Western News - 21/Mar/2006

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TV war series Over There, featuring Luke MacFarlane, is released on DVD
University of Western Ontario
March 21st, 2006

His nickname was Dim but Pte. Frank (Dim) Dumphy was not a dim bulb.

Quite the opposite, says London, Ont.-born actor Luke MacFarlane, who played the erstwhile American soldier on Over There, last year's short-lived TV war series being released this week in a special DVD edition from Fox.

"They called him Dim because he went to Cornell and they figured he had to be stupid to end up in the army," says MacFarlane, 24.

In a lot of ways, he adds, Dumphy was the conscience of the show, one who was able to grasp the big picture. But he had personal problems, too. In one unforgettable scene, Dumphy is recording a video love letter to e-mail to his wife back home. The scene cuts to the video playing on a screen, the camera pulls back and there's his wife, in bed with another lover.

Few who watched are likely ever to forget the torso scene, either. An Iraqi insurgent is hit in the chest with a shoulder-launched missile. The top half of his body disappears in a cloud of smoke while the legs continue to walk ahead for several steps before collapsing.

Over There was one of the most talked about U.S. shows of the past season. Produced by Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue, LA Law) and set in Iraq, it was the first ever TV series to take place in an ongoing American war. But, after 13 intense episodes, it was cancelled by FX, the Fox TV spinoff channel. (It aired in Canada on History Television.)

MacFarlane, a graduate of New York's famous Juilliard theatre school, says he doesn't know why the show failed to click with enough viewers - perhaps Americans weren't ready for the war to be dramatized in prime time - but maintains that Fox's audience expectations were just too high.

"I think FX kinda backed themselves into a corner," he says. "They had to cut their losses and just run away."

Because the series attracted critical acclaim, MacFarlane says they thought they might get a renewal but, ultimately, the numbers did the talking.

There were other controversies, too.

Some veterans swore by the show's authenticity, others said it was bogus. Not surprisingly, MacFarlane says it was definitely authentic.

"Any group of people in a specific field are going to be watching out for details. And the army is filled with particularly intense people when it comes to details, you know?

"To the point that people will know if a tiny patch is on backwards. And to them, if a patch is on backwards the whole film is bogus."

MacFarlane says his father is a doctor (the director of student health services at the University of Western Ontario) and they certainly don't call in to complain if the wrong medical instrument is used on ER.

Bochco and company also went to great pains to insist that Over There was not political, was not any kind of indictment against the Bush administration's venture into Iraq, that it was a just story about grunts in any war.

But MacFarlane concedes that if any war film seems pro war, it's propaganda. If it's done well, then it's going to be by its nature anti-war.

"Steven Bochco is a really smart person and he knows exactly what to say. But I think that of course it was a political TV show. I don't think he was highlighting those parts of it but, yeah, you cannot make a TV show about a war that's going on and not have a political show."

The DVD contains all 13 episodes, some with audio commentaries, plus two behind-the-scenes featurettes.

MacFarlane, meanwhile, says it's pilot season in L.A. and he has his fingers crossed that he might make it into a new network series this coming fall. But he's not likely to invoke any home-town connection with fellow Londoner, Oscar winner Paul Haggis (Crash).

"Well, Paul is a scientologist so until I turn over to that I don't know if I'm going to get invited into the fold," he says with a laugh.