Posts Tagged Film
2025 On Screen – the Second Half
Posted by cathannabel in Film, Television on December 14, 2025
Film
None of the films below were seen at the cinema. This is not normal, and I need to do something about it. Apart from anything else, I should be getting more value from my Showroom membership than I have for the last six months! I like the whole experience of going to the cinema – it’s so easy to put on a film on Netflix or whatever and half-watch it whilst scrolling on the phone, pausing to go and make a coffee or take a phone call, etc. The ritual of cinema – putting one’s phone on silent and away in a bag for the duration, stocking up on snacks and drinks beforehand to last for the duration, and all of that – makes one focus on the film, in a way that helps when trying to gather one’s thoughts about it after the credits roll.
Nonetheless, there were some fine films on TV, including some that I’d intended to see at the cinema but missed. I only realised whilst preparing this blog how few of the films below were produced/directed by women. Only Autumn de Wilde, with her debut, Emma., Wendy Finerman, producer of The Devil Wears Prada, Mia Hanson Løve with One Fine Morning, and Celine Sciamma, collaborating writer on Paris 13th District. Because these are films I’ve watched because they were there, rather than films I’ve chosen to go out of the house and into town to see, I can’t draw too many conclusions about this batch, other than to say that I clearly have watched quite a lot of thrillers, and not a lot of comedy, which seems pretty typical. I think there were one or two films that I started and gave up on – I haven’t included these because I suspect there may have been a ‘me’ problem – mood, level of tiredness, that sort of thing – rather than it necessarily reflecting badly on the film.
5 September
Compelling and extremely tense account of the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics in 1972, through the eyes of the ABC news team on the spot, who were providing live coverage of the sport, and found themselves confronting instead the practical and ethical challenges of live coverage of an unfolding tragedy. It’s understated in a way that actually enhances the tension rather than dissipating it.
American Gangster
Denzil Washington is superb here. I’m not a Russell Crowe fan but he’s pretty good in this too – he has to be, to make us root for him rather than the bad guy who happens to be Denzil Washington.
Another Country
Beautiful – and I’m not just talking about the male beauty on display from Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Cary Elwes. Ultimately though I wasn’t convinced by the bookend pieces with Everett as an older Bennett (in rather poor ageing prosthetics) being interviewed in Moscow about why he betrayed his country. We were supposed, I think, to see how the double life he realised he would have to lead as a gay man prepared him for the double life of espionage, but I don’t think this was developed enough to really work. I also find myself a little weary of posh boys – gay or straight – at posh schools.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
I was slightly underwhelmed by the book but rather enjoyed this. It’s a tad too long, and – this is a me problem – there are WAY too many snakes. I know the title announces it, and I remember the snakes from the book, but I much prefer not to actually see them… Rachel Zegler is great as Lucy Gray – there’s always a steeliness in her that belies her doe-eyed charm.
The Devil Wears Prada
Very enjoyable, even if it does its best to have its cake and eat it (not that eating cake is an appropriate metaphor given the food-phobic culture it portrays). It’s funny, and Meryl is awesome, suggesting depths and complexities without spelling everything out. As far as plausibility goes, I’m not qualified to comment, though the notion that Ann Hathaway’s Andy, a woman who prioritises comfort and wears sensible shoes, can learn not just to walk but to run in vertiginously high heels on that time frame seems to me improbable.
Echo Valley
A great cast make this highly enjoyable and genuinely tense but can’t quite paper over the plot holes. I found myself trying to work out the timings for what actually happened once we’d had the reveal, and I couldn’t quite make sense of it. That may be me, of course, but it’s such a common failing in thrillers, to leave the revelations and resolutions to be dealt with in a mad rush at the end, perhaps hoping we will be swept along and not notice… Old fashioned whodunnits, the sort where the detective gathers everyone in the library to announce the guilty party, used to have a sort of coda where someone says, ‘but what I still don’t understand is’ (speaking for all of us, probably) and then the detective helpfully explains. I am happy for things to be left unexplained, for plot threads to be left dangling, for motivations not to be clear even as the credits roll, but I don’t like plots that seem to suggest that everything is resolved, without making absolutely sure that the resolution makes sense. NB this will be a recurring theme…
Emma.
Having recently seen the Paltrow version, I think I prefer this. It’s funnier, for one thing, Anya Taylor Joy is quirky and Johnny Flynn’s Knightley is rougher around the edges than some portrayals. As enjoyable as it is, I remain unconvinced, however, that we need any more Austen adaptations, unless someone is prepared to tackle the less popular ones (Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey).
Enchanted April
Delightful – Josie Lawrence and Miranda Richardson lead as two not so happily married middle-class women who, entirely out of character, seize the chance to escape to a castle in Italy, where the place works a kind of magic on them, and the people who share it with them. That sounds a bit soppy and I suppose it is, but it’s also very funny, and very touching. By chance, I was watching Miranda Richardson in TV drama The Last Anniversary (see below) on the same day, and feel compelled to say that she is even more stunningly beautiful now than she was back in 1992. And the film has a place in my heart as it’s set and filmed in Portofino, where my daughter got engaged the summer before last. Maybe it is a magical place.
Frankenstein
Of course there have been many, probably too many, adaptations of Shelley’s novel, some of which bear only a passing and superficial resemblance to her narrative, let alone her philosophical concerns. I was never going to skip this one, given that it’s produced/directed/written etc by Guillermo del Toro, who was responsible for two of my favourite films, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. It’s so long since I read the book that I can’t swear to the film’s fidelity to the plot but it felt broadly faithful (though was the monster impervious to bullets in the original?). It’s visually fantastic, of course, gothic and melodramatic and (as the Guardian reviewer put it) ‘monstrously beautiful’. As is Jacob Elordi as the monster, to whom del Toro hands over the narrative part way through. Frankenstein’s contempt for his own creation – because it fails to live up to his impossible ideal – is the monstrous heart of the film, echoing Victor’s own rejection by his father, and driving the tragic outworking of the plot.
The Gangs of New York
This has many brilliant moments but I found it wearyingly long. DDL, in this as in There Will be Blood, seems to be hamming it up to the max. Having watched the documentary series Mr Scorsese, I do get (I think) something of what he was going for, the past that was still tangible on the streets where he grew up.
The Good Liar
Mirren and McKellen in a drama whose twists and turns aren’t impossible to guess (and if one consults the cast list in IMDb as I did, one of the major twists is substantially given away). But never mind all that, they are both splendid, as one would expect – it’s a kind of duel where we are supposed to think at first that they are very mismatched, but (as I hoped, being a fan of dramas where older women are shown to be canny and capable) all is not as it at first seems. It’s often very funny, but with an undercurrent of sadness.
King Richard
Will Smith’s excellent performance as Richard Williams, father to Serena and Venus, gives us room to wonder if he is an entirely reliable narrator, without leaning too much into that idea. He is both utterly unreasonable, and right in his assessment of how far his daughters could go, and of the obstacles that might be in their way.
The Lost Bus
A gripping account of a true story from the 2018 Camp Fire disaster in California, when a driver doing the school run found himself trying to get 22 children and their teachers (the film only portrays one teacher as the other did not want to be included) to safety as the fires destroyed everything in their path. It’s directed by Paul Greengrass, notable for United 93, 22 July (about the 2011 Norway attacks) and Captain Phillips. The suspense here is perhaps lessened by the fact that we may well know that the bus got through, but nonetheless it is incredibly tense, and Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera are great as the two adults trying to calm and reassure the kids in the face of their own terror, for themselves and for their loved ones.
A Man Called Otto
This could have been merely soppy – massively grumpy old curmudgeon has his miserable heart warmed by a lively young family who move in across the road – but the script and the performances give it much more than that, the heartbreak of loneliness, dark humour, and some genuinely moving moments. A lot of that is down to Hanks of course, this is the sort of thing he’s so very good at.
Maria
This can be seen as one of Pablo Lorrain’s trilogy of portraits of women on the edge: Jackie (Kennedy), Spencer (Diana) and now Maria Callas. We start near the end of her life, her voice has lost its control and power, and her ‘medication’ leads to hallucinations and confusion. We get flashbacks to her earlier life, both pre-fame and during her heyday as the diva of divas. Angelina Jolie is superb. I’m not qualified to speak of its accuracy – and I’m sure there was much more to Maria herself than the film could convey – but it’s a powerful and moving portrait.
Mr Burton
An old-fashioned sort of film, really. Performances are great – Toby Jones’s Mr B is melancholy but positive, easily wounded, and Richard to-be-Burton is bumptious and arrogant but also wounded. It doesn’t directly ask the question of whether Mr B had homosexual inclinations, but it shows how other people were ready to insinuate that to explain his motivation for taking Richard under his wing. For me, whether he was a closeted gay man or not, it seems clear (from the film and other sources) that if he was attracted, he was also scrupulous about not exploiting his influence or his proximity. Harry Lawtey gives us a flavour of Burton the star, and it’s fascinating to see that emerge, along with that extraordinarily rich voice.
Night Always Comes
One of those narratives where the protagonist is trapped due to bad decisions, which leave him/her with only bad choices (it reminded me of Martin Freeman’s TV drama, The Responder, for example). Vanessa Kirby is compelling, even whilst one wants to shout at her when she’s making the aforesaid bad decisions and getting herself deeper and deeper into the mire.
One Fine Morning
A rather fine study of a woman dealing with her father’s dementia (I wonder why that resonated with me…) and of what reviewer Monica Castillo called ‘a quiet sense of devastation’. Mia Hanson-Løve is skilled at this (I’ve seen a couple of her other films, Father of My Children, and Things to Come, both of which were excellent). Léa Seydoux is brilliant at conveying the pressure Sandra is under, as a widow with a young child and an increasingly dependent father, who knows she isn’t doing enough but can’t do more.
Our Town
I tracked this down on YouTube after reading Ann Patchett’s marvellous Tom Lake, which centres on performances of this play (see my Books blog). The version I saw was a TV film of a stage production, with Paul Newman as the Stage Manager. I thought at first it was going to be a bit too folksy American for my taste but then it got darker and deeper and by the end I was all in and weeping. It resonated with my thoughts about mortality since my husband died, and about how we go through our lives focusing on the big important days but don’t ever ‘realize life while [we] live it, every minute’. I won’t go on but the play now has a place in my heart.
Paris – 13th District
Jacques Audiard working with Céline Sciamma! Audiard directed one of my favourite contemporary French films, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, as well as A Prophet, and Sciamma is responsible for Girlhood, Petite Maman, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (and Paris – 13th stars Noémie Herbert, who’s in that last film). It’s a funny, touching film, a lot less harrowing than the aforementioned Audiards or Sciammas, about young people connecting (sometimes through misunderstandings) and disconnecting.
Persuasion
My favourite Austen (see my books blog for comments on Mansfield Park, which I recently re-read). I loved Persuasion even as a teenager, when one might expect to be more drawn to some of her feistier heroines, but Anne Elliott moved me a great deal then, and even more so now. A lot depended, as in any film adaptation of a loved book, on the casting, and both Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds were perfect. They are the still centre of the film, around whom people are gossiping, chattering, generally making themselves heard and seen, but who themselves say little (at least out loud). Once they have, quietly and unobtrusively, sorted out their future together, they walk out into Bath, where a circus is in town and people are cartwheeling and prancing around them, as they are oblivious to it all. It’s beautiful.
Rwanda
I really don’t know what to make of this, or why it was made. We have white Italian actors on stage playing the roles of people caught up in the Rwandan genocide and then segueing into scenes with Rwandan actors playing the same roles. The blurb in IMDb reads: ‘Close your eyes and try to imagine. A man, a woman and their families. The fastest and most systematic genocide in history. He is Hutu, she is Tutsi. He must kill. She must die. A fate similar to many others in that bloody spring. But this time there is a slight difference. When you open your eyes, you will be in their shoes and now the choice is yours. And yours alone’. None of which really gives us a convincing rationale for the way the story is framed: it creates confusion, and all that the use of white actors does, in my view, is to wrench us away from the real, tragic, horrifying events every time they appear.
Small Things Like These
Based on the Claire Keegan novel, like The Quiet Girl (from the book Foster), this is an understated, quiet film that gets under your skin and straight to your heart. Cillian Murphy is excellent, and the film does a remarkable job of conveying a sense of threat from what might seem an unlikely source. Directed by Tim Mielants, who also directed…
Steve
Cillian again, and again he is wonderful. This is a brilliant, downbeat, subtle film that very effectively conveys both the barely contained chaos and mayhem of the troubled boys and the commitment and love mingled with despair and boiling frustration of their teachers. The establishment itself is under threat as a waste of resources, and as much as the boys are full of swagger and aggression we see and feel how lost they will be if they lose this haven. I was unequivocally rooting for Steve and his colleagues, and for their charges, which made the film both extremely tense – towards the end especially, when I was full of dread – and very moving.
The Straight Story
This reminded me rather of Perfect Days. A synopsis of the plot would make it sound rather dull, but it is completely engrossing and very moving; subtly so, it doesn’t present itself as ‘heartwarming’ although my heart did feel definitely warmed, nor as tearjerking, though I did have a bit of a weep. Richard Farnsworth is wonderful in the lead role. I have to confess I’m not familiar with much of David Lynch’s oeuvre – I liked The Elephant Man and Wild at Heart, was not a fan of his Dune, and switched off Blue Velvet quite early on – but this one is near perfect.
Surge
Ben Whishaw is outstanding here as a man with mental health problems whose life spirals out of control as he tries to free himself of the constraints of job and family. It’s a very uncomfortable watch precisely because Whishaw makes us care about this man, so one spends a lot of time thinking, ‘Oh no, please don’t do that, please…’ and then watching as he does whatever it is that is bound to make matters infinitely worse. It’s deeply compassionate and rather moving.
Tar
This is brilliant. A film that treats its audience as adults who can manage to hold more than one idea in their head at the same time, and can engage with theoretical, intellectual discussions about music and its performance, with a compelling performance from Cate Blanchett in the title role.
The Thursday Murder Club
I haven’t read the book(s) so can only judge the film as it stands. It was mildly enjoyable, mildly diverting. Some of the scenarios were too ludicrous to be really funny, and some of the characters were a bit hard to take as representations of people only a little older than me (Celia Imrie’s wardrobe seemed to have been purloined from my Gran – born 1901 – rather than what a well-heeled woman in her mid-seventies in 2025 would be likely to wear). Daniel Mays seemed here to be reprising his character as the bumbling copper from The Magpie/Moonflower Murders. It didn’t make me want to read the books, but it passed a couple of hours quite well.
Unstoppable
Classic set up – a driverless train is hurtling across the countryside, and must be stopped before it reaches a residential area – delivered with conviction and panache by Denzil Washington and Chris Pine as the maverick pair who have to stop the unstoppable train. It’s actually a true story, remarkably.
Vera Drake
Imelda Staunton is outstanding in this. She cares for and about people, in practical ways, and providing illegal abortions for girls ‘in trouble’ is simply an extension of that. She never uses the A word, any more than she speaks of what got these girls and women into ‘the family way’. Just tells them to pop their knickers off and that ‘it will all come away’ when they go to the loo. Of course this is a gross over-simplification, as she finds out when one of her girls is critically ill after the procedure. She feels shame at her exposure but holds on to her belief that she is just helping out. It’s a corrective to the image of the back-street abortionist as exploiting these girls for financial gain and with no concern for the consequences to them, even if we wince at Vera’s haphazard approach to clinical hygiene.
TV
As usual there were a lot of murders. More than are listed here, since I haven’t reviewed the latest outings for Shetland, Trigger Point, Beck, The Gone, Karen Pirie or the Sommerdahl Murders, though all were watched and enjoyed, as were the latest series of Slow Horses and The Diplomat. There were a fair few thrillers that I gave up on or even watched through to the end but couldn’t think of anything worth saying about them other than to reiterate the kind of complaints I make about several better offerings below.
Because of the general murderiness, I find it’s essential to have a few things that are safe, that you know aren’t going to let anything too horrific happen, and that in general allow redemption for even the least likeable characters. This half-year that role was played by the latest season of All Creatures Great & Small, Leonard & Hungry Paul, and A Man on the Inside (I haven’t reviewed that last, because it’s season 2 and essentially the same sitch, just transplanted to a college rather than a retirement home, but I enjoyed it).
Blue Lights is my top cop drama, and Paradise the top thriller. Other standouts this half-year were The Line (Un Village Francais) and Stranger Things‘ final season.
I’ve tried not to do spoilers but you proceed at your own risk.
Drama
All Creatures Great and Small
I didn’t originally intend to review this, because it’s an ongoing series (and a remake), but I find myself referencing it as the epitome of nice telly and, particularly after the finale of this latest season, it is both that and more. The central three characters are much as they were in the 1970s series, although Siegfried is given more of a back story to explain his eccentricities, and Tristan is given more depth, particularly in the latest episodes where he finally opens up about some of what happened to him on active service. The women now actually have characters, which is a good thing. Mrs Hall in particular has gone from being a stock character – stout, sensible housekeeper – to someone much more interesting, much deeper. And as I mention above, whilst – as far as I recall – in the 1970s version WW2 was a kind of hiatus, here it deeply affects everyone, whether they are mothers/wives waiting for news which, in some cases, when it comes is desperately sad, or the men who volunteer and come back different. It’s nice telly in that we can trust that nothing too horrific is going to happen to the people of Darrowby, no serial killer is going to stalk those lanes and moors, the body count is going to remain low, with most of those who die doing so at the appointed time in their beds. But it’s more than nice in that these people have depth and complexity and so we invest in them, and what happens to them moves us more. It’s beautifully acted, of course, most particularly Anna Madeley’s Mrs Hall who is responsible for a large proportion of the moments that make me weepy, Sam West’s Siegfried, and Patricia Hodge’s Mrs Pumphrey (she had a hard act to follow in Diana Rigg but she’s given the character – who could be a bit of a joke – greater depth).
The Assassin
There are a number of actors whose presence in a series always inclines me to watch (and a few whose presence has the opposite effect, but we won’t dwell). Keeley Hawes is one in the former category, ever since Life on Mars and Line on Duty proved her versatility, and I thoroughly enjoyed this, despite its startlingly high body and gore count. The humour is, obviously, very dark, but it’s well done, and Hawes makes her ‘retired contract killer being forced to brush up her murdering skills’ human, and makes us root for her (and even her rather annoying son).
Blue Lights
This started off extremely well, and now with the third season is even better. What marks it out initially from the mass of police dramas is the Belfast setting, where organised crime and dissident paramilitaries have merged into an ever-present threat to the peelers. But what makes it outstanding is the quality of the writing and the performances – there are a number of incredibly high-tension scenes in this season, where the tension comes not only from the situation but from the fact that we’re so invested in the characters. Excellent, excellent stuff.
Bookish
So-called cosy crime series, set in 1946. I can’t be doing with too much cosiness – if we’re talking about murder, there has to be some sense of threat, of evil, of tragedy. Bookish does provide those things, along with humour and heart, and this first season ended with a promise of more.
Borderline
On the face of it, just yet another mismatched cop duo, but which has added interest due to the fact that these cops work either side of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and have to work together when Irish bodies turn up in the North, or vice versa. The Garda cop is rather tiresomely obnoxious, though her back story does provide some explanation for this. The Northern Irish cop has his own quirks – recovering alcoholic, so common in these narratives that it hardly counts as a quirk, but also a religious faith that is shown as being profound and central to his life, which is much more unusual.
Classified
Dizzying twists and turns in this French-Canadian thriller about a mole in the Canadian secret services, and the tensions between them and their US counterparts. I’m not sure that I quite grasped it all but that’s down to me occasionally losing concentration and missing info in the subtitles, I suspect, rather than to the plot/script.
Coldwater
Way, way over the top, but sort of fun. Seeing Andrew Lincoln, who never flinched in the face of zombie hordes, being a bit of a wuss, is amusing. Eve Myles does a good job of being a bit dodgy here, as she does in The Guest (see below) but Ewan Bremner’s Tommy is so obviously bonkers that it’s a bit hard to credit no one has sussed him out. The ending leaves a number of threads loose, but I kind of hope they don’t feel the need for another series.
Cooper & Fry
Adapted from Stephen Booth’s Peak District set series, many of which I’ve read. I enjoyed the books, but I don’t remember quite such a heavy reliance on the folklore/superstitions of the area. In the first two episodes alone we had a Screaming Skull, a Hand of Glory, a Plague Stone and a Black Dog, and a predictable tension between the city cop and the locals about how seriously to take these things. Otherwise I quite enjoyed the series, though it doesn’t really stand out from the crowd.
Down Cemetery Road
An adaptation of the first in Mick Herron’s other series (Slow Horses continues to be brilliant both in book and telly form), with Zoe Boehm (played – wonderfully – by Emma Thompson) as his lead detective and playing alongside the always excellent Ruth Wilson this is definitely a winner. The dialogue crackles with wit and the tension and stakes are nailbitingly high.
Fatal Crossing
Danish cold crime – a cut above the average. It leaves questions still hanging in the air, about the why, if not the who.
The Forsytes/The Forsyte Saga
I have history with the Forsytes. I watched the 1967 series – it must have been the Sunday night repeat which launched in September ’68, when I was 11. I was completely spellbound. I have no doubt if I rewatched it I would have issues, but it was truly powerful television, with some scenes that I can still bring to mind today. I watched the new Channel 5 adaptation with some trepidation, and rising annoyance at completely unnecessary plot changes, which radically alter the dynamics between characters, and at some of the casting. Soames, Young Jolyon and Bosinney could be members of a boy band – all are blandly handsome but characterless. We are treated to scenes of Young Jolyon shirtless in the gym, abs glistening, floppy hair artfully tousled. Even Soames has abs and biceps for heaven’s sake, as we saw in the scene of his wedding night with Irene.
I found the 2002 series on Netflix and rewatched that, which was much more satisfying. Damien Lewis is outstanding as Soames and Gina McKee conveys Irene’s self-contained, cool distance very well (unlike Millie Gibson’s giggly girl – not blaming Gibson, it’s the script & direction that’s the problem). It stays pretty close to the books in terms of plot (with some inevitable streamlining and trimming of peripheral characters).
There’s really no comparison between the adaptations, but I daresay I will continue to hate-watch the C5 version just to see how they deal with some of the plot developments, even if it irritates me enormously. If this was called, I don’t know, The Bridgertons or The Downtons, it would be soapy fun, but they are laying claim to John Galsworthy’s characters and if I were JG I’d be figuring out how to haunt everyone who dreamt up this mess.
Frauds
Suranne Jones and Jodie Whitaker are superb as two ex-con artists who team up for ‘one last job’. It’s funny and touching, and I would watch these two in anything.
The Gold
I’d skipped this when Series 1 aired a while back, but having been told very firmly by friends whose judgement I trust that it deserved to be watched, I then binged it and had not a moment’s regret. Splendid performances, very well written, an admirable avoidance of clichés and stereotypes. I very much liked Hugh Bonneville’s Boyce, who managed to convey both a downbeat stoicism and an absolute driving commitment to solve the case, but Tom Cullen’s portrayal of John Palmer is outstanding.
The Guest
This goes from 0 to 90 in the space of one episode – improbabilities pile up and really, the only way to approach this is just to suspend disbelief and go with it. I don’t mind this over the top approach as long as it’s well done, even if it is silly.
The Hack
Fascinating, if perhaps a little longer than it needed to be. There are two strands, which come together in the later episodes – David Tennant as the journalist who investigated and uncovered the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, and Robert Carlyle as the detective investigating the murder of Daniel Webster. It generates much righteous indignation, but inevitably the outcome is frustrating – the News of the World might be history but there is no shortage of disgraceful journalism these days, and the Daniel Webster case remains unsolved.
Hostage
Here my fave Suranne Jones is PM, wrestling with various domestic and international crises, one of which results in the kidnapping of her husband in French Guiana. Julie Delpy is great as her French opposite number. Entertainingly balances suspense and political intrigue.
I Fought the Law
The true story of Ann Ming, who ‘fought the law’ to get justice for her murdered daughter Julie, with Sheridan Smith (in a classic Sheridan Smith performance) as Ann. Obviously the heart of the drama is the personal tragedy and trauma of the murder and its aftermath (Ann Ming was the one to discover her daughter’s body, after the police had failed to do so despite allegedly intensive searches of the house), but there’s also a fascinating legal thread about the concept of double jeopardy, which Ming was instrumental in overturning.
Insomnia
This was quite eerie and disturbing, but it got less plausible as it went on and the final episode packed way too much in at the expense of any deeper examination of character or motive. We were left, ultimately, with the only explanation being the least plausible one, and with the impact of the events particularly in that final episode being seemingly glossed over. And the final, final shot, actually made a nonsense of that implausible explanation (I’m trying very hard not to spoilerise here). The performances were good though, from Vicky McClure, Tom Cullen (see above re The Gold), Leanne Best and Lyndsey Marshal.
The Invisibles
I saw this described as a French Slow Horses, which it isn’t. It’s about a unit that investigates unidentified corpses, and it’s enjoyable, if a bit formulaic.
The Last Anniversary
There were good things about this, but many of them were squandered in a rushed ending where the mystery was supposedly solved but in a way that strained credulity beyond breaking point (see Insomnia, above), and then strained credulity again with a cheesy resolution where everyone was somehow absolutely fine all of a sudden and everything was nice. It was fun along the way, and it was lovely to see Miranda Richardson, and also the brilliant Danielle MacDonald (loved her in The Tourist).
Leonard & Hungry Paul
I was recommended to watch this as an example of gentle TV and I’m glad I did. I watch a lot of murdery TV, and a lot of heavy documentaries, and I need to mix in a bit of TV that might warm rather than chill my heart, that’s funny and touching and, I suppose, nice. All Creatures (the current version) is usually my go-to in this category (see above), but it’s good to have some other sources of niceness. It’s not enough just to be nice, of course, for it to be worth watching the writing has to be good, the characters have to be well-written and well-played, and there has to be some depth in there, some emotional heft. Leonard & Hungry Paul ticked all those boxes.
The Line
This is Un Village Francais, which I’d heard about but not found until v recently, thanks to the change of title. The line referred to is the demarcation line between the Occupied and Unoccupied zones, and the complicated nature of that demarcation (the Vichy government, enthusiastic collaborators with the Nazis, were in charge in the unoccupied zone so it wasn’t a haven of freedom or democracy) is portrayed very effectively. That’s the strength of this series. Because it takes a soap opera format, our core characters over seven seasons encounter all aspects of the Occupation, and how they cope with it – try to survive it – is portrayed in a subtle and nuanced way. Very few collaborate out of conviction, most out of expediency. Almost all have compromised, and so people we have admired and respected over six seasons may be on trial in the seventh. I have to admit that the seventh season was problematic, not because of the treatment of the complexities of the aftermath of the war, but because some storylines were over-extended whilst others were dealt with rather brusquely, and, most of all, the frequent use of sequences where one of the characters not only ‘sees’ someone who is dead, but has a conversation with them. Very tiresome. But a small gripe in the scheme of things. I’m not a historian but I have read a great deal about the Occupation of France and found no inaccuracies – even where an incident seemed initially improbable, on investigation it proved to have been very accurately portrayed.
The Miss Marple Mysteries
BBC4 very kindly reshowed all the Joan Hickson Marples, and I thoroughly enjoyed them all. She is the definitive Miss Marple, those eyes are piercing rather than twinkly and when one character describes her as ‘a cobra in a twin set’ you know exactly what he means. When she has the perp in her sights she deals with them with cold contempt, and anger on behalf of the victims of the crime. I always found Poirot a bit irritating, but Hickson’s Marples are very satisfying classic mysteries.
Mix Tape
An absolute delight. The bits filmed in Sheffield were a lot of fun, and the idea of a romance told through songs recorded on a cassette tape is poignant and charming. Excellent script and performances. I read the book and was very interested to see the changes to the plot – I can’t say any more without spoilers for both TV series and book…
Outrageous
The Mitford sisters are endlessly fascinating. This is based on the collective biography by Mary Lowell, which, to my mind, goes rather gently on the fascism, perhaps wanting to balance it out with Jessica M’s hardline communism. The TV series only gets us to 1936 so I hope there will be another series at least to take us through the war years and beyond, and I will have to see in that case how that moral balancing act is handled once we get to the nub of what Nazism and Stalinism are about.
Paradise
Absolutely superb. Sterling K Brown is totally compelling in the lead, and the plot manages to twist and turn without sacrificing the integrity of narrative or character. I’m saying nothing more – it’s brilliant and I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes a good thriller.
Prisoner 951
This dramatisation of the events following Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s abduction as she tried to return to the UK after visiting family in Iran is compelling and maddening. It certainly didn’t leave me with any positive impressions of the FO or the succession of Foreign Secretaries who assured Richard Ratcliffe that they were doing everything they possibly could, whilst being unable to identify anything they actually had done. I had no positive views of Boris Johnson anyway, and his remark that Nazanin was in Iran ‘training journalists’ was a bit of typical Johnson carelessness – he must have known that she was there on holiday to see her parents and that this entirely incorrect statement could be used against her (as it was).
The Ridge
A NZ/British murder mystery which doesn’t go where one expects it to go, so it keeps the viewer on their toes. Lauren Lyle (seen recently as Karen Pirie) is a brilliant protagonist – there’s not a great deal I can say without risking spoiling things for you, but it was a cracker.
Scrublands: Silver
I haven’t seen the first series, but from the allusions made in this, it seems that Mandalay, the rather gloriously named partner of the journalist hero, has an unfortunate knack to find herself in the midst of bloody mayhem. This is well written, and it was a compelling drama, albeit with the occasional well-worn crime fiction trope popping up.
The Serpent Queen
Dialogue totally contemporary – fine by me, those prithees can get a bit tiresome, but it walks a fine line, if the dialogue suggests ideas/attitudes that would not have occurred or been understood in 16th century France/Italy. I think it gets away with it, as it does with the asides to camera, allowing Catherine de Medici to commentate on the action. She’s a fascinating figure, historically and as portrayed here – by Liv Hill as a young woman and then by the always magnificent and compelling Samantha Morton in later life. It’s been compared to The Great (another Catherine, this time the Russian Empress), but I never saw that so can’t judge whether this is, in comparison, not Great but just good, as some reviews suggested. I am enjoying it – I don’t know this period of French history well, but have encountered bits of it in various historical novels that I devoured as a teenager and more recently in Dumas’ La Reine Margot and the brilliant Patrice Chereau film of that book.
Shooting the Past/Perfect Strangers
BBC4 has been re-showing some of the best TV dramas from the archives, and these two from Stephen Poliakoff were fascinating. I’ve linked them not just because the writer (and some cast members) are in common but because of the theme of photography and memory which is central to both. Beautiful writing, superb performances.
Smoke
Lord, this is dark. I thought I knew what I was in for, but then it took a rather violent swerve and nothing was as I’d expected. Grim and dark and, whilst very well done, requiring a certain robustness of mood to be able to deal with it all.
Stranger Things
The last ever series, and I both don’t want it to end and feel that it’s right that it should. At the time of writing, I will still have the Christmas Day batch of episodes and the final final episode to watch, so I may add a note to next year’s first screen review blog about how they brought the series to a close, but meantime, it is as brilliant as ever, intense, genuinely scary, funny and clever. I cannot understand why M and I didn’t watch it, since our shared love of Buffy and of Stephen King’s opus makes it so very much our kind of thing. But we didn’t, and so I have watched it on my own, constantly wanting to turn to him and comment on some aspect of the plot. I’ve loved every minute of it, anyway.
