Bad Monkey
Certain movies become favorites. Watched over and over again. And back in the days of VHS watched so many times the tape become unplayable. But there are a rare few that you know will enter your personal pantheon from your first viewing. In fact they're so good that as soon as you finished watching it that first time you went back to the beginning and watched it all over again. The first movie I remember doing this for was Clue. My best friend brought it over on VHS thinking I'd love it. She was right. I asked her if I could borrow it and the second she left I rewound it to the beginning and watched it a second time. I almost contemplated a third viewing but I waited until the next day to do that. Swingers is another movie that I did this with. My friends and I rented it from Blockbuster Video and we went over to one of their houses to watch it. Since I was the one who rented it I took it with me when we left claiming I would return it right away but instead I promptly went home and watched it again. I watched it again for Vince Vaughn. Sure you could argue that Jon Favreau is really the star of that movie. I will violently disagree. This began my love of all things Vince Vaughn. His laid back laconic snark is an artform in itself. He's had some big hits here and there and quite a few misses, like I totally blocked out that he was in the Jurassic Park sequel... And yes, he will forever be beloved for Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and his stepping in to play Freddy Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm after the death of Bob Einstein which gave him good television exposure. But for me around 2005 when Wedding Crashers came out I was kind of tired of the same old same old from him. And then Bad Monkey came around. At first I wasn't sure I was going to watch it. My mother was a huge Carl Hiaasen fan and anyone who has spent any time around books knows how memorable the cover for Bad Monkey is with that piratical primate... So she would have been onboard. And then it was announced Slow Horses was coming back earlier than expected and I decided to get Apple+ a little early and see what this show was all about. Well this show is about Vince Vaughn's comeback. And while he didn't actually go away, this is a roll that will forever define him. It plays to his skillset to such a level it's a masterclass in acting just watching him. He is perfection as Andrew Yancy. I mean, people might say that it was a given it would be so good because Bill Lawrence is behind it and he's brought us Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Scrubs, and Spin City to name just a few classics. But this is a vehicle for Vaughn. His snark is still there, he's still laid back, but he's talking a mile a minute, filling the air with his words and his humorous delivery all while being backed up by a stellar cast. And while people will bemoan that a second season couldn't possibly be as good because almost all the cast is dead... Well, I'm willing to trust Bill Lawrence and his three season plan. Because, trust me, if there's any justice in the world Vince Vaughn will be getting an Emmy off this show. It's a delicious and delightful mystery inside a mystery while you take in all that Florida has to offer, and that happens to be a lot of Tom Petty covers. But at the very end they use Tom Petty's own version "Leaning to Fly" and it's like coming home. And Vince Vaughn as Andrew Yancy is welcome in mine anytime. I even will admit to enjoying his slightly annoying ringtone on his phone...
In 2014 the BBC successfully moved to acquire the rights to Agatha Christie's estate. Since then they have made nine adaptations. I actually couldn't bring myself to watch John Malkovich as Poirot so I can't pass judgement on it, but of the rest, two are fabulous, one is acceptable, and the rest are too painful to watch. In fact I couldn't even finish Partners in Crime it was so bad. AND they're redoing it with Conchita's husband from 
As a book lover I am intrigued by what books are touchstones with my friends. What book was their everything when they were growing up? Because everyone has some book that is the backbone of their personality and often they read it at a young age way before they should have. When discussing this with my British friends it's even more intriguing because there are books they read that were nowhere near as popular Stateside and some that were never even available here, and yes, I'm mainly thinking of Enid Blyton. Here everyone will talk about The Chronicles of Narnia, while there they're all about The Dark Is Rising Sequence. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham is one of those books, loved overseas but overlooked here. The 1960s film adaptation, The Village of the Damned, was hugely successful, which is how it's known here. But just the film, not the source material. In fact, while this adaptation was put up on Acorn originally as The Midwich Cuckoos within a month they renamed it Midwich Cuckoos: Village of the Damned because apparently Americans are that ignorant. And at the moment I wouldn't really argue with that. The important thing was that two and a half years after it was released in the UK I was finally able to watch this stunning science fiction exploration of what life is like now starring Keeley Hawes. Hawes plays the gender swapped Dr. Zellaby played by the incomparable George Sanders in the film. Though gender swapping the role adds so much to the understanding of this adaptation and to the horrors of the story told as seen from a female perspective. Because while previous adaptations have focused on the malevolent children this one isn't just about that. It's far more about female autonomy and how these women are impregnated against their will, forced to carry the babies to term, even going so far as to show how the unborn children are able to take control of the women's bodies so that they are unable to have abortions, and then are forced to live in a police state where they raise "their" children. While I'm sure a lot of people out there are like, well, that's not likely to happen, we're not living in The Handmaid's Tale yet... I counter that the reason this is so powerful is that it is exactly a scenario that could play out. I mean, take away the alien aspect, and it's a government forcing women to bear children and then monitoring their every move. That is totally plausible and as more and more rights get stripped away, terrifyingly likely. What ups this version though is having Dr. Zellaby go from a Gordon to a Susannah. Having the interface between the government, the children, and the mothers be a mother herself adds another layer to this. Add in that she herself has a secret about how hard she handled becoming a mother, and well, the impact of this series is all that more powerful. And as for the children? Oh, they are still very much terrifying and deserve what they get, but at the same time it's interesting because while they are a hive mind they actually do have individuality as Dr. Zellaby points out to her granddaughter Evie that she has tastes in ice cream different than the whole, that there are predilections. They are really evil only as a whole and individually they could be good. So what does this show teach us? Mob mentality is real and dangerous and the government want to control us. Especially if we're female. I can't think of anything more spot on. Terrifying but spot on.
