Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (1996)

"Neverwhere" imagines a grimy fantasy world beneath modern London that's unknown and off-limits to those who live above. The homeless who inhabit London Below seem to hail from an unspecified time several centuries back, with their own olde English mythologies, rivalries and rulers. Viewers enter their world along with the mini's hero, a yuppie exec (Gary Bakewell of "Backbeat") who falls down the "Neverwhere" rabbit hole while helping a damsel in distress.

Video is just passable -- the BBC apparently backed out on the plan to process the taped mini as film, foiling director Dewi Humphreys' lighting scheme. Still, the images are a big improvement over the grainy bootleg tapes that have been circulating on eBay. Audio is surprisingly effective now and then.

Gaiman has his say in a BBC interview from 1996 and in a commentary that runs the length of the miniseries. He tells how he got art-rock legend Brian Eno to do the score for pennies and how he snuck in a cameo in graphic-novel artist Dave McKean's astounding opening titles.

Neverwhere is a highly imaginative story of urban legend, rich with Gaiman's special brand of British black humor. The script is really wonderful, and Henry helps with his own experience in screenplay writing. Acting is terrific by everyone involved - I loved Gary Bakewell (frequent Paul McCartney impersonator on various BBC tele-biographies) as Richard Mayhew, the ordinary Englishman drawn into a strange adventure underground, and many other accomplished British actors - such as Laura Fraser, Trevor Peacock, Freddie Jones and Peter Capaldi - give a great performance. Unfortunately, the series suffers from the same problems shared by most British TV series - a budget lower than that of one episode of `Dharma and Greg'. Therefore, the scenery, though highly inventive and original, doesn't look very impressive. Dewi Humphreys directs like he would direct a soap opera or a murder mystery, and though the directing of the dialogue is flawless, the action scenes are immensely disappointing, especially the `Beast of England' battle, which is incredibly unconvincing.

Despite these weaknesses, though, the series is still well worth watching, especially if you're fond of the genre, and also if you're fond of British television. A word on two great artists who contributed much to the series: Dave McKean, for one, the great artist who collaborated with Gaiman in works like `The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch', `Black Orchid' and Coraline, created an astounding opening sequence to every episode, which is a fascinating piece of work by itself; if you enjoy his work on such graphic novels as Arkham Asylum, Cages and his covers for Neil's Sandman series, the DVD is worth it just for this one sequence. Secondly, the brilliant Mr. Brian Eno, the inventor of Ambient music and musical collaborator of the likes of David Byrne, David Bowie and Robert Fripp, supplies the wonderful score to the series, very eerie and atmospheric synthesized music. Thank god for that, because without him we'd probably have basic British TV music, which tends to be quite awful - and Eno's sound really adds a lot to the atmosphere of the story.

It's important that, if you read and enjoyed the novel Neverwhere, you won't approach this series expecting Hollywood - or even modern American television - production values, because you'll be disappointed. A movie version of this nature, in collaboration with Jim Henson co, has been in talks for some time, but it doesn't seem very likely. If fantasy films are to you special effects and big battle scenes, you probably won't be impressed by Neverwhere. If you love fantasy literature, though, and especially Gaiman's work, you'll find Neverwhere highly rewarding. It's very entertaining, and very imaginative. And in the end, imagination is what fantasy is all about. Isn't it?

Mr. Gaiman actually wrote the teleplay for this series FIRST. He then turned it into a novel afterwards. So if you're a purist, perhaps you should truly watch this before you read the book.

As for the DVD: it seems to be mostly shot on video, so it definitely has that Dr. Who feel to it. Book lovers will want to check out the Neil Gaiman interview included with the DVD extras.

Overall, once you accept the fact that there quite obviously wasn't a multi-million dollar budget, and let go of your (unintentional, I'm sure) Hollywood elitist ideals, you'll find yourself carried off into an alternative fantasy world... and you just might have a good time.