Trespasses
A love story set during the Troubles between a Protestant barrister and a Catholic school-teacher was never going to be all hearts and flowers – it is gripping and moving, with superb performances from the two leads. Tom Cullen is the barrister – and he makes full use of his slightly rakish charm whilst conveying his deeply held convictions about justice. Lola Pettigrew is the teacher, fresh from portraying Dolours Price in Say Nothing. Excellent supporting performances too from Gillian Anderson and Martin McCann (Blue Lights).
The War Between the Land and the Sea
Given that Doctor Who is in something of a limbo at the moment, with the collapse of the Disney deal, the abrupt departure of Ncuti Gatwa and the currently puzzling re-appearance of Billie Piper, it’s good to have this Whoverse drama, with UNIT and what we used to call Sea Devils, and Russell Tovey as an everyman admin person who finds himself suddenly in a key role in the titular war.
Documentary
The Beatles Anthology
We saw this series when it was first released in the ’90s, but it’s long enough ago that some bits of it don’t seem in the least familiar, even if other clips are very much so. It’s a joy to hear the songs – I don’t play them anywhere near as often as they deserve. The final, extra episode felt very much tacked on though. All it really offers is the insight into the process of recording the two ‘new’ Beatles songs based on John’s home demos. But that doesn’t take away from the series overall the freshness of hearing the story told only through clips, songs and their own words (plus those of George Martin, Derek Taylor and Neil Aspinall), giving context to the songs. And it seemed particularly apt to be seeing and hearing John (the Beatle I always loved best) on and around the 45th anniversary of his death.
Becoming Led Zeppelin
As the title suggests, this covers the early careers of Plant, Bonham, Jones & Page, and the early years of the band. Very interesting, even if I’m not a massive Zep fan, and find their live performances a bit samey… The focus is, refreshingly, on the music rather than the misdemeanours of the band members (on the rock’n’roll, rather than the drugs’n’sex).
Copa 71
A lot of the documentaries I watch are a bit on the grim side. This one is a joy. It tells the story of the Women’s World Cup competition in 1971 in Mexico, and just to discover that that actually happened is wonderful. It was against the odds, football’s international leaders were not prepared to acknowledge women’s football at all, but somehow it happened, and lots of the players are still around to tell us what it meant to them. Of course, women’s football has now established itself firmly, with the Lionesses being cheered as ‘Engerland’ whenever they’re in international competition, in a way that I wouldn’t have envisaged even ten or so years ago. It’s brilliant, and I wish that those passionate footballers back in ’71 had been able to continue playing at national and international level, but they’re remembered and honoured for their determination in the face of male obduracy and idiocy.
The Death of Yugoslavia
The history of the countries which once formed Yugoslavia is about as complex and twisty as European history gets. I’d only the vaguest idea – I’m currently reading Rebecca West’s diaries of her own travels in the region just before WWII, and I feel I need a flow chart or a spreadsheet or something to keep hold of it all. What happened when Yugoslavia started to implode was all too predictable in light of that history, though one might have hoped it would be less brutal and bloody than it was. Some of the story told in The Death of Yugoslavia is horrifying, none of it is optimistic.
Educating Yorkshire
I never saw the series 10 years ago (though I have of course seen the moment when a boy who’d struggled with a stutter manages to recite a poem). The inspirational teacher who worked with that lad is now the head teacher, with a school motto of ‘Be nice. Work hard’ and the series conveys very well both the chaos and idiocy and charm of the kids and the determination of the staff to give them the best chance they can. Lots of very funny moments and lots too that is moving and inspiring.
Empire
Another exemplary David Olusoga documentary history series, this one covering the story of the British Empire, from its beginnings with the establishment of the East India Company to its gradual relinquishing of former colonies after WW2. Some of the history was familiar, other bits much less so. As always, it’s compellingly presented and thoroughly researched, and Olusoga isn’t afraid to get personal, or to explore the personal stories of interviewees. Of course the usual voices have been raised to say that he’s only showing the bad bits of our imperial history but this series, like Sathnam Sangera’s books on empire, shows beyond doubt how the very concept of empire led inexorably to injustice and exploitation.
Hurricane Katrina: Race against Time/Katrina: Come Hell and High Water
Two documentary series for the 20th anniversary of the disastrous failure of flood defences and emergency management in New Orleans when Katrina hit. They cover similar ground and interview some of the same people, with Spike Lee’s Come Hell… spending a bit more time looking at what happened to some of the survivors in the years after Katrina, including looking at the way in which high profile initiatives to rebuild homes in the predominantly poor, black areas of the city failed to deliver. Both series feature my hero, General Russel Honoré, who is seen tearing into the National Guard for pointing their guns at the people who have fled the rising waters, and whose blunt and outspoken leadership shifted the focus back to the humanitarian needs of the population rather than the largely false narrative of lawlessness and violence. What chills the blood in both of these series is the unmistakable, unapologetic racism of those who created that false narrative – the example is given of two news reports of people getting essential supplies from abandoned shops, described in one case neutrally and in the other as ‘looting’ – no prizes for guessing how black and white survivors were respectively characterised. And then we see a group of white vigilantes, gleefully describing their patrols to keep black survivors out of their neighbourhood, by lethal force…
Mr Scorsese
A fascinating three-part biography of Scorsese, from early days in the mean streets of New York to global success in the movies. As with Spielberg (who is one of the big names interviewed here), we can see the obsession with film start to take hold during his teenage years and it has never lessened that hold on him, at considerable cost to his health and his relationships. And even at this late stage in his career, Scorsese is still mining those early years and their gangsters and hoodlums, corruption and violence.
Shifty
Lucy Mangan describes Adam Curtis’s five-part series of films as a ‘purely UK-focused dissection of recent history, built around the idea that the growing atomisation of society has ushered in an age in which the concept of a shared reality on which we can all depend has dissolved – and with it any hope of a functioning democracy’. It takes us from 1979 to the end of the century and New Labour, via a dizzying kaleidoscope of clips and captions. I think it demands a rewatch.
2025 On Screen – the first half…
Posted by cathannabel in Film, Television on June 26, 2025
Film
Most films, as usual, were seen on the small screen, but I did get out to the pictures for A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, Queer, Macbeth and Bridget Jones. There’s the usual mix of drama (special mention to The Outrun, A Real Pain and The Quiet Girl), biopic (notwithstanding my issues with the genre – and special mention to A Complete Unknown which sidestepped them nicely), scifi/speculative fiction (Quiet Place Day One probably the best of this group), and films about race (The Nickel Boys and One Night in Miami stand out). Good to see the number of female directors: Mary Nighy for Alice, Darling (her debut), Zoe Kravitz for Blink Twice (also a debut), Nora Fingscheidt for The Outrun, Gina Prince-Bythewood for The Old Guard, Regina King for One Night in Miami (another debut), Ava duVernay for Origin – and to note that of these, four are women of colour.
I’ve tried to avoid spoilers but you take your chances. As always, I’ve omitted anything I gave up on in the first third, and anything which was so purely mediocre that I couldn’t think of anything to say about it.
The Affair
Adaptation of Simon Mawer’s excellent novel, The Glass Room. Frustrating really, it managed to make the timelines really confusing, and one whole strand of the story (that of the nanny with whom the husband had the titular affair) is denied the development that Mawer gives it. The performances are good, but it didn’t really work.
Alice, Darling
Anna Kendrick is excellent in this account of coercive control, and female friendship. The picture is built up subtly – we, and her friends, notice Alice’s tension each time her phone buzzes, her fiddling with her hair (we don’t immediately realise how much of it she is pulling out). A road trip with those friends is the catalyst for realisation and intervention, shown without undue melodrama, and not over simplified. I must watch Kendrick in something where she isn’t in peril from horrible men though – the last thing I saw her in was Woman of the Hour…
Blink Twice
Originally called Pussy Island… Guardian’s reviewer says, ‘It’s about misogyny and abuse and memory and materialism and gender performance and many other things that would be a spoiler to mention. It’s therefore less of a plate and more of a buffet, and while it might be beautifully served, it’s a film about excess that suffers from it too, a case of too much leaving us with too little.’ For myself, I’m not sure whether it explained too much or too little – certainly, whilst there was a lot that I enjoyed, I had questions.
A Bridge Too Far
I must have seen this before, given my penchant for WW2 films, but it didn’t seem over-familiar, and it was very striking how the various misjudgements and miscommunications which contributed to the tragedy of the Arnhem battles are shown so clearly, not glossed over or justified in any way. I was prompted to read Anthony Beevor’s account of the campaign, which confirmed that the film was surprisingly (given the general track record of war movies) accurate.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Very, very funny. Laugh out loud (I snorted a couple of times, which was OK because I wasn’t the only one in the cinema to do so), but with a lot of heart. As a widow, albeit rather a lot older than Bridget, I found some of the scenes really moving – and again, I wasn’t the only one sniffling audibly. You could see where the plot was going, of course (and after all, what sane woman would settle for Leo Woodall’s Roxter – a gorgeous puppy in human form – when Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mr Walliker is around?) but that mattered not at all.
Captain America: Brave New World
I have yet to fully acclimatise myself to new Cap. Of course, I knew, from Endgame and The Falcon & the Winter Soldier, that ‘my’ Cap was gone, but I still have to remind myself from time to time. However, I love Anthony Mackie and I’m invested. My only problem with the plot was the references to bits of lore that I either had never come across (I’m not familiar with the comics at all), or only come across in The Eternals, which I recall I largely dozed through (maybe not entirely its fault). Leaving that aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
Civil War
This wasn’t what I expected – I was anticipating more of an action movie, but this was thoughtful and introspective about journalistic ethics, amongst other things, whilst not pulling its punches when it came to the violence. Our protagonists are war correspondents, specifically, led by Kirsten Dunst as a hardened reporter who has seen the worst that human beings can do to one another, and been damaged by what she has seen. All four of the group that we follow through the film in some way need the adrenalin of following the violence and recording the horror. The titular civil war plays out, but it could be any conflict, anywhere, and these people would be there.
A Complete Unknown
I’d expected to enjoy this with reservations, given my issues with so many biopics. But I loved it. Dylan does not lend himself to the traditional biopic format. Here we learn nothing about his life before he rocks up in New York, already a singer with a few of his own songs ready or bubbling away. Not to mention the fact that Dylan told people all sorts of tales about his life before New York, most of which were fairly obviously untrue – he invented himself as he went along. There are no personal crises – for his unfortunate girlfriends perhaps, and for Seeger and others who saw what they wanted to see in him and felt betrayed – but not for Bob. It’s interesting to compare with director James Mangold’s earlier biopic, Walk the Line, from twenty years previously, also an excellent film with superb performances but which follows the format pretty faithfully – and of course Cash, the subject of that movie, has a supporting role here. Chalamet was wonderful, as were the rest of the cast (esp. Edward Norton as Seeger, and Monica Barbaro as Baez). And the real triumph was the way in which the music told so much of the story – not just the lyrics, but the music, and the performance of the music.
Doubt
Superb, subtle, troubling and with so many outstanding performances. In particular, this was the movie that made Viola Davis a big name, albeit in a small part – she blazed out of the screen, and somehow unsettled everything, in just a few moments.
Frida
The Roger Ebert site review says that ‘Sometimes we feel as if the film careens from one colorful event to another without respite, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life did, too’. And that is one of the problems with biopics generally, but even more so with a life as full of drama and colour as Kahlo’s. Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina are great as Kahlo and Rivera – they are both ‘a lot’, infuriating and mercurial, and their relationship is as tempestuous as that suggests, with both parties being pretty damn unreasonable at least some of the time. The most notable thing, apart from the performances, is the way the director uses visual imagery – a bluebird flying from Frida’s hand during the trolley crash, and gold leaf falling on her cast.
The Gorge
Daft and thoroughly enjoyable scifi actioner. It rapidly became apparent that it would not do to think too rigorously about the plot, so I just went with it.
His Three Daughters
And what a trio! Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen bicker and grieve as the tensions in caring for and even spending time with their dying father bring all sorts of memories and misunderstandings to the surface. Brilliant.
The Holdovers
Gentle without being sentimental, this was the perfect film for New Year’s Day as we curled up on the sofa after too little sleep and slightly too much wine the night before. It’s not a feelgood movie exactly – there’s too much pain here for that – but it’s sympathetic and hopeful and with marvellous performances from Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in particular.
I, Tonya
Multiple layers of unreliable narration, gobsmacking ice-skating, and bravura performances from Margot Robbie and Allison Janney – hugely enjoyable.
The Invisible Woman
I watched this, by coincidence, shortly after watching Priscilla (see below) and was struck by the similarities, despite the very different setting. Of course I’m not comparing Dickens to Elvis exactly, but both men used their age and even more their fame to control the younger woman. The title of this film could apply equally aptly to Priscilla as to Ellen Ternan. If anything, this account downplays Dickens’ cruelty to his wife, but Ralph Fiennes doesn’t sanitise his relationships, and Joanna Scanlan powerfully conveys her devastation at being cast aside.
Jude
Dark and doom-laden adaptation of Hardy’s darkest and most doom-laden novel. Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet are both excellent, and it doesn’t feel melodramatic, because we feel the accumulating weight of all the forces that are against them, individually or together, so that the devastating denouement seems inevitable. Not a fun watch but exceptionally well done.
Macbeth
National Theatre production with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo – the performances are outstanding, as one would expect. The whole thing is stripped down in terms of the set and streamlined in terms of the absence of act and scene breaks. The latter has one slight disadvantage – there are a couple of bits in the script which don’t totally make sense without a break to indicate the passage of even a little bit of time – but it’s very minor. I’ve seen some superb Macbeths on screen over the years – Denzil Washington & Frances McDormand, Michael Fassbender & Marion Cotillard, Christopher Eccleston & Niamh Cusack, and going back further in time, Jon Finch & Francesca Annis and this may be the finest (with Denzil & Frances a very strong contender).
No. 24
Norwegian WW2 drama focusing on a hero of the Resistance. What makes this distinctive is the framing it gives, as he talks decades later at an event for schoolchildren, and fields difficult questions about what he did for the cause. It doesn’t give easy answers and that’s refreshing.
The Nickel Boys
Powerful adaptation by RaMell Ross of Colson Whitehead’s brilliant novel, which uses the device that we see everything from a first-person perspective, and the narrative builds through these flashes of imagery or memory, in a way that’s both deeply disturbing and very moving. I won’t say more about this because it isn’t a gimmick, it’s at the heart of what happens, and you need to see it to get the full impact.
The Old Guard
Intriguing, intelligent and entertaining superhero movie about a hard-bitten team of unkillable soldiers, which gives us plenty of action but also develops the characters and explores what it does to them to be killed, over and over again and to see each other being killed over and over again. There was talk of a sequel, which I’d happily watch, but it’s not emerged yet.
One Night in Miami
This is brilliant. Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay (shortly to become Muhammad Ali) and NFL star Jim Brown did actually meet up on one night in Miami, and this is their imagined conversation. It’s long on talk and short on action but this is not in any way a failing when the talk is as dynamic, as full of tension and pain and hope as this. All four performances (Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm, Eli Goree as Cassius, Aldis Hodge as Jim and Leslie Odom Jr as Sam) are outstanding. Superb direction from Regina King.
The Order
Solid and compelling drama about neo-Nazis in the US. It eschews melodrama for understatement, despite the highly dramatic nature of the events, with strong performances from Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult in particular.
Origin
Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste was ground-breaking, and this film (directed by Ava duVernay) tells her story, of the research and writing that led to its publication, at a time of great personal trauma for her. Excellent performance from Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Wilkerson, and it’s a fascinating and moving drama.
The Outrun
Saoirse Ronan is extraordinary. When isn’t she? This is a non-linear narrative of addiction and (hoped for) recovery, set for the most part on Orkney, where Rona confronts her addiction and her relationship with her parents (one bipolar/alcoholic, the other having found God) and the uncompromising landscape. It’s never sentimental, often very low key (in the Orkney scenes at least). And Saoirse Ronan is extraordinary.
Paddington in Peru
Not entirely necessary, but thoroughly enjoyable. Antonio Banderas and Olivia Colman were clearly having a blast.
The Piano Lesson
Based on one of August Wilson’s stage plays, this is a supernatural drama, with a fabulous cast (Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Deadwyler, John David Washington amongst others). It has been described as ferocious Southern Gothic, and it’s intense and moving.
Priscilla
Another ‘invisible woman’ (see above). We see Elvis through her eyes, as a lovestruck teenager, and then as a fearful, isolated and lonely wife, as he cheats on her, encourages her to take a variety of pills, keeps her away from his life on tour and from friendships with contemporaries – controls all aspects of her life. She is touchingly portrayed by Cailee Spaeny (also seen in Civil War), who conveys her naivety, her headstrong teenage determination to be with Elvis, and her painful realisation that this relationship will never be what she dreamed it would be.
Queer
An adaptation of William Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical account, with Daniel Craig on mesmerising form, seedy and needy, as a gay (queer) writer travelling in Mexico and Ecuador and picking up random men before falling for a younger man. Reviewers variously describe the sexual content as explicit or coy, which presumably depends on what you’ve been used to seeing on screen previously, though it does remind me how we are all inured to straight sex scenes on TV and in film and how much less so to gay sex. But I wasn’t really expecting the veering into dream and hallucinatory sequences, and the later parts of the film were sometimes baffling, sometimes alarming, sometimes gross… My brother (previously seen in Conclave) was in this as well though to my shame, and despite knowing that he was a barman (makes a change from clerical roles) I failed to spot him. Lesley Manville turns up, in an extraordinary and vanity-free performance that just shows what a marvel she is. I was thinking on and off throughout Queer of Under the Volcano (the book, rather than the film), and how that left me feeling quite woozy, as if I’d been overdoing things myself.
The Quiet Girl
A quiet film, a perfect film. Everything in this adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Foster is about the tiny details, the repetition of images, and very little is about what is said. Catherine Clinch’s performance as 12-year-old Cait is extraordinary. The end made me sob but along the way I was moved by those tiny details, Cait having her hair brushed with such tender care, a biscuit left on a kitchen table without any words being spoken (and that biscuit being squirrelled away in a pocket rather than scoffed straight away), Cait’s joy in her daily runs to the post box at the end of the lane. Wonderful.
The Quiet Place Day One
The Quiet Place launched us straight into a world where noise was deadly dangerous, and survivors had adapted to live with as little sound as possible. Here we see how this came about. It’s not a prequel in the sense that it focuses on the family at the centre of the original movie; here we see Lupita N’yongo and Joseph Quinn navigating a terrifying new world, and it’s an excellent and genuinely heart-stopping drama even though we know from the outset what the characters don’t, that silence is the only way to survive.
A Real Pain
Outstanding. The volatile emotional shifts of Kieran Culkin’s Benji take the audience with him – we laugh out loud and then are reduced to silence and to tears, at one moment identifying with and admiring him, and at the next understanding why Eisenberg’s David finds him so exhausting and frustrating. It frequently subverts our expectations, using Benji as a catalyst, and unsettles our assumptions about how one should respond to Holocaust sites. I loved the very low-key scene where they go to lay stones at the apartment where their grandmother lived. And the ending.
Rocketman
This one gets past my biopic problem by being fantastical rather than ploddingly realistic, and Taron Egerton does a fabulous job with the role of Elton John.
Santocielo
Endearingly silly film about angels and an unexpected pregnancy. Featuring Aidan Hallett as an angel.
The Six Triple Eight
The story sounded, and was fascinating, but sadly the treatment is so clichéd, the script is either inspirational speechmaking or folksy girly chitchat from a rather stereotyped group of characters, and the central topic, of just how a battalion of African-American women managed to turn around a monumental backlog of mail to get letters to soldiers on the front line and families back home, gets a much more cursory treatment than it deserves. It wasn’t just determination to prove that they could do it, bloody hard work, or loyalty to their commanding officer (an excellent Kerry Washington) – it was the imaginative application of skills they’d learned in their pre-army lives, and I really wanted to know much more about that, rather than yet another scene with our heroine weeping in the Ladies over her lost fiancé.
The Sound of Metal
Deafness and signing has been a bit of a theme in this year’s watching – see below for Code of Silence and Reunion. Here, Riz Ahmed’s Ruben has to come to terms with hearing loss, a shattering experience for a musician. As the Guardian’s reviewer says, he describes ‘the physicality of signing – of using the whole body as an expressive tool. … While Ruben may hide behind his words, Ahmed has never been more emotionally expressive than when communicating through ASL.’
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Very funny, very clever, and the perfect follow-up to a family Christmas meal.
Television
Loads of crime here (as per). A lot of it is pretty standard fare, but there’s some that stand out, notably Fargo, Code of Silence, Reunion and The Madness, and in the realm of true crime, A Cruel Love. I do a lot of grumbling below (as per) about the clichés that infect almost everything in this genre. The scene where our hero is trying to download something from a computer that’s going really slow, and the direction makes it look as if the bad guy is right outside the room and must catch them at it but no! Bad guy comes into the room and there’s no sign of our hero, or his/her USB. The way apparently sensible people decide that it’s sensible to withhold absolutely vital information or circumvent the rules when it will quite obviously cause massive problems for them and everyone else when their lies or evasions are exposed. If the plot is solid enough, the performances persuasive enough and the writing (particularly the writing of character) clever enough, even these annoyances can be brushed aside. But all too often I get hacked off, and start heckling from the sofa and it does detract from my enjoyment. But nonetheless, if there’s a new crime drama out, I’ll probably give it a go.
There’s been some outstanding SF in the form of Andor, The Last of Us and Who, and outstanding drama with Adolescence. And just the one proper comedy – Shrinking. Looking at the list, I should probably watch more comedy, though I did actually laugh a lot at Fargo, Department Q, and White Lotus…
Special shout out to some actors whose work I’ve particularly enjoyed: Aimee Lee Wood in Toxic Town and The White Lotus, Rose Ayling-Ellis in Reunion and Code of Silence, and Robyn Malcolm in After the Party and The Survivors. And a sad farewell to some that we’ve lost since the start of 2025, each of whom played key roles in long-running series that we loved: George Wendt (Norm!), Loretta Swit (Hotlips Houlihan) and, heartbreakingly, Michelle Trachtenberg, Dawn in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who was only 39.
Adolescence
I’m not sure that I have much to add to the many column inches that this has generated. It is a superlative drama, not because of the technical triumph of the continuous shot, but because of the way it uses that technique to give the story breathing space, not rushing from one moment or location to the next. The performances are of course brilliant, and heartbreaking.
After the Party
Excellent NZ psychological drama, in which we don’t know for sure if a crime has been committed, and in which the main protagonist (a glorious performance by Robyn Malcolm) is – intentionally – extremely annoying and prompted a lot of shouting at the telly, but remained absolutely convincing throughout.
Andor
I’ve never been a full-on Star Wars person, even though I’ve seen all of the films (apart from that other trilogy which I understand I don’t need to bother with), and enjoyed all of them, especially Rogue One, for which Andor is a prequel (R1 is in turn a prequel to A New Hope – have I got that right? Someone will undoubtedly tell me if not). Anyways, I’m not (evidently) totally au fait with Star Wars lore, and so have been selective in which spin-off series I’ve watched. Of those, this is the best – great storytelling, great, complicated characters, real tension. And great performances from a rather classy cast. Lovely to see Thierry Godard (previously known as Gilou from Spiral) pop up as one of the rebels on Ghorman, and I liked the fact that the Ghormanese (?) sounded like they were speaking French even though they obviously weren’t!
An’t Ei-lean (The Island)
Notable for being largely in Gaelic, with sub-titles. A decent crime drama, with the usual ingredients – including people behaving with unfathomable pinheadery (did our heroine really imagine that her past links with the victim and family would remain undiscovered if she investigated the crime?).
Black Doves
The body count is sky high, the violence quite startling, and it’s all extremely entertaining, with a lot of rather black humour, and excellent turns from Keira Knightley, Sarah Lancashire, and Ben Whishaw (a very long way from Paddington).
The Black Forest Murders
A good, solid German crime drama based on a series of real murders. It’s understated and unsensational and conveys the tedium and frustration of investigation, without being either tedious or frustrating (see also Breakthrough, in a similar vein).
Black Mirror
As usual, this latest season is a mixed bag. Personally, I loved Hotel Reverie (which features on some people’s least fave episode list, but there you go), Common People, Bete Noire (though I wasn’t totally on board for the ending) and Eulogy but wasn’t convinced by Plaything and USS Callister was fun but not as good as I’d anticipated. The casts are always stellar, and it’s at its best when the tech is not only interesting but imaginable as an extrapolation of what can be done now.
Black Snow
Australian cold case crime series – I watched Season 2 having not seen 1. Entertaining enough, but the lead detective is a pain – insubordinate yob with a messed up personal life who nevertheless ends up solving the case by breaking all the rules, which is hardly a fresh take.
The Bombing of PanAm 103
I haven’t seen the other recent dramatisation of these events, so can’t compare their respective approaches, but this one walked a slightly uneasy line between a clear focus on the investigation, with its many dead ends, communication breakdowns and political minefields, and the personal stories of the bereaved. At heart it was a procedural drama, and most at home in that arena. The opening episode, portraying the crash itself, was extremely well handled, and movingly conveyed the shock, confusion and grief of the relatives of passengers, and the local people who lost homes and family members. But the attempt to keep that thread running through the rest of the drama was less successful and whilst it stayed the right side of maudlin, it did feel a little like an obligation, and not the real focus of interest. Whether I would have been persuaded by the other dramatisation that the wrong conclusion was reached in the investigation I don’t know. And whether this drama was ‘necessary’ as some reviewers asked – well, how much of the drama I watch is in any sense necessary? In the case of dramatisations of real events, I’d say that they do serve a purpose. I remember Lockerbie vividly, not through any personal connection but just through watching the news around that time – but my recollections are very fragmentary – anyone even ten years or so younger than me might well barely remember it – and it was historically and politically significant.
The Breakthrough
Swedish drama about an unsolved murder and the dogged commitment of a police officer to find the perpetrator. Low key and subtle.
Call the Midwife
I’d seen the odd episode, but mainly the Christmas specials which inevitably ladled on the sentiment a bit lavishly given the season. So I started at the beginning and worked my way through from 1957 to 1971, and was absolutely fascinated, and impressed by how hard-hitting it often is, even if it tends to leave one with at least glimmers of hope and possibilities of redemption. Given that I cry every time I see a baby being born on screen, this meant at least three guaranteed weeps per episode, and that’s not reckoning with the wider storylines, thalidomide, backstreet abortions, wretched poverty and so on. I found the treatment of religious faith fascinating too, and strangely unalienating to me as an atheist viewer. I could do without Vanessa Redgrave’s pious opening and closing words though – for the early episodes, where old Jennie was reflecting on young Jennie’s experiences, this was fine, but once that connection was lost, all we had was platitudes and pieties, and Redgrave’s voice adds way more gravitas to the words than they can carry. However, I will be there for as many series as there are, will undoubtedly weep in every episode and if I have to grit my teeth for the occasional sentimentality overload that’s a small price to pay.
Code of Silence
Two thrillers on TV this half-year, in which deafness and lip-reading play a huge part (see also Sound of Metal in the film list above). See below for Reunion – both star Rose Ayling-Ellis, whose star has risen considerably since Strictly brought her to the attention of non-Eastenders fans, and she’s superb in both. This one was particularly fascinating as it showed the process of lip-reading, how some sounds are impossible to distinguish from one another, so the lip-reader has to construct the words by combining what is clear with what is likely given the context. It’s very impressive. The plot veered into improbability and thriller clichés at various points but maintained a high level of tension to the end. And whilst Alison did behave recklessly at various points, her motivation – a mixture of the intoxicating effect of being really listened to and taken seriously, and her attraction to one of the people she’s being asked to spy on – was plausible (thanks to Ayling-Ellis’s performance as much as to the script).
A Cruel Love
Excellent account of Ruth Ellis’s story, with a great performance by Lucy Boynton in the lead role. Coincidentally I was reading Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men whilst watching this series (not literally at the same time, you understand) about a miscarriage of justice in which a Somali man was executed for a murder he had not committed. Ellis, of course, did kill David Blakeley, but that she was hanged for it was as much to do with society’s disapproval of her personal morality as with the strength of the case for first-degree murder.
The Day
This Belgian series portrays the events – v dramatic events, starting with a robbery and the taking of hostages – of one day, in twelve episodes, by showing us the same incidents from different perspectives (the police, the hostages, the perpetrators). It maintains the tension pretty well until the final couple of episodes by which point I admit I was starting to weary a little.
Department Q
By rights I should have been annoyed by this. The lead character is a misanthropic maverick who never does what he is supposed to, is rude to absolutely everyone and gets himself into unnecessary pickles en route to (of course) solving the case. The cast is great but as so many crime dramas show, that’s unfortunately not always enough. It turns out though that when the dialogue is this sharp and funny (very dark humour), when the characters behave with consistency even if they are consistently being dicks, and when there is, despite all the above, real heart in some of the relationships, I can thoroughly enjoy the ride, and will look forward to another season.
Dickensian
I have no idea why I didn’t watch this when it came out in 2015, and even less idea why it was cancelled after only one season. I loved every minute of it, and Dickens’ world is so rich and complex that they could have continued to mine it for ideas as good as these. But at least they did this, with a splendid cast, beautifully written, and a joy for anyone who loves the books.
Doctor Who
I loved Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor. He brought something different, something joyous, a smile that could light up galaxies, a lightness that belied his capacity for anger. I had hoped for a much longer tenure, but I guess Who got him just as his star was rising, and there were too many opportunities out there for him to resist. We don’t know (at least at the time of writing) for how long RTD had known that he’d only have Gatwa for two seasons, so whether urgent rewrites were required to factor in a regeneration, or whether that was always the plan. And we don’t know (at the time of writing) whether Billie Piper is returning as the Doctor or in some other capacity (the credits didn’t say, as they have done in previous regen episodes, introducing BP ‘as the Doctor’…). All that aside, Gatwa’s second season was just the right mix of complicated ideas, humour, tech and legend. I particularly loved ‘The Story and the Engine’, with its Lagos setting and use of West African folklore (and names – Abena means girl born on a Tuesday, which I know because I am an Abena, or would have been had I been born Akan/Ashanti). Allons-y, I hope, to more Who, whoever the Doc turns out to be. But I’ll miss this Doc.
Dope Girls
This reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety and indeed, I discovered that both are based on the same real woman, Kate Meyrick, who ran nightclubs in Soho during the 20s and 30s, and was arrested and imprisoned on a regular basis. The series takes liberties with the historical Meyrick but the setting is vividly conveyed, and the performances are great. Julianne Nicholson’s performance as Meyrick (Kate Galloway in the series) also had quite strong Shauna from Yellowjackets vibes at times.
Fake
We know from the outset really that Joe is a no-good SOB. That Birdie chooses not to see the red flags is, however, understandable in context. And if the series hadn’t been called Fake, would we have seen them quite so early or so clearly? The emotional tension is built up skilfully and the performances are great – and whilst we aren’t in any doubt that Joe is a wrong ‘un, we don’t know quite what he’s up to, and the drama doesn’t give us easy or tidy resolutions. Very well done.
Families Like Ours
Brilliant drama, set in a near-future Denmark where climate change has forced the country to, in effect, shut down and its citizens to migrate to whichever countries will offer them a home. It’s a ‘what if’ narrative, and it tackles lots of aspects – the scope for corruption as those who know what’s coming try to sell up before other people realise that property and land will soon be worthless, the resistance of other countries to an influx of climate refugees, and the smaller scale impact on families as members are forced to take different routes to safety, and some to take huge risks to reach each other. What has remained with me, more than the personal dramas, is the way it portrays the impossible choices, the inexorable sequences of events and the way in which potential sanctuaries very quickly pull up the drawbridge.