I get it, you haven't tried this show because you're intimidated. The lore of Dune is overwhelming. You went to a bookstore once and were like, I think I'd like to read Dune, you picked up the book, which is already pretty thick, you saw how tiny the print was and thought, I'll just watch Chalamet and Zendaya. Then you watched the Denis Villeneuve films and enjoyed them. Obviously the first part is way better than the second in spite of the infrared scene, but again, going further into this world is daunting and Austin Butler is dead. I am here to allay you fears. First, Dune: Prophecy is set about ten thousand years before the time of Paul Atreides. What does this mean? You don't need to know anything from the movies. I mean, obviously if you were paying attention the fact that technology has stagnated over a ten thousand year time period is fascinating with the ouster of "thinking machines" but seriously, you don't need to go that deep. That's for the uber nerds. This show works on many levels and even at the simplest level it is a stunning tale of court intrigue. You have three houses that are vying for dominance, the same three houses that the films concern; House Harkonnen, House Atreides, and House Corrino. Then there's the Bene Gesserit, a religious order of women who wants control more than the Houses and are willing to work in the shadows in secret and as advisors to steer the Imperium and control the galaxy. This is all neatly summarized at the beginning of the show, but again, you don't need to be in the weeds to enjoy this, because this could be any court scandal. Who has power, and who wants power, and who is willing to manipulate the universe to get it and who wants to upset the status quo and wrest control from those in power. Meaning, this isn't confusing at all, Dune: Prophecy tells a tale simply and well. Plus we have stunning costumes and actors drawn oddly from the stable of British actors who have appeared on The Witcher. Perhaps they have a love of court intrigue with an otherworldly aspect? I mean, obviously the draw is Oscar nominee Emily Watson, but there are so many British actors I love, especially the young actress from Steven Knight's 
Way back in January of 2013 my Mom and I become obsessed with the reboot of Father Brown. It had just the perfect light touch. What's more it had Mark Williams. Which is actually how I heard about the show. Most people think of him as Arthur Weasley, a role to which even Father Brown did the occasional nod. I am not most people. To me he is Olaf Petersen, "I've been to Titan, I've been to Juno, I can name eight things that go in jars that you know!" Olaf, you didn't deserve to die aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf, but you will forever be missed. When my Mom's health started to fade a lot of shows we watched fell by the wayside. Which means that somewhere around season three or four we had stopped watching Father Brown. The one upside to this clear demarcation point in my life is that going back now and catching up on shows I used to love I have so many more episodes to watch. Because as my life was derailed Father Brown was chugging along. Last year when I went back there were eleven seasons to catch up on! It goes to eleven! I mean, technically it now goes to twelve, but at the time I picked the show back up there were eleven seasons and a hundred and twenty episodes. All those adventures with Father Brown, Mrs. McCarthy, Lady Felicia, Sid, Inspector Sullivan, Sergeant Goodfellow, and of course, Hercule Flambeau! And then the new characters, Inspector Mallory, Bunty, Brenda, and Mrs. Isabel Devine whom I hadn't even met yet! This is a show that's simply done and that's why it's so comforting. It's a place where time stands still. Literally. It was until the season nine final and their hundredth episode, "The Red Death," that it actually became a new year. Despite having previous holiday episodes and several big events having to have occurred simultaneously, like Sid serving time before actually committing a crime, time was immaterial until the arrival of Claudie Blakley as Mrs. Devine who somehow brought time with her. As each season since has been approximately a year. I know! It's shocking how time is now flying in Kembleford! If they're not careful they might actually catch up to Sister Boniface in the sixties! While each season of this show has been a delight and, for Mrs. McCarthy, a way to dabble in her own homegrown variety of McCarthyism, this current season was especially delightful. What set it apart you say? I like how the mysteries were more tailored to the leads. In previous seasons it's murder comes what may, be it a travelling circus or a cult. Now we have the crimes reflecting the interests of our leads. Mrs. Devine loves acting and we got a historical reinactment, a murder mystery play, and a radio drama. For Ruby we had a ballroom dancing episode. And for Flambeau, we had him appear to go straight. I mean, we knew it had to happen eventually... But even with a divinely Gothic episode, "The Horns of Cernunnos," and us FINALLY meeting Violet Goodfellow and the return of Blind 'arry, Lady Felicia took the cake. In her episode, a now undoubted classic, "The Sisters of Aeschylus," Dan Douche Scott, AKA John Hopkins from Midsomer Murders is murdered and Lady Felicia asks for a little help on her novel. Which is some of the best and most comedic acting that I have ever seen from Nancy Carroll. Lady Felicia doesn't understand similes! Oh, how I never want this show to end. These are my friends. I get them. I get their humor. BATS!
