Must see TV
Shows Summer 2017 - Is Bob Odenkirk the weak link in Better Call Saul?
"Its been
quiet over there in Treedown world" many people are rarely heard to
say on Boris’s cable car ride to nowhere. Is it because the nights are short and
hot, or is it due to exceptional TV viewing keeping our writer from the laptop
face? Well, Netflix is having a boom time in TG domain now I am truly hooked
on ‘Better Call Saul’ Series 2.
Where Series 1 was slightly direction less and
unsure of itself – is it a comedy with nasty sub plots or vice versa? Series 2
has the Breaking Bad team giving it their full attention. And we now have two
evolving plot lines with Mike taking on Hector’s Mexican cartel, and playing
fast and loose with some seriously dangerous characters. Jimmy is still the
eternal lawyer with a desire to fail, even though he has a fabulously talented lawyer
girlfriend called Kim Wexler. Jimmy is hard to like and its typical of Vince
Gilligan to base this spin off series around the worlds biggest loser. One of
Breaking Bad’s greatest bad guys has already banged heads with Mike, and
although Tuco is locked up for many episodes, his uncle Hector is out to
threaten all witnesses – well Mike – so Tuco doesn’t have to do too much time.
The whole is thing is barreling towards more carnage and another edge of the
seat denouement, to be followed by Series 3, already announced in the States.
There is
one tiny thing that troubles me about BCS. No, its not that the character
called Saul is yet to appear. What Breaking Bad proved beyond everything, the
brilliant plot of one mans plan to make a quick buck out of the drug trade
snowballing out of control. Like an avalanche the story sweeps all before it,
the friends and family of Walt are dragged into the vortex and are forced to
change or leave. The fabulous setting, the clever use of music and editing.
Above all, it was the casting that was truly amazing. How did they know Brian
Cranston was a leading man with so much charisma and gravitas? His main claim
to fame was playing the bumbling Dad in a comedy aimed at kids. So when I tell
you I have serious doubts about Bob Odenkirk in the main role, you have to
question why would they cast an actor who seems to have so little range. One
moment he is playing the grifter, tricking travelling salesmen out of their
savings. The next he is admitting committing fraud and felonies to a foe, all
because he has really got a heart of gold. Believable? No. Would another actor
make it work ? Fassbender, Hardy, Gyllenhall, Ryan Gosling ? Err yes, Ryan
Gosling would be better. A lot better. So why base the whole series around
Odenkirk? Vince Gilligan is a clever fella, so I am going to look for the
answer spending some more time thinking on it. Unless any of you voyagers on
the cable car can help ?
Now on BBC2,‘Paula’
is two episodes in and has followed ’The Fall’ in using Ireland as a backdrop
for some nasty scenes involving violence against women. But the pace has been
unrelenting and the tension grips like a vice.
Jamestown
is preposterous fun with the boat load of women newly arrived in the European
claimed American lands causing havoc everywhere they go. The arch toff “Lady in
daft hats” knows no true emotions, but schemes and manipulates everyone stupid
enough to listen to her.
“What is
this I hear about a map of buried treasure, governor?”
“I don’t think
you should worry your pretty head about it, lady”
“But its so
much more fun than farming …”
Max Beesley
is on his way back from Indian lands with a burnt face that must smart. Its
like goo to look at but doesn’t seem to bother him any. I thought he might not
be dead when he got blown up, because, well, because his character is played by
Max Beesley!
Comedy is
not in its heyday, but I guess it’s hard to be funny in these times of the PC
police and Trump clodhopping about the world like a giant marshmallow, with a
smaller marshmallow in his head for a brain. Thank goodness for Veep – now in
its sixth season, still as brilliantly cynical and hilarious as ever. , If you
want to have a laugh, do not be put off by the subject matter. The American
president (POTUS) and Vice President (VP or Veep) really are rich pastures for
sharp writers and producers like Armando Iannucci.
‘3 Girls’
was gripping and a superbly well done drama about the grooming of young girls
by a group of Asian men in Rochdale. The ever remarkable Maxine Peake stole the
show and did so much with a small part as the sexual health worker who tried to
alert the authorities about what was going on but was continually ignored.
Twin Peaks
has returned after 25 years and is still mining the same weird worlds of Laura
Palmer, Agent Cooper and little men who talk backwards/forwards in a parallel universe
of red curtains and now a tree with a talking brain on one branch. These scenes
were so much more powerful last century because they were used sparingly and
held a tone of mystery and unease. Now they are longer and although superbly
well done – the scenes with Laura Palmer were deeply strange and unsettling due
to her undefinably unnatural way of walking, speaking and blinking – dont carry
as much weight. Twin Peaks was masterful in its power to subvert and crush the
sense of normality of the world in which it is set. Cooper has a dark side to
his character which seems intent on evil doings in the twilight world of
motels, runaways and hustlers. The other Cooper is still besuited and neat, but
he inhabits the nether world of red curtains, and spends far too long running
around with no purpose or end product. I am only up to Episode 2 so there is
plenty of time for David Lynch to iron out any rough edges and let the
weirdness really flow.
Finally
Versailles has been great in the depths of depravity to which most of the
action has sunk. Although Sun King Louis has apparently found God and has taken
to the battlefield in Flanders as a sop to the almighty, you feel his heart, as
well as his scene stealing brother, are still in drug filled Versailles. The
Queen – pious and Catholic – has been left in charge and has outlawed fun, the
parties and orgies continue, with the fabulously corrupt Chevalier chief organiser,
and Madame de Montispan (a career high for new star Anna Brewster - now dominating all her scenes) defiant in the face of her adversary. One is chief
Mistress Number 1, the other is Queen and wife. One gets the feeling they are
both doomed as the court is brim full of young, eager arrivistes aristocrats
with nothing but the aim of hitching a rich husband to concentrate on. This has
been beautifully staged and has been packed full of down and dirty poisonings,
stabbings, backs stabbings and wicked human behaviour of the most greedy and
self-serving kind. Which always makes for great TV.