Fargo
One of the best of the series spinning off from the original Coen Brothers film. Juno Temple is wonderful in the lead role, and right from the start, I’m rooting for her, as I did for Frances McDormand’s Marge, and literally sitting on the edge of my seat and holding my breath during the tensest bits of the plot. As always there’s lots of dark humour here too.
Get Millie Black
A cop series set in Jamaica, with a cop who’s on a personal mission, never knowingly does what her superiors tell her to, and so on. Excellent plot, nevertheless, and a protagonist who is convincing even when annoying.
I, Jack Wright
Cracking cast play various members of a family whose members may or may not be involved in the death of patriarch Jack Wright, but who are all up to something and lying to pretty much everyone else about everything. It’s very clearly set up for a second series and I’ll be there for it. Written by Chris Lang, the writer behind Unforgotten which is consistently one of the best series out there.
The Last of Us
Utterly gripping, and for those of us who have never played the game, there are absolute gut punches in this second season. I won’t say more for fear of spoilers, but it’s beautifully done, and Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are superb as the two main leads.
The Madness
Colman Domingo is splendid in this paranoia fest as a man who finds himself being framed for murder, and we’re with him on every step of the way, as he tries to stay just ahead of the various forces who are closing in on him. It’s breathless and thrilling, and whether or not it’s entirely plausible, we don’t really fret, because we’re invested.
Malpractice
This starts off brilliantly as a study in just about controlled chaos on a psychiatric and an obstetrics ward, where staff are struggling to meet the needs of challenging patients whilst managing their own personal crises and pressure from management. The main protagonist behaves idiotically but notwithstanding that there are real issues and it’s all extremely tense. Towards the end it does get a bit generic thriller, with a whistleblower rocking up at the very last minute to save the day, and a dramatic showdown where the bad guys are exposed. That tends to sideline the more complicated (and very interesting) questions about how patients with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illnesses are treated in a medical context, or how life and death decisions can be made in complex situations, or about resourcing of psychiatric care, etc etc. But overall, a decent medical drama.
Miss Austen
A very different pace to much of the above (and below), with the ever-marvellous Keeley Hawes as Jane’s sister Cassandra, addressing the mystery of why many of Jane’s letters were destroyed after her death. It’s speculative, of course, but persuasive, and beautifully done. I also watched an excellent BBC documentary series, Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius and am hankering after a full Austen re-read – perhaps starting with Mansfield Park, the one I did for A level that I haven’t re-read since.
Missing You
It’s another Harlan Coban thriller. Plot holes aplenty, great cast rather wasted on shallow characterisation and clunky dialogue. You know what you’re getting with these, and they pass the time.
The Night Agent
Not a patch on the first series (with which I had some issues) – disbelief simply could not be suspended as the improbabilities multiplied with each episode, and our hero’s exceptionally annoying girlfriend behaved idiotically at every turn. I watched to the end, inevitably, but will try to resist series 3 if there is one.
The One that Got Away
A clever, complex narrative (an English language version of the Welsh drama, Cleddau), not without some of the usual crime drama tropes, but they’re used intelligently. I did want to shout at both the leads, but particularly Richard Harrington’s Rick, quite often, but they were both consistently drawn and convincingly played.
Patience/Astrid: Murders in Paris
Patience is a British remake of French series Astrid: Murders in Paris, and some episodes of the former follow very closely the original plot lines as well as the premiss, which is the semi-official recruitment of an autistic young woman who works in the archives in active investigation of crimes because of the way she observes minute details and perceives patterns. Ella May Purvis, who plays Patience, is herself autistic, and I found her performance particularly persuasive, and often very touching.
Prime Target
This started off well, with an intriguingly abstract concept (to do with prime numbers, though I can’t claim I entirely understood) but meandered off into standard thriller territory disappointingly quickly, with all the usual tropes deployed. The performances are good and the script decent, at least.
Protection
This had a cracking cast – Siobhan Finneran in the lead – and again an interesting premiss, this time about a breach of security regarding a family in witness protection – but again it got mired in too many of the standard crime drama elements. Nonetheless, it was pretty gripping.
Reunion
Initially I noted this one as a must-watch because it was filmed in and around Sheffield, including some locations very close to home. But in the end, I was so focused on watching the drama that I forgot to look out for the places I expected to recognise. As noted elsewhere (see Code of Silence and Sound of Metal) deafness has been an unexpected recurring theme in recent weeks. The protagonist has been failed by the education system, manipulated by the justice system and failed again by the prison and probation systems (‘oh dear, we forgot to book a BSL interpreter’, is a recurring motif, and the consequences of this are from from trivial). There’s a thread of real anger running through the plot and reflected in the powerful central performance by Matthew Gurney.
The Rig
Series 2 of this sci-fi environmental thriller (shades of John Wyndham) was let down by a terribly clunky script. I don’t remember Series 1 being as bad as this, and I am very sensitive to clunks. I suspect a third series is on the cards, but I might not bother, which is a shame because there are interesting ideas in there.
SAS Rogue Heroes
I loved both series of this. It’s odd in a way – if I met any of these mad bastards in real life I’d want to give them a wide berth, but the series humanises them without whitewashing the mad bastardry. The history of the invasion of Sicily and the battle for Termoli wasn’t familiar to me, and I know that the disclaimer broadcast at the start of every episode means that I can’t rely uncritically on this as a historical source, but it was interesting, and broadly accurate enough, nonetheless. Watching this kind of intense action heroics is something I’ve always enjoyed, and the WW2 context allows me to enjoy it without qualms, because these mad bastards are risking everything in the fight against a real evil.
See No Evil
This is from 2006, with Maxine Peake as Myra Hindley. I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch it but the cast (Maxine Peake in particular) suggested to me that it would not be schlocky or voyeuristic. We see events through the eyes of Myra’s sister Maureen, and her husband Dave – the latter was implicated early on in the murder of Edward Evans, but then cleared of involvement, and the impact of the crimes on both of their lives was huge and long-lasting. When we first meet Hindley and Brady, they have already murdered and so the only murder that we see (in glimpses) dramatically is that of Evans, as it was witnessed by Dave. This decision means that the focus is not on what Hindley and Brady did, but on the investigation and the repercussions of the case.
Shrinking
This made me laugh out loud more than anything else I watched on TV this year and also made me cry quite a lot. The cast is brilliant, the dialogue snappy and rude and funny, the humour and the heartbreak nicely balanced and interwoven. Harrison Ford is an absolute joy.
Strike: The Ink Black Heart
Based on by far the weakest of Robert Galbraith (aka J K Rowling)’s detective novels, the TV version does what it can but isn’t able to stop it being both muddled and rather tedious. It’s all about a cartoon but too many of the characters are cartoonish.
The Survivors
Adapted from one of Jane Harper’s excellent thrillers, this gets its claws into you right from the start and doesn’t let go. It’s not just about twists and cliffhangers, it’s about the legacy of a crime – grief and guilt – and how that shapes and twists relationships and communities.
This City is Ours
The territory is familiar – a crime family facing issues of succession and change and jostling for power amongst the younger generation. The cast is excellent – Sean Bean is always hugely watchable, and I’m always absurdly pleased when he retains his Yorkshire accent( even though here the setting is Scouse). And whilst it doesn’t offer any huge surprises in terms of the outworking of the plot (no, you can’t just walk away from OC, particularly when it’s a family business) it achieves real tension along the way, and some nicely nuanced characterisation.
Toxic Town
Based pretty closely on the real court case about a cluster of infant abnormalities resulting from toxic waste. Some characters are composites as is normal in these things, and it plays out v much like Mr Bates, especially in the scene where they’re thinking no one will turn up to the first meeting, and then there’s a trickle of people, and then a flood… The central performances are excellent – Jodie Whitaker, Claudia Jessie and Aimee Lou Wood as the three mothers at the heart of the case, and Rory Kinnear as the lawyer who decides to take the case on.
Towards Zero
Stylish and engaging Agatha Christie adaptation with a fab cast having a grand old time, and the dénouement keeping me, at least, guessing till the end. Christie at her best (for me usually the Marples rather than the Poirots) has a kind of darkness that lingers with you after the whodunnit question is answered and this isn’t one of those, but most entertaining.
The Vanishings
This has a basis in some true, unsolved cases where women disappeared. But unfortunately the series just uses that as an excuse for a clichéd women-in-peril set up, with far too many sub-plots and red herrings, characters behaving with unfathomable pinheadery and a ludicrously improbable dénouement that clearly sets up a Season 2 which I hope I will have the strength of character to resist.
Vera
Ah, Vera, I will miss you. A great character, with a strong supporting cast (including many who’ve gone on to even greater things, like Ben Kingsley-Adir and Cush Jumbo) and consistently well-written and structured plots. Refreshingly, the murders aren’t the baroque constructs of a fiendishly clever serial killer but rooted in people’s chaotic past and present lives (as with Unforgotten). And the landscapes are glorious.
Virdee
Speaking of ‘the baroque constructs of a fiendishly clever serial killer’… I was really, really disappointed in this. The plot holes were so numerous and so sizeable, the fiendishly clever serial killer’s motivation and intentions were so muddled, and it reminded me at times of the Bond movies where the evil mastermind intent on world domination, having Bond at his mercy, hangs about explaining things and generally engaging in displacement activity, thus giving Bond time to escape. The setting for Virdee was great, many of the characters were great, but the plot just got sillier and sillier and I lost patience.
The White Lotus
I caught on to this rather late, when everyone was talking about series 3 and a friend was incredulous that I’d never watched it. Huge, huge fun, with lots of characters to boo and hiss at (a minimum of one massively entitled man-baby per season, in particular), but always a couple to identify with or at least root for. I wasn’t very successful in avoiding spoilers (the perils of catching on to things rather late), so some of the shocks were not as shocking as they might have been, but the cast was outstanding, and I had a grand time.
Zero Day
I’m not sure I enjoyed this quite as much as Lucy Mangan, who described it as ‘first and foremost an astonishing amount of fun – firmly grounded by De Niro and his portrait of a good man struggling to do the right thing in a world that offers corruption at worst, and only compromise at best’. But it was fun, and De Niro was a blast, even if the denouement didn’t entirely convince.
Documentary
The Balkans: Europe’s Forgotten Frontier
Not a travel programme, as one might guess from the presenter. Katya Adler focuses on history (mostly very recent) and politics to explore the various new nations that make up the Balkans. Very interesting, mostly new territory for me.
Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation
I knew very little about the occupation of the Channel Islands, though I do remember a book I read as a child, set on a fictional island nearby, and written in 1941, about the early stages of invasion and occupation (Mary Treadgold’s We Couldn’t Leave Dinah). It seemed surprising that so little has been written about it, given that the islanders were the only Brits to experience occupation of their homes, and that their experiences are, in microcosm, those of occupied peoples in mainland Europe. But given how long it took for the full picture, the shades of grey, to emerge in relation to the experiences across the Channel – initially polarised into splendidly heroic resisters or scoundrelly collaborators, but actually much more complex as people negotiated how to survive – perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. The documentary is very well done – that it leaves me wanting to know more is a tribute rather than a criticism – with dramatised sequences drawn from the wartime diaries of a small number of islanders.
7/7 The London Bombings
Excellent account and analysis of the terrorist attack. Of course I remember the events from the time, but there was a lot here that I hadn’t known, particularly relating to the second, failed attack, and the killing of Jean Charles Menendez. The interviews with victims and first responders are powerful and profoundly moving.
The Lost Women Spies
I wish this had either been straight doc or straight drama. The hybrid approach here resulted (as it often does with these things) in rather wooden dramatic interludes, with frankly awful dialogue. A shame, given the power of the story it’s trying to tell. It would be almost impossible to make an account of the wartime service of Odette Hallowes, Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan dull, and this isn’t, but I winced at the scenes where Atkins and Buckmaster have conversations that seem to consist of one of them saying something and the other repeating it incredulously. And that these were included at the expense of seeing, for example, Inayat Khan’s capture and attempted escapes is bizarre.
No. 1 on the Call Sheet
A two-parter about the black actors who have achieved that status of no. 1 on the call sheet (even if not always no. 1 on the payroll), featuring, well, pretty much everyone you can think of who’s still with us (and it paid heartfelt and heartbreaking tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who isn’t). It wasn’t the deepest exploration of the issues but it wasn’t just a superficial celebration either, and many of the individual testimonies were very powerful.
Vietnam: The War that Changed America/Turning Point: The Vietnam War
Two fascinating, powerful documentary series. The first focuses on the impact of the war on America and Americans, whilst the second, the latest in the excellent Turning Point series (earlier series have covered 9/11, and the bomb and the Cold War), takes a more straightforward chronological approach, and includes interviews with Viet Cong fighters as well as US veterans. It’s pretty devastating stuff – not just the brutality but the cynicism of those who allowed the war not just to drag on but to escalate.
2024 On Screen – the second half
Posted by cathannabel in Film, Television on December 10, 2024
Most of what I watched at the cinema or at home during the second half of the year is here. It still feels strange to me to be watching the TV on my own. The plus side – no one is going to veto costume drama, literary adaptations or yet another WW2 drama – is very much offset by the downsides of not having someone to talk with about what I’ve just watched, to share the experience with. I’ve found that comedy, in particular, suffers from being watched solo. A few things have overcome that this year, but I’ve abandoned quite a few comedy series because it just felt weird. I’m also less keen on scary movies, for obvious reasons. Even with all the lights on, it’s a lot harder to shake off the creepy feeling if there’s no one to have a mundane conversation or a laugh with. With all that said, film and television take me outside of my own environment and my own company, broaden my mind (at best) and horizons, and (at best) lift my spirits. I’ve omitted from the account below things that were just ‘meh’, things that I abandoned after one or two episodes, and season x of things that I’ve been watching for a few years.
Big Screen
Most of the films in this half of the year were actually seen on the smaller screen. At the cinema I saw Radical, Electric Lady Studios, Gladiator II and Conclave. And perhaps fewer of the films were truly outstanding – I think I’d had a run of really top-notch films in the first half of the year. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t some absolutely excellent ones here – Anatomy of a Fall, Blitz, Conclave and Lady Macbeth stand out but I’d pick Perfect Days as my favourite (partly because it was so unexpected).
All About Eve (1950)
I have seen this before, obviously, but not for a very long time. There was a period in my twenties (I think) when there seemed to be Bette Davis movies on every Saturday afternoon, and it was glorious. I caught the second half of her earlier film Dark Victory just before this one, and it was instructive to see how things had changed – DV was very stagey – lots of big gestures, AAE much subtler and darker (I thoroughly enjoyed both). AAE is so well known that I can’t imagine watching it without knowing what Eve is up to, but whilst there isn’t that potential element of surprise, it’s still gripping to see how it all plays out, and the performances from Davis, Anne Baxter and Celeste Holm, are superb.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
I saw Sandra Huller in Zone of Interest not long before I watched this – she’s remarkable in both films. In many respects this is a classic mystery – a man falls to his death, but did he jump, fall by accident or was he pushed and if so by whom? We don’t really know till the end – even then I wasn’t totally certain I had put the pieces together correctly, so it merits a re-watch. Whilst that puzzle is the plot, what makes the film great is the drawing of the characters, especially Huller’s character Sandra, and how we see them from different points of view as the investigation continues. Excellent, gripping stuff.
Belle (2013)
I wanted to love this, and I certainly liked it, but it was somehow underwhelming. I’m not sure why. The story should be compelling enough, the performances are fine, but it was perhaps too conventional in its approach, and the parallel story of the Zong massacre needed more development (not just exposition) to be as powerful as it deserved.
Black and Blue (2019)
Cracking action thriller – shades of ’71 and Assault on Precinct 13 at times – with Naomie Harris as the Afghanistan vet newly recruited to the New Orleans PD only to find herself isolated from both the black community she grew up with and her new ‘blue’ community of cops. It hints at deeper issues (race, police corruption post-Katrina) but that’s not really what we’re about here – it’s a thrilling ride, and the tension ramps up quickly and then doesn’t let go.
Blitz (2024)
McQueen weaves a number of real stories – some very specific, like those of the Nigerian ARP Warden, and Ken ‘Snake-hips’ Johnson who died at the Café de Paris, others more representative, like the criminals who profited from the Blitz by robbing bombed buildings, or the firemen struggling to get the water through their hoses with the Thames at low tide – into his tapestry of life in the East End of London at the height of the Blitz. Saoirse Ronan is wonderful, as she always is, Paul Weller is excellent in an understated role as her dad, and Elliott Heffernan outstanding as 9 year old George. In many ways, it’s quite a traditional narrative, invoking – inevitably – other treatments of the era (Atonement, very specifically). (I was puzzled though by reviews which suggested The Railway Children as a reference point – aside from the fact that Blitz features (a) trains and (b) children, I see no real relationship there.) But McQueen’s visual imagination, and the way Hans Zimmer uses sound, go beyond that traditional approach. And the thread running through it all is that we are seeing the people that the traditional narrative of the Blitz and of ‘Blitz spirit’ left out, particularly the black Londoners. (See also Lucy Worsley’s documentary, Blitz Spirit, on iPlayer, which covers some of the same territory, almost certainly through many of the same sources.)
Bombshell (2019)
See also She Said, from 2022 – both films tell part of the #MeToo story. Bombshell is an account of how Roger Ailes, serial sexual harasser and bully at Fox, was brought down as the women started to talk, to each other and to lawyers. Whereas She Said is from the perspective of the journalists looking to uncover Harvey Weinstein’s regime of abuse, here we see things from the point of view of the women who may have prospered professionally but had to endure years of humiliation and the constant awareness that his favour was on a whim and could be withdrawn at any time. These are nuanced portraits, showing how so many women in the workplace survive by constantly masking, adapting, smiling, conforming, until they can’t do it any more. Variety‘s reviewer said that ‘Bombshell is a scalding and powerful movie about what selling, in America, has become. The film is about selling sex, selling a candidate, selling yourself, selling the truth. And about how at Fox News all those things came together’.
Carol (2015)
Superb. Blanchett and Mara are wonderful, both complicated, difficult to read, so that they continue to surprise us. The film always looks fabulous, but there’s a sense that we’re seeing surfaces, public personae, and that so much is hidden, as it had to be.
The Children Act (2017)
Good, solid adaptation of an Ian McEwan novel (one that I haven’t read). As in so many of McEwan’s books and films, the protagonists inhabit this very cultured, privileged world (everyone is a lecturer, a lawyer, a writer, with a big London house), and I do sometimes find that trying. But the ethical and philosophical questions with which Emma Thompson’s lawyer grapples are fascinating and she is excellent, as is Fionn Whitehead as the boy at the heart of that dilemma.
Churchill (2017)
With Brian Cox and Miranda Richardson as Winston and Clemmie, this should have been decent at least. But it wasn’t. The portrayal of Churchill was a caricature, his actions frankly unbelievable (seriously, on his knees praying for bad weather so that the D Day landings could not go ahead?) and his motivation opaque. One reviewer described it as ‘uniquely awful and tedious’. And from everything I have read, it is historical nonsense.
Coco (2017)
Top-notch Pixar. The animation is stunning, the folklore around the Day of the Dead is explained enough for the story to work, without weighing things down with exposition, the songs are great, and the ending made me weep. The notion of people dying finally when no one living still remembers them, was bound to connect with my own experiences of bereavement, and perhaps particularly with the long, slow bereavement of dementia… (Pixar’s previous excursion into the afterlife, Soul, drew on a whole different set of ideas and cultural traditions, but was also very touching, and very musical.)
Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
Gloriously funny adaptation of a gloriously funny book. A collection of superb actors, having enormous fun – Ian McKellen as the spiritual leader of the Quivering Brethren, Rufus Sewell, Eileen Atkins, Stephen Fry and more. And Kate Beckinsale is a joy as Flora Poste. I laughed out loud, quite often, which is something I find I don’t do so much these days, now I’m on my own. It felt good.
Colette (2018)
Good, solid biopic, focusing on the sexual politics of the time, with excellent performances from Keira Knightley and Dominic West.
Conclave (2024)
Based on the Robert Harris novel, this subtle, clever thriller (a thriller full of drama but largely without big dramatic incident) takes place entirely within the Conclave, the locked-down part of the Vatican where the assembled Cardinals meet to choose a new Pope. With each vote the picture changes, certainties are eroded, new threats emerge and predicting the outcome would be a fool’s game. The Guardian‘s review is very positive about the film, but its first paragraph gets in a fair few snooty put-downs for the source novel (‘easily devoured’, ‘pulpy’, ‘beach read’, ‘pot-boiler’ – yes, we get the picture, but the book is far better than that, IMO). Berger’s adaptation holds the attention throughout and touches on a whole host of questions from the world outside the Conclave that are reflected in the conflicts within it. The performances are superbly understated – Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, playing detective whilst wrestling with his own ambition, Stanley Tucci as liberal Cardinal Bellini, John Lithgow as the more obviously machiavellian Cardinal Tremblay and Lucian Msamati as Nigerian Cardinal Adeyemi, representing an increasingly powerful force in the Church – and then there’s the new guy, who’s appeared from nowhere. Isabella Rossellini leads the Sisters, who feed the Cardinals, but don’t get a vote. There’s a wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack, and clever use of background sound – dramas that happen off-screen and are only imperfectly overheard, even the sounds of breathing and papers rustling claim our attention in this largely still space. And, with commendable restraint, I have waited until now to mention, just in passing, that my brother is present on screen in a number of key scenes, as one of the assembled Cardinals (a non-speaking role but, I feel, crucial). With even more commendable restraint, I did not cheer or nudge the person in the next seat to say ‘look, that’s my brother’, but I was very excited.
The Damned United (2009)
Martin Sheen does a superb job of playing Clough, at his most truculent and bloody-minded. Whether it is entirely accurate is another matter, but it rings true, and conveys something of the reality of 1970s football (I know, I was there. Not at Elland Road or the Baseball Ground, but at the City Ground, both before and during Clough’s reign there).
The Edge of Love (2008)
Keira again, this time with Sienna Miller as the lover and wife respectively of Matthew Rhys’s Dylan Thomas. I didn’t quite believe in this version of Thomas – somehow, despite being better to look at than the real thing, the source of his attractiveness to these two women was unclear. So this was perhaps a miscasting – Miller and Knightley on the other hand dominate the film.
Electric Lady Studio (2024)
Excellent documentary about Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studio, completed only a short while before his death but which seemed to embody his dream of a place devoted to making music. Lots of interviews from people who knew and worked with Hendrix, lots of clips that I’d never seen before (despite having been immersed in Hendrix’s music for over fifty years).
Elvis (2022)
Austin Butler’s performance is glorious, I’m less sure about Hanks, who seems to veer towards caricature, but given that the film does not aspire to straightforward biopic realism, maybe that’s what was intended. But overall, the film was hugely entertaining and whenever Butler was on screen, I was mesmerised.
The End We Start From (2023)
The brilliant Jodie Comer in a disaster movie setting, where catastrophic flooding leaves her homeless with a new baby, negotiating a highly dangerous world to find her way to safety. My only problem was that I could not quite switch off the part of my brain that was constantly asking boring practical questions about how the baby always had clean clothes, etc, which wasn’t really the point. It was more about how quickly the infrastructure of society crumbles, and how everything that we count on becomes uncertain and perilous (see also Threads, below…), and how in the face of all that, one might survive.
Firebrand (2024)
The film does warn viewers that history tends to leave a lot of gaps when it isn’t covering men and wars, and that those gaps may be filled with – sometimes wild – speculation… But it’s pretty plausible, for the most part, and much of what we see on screen is well-documented, and familiar from various ‘Henry & the Six Wives’ dramas on TV and film. Alicia Vikander is excellent as final and surviving wife Catherine Parr, as is Jude Law in a vanity-free portrayal of the King (those wobbly buttocks – surely not Jude’s?). I’d just finished watching the first series of Wolf Hall and what came across in both treatments was the constant fear in which one would have lived if one was close to the King – enemies constantly circling and seeking their opportunity to strike, and the King himself, mercurial and volatile, believing absolutely that he is absolutely right. This fear is written on Vikander’s face, as it was on Claire Foy’s as Anne Boleyn.
Gladiator II (2024)
I enjoyed this enormously. I’m not as passionate about the first film as some, I’ve only seen it once and that a while ago, so I wasn’t as conscious of all of the references and echoes as its true devotees would be. So it may be that I enjoyed it more for being able to take it on its own merits, rather than comparing it. I also had forgotten that in GI, Lucius is not Maximus’s son – or not known to be. Perhaps having carelessly disposed of Maximus’s actual son in GI, Ridley Scott realised he had missed a trick and retro-engineered an earlier relationship between Maximus and Lucilla that resulted in Lucius’s birth. Other than that, even with my less than total recall of GI, it was obvious that the plot of this film followed the same pattern as that of the first, and so there was a certain lack of suspense (there was never any real possibility that Acacius’ coup would succeed, or that the two armies facing each other at the end would decide to fight rather than uniting around Lucius). But the set pieces were spectacular (those baboons really spooked me and my one, terrifying encounter with a baboon on a path at a wildlife reserve in Nigeria, has been popping back into my mind rather a lot – he clearly wasn’t in the mood for ripping little girls’ throats out, so whilst I stood frozen with fear, he just ambled off), and the performances were great – Denzel Washington’s in particular, and Paul Mescal was charismatic without merely being a Russell Crowe #2.
Hitman (2023)
Highly entertaining, based (loosely) on a true if improbable story. Also somewhat improbable is that the hero, as portrayed by Glen Powell, is supposed to be the kind of bloke that fades into the background…
In the Heights (2021)
Fabulous, touching, ultimately uplifting and joyous musical from Lin Manuel Miranda.
Inside Out 2 (2024)
It was never going to have quite the impact of the first film, but introducing the maelstrom that is puberty brings in a whole lot of new emotions. Anxiety, oh, how well I know you… It’s clever, witty and has a lot of heart.
Joy (2024)
The story behind the birth of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown. It’s a straightforward narrative, with nice period details, and excellent performances from Thomasin McKenzie (so good in Life after Life and Leave no Trace) as Jean Purdy, the third and until long after her death unsung member of the team, along with James Norton as the research scientist and Bill Nighy as the surgeon. It’s low-key but Purdy centres it on powerful emotions – her own and those of ‘the Ovum Club’, the women who sign up to be, essentially, experimented on in the hopes that they might become pregnant at last. Every failure in the lab is a heartbreak for one of them. But we know that one of these women will have their baby, and in that climactic scene, with the sound of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending on the gramophone, I was swept away by my own memories, and by thoughts of all the women I’ve known who had their longed-for babies thanks to this pioneering work.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Fourth in this fine series, with stunning CGI. Could be the start of a second trilogy rather than an addition to the first, given the time that has elapsed since the events of War for, and the world we’re in now presents new threats and challenges to both apes and humans.
Lady Macbeth (2016)
Florence Pugh is magnificent (when is she not?) and terrifying. Especially when she smiles, or giggles. She’s more often impassive, but behind that mask there is desire, and rage. We sympathise, a young woman effectively imprisoned in the house by her father-in-law and her husband, neither of whom is remotely interested in her well-being. And then her jailers unwisely leave her unattended for a while, and things get messy, very quickly… The Guardian‘s reviewer said that ‘As Katherine, Pugh has the vaulting ambition of Shakespeare’s character (a single line, “It is done”, pays homage to the great ancestor), also the Flaubertian yearning of the passionate woman subjected to the bourgeois tyranny of wifehood, as well as the modern noir obsession and criminal daring that begins to assume its own momentum. Katherine has cunning and a talent for survival. She starts out Madame Bovary, and winds up Mr Ripley.’
The Last Duel (2021)
Jodie Comer again, with Damon and Driver, in a story about property and law and revenge – and rape. Any film set in medieval times falls prey to the Holy Grail problem – it is impossible not to find lines from that film popping into one’s head, quite inappropriately, as one bloke in armour rides up to the castle and demands entry, or whatever. Once one has acknowledged and dismissed this as best as one can, there’s a cracking drama going on, with an absolutely fascinating view on sexual politics. It’s extraordinary, that what one might imagine to be a liberating belief, that the woman’s pleasure is central and crucial, becomes just another way of constraining women. The film uses the Rashomon device so that we see events first through Matt Damon’s boorish squire/knight, Marguerite’s husband, and then through Adam Driver’s caddish but cultured le Gris and only then as Marguerite experienced them. Le Gris’s chapter is particularly interesting – does he truly believe, as his later behaviour suggests, that no rape occurred? Certainly from the viewer’s perspective there is not a shred of doubt.
Lola (2022)
Fascinating low-budget sci-fi/alt history film about two orphaned sisters who build a machine that can pick up broadcasts from the future. There’s a lot of fun with this, as they discover Bowie, several decades ahead of time, but then things turn darker as the war begins and their machine can serve a different purpose. It’s black & white, ‘found footage’ (although one wonders with some parts of the film who exactly was filming and how), with a fragmented narrative structure. It’s really sharp, original and engaging.
Men (2022)
Jessie Buckley is traumatised after the shocking death of her husband and so relocates to a big empty house in a village in the countryside, where she knows no one (as you do…). Everyone here is creepy AF, and they all look like Rory Kinnear (which is not the same thing) and things get creepier and bloodier and grosser and who knows what the heck it all adds up to in the end. The men Buckley’s character, Harper, meets start off just as a bit patronising, and end up full-on murderous, and the title does seem rather as if it’s talking about Men (yes, in this film at least, all men), not just these men. It’s not an ideal film to watch whilst alone (albeit not in an unfamiliar house in a remote location) but by the time we reach the indescribable concluding section, we’re way beyond unease and feeling a bit creeped out, and it’s not so much scary as extremely hard to watch (and impossible to unsee). Bonkers.
Midas Man (2024)
Excellent biopic of Brian Epstein, very well cast and imaginatively presented, with a bit of fourth wall breaking as we whizz through the years. Does it tell us anything new? Well, that depends on how familiar we are, I guess, with that story – I’ve read loads and watched loads and there wasn’t anything dramatically new, but it was very enjoyable. The only problem was that they didn’t have the rights to use any Beatles compositions so the uninitiated might come away with the impression that they were a covers band…
Mr Klein (1976)
I’ve been trying to track this film down for years, and finally managed to rent it (probably it resurfaced after the death of its star, Alain Delon). Delon plays an unscrupulous art dealer, who is happy to obtain artwork at knock-down prices from Jews desperate to get out of Occupied Paris, until a chance event links him to another, Jewish, M. Klein. It reminded me very much of Arthur Miller’s novel, Focus (see my books blog), in which a personnel manager gets a new pair of glasses which make him look Jewish and how his life unravels from that moment. Of course, whilst Miller’s character encountered violent bigotry, M. Klein faces death. Absolutely fascinating film.
Mrs Harris goes to Paris (2022)
Utterly charming, utterly improbable, Paddington-esque tale. Lesley Manville is as brilliant as always, Isabelle Huppert is great too, bringing her trademark icy charm.
One Love (2024)
Kingsley Ben-Adir is great, but I have a biopic problem, in that, as wonderful as the performance may be, I’m still seeing it, ultimately, as an impression, a set of learned mannerisms, and my belief is sadly unsuspended. But given that – which I guess is a me problem – it’s pretty good, and I was pleased to see appropriate prominence given to Marley’s religious beliefs, and his character not overly sanitised. And of course the film is full of the most wonderful music.
