Reviews and more!

 I re-watched this program over the last couple of weeks. I enjoyed it the first time around, and then I read the books a few years ago. Fifteen complete stories on tv and twenty-six novels — hmmmm. And then I was looking for something else to watch, and DCI Banks looked like an old friend. Not the best idea. The second time around, the comparison between the show and books intruded, and the books definitely won. The characters were more one-note than I remembered, especially Banks himself. Disappointing. 🎥🎥

  So I have free HBOMAX for this weekend, and I found this holiday movie. Yay! Henry Golding and Emilia Clarke, both of whom I like. Double yay! But this story is not a typical holiday romcom, so be prepared. Kate’s family is driving her crazy, and she’s a wannabe  actress working in a somewhat bizarre holiday shop. She and Tom meet-cute and spend time together, forming a sort of platonic relationship. But why doesn’t he want to take it further? And why does he disappear every so often? The answer blindsided me, not gonna lie. Back to The Holiday and pretty people getting together forever.  🎥🎥

  I’m so old that I have lived through this era as well as seen the first version of the Tom Wolfe novel when it came out. Our family watched that movie multiple times (“Who was the best pilot I ever saw? Well, you’re lookin’ at him”).  The new 8-episode version moves from the forming of NASA to the choosing of astronauts, ending with the first Gemini manned space flight. It’s quite different from the movie and the book, which include comparisons between the new age of astronauts and the past age of Chuck Yeager and the dare-devil test pilots. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not good television — far from it. By choosing to focus on the astronauts and their families, we get an in-depth exploration of the men that chose this path and the families that had to deal with their choices. Don’t miss this one.  🎥🎥🎥🎥

 A fun romp from British comic actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. By day, Gus is a broadband guy for Smyle, but he’s also a paranormal specialist by night. When new guy Elton joins him, ghosts, etc., seem to multiply! And then Astrid becomes part of the team, bringing her own supernatural baggage. Another show to make you forget 2020’s craziness for a little while. Think UK does Ghostbusters.🤣 🎥🎥🎥🎥

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/16/the-curse-of-the-buried-treasure/amp   What a charming, unassuming little gem this show is. Who knew that in the U.K. there were actually folks armed with metal detectors looking for buried treasure? This 3-season series follows Lance and Andy as they walk the beautiful fields of Essex, UK, searching for Anglo-Saxon or perhaps Roman buried artifacts. Their hobby becomes a bit of an obsession along the way, and their friends and family have their own quirks as well. In the midst of a pandemic, this series brings joy and laughter at the little things in life.  And The New Yorker just published an article about this very subject! 🎥🎥🎥🎥

  Wow. This season just blew me away, and I totally admit to bingeing it in 3 days. With a major emphasis on Charles and Diana, these episodes also encompass Margaret Thatcher’s  tenure as prime minister. I found myself furiously looking up events online after (and sometimes during!) episodes to check what was fact and fiction. And being of a certain age, I remember many of these moments, having lived through them. With a present-day perspective, there were some heartbreaking scenes (Charles and Diana dancing in Australia) as well as a few ironic ones (Prince Andrew explaining a Koo Stark movie to Queen Elizabeth). What a cast. If you start down this road, be prepared to be beguiled. 🎥🎥🎥🎥+

  If you’re looking for a lovely setting and an enjoyable tale of discovery and romance with an environmental element, this is the show for you! Hoping that her next step is the main office in Oslo, environmental consultant Kate Ryan reluctantly agrees to go undercover to an Irish coastal town to help with acceptance of a Norwegian-run wind farm already in the planning stages. Unfortunately, this County Cork village has memories and secrets for her. And that’s one of the main conflicts — but there are also protests over the very existence of the wind farm. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the scenery as foreign business collides with Irish feistiness and Kate’s secrets are in danger of being revealed. 🎥🎥🎥

 I loved both the book and the 1940 version of the movie — a Gothic novel at its psychological best. A young woman, companion to a rich woman in Monte Carlo, ends up spending time with handsome widower Max de Winter. After a short courtship, they marry and go to Manderley, De Winter’s estate in England. There Mrs. Danvers, the grim housekeeper, does her best to sabotage the new bride’s relationship with her husband — the housekeeper super-loved Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife, who died in a boating accident. So many twists and turns  occur before the final moment of the movie. This update is meh at best. The setting is the same, the story is the same, but the underlying ominous feeling is lacking. It’s a prettier, less fake-looking version of the Hitchcock-directed 1940 movie. I’ll take the Olivier-Fontaine-Hitchcock version, please.  🎥🎥

