Peter Milligan's Meta4orce

This makes me both happy as well as sad. Happy, because I get to see Milligan written stuff, and sad because that it was only chance that brought me upon it. This really needs to be out there, because its Milligan doing great stuff in a limited environment.

Meta4orce

I came across it accidentally while I was searching for Peter Milligan interviews to read and google brought me to this interview. Actually I only clicked it because it was dated 12 June, 2008 and I thought why have I never read an interview that he did so recently. Turns out that it was not done in relation to comic books hence my familiar haunts would not carry it. But what it did lead me to, was this new Animated Series from BBC. It seems to be one of those new type of made for the web shows with games thrown in to give the "Interactive Experience". But thats not what interests me in the least. What interests me is the writing.

While the concept seems to be a little derivative, its set in a different kind of environment. And that seems to have been something given to Milligan rather than him coming up with it. Whoever decided to come up with the concept of 2034 London, where everything has been submerged under water seemed to have global warming as a plot point in his mind for the show. But Milligan obviously wasn't interested. The series starts off with introductions for all the characters comprising the team Meta4orce which obviously stands for Meta + Force as the team members are biogenetically augmented as the tagline of the show mentions. Its a murder mystery and for a very brief period I was afraid it might turn out to be a very generic show. After all Milligan seems to have been handed down the concept, as well as having to self censor as the show is aimed at kids, but I needn't have worried. The all too familiar themes of Milligan are all present here. The victim's identity crisis, that of the team members themselves, and that cruel twist in the end are all evidences of Milligan's talent. And all of it done in a very compressed manner of storytelling, with some assist from the 2D over 3D animation.

But its Milligan's writing that makes me want to watch more of this. Although it seems that decision is entirely upto BBC. Lets hope they don't go the way DC have, with Milligan's exclusive.