The Larkins
When it was announced that there was going to be a new adaptation of H.E. Bates's Pop Larkin books I was honestly baffled. I know reboots and reimaginings are all the rage, but the early nineties television series for ITV, The Darling Buds of May, is a legit television classic and made a star of Catherine Zeta-Jones while further cementing David Jason and Pam Ferris's status as British living legends. In fact it was one of the first big British television series that I was able to get through Netflix in the days of DVDs by mail. For some reason the discs I kept getting for episodes five and six which adapted A Breath of French Air always arrived damaged. But I persevered and eventually, as in at least a month after starting the episodes, I got to see Anna Massey in all her glory. Because so much in life comes down to, is Anna Massey in it? And if the answer is yes then I have to see it. This has backfired a few times, but for every production of The Robinsons there's a He Knew He Was Right. But when Bradley Walsh was announced as Pop Larkin after his successful run on Doctor Who I knew I wanted to watch the newest adaptation. And then they cast Sabrina Bartlett as his daughter Mariette. Everyone has actors they can't stand. They see them and they just can't watch them. Sabrina Bartlett is that for me. The only role I've ever liked her in was in Poldark, because she was murdered. When Arya was wearing her face on Game of Thrones I couldn't handle it. Then when she showed up on Bridgerton, hell no. Other shows she has been in over the years I have successfully blocked memory of her from. Like Victoria, she was on that!?! Guess I can't rewatch it. But then I got Acorn so I could see the final season of Doc Martin and I try to use my subscription services to the max so I thought, what could it hurt? It's only seven episodes. Even if I hate it it's only a week! But then I was surprised. I loved the new adaptation. Somehow Sabrina Bartlett was perfectly cast as the headstrong Mariette. In fact every single member of the cast was perfect. Sure, this a rural idyll, an England that never was, where everyone is happy and there's more than plenty on the table and tax men become family members, but I didn't care, I fell in love with the Larkins! And then tragedy struck! As in scandal, chaos, all was not right in Kent! Rumors abounded that all was strife behind the scenes. Sabrina Bartlett quit and was replaced with someone cast just because they had the hair and teeth. But Sabrina Bartlett wasn't the real problem, apparently that was the actor playing Charley, Tok Stephen. There might have even been inappropriate pictures texted to Sabrina so everyone was naturally shocked that he wasn't fired and was coming back for season two. But the truth is he was sidelined. The show lost something of it's spark. They didn't want another romance to be the focus of the second season so they asininely decided that Pop would go to prison. While this is actually what happens in the third book in the series it just felt depressing and contrived and too much of an overbearing story arc. Add to that everything seemed to be overly lite to look all sunny when it wasn't, overall the second series felt like a badly put on stage play, all surface, no depth. Continued rumors of tension behind the scenes meant that this is the last this iteration of The Larkins will grace out screens. Of course Bradley Walsh took the bullet and said it was due to his busy schedule. Very gentlemanly of you Bradley, Pop would be pleased.
What did I know about The Witcher prior to Netflix's announcement that they were making a TV show? That it was a popular video game. What did I know about The Witcher after Netflix's announcement that they were making a TV Show? That it was a popular video game, there were also books, and Henry Cavill was going to play the lead and was a big fan. The thing about the show is it's actually hard to get into. The first season has I don't know how many timelines and tries to impart the mythology of the world via osmosis. This is not a method I would recommend to anyone trying to impart large chunks of knowledge. It's very confusing. Even to those who are rewatching, so say my friends. I'm not the biggest fan of the info dump, but I wouldn't object too strongly in this instance. In fact I think I might have learned more from The Witcher: Blood Origin about the mythology and history of the Continent than I did from the main show. This all led me to prefer the one-off episodes. Sure, they were mainly monster of the week episodes, but if anyone says anything bad about the creepy incest episode "Betrayer Moon" or the just insane reimagining of Beauty and the Beast "A Grain of Truth" I will fight you. Once I get my hands on a Witcher potion. The thing you have to understand about The Witcher, from what I can see, it doesn't really have any pretensions to be something it's not. It's not trying to be something more like The Rings of Power, it's just trying to be itself, which is Xena: Warrior Princess with an actual budget. You even get the off-the-wall cameos like Molesley from Downton Abbey to Simon Callow who wandered by for two episodes as an eccentric bookseller with a rather fiery end, to Graham McTavish obviously playing the role Simon Callow wanted, nudist talking to owls. In other words all I'm asking for is a Bruce Campbell cameo. Hell, I'd even watch Bruce as Geralt more than I'd watch the least Hemsworth brother take on the role. And serious question, do we think this is a option? Because I am not joking about preferring a Bruce Campbell version seeing as there's no way in hell I'm watching one with that Hemsworth on board. So in a moment of clarity, I will confess that this review is for the final season of The Witcher. Let's face it, it's how we all feel. I even wonder if Netflix feels the same way, there was an odd survey they had me fill out back in July... And given the way it ended, I don't know if I want to give them a second chance. The first half of this season was oddly informative and didn't confuse me in the least, except for the part where like no one told Ciri her father is alive. It's like they realized from The Witcher: Blood Origin that an audience wants a comprehensible story. They also got the memo that Jaskier should be in every episode AND have an adorable love interest AND a rival, bringing on a marvelous bard who so breaks the forth wall. But then "The Witcher Red Wedding" happened. And while it was magnificent, the writers forgot that in the world of Game of Thrones that the "Red Wedding" was quickly followed by the even more spectacular "Purple Wedding." Here we got a grumbling deathbed Geralt and a vision quest Ciri. Oh, and no resolution. Don't forget the fact that they wasted their last three episodes and in particular their final episode on nothing. What a waste of a Witcher. I think that should be one of Jaskier's final songs.