I am perhaps not the best judge of this show. I might be a tad obsessed with the Mitfords. I have poured over everything these prolific sisters have written and therefore know their history. I know what came before and what came after so I don't know if someone who at the very least hasn't read 
If you are a fan of British comedy if I were to randomly yell at you "Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango!" you would hopefully laugh and then become my new best friend. The name Clem Fandango brings joy into the world. And the echoes of Matt Berry as Steven Toast screaming. Shazad Latif is Clem Fandango. Because, while he has been wonderful in so many shows, big shout-out to Penny Dreadful, I will forever refer to him as Clem Fandango. And yes, it has to be his full name. First and last, not just Clem not just Fandango. The whole Clem Fandango. Anyway, for this I will try to refer to Shazad Latif by his real name and even if I didn't I could totally cut and paste his name over my typing Clem Fandango before I posted this and you would never know the difference. What all this is in aid of is that because of my love for Shazad Latif I have been waiting for Nautilus for what seems like forever. This was a show in limbo. They finished filming over two years ago when it was going to be on Disney+. Dinsney+ shelved it because apparently that's what you do to make a buck these days, look to 
If there's one thing Janeites can agree on since time immemorial, or since fans of Jane Austen agreed on a moniker, that one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Jane's life is why her sister Cassandra burned practically all of Jane's letters. Of all the letters Jane wrote in her lifetime only 160 remain. What was in those letters that Cassandra deemed necessary to expunge? I mean, one of the surviving letters is Jane getting blind drunk and puking, so, why'd Cassandra do it!?! In fact, most Janeites, if given a chance to change one aspect of the history surrounding Jane, would probably choose for the phoenix-like return of the letters, while I personally would have liked Jane to have lived long enough to finish Sanditon so that she'd have written seven novels instead of six. At least she wrote more books than Jack the Ripper had victims. Why am I bringing up Jack the Ripper while discussing Jane Austen's letters? Because it is another of life's mysteries that will forever remain unsolved. Unless the premise to Anthony Horowitz's show Crime Traveller becomes a reality that is. Miss Austen is a bittersweet story of family connections and sisterly love that involves Cassandra Austen going to attend the deathbed of family friend Reverend Fowle, who, if fate had been kinder, would have been Cassandra's brother-in-law. Whilst helping the Reverend's daughter Isabella dismantle the household on the Reverend's death Cassandra hopes to find her sister Jane's letters to Isabella's mother Eliza who was Jane's dearest friend. But it is not an easy task with Eliza's sister Mary, who is also Cassandra's sister-in-law, on the hunt for the letters. What follows is a dreamlike rumination of the past and present and what you are willing to sacrifice for love and will that sacrifice be worth it in your dying days. Here we see Cassandra as a driving force. She was Jane's dearest friend and confidant but she also acted as a midwife to Jane's books. This posits that she turned away from a traditional life because she knew she had a greater purpose. The love of Cassandra's life wasn't Tom Fowle, it was Jane. Cassandra was the shepherd and the champion of Jane. In a scene where she starts to place Jane's books on their bookshelf, it isn't just Jane's legacy, it's their legacy. And when Jane dies it's up to Cassandra to protect that legacy. She was Jane's secret keeper and Jane wanted no one to see the darker side of her. The bleak thoughts and the moments of despair. She wanted to be remembered for her work. Work she published anonymously while alive, though don't read too much into that because it was the convention more than anything else. And historically it must be remembered that Frances Burney was viewed as an author equal to Jane but when her letters were published they overshadowed her works. Perhaps Cassandra didn't want this for her beloved sister. Let the work Jane wanted to share with the world be that by which she is known. And only that. And by the end of Miss Austen after crying your way through Jane's death you are so emotionally raw you will believe anything. Of course Cassandra had to do this. It's what Jane would have wanted. But then, later, once you've recovered, you realize that we're not talking about a few letters taken from a vicarage, we're talking about the destruction of approximately three thousand letters. The scale isn't taken into consideration here. So while emotionally I fully want to believe Gill Hornby's suppositions, the logical part of my brain says that this wholesale destruction must mean something more. Something we will never know. 