Operation Mincemeat (2021)
One of those ‘you couldn’t make it up’ wartime stories, which I’d read about in Ben MacIntyre’s account. It’s a good, solid tale, well told.
Perfect Days (2023)
A near perfect film. If someone had told me I would say that about a film whose action takes place for the most part in Japanese public toilets, I might have been slightly sceptical. But it is quiet and gentle and perceptive and very beautiful and all I can really say is, watch it, if you get the chance.
Radical (2023)
This was walking a very fine line, between Season 4 of The Wire unbearably bleak, and unbearably sentimental. And it walked it just about right. Tales of an inspirational teacher who reaches the unreachable kids are always prone to idealisation (e.g. To Sir with Love), but this was closer to Entre les Murs, in which the teacher is shown not always to get it right, not to be able to reach everyone. And the situation of the kids he teaches is brutal and heartbreaking, but we know – because this is a true story – that some did make it, largely thanks to him.
Radioactive (2019)
Rosamund Pike is excellently spiky and ‘difficult’ as Marie Curie. Whilst I’d grown up with the story of Marie Curie, I’d never heard about her work in WWI, setting up (with her daughter) a mobile X ray unit, which enabled many unnecessary amputations to be avoided, and many lives saved. I’m not entirely sure though about the intercutting with various vignettes showing the impact – for good or ill – of the Curies’ work, which seemed a bit on the nose.
The Red Shoes (1948)
I can’t excuse the fact that I hadn’t seen this before – not only as a massively famous and highly regarded movie, but also because I love Powell & Pressburger. So, mea culpa and all that. But I have now, and I’m besotted with it. I also watched a fascinating documentary, Made in England, with Martin Scorsese talking about Powell & Pressburger which gives some fascinating background to this and their other wonderful films. Scorsese described The Red Shoes as ‘wildly inventive, complex and not at all comforting’, which hits the spot, I think.
She Said (2022)
See also Bombshell, the first film to tell the story of #MeToo. She Said shows the exposure of Harvey Weinstein through the work of journalists who tracked down the women he’d assaulted, all of whom were afraid to speak, and many of whom had been coerced into signing NDAs, and accumulated the evidence until it was impossible to ignore it. It’s a sister film to Spotlight, and similarly eschews melodrama for a portrayal of the slog and frequent discouragement of this kind of investigative journalism.
Wicked Little Letters (2023)
A gloriously wicked little film, with Colman and Buckley having a splendid time with their respective roles, as (seemingly) buttoned-up spinster and floozy.
Wind River (2017)
A very bleak tale set in a wintry Wyoming, where a Native American girl has been found dead, and she’s not the first. It’s a brutal, bloody tale, and makes it central point well, that Native American women and girls are not even monitored, unlike those in other groups, let alone properly investigated.
Woman of the Hour (2023)
Really disturbing account of a (real) serial killer who ended up as a contestant on a dating show. Tonally it’s really interesting – the section where we see the programme being filmed is funny and skewers the casual sexism of the presenters and the male contestants, but all the while we know, as Anna Kendrick’s character doesn’t, what one of those contestants has already done. The crimes themselves are shown quite graphically, which makes that part of the film really intense even whilst we’re briefly distracted by Kendricks’ attempts to subvert the format. (PS: Having seen a few series of Married at First Sight (no intervention required, I have kicked the habit now) the idea of a sociopath – or worse – participating in a show of that sort doesn’t seem the slightest bit improbable.)
Small Screen
The usual mix of crime drama (perhaps slightly more true crime – M was never as keen on those), sci-fi/fantasy, thrillers, historical drama, etc. Top sci-fi this half-year is Supacell, top crime Sherwood, true crime Five Days at Memorial, historical Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, and drama, Mr Loverman. Of the documentaries, David Olusoga’s A House Through Time: Two Cities at War stands out. As always, I haven’t reviewed all of the programmes I watched – there were new series of Shetland, The Tower, DI Ray, The Lincoln Lawyer, All Creatures Great & Small, Slow Horses, Vienna Blood, McDonald & Dodds and Midsumer Murders, all ranging from serviceable to superb, which don’t feature below, even though Slow Horses is one of the best things ever (it’s just that it gets a bit tedious to ‘review’ it when all I’m really saying is ‘this is one of the best things ever), and All Creatures is massively important to my mental well-being (particular given the somewhat grim cast of a lot of my watching). And if I started something but abandoned it, you won’t see that recorded here either. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers but you should proceed with caution.
Drama
Agatha All Along
Marvel TV hasn’t given us much that’s really great recently, but this is both huge fun and packs an emotional punch – it follows on from Wandavision, which we loved. Kathryn Hahn is a powerhouse in the lead role. And it’s got a song that’s firmly stuck in my head. And it’s a female dominated storyline (because, witches), like The Marvels but unlike most of the rest of the franchise.
The Claremont Murders
Australian true crime, about a series of murders of young women and the lengthy failure to find the perpetrator (DNA was the breakthrough here). It does give due weight to the effects on the families of the victims, although at least one family member said how traumatic he and others had found the programme. It’s a question that surely must occur with all these true crime dramas where relatives are still living, and some are easier to defend than others, if they shed new light in some way. This is a fairly middle of the road example, but well enough done.
Day of the Jackal
Forget Edward Fox and de Gaulle – here’s Eddie Redmayne in a Mission Impossible style mask with impossible feats of marksmanship, being pursued by Lashana Lynch’s intelligence officer. Glamorous locations, high speed chases, lots of tech, and a thoroughly entertaining few hours. The Jackal and his nemesis are actually more balanced than in the original film – her moral boundaries are shown to be pretty movable, and the question of whether/how one could have a family in their line of work is pressing for both. I don’t think for the most part, however, we are overly concerned with those deeper questions…
The Devil’s Hour
Very, very unsettling. Superbly played by Capaldi and Jessica Raine in particular. I won’t even begin to talk about the plot – you have to just watch it and trust that some of it will start to make some sense, in due course. Once the pieces start to fall into place, it’s still complicated, not just plot-wise, but emotionally (it reminded me of The Lazarus Project). Completely compelling and rather disturbing.
The Diplomat
Series 2 is even more fun than the first and ends with an even more dramatic cliff-hanger. Along the way there’s a lot of fun at the expense of Keri Russell’s Ambassador and her failure to look ambassadorial (I must admit the thought that she surely ought to be able to use a hairbrush occasionally had occurred to me a number of times). Rory Kinnear is brilliant as the boorish UK PM.
Discovery
The final series of Star Trek: Discovery. I loyally watched to the end, but it sustained the kind of annoying tropes that have somewhat spoiled my enjoyment throughout – the idealisation of Captain Burnham, particularly given where she started, is cloying, all of the core crew are straight-up heroes, and there are too many deaths/departures which turn out to be rather less than final. The third point is a common issue with sci-fi/fantasy – after all, if you can reverse death, why wouldn’t you? – and sometimes it is done well, for a purpose, sometimes it’s a kind of ‘have your cake and eat it’ thing, milking the death/departure for viewer tears and then bringing them back to have another go. Discovery tends very much to the latter. Strange New Worlds is far superior, and I look forward to its return.
Douglas is Cancelled
This wasn’t quite what I expected. It was billed as a comedy, for a start, and played as such initially. But the central, crucial episode, set in a producer’s hotel room, is as far from comedy as one could get. It’s deeply uncomfortable to watch and makes the humour in the remaining episodes very dark indeed. Karen Gillan is superb.
Ellis
Whilst there are a heck of a lot of crime series around, some of which are hard to remember after they’ve finished, this one plays on the strength of the lead, Sharon D Clarke, so wonderful in Mr Loverman (see below). And there’s depth to that character, and to her sidekick, so if it gets a second series I’m in.
Elsbeth
Quirky and entirely formulaic crime show which some found intensely irritatingly, but which I rather enjoyed. It’s what they call cosy crime, and there’s no ‘whodunnit’ element – we see who dunnit, we’re just waiting for Elsbeth to work it out, in various quirky ways.
The End of Summer
Twisty, dark thriller. The lead character was frustrating – I do wish from time to time we’d have protagonists in this kind of narrative who actually do their job, without huge lapses into unprofessional behaviour, there must be plenty of those around, and the plot was interesting enough without me having to shout ‘Oh, you are kidding me’ at the screen quite so often. But along the way it was atmospheric, and the twists were well handled and not merely gratuitous.
Eric
Bonkers. A mad cross between Harvey and a very dark tale of mental breakdown, political corruption and homelessness. Cumberbatch is excellent as the children’s TV puppeteer who manifests (or does he?) a new puppet to assist when his son goes missing. If that description sounds too silly to bother with, do give it a try; even if it doesn’t always manage its disparate elements perfectly, it’s never less than compelling. As the Independent reviewer said, ‘Even though the shadow of Big Bird hangs over the series like a, you know, big bird, there is a dark, misanthropic streak to proceedings. Much of the action takes place in New York’s murky, subterranean underworld, but the real sewer runs through the establishment. This is a depraved world, where even that most innocent of things – a children’s TV character – has to spit feathers to right wrongs’.
Everything you Love
Interesting Scandi drama about far-right radicalisation through the story of a young couple meeting again after a long gap, falling for each other, until the young man’s extremist views and actions fracture the relationship. Very well played by both the leads, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but that’s fair enough – a tidy resolution would be unrealistic and any neat answer to the question of how/why young men (in particular) are drawn to violent extremism is not yet forthcoming.
Five Days in Memorial
Absolutely riveting account of what happened in Memorial Hospital during Katrina. Initially it’s a fairly straightforward disaster movie scenario, but whilst initially we identify both with the patients and the medics and other staff desperately trying to do their jobs in impossible circumstances, gradually another strand emerges. People start talking (in corners, a bit sotto voce) about making certain patients who would be difficult to evacuate ‘comfortable’, about not leaving ‘any living patient’ behind, and these coded conversations lead to the decision to euthanise a number of those patients. The series then follows the investigation into what happened, and the eventual suppression of legal action against the doctors involved. It doesn’t give easy answers, it’s not good doctors and bad doctors, and one is reminded constantly that at the point when these decisions were taken, there was no certainty of the timescale for rescue, or even whether any rescue would come. Powerful stuff.
Funny Woman
A 60s pastiche about 60s TV and Gemma Arterton’s funny woman. It manages to avoid too crudely overlaying contemporary sensibilities on the characters and setting, though the tone varies considerably, from moments where the ‘real life’ action is as daftly farcical as that in the fictional sitcom, to dealing head on with sexual assault, the policing of homosexuality, and racial violence. A glorious soundtrack made up of the usual suspects but also quite a lot of much more obscure tracks.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Fabulous adaption of the Amor Towles novel, with a lovely performance from Ewan McGregor in the lead, and great support from Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Johnny Harris. Often touching and funny but with a constant undercurrent of dread. The action remains – until almost the end – confined in the Metropol Hotel, like Count Rostov, but what’s going on outside of the hotel’s walls is constantly impinging and forcing its inhabitants to adapt.
The Hour
Drama series about a current affairs TV programme in the late ‘50s, with an absolutely stellar cast – Romola Garai, Ben Whishaw, Dominic West and others. It only got two seasons, which was a shame – I thought it was excellent, and would have loved to see it follow these characters through into the ‘60s.
The Jetty
Jenna Coleman as a cop whose investigation of a current case opens up questions about an old missing persons case, and about her own late husband. Coleman is good, but I found myself frustrated (again) by how unprofessional her character becomes and how quickly, and also by the piling up of twist/reveals in the final episode.
Justice: Those who Kill
The world’s worst criminal profiler is still at it. Either she’s stating the bleeding obvious, or she’s barking up entirely the wrong tree – but here she is, called in again on a tricky gang violence case. It’s all entertaining enough but I keep wanting to shout at them, ‘don’t listen to what she says, she was shagging the perpetrator in her last case but one’…
The Lady in the Lake
A superb adaptation of Laura Lippmann’s excellent thriller, with Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram as the two very different women whose lives intersect unexpectedly. It’s set in the civil rights era and confronts the racial and gender oppression of the times. It isn’t afraid of deeply uncomfortable moments – such as Portman’s Maddie’s assertion that in other circumstances, she and Cleo could have been friends. ‘And what circumstances might those be?’, asks Cleo, to which Maddie has no answer. Along with all of this, and there’s a lot going on here, as the Guardian reviewer put it, ‘Lady in the Lake is also an incredibly sumptuous and fearless aesthetic experience, combining not just the meticulous recreation of the 60s, but also of Cleo’s childhood in the 40s and Maddie’s formative experiences a decade or so later. It uses dream sequences, musical interludes, flashbacks and assorted other devices that in lesser hands can be – and frequently are – mere irritants to flesh out its characters and questions more fully.’
Last Days of the Space Age
I had hopes of this being a good deal more interesting than it turned out to be. It’s too soapy, too formulaic, and glides over a lot of the issues it raises. Fun enough, but it could have been so much more interesting – the context, 1970s Australia, and the interweaving stories about industrial unrest, burgeoning feminist and First Nation activism, Vietnamese refugees, seemed to have a lot of potential.
Mr Loverman
Beautiful, funny version of Bernardine Evaristo’s book, with wonderful performances from Lenny James, Sharon D Clarke and Ariyon Bakare, among others. It doesn’t oversimplify the issues – Barry (aka Mr Loverman) has lied for his whole life, and that’s cheated his wife Carmel of the life she might have had, which in turn has embittered his daughter Donna… And yet, and yet… It’s a moving portrayal of an enduring and tender love, which was hidden because it had to be, until the weight of the years of lying seemed too heavy to shift.
Ludwig
More so-called ‘cosy crime’. There’s quite a bit of humour in David Mitchell’s character impersonating his own missing twin, and in his general nerdiness, and the puzzles are clever and intriguing. With Mitchell & the incomparable Anna Maxwell Martin, and solid back-up from the rest of the cast, it’s thoroughly enjoyable. I do dislike the word ‘cosy’. I know what it means in this context – there aren’t going to be graphic crime scene images, plots revolving around historic sexual abuse in children’s homes or rape/murders, and the detectives aren’t going to be burdened with massive trauma. And that’s fine – these dramas focus on the puzzle, usually less explicitly than Ludwig, rather than on the tortured motivations of the perpetrator. I wouldn’t want my crime fiction to be all cosy, however – and I do think the label is misused sometimes (I saw Shetland so described the other day, which I don’t think is right, as that series is more than capable of being gritty and dark). But Ludwig is great, and I look forward to the next series.
Man on the Inside
I love Ted Danson. For Cheers, obviously, but more recently for Fargo and The Good Place. And here he’s with Michael Scher, the writer for The Good Place, and it’s an utterly charming and funny tale of a widower going undercover at a retirement home. It manages to be very touching too, without sentimentality.
Nightsleeper
Don’t fret about plot holes. Just enjoy the ride, let the momentum of this thriller take you forward, breathless, until the final credits roll. There will be plenty of time after that to ponder the improbabilities/impossibilities involved.
Orphan Black – Echoes
It didn’t stand up to the original – how could it, especially without Tatiana Maslany – but it does develop the clone plot and takes it to some different places. It took me a while to get my head around where/when/who but once I’d got there it was gripping stuff, and I’m hoping for a second series.
The Perfect Couple
Slick crime drama set amongst some of the least likeable people one could imagine, even if it does dig below the glossy surface a little. Kidman et al are super rich, super brittle, and entirely engaged in maintaining the said glossy surface at all costs. One doesn’t really end up caring about any of them, but it’s entertaining in a beach read kind of way.
Platform 7
I loved Louise Doughty’s book, but this didn’t quite work as TV. Given that our protagonist is (SPOILER ALERT) a ghost, this forced her to spend much of her time observing events, and looking sad/anxious/angry, rather than participating or even influencing. As a powerful depiction of coercive control though, it worked very well indeed.
The Project
Lord, this was an uncomfortable thing to watch just after Labour’s election victory. The first part is set in the build up to the 1997 landslide, the second just afterwards, and it shows a number of young activists gradually confronting challenges to their ideals and their relationships. As the director, Peter Kosminsky, said, ‘After so many years of Conservative government, they believe anything that puts Labour back in government is acceptable. But be careful what you wish for’.
Rings of Power
Better than the first season but still flawed. Too much happening, so that the finale was rushed and perfunctory in relation to some of the narrative strands. And rather clunky in the way it reconciled what we see in the series with what we know from the books/films: the Stranger being called ‘Grand Elf’ and then deciding his name is Gandalf, and Galadriel reminding Sauron that the rings exert power over the wearer, so that you cannot be their master, and then immediately calling him ‘Lord of the Rings’. It’s got the classic prequel problem – everyone has to be manoeuvred into where they need to be at the start of LotR, and we can see the machinery whereby that happens. Along the way, however, lots of powerful sequences, and I’m looking forward to the next chunk of the story.
Rivals
Glorious, ridiculous 80s bonkfest. I haven’t ever read any Jilly Cooper so I don’t know to what extent the sexual mores have been adjusted – where they have it appears to have been with a relatively light touch. And whilst sex in general is here treated as desired and enjoyed by both, sexual assault and rape are given a very different treatment. The cast is ridiculously good, and all seem to be enjoying themselves enormously. And it’s rather touching to note that, given the trio of hotness that is David Tennant, Aidan Turner and Alex Hassall, rather a lot of us have fallen for Danny Dyer, despite his wig…
Sambre
Another true crime, this one about a serial rape case in France, viewed through a series of interventions, each of which fails due to prejudice, bureaucracy, incompetence, until a final breakthrough brings the perpetrator to justice. Very well done.
Say Nothing
This is a tough watch. There are moments when the vitality and conviction of the Price sisters sweep us along so we’re almost rooting for them, and then we are reminded of what it is they’re doing, and we’re shaken. Their belief is absolute, they are at war and thus all sorts of things are legitimate – until they are no longer at war, but didn’t win, and so all of those appalling acts were, in their eyes, for nothing. This makes the crisis of faith not primarily about conscience. It is not that Dolours (let alone sister Marian or Brendan) start to believe that they were wrong to kill alleged ‘touts’ (even though she is haunted by some of the deaths of those she drove across the border to be killed), because it is implied that had they won – i.e. the British had departed, and Ireland was united – this end would have justified those means. The heart of the series is the abduction and murder of Jean McConville and it’s not till the end that we get any answers about this – and even then there is the disclaimer on screen, the denial from two of the alleged perpetrators that they played any part in it. But the series perhaps dangerously engages our sympathies for the sisters and for Brendan Hughes, whilst Gerry Adams is played as being duplicitous and cold from the outset. Lola Petticrew as the young Dolours Price is charismatic and vibrant, and Maxine Peake as her older self powerfully conveys the damage, the doubt, the sense of loss that gradually eat away at her after her release from prison. It’s incredibly murky, and probably always will be. I also watched 2018 drama-doc I, Dolours, which covers a lot of the same ground though in less detail.
Sherwood
Bloody hell, this was riveting. And for those who thought the plot a little improbable, I know someone who was on the jury when these crimes came to court, and the drama stayed very close to the truth. Monica Dolan was terrifying and Lorraine Ashbourne magnificent, and there were wonderful performances from the rest of the cast too, amongst which I must pick out Bethany Asher in particular.
Show Trial
Michael Socha and Adeel Akhtar carry this, and the drama is most compelling when they’re facing one another across a table, as client and lawyer. I’d watch either of these two in pretty much anything, and they’re both outstanding. The plot, sure, it’s great, but whenever Socha or Akhtar or both aren’t on screen, we’re kind of waiting till they are…
The Silence
Grim Ukrainian/Croatian crime drama about trafficked girls and weapons, corrupt cops and politicians, and general indifference to the fate of dead girls when they’ve grown up ‘in care’. Compelling but exhausting.
Silo
I was very happy to see this renewed for a second season – we were only just beginning to understand the world of the show, and three episodes into season 2, there is still much to get to grips with, but perhaps most of all, the sense of how elusive and dangerous the truth may be, and what happens when lies are overturned. Rebecca Ferguson is a compelling lead, with great support from Tim Robbins, Common and Harriet Walter (and Steve Zahn in s2). This is proper grown-up, complex, intelligent sci-fi, and it’s proper gripping too.
The Sommerdahl Murders
Rather soapy Danish crime series – the crime side of it is better than the romantic/domestic aspect, or at least my preference would be to dial down the latter and concentrate on the former.
Spy/Master
Excellent Romanian Cold War spy thriller about a KGB agent high up in the Ceaușescu regime, who finds himself needing to get out rather urgently. It’s a scenario that is broadly familiar but the portrayal of life with the Ceaușescus is rather less so and is fascinating.
Stalk
French drama about a student who uses his techy skills for evil rather than for good – or at least initially to get his own back on fellow students who have humiliated him. I could have done without the central character’s pccasional portentous/preachy voice-overs, but generally it’s well done. The tech is, I assume, solid, though it bemuses me. There is a second series, but I don’t feel compelled to watch.
Stateless
Powerful Australian drama about refugees, based on the real stories of four people who end up in an Australian detention centre for illegal immigrants, either as detainees or employees. It gets across with real power the impossibility of the refugees’ situation. The story of Cornelia Rau, a mentally ill white Australian woman, who was found to be one of those detainees, despite being an Australian citizen, is used not to displace the narratives of the Afghans, Syrians and other asylum seekers, but to convey the bureaucratic nightmare in which they all find themselves.
Stockholm Requiem/Hostage
Requiem is a twisty crime series, with an interesting structure – a sequence of crimes are investigated and (to some extent) resolved, but turn out to be linked, and not by the perpetrator(s). Hostage follows some of the same characters but with a very different scenario, with a hijacked plane – it’s more conventional but well done and gripping.
Supacell
Looked initially like a new version of Misfits, whereby a bunch of people suddenly get superpowers. But these aren’t random, as it gradually becomes clear. All are black, all have some family history of sickle cell disease. It’s not humourless but it certainly isn’t played for laughs – the implications of the new abilities are complicated, and the new superheroes are clearly in danger. The Guardian’s reviewer said that ‘This is not your typical superhero origin story, where preserving truth, justice and the American way is the primary concern. Instead, the characters are operating in a society where the odds are stacked against them, and they are all struggling to make ends meet and avoid violence’. Excellent series, hoping for a sequel.
Threads
I watched this when it was first shown. I can vividly remember how unsettling it was to head off the following morning into the city centre that I had just seen destroyed on screen, to get the train to work. I wasn’t sure how well it would stand up to a rewatch, but it stood up almost too well. I’d remembered from the time feeling that the central storyline, the young couple having to plan a wedding due to an unplanned pregnancy, seemed to come from an earlier era of kitchen sink drama. This datedness seemed to be backed up by the fact that ‘Johnny Be Good’ is on the car radio and the pub jukebox. All of these years on, it seemed timeless. And it was as brutal and bleak and horrifying as I’d found it first time round, and it’s staggering what was achieved for what would now seem a fairly modest budget. But I almost wished I hadn’t rewatched it because it reminded me of all the reasons there are to fear for, not so much my future, but that of my kids, and their kids…
The Twelve
Soapy jury drama. This is season 2 of the Aussie version of a Belgian series we watched via Walter Presents a few years back. The main plot is intriguing and solid, but some of the stories involving individual jurors were rather predictable (well, of course the moment you blurt out the huge secret you’ve been keeping for years the person most directly affected by that will prove to be standing at the door, and will then rush out into the street and be hit by a car, because that’s what always happens in these things). And Sam Neill as one of the defence lawyers was giving me definite Judge John Deed vibes which is not a good thing. But it was entertaining enough.
Under the Bridge
See my books blog for the true crime book on which this is based, the murder of a teenager by her peers. It’s very watchable, though the directors took the odd (in my view) decision to insert writer Rebecca Godfrey into the narrative via a personal history that mirrors some of the experiences of the teenagers involved. None of that was real – Godfrey was a journalist who spotted a good story, investigated and wrote about it. The choice to link one of the cops to a story about forcible adoption of First Nation children is also fictional, but I don’t have a problem with the way in which, in particular, Canadian and Australian dramas are bringing this history into the foreground, and Lily Gladstone is always worth watching in any case.
Until I Kill You
Bloody hell, Anna Maxwell Martin is good. One of those actors who compel one’s attention completely, even in something lighter weight, like Ludwig. This one is not lightweight, not in the slightest. It’s true crime, based on the memoir of a survivor, and it shows, brutally, not only how someone who seems to be a ‘free spirit’, an oddball, but deeply lonely, could come under the power of a psychopath, but how her reactions, her spiky defensiveness and stubborn refusal to fully cooperate with the police or with other agencies who try to help, put her at further risk. But it does so without victim blaming. Some of what she tells the police about the man who tried to kill her is ignored, largely because she was ‘odd’ and difficult. She doesn’t behave like a victim is supposed to behave, and so she is written off as unstable and thus unreliable. When she tells the court about the lasting effects – physical and mental – of his attacks on her, it is not only heartbreaking but enraging.
We Were the Lucky Ones
The title is ironic. Yes, this is the story of a family many of whose members survived the Holocaust, against the odds, through various means. But ‘lucky’? As I said in another blog, film/TV depictions of the Holocaust should never, ever, be ‘poignant’ (don’t get me started on that), never (heaven help us) heartwarming. Here, the survival of so many of this family, who went on to build future generations, was not a ‘happy ending’ but a shout of defiance in the face of evil.
Wolf Hall
I re-watched the original series and was reminded again just what a fabulous slice of TV it was. Every performance, every detail. I could just watch Rylance’s face for hours, his stillness. Director Kosminsky described it as him listening, but he’s ‘listening’ to more than words, his antennae are picking up on gestures, sidelong glances, silences. And he’s listening as if his life depends upon it – as, indeed, it does. It took a moment in this new series to adjust to a certain number of recastings (due to death (Bernard Hill), global fame (Tom Holland) or other reasons) and to the fact that returning cast members are 9 years older than when we last saw them, though only a couple of weeks have passed for Henry, Cromwell and the rest. But it’s not lost any of its power and intensity. Cromwell, once so sure footed, now vulnerable, making mistakes, making even more enemies. I know how it ends, of course, and I remember that feeling as I read the book, that I wanted a different ending, for him to find his way to that former abbey where the bees make honey that’s scented with thyme.
Documentary
The Battle for Black Music: Paid in Full
Exploitation by managers and record companies is not exclusively an issue for black musicians, obviously. Youth and naivety have always been taken advantage of to make sure that the big bucks don’t go to the talent. But if you add in the factor of race, and how much less power even high profile black artists had/have, there’s a pattern that isn’t just about individual bad actors, but about institutionalised racism and the entitlement that goes with it. A fascinating and infuriating account.
Black Barbie
I was never much of a one for dolls as a child. I do remember my younger sister having a black baby doll (in the early-mid 60s I think), but the first black Barbie didn’t arrive till 1980. The documentary tells the story of the women who made that happen. Of course, Barbie, black or white, doesn’t really look like any of us (even Margot Robbie), but for black girls it wasn’t just the improbably long legs and tiny waist, but the colour of her skin and hair, the shape of her features. And so it was important that black Barbie wasn’t just regular Barbie in blackface, but had a wider nose, fuller lips, and an Afro. It’s not a straightforward tale of representation and empowerment – white Barbie is still and always will be The Barbie, the first and original. But black Barbie: ‘She’s black. She’s beautiful. She’s dynamite’, as the original tagline had it.
Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World?
The title contains a question to which the obvious answer would seem to be a hard no. And the series doesn’t do much to change one’s mind on that, but it does give an in-depth account of many of those flashpoints in world history where America did too much, or not enough, and what the consequences were. With lots of insiders – Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, Madeleine Albright, to name only the best known – the series gives real insight into what happened, and why.
A House Through Time: Two Cities at War
I haven’t seen the previous series of A House Through Time (I will do) , but this one is riveting. He’s identified apartment blocks in London and Berlin whose occupants, between the wars and during WW2, include Jews and SS members, conscientious objectors and war heroes, and everything in between. Exemplary TV.
Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter
Cathy Terkanian gave her daughter up for adoption in 1974 – Cathy was 16 and never knew who had adopted the child. In 2010, she was approached by the adoption agency wanting to get a sample of her DNA, because a body had been found that might be the daughter, who had disappeared in 1989. Although the DNA wasn’t a match, this started Cathy on a mission to find out what had happened to Aundria. The answers she finds are devastating. It’s a gripping account, well told.
Spielberg
Excellent documentary account of Spielberg’s life and career – it was made in 2017, five years before The Fabelmans came out, and it would have been fascinating if the doc could have explored that movie too, in relation to the biographical material they’d already covered.
Stax: Soulsville USA
This first lifts your heart, with the story of how Stax came into being, of the remarkable way in which music brought black and white artists together in a time of segregation, and then breaks it as we see how the big record companies wanted what Stax had created, and gradually, ruthlessly, drove them out of business. But perhaps the most heartbreaking thing was to realise that despite the musical camaraderie, the white musicians did not get what life was for their black bandmates, and did not ask (particularly after the assassination of MLK) and that it was not possible for that communication gap to be overcome.
Union
Another exemplary Olusoga doc, this one tracing the history – much of it unfamiliar to me – of Great Britain/the United Kingdom, how the union came about and the threats it has faced over the centuries. (When I googled this to check the full title, I found it was listed as ‘Union with David Olusoga’, which sounds lovely but does not accurately reflect the contents of the programme…)
Watergate
This 1994 documentary series is fascinating. I recall these events unfolding in real time, have read the Bernstein/Woodward book and seen the film, and watched the fictionalised re-telling based on John Ehrlichman’s book, with Jason Robards as ‘President Richard Monckton’. But there’s lots of new material here, and lots of interviews with the people directly involved, so much light was shed on this whole murky episode.
The Zelensky Story
A truly remarkable man, who might in other circumstances have never been much known outside Ukraine but who now stands for his country, and as a symbol of resistance to big power aggression. I was struck by the remark, from one of his close associates, that his change of personal style after the invasion was not cosplaying a soldier, but rather identifying with a civilian resistance. It made me admire him even more than I did already, but also fear for him.
Twenty Films
Posted by cathannabel in Film on November 3, 2024
I’ve been trying to build BlueSky as a place to focus my social media if/when X/Twitter becomes too toxic or melts down altogether. So when BookSky featured a challenge to post covers of 20 books that had had a major impact/influence on me, I jumped at it, thinking (rightly) that I might well find amongst the others joining the challenge or responding to my choices people who were worth following, and followed it up with 20 records, and 20 films. (I really, really like lists). The books that I chose are all ones that I’ve talked about on this blog at various times, as are the 20 albums. But I’ve never blogged about my top films. And the BlueSky thing specified no reviews, no details, just the book cover, CD/LP cover or film poster, so here I have a chance to tell everyone not only which 20 films I chose, but why.
This isn’t my stab at picking the 20 best films ever. I could make a case for some of them, but not all. It’s about their impact on me, and that’s subjective, whatever their critical and/or popular standing. I ruled out films where I could not readily recall that first viewing, the when and where of it, but more importantly the feeling of it. Some of these films packed a huge emotional punch, left me wrung out and still sobbing after the credits had rolled. (A lot of these films made me cry – as anyone who has watched a film with me will know, that’s a very low bar – but that isn’t a criterion in itself.) Some of them immediately intrigued me, made me want to watch them again (and again) to figure them out, to understand some of the layers of meaning. In some of them (and these aren’t mutually exclusive categories) the look or the sound of the film (not necessarily the music) were a huge part of their power. But all of these films stayed with me from that first viewing, not only as I made my way home from the cinema, or off to the kitchen to get a cup of tea, but long after. And all but the most recent have proved that they sustain their power on subsequent rewatches.
