We’ll begin with the stray-est
of stray viewing - on Paramount+. Also
the newest, and one of my top recommendations, the third and final season of Colin
from Accounts (MC-85), a charming
series from down under, written by and starring Patrick Brammall and Harriet
Dyer, a real-life married couple who have a genuine understanding of the pathos
and humor of real-life relationships.
The first season went from their meet-cute to finally getting together,
the second followed their living together to the point of a black-out marriage
proposal. The third begins with them
re-meeting three years later, each in separate relationships but somehow still meant
for each other. She’s returned from her
medical residency, and he’s gone through a rough patch that forced him to sell
his Sydney brewery to a venture capitalist.
Neither has really met their match, but the situation is sticky all
round. Rarely has a cast of difficult
people in cringeworthy situations been so authentically appealing, both funny
and truthful.
I rarely watch anything on
Prime Video, but when Metacritic rounded up the best new shows of the year so
far, on top was Bait (MC-85), so I gave it a try.
Riz Ahmed created and stars in this rambunctious series of six 25-minute
episodes, nominally a comedy but with a lot on its mind. He’s auditioning to be the next James Bond,
goes blank while filming, but then blows up on social media, mainly in
controversy over the prospect of a “Paki” playing the oh-so-English hero. Things start weird and keep getting weirder,
e.g. his main interlocutor is a severed pig’s head with the voice of Patrick
Stewart. But amidst the rush are telling
tales not just of the lures and dangers of celebrity, but the private and
public concerns of former Commonwealth immigrants to Britain. A heterogeneous stew, but a rapid-fire watch.
Another Amazon production
that surmounted my indifference was Sheep Detectives (MC-72), a
mild and amusing creature feature in the vein of Babe. Instead of one CGI pig, here there’s a
whole flock of uncanny sheep with celebrity voices. And live-action stars like Hugh Jackman and
Emma Thompson deliver cameos. There’s a not-very-mysterious
murder mystery and some semi-sophisticated humor that may take this film out of
the category of kids’ film, but it straddles genres for widest audience appeal,
which managed to include even me.
Now that HBO has been
thoroughly minimized (with worse to come when the Ellisons actually take over),
Rooster (MC-68) stood
out for a familiar cast, plenty of amusing banter, and a setting that I find
quite congenial, a small liberal arts college in New England. And yet its “meh” quality seems indicative of
HBO’s descent into mediocrity, compared to something like FX’s The Bear,
with which it shares a similar but much less effective climax, here derived
from an old movie and not authentic feeling.
Still, Steve Carell is easy to like, Charly Clive is something of a
find, and Danielle Deadwyler is an excellent actress in a role too small for
her, as is Connie Britton. But in the
end, it’s just a sitcom, and I won’t return for the second season that’s so
blatantly set up.
Having watched that without
too much annoyance from ads on HBO, I thought I’d try to finish the final
season of Hacks (MC-87), but I just couldn’t
hack it. Seems that with ad-supported
streaming, the more popular the show, the more ads (I’ve noticed that John
Oliver’s show is never interrupted.) I wasn’t
loving this series finale as much as previous seasons, anyway.
What I was loving - quite to
my surprise – was Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (MC-86, P+). Even more than the director’s biopic Elvis,
this documentary gives me a newfound appreciation for a singer who was never
really a favorite of mine. There’s a
goldmine of recovered footage, both concert and offstage, with a focus on his
long Vegas residency in the 1970s, songs frequently (and absorbingly) edited together
from different time periods. Elvis was
certainly a more sophisticated and thoughtful musician than I realized, as well
as an energetic and engaging performer.
There is no hint of the drug-fueled decline that led him to die sitting
on the toilet at 42. Luhrmann’s
razzle-dazzle suits Elvis’s rattle-and-roll, and redeems his memory for the
less-than-faithful.
As a confirmed Janeite, I can
be severe about some Austen adaptations, but it didn’t take long for The
Other Bennet Sister (MC-80,
Britbox) to win me over in its brisk ten half-hour episodes. Authentic period flavor makes this fanfic
more than tolerable, and Ella Bruccoleri is winsome in the titular role of
Mary, the most mocked and maligned of the sisters in typical tellings of the
family history. It took me
a while to realize that the Ruth Jones who plays Mrs. Bennet was actually
“Nessa” (“What’s occurin’?”) from Gavin & Stacey, which compounded
the delight. Like her sisters before
her, and like any Regency rom-com heroine, Mary finds herself facing a choice between
two men, the congenial good match vs. her heart’s desire. Nonetheless, the characterizations seem as
authentic as the costumes and settings, which stretch from Mrs. Darcy’s
Pemberley to Mrs. Gardiner’s London and a subsequent sojourn in the Lake
District. The latter lady is superbly
embodied by Indira Varma, who overturns my usual objections to de rigueur
DEI casting. I also enjoyed the parlor
game of calling out the Austen novels (and adaptations) from which the bits and
bobs of the story are culled. Entertaining
and endearing.