Wolf Hall is an intriguing look at the life of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII wherein it tells the story by telling the stories around the story. We don't see the big expected moments, we see the quiet contemplative moments where time stops and takes a beat before resuming. Mark Rylance is able to portray all that is going through Thomas Cromwell's mind with just a look, a simple sigh, a readjustment of his robes before entering a room. This is a masterclass in acting while at the same time you don't think of him as an actor in a role, he becomes Thomas Cromwell. Just as Damian Lewis becomes, in my mind, the definitive Henry VIII. There's humor, there's pathos, there's regret, and there's menace. All that is needed for a king because they can turn on a dime. One minute you're in favor, the next, because you couldn't do the impossible, you're dying in a cold room alone crying out for your loved ones. The first season covered the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn culminating in her death while the second season, arriving a decade later, charts Thomas Cromwell's life mirroring Anne's all the way to the gallows. They both went above their station and displeased the king and their downfall was inevitable. Because to gain power you gain enemies and if those enemies, even for a second, gain the ear of the king, well, you're in trouble. And the second season covering the final book in Hilary Mantel's trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is Cromwell realizing that to get where he is in life he has done some pretty despicable deeds for the greater good of the kingdom. I mean, I could have told him that right away, no one involved with the monarchy in any way has a clear conscious. Yet I think he really thought he was the good guy, he thought that what he did was right and it's only when the daughter of his mentor spurns him and calls him out does he start to question his life. For someone who was so good at his job to lack such self-awareness is kind of an interesting sight to behold and Mark Rylance is able to give it the right gravitas. But my problem with this series is that the first season was sheer perfection. There was not a wrong note. In only six episodes it showed how this man moved through the world and was shaping history by taking care of the little details. Then a decade passes and they decide to finally adapt the final volume and things have changed over time. And instead of striving to maintain faith with the first season they decided to shake things up. There's still basically the same fantastic leads, the same sumptuous costumes, the same music keeping pace with time advancing forward, but there are serious missteps. My main quibble was with the recasting, some of it blatant stunt casting. Obviously some actors had to be recast because they had died. That is the only legitimate excuse for recasting. They should have dragged Tom Holland back to set and demanded he play Cromwell's son. Spiderman can wait! There were just so many cast replacements that I was baffled. And none of them for the better. They didn't even have the same vibe. I mean, what the hell is going on with Chapuys!?! The two different actors don't even have a nominal similarity. And don't get me started on the lack of Jessica Raine! And yet, the way this was filmed they act like we should somehow be able to intuit without being told that these are the same characters. I fear that is not the case. You can tell a story by telling around it, you can't tell a story if you don't tell us who the people are. I recently read a review of the first two books and the reviewer was outraged that they had tried to adapt such stunning works for the small screen saying it would take away the magic. I say, they did have the magic. They just lost it after a decade.
Dame Jilly Cooper and her bonkbusters never really made a splash stateside. So you'd probably think it safe to assume that the one and only reason I watched this series was because of David Tennant. You'd be partly right, but throw in Aidan Turner, Katherine Parkinson, Oliver Chris, and Claire Rushbrook as well. But the thing is, if you're a fan of British television and in particular older classic sitcoms like The Vicar of Dibley, there are many cultural references that you either educate yourself about or allow to go over your head. I chose to educate myself, so while I've never read a word Dame Jilly Cooper has written I was well familiar with her name and her subject matter. I mean, the dust jackets of the Rutshire Chronicles are pretty iconic and are very clear as to what they're about. In other words, Dame Jilly Cooper is Dallas and Dynasty in prose form. And I love me my Dallas and Dynasty and was so stoked that they were going all in on the eighties excess for this adaptation. The clothes, the music, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but at the same time, oh so British. It was like a mashup of all things I love in one perfect package. And you will see many a package. Because what sets this show apart is that it's seen through the female gaze. So it's the men whose bodies are being sexualized, and I say about fucking time. The romance genre is primarily female dominated and yet how often are adaptations still seen through the male gaze? And why I ask myself!?! Women want a little rumpy-pumpy with their own needs met. Though I will say that the coupling montage sequences that close out a few of the episodes go a bit too far... Or should I just say, I bit too much. It's like sensory overload which tips it a little too far into the camp category. And while there is no denying that this show is camp, camp is a fine line to walk, wobble too much to one side or the other and you could end up stodgy or ludicrous, which it occasionally does, in both directions. Though I shouldn't read too much into my nitpicking, because this is about abundant joy, and it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and boy did I enjoy it. I mean, the bad guy is named Baddingham and they live in Rutshire! That's the level it's playing at and playing with! And oh, David Tennant loves to chew the scenery villainously. If there's one flaw to the show it's a lack of explanation as to how television worked in the eighties in England. So Lord Tony Baddingham runs Corinium, an independent commercial television station which currently has the franchise rights for the southwest of England. But these rights are up for renewal so another company could pitch for them and a board made up of Sister Boniface's mother and a rapist priest get to decide who gets it. Which is where the rivalry really heats up because Tony's nemesis Rupert Campbell-Black, the top TV show host Declan O'Hara whom Tony fired, and electronics impresario Freddie Jones form Venturer which in the finale gets through the public hearing to being allowed to pitch for Corinium's franchise. Or at least I think that's what happens. It's confusing to an American like me where this isn't at all how television works. Anyone can have a station as long as you have money... So... Yeah. Love the show but don't really understand a lot of what happened in the middle. I guess that just means I'll have to watch it again. The lengths I'll go to to make sure I have all the facts! Grueling I tell you! Grueling! I think I'll read the book as well...