Of course, making any such list, as those who are addicted to list-making know, is about what you leave out as well as what you include. To get it to 20 meant rejecting films that I love, and that felt bad. I could easily pick another 20 wonderful films, but they wouldn’t quite meet my stringent self-imposed criteria. So these (in no particular order) are the ones that survived the cull, and I’ll tell you why.
Arrival (2016, dir. Denis Villeneuve)
A pretty much perfect film. It has everything one might want from a ‘first contact’ sci-fi movie but then more, much more, than one might expect. The search for a way of communicating is clever and thought-provoking, but also very moving (it reminded me of my favourite Star Trek: Next Gen episode, ‘Darmok’). And the final part of the film – I can’t say anything too specific because if you haven’t seen it, then you need to, and whilst it stands up to any number of rewatchings, the moment on a first watching when one grasps what it is that has happened is so powerful that it should not be compromised. It’s all visually stunning too. The score is one of Johann Johannson’s best, and that’s saying a lot. It’s worth reading too the short story on which the film is based, Ted Chiang’s ‘The Story of Your Life’.
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, dir. Frank Capra); Music – Dimitri Tiomkin
I resisted this for years. I’d seen it described as ‘heartwarming’, which is a red flag for me – I don’t mind my heart being warmed, but I resent a film/book explicitly setting out to warm it. But when I eventually succumbed and watched it, I found that whilst the very final scene did, indeed, warm my heart, that sentimentality had been more than earned. Capra’s hero is a good man, without any doubt, but we see him tormented by regrets, and by resentment that doing the right thing, as he must, ties him down and traps him in domesticity and small-town life, when he longed and longs to travel the world. He’s angry, and that anger shows. He’s a good man, but not a saint. And so we can identify with his frustration, his regret, even the anger. I always watch this film a few days before Christmas – that became a tradition as soon as I’d watched it that first time – and each time I weep at the opening sequence, as the prayers for George go up to the heavens, and keep weeping, off and on, until The End. There are odd moments at which I wince every time (I hate the way they all patronise Annie, most particularly, and I’m not entirely reconciled to Mary’s transformation into a scared of her own shadow spinster in Pottersville, though there are ways of interpreting this). It’s not a perfect film, in other words, but it’s a powerful and profound one, that goes to very dark places but shows the way out of them. See, if you’re interested, my two previous blog posts about IAWL: You are now in Bedford Falls | Passing Time, Letting it get to you: Doctor Who and George Bailey | Passing Time
Le Mepris (196 , Jean-Luc Godard); Music – Georges Delarue
I don’t tend to love Godard – give me Resnais (see below), Truffaut or Malle any day if we’re talking Nouvelle Vague. But while I was doing a part-time French Language & Cultures degree, which had a very strong cinematic bent, we had a module on intertextuality and studied this particular film in depth. It’s absolutely rammed with intertextual references – the very presence of Fritz Lang, the film posters in the scenes at Cinecento, the books that the characters read, the Odyssey… My enjoyment of the film is more purely intellectual than for most of the films in this list, but no less powerful for that. One can analyse – and we did – every shot, for its use of colour, its framing, its intertextual details, but also the plot, which has layers of ambiguity that keep one pondering. It’s visually very striking, and that strange house – the Casa Malaparte on Capri island – is quite disturbing (I had a strong sense of vertigo when I watched the film on the big screen).
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz); Music – Max Steiner
I loved Casablanca from the first time I saw it (how could one not?). Bogart, Rains and Bergman. The Marseillaise scene. The dialogue, crackling with dry wit. And somehow, that film gets richer and stronger every time I watch it. When I first realised just how many of the people involved in the film – both behind and in front of the camera – were refugees from Nazi Europe, that brought a depth to many of the scenes that I hadn’t realised on first watching. It’s not just the big names (Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid), or the second-tier cast (e.g. Curt Bois, Madeleine Lebeau, S Z Sokall) – the couple earnestly practising their English for their hoped-for new life in the USA, Frau and Herr Leuchtag, were both played by Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany/Austria (Ilka Gruning and Ludwig Stossel). One can love the film without knowing any of this – it’s a pretty much perfect film however one looks at it. The Marseillaise scene always reduced me to sobs, but knowing that Madeleine Lebeau, who plays Yvonne, had had to flee Paris ahead of the Nazis, and that her tears (and those of many of the other cast and crew in that scene) were real and heartfelt, makes it utterly compelling. The film Curtiz provides fascinating background to the director and the production of Casablanca and is well worth seeing.
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais); Music – Francis Seyrig
I wrote a whole blog about this film. So I won’t repeat myself, other than to say that Alain Resnais is probably my favourite Nouvelle Vague film director, and that one of the things I like about him as that whilst the films he made in the 50s and 60s were enigmatic, heavily intertextual, non-linear, intellectual, he went on to make more comedies, including a number of films of Alan Ayckbourn plays (e.g. Coeurs (Private Fears in Public Places) and Smoking/No Smoking (Intimate Exchanges), much more accessible but still clever and thoughtful. In Marienbad, one of the quintessential new wave movies, there’s a moment when one can see, briefly, the unmistakable silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock (I didn’t believe that when I read about it, but it’s there, I promise – what it tells us is another question). And Resnais, apparently, was a big fan of Marvel, and wanted to work with Stan Lee. Again, I’m not joking. And that leads us neatly on to…
The Avengers (2012, Joss Whedon); Music – Alan Silvestri
The first in a stunning sequence of superhero movies that came to a powerful climax with Endgame. This one has everything that one might wish for from a superhero movie – massive battles, superb CGI, gorgeous superheroes, and a clever, witty script. That final element is courtesy of Joss Whedon, who – though we did not know it then – is highly problematic. But at the time this was released, I was a huge fan primarily because of Buffy, and his script here brings not just humour but depth to the story. Whedon didn’t continue to play much of a part in the Marvel glory years, but he set the tone. I had no background with the comics (graphic novels, whatever), so came to these characters fresh and fell for them. I wrote a blog about Marvel too…
West Side Story (1961, Robert Wise); Music – Leonard Bernstein
I love the Spielberg version – it seems to me that it honours the original without being afraid to change things about it. But for the purposes of this list, it is the original movie that I’m going back to, because the impact of that, on first and on every subsequent viewing, was so great. The choreography is mesmerising, the songs are glorious, the ending is so powerful – that moment when Tony’s guys try to lift his body, and stumble a little, and the others come to take his weight. I can write about it but I can’t talk about it without choking up. It is the finest musical ever (I’m aware that other fine musicals are available, but this just tops everything else).
Girlhood (2014, Celine Sciamma); Music – Para One
Celine Sciamma is probably my favourite current French film director. This is the first film of hers that I saw, and it is gripping, moving, powerful, from the opening sequence. The Roger Ebert site reviewer says: ‘There are many moments that linger in the mind long after the film has ended. The epic slo-mo all-female football game of the opening. An early scene showing a raucous group of girls heading back to the projects, all talking at once, until they fall into silence, collectively, when they approach a group of boys lounging on the steps…’. And I would add the scene where the group of girls try on shoplifted dresses, in a motel room, miming to Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’… The film is desperately sad, but there’s beauty here too, and humour, and just a smidge of hope. A tough watch but eminently worth it – and I also love Petite Maman and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
ET (1982, Steven Spielberg); Music – John Williams
Possibly Spielberg’s best. It has his trademarks – the child’s viewpoint, mirrored by an adult who hasn’t forgotten, the sense of wonder, the humour and the sense of loss. I cried through much of this when we first saw it in the cinema (I was not alone in that, as became evident when the lights went up), and cried so much when I first tried to watch it with the children that I thoroughly put them off the film for quite some time. But there’s so much joy in this film – I love the scene where ET gets tipsy at the house, and Elliott picks up his inebriation telepathically, and most of all the moment when the bikes take flight… Having watched The Fabelmans one does tend to read back into Spielberg’s movies from his own childhood, but I don’t think one needs to here – anyone can, whatever their age, if they let themselves, identify with Elliott.
Hidden/Caché (2005, Michael Haneke)
This one has an opening scene which is guaranteed to make cinema audiences start restlessly muttering about whether to alert the cinema staff that something has gone wrong, and home audiences double checking whether their TV or DVD player has frozen. M always quoted this one as the epitome of French film – in his view, a film in which nothing happens, at great length, and with a lot of talking. Which is fair, TBH, but I love it. When things do happen, they hit you with great force, and certain scenes have stayed with me through the years since I saw this at the cinema. It also sparked an interest in a largely forgotten (rather, deliberately hidden) historical event – the massacre of Algerian demonstrators in Paris in 1961. I had never heard of this when it was referred to in the film and found it hard to believe that this could have happened and yet be almost completely unknown. De Gaulle’s censorship was astonishingly effective even outside France and its territories – I discovered when talking to my father that he had heard about the event, but from the newspapers in Ghana where we were living in ’61. I noticed looking at the film’s Wikipedia and IMDB entries that no one is credited with the music – I hadn’t registered the lack of a soundtrack (other than in that opening scene) but it’s intriguing that Haneke chose not to use one. When I next rewatch the film I will be aware of that.
Little Women (2019, Greta Gerwig); Music – Alexandre Desplat
It has to be the Greta Gerwig version. I grew up with the book, identified fiercely with Jo, wept over Beth, and followed them all through to Jo’s Boys and Little Men. I’ve seen various adaptations, on film and TV, over the years, most of which have had something to recommend them, though I recently re-watched the Winona Ryder version and was cross about how girly Jo got about the Prof. But I saw the Gerwig film in very early 2020 and it was a deeply emotional experience. It took me back to the book by deconstructing the book’s chronology and leaned fully into the trope of Jo being both the author and the subject and the two not being identical. But more than that – in early 2020 I knew that very soon I would be losing my little brother, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2018, and whose journey was very close to the end. So those scenes with Jo and Beth broke me and do so still. It’s another film that I watch every Christmas – even though this version doesn’t open with Christmas – and at the same time that its depictions of family and the closeness of siblings is terribly sad when one has gone (we were four, until we were three, just like the March family), the glorious chaos of four siblings close in age and different in temperament, all talking across one another, squabbling and making up and holding each other close is joyful too.
Timbuktu (2014, Abderrahmane Sissako); Music – Amine Bouhafa
Having seen Sissako’s earlier film, Bamako, a remarkable and fascinating exploration of globalisation through the device of a trial taking place in the courtyard of a home in Mali’s capital, I caught this one at the cinema as soon as it came to Sheffield. It’s about the occupation of Timbuktu by extreme Islamist group Ansar Dine, who impose harsh laws (banning music, making women cover their bodies and even their hands, banning football). Set against this is the story of a small family based outside the city, making a living from their livestock. Sissako shows moments of resistance – the imam who rebukes the occupiers for entering the mosque without removing their shoes, the boys who carry on playing football after their ball is confiscated (a lovely sequence, in which it is very easy to forget that there is no ball, as they swerve and tackle and shoot). Like Bamako, the film is partly about language – we hear Arabic, French, Tamasheq, Bambara and English, and this is linked to the notion of justice as a man is tried for murder in a language he cannot understand. It’s a powerful, tough, beautiful and witty film – and it’s complex too, making the invaders human rather than merely monstrous. The Guardian reviewer said that Sissako ‘finds something more than simple outrage and horror, however understandable and necessary those reactions are. He gives us a complex depiction of the kind you don’t get on the nightly TV news, even trying to get inside the heads and hearts of the aggressors themselves. And all this has moral authority for being expressed with such grace and care. His film is a cry from the heart about bigotry, arrogance and violence.’
The Gospel according to Matthew (1964, Pier Paolo Pasolini); Music – Luis Enriquez Bacalov, inc. Gloria (Missa Luba), Bach, Odetta, Blind Willie Johnson, Kol Nidre
An Italian neo-realist take on Matthew’s version of Jesus’ story, with non-professional actors. It tells the story as Matthew presents it – full of the miraculous. Nothing is added – even the dialogue all comes from the Gospel. Pasolini was hardly the most likely prospect for such a film, given that he was a gay Marxist atheist, but as he said, ‘If I had reconstructed Christ’s history as it actually was, I would not have made a religious film, since I am not a believer. I do not think Christ was God’s son. I would have made a positivist or Marxist … However, I did not want to do that, I am not interested in profanations: that is just a fashion I loathe, it is petit bourgeois. I want to consecrate things again, because that is possible, I want to re-mythologize them.’ The end result is beautiful, strange, remarkable. The soundtrack draws on sacred/religious music from various cultures and introduced me to the Missa Luba, the ‘Gloria’ from which gave me goosebumps when I heard it in the film.
All of us Strangers (2023, Andrew Haigh); Music – Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch
The Guardian described this as ‘a raw and potent piece of storytelling that grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.’ I’d read reviews before watching but I wasn’t ready for the way the film handled Adam’s visits to his parents, let alone for the ending. It somehow tapped into my own sense of loss (my parents – one gone, one lost in dementia – my younger brother, my husband). I will watch it again some day to appreciate it fully, but it will be some time before I’m ready.
Last of the Mohicans (1992, Michael Mann); Music – Trevor Jones/Randy Edelman
From that opening sequence, with Day-Lewis running through the woods (‘like a force of nature’, as one reviewer put it), to the dramatic clifftop climax, it’s tense, violent, incredibly romantic and completely absorbing. I’ll be honest, DDL usually inspires more admiration than adoration from me, but here I was with Cora all the way. The film messes with Fenimore Cooper’s book, and with history, but that’s fine. It doesn’t have grand ambitions – it’s quite an old-fashioned film, but it works wonderfully.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, John Carpenter); Music – John Carpenter
The original. Obviously (I include an image below from the remake, which I’ve never seen, but maintain is entirely uncalled for). Absolutely gripping – the action is relentless, and one tends to forget to breathe. The ice cream van sequence is horrifying (and Carpenter apparently said that he would have toned that down if he’d made the film later) but I never felt it was gratuitous. The plot is stripped down to bare bones and all that you really feel whilst watching is that you are in that semi-abandoned police station and that you’re under attack, from an enemy who is not going to give up until either all of them or all of you are dead. Brilliantly done, and you might need a lie down afterwards.
The Best Years of our Lives (1946, William Wyler); Music – Hugo Friedhofer
I’ve seen this a number of times, but not for quite a while so it is overdue a rewatch. After all of the heroics of the war movies, here is a sober, realistic portrayal of what three ordinary men came home to. It doesn’t talk about PTSD – it’s not so much (at least not explicitly) about the impact of what they saw and did out there – it’s about who they are now, how they are not the same as when they enlisted, and how/whether those who loved them then will deal with this new reality. It also shows, with honesty, the sense of purpose and comradeship that these men are missing as they try to find their way in the places that were once most familiar to them. Most famously, Harold Russell’s portrayal of Homer, who’s returned with hooks instead of hands, conveys the hurt and the humiliation of being helpless, the fear of being pitied rather than loved.
Paddington (2014, Paul King); Music – Nick Urata
Both Paddington films are superb. Yes, they’re based on books aimed at young children, and yes, the message is appropriately reassuring – bad things happen to good people but it all comes out right in the end, because there are enough good people to thwart the bad guys. Paddington himself is childlike, in the way he experiences new things, and his assumption that the people he meets are going to be benign, until proven otherwise (Mrs ‘Arris, as portrayed by Lesley Manville, reminded me very much of Paddington). His clarity about right and wrong is childlike in its simplicity but adult in its courage. This first film includes some of the most brilliantly funny slapstick sequences, which – unlike some slapstick – never really wear out their welcome. And poignant moments, reminding us about the reality of the world we live in, where we have arguably forgotten how to treat strangers. I’ve listed the first film because that had the most immediate impact – I wasn’t expecting great things really, just a pleasant and amusing interlude, but I truly loved it. It’s a family film in the best sense of that term – it’s about family as well as being aimed at all the family.
Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer); Sound – Mica Levi
There could hardly be a more brutal contrast with the previous film listed. There is no comfort here, not a shred. The sounds that we hear throughout the scenes at the house are sometimes neutral (machinery, trains), sometimes not (screams, gunshots) but we know what is happening on the other side of the garden wall, so we know what those trains mean. And yet, after a while, I found that I had filtered the sounds out, as one does with traffic noise if one lives on a busy road. And that was horrifying too. I have only seen Zone once, and whilst it deserves a rewatch to see the detail that one inevitably misses in a first viewing, I am in no rush. I watched it alone, and am glad that I did, because I wasn’t capable of any kind of conversation afterwards, and whereas sometimes after a disturbing film the return to familiar domesticity is reassuring, after Zone it felt (albeit briefly) wrong. I’ve spent a lot of time considering how one can make fiction (film or literature) about the Holocaust, and indeed whether one should. I’ve concluded that it is possible, and indeed necessary, to do so, but that it is also incredibly risky – it should never, ever, be ‘poignant’ (don’t get me started on that), never (heaven help us) heartwarming. If, as in a recent TV fact-based drama, there is a positive conclusion (We Were the Lucky Ones), survival was not a ‘happy ending’ but a shout of defiance in the face of evil.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo del Toro); Music – Javier Navarrete
I saw this twice at the cinema, and at least twice since on DVD. It’s visually stunning, magical, terrifying, shocking. Roger Ebert called it ‘one of the greatest of all fantasy films, even though it is anchored so firmly in the reality of war’. There are two realities on the screen here, even if the child at the centre of the narrative is the only one who sees the faun and the Pale Man. This taps into so many fantasy narratives – the child who has access to another world, adjacent to, and at times or in certain places merging with our own, whilst adults are oblivious, preoccupied with their own monsters and nightmares.
P.S. I didn’t make a rule that I could only include one film per director, but that’s how it panned out (honest). There is a preponderance, inevitably, of US and UK films, but also movies from Mali, Mexico, Italy and France. Cinema takes us across continents, and also across the centuries – from the ancient narrative of Matthew’s Gospel to contemporary urban life. It’s satisfying to see that this selection, not by design, illustrates that.
2024 on Screen – half-time report
Posted by cathannabel in Film, Television on June 23, 2024
The Big Screen
Some superb films on my list this half-year. Most were actually seen on the smaller screen, but I did go to the cinema for The Zone of Interest, Furiosa, Dune 2, Dear England, and Rome: Open City (of those, Furiosa and Dune 2 were on the very very big screen, deservedly so). Even more than usual, I find it impossible to pick ‘the best’ or even ‘my favourite’ but I have asterisked a few that seemed to be head and shoulders above the rest. I’ve included some re-watches but not all, and I’ve missed out any film that I started and just CBA’d to continue (clearly that is a judgement, but not a judgement that I can necessarily defend, as it might have got heaps better after I switched off…). Some of my watching was to prepare me to visit Vienna, Prague and Berlin (see also my books blog, and there will be a full blog about the trip in due course). Quite a bit of it, as always, was WWII related (the trip and my watching through the last six months). But I’ve also explored other pasts, and futures…
About Time
Classic Curtis – cute, funny, with some very problematic elements (all the men in the family have a secret power that they keep secret from all the women in their lives and use to manipulate said women into liking them more). We enjoyed it enormously, despite the problematic elements. Until the narrative took a turn that we weren’t expecting and one that left my daughter and I clinging to each other and weeping.
Aftersun*
Melancholic, often sweet and funny, portrayal of a father and (just) teenage daughter on a holiday that he probably can’t really afford, their interactions showing both of their vulnerabilities and foreshadowing a future that we glimpse, intercut with the scenes from the holiday. Mescal is brilliant, Frankie Corio as his daughter extraordinary.
Ali
Will Smith is excellent, but somehow the film doesn’t quite work. So many aspects of Ali’s life seemed to be touched on (particularly his friendship with Malcolm X and loyalty to Elijah Mohammed) and then left to one side. It’s not quite hagiography but it does gloss over Ali’s affairs and their impact on his wives, and it doesn’t ask the hard questions, of Ali as a man or as a boxer. One review calls it ‘flat, curiously muted’ and notes issues with the pacing, and I think I agree on both points.
All of Us Strangers*
Devastating. The Guardian described it as ‘a raw and potent piece of storytelling that grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.’ I’d read reviews before watching but I wasn’t ready for the way the film handled Adam’s visits to his parents, let alone for the ending. I can’t actually talk about the film, I can’t hear Frankie’s ‘The Power of Love’ without choking up, I can’t think about certain key moments or even about why this film reduced me not just to tears (that’s not so unusual) but to sobs that actually physically hurt. It’s beautiful and unbearably sad and I might have to watch it again some day to appreciate just how it’s done, but it will be quite some time before I’m ready.
Allied
Well, this was entertaining and exciting enough, I guess. I just didn’t believe it. And I found Brad Pitt really rather wooden… Marion Cotillard deserved a better co-star.
American Fiction*
Very funny, even if painfully so. As a white reader who has consciously tried to read more by writers of colour, to hear more black voices, etc., I winced while I laughed. I wish it had explored more the interaction between Jeffrey Wright’s Paul, and Issa Rae as the author of We’s Lives in da Ghetto – I would have happily sat through an extended version of their conversation.
Anthropoid
Gripping account of the assassination of Heydrich in Prague in 1942, from the perspective of the Czech resistance. We saw this when it first came out, but I re-watched because it was filmed in Prague (the second city on our European trip) and I knew we would be visiting some of the locations. As it turned out, my son made the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of sv Cyril and Metodej (Heydrich Martyrs Memorial) without me, as Prague’s cobbled streets had temporarily done for me after several days of clocking up record numbers of steps. See my forthcoming blog about the trip for more.
The Beautiful Game
A football drama – set at the Homeless World Cup in Rome – where the usual problem (actors playing top level sportspeople) doesn’t apply because the footballers in this tournament are not there because they’re the best in their country. Micheal Ward (who was wonderful in Empire of Light) is brilliant here. It occasionally lacks subtlety, and I normally react badly to the word ‘heartwarming’, frequently used to describe this film – but what the hey, my heart was undeniably warmed. It’s funny and touching and it’s about football and I loved it.
Before Sunrise
This was a taster for a short stay in Vienna (we were there a bit longer than the characters in the film) and we did spot a few of the locations as we wandered around the city. Absolutely charming, sweet and funny.
Ben is Back
Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges make this work with wonderfully nuanced performances. Roberts as the mother of an addict is torn between loving him, wanting to believe in him, and knowing that addicts lie and steal and that she can’t risk too much trust. And Hedges makes us believe, despite the way in which his story unravels, that he wants to be clean, that he loves his family. That’s the film, really, that relationship, and the tensions that ripple out from it to the rest of the family.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
I saw this at the cinema when it came out, and settled down for a re-watch one afternoon when I needed something familiar and a guaranteed pleasure. I was in love with both Newman and Redford when I first saw it (heck, I still am), though had I been forced to choose one, it would have been Newman (still is). The film stands up remarkably well – Katharine Ross’s Etta Place has plenty of agency (despite that scene where she undresses at gunpoint) and character, when she might well have been a mere passive hanger on. It’s funny and touching and a delight.
Catch Me if you Can
Very entertaining. If it doesn’t explicitly portray the real damage (financial and emotional) that Frank Abagnale Jr did through his lies and scams, Tom Hanks’ FBI agent provides the balance with his relentless pursuit, so that as charming as Frank is, we never truly want him to get away with it, we just want the cat and mouse game to be fun, as it is.
Chevalier
There has been a huge amount of effort to re-establish in the musical repertoire composers of colour who had been sidelined or forgotten altogether – Florence Price and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, for example, are now regularly featured on programmes of orchestral or chamber music. This guy, Joseph Bologne AKA Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was earlier than either of those, and his life is as remarkable as his music. Whether all of the events depicted here happened quite as shown doesn’t matter terribly – Kelvin Harrison Jr persuades us that he was brilliant, charming, bold and confident, and the music on the soundtrack confirms he deserves this starring role.
Chicago
This was fun, but I never felt entirely engaged either by the music or the plot – it was all very well done, entertaining, diverting, and the production was imaginative. Just somehow left me a bit neutral.
Collateral
Cracking thriller. I enjoyed Cruise as a baddie, and Foxx’s taxi driver/dreamer is a wonderful foil for him. OK, the final showdown (especially the subway sequence) could be said to be hackneyed but by that time I was sufficiently invested not to be quibbling about anything, just to enjoy the ride.
The Commitments
Funny, exuberant and with a nice balance between the hopes and dreams of the musical big time and the cynicism born of everyday experience. The sequence with the auditionees queueing up at Jimmy Rabbite’s door is glorious, as is the music. If the story seems to fizzle out a little at the end, well, that’s life…
Daphne
Biopic about du Maurier, focusing on her passionate relationships with women. One reviewer complained about this, but as it doesn’t claim to be the definitive exhaustive biography, and as these relationships are well documented but not well known, it seems perfectly valid to me. Geraldine Somerville’s du Maurier remains quite an enigma but is always fascinating.
Dear England
An NT Stage on Screen production. Loved every minute of it. Joseph Fiennes was perfect as Southgate, and I ended up a great deal fonder of Harry Kane through his portrayal by Will Close than I ever was before. Funny, touching, giving due recognition to mental health and to racism, without allowing either of those to overwhelm the narrative.
Decision to Leave
A truly intriguing and compelling Korean thriller, a story of obsession, of a cop with insomnia and problems with his vision (obviously metaphorical as well as literal), and a fascinating suspect in a baffling murder case.
Dune 2*
Loved the book (and several of its sequels) in the 70s, thanks to my husband who was a keen reader of science fiction (and who would have loved the Villeneuve adaptations). Saw but didn’t like the David Lynch movie version from 1984. I was blown away by the first film, despite only seeing it on a TV screen. We saw the sequel on Imax, and it was stunning. It is, to the best of my recollection, a pretty faithful adaptation of the book, which is complex and multi-layered, and reflects Herbert’s interest in ecology, messianic religion and mycology (some elements of the book were apparently inspired by his experiments with psilocybin).
Everybody’s Talking about Jamie
It took me a long time to get round to this – I’ve still never seen the stage version on any of its periodic returns to the Crucible theatre. It was hugely enjoyable, although I can’t say that any of the tunes stuck in my head at all. Obviously, I tried to spot Sheffield locations (without much success), though I already knew the social club scene was filmed at Crookes Social Club (erstwhile Working Men’s Club), where I go regularly to see Sheffield Jazz gigs. We were shopping in Crookes one day when we saw two coaches struggling to negotiate the narrow, car-lined streets, and then saw them disgorge a large number of passengers, who made their way to the Club to act as extras.
The Falling
Dark but often quite funny account of an epidemic of fainting at a girls’ school – wonderful performances from Maisie Williams and Florence Pugh (her debut) in particular amongst the girls, and Greta Scacchi and the always brilliant Monica Dolan amongst the teachers. Maxine Peake is brittle and damaged as the mother, Joe Cole charming and dangerous as the brother (in one of only two male roles in the film). And Tracey Thorn provides the perfect soundtrack of woozy, dreamy songs.
Flight
Denzel Washington as a pilot whose personal habits come under scrutiny after a crash landing. He’s excellent, of course, giving the role depth and complexity. And the scene of the crash is one of the more terrifying air disaster sequences I’ve seen.
Frances Ha
Gerwig is utterly beguiling (though Frances would no doubt be infuriating in real life), and the film is warm and funny with moments of poignancy. The whole thing has a Nouvelle Vague feel to it, accentuated by the score, which includes some of Georges Delarue’s music for Le Mépris.
Full Time
Excellent French drama, starring, Laure Calamy, Noémie in Dix pour cent (Call my Agent) as a single parent, running (literally and metaphorically) to keep up with the various elements of her life (childcare, job, chasing her feckless ex for maintenance, commuting in the midst of strikes). It ramps up the tension to an almost unbearable level (particularly if one has ever had to juggle in this way and knows that feeling of utter panic).
Furiosa
Thoroughly entertaining, visually brilliant, with great performances from both Anya Taylor Joy and Alyla Browne as the even younger Furiosa. Chris Hemsworth is virtually unrecognisable thanks to wig and prosthetic nose in his role as the bonkers war leader Dementus. Tom Burke is arguably somewhat wasted in a very taciturn action role as Praetorian Jack, which requires him to exchange smouldering looks with Furiosa but gives him little other opportunity to flesh out his character. I enjoyed it all hugely, but it does suffer from that inevitable prequel problem – we know where it all must end up. The film even segues into the early part of Fury Road, and the end credits include brief snippets of both films. So, whilst the action along the way is thrilling, we are waiting for what we know must happen rather than genuinely wondering what will happen.
Good
I saw this twice, firstly in the film version starring Viggo Mortensen, and again in the NT production with David Tennant. It was a great deal more effective as theatre than film – the movie version filled out bits of plot that were perhaps better left ambiguous, and the device where the protagonist hears music at key moments worked much better in the very stylised theatre version. The use of actors to play multiple roles worked, for the most part, although it required some concentration, particularly in relation to Sharon Small (playing the wife, the mistress/second wife, the mother and an SS colleague) to be sure who was who. Both Mortensen and Tennant were superb in the lead roles. The play asks how a ‘good’ person could collaborate with evil, a perennial question about the Nazi era, and C P Taylor shows how the protagonist – an ordinarily decent person, if lacking in empathy, compromises his values gradually, tiny step by tiny step until he is fully identified with the regime.
Good Grief
A charming but not awfully deep study of the aftermath of a sudden bereavement. I had a lump in my throat once or twice, but I couldn’t entirely identify with these people and their world. Still, it had its moments.
Greyhound
Hanks being an ordinary hero again, this time shepherding his escort destroyer group as it protects an Allied convoy against U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Not a remarkable film or performance, but good, solid stuff.
The History Boys
Alan Bennett’s script is brilliant, waspish, funny but with undertones of real melancholy. Excellent performances from the ‘boys’ too. But it felt weird that the issue of sexual molestation, however mild, by a teacher is treated so lightly, so benevolently, both by those on the receiving end and by the film itself, which doesn’t really question their reactions.
The Hours
I wasn’t totally convinced by Nicole Kidman’s take on Virginia Woolf – I’m not sure if it was the nose, or rather the knowledge that it wasn’t Kidman’s, though Bradley Cooper’s prosthesis, whilst being more controversial, didn’t get in the way of his performance in Maestro. I expected Woolf to be fiercer, perhaps. Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep are both superb, and the interlinking narratives, with Mrs Dalloway as the connecting thread, are moving and powerful. And the film reminds me that I must read Mrs Dalloway….
Just Mercy
Powerful fact-based drama about justice and race in the US. Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx are great as the lawyer and accused man respectively. The film’s main weakness lies in the treatment of their opponents: as the Guardian reviewer says, ‘It distracts from the reality of the case and of ongoing cases such as this, turning racists into pantomime bad guys rather than presenting them far more chillingly as real people who have normalised their hatred’.
Kidnapped
Fascinating historical drama from Italy about the 1851 kidnapping of a Jewish child after a maid in the household secretly baptises him on what she thinks may be his deathbed. It’s based on a real case, features a compelling performance by Barbara Ronchi as the child’s mother, and superb work by Aidan Hallett, in a non-speaking role, as one of the Pope’s servants.
The Last of the Mohicans
What a film. I remember loving it when I first saw it, but it blew me away all over again. From that opening sequence, with Day-Lewis running through the woods, to the dramatic clifftop climax, it’s tense, violent, incredibly romantic and completely absorbing. I’ll be honest, DDL usually inspires more admiration than adoration from me, but here I was with Cora all the way.