Poppy Parnell, a former NYTimes prizewinning journalist and current podcaster, now living in San Francisco, attends a court proceeding to reopen the case that won her a Pulitzer. Due to a newly found video, convicted murderer Warren Cave’s defense attorney attempts to make a case that Lanie Buhrman, the eyewitness who claimed to see her 16-year-old neighbor Warren leave the Buhrman home right after her Stanford professor father’s murder, was coached.  The judge denies the motion, but that video troubles Poppy, who decides to re-look at the case and create a podcast about it. There are a lot of dysfunctional families in this show; there’s also the cultural divide of Poppy’s Oakland family and her own San Francisco lawyer husband as well as the upper class neighborhood of both the victim and the alleged murderer. It’s a bumpy ride to the climax, which also includes racial overtones. I actually re-watched a part of the first episode after a voiceover comment made in the final episode....

 It’s not your mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother’s Dickinson for sure. But it’s a fresh, interesting take on one of the USA’s best-known poets, Emily Dickinson. The language is 21st century as is the music used in this show. Sometimes fiction but often based in fact, the episodes bring to life Emily’s family situation and the moments in her life that event lead to her self-imposed isolation. Each episode’s title comes from one of her poems, and by the third entry, I was looking forward to finding out more about that particular poem and its connection to her life. What a fabulous way to introduce Dickinson to a new audience. 🎥🎥🎥🎥

  From NBC comes this surprising show about death and the afterlife. Michael welcomes newly deceased folks Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason to The Good Place, where desires are met by the always smiling Janet. Their afterlives seem perfect even though Eleanor, and to a lesser extent the others, know that they were far from perfect in life. Is this really heaven? Or is it something else? This fun and ultimately uplifting show uses humor and the imperfections of the characters to explore the afterlife in a number of different ways. Just a delightful, sometimes profound  show. 🎥🎥🎥🎥

 Cobra, not an animal but an acronym, stands for Cabinet Office Briefing  Room A, a special group called up when a national crisis looms.  Conservative Prime Minister Robert Sutherland must make quick decisions related to solar flares and a geometric storm that promise to cause havoc with flights, telecommunications, etc. Paralleling the scientific storms are those found in the lives of the major characters, not the least of the PM, whose daughter finds herself in a serious amount of trouble due to drugs and a resulting death. Then there’s Anna, Sutherland’s Chief of Staff, whose relationship with a Serb during her time there as a war correspondent intrudes in her life in the midst of the solar flare crisis. A few other subplots emerge as well. The storyline shifts from disasters to political intrigue to torn relationships. Lots of stuff to keep track of — it was okay but not great.  🎥🎥+

  Set in South India, this show revolves around Dr. Ruby Walker, who sets off from London to South India after a painful breakup. She has applied to a lovely-looking clinic but is assigned instead to a public hospital run by no-nonsense Dr. Lydia Fonseca and much warmer Dr. Ram Nair. We follow Ruby’s journey and in doing so see the beauty, culture, and traditions of India through Ruby’s eyes. It’s a wonderful ride through three seasons. I only hope there’s a season 4.  🎥🎥🎥🎥+

  An interesting premise — a police detective finds himself working on a case with a genealogist. Arthur, at first annoyed at having Margot as his second, soon realizes that she is sharp, helpful, and quite attractive to his superiors. That last quality leads to more allocations of time and equipment in the case. Through the six episodes of season one, Arthur and Margot become a team, and the dynamics between them and their superiors, Stavros and Le Procureur, along with energizer bunny Garnier, provide comedy as well as crime resolutions based in history. What a fun ride through French history via present-day crimes. Season two is jarring as it begins — with no explanation, Margot is now a much younger brunette and Le Procureur is an attractive redhead. What???  Gone is that interplay from season one. I watched all of season two anyway. It just lacked the spark of season one. What were they thinking? 🎥🎥🎥🎥 season one 🎥1/2 season two