Stranger Things: The Flight of Icarus by Caitlin Schneiderhan
The Viper's Nest Roadhouse and Cafe by Seana Kelly
Haunted Echoes and Southern Nights by Peter D. Baker
When I'm Dead by Hannah Morrissey
Nestlings by Nat Cassidy
The Night Raven by Johan Rundberg
What the Rivers Knows by Isabel Ibañez
The Paleontologist by Luke Dumas
The Costumes of Downton Abbey by Emma Marriott
Being Henry: The Fonz...and Beyond by Henry Winkler
I can't be the only one who knows Catherine de' Medici from the guilty pleasure that was Reign. Yes, yes, I know, I did know vaguely who she was before than but needless to say, I was intrigued by this new series and was sold once I heard that Charles Dance was playing Pope Clement. The weird thing about this adaptation is that while it obviously has better production values than the CW could afford, there's still a bit of a low budget feel to it. This though could be due to the bizarre music choices that start and end each episode, much like the 2018 adaptation of Vanity Fair, or the arch knowing tone that wants to be Gentleman Jack and fails. Yet, it still has charm. The driving force though is really just waiting for Catherine to go full on serpent queen and embrace the dark side. To watch her line up the pawns and knock them all down, getting exactly what she wants. Yet she's willing to play the long game and thankfully in the meantime we have Ludivine Sagnier as Diane de Poitiers. Diane was the mistress of Catherine's husband Henri. Diane had a lot of power and spent a lot of time rubbing this in Catherine's face. But Ludivine who I previously admired on The Young Pope/The New Pope, plays a character you love to hate so perfectly she is what I envision Catherine will become, well maybe not bathing in gold, but you never know. This back and forth between the two women, and later between Catherine and her daughter-in-law Mary, is really at the heart of the show. Women vying for what power they can hold onto. Which made my mind just explode. Because I just realized that ANY royal historical drama could never pass the Bechdel Test. Did these women EVER talk about anything other than men or how they will derive power due to their male protectors? No they did not. It's all men and marriages and alliances and male heirs and men men men. Seriously, why have I never noticed this before? This is brought home even more here because all the main stars of the show are female yet everything is about the men. And the star with top billing is Samantha Morton. I'm not sure I really get how she's approaching this character. She's playing the role very quiet, very reserved, and oddly very love-struck. The weird mystical aspects are shoved off onto Ruggieri, played by one of my favorite actors, Enzo Cilenti. But Catherine is almost a nonentity. She is the spider at the center of the web, but only because she's worked her way there slowly and methodically. I think more than anything that is why this show got a second season, viewers need to see her at the height of her power, not some woman barely holding onto her marriage, or a baby factory, or a widow, she needs to seize control. And the last two episodes showed us what's coming. France and Catherine's enemies better hold on tight.
