have a long history of being portrayed on screen as any number of condescending or insulting stereotypes, from noble savages, to quirky old mystics brimming over with folk-tales and old-wifey-wisdom, to drunks, druggies, madmen and wash-women. It’s heart-breaking that some of the most authentically Scottish characters ever committed to the big screen are in Trainspotting. Was Outlander going to do us Scots proud, or was it going to offer up yet another round of tartan-box kitsch, craven historical inaccuracies or poverty-porn pish?
Well, folks, it’s time to find out for myself.
Over the next few weeks – up until the soon-to-be-aired fourth season’s mid-season finale on December the 9th – I’m going to be bingeing my way through the series to date, and giving my thoughts on the drama as it unfolds, in little easy-to-digest 3-5 episode chunks. Who knows? Some of these thoughts might even be insightful and provocative, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for that.
In any case, I hope you’ll join me on my binge. Whether I end up loving or loathing Outlander, you can be sure of one thing: we’re going to have fun together.
I hope we will anyway…
Maybe.
Binge Diary 1 coming on Wednesday the 24th.
BEGIN THE BINGE HERE