I watched this show a while ago, but it really resonated with me, and now that the election is over, I keep thinking about it. Imagine more than two parties, and imagine that the smaller parties can truly make a difference. This is the premise of Borgen, where a female legislator from a lesser party becomes prime minister. We follow Birgitte Nyborg Christensen, who through a series of events becomes the first female prime minister of Denmark. Through three seasons, Birgitte gains and loses power, with her job affecting her marriage and sometimes her children’s actions. This is what a multi-party system looks like — fascinating. Maybe the USA needs to re-think the way things work, and this show gives us a glimpse of how a number of other governments operate. Loved it. 🎥🎥🎥🎥+

What a fun addition to the Holmes canon, taken from the young adult series.This one stars Millie Bobby Brown, one of the leads  in Stranger Things. She gets to be her British self and is joined by Sam Claflin and Henry Cavill, playing Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. The younger sister who they kind of discount, Enola is just as sharp as her brothers. Finding her missing mother takes young Enola to London, where  her brothers become involved as well. A fun watch for the whole family. 📽📽📽📽

The last few days have been busy, so I’m catching up today with this remake of a British movie that I loved. I enjoyed this version although it didn’t strike me as very different in tone from the original. And I thought the ending was just lame and not in keeping with the arc of the story. That being said, there were some fun and poignant moments throughout. I’m pretty sure that my love of the movie colored my feelings about the tv version. Just being honest here. 🎥🎥1/2

What a gem this show is! It didn’t hurt that the young Beth looked pretty close to the way I looked as a 9-year-old and in the same time frame (yes, I was a child of the ‘50s). Based on a 1983 novel written by Walter Tevis, these seven episodes encompass main character Elizabeth Harmon’s life from the 1950’s through 1968. After losing her mother due to a car crash (her father was out of the picture by that time), Beth is sent to an orphanage. Initially an outcast, she eventually makes friends with fellow orphan Jolene. She also learns how to play chess, her teacher being the custodian, Mr. Shaibel. From these humble beginnings, Beth becomes a master chess player. Her journey from the orphanage to a prestigious chess tournament in Russia involves adoption, addiction, and ultimately self-discovery. The cast is primo, the atmosphere spot on. And there’s positive message through it all. Wonderful. 🎥 🎥 🎥 🎥+

 I try to intersperse dark shows with lighter fare every so often. So for this entry, think Netflix does Hallmark movie. What does that mean? Well, there’s cursing, sex, and a really inappropriate auntie, played by a she’s-had-way-too-much-work-done Kristin Chenoweth. The pretty main characters are a grown up Emma Roberts and Aussie hottie Luke Bracey, each of whom has a minimally sad backstory leading to their decision to be each other’s holiday date — holidays and weddings. It’s the Hallmark formula, spicy version. A fun diversion. 🎥 🎥1/2

I love how Harlan Coben books, usually set in New Jersey, find their way onto the screen in different countries. The most recent series I watched was this one, set in current Warsaw and at a summer camp 25 years earlier. Prosecutor Pawel Kopinski becomes involved in solving the murder of a body found near the summer camp where his sister and another camper disappeared 25 years ago. We delve into that summer of 1994 with Pawel and his crush Laura, discovering the relationships that led to the disappearance of four campers, two of whose bodies were found soon after their disappearance. A sub-plot involves Pawel’s mother and Laura’s father along with more than a hint of anti-Semitism.  As is always the case in a Coben novel, many twists and turns occur before the final resolution. In the final analysis, it’s about parents protecting their children. 🎥🎥🎥🎥

Today begins a new blog! Have you ever been watching a show, and all of a sudden you think, “Hmmmm. This looks familiar”?  Yep, me, too! I’ve been bingeing shows for years but even more so after my retirement in 2019. There’s a dual purpose to this blog: 1) to review shows for those folks looking for another good one to watch and 2) to cement in my own mind the best and worst of the tv (and a movie or two) that I have watched.  So, Darkness: Those Who Kill — I’ve been a big fan of Nordic noir ever since that first episode of the British version of Wallander aired on PBS (you’ll soon discover that I’m a PBS junkie). Detective Jan Michelsen and psychologist Louise Bergstein find themselves working together to solve the kidnapping of teenagers Julie and later Emma. Through the eight episodes, the two discover secrets about the girls’ families and connections to other crimes. The criminals’ backstories are also revealed along with those of both Jan and Louise. The violence, sex, a...