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 | Reviews for The Happiness Patrol |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 8 March 2021 |
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| Rating: |   4 |
The Happiness Patrol is a bit of a misfire. I think the writer, Graeme Curry, never quite decided what he wanted it to be. Was it to be a satire of Thatcherite politics? There's a bit of that. Is it to be a gloomy dystopia? There's a bit of that. Is it to be a version of The Avengers in outer space? There's a bit of that. The mix just does not blend well. I got the feeling when watching the original on TV that much of the script was cut to make it a three-part story. Curry's novelization of his script reinforces that suspicion, with several additional scenes that make sense of how characters get from here to there. Also, I understand that the TV version of the Kandy Man was not fully in keeping with Curry's vision of the character, which he keeps in this novel and is far better than the one that ended up on the TV. Still, the major flaws of the story remain intact in this novelization.
