I’m off my film watching and reviewing stride, so I going to start to catch up with a few firm recommendations for long-form viewing, tv originals now on dvd.
Breaking Bad went through two seasons on AMC without attracting my attention, despite being promoted along with Mad Men. But I came across an article that compellingly praised the second-string cable channel for having the two best shows on tv. With the first season already out on dvd, it was easy to try out this series, and soon jump on the growing critical bandwagon. If you tend to like HBO series, then take a look at what AMC is doing. The creator of Breaking Bad is Vince Gilligan, a veteran of The X-Files, which means nothing to me, and the star is Bryan Cranston, of Malcolm in the Middle and other tv that I have never seen. But together they’re doing something special here -- taking an unlikely premise and spinning it out to absurd yet oddly convincing lengths. Cranston is a straight-arrow high school chemistry teacher in Albuqueque, who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, and to build a nest egg for his family before he dies, decides to “break bad” and start cooking crystal-meth. Complications ensue, which I will allow you to discover for yourself. (Any resemblance to the premise of Weeds is decidedly superficial, though it’s possible this is more of what Pineapple Express wished to be, ordinary guys in an action movie situation.) This series is culturally and socially observant, suspenseful and funny, grisly and wry, with great characterizations from a large cast of characters who are easy to become involved with. After the initial seven hour-long episodes, I’m eager for the second season to come out on dvd or re-run on AMC. This show is more interesting and amusing than any chemistry class has a right to be.
Having re-watched all 26 episodes of The World at War for the first time since it was broadcast in 1974, I have to say that it stands up very well as a panoptic view of the cataclysmic events of WWII. With footage from German, Russian, and Japanese archives, as well as the American and predominantly British viewpoint, you see things rarely witnessed before or since. Laurence Olivier’s narration and the plangent music are perfectly and memorably pitched. And there is a poignancy in the first-person recountings from the early Seventies, which are more distant from us than they were from the events themselves. This series is a window on a perspective we always need to keep in view.
As a big fan of the Emma Thompson-Kate Winslet Sense & Sensibility directed by Ang Lee, I didn’t feel the urge to watch the three-hour Masterpiece Classic version broadcast on PBS last year, but I did finally catch up with it on dvd, and I have to say that for those of us who can never get enough Jane Austen (as long as her memory is not traduced by the adaptation), this is well worth watching, with exceptional location shooting for a tv series and solid performances from Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield, who do not supplant Emma and Kate but offer new shadings to the sensible and sensitive Dashwood sisters and their errant suitors. Classic, indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment