Category Archive: Drama
An Obvious Disavowal
“Disclaimer” (Directed by Alfonso Cuarón Orozco from Renée Knight’s novel, 2024; Apple TV) Prima facie, this appears to be a clever, intriguing, well-made, beautifully-performed dramatic series, with a cast headed by Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Lesley Manville. A revenger’s tragedy, where a woman’s wicked past comes back to haunt her, undermine her marriage, further alienate her son, and damage her career. A series of flashbacks – the default of weak or flawed narratives, real and confected – terminates with cartoon-telescoping straight from a Warner Bros. cartoon, or Happy Tree Friends. These scenarios, unfortunately, are not only…
Continue Reading →One Day (Netflix 2024 British television series.)
If you can be bothered starting this listless series, we recommend that you binge watch all 14 (!) episodes because once you switch off, you’ll never bother going back. To start with, the plot is suspense-free. Rich golden rich boy Dexter meets socialist Emma (a girl from the wrong side of the tracks and of another race) at a posh university. They go their separate ways until..! Whatever could happen?! Even this hackneyed story could be worth watching – Leo Woodall (previously seen in White lotus 2) is terrific as the languid upper-class Dexter – although he could do with…
Continue Reading →The Following Events Are Based On a Pack of Lies
(Foxtel Go. Binge) (2023) Creators: Ginny Skinner, Penelope Skinner; Directed by Robbie McKillop and Nicole Charles. The name and set-up of this sleek five-part ITV series leave the viewer suspecting a twist at the end. So that the reader will not be disappointed, we will tell you that the twist never comes. The narrative is pretty straightforward, if not always credible. But that’s ok. This is bite-sized entertainment of the fairly predictable, non-demanding type, with fairy-tale themes. While pushing her bike around Oxford wearing a peculiar, self-designed red cape, our heroine, middle-aged sad-sack Alice Newman (Rebekah Staton) spots her Big…
Continue Reading →Happy Valley : BBC One
No-one does grief and resentment like Sarah Lancashire. (See Last Tango in Halifax, BBC One 2012, series 3, episodes 3 & 4). After Happy Valley this sterling actor can add loathing, despair and massive disappointment to her CV. Indeed, no-one in Happy Valley experiences much of anything else. The West Yorkshire grit, damp, poverty, addiction, disease, treachery and crime with which they all live is made palpable and visceral in this most excellent 3 series show. The only person to escape the poverty bit at least, is the one rich man in the village (see The Vicar of Dibley) –…
Continue Reading →Better Call Saul (Finale Season)
(Stan, 2022) This sublime series, from one, two, three, four and five, a pre-cursor to Breaking Bad, is wrapping things up. Series Six hurtles toward dark places with all the terrifying speed of a runaway train, conducted by Edgar Allan Poe. This is a slow train wreck coming: we know that split-personality-Saul, Honourable killer Mike, and Super Polite and Super Evil Gus, make it into the made-earlier-but-set-later series, but what of Nacho, Howard, the dreadful Lalo and – of course – Kym? It’s just the best thing on TV in many, many years…
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