Import Gems: Borderline is The Office Meets Border Security

One of the cool things about Netflix is that it has quite the collection of terrific foreign shows that you've never heard of just waiting to be discovered. Import Gems is a new feature where I'll be highlighting some of these shows, all of which are available on Netflix (Or at least Netflix Canada) for your viewing pleasure. For the first installment, we'll be looking at Borderline, a British retroscripted mockumentary created by Chris Gau and Michael Orten-Toliver

When I fired up the first episode of Borderline on a whim the other night, I groaned a little when I realized it was a mockumentary show. Now I don't mind the mockumentary format- where everything is filmed "fly on the wall" documentary style with camera confessionals for the characters to express their thoughts- but it's pretty well-trodden territory at this point and it's hard to do something new with it. Add in that Borderline was a workplace comedy about people making the best at a mundane job (Here, airport border security at the fictitious Northend Regional Airport) with a boss no one respects and by midway through the first episode, I was ready to write the show off as a clone of "The Office", though I did think it was a fairly clever and funny clone. I kept watching though and quickly realized I wasn't giving Borderline enough credit. The elements (The format, the mundane job, the awkward boss, the wacky co-workers, the charming "normal" leads with the slow-burning flirtation, the slice-of-life plots) were nothing new but they kept developing and playing out in ways that I didn't expect, finding new life, nuance, and humour in old standbys. By the end of the second episode I was hooked, and when the 6-episode season ended I no longer thought of Borderline as just an Office clone. It was a lot more than that.

A lot of the charm of Borderline comes from how it's scripted. The show uses a technique called retroscripting, which is a form of improv where actors are given scene descriptions and make up their own dialogue as they move the story along. That gives the dialogue and most of the jokes a loose, natural feel that makes it seem like a genuine border security reality show, albeit a ridiculous one. It also allows the punchlines to genuinely sneak up on you. I was surprised by how often I was caught off-guard by a joke, even in scenes where I knew a joke was coming. The real impressive thing about the retroscripted approach though is that you would never know how much of it was improvised if you didn't look that up. Where a lesser comedy can be driven off the rails without a real script to serve as a backbone, Borderline feels controlled and focused throughout. Occasionally a joke won't mesh with the established narrative but the lines are so funny it's barely even noticeable.

Another benefit of the retroscripting approach is that without a full script to rely on, the actors have to look inward to create distinct characters full of depth and surprises. Chief Inspector Proctor (Jackie Clune) and Agents Tariq Mansoor (David Avery), Andy Church (Liz Kingsman), Clive Hassler (David Elms), and Grant Brodie (Jamie Michie) could feel like stock character types but they seem like real people with feelings and inner lives. Proctor is a boss that makes her employees feel uncomfortable and brings her personal problems to work, but Clune also gives her a lot of frustration and resentment about her life that deepens the character. Tariq and Andy are the Jim Halperts of the show, putting up with the insanity around them but Tariq is also an aspiring DJ who is constantly shocked by how much he doesn't hate his borderline job and Andy puts up with and partakes in the silliness but she's also an adult woman who knows exactly what she does and doesn't want, which pays off dividends throughout the season. Grant is introduced as the bigot of the team (He's unaware of what profiling is until he's informed he does it every day) but is shown trying to be aware of his prejudice and shows himself to be the heart of the group by the end of the season, and nervous, awkward Clive steals every scene he's in with his desperation to be part of the group. The improvised dialogue helps build a natural chemistry and sense of camaraderie within the ensemble that really resonates as the season goes on.

The strong character work and the loose feel of Borderline also work well with the storytelling of Borderline, which gets a lot of mileage out of it's podunk airport setting. From the first episode, which details the team getting a directive from head office to keep an eye for anything "Out Of the Ordinary" which seems an awful lot like racial profiling, the show isn't afraid to dive into every aspect of border security with sharp wit and a bit of insight. The show quickly establishes Northend as one of the smallest, least busy airports in the U.K., which helps keeps the stakes low, justifies a lot of the goofing off we see, and adds a sudden dramatic heft to a late-season episode where the airport gets it's first ever asylum seeker. Even when the plots are broad and sitcommy, like an episode where no one remembers Clive's birthday, Borderline is able to put a nice twist on it (Clive's birthday is partially forgotten because a beloved airport employee Tariq and Andy have no memory of has died, which gives the episode two stock plots that intertwine and pay off in interesting ways). The episodes all standalone but there is a nice subtle bit of serialization throughout the season which pays off nicely in the last couple episodes. Even the inevitable Will They/Won't They between Tariq and Andy is nicely handled. Their bond is played as less of an epic love story and more of a slowly growing flirtation that culminates in a way I wasn't expecting and was very pleased by.

Ultimately though the real secret weapon of Borderline is the very thing that made me apprehensive when I first started watching it: the mockumentary format, specifically the use of narration. Each episode of Borderline is held together by ongoing narration by Ralf Little setting up what we're about to watch or summarising the scene, adding authenticity to the faux-reality show we're watching. Initially I wasn't paying much attention to the narration, figuring it was superfluous until I began to realise there was often a significant disconnect between what was actually happening on screen and how the narration was contextualising it. The characters might be acting ridiculous but the narration frames their actions as totally normal and sometimes even commendable with little judgement on how they're acting (Which makes the times when it does judge comic highlights). In the second episode for example Grant detains an attractive woman for a bit so he can get to know her personally while the narration keeps praising him for how dedicated he is and what a thorough job he's doing with his interview (It does note when he gets her phone number at the end that. It's the classic mockumentary trope of a character's words being contradicted by their actions taken to new heights. Even when the narration is accurately describing the situation, it's done in a way that only heightens the absurdity, like when Mark Addy is detained for being what the narration calls "suspected of being on Game of Thrones". It's an ingenious way of ringing every possible drop of comedy from the scene and it breathes new life into the mockumentary format.

So yeah, on the surface Borderline is the kind of show you've seen many times before and there's nothing terribly new or innovative about it. If you stick with it though and pay attention to the remarkable acting and storytelling on display, you'll find yourself constantly delighted and surprised time and time again by how it makes use of it's familiar parts. Its simpleness is really a deception and it's a lot deeper and funnier than you might expect. It's a show that can be finished in a couple of hours but those couple of hours will stick with you long after you finish watching. It probably won't ever reach the popularity of The Office (both British and American) versions but if it did, it'd certainly be deserving of it.