Today on #WebSeriesWednesday I watch the British dramedy ‘Shadazzle.’ The show reminds me just how tough it can be for me to understand those bloody British accents! More importantly it is a show written with running themes!
Shadazzle is one of those shows that wants to be funny but still wants to tell a story that the viewers can take seriously. In that sense it is a classic ‘dramedy’ with some over the top characters that seem at first to exist only for comic relief but also with some challenging themes going on.
Mixing comedy and drama can be difficult, and I think Shadazzle struggled to find the right balance at some points. Early on I felt like the show was more of a comedy that was trying to poke fun at the thought of being more dramatic. The piano backed intro makes some comedic scenes later on in the story out to be heavy and emotional.
It reminds me of a short film I did in school where I had a scene of the main character just looking at himself in the mirror. The shot wasn’t my idea so when editing everything together I decided to back the shot with a sappy piano. I thought the result was hilarious, but I’m not sure if anyone else did.
As the story goes on it becomes more dramatic. This is because the story starts to make a little more sense. The show likes to have a previously-on segment as well as clips from future shows. This makes each episode feel like a small part of the whole – in other words the viewer gets a very large look at the entire story in each episode. At first this is confusing, but as the story goes on the pieces start to make more sense.
Somewhere around episode six I bought into the dramatic portions of the story, and that was because the story became quite human. So many characters were struggling for some sort of survival – struggling to make ends meet, struggling to live without love, struggling to… find directions.
I think it worked because it was subtle – sure the drinking wasn’t all that subtle, but it masked the characters underlying struggles and I found that absolutely refreshing.
The show is definitely funny too, in that awkward British style. The jokes almost all have to be experienced first hand to enjoy fully so direct your browser over to http://daffadillies.co.uk/shadazzle and find out for yourself! Season 2 launched today so there are plenty of new shows on the horizon!