If you are a fan of British murder mysteries, you are a fan of Anthony Horowitz. If he did nothing else in his life he would be remembered for bringing Midsomer Murders to the small screen. A show that has been a staple of television since he wrote the adaptation of that first episode, "The Killings at Badger's Drift," over twenty-five years ago. But then he created one of the greatest detectives ever with Christopher Foyle, the star of Foyle's War. So many stars got their start on these intricately plotted mysteries that were almost a British equivalent to Columbo, in that the joy wasn't just solving the crime but in watching how Foyle approached solving the crime. Yet Horowitz didn't limit himself to television, he was a successful author. He predominately wrote children's and YA until 2011 when he wrote the first officially licensed Sherlock Holmes book since the death of Conan Doyle, 
Jane and the Final Mystery by Stephanie Barron
Murder in Drury Land by Vanessa Riley
The Herbalist's Secret by Annabelle Marx
Murder on Mistletoe Lane by Clara McKenna
Edge of the Grave by Robbie Morrison
The Fatal Folio by Elizabeth Penney
The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett
West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman
The Last Close Call by Laura Griffin
The Palisades by Gail Lynn Hanson
Jewel Box: Stories by E. Lily Yu
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Volume 4 edited by Paula Guran
The Innocent Sleep by Seanan McGuire
Turtle Bread by Kim-Joy
Holding is Ireland's answer to a procedural show that is Broadchurch meets Ballykissangel. It's nice and pastoral with crimes that are comfortably in the past even if their shadows are now finally being felt in the present. Everyone is on a spectrum of "hot mess" from secretly binge eating in their car to drunkenly heckling bad karaoke singers to shagging in an abandoned ambulance. Yet somehow everyone is OK with just plodding along. The show is based on Graham Norton's first fiction book and while the show does keep you engaged over it's four episodes you could tell by the very structure that he is a first time author. How you might ask? Well, the ending is just too convenient. When you set up a decades old crime and then in the present have one of the characters dying of Cancer, well, to make the killer the Cancer patient, that's too pat isn't it? Life isn't that simple. Life can't be tied up in a nice little bow that quickly heals the community. Nature being the bringer of justice not to mention the whole "maybe guilt brought on the Cancer" is just lazy. Just because you have quirky characters and a pastoral setting doesn't make this charming. In fact, there's one aspect that skeeved me out so bad that it tainted the entire show. Evelyn Ross is in her thirties and has never gotten over her true loving abandoning her after he beat her to a pulp and she miscarried on the night of his wedding to another woman. Of course his is the body that was discovered. Evelyn, to numb herself, is having an affair with Stephen Chen. Stephen is seventeen and the son of Evelyn's sister's partner. At least they kind of call out the "incest" but they never really call out the whole pedophile aspect of this relationship. So yes, he's technically of the age of consent. But that's a technicality that doesn't get ride of the whole creepiness of it. Plus they are having sex in an abandoned ambulance. How is this sanitary!?! I mean, I just can't on so many levels. And here's the thing, consent is more important than ever and how we talk about power dynamics in a relationship, and if there's anywhere in the world more associated with pedophiles than Ireland, strictly because of the Catholic Church, I don't know where that would be. Therefore to be telling this story in Ireland at this time, I think it needed to be done more sensitively. Just by having the woman being the older of the two doesn't make this OK, just look to Mary Kay Letourneau, may she be singed for an entirety. But what adds insult to injury is when Evelyn apologizes at her sister's wake to Stephen saying that what she did was wrong and him then saying to basically forget about it because he loved every minute of it... Excuse me? He's a child, he might think this way now, but what about when he gets older and realizes that their relationship was actually abuse? It's not cool or sexy or anything to be in this kind of relationship and Holding didn't real emphatically say otherwise. Therefore I can do nothing but look back on this series with a kind of creepy regret. It could have been something, but it was out of touch and unoriginal. 
First impressions are important. Yes, you could get an inaccurate impression but only time will tell. My first impression of The Confessions of Frannie Langton sadly bore out. Because a show that starts with the year in a big large font, 1826 if you were interested, and then follows it up with all the characters wearing Empire waisted dresses, well, that's such a glaring inaccuracy that I just couldn't look beyond it. Every second a character was on screen I was aware that the costuming was entirely wrong. What's more there were flashbacks and they were wearing the same clothes! Fashion changes. You could make the argument that Frannie herself was poor so she would still be in older fashions, that doesn't apply to ANYONE ELSE. The Empire silhouette ended six years before this story starts. SIX YEARS. How can a costume designer get it this wrong? It's like the time I watched a documentary on the Adnrew Davis adaptation of Sense and Sensibility and the costume designer said they purposefully changed the style to add more color. And I'm still pissed about those costumes all these years later. That and David Morrissey's bad wig. But it's not like I'd actually recommend The Confessions of Frannie Langton to anyone so I guess it can go about being historically inaccurate all it wants behind everyone's back, except that there's me here stewing, I will NEVER let this go. I really want to know what was the point of making this other than to make us angry and depressed about the world we live in as well as pissing me off about costume design? We have slavery, we have implied vivisection, we have drug addiction, we have miscarriages, we have incest, we have prostitution, we have murder, and in the end, we bury our gays. Some reviewers have pointed out that the "unapologetic" nature of the love between Frannie and Marguerite somehow makes the story rise above the fact that they both die in the end. Were they watching the same show I was? Because their relationship is toxic, Marguerite turns Frannie into an addict and then cheats on her with her own "son." Oh and I totally forgot, that Marguerite then killed herself. Yeah, I'm spoiling it for you, but as I said, you shouldn't be watching this anyway. This was only four episodes long and that was four too many. There were so many good actors just doing bad material I just couldn't bear it. I was looking back at my notes from when I was watching this and I literally only like the cat. All the other characters were grasping, mean, evil, ruinous sorts. Maybe an author the likes of Dickens could have made these people interesting, but Sara Collins, adapting her own book, couldn't. And you know what, when her book came out I was excited to read it, and then excited that it was being adapted, but a dark tale told by an unreliable narrator done by incompetents wasn't what I was looking for. This was a tale dark in nature and just dark, as in the crew obviously didn't understand that lighting was needed for the viewers to see the characters and it was glaringly obvious they had never lite a dark skinned person in their lives. So all those people out there decrying that a show about lesbians is morally reprehensible, first off, I will never agree with you, but more importantly, if you watched this you'd have legitimate reasons to complain.
