Its increasingly in vogue to announce to any group discussing anything that was on last night that the TV has been jettisoned. I dont know if thats so they dont have to pay the licence fee, or just watch what they want via Netflix or any other pc based platform. I am also unsure if this means they still have access to the latest HBO offerings on Sky Atlantic, which is becoming the only real reason i bother with all this expense. You can most assuredly get all the quality BBC tv and radio output on IPlayer. It makes sense, you watch when you want to, you dont need to wait a week for the next episode if you time it right. The latest 60s set spy thriller The Game was only 6 episodes in total so the complications of the early episodes timing out, as they did during Game of Thrones, doesnt occur.
Theres another group going around making self satisfied announcements at the water cooler who need to wipe the smug expression from their minds asap. The "Im not watching the new True Detective series" lot. Oh, how wrong can you be, you poor fools. You have just missed two of the best action sequences staged for TV since Walt and Jessie looked like gonners at the Mexican pool (BBad). First there was an almighty shoot out between protagonists and bad guys in S2 E4, then an edge of the pants getaway from a high class orgy in a secluded mansion - S2 E6. The protagonists are awful you say. The story is completely unfathomable you say. I cant get passed Colin Farrells eyebrows you say. Well, you should try for 3 reasons;
1-The Protagonists; Three cops, one gangster attempting to become legit.
Cop#1 Colin Farrell plays an unlikeable dinosaur bent cop. He drinks, drugs, smokes, beats women, he is detestable. He takes about 5 grams of coke in the time it takes Johnny Thunders to play the intro to Jet Boy. It seems quite out of character that he likes the New York Dolls - hed be more a BeeGees kinda guy I'd have thought. So is it meant to be a point in his favour, or is this the go to drug taking song, like Iggys I Wanna Be Your Dog was used in Lock Stock. All this depravity is caused, apparently, because he has to suffer being watched interacting with his son by a social worker. He is fighting his wife for access or parental rights, you see, so he must have a heart somewhere.Waking up in a wrecked room, he phones her and does a complete volte face, which is stretching it even more.
Gangster - Vince Vaughan's character isnt much better, trying to claw his missing $5m back from deadly Mexican hoodlums, and keep his girlfriend happy, played by a wasted, in terms of acting - so far- Kelly Reilly.More later.
Male cop #2 - Taylor Kitsch, is as troubled as Farrell.He has a death wish. We know this because he accidentally discovered the eyeless victim of torture in S2 E1, by turning the lights of his motorcycle off while thundering along at 100mph on the coast road at midnight. But somehow the cops perform wonders in the crucial scenes described. You cheer them on despite everything.
Cop #3 - It is, by some way, Rachel McAdams' show. She is also damaged, the hallucinations at the orgy show us why, but more likeable and always excellent, the knife practice routine she goes through, before the orgy burns with speed and aggression, all the while gleaning info about the scene from her sister. When it comes to escaping, the precise use of a blade honed in the routine saves her life, at least twice.
2 - The plot and reality; although it is super hard to make out what is going on between who, the plot is deliberately opaque. You just have to try to keep up and hope all will become clear. Vaughan doesnt really know where his $5m has gone. He was investing in a land deal which would have taken him out of the crime world, but he is now forced to return, and he is up to his armpits in it. Not only do nasty, dangerous Mexican gang bangers threaten his turf, his cop on the inside, Farrell, holds a gun on him under the table in S2 E6. Things are looking increasingly precarious for this super confident macho man, who must not lose face as the bad guys prod and test him for weakness. Then there are the missing gem stones and the missing girls. It is multilayered - lets hope writer Nic Pizzolatto brings it altogether at the conclusion. He has done it before, give him the benefit, you owe Series 1 that.
3 - Tension. Having just survived a very nasty, hit and miss shoot out in a LA street, with many bad guys spraying bulitts all over the place, the three cops looked utterly shell shocked. The reaction was not button the revolver in the holster and strut off to the bar. It was get down on your knees and try to stop shaking. McAdams is sick. This is how you would feel. But the attempt to infiltrate the party, starting on a bus taking hookers to a mansion by McAdams was almost too much to bear.
When they arrive, everything is confiscated. She stands in a line of girls dressed in gowns. A woman walks along the line, and sprays a substance into every mouth. "What is it ? " she asks the girl next along. "Oh, its great, its just to put you in a good mood". So McAdams has to deal with a room full of
men who have been told to take what they want. All the while her grip on reality begins to fade. She hallucinates an evil face like Bob from Twin Peaks. The other two meanwhile are breaking in down below, to get info and help her escape. What happens next is must see. Believe me and get the TV out of the cellar.
Audiobooks and BBC Radio
Ha ha, thats a laugh you say. I only watch on the PC, the TV is at my dads. So heres a thought. Have you tried BBC radio on iplayer or audiobooks on a platform like audible or youtube. You cannot beat the BBC for radio drama. They own it. Having listened to Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, I am now half way through Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate, starring Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant. Considering this is a 20th century attempt to replicate War and Peace with a cast of 40+ characters who all have long Russian names, this is a masterly production of a difficult book to follow. The familiarity of a voice like Brannaghs makes it so much easier to place yourself in the convoluted and lengthy story. The other problem is much of the action is set within the rat war of Stalingrad of 1942. A more difficult thing to dramatise on the radio is hard to imagine. The quality of script and acting is first class, you must excuse the overdone dashes from pillar to post trying to avoid sniper fire.Some of the battles and explosions are actually pretty good.
I dont think foreign readers have access to the BBC iplayers fabulous back catalogue of programmes, including over 300 episodes of Lord Melvyn of Bragton's In our Time series. Often its beyond obscure; Tagore anyone? But his examination of the Etruscans, or Bruegel's 1559 picture The Fight between Carnival and Lent are a joy. I recently listened to an examination of Wellington and Napoleon as battle commanders. It was all over in half an hour. It seemed so short; the programme was given an extra 15 minutes sometime during it's lengthy run. Melvyn is a one off, as a talking head pointed out in the recent profile of him that aired recently. It will be on iplayer no doubt - tv section.
As for audiobooks, I enjoyed Donna Tartts debut novel, a tale of over privileged Classics and Greek scholars at an American Yale type university, A Secret History. I was bored stiff by the second, The Little Friend. Both were read by the author herself, most capably. But i have found nothing to beat the masterly accents and life breathed into David Mitchell's brilliant tale of trade, intrigue and devilry in 1800 Japan - The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Cloud Atlas was the first tale that translated so well from the page, this audio version as read by Jonathon Aris and Paula Wilcox is the benchmark audiobook, and is even more enjoyable than the ingenious Cloud Atlas film.
#A Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
#Cloud Atlas
#David Mitchell
#Jonathon Aris
#In Our Time
#Donna Tarrt
#Audiobooks
#True Detective
#The Game
#Kenneth Branagh
#David Tennant