Of all the famous literary characters the world over I do not think any of them come close to Sherlock Holmes when it comes to adaptations. There are the canonically accurate adaptations but there are just as many parodies, pastiches, and perhapses. And one must 
Disclaimer is a complex show about how we as individuals and as a society apportion blame and deal with our own trauma. With these weighty subjects it feels as if at times it's fighting with itself by using cheap gimmickry. The main stumbling block which you surprisingly do indeed get used to is the voiceovers. Kevin Kline and Cate Blanchett both narrate their inner thoughts in the first person. Which, can sometimes be annoying, sometimes enlightening, and sometimes humorous. The problem is the second person narration done by Indira Varma in, one can only assume, the worst echo chamber ever conceived for recording in the history of mankind. Indira acts as narrator for Cate Blanchett's character Catherine Ravenscroft at the beginning of the miniseries while she narrates for Kevin Kline's character Stephen Brigstocke at the end, and an inconsequential bit inbetween for Catherine's husband Robert played by Sacha Baron Cohen. The shift is when Catherine reclaims her voice and faces her trauma while Stephen retreats into himself after realizing his horrible misapprehension. So, kind of cliched, but if the sound hadn't been so bad it would have kind of worked. But this show is just a mess in all things auditory. Horrible music choices are clashing and drowning out dialogue. Everything is just cacophonous. And if it was done on purpose to be more "real" well, "real" here doesn't equal enjoyable. Yes, programing should challenge the viewers, but intellectually, not physically. Plus, the way the cats just roam free and do whatever they want is delightful and gives the show a realness without any pain. In fact, while Kevin Kline could easily get an Emmy for this, the three cats are the stars. I mean, why aren't these cats credited on IMDb!?! I need to know who they are, what their names are, and what other things they have starred in. And again, the cats ground it in reality unlike the nauseating handheld camera work whenever Catherine Ravenscroft's husband Robert is the focal point. We don't care about Robert. And we sure as hell don't want to see him if that janky camerawork is coming. The sound, the camera, the voiceovers, all these are just amateurish and then you watch Kevin Kline and he's so amazing you kind of forget the bad and focus on the good. He sets out to destroy Catherine Ravenscroft's life because he believes that she is the reason his son died in Italy twenty years previously. And the thing is, he's right, in the bigger picture, but he gets the details so wrong and while combating the trauma of losing his son and then his wife to Cancer he foists all the blame on Catherine. Whom he destroys. Utterly. And this destruction is a joy to behold. You WANT him to succeed. He plays a kind, doddering, old man to get close to Catherine's husband and son. He creates a finsta to push her son over the edge. And each shift starts subtle and blooms into that mischievous grin that hasn't changed in over forty years. Damn, I've missed Kevin Kline! But when he realizes that truth. When Cate Blanchett delivers the real truth bomb in the final episode, you see why she has two Oscars. They play and fight off against each other across a shitty kitchen table and it's the meeting of two acting geniuses. But I think Kevin Kline gets the last gutpunch in when he realizes the trauma his son inflicted on Catherine and he, in turn, spares her son. That hospital bedside scene should be studied as a masterwork. This series though? Is kind of a mixed bag of perfection and amateurism, much like life itself.
I have to admit that I need to start each new year with a transplanted Harlan Coben miniseries. Damn you Netflix! You've created this addiction in me! Since 2020 Netflix has started each year off with a bang by dropping an addictive Harlan Coben adaptation invariably with Richard Armitage in some role. I mean, there's a fair amount of James Nesbitt too, but he's like the extra special sauce only available once in awhile. Last year though 
This one is going to be a hard one to write about. I was a fan of Neil Gaiman. I saw him speak twice and got to meet him at one of those events. He seemed perfectly lovely and dedicated to his fans. As we've since learned by the allegations that first broke on Tortoise Media this was all a front. A way for the spider to lure in the flies. The fallout was deservedly harsh, projects were scrapped left and right. The Sandman was almost completely wrapped when the news about Gaiman broke. Therefore production continued. What was to be done with the show could be decided later. After all Anansi Boys was completely finished when it was permanently shelved. Amazon got a nice tax write-off and got to appear as if they're supporting the victims when it was really all about the bottom line. But the thing is, The Sandman has a life of it's own. The fanbase is all-encompassing. Netflix knew that the clamor Amazon was experiencing over Good Omens was nothing to what they would face if this season never saw the light of day. Plus the team were claiming, whether honestly or to cover their asses, that the series had always been planned as two seasons and Gaiman wasn't really involved. Though I do question that second statement after reading some interviews. So season two of the show dropped in July with no fanfare and minimal press coverage. And I honestly didn't know if I'd be able to watch it. While having previously been a fan of Gaiman I had never been a fan of The Sandman comics. And oh how I tried. But I'd get about six books in, up to Brief Lives, and just throw in the towel. I never got any further and at least now I never have to force myself to finish this series. I am done with it. As for the adaptation, I did feel the need to tune in. The show worked for me where the comics did not. The rough edges and the excessive rapes had been sanded away. And at least we now know why Gaiman included so many rapes. Which actually made parts of this season a painful experience, and not just because of the autotuning of Ruairi O'Connor as Orpheus. When Nada confronts Dream about his treatment of her you are horrified thinking about how the man who wrote this put women in this same situation over and over again. And why bring back the rapist author, Richard Madoc as played by Arthur Darvill? Did they want to hit us over the head with the fact that Gaiman basically wrote his sick fantasies into this series? That Richard Madoc was his avatar in this fictional world. I mean, if Gaiman hadn't been such a good showman we should have seen what was right in front of us all along. Oh, the irony of the second series being about reconciliation and redemption after the first one was about reclamation and revenge. Because he denies it all. There will be no reconciliation for him. No redemption. And there can be no separation of art and the artist, he made sure of that. A part of me even wondered if originally Gaiman was supposed to be there at Dream's funeral next to Madoc. Thankfully that didn't happen. And even if their creator will forever be in torment, at least his creations were given a fresh start. They were released out into the world. They were set free. Hopefully not to ever be caught in their creators net again. Forever connected by somehow liberated.