Little Women
The 1991 version, with Wynona Ryder as Jo. Pretty good, until the end when Jo goes a bit too girly over the Prof. I think I’ve been spoiled for other versions by Gerwig’s, which is now one of my annual Xmas watch and have a bit of a cry films, and whose rearrangement of the chronology (it seemed blasphemous at first, not to open with ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’) brings such depth and nuance, without taking anything away from the narrative or the characters.
Maestro
Another film (see Oppenheimer) that raises the issue about non-Jewish actors taking Jewish roles. It did strike me, watching Oppenheimer, that you had on screen three of the most prominent Jewish scientists of the twentieth century (Einstein, Bohr and Oppenheimer), played by Conti, Branagh and Murphy respectively, and here one of the most prominent Jewish composers/conductors, played (with a prosthetic extension to his nose) by Bradley Cooper. At a time when we would simply not accept ‘blackface’ or ‘yellowface’ and it’s actually very difficult to watch older films in which those horrors were perpetrated (I switched off Breakfast at Tiffany’s when Mickey Rooney came on, and have never gone back to it), should we be as absolute about ‘Jewface’? I don’t know. But watching Cooper as Bernstein I forgot very quickly that the nose was fake because the performance was extraordinary, as was Carey Mulligan’s. And the music, of course, was sublime.
Mank
And right on cue, here we have Gary Oldman playing the Jewish Herman J Mankiewicz. I was occasionally reminded of Oldman’s more recent TV stint as Jackson Lamb, e.g. in the scene where he drunkenly disrupts a gala dinner… It’s a bravura performance (Mank, as well as Lamb), and backed up by Tom Burke as Orson Welles and Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davis. Fascinating, particularly if one has an interest in the movie industry of that era.
The Mist
Excellent adaptation of the Stephen King novella. Pretty much what you’d expect – until the ending. My God, that is one of the bleakest things I’ve seen in a film and my watching tends to the bleak and the grim. It’s not what King wrote, but King endorsed it (and as he tends to bottle his endings, I can imagine he rather admired what Darabont did with this). I didn’t like the leading man especially – where do they find all these square jawed types? – and, until that ending, I didn’t quite believe in him.
Moonlight*
A wonderful film, beautiful and melancholy. Brian Tallerico’s review describes it as ‘both lyrical and deeply grounded in its character work, a balancing act that’s breathtaking to behold. … it’s one of those rare movies that just doesn’t take a wrong step’.
Napoleon
I was disappointed in this – I wanted to enjoy it but found it deeply frustrating. Not because of historical inaccuracies, but somehow it was tonally all over the place – some moments were funny, but I wasn’t entirely sure all of them were intended to be. The best bits by far are the battles, which were viscerally exciting and did convey the problematic greatness of the man.
Nomadland*
A beautiful film, warm and generous, with Frances McDormand’s marvellous performance at its heart as a woman who becomes ‘houseless’ after losing first her job and then her husband, and who in the wake of those losses feels the need to keep moving, to make only temporary connections (mainly with other nomads).
Official Competition
Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez are a director and two actors rehearsing for a film. That’s it really, but it’s clever, brilliantly funny and with superb performances from all three.
Official Secrets
Good, solid drama based on the true story of Katherine Gunn (Keira Knightley), who passed on information she received in the course of her work at GCHQ and was prosecuted for it. It works all the better because Gunn clearly isn’t grandstanding, she doesn’t set out to be a martyr, she just sees something that seems to her to be so clearly wrong that she has to do something about it. She’s shown to be a bit naive, in not anticipating what the consequences might be, for her or her family, but in a way she is, as the Guardian put it, a ‘classic whistleblower. She has an idealism, work ethic and professionalism that made her an excellent intelligence operative in the first place, and yet it is precisely these things that made her rebel. Most importantly of all, she is young.’ Knightley is excellent in the role.
On Chesil Beach
This was exquisitely done. Until the final act when it messed things up rather badly. We didn’t need that clichéd scene in the record shop, and we certainly didn’t need the final scene at the concert. I wondered briefly whether these scenes would turn out to all be in Edward’s imagination, but if we were meant to think that, it wasn’t signalled – I’m not sure it would have worked anyway, it would have been rather Atonement-lite. And why was the old age make-up so awful? Surely we can do better than that these days? Such a shame, because the scenes with Florence and Edward awkwardly trying to negotiate the tricky territory of sexual intimacy, without prior experience and with only minimal knowledge, were agonising but brilliant.
The Outfit
This is an odd little film, which keeps on overturning our understanding of what’s going on. It’s full of suspense, but we as the audience are somewhat at a remove from the characters. Mark Rylance in the central role is calm, tightly buttoned, and seemingly preoccupied with his business, cutting out cloth for suits – he’s a cutter, not a tailor, as he informs people several times. There are gangsters, there are guns, and there’s a clever McGuffiny plot, and it’s all very entertaining.
Palm Springs
I do love a time loop, and this is funny and clever and very entertaining. Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti and J K Simmons are brilliant and give us some actual real emotional weight along with the comedy.
Parallel Mothers*
Gorgeous and moving film. The plot might sound improbable but it carries absolute conviction, with the message that ‘the personal is the political and that history, the future and the present are as one’.
Resistance
This is an adaptation of Owen Sheers’ alt-history novel, where England is under Nazi occupation, and the men of a Welsh valley disappear one night, leaving the women to manage the farms, and the occupiers. Slow and atmospheric rather than action packed.
The Resistance
Not to be confused with Resistance (see above). This is an account of some of the Jews who hid out in Berlin through the duration of the war, living precarious lives, figuring out who to trust. Well done, and these are not familiar narratives – I had no idea that so many managed to survive in this way.
Rome: Open City
Fascinating and powerful. Rossellini filmed this in 1945/45, in the very immediate aftermath of the liberation of the city (the ‘open’ in the film’s title is ironic, as it portrays the period when Rome was occupied by the Nazis). The narrative is absolutely compelling, and the action brutal, but never gratuitous. The film has been on my ‘really want to see this’ list for ever but has only just been re-released into cinemas (it didn’t do very well when it was first released in 1945, as people didn’t want to see the horrors that they had only just escaped portrayed on screen).
Saltburn
Heavily intertextual, the class clash is familiar territory (Brideshead, Ripley) and Emerald Fennell isn’t saying anything particularly new or insightful. It’s ‘deliciously, wickedly mean—seductive and often surreal—with lush production values and lacerating performances’, but it would have felt stronger if it had left a bit more to the imagination at the end (and I’m not talking about the dancing).
Shirley
Like last year’s Rustin, this is a good, solid biopic, with a wonderful central performance (here from Regina King) of a key black player in American politics. Shirley Chisholm was the first woman to run for US President, and what is particularly fascinating is how her presidential bid plays out in terms of support from fellow Democrats, and fellow feminists. It is, perhaps, again like Rustin, a bit worthy. But these films pave the way for other, maybe more nuanced explorations of these hugely important people, and others like them who have been somewhat neglected.
Society of the Snow
Eschews sensationalism for a subtler approach, without swerving the ‘cannibalism’ issue. Powerful and moving, it excels both at the shocking violence of the crash and subsequent avalanche, and at conveying the long, agonising wait for rescue and the physical and mental torment of trying to survive.
Still Alice
Julianne Moore is quite outstanding, and heartbreaking, as the academic with early onset dementia. Although my own experiences (vicarious) with dementia have been with much older people in whom the condition is seen as par for the course, Moore’s performance rings true, whether she’s portraying Alice’s bewilderment and fear, or her absence. And the choice to write about early onset gives opportunities as well, as both Alice and her family have to accommodate something that is both unexpected and profoundly unfair, and their interactions, entirely convincingly, do shed light.
The Talented Mr Ripley
Another re-watch, prompted in part by Saltburn’s homage, and interesting to compare with the new Andrew Scott version (see below). It’s sunlit and glossy, rather than shadowy and noir, which takes nothing away from the brutality of the murders. Damon, Law and Paltrow are excellent.
Ten Things I Hate about You
Taming of the Shrew, US high school style. It shares some of the problems of the source material – is it even possible to avoid them? – and there are moments which haven’t aged terribly well, but it’s a lot of fun along the way, and the leads are a delight. Oh, and BTW, Heath Ledger’s character was, I’m sure, the inspiration for Eddie Munson (as played by Joseph Quinn) in Stranger Things.
The Third Man
Rewatched after many years in prep for the Vienna trip (see also Before Sunrise). Aside from it being a brilliant film, with stunning cinematography, it reminded me that Vienna, which likes to give the impression of having been untouched by the centuries, was in the immediate aftermath of the war very much marked by bombing and by the Red Army’s battle to liberate the city – not reduced to rubble like Berlin, but still battered. One would not know it today.
Trumbo
Bryan Cranston is superb as the screenwriter who fell foul of the Red scare in the 50s and could only get his work on to the screen by using pseudonyms or getting others to put their names to the scripts. It’s not a super deep examination of the phenomenon, but it does convey the terrible pressure on those who saw their livelihoods taken away from them. Helen Mirren is the appalling Hedda Hopper who says out loud the quiet bit about the Red scare – its antisemitic roots.
Wil
A very dark and bleak narrative of young police officers in occupied Antwerp. In some ways it chimes with Good – how do you continue to think of yourself as a good person, to be a good person, when the rules are made by an evil regime, and enforced by brutal men? It’s an extremely tough watch.
Wings of Desire
Prep for Berlin, the third city on our European trip. Released in 1988, the film is set in the still divided city, where angels literally watch over its inhabitants, observing and only occasionally connecting with them. There’s not a lot in the way of plot, but it’s an extraordinary and bewitching film. ‘Wings of Desire … creates a mood of sadness and isolation, of yearning, of the transience of earthly things. If the human being is the only animal that knows it lives in time, the movie is about that knowledge.’
The Woman in Black
I was underwhelmed by the book, TBH, despite having loved a number of Susan Hill’s previous novels (In the Springtime of the Year, Strange Meeting, and others), and subsequently loved her crime series. The film had some nice jump scares, and plenty of atmosphere, but it didn’t really amount to very much, I didn’t quite believe the lead character, and I rather disliked the ending.
The Zone of Interest*
Extraordinarily powerful. I am not sure how well I can yet articulate what the film did, and how – that might take another watching, which I’m in no hurry for, not really. I have watched many films about aspects of the Holocaust, have read histories, first-hand accounts, fictionalised accounts, watched documentaries, seen footage from the liberation of the camps. This was as shocking as anything I’ve seen, despite showing nothing. The moment when I realised that I had filtered out the sounds from the other side of the wall, as one does with traffic noise when it’s always there, was shocking in itself. I didn’t weep until the scene at the end, in the present day, as cleaners at Auschwitz polish the cabinets with the shoes and the spectacles. But I really didn’t want to talk to anybody afterwards so was glad I’d gone on my own – I didn’t want to talk about the film, but nor did I want to talk about the banalities of everyday life – not after that.
Small Screen
There’s a lot of the usual stuff here. Crime drama features very heavily, and there’s a sprinkling of SF/fantasy, as well as some superb dramas that don’t fit as easily into a genre. I haven’t covered ongoing series, however much I’ve enjoyed them (thinking of you, Vera, Vigil, Wisting) unless there’s something significant to be said about this particular series, and as with the movies I haven’t covered things that I abandoned (so what remains I watched all of, whatever its flaws). I’d pick out Blue Lights as the best of the crime, The 3 Body Problem as the best SF/fantasy, and share the honours otherwise between Mr Bates vs the Post Office and Masters of the Air.
Drama
3 Body Problem
Brilliant, brilliant stuff. This has everything – it is clever, inventive, visually stunning and has a hell of a lot of heart too. It kept me guessing throughout but was never merely clever for the sake of it. There will be a second series, I’m delighted to say (I do worry these days, as too many good, inventive TV series get dumped – Lazarus Project being the most recent example).
After the Flood
Jolly good thriller, set in a Yorkshire village, with perhaps an over-abundance of twists, but all well done and a good solid cast.
The Americans
We watched the first couple of series of this, and then it switched to one of the streaming services that we didn’t then have access to, but we always wanted to see how things played out for Philip and Elizabeth. Now it’s on Disney and so I’ve picked it up again, taking a bit of a guess as to where we’d got to, but starting again at series 3 felt about right and I binged it through to the end. The constant peril of their double life makes even the most mundane domestic scenes tense and anxious, and there’s a lot of proper spy thriller action, with a pretty high body count. The BBC documentary series Secrets & Spies (see below) proved to be a very relevant factual counterpoint to the drama. (I do have issues with Philip’s wigs though, and find the sex scenes quite disturbing as I worry about wig displacement in the throes of passion). But wigs aside, the series is superbly acted, and confronts us constantly with moral questions, about loyalty, about deception in all its forms, about what means can be justified if one believes absolutely in the end – and we might think we know the answers to those questions but as we identify with Philip and Elizabeth that starts to seem less straightforward. The final series is a masterclass – ramping up the tension, but also laden with sadness and a foreshadowing of loss.
Blue Lights
Series 2 was as good as the first series, which is saying something. Real edge of the seat stuff, and with emotional heft too. It does all of the things that regular cop dramas do, but does them better than most, and the Belfast setting provides extra layers of complexity to the interplay between cops, criminals and community. Exemplary.
Breathtaking
A fictionalised version of Rachel Clarke’s raging, heartbreaking account of the early days of Covid, from the perspective of an NHS doctor. Intercut with Government briefings and news reports, to ramp up the rage, but always focusing back on the people – staff and patients (and occasionally staff who are patients) who were on that particular frontline.
Coma
Jason Watkins’ mild everyman in an ever more complex and deadly tangle after an encounter with a young thug – my only quibble would be that the ending felt a tad unrealistic and anti-climactic (though maybe there’ll be a series 2?)
Criminal Record
Very, very noir. Capaldi and Jumbo are superb. I keep thinking about the ending, and wondering. And that theme song – I had to track it down, it’s ‘Me and You’, by the Dreamliners,
Criminal UK/France/Germany/Spain
All four series follow the same format, and use the same set – an interview room, with a viewing room alongside it, and essentially that’s it. Each episode features one interview, with a suspect/witness, and it’s very Line of Duty, though less likely to end with a urgent extraction and a shoot-out.
The Cuckoo
One of those psychological thrillers that compels you to keep watching even though in your head you’re constantly saying ‘Really? Seriously?’ and predicting with reasonable accuracy where the plot is going. Tosh, but quite well done.
Doctor Who
Ncuti Gatwa is a joy. And he is, indisputably, the Doctor. The episodes seem to me to have got better and better, which suggests that some of this is cumulative, the result of an overarching plan for the series which allows each episode to carry with it some of the ideas and the emotional import of the previous ones. It’s been much commented on that Gatwa hasn’t been front and centre of all these episodes (because he was still filming Sex Education), but that’s allowed some very inventive writing, and when he’s there, there never seems a very good reason to look away from him. The BTL comments in the Guardian cover the usual range of responses. There’s the old familiar: ‘this isn’t proper Doctor Who any more, I’m never watching it again’, from those who’ve been saying that ever since there was a line for people to comment below, and who will be back next week to say it again. Some of the detractors find it too woke, which is hardly worth arguing with. But there’s also a lot of excitement from people like me who have loved this programme through its highs and its lows. Jodie Whitaker’s tenure could have been so much more exciting – she was great, but saddled with far too many ‘meh’ scripts (and some that were worse than meh) and that’s a real shame. But, as another Doctor would say, allons-y! This is pretty bloody marvellous.
It would be remiss of me not to mark here the passing of one of the very first Doctor Who companions, William Russell, who played teacher Ian Chesterton alongside William Hartnell’s Doctor. Russell was 99, and appeared in the final Jodie Whitaker episode, The Power of the Doctor, in a rather lovely scene at a companions’ support group.
The Durrells
Given my tendency to go for the grim, I need at least one series in my life at any given time that offers essentially warm-hearted, humorous, not too dramatic dramas, which can be guaranteed not to swerve into anything too traumatic, but which aren’t merely cosy. All Creatures Great and Small fills this place to a T – it doesn’t sidestep the harshness of the lives of the farmers, or individual heartbreak, but we know, really, that everything is going to be alright and that the grumpy or mean person probably is unhappy rather than evil. The Durrells does a similar job. I read Gerald’s books about his family life on Corfu and about his wildlife expeditions as a child – they’re hugely entertaining, and are already somewhat fictionalised accounts, so that the programme takes further liberties is probably OK. The humour is broad and often slapstick, but the writing is usually subtle enough that it isn’t wholly reliant on pratfalls and comic misunderstandings and allows some real emotional connection. That emotional connection centres on Keeley Hawes’ Louisa – Hawes is superb and if you aren’t rather in love with Louisa within the first episode or so, then I don’t know what to say to you, I really don’t.
Echo
I enjoyed this less than I thought I would (though more than Secret Invasion) but there’s lots about it that I did like, including the lead, powerfully played by Alaqua Cox, and her family/community, the Choctaw heritage that is the source of her powers. The Kingpin storyline, picked up from Hawkeye, and linking in with Daredevil, had/has the potential to be powerful, and perhaps now that the exposition is all out of the way and we know who Echo is, and why, that will work better.
Fool me Once/Safe
I’ve bracketed these together because these Harlan Coben series are all rather similar (I’ve read a few of the books and it’s true of them too). I find it hard once the series is over to recall anything very much about the plot or the characters, but whilst watching I am entertained and mildly involved, even though they tend to feature a preponderance of the square-jawed male lead, who I tend to find rather annoying, and impossible to identify with.
The French Case
A dramatised account of the investigation of the death of Grégory Villemin, an incredibly murky case, involving poison pen letters and family feuds, which seems no closer to being solved now than it was when Grégory was murdered in 1984. The drama is toughest on the media, and at least some of the investigators, and perhaps most of all on Marguerite Duras, who bizarrely was brought in to consult on the case, and proceeded to pronounce, without any actual evidence or direct contact with the parents, that it was the mother who had killed the child. Intriguing but frustrating.
The Gone
Atmospheric New Zealand set crime series, with an Irish detective (a man with a secret, natch) over there to look into a disappearance, and its connection with a major Irish crime family. This could all be quite clichéd – the ‘odd couple’ pairing of said detective with his Māori counterpart, who has her own personal tragedies and conflicts – but the characters are well drawn and played and the wider issues that the crime raises turn out to be more interesting than the original premiss suggests.
Hidden Assets
More Irish crime, this time centred on the team who track down proceeds of crime, and here the Irish officers are working with their counterparts in Belgium. There are two series, with different leads in each case, but linked stories. Good solid stuff.
Kafka
It seemed appropriate to watch this after being in Prague, which reminded me that I should read more Kafka. Full disclosure, I have read The Castle and a number of short stories but nothing more (yes, OK, shame on me, and all that). It’s a quirky and often darkly funny take on Kafka’s life, his romantic attachments and his friends (especially Max Brod without whom Kafka would probably be pretty much forgotten).
Masters of the Air
Band of Brothers and Pacific were both so very, very good that this came with rather high expectations attached, and it lived up to them. I have had a particular interest in the air war, ever since my father, who during the war was an avid aeroplane spotter, and then went on to an apprenticeship with de Havillands, taught me to identify planes when I was still in my pram. This latter may be slightly apocryphal – I cannot on oath assert that I was able to lisp ‘Dragon Rapide, Daddy’ as one flew overhead to the small airfield near our home, but by the time I went with my brother to see Battle of Britain at the cinema I knew my Messerschmitt from my Hurricane. Masters of the Air is solidly researched so that even where fictional characters are created, or where real events and real people are combined for dramatic effect (i.e., this happened, but not necessarily to this person), it is absolutely credible. None of which would make it one of my top watches of the year so far if it weren’t emotionally powerful and credible too, but the performances are great, the tension of the battle scenes is incredible – I found myself watching literally sitting on the edge of my seat and not breathing – particularly as it was clear early on that none of these characters, however well known the actor playing them, was guaranteed to survive. As with Band of Brothers, the drama touches only briefly on the Holocaust but the equivalent scenes to the former’s liberation of Landsberg are done with the same intelligence and care, and they enrich the drama.
Mr and Mrs Smith
These two, played with oodles of charm, heart and humour by Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, bicker their way through a series of missions, none of which go entirely to plan, and all of which involve a startlingly high body count. Thoroughly entertaining. Apparently there will be a series 2, but not with Glover and Erskine, which is a shame, but on the other hand, makes that series 1 ending more realistic (not that realism is entirely the thing here).
Mr Bates vs the Post Office
Obviously this has been a hugely important drama not just because of its quality but because of its impact on the sub-postmasters’ claims against the Post Office, and the enquiry into how the false prosecutions came about and continued for so long in the face of what was already known about the vulnerability of the Horizon system. Toby Jones, Monica Dolan and others make this all profoundly human, so that the drama, like Breathtaking, is not only heartbreaking but rage-inducing. I thought often as I watched it of the Hillsborough families, particularly when the accountant says to Mr Bates, ‘I don’t know how you people are still standing’, but since this was broadcast, there has been renewed and reinvigorated coverage of other scandals – contaminated blood, carer’s allowances and Grenfell – and it seems that Mr – sorry – Sir Alan Bates in his own understated way is something of a beacon to other victims of injustice and cover-ups.
Mrs America
Fascinating drama about the fight for and against the ERA in the US. Excellent performances from Cate Blanchett as the monstrous Phyllis Schlaffler, Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem, Tracey Ullmann as Betty Friedan, and more, plus a handful of fictional characters invented to convey some of the tensions in both movements. Often very funny, full of surprises, and with a cracking 70s soundtrack.
Mrs Wilson
Ruth Wilson plays her own grandmother in this drama of deception, centred on but going beyond the purely domestic sphere. The focus is very much on the wives betrayed and deceived, rather than on the deceiver, whose motivation neither we nor they ever really uncover – it’s stronger for that, as the deceiver can so easily be played as a charming rogue (since clearly he was rather good at being charming) and the damage he left in his wake underplayed.
Murder is Easy
The latest Christie adaptation – this was one I remember particularly vividly, the quote beginning ‘why do you walk through the fields in gloves’ and the strength of the murderer’s hands. As with all of the recent dramatisations, it’s been tinkered with, in ways that might well get the GB News types a bit agitated (a black protagonist! Lawks a mercy) but it retains the strengths of the novel.
A Perfect Spy
Excellent le Carré adaptation from 1987 (one of a number of dramas from the archives which have been broadcast lately, to mark the anniversary of BBC2) , based on one of the best of his books.
Prisoner
Bleak Scandi drama about corruption in a prison – it’s brutal but also thoughtful and not too simplistic. Not an easy watch but worth it.
Rebus
A new take on Rebus, introducing us to him as a younger man, earlier in his career, but already instantly recognisable as the Rebus we know and love and are infuriated with. I never felt that John Hannah was quite the right man to play him, and Ken Stott was very much the older, battered version, but Richard Rankin (no relation, apparently) is just right. It’s the same trick that Young Wallander tried, setting the younger version not in his own past but in the present, which allows a different take on some aspects of the established Rebus pre-history. Rebus is kind of the archetype of the rogue/maverick cop, never knowingly toeing the line, leaving a trail of wreckage (personal and professional) in his wake, so this series – and Rankin – will have to fight a bit harder in a crowded field to establish his individuality (mind you, if the competition is that execrable Crime series with Dougray Scott it shouldn’t be too difficult).
The Responder
If Prisoner was bleak, this is bleaker. Ye gods, it is relentless, Martin Freeman’s Chris is trapped and every way he turns there is merely another trap waiting for him (and the same is true for many of the other characters). Whilst he does make (many) questionable decisions he remains sympathetic, because he’s actually trying to be a good man, to do the right thing. He’s brilliant in the role, and it is brilliantly done (the late Bernard Hill is excellent too, as Chris’s father, in what presumably was his last TV role). I find I need to watch an episode of The Durrells, or something daft like Taskmaster after each episode or it’s just too much.
Ripley
This is much closer to the novel than the Damon/Law/Paltrow film (see above), except in the age of the lead protagonist – the book suggests that Ripley and Greenleaf are in their early 30s whilst Scott is in his late 40s. That does change the tone. Damon seems, if anything, younger than the character he’s playing, and that gives him a kind of naivety which might make one – at least until he starts with the bludgeoning – a bit more forgiving of what he’s up to. Scott’s Ripley is a darker character from the outset (and not just because of the b/w film noir cinematography). But it certainly works. The pace is slow, with masses of detail, motifs that recur (the cat, the ‘nice pen’, the stairs, the Caravaggios) and whereas some found that frustrating, I found it seductive and the moments of violence all the more startling. And the slow pace extends even to those moments – this makes killing look like bloody hard work, and the cleaning up afterwards even more so.
Shardlake
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the late C J Sansom’s Tudor detective series and hope that this is just the first of the adaptations. Arthur Hughes is great as Shardlake, and it’s good to have an actor with a disability playing the role, and Sean Bean is an excellent Cromwell (it will be interesting to compare with Mark Rylance in that role when the final Wolf Hall series is out). Very moodily atmospheric, rather Gothic (mad monks and all that), and whilst I’d read the book, I had entirely forgotten who did what to whom so I enjoyed the puzzle all over again.
Shogun
This was beautifully done, often brutal, sometimes hard to follow, but absorbing and fascinating. It’s incredibly rich in detail, from the costumes to the customs, the dialogue to the action, and the cultural tensions between the Englishman and his Japanese ‘hosts’ are drawn with subtlety and without condescension.
Shoulder to Shoulder
This drama series about the Suffragette movement was first broadcast in 1974 and I thought at first I was going to find it a bit slow and stagey, going by the first episode. But it caught fire – Georgia Brown’s portrayal of Annie Kenney is great, and the episodes showing the force-feeding in prison of those women who went on hunger strike are graphic and still genuinely shocking.
Small Island
Excellent adaptation (from 2009) of Andrea Levy’s novel about young people from the Caribbean trying to build new lives in London in the 1950s. A stellar cast – David Oyelowo, Naomie Harris, Ruth Wilson amongst others – and a hard-hitting plot, with tenderness and humour.
The Tourist
A cracking thriller (two series thereof) with Jamie Dornan as the amnesiac whose forgotten past keeps catching up rather brutally with him. It’s gory and violent and very funny, and the relationship between Dornan’s ‘Elliott Stanley’ and Danielle MacDonald as police officer Helen Chambers is a delight. I have to say how much joy it brought to me that Dornan’s character is shown to fancy MacDonald, who would generally be described as a slightly larger woman, like mad, and to fall in love with her. Clearly a lot has changed since the days when plump women not only never got the man (let alone a man of Dornan’s looks and charisma) but were all too often shown as being dim and lazy and a bit of a joke.
Traces
Series 2 of this Dundee set forensic science thriller. The structure of the series goes weirdly off kilter as the first couple of episodes focus on the continuation of the plot from series 1, but that is then completely abandoned as the key characters in that strand up and leave, and the remainder of the series concerns itself with the race to catch the Dundee bomber before he blows up the V&A or Broughty Ferry. It’s almost as if the producers/writers were taken by surprise by the departure of key cast members – from a viewer’s point of view it would have been better either for that previous plot strand not to have been foregrounded initially, or for further references to it to be woven into the bomber plotline. As it was, it seemed as if the remaining cast members had simply erased all memories of those events and people – very odd. Nonetheless, it was exciting stuff (and there’s a particular frisson when one is familiar with some of the locations).
Truelove
A thriller that starts off exploiting an instinctive sympathy with the idea of assisted dying and then undermines it horribly – it doesn’t change my view that we must be able to find a way to enable the terminally ill to choose when and how they end their lives rather than lingering on in increasing misery, but it is a reminder both that the safeguards need to be carefully thought through and robust, and that palliative terminal care needs to be better, and available to everyone. (See below for my thoughts on Liz Carr’s documentary, Better off Dead.) The plot has a few implausibilities, but the lead roles are all superb – aside from Lindsay Duncan and Clarke Peters who carry the weight of the drama, Sue Johnstone in particular stands out, as does Kiran Sonia Sawar as the dogged copper who susses that something isn’t quite right.
Unbelievable
A harrowing account of a real case where a young woman alleging rape was persuaded/badgered into saying that she’d lied, and how that injustice was eventually overturned, thanks to the determination of two female detectives following the trail of the rapist. Kathlyn Dever (wonderfully funny in Booksmart, heartbreaking in Dopesick) is superb here, showing her character’s vulnerability and wilfulness, and the trauma she carries with her from a chaotic early life.
Under the Banner of Heaven
Fascinating and horrifying true crime drama based in a Mormon community, with Andrew Garfield as the massively conflicted cop leading the case.
The Way
I really, really wanted to like this. But I’m afraid it was an incoherent mess, way too many clichés, underdeveloped ideas and characters. Sorry.
We are Lady Parts
Season 2, and it’s as warm and funny and touching and clever as ever. And the music is great (both the Lady Parts originals, and their Britney cover)! Whilst Amina (the ever wonderful Anjana Vasan) is ‘the I guy’ (to use a Stephen King term), all of the band members – and their families – are given depth and breadth, and take centre stage at some point in the series. Bisma’s rendition of ‘Please Don’t Let me be Misunderstood’ – having literally put her family on pause in the midst of a row – was powerful and really rather moving, as well as beautifully sung by Faith Omole.
Documentary
Better off Dead
Liz Carr is passionately opposed to the legalisation of Assisted Dying ( or, as she calls it, Assisted Suicide) and it is impossible to simply dismiss her views, as she is someone who has been told many times that it would be better if she were dead than to live on with her level of disabilities. She rightly fears the potential for coercion, for emotional pressure on those who might see themselves (or be seen) as a burden on society and/or on their families, and the widening scope of the legislation in Canada does seem dangerous. I would still argue that there must be a way in which those who are suffering unbearably can be allowed to choose the time and manner of their death, without asking their loved ones to undertake criminal acts on their behalf. But Carr’s arguments must be listened to if any future legislation is to adequately protect people from being, even gently and kindly, shepherded into this course of action.
Can I Tell You a Secret
Documentary about online stalking and how the perpetrator was exposed. The courage of the victims is remarkable, but the production was annoyingly gimmicky – the voicing of some of the emails was confusing, and the actors speaking the lines seemed to have been told to camp it all up rather, which didn’t match the seriousness of the topic.
D-Day: The Unheard Tapes
Hearing the voices of the eyewitnesses lip synched by actors could have been clunky but it is direct and very powerful. We hear not only from the soldiers who landed on the beaches or behind the lines but the German soldiers who were there to stop them, French civilians who found themselves suddenly on the frontline and members of the French Resistance who had been waiting for the invasion to launch their own attacks. There are re-enacted sequences, featuring those actors, but the heart of the programme is the interviews, made at various times and in various places over the years since the war. Hearing those voices is a remarkable experience. If we’d just had the actors reading their characters’ words, we would wonder whether that catch in the throat was ‘acting’ or that the man speaking really couldn’t speak of that moment without choking up a bit. Fascinating and very moving.
Defiance: Fighting the Far Right
Superb, powerful documentary about how Asian communities in London, Bradford and elsewhere organised their own defence against National Front and other fascist thugs in the 70s.
The 50 Years’ War: Israel and the Arabs
The overwhelming feeling from watching this is of the intractability of the situation. The programme dates from 1998, but whilst obviously a lot has happened since then, the core of the conflict is fundamentally unchanged and so the analysis here seems as relevant as when it was first broadcast. The more one understands the history, the more one (or at least I) finds it hard to see a way forward. It’s easy, in contrast, to see what could have been done differently, both before and in the immediate aftermath of WWII, but it seems that every time there has been a glimmer of a chance of doing right both by the Jewish/Israeli population and by the Palestinians, that chance has been sabotaged by one or both sides. And things have perhaps never been more polarised than they are now, when to express horror at the 7 October attack is to be seen (by some) as a Netanyahu supporter, and to express horror at the onslaught on Gaza is to be seen (by some) as an antisemite… At least my sense of despair is based on a more informed understanding of history, thanks to this series.
Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd
Excellent documentary, drawing on the accounts not only of the other members of Floyd but of others who knew Barrett before and during his period of fame, and in its aftermath.
The Jury: Murder Trial
Reality TV with a more serious purpose than anointing a new Star Baker or marrying people at first sight – here a real murder case is re-presented to two juries made up of the usual mix of people who might be called up for jury service, and at the end each jury has to arrive at a verdict on which they all agree. The fact that they come up with different verdicts is obviously a cause for concern, but the process by which they arrive at that is more deeply worrying, in particular the ease with which one or two dominant personalities can skew things. Is there an alternative? I think at the very least the way in which the jury system works seems to be in need of an overhaul.
Michael Palin in Nigeria
This most amiable of world travellers makes his way from the hubbub of Lagos north to Kano and back south to Benin City. In only three episodes the series can’t hope to capture the complexity of this huge country, particularly as there are swathes of the north (including Zaria, where my family lived in 1966-67) where it was seen as too dangerous for Palin and the film crew to travel. But along the way we do get a sense of at least some aspects of the country, and of some of the more contentious issues – the legacy of slavery and colonialism, the British Museum’s determination to hold on to treasures looted from Nigeria during the colonial era, and the ecocide in the Niger Delta.
The Miners’ Strike: A Frontline Story/Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle for Britain
Two powerful documentaries marking the fortieth anniversary of the miners’ strike. The BBC’s offering is not dissimilar in style to Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, which was a remarkable and unforgettable account of the Troubles, telling the story and drawing out the details through the words of people who were directly involved. It works equally well here. Channel 4’s series also draws very heavily on first-hand testimony, but focuses in each of the three episodes on a particular place or aspect of the battle. Its third episode investigates some of the machinations behind the scenes, and whilst it is of interest it lacks the immediacy of those first-hand accounts.
Royal Kill List
A documentary with (quite well done) dramatised interludes. Charles II’s vendetta against anyone who had supported his father’s execution (explored in Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion) might be understandable on an emotional level, but combined with his absolute conviction that, as Sellar & Yeatman put it, ‘He was King and that was right. Kings were divine and that was right. Kings were right and that was right’, this led to appalling brutality, treachery and injustice. I concluded that the Royalists were not only Wrong but Wrepulsive. Which doesn’t mean the other lot were right. Obviously.
Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice
A rage-inducing account of how the police force failed to notice that amongst their ranks was a man whose behaviour (multiple sexual offences) should have automatically precluded them from police work, and how that man used his position, his badge and his authority, to kidnap a young woman on her way home, and then to rape and murder her.
The Secret Army
If someone had told me that early on in the Troubles an American film team would have been able to make a documentary film including footage of an IRA team heading off to plant a bomb, and a tutorial on weapons, I would have thought that highly improbable. But it happened. The film was made, processed in London, where MI5 had full access to it, and never shown. It’s all utterly bizarre, and the intentions of the film maker, and of the IRA top brass who approved the project, are very hard to comprehend.
South to Black Power
Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns told the story of the Great Migration, the mass movement over several decades of African Americans from the South to northern cities, in flight from the Jim Crow laws and accompanying relentless racial violence. Here writer Charles Blow makes the case for a reverse process, boosting the black population in parts of the south (areas where it is already a very significant minority) such that it might reach a tipping point of political power.
Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War/Secrets and Spies
It seemed almost rather too timely to be revisiting some of the scariest moments of the Cold War, when we came closest to the unthinkable. The Turning Point series was excellent (there was a previous series about 9/11 and what followed which was also exceptionally well done), with lots that I didn’t know and much richer detail and context on the bits of the story that were more familiar to me. Secrets and Spies focused in more closely on the Reagan years, and on some of the individual stories and it provided an intriguing counterpoint to The Americans, as well as reminding me of Deutschland 83 in its coverage of the Able Archer training exercise (also, obviously, featured in Turning Point) that nearly triggered disaster…
When Bob Marley Came to Britain
This was lovely. Marley playing footie in the park, doing an acoustic gig in the gym of Peckham primary school and generally connecting with the black Britons he met in a way that still, clearly, means the whole world to them today. And of course there’s the wonderful music too.
2022 On Screen (the first half)
Posted by cathannabel in Uncategorized on June 30, 2022
There’s a correlation between the relatively low book count this half-year (see my 2022 Reading post), and the unprecedentedly high film/TV count. On the days when I couldn’t focus enough to read or to tackle any of the jobs on my to-do list, I watched movies in the afternoons. Most of the films were seen via Netflix or other streaming services, which I’d barely explored until this last eight months, with only two cinema expeditions so far this year.The pattern of my TV watching is more as it used to be – a few things which I would never have persuaded my husband to watch, but most programmes/series are ones which I had watched with him, or would have done had he still been here.
I haven’t attempted a full review of everything – this year isn’t normal in any respect, and so my comments on these films and television series may tend to reflect my circumstances, the stage I’ve reached in processing my bereavement, and how that colours my response to what I’ve watched. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, but no guarantees…
I have missed out a few things about which there was really nothing to say – a film/programme that did what it set out to do but left little impression, one which I dozed off during, and woke to see the final credits rolling, or started watching and couldn’t be bothered to finish. Because the latter two categories may be about me as much as the quality of the material, I would not necessarily seek to judge… Where something aimed high and fell short, or did a disservice either to its source material or to its subject, I say so, however. And the best of what I’ve watched so far this year is marked with an asterisk.
Films (via large and small screen)
10 Cloverfield Avenue
When I was recovering after knee surgery my son came to stay for three weeks and brought a stack of DVDs, handpicked for my enjoyment (he knows me very well), but also avoiding anything too heavy about loss and grief. This was an excellent choice – the claustrophobia and paranoia set in early on, and I really could not predict how the plot was going to play out, nor were the loose ends tied up too neatly at the end.
22 July
The triggers I was trying to avoid were personal and specific, so didn’t condemn me to bland fare. Far from it – this one was a tough watch; it moved me but didn’t (apart from an odd moment) cause me deep distress. My interest in this account of the 2011 Norway killings was in the aftermath rather than the atrocity per se, and specifically how the trial was handled. Perhaps also there is some release in confronting a bigger tragedy than my own, with wider impact and implications. I’d very much admired Greengrass’s United 93 and this was just as good.
‘71
Absolutely gripping, the sort of thriller where you forget to breathe… Added power in the knowledge of the reality of, if not this specific story, then the general situation on the streets of Belfast at the start of the Troubles, and added interest in the knowledge that some of the Belfast scenes were actually filmed here in Sheffield.
The Aftermath
Could have been good. But it was so wooden and predictable. It flips the scenario at the heart of both Vercors’ clandestine wartime novel, The Silence of the Sea, and Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise (see below), as a French home is taken over by a German officer who, however, proves to be cultured and troubled. (Those two sources are more or less contemporary – I can’t see any way they could have been aware of each other.) But this film doesn’t do anything more interesting with the plot than make the occupying forces the Brits and the cultured German the person whose home has been taken over. The love affair which results is both predictable and unconvincing, at least in its denouement.
Ali and Ava*
This was wonderful. It goes to some dark places but I was rooting for Ali and Ava from the start; the characters are beautifully written, and beautifully played, by Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook, it’s often funny, and very touching.
Aliens
Another film from a movie night with my son, who was shocked to learn that I’d seen Alien but none of its sequels. This was thoroughly gripping, with plenty of jump scary moments and obviously a proper kick-ass female lead.
All About my Mother
My first Almodovar. Cruz is wonderful, as is Cecilia Roth. The plot is quite overwrought, which is emphasised by the interweaving of Streetcar Named Desire (amongst other intertextual references), but it’s witty and warm and compassionate.
Amistad
Fascinating account of the legal case brought after the mutiny on slave ship Amistad, in which the status of the mutineers – had they been brought from Africa, illegally, or were they owned as slaves, legally? – was crucial to the verdict. Djimon Hounsou’s performance is magnificent and very moving.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
I was afraid this was going to be really sentimental and sugary but it managed not to be (Tom Hanks really is good at negotiating that territory), and in fact was frequently quite cathartically moving.
Before I Go to Sleep
I’d read the book quite recently – it’s much better than the film, as the film has to miss out so much of the painstaking accumulation of detail that one is unavoidably aware of the plot holes… Kidman and Firth do a decent job in the circs.
Bladerunner 2049*
Fantastic – beautiful, gripping and memorable. I should probably have rewatched the original which I hadn’t seen for decades, but no matter, I loved this.
The Blue Dahlia
A proper film noir, courtesy of Talking Pictures TV, from 1946, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Interesting post-war context – Ladd’s character comes home, with two other demobbed air force buddies, and that one of the two has PTSD and a metal plate in his head.
Boiling Point
Bloody hell, this was tense. I felt myself getting more and more hot and bothered as the film went on. Stephen Graham is, as always, brilliant.
Bombardment
One of the pleasures of Netflix has been access to European films about aspects of WWII – this one tells the story of a bombing attack on occupied Copenhagen, towards the end of the war, which attacked the wrong target, killing children and teachers at a local school. The lead characters appear to be fictional, but the basic events are accurately and powerfully depicted, even if the ending is a bit abrupt.
The Book Thief
I wasn’t sure how well the book would transfer to the screen but it’s beautifully and movingly done.
Call to Spy
A film I’d never heard of, about two of the female SOE operatives in France in WWII, Virginia Hall and Noor Inayat Khan. Some of the details are tweaked to place the two of them together in occupied territory, but the depictions of the two women are very true to all of the accounts I’ve read. And I don’t know why there haven’t been more films about Noor Inayat Khan in particular. I ran a session for Year 10s on a gifted and talented programme a few years back, talking about what history is, and talked about the French Resistance and about the real choices people had under occupation. When I told Noor’s story, I swear the South Asian young women in the room lit up – the last thing they had expected was that one of these Resistance heroes would be someone who looked like them.
The Courier
A Cold War thriller, based on the real story of Greville Wynne and his Soviet contact, Oleg Penkovsky. Very well done, Cumberbatch excellent in the lead role, even if Jessie Buckley is somewhat underused as the long-suffering wife (I’ve lost track of how many brilliant women I’ve seen in these movies as long-suffering wife, supportive girlfriend, etc etc, which I thought were tropes that had had their day…).
Curtiz*
Another gem. Curtiz was the director of Casablanca, a film which gets better every time I see it. And one of the things that gives it so much depth and life is that so many of those involved in the making, on both sides of the camera, were themselves refugees from Nazi Europe, including Curtiz himself, who is seen, during the battles with the studios to make the film, also desperately negotiating to try to get a relative out of Hungary. Fascinating.
Da 5 Bloods*
I loved this, so much. Wonderful performances from, esp., Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters and the late Chadwick Boseman, riffing on Treasure of the Sierra Madre, humour and horror and heart.
Darkest Hour
Great performance from Oldman, and the film manages to create real tension even though we know how it all turned out. The scene on the Underground though – pure hokum! However, as sceptical as I was, it did bring a tear or two to my eye.
David Copperfield*
Glorious. Ianucci captures and revels in Dickens’ exuberance. The performances are wonderful – Dev Patel is perfect in the lead, with brilliant support from Capaldi, Whishaw, Laurie, Swinton et al, and lesser-known names such as Rosalind Eleazar as Agnes Wickfield. And, oh lord, the bit where Dora says, ‘Write me out, Dodie’ breaks my heart.
Don’t Look Up
Crikey, this one was divisive. I can see both sides – I think it’s funnier than some of the critics acknowledged, but less important politically than its creator and its advocates claim. It gets some nice punches in at some fairly predictable targets, but is unlikely to change anyone’s mind or behaviour. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it.
Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
If you’re going to call your film a multiverse of madness, it can’t have a linear plot with all loose ends neatly tied up. This doesn’t – there’s too much happening, too fast, to keep track of the various ‘verses, let alone the implications of what happens in one for all of the others, or to recall which one is the one we started off in. Sam Raimi brings a horror sensibility to the film, which is scarier than Marvels generally are. Cumberbatch is great, Olsen is terrifying and heartbreaking.
Dune*
Villeneuve is one of my favourite directors (see also Bladerunner 2049, Sicario) and this is stunning, visually and in its interpretation of a book I haven’t read for decades, but dearly loved. The soundtrack is great too.
Encanto
Delightful, with a very un-princessy hero and some nice tunes.
Enduring Love
I’m in two minds about McEwan’s novels. On the one hand, there’s Atonement, one of my favourite 21st century novels, and on the other, there’s Solar… I haven’t read the book on which this is based so can only comment on the film, which is gripping and troubling and quite talky but with moments of physical shock, and the performances are excellent.
Enemy Lines
This is what happens when you put every WWII movie cliché into a pile and shuffle them and then just sprinkle them liberally throughout your narrative and script. There were some here I hadn’t heard since Pearl Harbour.
Enigma
Based on the Robert Harris novel which I read this year (see my books blog), it suffers from over-simplification, as we lose so much of Harris’s detailed analysis and explanation that it ends up being just another thriller. The leading man is miscast, but Kate Winslet is great.
Enola Holmes
Millie Bobbie Brown from Stranger Things tackling crime and outwitting her more famous brothers. A thoroughly enjoyable evening’s watching.
The Eternals
This was often baffling, without the excuse of Dr Strange that it was juggling an infinite number of different universes. As familiar as I am with the Marvel cinematic universe(s) this required me to pick up a whole lot of new cosmology which I didn’t totally get, and I really didn’t connect with the characters. All of the above may be partly my fault, if I was feeling particularly foggy when I watched it, so a rewatch may clarify matters.
Film Stars don’t Die in Liverpool*
This is so good. Annette Bening’s portrayal of Gloria Grahame’s last years is so moving – she’s fractious and demanding and incredibly vulnerable. Jamie Bell is excellent too as her much younger lover, and the juxtaposition of the Hollywood star with his Liverpool family is funny and touching.
The Forgotten Battle
Another of the European WWII films that I found on Netflix, this excellent Dutch movie covers the Battle of the Scheldt in 1944, strategically of huge importance, but as the title suggests, somewhat forgotten.
The Ghost Writer
Adaptation of a Robert Harris novel that I haven’t yet read. Very much enjoyed this – the viewer is figuring things out along with Ewan McGregor’s character, so is being constantly wrongfooted, and increasingly paranoid (but maybe not paranoid enough…) and the ending was genuinely a shock.
The Girl on the Train
I wasn’t sure about Emily Blunt in the lead role – too obviously attractive? – but she made it work, and it was a decent adaptation of the book.
Gladiator
Yes, I did watch it this year for the first time. And I thoroughly enjoyed it too.
The Hand of God*
Recommended by the Italian branch of the family – I’d previously enjoyed Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, and The New Pope (in which my brother appeared for a brief but profoundly significant moment as a Cardinal). This one is a coming of age story, strongly autobiographical, and it is quirky, funny and heartbreaking.
Hurricane
A Polish/UK co-production focusing on the Polish RAF squadron, their role in the Battle of Britain, and the grubby way they were treated after the war. The condescension of the establishment towards them, and their consuming grief and rage at what the Nazis are doing to their homeland and their families, are very powerfully conveyed and the air war scenes are thrilling.
The Impossible
Based on an eye witness account of the 2004 tsunami, this is a pretty intense watch. I did feel that the ending relied rather heavily on repeated coincidences to bring the survivors back together, but for all I know this may reflect what actually happened. Tom Holland as the teenage son is brilliant.
Is Paris Burning?
1966 epic about the liberation of Paris by the Resistance and Free French forces.
Jackie
Quite a tough watch. I guess watching a film about someone being suddenly widowed wasn’t a great idea, although the overall mood of the film was slightly chilly, which created some distance.
Kobo and the Two Strings*
Wonderful anime, with a story that went to much darker and complicated places than I was expecting, and was very moving (the version of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ that played at the end just broke me and I sobbed for quite a while).
The Last Sentence
Long (well, it felt long) and slow, this account of the life of a Swedish newspaper editor between 1933 and 1945, when Sweden was a neutral country. It deals with his political activity (anti-Nazi), but also with his relationships with wife and mistress(es). He’s a far from sympathetic character who treats the women in his life appallingly.
Lion*
I loved this – the kid who plays the protagonist as a child (Sunny Pawar) is utterly mesmerising and for the whole of that part of the narrative I was on the edge of my seat wanting him to be safe. Dev Patel as the adult version is also compelling as he becomes obsessed with finding the home that he’d lost before he even knew where it was.
The Lost Daughter
Olivia Colman is superb – as is Jessie Buckley as her younger self – and it’s quite a disturbing watch, with some visual shocks that may be real or hallucinations, and an ambiguous ending.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Chadwick Boseman is excellent again in this, and Viola Davis makes the most of her role as Ma Rainey – it’s a very powerful image of a black woman demanding to be treated not just with respect but as a kind of royalty.
The Tragedy of Macbeth*
Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as Macbeth & Mrs Macbeth. I very much liked the Fassbender/Cotillard version from a few years back, but this one is brilliant too – the black & white expressionist cinematography creates, as the Time Out reviewer put it, magic with shadow and light.
Malcolm X
Spike Lee’s biopic, with Denzel again. Controversial at every stage of its writing and production, it’s a compelling portrait of a complex man.
Mary Queen of Scots
Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan as Elizabeth and Mary respectively, in a historical drama that takes some liberties with history but to very enjoyable effect.
Minority Report
Another of my son’s choices for post-surgery watching, and another excellent thriller with a philosophical dimension (free will v. determinism), and lots of opportunities for Cruise to do his thing.
Munich
Another Spielberg, and lord, this is dark. It kicks off with the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and moves on to the Mossad pursuit of the presumed killers – relentless, and brutal, but not without moral debate, and anguish on the part of at least some of the Mossad team about what they’re doing.
Munich: Edge of War
Another Robert Harris adaptation, setting up a slightly different reading of Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement of Hitler, with a (presumably) fictional plot involving a document that lays out unambiguously Hitler’s intentions that has to be smuggled from an anti-Nazi German to a member of Chamberlain’s team. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know how faithful it is to Harris’s plot, but it’s a fine thriller, with some very tense moments.
No Time to Die
Daniel Craig in his last outing as Bond. Classic stuff.
The Northman
Gory, shouty, completely gripping. Draws on the original story that Shakespeare used for Hamlet. With Alexander Skarsgard in the lead, and Bjork popping up as a seer. NB I first encountered Skarsgard in True Blood, where he played vampire Eric Northman…
Operation Finale
The capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina – manages to generate some tension despite the fact that we know the outcome, largely through the conversations between Eichmann and his captors as they wait until they can get a flight to Israel. Ben Kingsley and Oscar Isaac give strong performances.
Paris Blues*
I had never heard of this until I read some of the obits for Sidney Poitier. Poitier and Paul Newman are jazz musicians in Paris, who meet up with two women (Diahann Carroll and Joanne Woodward). It’s not much of a plot but who cares – those four beautiful people, wandering around Paris to a Duke Ellington score, and Poitier and Carroll talking about racial politics in the US, the reasons he won’t go back home, and the reasons she knows she must.
Philomena
A woman’s search for the child taken from her when she was a single mother back in Ireland in the ‘50s, this is a hefty emotional drama, played subtly by Dench and with real restraint by Steve Coogan. It exposes a cruel system, which continued until far more recently than one might have imagined, and how the Church managed also to profit from that system.
The Pianist
Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw Szpilman’s remarkable first-band account of his survival in Warsaw during the Nazi Occupation. The film doesn’t pull its punches – there are no last minute reprieves for most of the characters, nor miraculous returns from Treblinka – but we see only what Szpilman saw, the ghetto and the city, not the gas chambers and the crematoria, and it doesn’t milk the story for tears or shock.
Primal Fear
Edward Norton’s film debut and he’s absolutely brilliant, really lifts a decent thriller to a different level.
Quo Vadis Aida*
Incredibly powerful film, set during the siege of Srebenica by the Serbian army. Aida is a teacher who’s working as a translator for the UN and whose family are caught up in the horrors. The tension ramps up and up until it’s almost unbearable.
The Resistance Banker
Another of those European (Dutch again) WWII movies, this one does what the title says, tells the true story of a banker who devised a scheme to fund the Resistance and help Jewish families to escape. A really interesting and (to me) completely unknown story.
Sicario
Gripping, dark, brutal. Great soundtrack.
Snowpiercer
One of my son’s choices, and another win, not just because Chris Evans. I mean, there’s John Hurt and Tilda Swinton too… But the set-up is intriguing and the reveal is gradual and intelligently done, and with real impact.
The Social Network
This is very well done, and well played. It’s just that really, spending that amount of time in the company of these people isn’t my idea of fun.
Sonny Boy
Another Dutch WWII film, this one explores racism through the experiences of a young man from Suriname who moves to The Hague and forms a relationship with a white Dutch woman, before the war. It’s based on a true story, and it’s moving and thoughtful.
Spiderman: No Way Home*
This is an absolute blast. More multiverse madness, but amongst it all real heart, real poignancy as well as humour.
Spotlight
It’s All the President’s Men but with a newspaper office exposing the scandal of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Boston. The tone is deliberately low-key, no histrionics, and it’s all the more powerful for that. Excellent performances from Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Stanley Tucci.
Suburbicon
Way, way, over the top black comedy as Matt Damon’s apparently conventional 1950s businessman is drawn into more and more violence to cover up a domestic crime, but this plot runs alongside a rather underdeveloped one concerning the arrival of a black family in a white neighbourhood and the campaign of hatred against them.
Suffragette
A decent historical drama about the Suffragette movement. Somehow it didn’t manage to be more than that.
Suite Francaise
See above for the plot similarities with The Silence of the Sea and The Aftermath. This is based on one of the two surviving sections of Irene Nemirovsky’s novel, which was left unfinished when she was deported to her death in Auschwitz in 1942, and only published this century. She was an established and successful novelist before the Occupation but this was written clandestinely, while she tried to keep her children and husband safe. The film is faithful enough to the novel, but has a rather soapy feel to it. It’s impossible to respond to the novel without thinking of the story of its publication, and unusual to read a fictional account of the Occupation which is totally without hindsight (someone in my book group criticised Nemirovsky for not talking about the deportation of the Jews, but focusing on romantic tension between occupied and occupier…).
Sully
Tom Hanks as the good, decent, ordinary guy again. Laura Linney as his long-suffering wife (she’s having much more fun in Ozark (see below)). The film depicts not only the extraordinary landing on the Hudson after birds fly into and incapacitate the plane’s engines, but the inquiry afterwards, which seems to be challenging Sully’s professional judgement that this was the only way he could save the plane’s passengers. It’s gripping stuff, and the effect on Sully of these traumatic events is conveyed very powerfully.
Their Finest
Adaptation of one of Lissa Evans’ marvellous WWII novels, this is a funny and sharp account of the making of wartime propaganda films, with great dialogue and characters.
Train to Busan*
One of the best zombie films I’ve seen. It reminded me of Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, with the sheer relentlessness of the onslaught. It’s very very gory and it keeps the tension up right to the end.
Turning Red
Lovely, funny and touching film about adolescence and the mayhem of hormones in a newly teenaged girl. Coping with her own turmoil of emotions and sensations, and with her mother’s embarrassing attempts at solidarity and support has a surprising effect on Mei Lee… A delight.
United
A moving account of the Munich air crash through the eyes of the very young Bobby Charlton. It could have been better – we didn’t need the cartoon villainy of the FA and the portrayal of Matt Busby was odd (and offended his family deeply), but it worked, and the period detail of how even top-flight footballers lived back then is fascinating.
World Trade Center
An extraordinary achievement, to make a boring film about 9/11. I’m not underplaying the courage of the firefighters portrayed in the film, who did what they had to do regardless of their own safety, but they deserved a much better cinematic tribute.
Worth
A very different take on 9/11 as Michael Keaton plays an accountant who has to devise the algorithms to determine compensation for victims and their families, and Stanley Tucci is the widower who challenges the impersonality of the approach. We share Keaton’s detached perspective for much of the film, which gives the sections where members of his team interview victims and families huge power. It’s interesting, challenging and moving.
Zero Dark Thirty
Still with 9/11, this is a cracking thriller about the hunt for Bin Laden, which doesn’t shy away from the morally grey areas.
Zodiac
The long and ultimately unresolved hunt for the Zodiac killer is here shown not only through the murders themselves but through the effect on those involved in the hunt – Ruffalo, Downey Jr and Gyllenhaal give strong performances.
TV
After Party
Very silly, visually witty, cracking script. A lot of fun.
All Creatures Great & Small
Proper comfort telly. Yes, it risks cosiness and I hate that word, but it actually never dodges the brutal realities of farming and livestock management, and it has given Mrs Hall (in the 1980s televisation a stereotypical older woman, stout and no-nonsense) an emotionally powerful back story and a lot more agency. And Sam West is now Siegfried Farnon, as far as I’m concerned.
Anatomy of a Scandal
Sillier than I’d expected from reading the book, which I recall being quite a decent thriller. The dramatization uses some very odd visual tricks (a man suddenly being thrown backwards by an invisible force when police take him in for questioning about a rape, and flashbacks where present-day version and past version of a character are both visible, and so on) which were just gimmicky. The inevitable compression of the plot made its weaknesses more obvious, plus I got very tired of the wronged wife’s incredibly beige wardrobe.
Anne
Harrowing account of the life of Anne Williams, mother of one of the Hillsborough dead, and relentless campaigner for justice for all of the 97. It starts off as a tough watch and doesn’t get any easier, but it’s important as a reminder of what it takes to win any kind of recognition of institutional wrongdoing, and of how fragile any win is likely to be.
Baptiste
I do very much like Tcheky Karyo’s grizzled detective and Fiona Shaw was a great addition to the cast. I enjoyed the plot, although I found myself not quite believing the central premiss, and not at all believing Baptiste’s remarkable full recovery from what looked like a pretty comprehensive battering by a man half his age. Just for once, it would be good to have an older hero whose age was acknowledged a bit more honestly – I don’t mean they spend the whole show complaining about their joints, but don’t suddenly make them into an almost invulnerable action hero, OK?
Beck
Now Beck is an older hero whose age is acknowledged, both directly in terms of his health, and tacitly – he doesn’t suddenly chase down a perp, or engage in fisticuffs with young thugs. He uses his vast experience and lets the young cops do the risky stuff, and quite right too. The supporting cast are great, and the plots are dark and tense. Though I am slightly tired of the usual coda with Martin and his neighbour on the balcony – might be time to retire that.
The Crown
I would never, ever, have persuaded my husband to watch this. I only started because a couple of friends whose judgement I trust told me how good it was, and they weren’t kidding. The period it spans is pretty much my lifetime, plus my parents’ recollections of earlier events and it was absolutely fascinating to see the events I recall from this very different, very odd perspective. The cast are brilliant – I did wonder how the transition from one set of actors to another would work, but after half an episode or so to recalibrate, it was fine. It’s all very bizarre really, and I wonder how they’re going to handle some current royal issues when they get to them…
Dalgliesh
Bertie Carvel is my third Dalgliesh. First up Roy Marsden, cerebral and ascetic, then a seriously miscast Martin Shaw (nothing against Shaw, but he’s not Dalgliesh). Carvel was just right, the supporting cast were excellent, and the plots pretty faithful to the books. I look forward to future series.
The Defeated
A dark, grim crime thriller set in Berlin immediately after the war, a city divided into different occupied zones, a city of rubble and displaced people and people just trying to survive by legitimate or corrupt means. I didn’t take to the leading man, thought he was a bit characterless, but the portrayal of that world, and the interweaving stories were very powerfully done. Lots of threads left dangling, for a second series to pick up.
Derry Girls*
Glorious. Lisa McGee’s writing is pitch perfect – she gets the balance between the teenage self-preoccupation and silliness and the events around them just right, and knows just when and how to punch us in the guts. I don’t know what to pick out for special mention – the episode with the mammies, Liam Neeson’s cameo appearance with Uncle Colm, Orla dancing through Derry… The finale was a thing of great beauty and power and I loved it.
DI Ray
One can’t claim now that there aren’t black officers in senior roles in TV crime dramas but I haven’t seen before such an honest treatment of the microaggressions that those officers encounter along the way. There were a few plot issues (why does the plot always require our hero to behave stupidly and unprofessionally when they’ve been portrayed up to that point as bright and professional?), and the overall mood was rather dour, but I’ll be interested to see if it gets picked up for a second series.
Doctor Who
Just two specials in this half-year. The New Year’s Day episode was great, funny and clever, and I do love a time loop. The Sea Devils episode was fun but had rather too much plot for its running time, so ended up feeling a bit disjointed, and will be remembered for the tentative and awkward acknowledgement of mutual feelings between Yaz and the Doctor (very nicely handled). Only one more special to go – I’ll be sorry to see Whitaker go, and wish she’d had consistently better scripts and not had a pandemic to interrupt the flow (though her broadcast in character during the first lockdown was a thing of beauty). But I’m really, really looking forward to RTD’s return and to meeting 14 (even if it’s also hurting my heart that 14 will be the first Doctor Martyn will never have encountered).
The Falklands Play
I think my response when this was originally broadcast in 2002 (in an amended and abridged version) would have been much more cynical about its comparatively positive portrayal of the then Conservative government, and it speaks volumes about the state of our current cluster of incompetence and dishonesty that my main reaction was, good lord, here are people seriously considering what is the right thing to do, and insisting on resigning if they got it wrong (in failing to foresee the invasion), and isn’t that extraordinary? Obviously, Patricia Hodge’s Thatcher is a far less odd and far more sympathetic portrayal than Gillian Anderson’s in The Crown, and the reality was probably somewhere between the two. The production history and the politics of the writing, production and broadcast are as interesting as the play itself in a way.
Fargo
The fourth spin-off series from the film, this time set in 1950/51, in Kansas City, and the scene is set as successive generations of gangsters (Irish, Jewish, Italian, African-American) jostle bloodily for dominance. If it doesn’t quite match up to the brilliance of previous series, there’s plenty of very dark humour, and a sharply written script, as well as a mesmerising turn from Jessie Buckley, to enjoy.
Five Came Back
This fascinating documentary series explores the work done during WWII by five Hollywood directors (Ford, Wyler, Huston, Capra, Stevens) who were recruited to create propaganda films to win hearts and minds at home. It explores each of the five’s response to what they saw on the front line, and how what they wanted to say wasn’t always permitted (Huston’s film about PTSD in returning soldiers, for example), and how their experiences affected their post-war careers.
Final Account
German documentary featuring interviews with some of the last generation of German participants and witnesses to Nazism. It’s a deeply troubling watch – even the best of the interviewees clearly have fond memories of their days in the Hitler Youth, and for the most part there is a stubborn reluctance to acknowledge what they knew.
Gentleman Jack
Suranne Jones is striding across the Yorkshire countryside again, and it’s marvellous.
Happy Valley
Grimly gripping crime drama set in the least happy valley one could imagine. The writing and the performances are top notch.
Hidden
Mind you, the Welsh landscape of Hidden is hardly a tranquil haven either. Again, writing and performances ensure that you can’t look away.
Inventing Anna
Dramatisation of real events, carried by a bravura performance by Julia Garner as Anna Delvey/Sorokin, who conned people out of millions basically just by acting as if she was super rich and telling people she was super rich. Delvey/Sorokin is a very odd character, sociopathic and ruthless, and if one didn’t know it was a true story, one would find it very hard to believe that she convinced anyone to part with even a used fiver.