Code of Silence (MC-80, Britbox)
bids fair to do for deafness what Astrid is doing for autism, with a
“disabled” young woman using her special ability to help detectives solve
crimes. In this case, a police cafeteria
worker is called in for lipreading on surveillance videos and proves invaluable
in trying to prevent a suspected jewel heist.
In this Canterbury-set series (already renewed), the deaf woman who
proves to have a special gift is Rose Ayling-Ellis, in a wonderful portrayal of
the main character. She’s particularly convincing,
but the rest of the cast is good as well, and the way the story spins out over
six episodes is continuously interesting.
In the international glut of police procedurals, this sticks out as
distinctive and involving, with a unique point of view. If the Brits can do this, why bother
with pallid remakes like Patience?
One Brit you can count on is
Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack, etc.) and her
latest series is Riot Women (MC-83). Garage band stories
among the gals are as common as they ever were with guys, but this one ranks
right up there with We Are Lady Parts for its novel perspective. These ladies are mostly menopausal and
“seeing red” in one way or another. Joanna Scanlan plays the mother hen of the
group, but Rosalie Craig is electrifying as the flame-haired lead singer
belting out her punk-style rage. Ms. Wainwright
is the bard of Yorkshire, and this series shares that setting, in six hour-long
episodes with a second season already in the works. She always has a distinctive female
perspective, and while this show is both funny and moving, it seems to cover
the gamut of what a women’s consciousness-raising session might discuss. To me that’s a good thing, and this show is
certainly among my strongest recent recommendations. All these women, actors and creators, are a
riot to listen to, and rate your attention.
New on Britbox during a
current subscription offer was the police procedural Gone (MC-77), not generally my bag but worth a look. A six-episode fictionalization of a true
crime book, the story is of moderate interest, as the steely headmaster of a
posh old boarding school is suspected of murdering his wife. But it’s the acting that kept me interested,
with the ubiquitous and usually-stoic David Morrissey (typically on the other
side of the law, cf. Sherwood) given the chance to emote. I take note of two actresses new to me for
future reference: Eve Myles as a
sympathetic detective, and Emma Appleton as the anguished daughter. Adequate collections of types at a modern police
station and antique school complete the extensive cast. Above average, if you like this sort of
thing.
Britbox is the repository of
many films and series I have relished in the past, but it’s a channel I dip
back into only on favorable occasions. This
time around, very fond memories of Twenty Twelve and W1A led me
to an episode of Twenty Twenty Six, but this retread could not compete
either with the previous two series, or the actual 2026 FIFA World Cup then in
progress. I did glom on to Tracey
Ullman’s Show (IMDB), and though the topical satire of this decade-old
sketch comedy series is a trifle dated (and very British), Tracey certainly
knows how to put on a show and is an impersonator extraordinaire. I kept coming back for more until the subscription
special ran out. I’d been meaning to take
a look at the highly-praised Belfast cop show Blue Lights, but that will
wait for another go-round.
We were getting AppleTV on a
similar two-month special through Prime Video, but it was too soon for the
latest season of Slow Horses and none of their new shows stood out for
me. Not that long ago, I was calling the
channel “Applelicious”
but on this go-round I found little to my taste. Their productions have variety and polish,
but like red delicious tend toward the bland and mushy, of genres that I do not
find piquant or appealing. Most popular
lately has been Widow’s Bay (MC-78). Like so much
on the channel, it’s not too painful to watch but not my favorite viewing, so I
have no regrets about giving up on it early (and all those Emmys won’t make me
go back and finish). The same applies to
Margo’s Got Money Problems, Lucky, Sugar, and Silo. For old times’ sake, I’ll watch the
reboot of Ted Lasso until this month runs out, but then I’ll wait till the
coming season of Slow Horses is complete before I go Apple-bobbing
again.
Kanopy (or Hoopla, depending
on your local library) is a valuable free streaming service, which frequently
surprises with new and hard-to-find films, as well as their diverse stock of
classic films and tv. Recently three on
my watchlist popped up in quick succession.
The Croatian semi-documentary
Fiume o morte! (MC-85) is both fascinating
and funny. It tells the story of the
occupation of the Adriatic city now called Rijeka - a hundred years ago it had
the Italian name of Fiume - by proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio (which I first
learned about in the excellent Mubi series Mussolini: Son of the Century). Initially welcomed and supported by Il
Duce in ovo as the opening shot of the Fascist revolution, D’Annunzio’s
takeover was suppressed within a year by Mussolini in his consolidation of
power, leaving behind an incredible archive of ten thousand photographs. They form the backbone of the film, which is
fleshed out by current Croation residents of the city, recruited off the street
by the filmmaker, with or without any recollection of the historical episode
(the city has been part of “eight or nine countries” in the interval), including
eight baldies who play the would-be dictator at different points in the film. The incongruity of staging events from more
than a century ago with nonactors in a modern city setting is amusing, but the
interpolation of photographs of the scenes being reenacted gives the film
multiple levels to work on, and offers an instructive present-day lesson in how
fascism comes to power.