Before you even ask, yes, I will watch anything set in Wisconsin to sit in judgement on it. Because that's what a true Wisconsinite does. Which means, don't ever get me started on Picket Fences. And you know what, Revival was doing pretty good until episode eight wherein Wausau has magically acquired an Amtrak station. The lack of railways in Wisconsin, and the fact that the capital doesn't have a stop with the minimal Amtrak service there is is a very sore subject for the state's residents. As for the Milwaukee corridor rumors, bite me. And this plot point, which was kind of a major plot point, was just throwing salt in the wounds. But at least they avoided any mispronunciations, which is why I will forever hate Jack Trotter on The Gilded Age for his mangling of Peshtigo. I know I should feel so happy for him becoming rich and buying a house and everything, but I'm sorry, you can't pronounce the town where your mother died and you were presumably born!?! Plus, I'm additionally sorry that the Chicago fire took the focus away from Peshtigo, but, whatever, learn to pronounce it Jack. Because at least Revival redeemed itself for the Amtrak error by putting in a wicked Milwaukee Bucks burn in the finale that they had lost to the Indiana Pacers. Again. Seriously, if you're a Bucks fan, you feel this joke in your very soul. And has The Gilded Age done anything to make it up to me yet? No. It hasn't. Moving on, if I can, as a connoisseur of everything to do with my home state I had obviously heard about the graphic novel by Tim Seely and Mike Norton. Patrick Rothfuss put me on to it, and well, Patrick Rothfuss has really bad taste in reading material. Something I have painfully learned over time. I just didn't like it but at least I have since realized why Martha's nickname is Em. It's not Em it's "M." Get it? Anyway. So, this is a zombie story, so if you have zombie issues, maybe don't tune in. But even if you do have zombie issues, maybe try it anyway, because while this is a zombie story it's also about how we treat others and militias and religious zealotry and personal agency and MAGA and the CDC and all of that and it hits really close to the bone. Luckily though if you were one of the Revivers that came back from the dead that injury will heal right up. I'm a fan of zombie stories that try to tell a bigger tale, that about family and connection and identity and our place in the world, which is why I love iZombie and Shaun of the Dead so much. Because who says zombies have to be humorless? And while Revival does have it's more amusing moments this is a darker but far more fascinating tale. It's like a puzzle you're piecing together. There's a cold case but there's also this new miracle that's happened and how they connect is everything. And while we are given an ending and Martha's MAGA dipshit father is given a few glorious smackdowns, there is more to explore in this world. When reading that comic all those years ago I would never have thought I'd enjoy, let alone embrace, a show based on it, here I am. Just shows that many kinds of miracles were worked on this show. Plus the wrestler CM Punk is brutally murdered in an episode if that's your jam...
If I'm honest the only reason Dept. Q came to my notice is because while promoting it Matthew Goode was talking about why he isn't in the final Downton Abbey movie, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. To save you the bother, it wasn't a big enough role and he likes jobs that challenge him, in other words how Mary married two men played by actors completely uninterested in the legacy of Downton is beyond me. But that meant I was mildly interested to see him in this role that would lure him away from a five minute Ascot cameo. And once I learned it was a Scottish police drama, with quite a few of my favorite Scots, I wanted to see if it was better than the recent effort to reboot Rebus. I can definitively say that it is better than Rebus, but there's an equally forgettable quality to the show. Could it be that Goode's character, Carl Morck, is so abrasive and angry that it's hard to watch him? Yes. But thankfully the other characters soften his edges just enough that by the end of the first season he's bearable. Could it be that Matthew Goode needs to eat a few good hearty meals because he's so skinny he looked like a famine victim? Yes. It was very disconcerting. Could it be that I didn't give a shit about the missing woman whose cold case they are investigating because she was unsympathetic and was played by an actress I didn't care for? Oh, most definitely. I only wanted the case to be solved so that Akram Salim, who chose the case because he believed it could be solved, would get vindication. In fact it's Akram Salim and the other Department Q subordinate, Rose Dickson, that carry the show. One with their quiet intelligence, the other with their quirky hair. Seriously, you can go down some serious rabbit holes on the internet about Rose's hair if you so have the mind. But as much as I love these characters, they are also problematic, and not just the fact that Rose's hair never moves, seriously, go down a rabbit hole, I dare you, it's that Akram Salim, with his outsider status, not actually being a police officer but having been one in Syria before he left for the safety and education of his daughters, is the one used to work outside the system. This means using extrajudicial force. AKA he beats the shit out of people. And while it's used as a way for Carl to underestimate Akram and almost as a cathartic comedic action to relieve the tension of the constantly propulsive plot I have issues with it. They are using a Middle Eastern character to be the enforcer, and this just smacks of racial profiling. Yes he's calm and collected and a family man, but by forcing him to be the muscle they are diminishing him. Seeing as this show is getting a second season I can only hope they will address this. Because Akram and the rest of the supporting cast are what makes this show work. In fact, do we really even need Matthew Goode? Because the book The Keeper of Lost Causes was first adapted as a film for Denmark and starred Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Carl. And if you've seen Britannia, you know that Nikolaj can out act Matthew Goode any day. Damn, what I wouldn't give to just combine that film series and this television series into the ultimate Department Q series!
James Bond is an evergreen. Just look how excited people are about the scant pieces of information that have been released about the next film. I know we don't yet know who will be Bond, unless there's been some major announcement since I typed this and it posted, but the Steven Knight news has me very excited even if he should be working on season two of Taboo. Nothing should take presidence over that. I've been waiting for eight years! Yes yes, Great Expectations and A Thousand Blows has numbed the pain, but it's still there. It feels like it will always be there. Anyway, Bond is the gold standard of spycraft, but with shows like Killing Eve and Slow Horses, espionage and hired killers are making a big comeback. Especially if they're slightly inept. The Jackal is not inept. But things really don't go his way. And he's so committed to his job, he holds a grudge so tightly, that, well, he'll do what he promised to do. Eventually. At any cost. Whilst also enacting sweet sweet vengeance. This is a wonderful modernization of the de Gaulle-heavy book which utilizes modern advancements in weaponry and subterfuge coupled with Eddie Redmayne's chameleonic acting abilities. I mean he's no Jodie Comer, but he'll do. And while you don't like this cool character, you root for him. You do not want him to be caught. You want him to live another day and take his cute little suitcase that transforms into a deadly weapon and just kill all the people that are causing trouble in the world. Of course, being such a renowned assassin means he has operatives obsessed with finding him. That obsessed operative is Bianca Pullman played by Lashana Lynch. The two of them are in an interesting dance. They are almost symbiotic. There lives are eerily similar. They both have partners that suspect that they have secrets and who know, deep down, that if forced to choose they will choose their work over their family. The job is everything to both of them. They have blinders on to everything else. And, like The Jackal, you don't like Bianca. The Jackal doesn't have a moral compass, but Bianca wants to believe she does. So the way that she exploits people to get what she wants is reprehensible. I know this is a bit of a conundrum. What I like about The Jackal I don't like about Bianca. But it all comes down to flair. He has flair and she's just flailing. He can pull off Edward Fox's iconic look from the 1973 adaptation and she always looks like she's lying. Which she is. Though that doesn't matter anymore now does it? Because if you've watched the show you know that she fails and dies at the hands of The Jackal. She has found him, tracked him all the way to his home, and in the end, that tiny bit of humanity is probably what did her in. No. That's being too kind to her. She just wasn't quite good enough. She didn't deserve to succeed. And the very fact that she failed is what made this series work. Her death justifies it all. I knew that he'd survive to kill another day as they are doing a second season and this isn't an anthology, but her death was a blessed surprise. It showed that she was a failure. Something the viewers believed, deep down, since the first episode. She was a wreck and belonged with Jackson Lamb. Yet the show built the two of them up to be a great showdown of colossi, so one of them couldn't have feet of clay could they? Well, they both had their weakness. At least the writers didn't hesitate to pull the trigger on the weaker one.
Uzo Aduba's performance as Cordelia Cupp will go down among the great fictional detectives of all time. This amateur ornithologist deserves a place alongside Benoit Blanc, Hercule Poirot, and Jacques Clouseau. Unfortunately she's not the star of the show, the White House is. Because this show is perplexingly based on a non-fiction book about life in the White House. Kate Andersen Brower's 2015 book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House takes a deep dive into what makes the White House function and for some reason all those excruciating infinitesimal details of what makes the White House work are the backbone of this series. While yes, this does give the show a grounding, the verisimilitude is off the charts, the problem is the show became so enamored of these details and how many cooks and chefs there are that is was repetitive. I do not need to hear what everyone was supposed to be doing and where and when for the hundredth time based on "protocol." I need to have some forward momentum. And to have a show with only eight episodes seem overly long, that signifies you are doing something wrong. They blundered cameos, they underutilized Australian red herrings, and, in the end, sure, I got a good, nostalgic Jason Lee rant, be he didn't even seem to be feeling it. They should have asked Jane Curtain in the first episode who did it and been done in five minutes. But instead the show limps on, they release the suspects and have a hearing only to have to bring everyone back. And all the while they never even explained the calligrapher! By the end I didn't care. I just wanted it over. But for me the biggest misstep was Al Franken. Al Franken is supposed to add to the verisimilitude. He's playing a Senator from Washington and was a Senator of Minnesota until he was forced to resign in 2018 due to sexual misconduct allegations. And while what Al Franken was accused of is nothing compared to what is happening right now in the government that doesn't mean that he should be forgiven because his crimes were minor in comparison. Yes, discount the suffering of his victims because it could have been worse. That's a great stance to take. MSNBC seems to take that stance as well because they've been trying to rehab his image for years which I find simply repugnant. And that's what The Residence is doing, it's helping to rehab his image. Look, he was so good as a senator, don't you want him back? No. No I absolutely do not. And every single time I saw his face on this show or heard his voice I was enraged. He is an abuser given this platform and that is just unacceptable. Shonda Rhimes should be ashamed of herself. Resigning from the Kennedy Center Board doesn't make it right. For once I was glad a show I watched was cancelled. They wanted verisimilitude but all they got was my ire. And the ire of my friend who studies the habitat of birds. Yeah. They might have got the details of the White House bang on, but they did not do so with the birds. 