The Ipcress File
Clearly there was no need for a remake but here we are, and I rather enjoyed it. I liked Joe Cole in the lead, it was all very stylishly done, and no more or less faithful to the Deighton novel than the 1960s film was.
Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story
Vile. I can remember when he was ubiquitous on the telly, and I never liked him, but I thought he was just irritating rather than being dangerous. And yet some of the clips included in the documentary practically advertise his predilections. Did we learn anything new or useful? I don’t know – except that if someone tells the world that they are a monster, it’s probably sensible to believe them…
Killing Eve
Yes, it should have probably finished at the end of season 2, or 3, but having got this far I was always going to watch the final series. There were some good moments, and some important revelations, and quite a few scenes from which I had to look away.
The Last Days
1998 documentary telling the story of five Hungarian Jews who survived deportation to Auschwitz in the last year of the war. As always, I am struck by the sheer obsessive insanity of a regime losing a war on several fronts which channels huge resources into rounding up and murdering people who pose no threat to the regime other than by their existence as Jews.
Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Britain
Fascinating interviews, wonderful music, and a forceful reminder of the daily experience of racism in all its forms that all of the participants have encountered. I would have loved a longer series that could have gone into greater depth into some aspects – particularly the interface between African and Caribbean cultures.
Life after Life*
Superb. Beautiful and so very moving. Kate Atkinson’s book is one of my favourite novels of this century – I’ve re-read it several times and I love it. I did wonder about the wisdom of watching this, as life after life also means death after death, and I did have to have quite a big cry after each episode but in a strange way, this is life affirming and uplifting, and I’m glad I did.
Lupin
French crime thriller with a light touch, as Omar Sy carries out heists inspired by the fictional detective Arsene Lupin. Sounds daft, but it’s v enjoyable.
Midwich Cuckoos
A decent adaptation of the Wyndham novel. It updates the action, so that rather than everyone having conniptions about unmarried women being pregnant, the women, and any partners, all respond in much more nuanced and individual ways, at least until their unborn offspring start controlling their emotions and actions.
Mindhunter
Whilst I often wished I could unhear some of the dialogue (during the FBI agents’ interviews with convicted serial murderers) this is really compelling – I hadn’t realised quite how the vocabulary and the profiling assumptions that we take for granted about serial killers grew out of the work of this small FBI team in the 70s. Whilst the two leads are fictionalised, the cases are real, and it was particularly interesting to see the treatment of the Atlanta child murders (watching this led me to read Tayari Jones’ novel, Leaving Atlanta, and James Baldwin’s essay, Evidence of Things Not Seen, to find out more, from different perspectives).
Moon Knight
This was often bewildering, often funny, often quite scary.
Ms Marvel
Ms Marvel, like Spiderman, is dealing with the arrival of superhero-ness alongside the usual teenage challenges of school, parents who just don’t understand, friendships and crushes. Unlike Spiderman, she’s also negotiating the cultural heritage of her parents, and the history of Partition and what it did to their family. Hugely engaging.
My Name is Leon
Beautifully done, with a wonderful performance by Cole Martin in the lead as a ‘looked after’ child. Breaks your heart, but heals it too.
Normal People
Oh, I have struggled with this. The performances are excellent, it’s not that. Maybe I just find being reminded of being that sort of age, and the agonies that go with it, too much. Every conversation, every interaction is so burdened with unspoken insecurities and with misunderstandings that could be cleared up in five minutes if they just had a proper chat.
Opera Italia
The ebullient Antonio Pappano, currently music director of the Royal Opera House, but who we saw conducting at the Auditorium in Rome a few years back, is the perfect host for this history of Italian opera.
Ozark
Brilliantly dark crime series, with a labyrinthine plot and a cast of characters who are, to a man, woman or teenager, morally compromised. That we root for some of those characters is because they are drawn with so much depth and detail that we understand who they are, even if we disapprove of what they do. Laura Linney, Jason Bateman and Julia Garner are particularly strong.
Parks & Recreation
I was told that if I got Season 1 out of the way and got into Season 2, I would love rather than just liking Parks & Rec, and would love rather than just liking Lesley Knope. This is indeed how it panned out.
Peaky Blinders
The final season as far as TV is concerned – mention has been made of a movie, so we’ll see what comes of that. Season 6 was always going to be tricky, as the absence of Aunt Polly made things feel a little out of kilter, even whilst it made room for the other women in the cast in various ways to take centre stage. Whilst some of the earlier episodes seemed to take a lot of time to not progress the narrative very much, it gathered pace towards the end of the run, and the final episode was a masterclass in drawing threads together, but also leaving questions unanswered and possibilities dangling tantalisingly…
Picard
Pace was an issue with Season 2 of Picard too – the flashbacks to Picard’s childhood, though it became clear why they were so important, were too long drawn out and too often repeated. But the Borg are always a welcome arrival (in plot terms), and the time travel plot was fun, and the denouement was surprising and moving.
The Promise
French crime. Enjoyable, but tiresomely dependent on good, professional cop behaving badly/foolishly.
Sherwood*
Superb. The long afterlife of the divisions between mining communities and families during the 1984 strike was well known to us, having lived in Nottinghamshire and then subsequently in Yorkshire, and having had to explain to our son why Sheffield United supporters as yet unborn in ’84 were yelling ‘scab!’ at Nottingham Forest supporters as yet unborn in ’84… The cast list is packed with some of the best British actors of recent years, too many to mention but Adeel Akhtar is particularly outstanding. Its only misstep was a reference to ‘Notts Forest’ in ep. 1, but the writing and performances are so fine that I had to forgive that. And the ending… Subtle, intelligent and powerfully emotional.
Slow Horses
This is le Carré territory, except that the spies are the dregs of the British secret services, all having been demoted for some dereliction of duty or failure of judgement, and are being led by one Jackson Lamb (brilliantly played by Gary Oldman) who is, or at least purports to be, completely cynical and disillusioned about the whole thing. It’s funny and sharply written, and gripping too, since despite Lamb’s best efforts, his motley collection of failed spies get drawn into some fairly heavy events.
Stranger Things*
We were told so many times by so many people, when this first started, to watch it, and I have no idea why we failed to heed that obviously sound advice. The homage to Stephen King, the echoes of Buffy, the nods to ET and Close Encounters, all mark this out as entirely our sort of thing. So I’m sad we never got round to it together, but I have been loving seasons 1 and 2 this year.
Ted Lasso
Season 2 experimented more with the format than Season 1, but kept the things that made this special. And the fact that it ends with Richmond’s skin-of-the-teeth promotion is a particular delight, given my own team’s success this year (Nottingham Forest, obviously).
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The film was too constrained for time (ha!) to really explore the complexities of the narrative, so stretching it out into at least two series certainly works better. The awkwardness of the scenes between adult Henry and child Claire is handled well, with due acknowledgement given to the disturbing way that their friendship could be interpreted and the two leads are charismatic.
Trigger Point
Thriller based in a Met bomb squad. There’s certainly plenty of tension, but the script is often leaden and however good the leads are (and they are very good) there’s a limit to what they can do with the lines they have to speak…
Stanley Tucci: In Search of Italy
Delightful. Tucci is the most charming of hosts, clearly a man who loves his food (and somehow, annoyingly, maintains a svelte figure despite this) and he takes us region by region through the cuisine, the ingredients, the techniques, the history, the politics of food.
Turning Point
Documentary series about 9/11, which begins with the attack and then explores the US and international response. Very interesting and hard-hitting.
Uprising*
Powerful and gut-wrenching Steve McQueen documentary series about the New Cross fire and the ways racism twisted the media response to the deaths, and the police investigation into the cause of the fire.
Vigil
Properly claustrophobic submarine-based thriller. Was it plausible? I don’t rightly know, but I totally bought into it, for the length of the series at least.
The Walking Dead
I’ve somewhat lost track of what season we’re in now, or how far through, what with all of the breaks. But I know we’re coming towards the end of what has been, overall, a bloody good run. It did lose its way a bit for a while, dragging the Saviours plot out too long, but it got back on track with the Whisperers, and took things in a whole new direction with the Commonwealth.
We are Lady Parts*
Fabulously funny series about an all-female Muslim punk band, with Anjana Vasan (also seen this year as Pam in Killing Eve) a delight in the lead role.
We Own this City
From the same stable of writers as The Wire, which is a damn fine pedigree. This is based on real events, police brutality and corruption within the Baltimore PD’s Gun Trace Task Force. Jon Bernthal is brilliant in the lead role, all swagger and strut, with Jamie Hector (Marlo in The Wire) as his polar opposite. It’s dark, and the non-linear narrative requires some concentration.
Who Do You Think You Are?
Another long-running series that I only started watching in the last few months. How interesting it is depends on the person whose family history is being explored – I found Sue Perkins’ story fascinating, and Matt Lucas’s was almost unbearably moving, all the more so because his normal TV persona (one that I find intensely irritating, TBH) was entirely absent. Instead a serious, grown-up person was there, one who at many points in the programme was struggling with deep emotions as he discovered the stories of relatives who had remained in Germany or fled to the Netherlands during the war.
Winter on Fire
Fine documentary about the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2013-14, obviously even more significant, pertinent and moving in the present circumstances.
2021 on Screen
Posted by cathannabel in Film, Television on December 13, 2021
I only saw two films at the cinema in 2021. It took me a while to feel confident in going back, but I’m glad I did, for the delight that was Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman. (I subsequently saw West Side Story, see below) It seemed fitting, as well, given that the last films I saw at the cinema, in March 2020, were her Girlhood, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The second of those was the last film I saw at the cinema with my late husband.
There are plenty of films here, viewed on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus and regular TV channels. It’s a different experience, certainly, less immersive (I wouldn’t check my phone during a film at the cinema whereas, I’m afraid, I can’t always help myself when at home). But it’s been invaluable, during the various phases of lockdown, and during the weeks immediately after my husband’s death when some already familiar films provided comfort and distraction.
Anyone who has read my reviews of previous years will expect, and will get, a lot of detective, crime and thriller series, a fair bit of scifi/fantasy, and some serious drama. They might not expect a flurry of reality shows – indeed, neither did I. If anyone had told me that in October/November 2021, I would be binging Married at First Sight Australia, The Bachelor (Australia), and Selling Sunset, I would have scoffed. But there, indeed, I was. They served a very useful purpose – they were ludicrous, and despite featuring ‘real’ people, seemed to have no connection to any reality that I recognised, and that was fine, because (for the most part) nothing that happened on these shows was going to break my heart into little pieces. Rather, I spent a lot of time shaking my head in disbelief…
The following list of TV programmes and films (some with commentary, some not) includes things I watched with him, things we’d watched together but which I continued on my own, things I watched with the kids in the strange weeks following his death, and programmes/films to which they introduced me.
Drama
The A Word (series 3) – excellent performances, and very touching. Not the last word on autism (it’s far too complex to be that – as they say, if you’ve met one autistic person you’ve met one autistic person) but a portrait of one autistic child and his family.
It’s A Sin – this was stunning, and devastating. Superbly played by all of the leads (special mention to Keeley Hawes, who was horrifying as Ritchie’s mother).
Elizabeth R – I rewatched this to see how something that at the time seemed like landmark television held up 50 years later. It was slow by contemporary standards, and the budget constraints were pretty obvious in the crowd scenes, processions, battles, etc, but Glenda Jackson’s performance was as powerful as I remembered it.
Peaky Blinders – My husband never fancied watching this, despite so many people saying how good it was. I started watching it, with my son, after his death – whilst it’s not what you might call comfort watching, it was something that was good in its own right and had no associations with him that might have ambushed me. It’s brilliantly done, the script, the performances, the pacing, the sets are all marvellous, even if the accents are a bit wonky…
Small Axe – What struck me most forcibly was how different each film is from the others in the series. Mangrove is, of necessity, talky, with a fair bit of declaiming in the courtroom scenes, but Lovers’ Rock has only minimal dialogue, with long sequences where we are just watching people dance and sing along to the music. Music is at the heart of all the episodes except the final one, Education where the appalling travesty of education that was all too often SEN schooling was illustrated by a teacher inflicting his rendition of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ on his class (and compounding the crime by claiming that the Animals wrote it…). These films were, individually and as a group, powerful and moving, and vital. It was hard to watch and listen to at times, but well worth doing so, whether one was generally familiar with the events and situations described or not.
Passing – Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of Nella Larson’s 1929 novel is understated, beautifully shot and full of tension. Wonderful performances from Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson.
Petite Maman – a beautiful, magical exploration of loss. The trigger warning referred to ‘mild bereavement references’, and thankfully they were mild, poignant rather than heart wrenching.
The Dig – understated account of the excavation of the Sutton Hoo treasure, during the uneasy days just before the Second World War. Along the way it deals with class and gender prejudices, but with a very gentle touch.
The Harder They Fall – gripping and violent account of black outlaws in the wild west. Not only are most of the characters black, but women play key roles too (Regina King in particular is magnificent). The soundtrack is brilliant – gospel, rap, afrobeat…
1917 – a super-tense account of two young soldiers’ attempt to get an urgent message through to another batallion, across no-man’s land and behind enemy lines. The tension is heightened by the filming which is, for much of the film, a long continuous take
Good Vibrations – warm and funny account of the eponymous record shop in Belfast, and its role in the success of the Undertones.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 – fascinating, flawed depiction of the trial of activists for incitement of violence at the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968. I wanted more, a lot more, about Bobby Seale, originally the eighth man, without legal representation, and at one point bound and gagged in the courtroom, but it wasn’t that film. Very talky (but how could a courtroom drama be otherwise?), and I suspect somewhat romanticised (did that final scene – the reading of the names of soldiers killed in Vietnam during the course of the trial – take place, and did junior prosecutor Richard Schultz stand, out of respect to the fallen?). The word that crops up most often in reviews is ‘portentous’ and I guess that’s fair.
Scifi/Fantasy/Horror
Battlestar Galactica – the 2004 series, and very different to the original 1970s show. This is gritty and hard-hitting – blood, sweat and tears all in copious supply. The plot was complex and intelligent, and rarely predictable (even when one is very familiar with the genre). The political/religious threads were fascinating, and the ending didn’t tie them all up neatly, leaving viewers to decide, or to wonder.
His Dark Materials – series 2 of the Philip Pullman adaptation was even better than the first. I knew the plot, but still got goosebumps
The Last Wave – ludicrous French fantasy which failed to make any sense at all. We’d watched in hope of something more like The Returned, but it wasn’t even close.
The Mandalorian – very engaging Star Wars spin-off which I managed to comprehend despite not being entirely au fait with that world.
Agents of Shield – the last ever series, and it went out with impeccable style, lots of heart, and a final episode that eschewed high drama and tragedy for a poignant glimpse of something resembling real life.
Loki – wonderfully entertaining, and the double act between Hiddleston and Owen Wilson was a joy to watch.
Wandavision – this was outstanding television. We had no idea what was going on, for quite a while, and the darkness crept up on us. Ultimately, it’s about grief. ‘What is grief, if not love, persevering?’.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – more like the Avengers films than the previous two spin-offs, this marked out new territory with its recognition of race, a tough look at the realities rather than just cheering the notion of a black Captain America.
Hawkeye pairs the supposedly low-key Avenger with an Avenger wannabe, played by Hailee Steinfeld. This works extremely well – she’s desperate to be a super hero, and to be the partner of a super hero, he just wants to get home for Christmas with his kids. There are also obviously bad guys and conspiracies and some jolly good archery.
Black Widow – about bloody time. But also a bit late, in that Natasha died in Endgame. But it fills in her story very satisfyingly, with a good dash of humour and lots of fighting and exploding. Loved Florence Pugh as Yelena.
Shang Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings – a cracking addition to the MCU, with a predominantly Asian cast, this is visually stunning, and I love the cast, particularly Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh.
The Walking Dead – on to the final stretch now (disregarding any future spinoffs). Since the Whisperers storyline it has been back to full strength, with inventive approaches to storytelling forced on them by the pandemic.
Doctor Who – a New Year’s special and the final series for Jodie Whitaker’s Doctor.The Special was OK, the series was much better – it threw any number of elements into the mix and then stirred them up furiously, and it was genuinely exhilarating. The ‘Village of the Angels’ ep was also genuinely chilling. A couple more specials and then a new (old) showrunner and a new Doc…
Deadpool 2 – very funny, very rude
Fantastic Beasts 2 – completely baffling. Did I nod off partway through? What was all that about? And why?
Happy Deathday – a Halloween choice, and a good one. I do love a time loop.
28 Weeks Later – I saw 28 Days later years ago, but had never got round to the sequel. It may not live up to that, and there were some dodgy elements of the plot that were never explained (e.g., given that the zombies are driven by mindless rage, how does the zombified father have the mental control to stalk and pursue his children?), but it was thoroughly entertaining.
Justice League – this was long. Entertaining enough (once we’d worked out that the reason we seemed to have been pitched right into the middle of the action without any explanation as to what was going on was that we’d mistakenly selected the recording of part 2, thus pitching us right into the middle of the action). I can’t get along with this Batman though – the dark broodiness seems comical.
Kingsman – very silly, very violent, quite rude, very diverting.
Lucy – started off brilliantly, got dafter, if more visually exciting, as it went along.
The Shape of Water – beautiful, magical, strange and moving. It will also always be to me the last thing that I watched with my husband, the night before he died.
Shazam – post-bereavement fun watch
Starship Troopers – violent political satire on militaristic nationalism, based on a Heinlein novel which celebrated militaristic nationalism (and which director Verhoeven described as ‘a very bad book’ and so right wing he could not bear to read it all).
Zombieland Double Tap – not as good as the first film, but entertaining
Crime/Thrillers
NB – the adjective ‘grim’ crops up a number of times below. This is not necessarily a criticism, more of a warning that in this particular drama we are a long way from Midsomer, Mallorca or Paradise.
All the Sins (Finland, series 1 & 2) – grim. Lots of religious repression.
Darkness (Those That Kill) (Denmark, series 2) – serial killer series focusing on a profiler, who is so bad at her job that she sleeps with the perp (sorry if I’ve spoilered it, but actually I’ve saved you some time…)
Deutschland 89 (Germany, series 3) – a fine finale to the series, as we’ve followed Martin through the last six years of the GDR. Whereas much of the history invoked in ’83 and ’86 wasn’t too familiar to us, this one of course was, and it was fascinating to see if from such a different perspective.
DNA (Denmark) – entertaining, but plot holes aplenty
Ice Cold Murders – Rocco Schiavone (Italy) – the plots are ok, and the maverick detective is ok if a bit of a cliché, but the ‘comedic’ elements haven’t travelled very well and sit poorly with the darker elements of the plot
Monster (Norway) – grim. Lots of religious repression.
Nordic Murders (Germany) – not really Nordic, as we understand it. Set on an island that is part Polish, part German. Series 1 (I haven’t followed up subsequent series) started off well enough with the release of a former prosecutor after serving a prison sentence for murder, but then every episode seemed to feature said former prosecutor somehow getting involved in, and miraculously solving, the crimes.
Paris Police 1900 (France) – fascinating, set in the days when the Dreyfus affair was tearing France apart, and antisemitic conspiracy theories were rife.
Rebecka Martinsson (Sweden) – we watched series 1 some time ago so were slightly thrown when the eponymous detective looked entirely different in series 2 thanks to a change of actor. Having got used to that, it was entertaining, even if the lead characters were quite annoying.
Spiral (France) – our final encounter with Laure, Gilou and Josephine. They will be sorely missed.
The Twelve (Belgium) – a courtroom drama with two strands, a murder trial, and the personal lives of some of the jurors. There were some holes in the former plot line, and the second was a bit soapy, but overall it was enjoyable enough.
21 Bridges – v. enjoyable cop thriller with Chadwick Boseman in the lead.
The Valhalla Murders (Iceland) – Grim.
Bloodlands – convoluted plot, not entirely convincing. A second series is apparently in the works but I may not bother.
Inspector George Gently – I do love a period detective drama, if it’s done well and thoughtfully uses the period setting rather than just tapping into some vague nostalgia for the old days when there were bobbies on the beat. Gently is an excellent example of the genre – the 60s setting brings out, in early episodes, the fact that murderers faced the death penalty, the way in which the war was still so present in the minds of those who fought in it, and a barrier to understanding between the generations, the racism, sexism, homophobia and so on that were taken for granted…
WPC 56 – the tone of this is all over the place. Quite serious stuff about racism and sexism and heavy-handed policing, mingled with rather heavy-handed comedy/slapstick involving a bumbling spiv, or a clumsy copper. The lead character (in series 1 and 2) is also an unconvincing mixture of forthright and gutsy, with naïve and romantic (not an impossible combination, I do realise, but neither the script nor the performance is good enough to make it work).
Endeavour (season 6) – yes, this is period detective drama. But it’s so much more. The quality of the writing is consistently high, and the performances, particularly from the core team of Evans, Allam and Lesser, are subtle and convincing – and often very moving. And of course, whilst we are enjoying the 60s/70s setting, we are always conscious that this is the ‘origin story’ of Morse and there’s a fascination in seeing Evans’ portrayal, and the scripts, gradually connecting with the original series.
Grace – didn’t quite work, despite John Simm, who I really like. It’s quite a cracker of a plot (based on, though its ending departs from, Peter James’ Dead Simple) but the eponymous DI’s dabbling in the supernatural (he consults a medium, despite having nearly lost his job over doing so in a previous case) was odd – I think we were meant to believe that the medium was the real deal and his input valuable to the case, but it wasn’t very convincing.
Innocent – series 2, but with an entirely different cast and plot from series 1. The link is that both feature people who have done time but then had their convictions overturned, and focus both on the difficulty of reintegrating with their previous lives, and their desire to expose the real murderer.
Killing Eve – season 3. OK, I know it’s not quite as brilliant as the first two, but even slightly less good Killing Eve is a cut above the average.
Line of Duty – I did not share the disappointment that some felt about the big reveal which turned out not to be such a big reveal. Yes, our household did let out an incredulous shout as we realised who was being led into the interrogation suite, but it was obvious immediately that this was no criminal mastermind but someone obeying orders from much higher up, so we are still waiting for the actual Big Reveal (series 7?)
Mystery Road – gritty Australian crime series (series 2). Excellent, and featuring a significant number of indigenous Australian actors, including the lead, Aaron Pederson. He’s incredibly dour – the character was described by the Guardian’s reviewer as ‘caught between traditions, between worldviews, between laws and lores’. The history and racial politics of Australia are always present here, whether as a troubling undercurrent or in the foreground of the plot.
Shetland – the series has long since parted company with Ann Cleeves’ novels, but stands on its own two feet very well.
Too Close – a psychological drama with a number of glaring plot holes, but great performances from Emily Watson and Denise Gough.
Traces – excellent crime drama written by Val McDermid, set in Dundee, and featuring Martin Compston (Line of Duty).
Unforgotten (Season 4) – this series is always emotionally hard-hitting. The ‘reveal’ scene at the end of Season 3 still haunts me, and the focus on the way in which the impact of the crime continues to devastate long afterwards is powerfully done. This series was no exception. Apparently some viewers were cross about the ending, which I don’t really understand – I thought it was, yes, heartbreaking but handled with subtlety and humanity.
Vera (Season 10) – we do love Vera. And I have a very soft spot for her DS, especially (I may have mentioned this in previous years’ reviews) the way he kneels down to put her crime scene shoe covers on.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – the 1979 series, with Alec Guinness as (surely) the definitive Smiley. I remember watching it at the time and being enthralled. The opening sequence was slow, and almost dialogue-free, but told us an awful lot regardless – subtle atmosphere building and character development. Everything was slightly sepia, as if nicotine stained. The 2011 film was excellent, but I was surprised how closely they followed the series.
Gosford Park – easy to get distracted by the star cast, but one did have to concentrate to follow the plot. Thoroughly entertaining, great script, splendid performances, no depth or nuance but that didn’t stop it being most enjoyable.
Death in Paradise/The Mallorca Files/McDonald & Dodds/Midsomer Murders – murder in a beautiful setting and/or with a slightly tongue in cheek approach, nothing too heavy or emotionally engaging. There are times when that’s just what one needs.
Comedy
Brooklyn 99 – having been urged for several years to watch this by my son, I finally started to watch it, with him, in the days following Martyn’s death. Very funny, very well written.
Community (Season 6) – They got six seasons, but no sign of a movie… Continued to be super-meta and bonkers to the very end.
Good Girls – this one was my daughter’s contribution to post-bereavement watching. Whilst some (many) plot developments could be seen coming, the script and the performances make it immensely enjoyable.
Modern Family (Season 9) – it tends to re-tread the same ground repeatedly, but Phil makes me laugh such a lot that all is forgiven.
Parks & Recreation (Season 1) – I gather that Season 1 is simply an intro to when it gets really good, from Season 2 onwards. I intend to check that out soon. Meantime, we rather enjoyed Season 1.
What We Do in the Shadows – mad, silly, rude and gory
This Way Up – Aisling Bea’s comedy has so much heart. It’s full of people who aren’t horrible, just human and who make mistakes and hurt people without particularly intending to, and people who are trying really hard to cope with life. It made me laugh and cry.
Ted Lasso (Season 1) – a warm hug of a show. But not as cosy as that suggests, it doesn’t shy away from unhappiness and unkindness, and Ted isn’t a Forrest Gump, as I feared, but a very intelligent person who’s found a way of living and relating to people that merely seems simple. I loved it. And it’s about football.
Films we watched, huddled together on the sofa, in the aftermath: Bridesmaids, Hitch, Lovebirds, Murder Mystery. All enjoyable and silly, and just what we needed.
Reality/Quiz
Strictly Come Dancing – I had never watched this before. I can’t imagine how I could have sold it to Martyn, TBH. But I am now so invested, having wept my way through Rose’s silent dance, and John and Johannes talking about coming out, and Rhys’s Dad and AJ’s Mum… The dancing is so joyous and life affirming, and for all the clichés about ‘journeys’ we are watching people grow and flourish in a most extraordinary way. I’m hooked.
The Great British Bake-off – another bit of joyful telly. These people are competing against one another, but they seem to care about each other too. As the final three waited for the announcement of the winner, they were all holding hands, which was rather sweet. Baking, like dancing, is something I cannot comprehend or imagine ever doing, even incompetently, so it does all feel rather like magic.
Taskmaster – it does depend a bit on who the competitors are, but generally it’s engaging, funny, and bonkers.
Music
Get Back – this was glorious. I remember watching the Let it Be documentary, way way back, with Martyn, and the selection of material made everything seem sour, and sad. Seeing all these hours of footage, what comes across is the joy that they still found in making music, the laughter, the sweet moments, the magical process where we hear the song we know emerging from what seemed to be an aimless jam. There’s friction, sure, but ‘you know, lads, the band!’ as Paul says. And I’ve always loved that rooftop performance. Favourite moments – the ‘Get Back’ moment, John and Yoko waltzing to ‘I Me Mine’, Heather mimicking Yoko’s primal screamy vocals, Paul saying, very early on, that it would be really cool if the gig were to be interrupted by the cops. Paul mocking the idea that future generations might think the band broke up because Yoko sat on an amp. Mal. And Glyn. Everyone trying to stall the cops as they head for the roof. I know some people (probably quite a few) found its running time too long. All I can say is that it never outstayed its welcome for me. My apprenticeship was 47 years of listening to musicians jamming, trying things out, allowing tunes to emerge. Listening as it happened, and then listening to recordings of it happening… So every minute of this was tinged with sadness, that Martyn wasn’t there to watch it with me, and memories of listening to this music with him, and listening to him making his own music.
Summer of Soul (or – when the revolution could not be televised) – 2021 documentary, mixing footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival with commentary from some of the artists, and some members of the audience. It features performances from (amongst others), Mahalia Jackson, Staple Singers, Sly & the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Stevie Wonder… An extraordinary record of an extraordinary event.
Hamilton – a real treat. The conceit (rapping about 18th century American history) is audacious, and carried off with such flair and style. As the Guardian reviewer put it, it offers us ‘history de-wigged’, it captures ‘the fervour and excitement of revolution’, and celebrates the ways in which immigrants shaped America by casting almost entirely non-white performers. Stunning, and I will be re-watching this soon.
Aretha Franklin – Amazing Grace – wonderful footage from the recording of the Amazing Grace album, Aretha paying her gospel dues. That voice, oh lord. And she sang her mash-up of ‘You’ve got a friend’ with ‘Precious Lord’.
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool – brilliant doc on one of my absolute favourite musicians, a most remarkable and fascinating man with an extraordinary life.
Once were Brothers – another excellent doc, this one on The Band, largely through Robbie Robertson’s reminiscences, which are very articulate and thoughtful.
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes – a labour of love from writer/director and actor Caroline Catz, exploring the life and work of this innovator in electronic music, someone who undoubtedly should be better known.
West Side Story – Spielberg was never going to diss the original movie, so my fear was that it might be just a bit too reverential, rather than that he would ditch any of the things that are most vital about it. The music, the lyrics, the choreography, are all there, and any changes are contextual – the setting for some of the big dance numbers, who some of the songs are given to, for example. There’s additional dialogue which allows for a fleshing out of the social issues touched upon in ‘Gee Officer Krupke’, and the context of a neighbourhood that’s not only disputed territory between the rival gangs, but scheduled for demolition and future gentrification. Lovely as Natalie Wood was, I much prefer Rachel Zegler, and whilst Ariana Debose can’t eclipse Rita Moreno (who could), she matches the vibrancy of that performance and, of course, we get Moreno anyway, in an added role as Doc’s widow. She gets to sing ‘Somewhere’, which broke me, that song, in her still lovely but more fragile voice, reflecting her own attempts to find a place for her and the man she loved. I loved it, and I cried, quite a lot, as I always do, but I also smiled in sheer delight, as I always do.
Carousel/South Pacific – first time for the former, the second (my Mum’s favourite musical) I have watched many, many times. I really disliked Carousel. Most of the music didn’t really move me (apart from it’s one really big wonderful tune), and I loathed Billy Bigelow, at best a charmless yob, at worst a violent bully, and so I hated him being given another chance to show Julie that he loved her (by hitting their daughter, apparently – but it’s OK because it felt like a kiss…). This stuff is seriously toxic and that one really big wonderful tune cannot redeem it. South Pacific, on the other hand, only a couple of years later from the same team, is wonderful. Now I know they dodge the issue of racial prejudice by having lovely Joe Cable die before he can keep his promise to Liat, but that song, ‘You Have to be Carefully Taught’ is brilliant, and pretty radical. Just to have Nellie and Joe acknowledging the irrationality of their prejudices, and their feeling of helplessness in the face of those irrational responses, is pretty radical. The tunes are great, the performances are great, and the use of coloured filters (a lot more extreme than the director had intended) is still startling and strange.
A mixed bag of musical biogs on Billie, Ella, Fela Kuti and Betty Davis (this last one rather undermined by the dearth of performance footage)
It’s impossible to think back over this year without constantly labelling the memories as ‘before’ or ‘after’. There are things I’d never have watched if he’d still been here, and things it seems awful that he missed because he would have loved them (Get Back, the latest series of Endeavour, to name but two). I don’t want to get maudlin but melancholy is inevitable. We had 44 years of watching telly on the sofa together, and we shared a love for Doctor Who for the last 47 years (starting with Pertwee, ending with Whitaker – I go on alone to the next regeneration). This time next year that before/after feeling will be less acute. I will have a whole 12 months of watching on my own, with family, with friends. I’ll still wish he was here though.
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Passing Time 