The Turkish-German filmmaker
Fatih Akin made my must-watch list early on with Head-On and The Edge
of Heaven, but subsequently fell out of my purview till Amrum (MC-76) turned up on Kanopy.
It’s properly called “A Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin,” with Akin working
with the older filmmaker on a memory film of his childhood in Germany at the
end of WWII, eventually taking over as director before the elder man died (he’s
glimpsed in the film’s final shot). On
the titular island, just off Germany’s north coast, the waning days of the war
are just a rumor till the radio announces Hitler’s death. The protagonist is a 12-year-old boy (Jasper
Billerbeck in a very winning performance), evacuated from Hamburg to his
mother’s ancestral home in a small old whaling community, while his Nazi
apologist father fights to the last gasp.
When his mother suffers postpartum depression, more from Hitler’s
suicide than the birth of her fourth child, the boy goes on a convoluted quest
for the only thing she is willing to eat, white bread with butter and honey. This brings him into contact with many elders
in the community, from whom he learns much about his family, and the final days
of a war that seems both distant and all-too-close. Appropriately, Akin is more subdued and scenic
than usual in this subtle story of an awakening conscience.
Kanopy had an Akin film that
I had missed, so I caught up with In the Fade (MC-65), another collaboration
with Hark Bohm. It’s a fact-based story
of a neo-Nazi bombing in Germany, which centers on a sterling performance by
Diane Kruger, whose husband and son are killed in the blast. A tripartite structure goes from police
investigation to the trial (an interesting glimpse inside a German courtroom)
to a revenge plot (which divides viewers), but Kruger is convincing throughout. She and the film did win some awards, but not
my personal recommendation.
For me the presence of two
reliably great actors, Toby Jones and Lesley Manville, overcame the
sub-benchmark MC rating and led me to watch Mr. Burton (MC-61) as soon as it appeared on Kanopy. Jones is the title character, a theater
person consigned to teaching literature at a Welsh high school during WWII, who
takes under his wing a promising student, the son of a drunken miner, both
named Richard Jenkins. Eventually, the
more-or-less-homeless young man moves into the boarding house where Mr. Burton
lives, run by “ma” (Manville). Together
they get him into Oxford and onto the stage, Richard along the way taking
Burton’s last name. In the role, Harry
Lawtey is rather better as the deep-voiced Shakespearian actor than the
comically oafish young man, but Jones and Manville are marvelous as usual, the
story is largely true, and the filmmaking is serviceable. At the end, I went straight to re-watching Becket,
my favorite film back in high school.
And followed up by tracking down My Cousin Rachel, Richard
Burton’s first Hollywood film (a not-too-bad quasi-remake of Rebecca).
Then, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (decidedly dated, but
titillating as celebrity couple self-exposure).
I wouldn’t go so far as to
call Ex-Husbands (MC-65) a find, but it does
represent one of the many niches filled by Kanopy, worthy independents that
never got much notice. It was probably
Griffin Dunne in the lead that made me check it out, and he does not disappoint
as a sixty-something Manhattan dentist who is being unwilling divorced. His father left his mother in their eighties,
and the impending marriage of his elder son (the ubiquitous James Norton) is no
sure thing. But a bachelor party
organized by the younger son is going forward anyway, at a White-Lotus-type
resort in the Yucatan. By chance or
scheme the Dunne character is staying nearby, and crashes the party in the most
genial way imaginable. This is a sophomore
writing and directing effort from Noah Pritzker, who probably got a second
chance because of the money associated with his name, but earned it with this
earnest and endearing family dramedy.
Won’t make your day but won’t waste your time.
Speaking of unique finds, Wild
Rose (MC-80) was
the film where I first connected with the incandescent talent of Killarney’s own Jessie
Buckley, now so widely recognized. My
initial rave is here. I was delighted to re-watch this tale of a hardscrabble
Glaswegian country singer yearning for Nashville with someone who had
missed it. So I’ll close out this omnium-gatherum
with a strong recommendation for this breakout from a superb singer and actress
– and for Kanopy as an addition to your streaming options. (A final note before posting: As an example of the range and quality of
Kanopy offerings, I’ve just started watching the aforementioned Blue
Lights (MC-82) on
that channel, and so far I seem likely to echo the “universal acclaim.”)
Oh, one last-minute
postscript, over on PBS: I remain no fan of Masterpiece Mystery, but
occasionally a favorite actor will induce me to watch a series. Such is Marble Hall Murders (IMDB), the third and final series starring Lesley Manville
as a mystery book editor who finds herself solving real life crimes. Manville is always worth watching, and each
of the series (Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders are the
others) has the novel gimmick of doubling up murders, one fictional and one
“real-life,” with the same actors appearing as different characters in each
strand. This last series seemed like the
best of them to me, but then I’m not really a judge of the genre.
What I usually go to PBS for
are documentaries, and a lot will appear in an upcoming post on “Documendations
2026,” along with another lengthy round-up of Criterion Channel offerings, both
already well in progress.