I have no idea what I just watched. But I have theories. Theory one; this is about a background character on the procedural show, Black and White, who is able to temporarily break out of the stereotypical Chinatown background actor trope that many are living on a perpetual loop and rise to be someone else only to be villainized when he gets too far from his humble origins. This theory is supported by how the show within the show evolves from an eighties cop drama to a Dick Wolf wannabe procedural to an almost True Detective search for inner truth. But then it's negated by the Painted Faces revealing that the show isn't the point, the point is to use the surveillance state to push a certain narrative. Which doesn't align with what came before, but, this show isn't about explaining anything in the end. Theory two; hell loop or limbo, your choice! While only broadly hinted at by a mural and Chinese mythology before doing a confusing infodump in the last episode this technically makes the most sense, especially with regard to the characters who die and come back in a container down by the docks with their memories wiped and then take up the same roles with no memory of having done this before. If this is the case, then how do you "level up?" Is it dying and starting over on another show? If so, well, then this is Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes but done in the most confusing way possible. And I do think Interior Chinatown wants to be Life on Mars with a focus on the Asian experience but ends up being a confusing mess that ironically does a disservice to the amazing acting on display. Because in the end the only thing you can be certain of is that this is about the Asian experience and how Asians are represented in the media and how there are so many amazing Asian actors out there who have never been given the chance to shine. And here Jimmy O. Yang and Ronny Chieng in particular show they are formidable talents. But then I've been a fan of Jimmy O. Yang since Silicon Valley so I feel like the rest of the world is finally catching up to what I already knew. Which is why the ending to this series felt like a personal insult. The Asian characters' stories are in the end negated. They are left behind. Which is irony at the top of it's game. The point of this series seems to have been about giving these characters their story, their time in the spotlight, to rectify the wrongs of what television representation did to them over the years and then Interior Chinatown did them dirty. This show should have known better. This show should have done better. This show did what every show before has done but added insult to injury by saying that they understood. They obviously understood nothing. Except for that delightful crab rangoon joke. That I will allow. 
I just learned something about this show that makes me want to like it more. Jenna Lamia who plays Judy Cooper on Resident Alien developed, wrote, and executive produced The Perfect Couple. She is so talented and such a force of nature. I mean, have you seen how professionally she digs a grave? And yet, I can not bring myself to actually give a fuck about this show. I mean, if the best part about your show is the opening credits, I think you have a problem. The Perfect Couple hons in on what all trashy prestige television does, rich, pretty people getting put through the blender. Here they were just able to get bigger names and luck out by getting two actors from White Lotus. Nicole Kidman has kind of made this her niche, Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Perfect Couple. I think it's time for her to move on. Nancy Meyers Coastal Grandmother is over with and you need more than a pretty house to make a show. But damn, that house is pretty. The people though? They might be pretty on the outside, but are horrible on the inside. Though speaking of the outside, there's some serious WTF going on with plastic surgery. Isabelle Adjani is unrecognizable and as my brother perfectly phrased it, Nicole Kidman looks like she's had a Photoshop filter applied. Whereas Liev Schreiber just wandered onto set and they put hipster glasses on him and called it a day. Damn the double standards of Hollywood! The main problem here aside from the fact they don't believe in fair play and there are so many things that are dropped or unexplained is Amelia Sacks. Our protagonist played by Eve Hewson is about to marry into this privileged world and is to be the viewer's surrogate, and yet I have no idea why she's marrying Benji. She obviously doesn't love him. Yes, there's the, before her mother dies she gets to see her daughter married angle, but I felt like there was something deeper. Like she needed Benji's money or connections to help her mother out. Amelia obviously cares more for her murdered maid of honor than she does for her future spouse, and yet the whole cancelling of the wedding is just like a plot point that's not quite hit. It's an afterthought. And then throughout the show she becomes more and more irrelevant until the end when she and Benji just shrug and walk away from each other. Um, what now!?! All this production, all this fanfare, that ends on a whimper not a bang... I think that is a perfect metaphor for the whole show. It started strong, it started joyous, I mean, look to those opening credits, and then, by the end you literally didn't care. This was six episodes and it felt overly long. It lacked focus and didn't play fair. But then again, it was about foul play and at least it felt like Dakota Fanning was having fun.
