Actually, the title of this blog is wrong (as it often is) because we're kicking off with a proper killer, with no filler... the third season of Barry, the Bill Hader led contract killer black comedy drama which has gone from a very dark but funny show that now finds itself in the lap of absolute madness. This is the blackest of black comedies and for every laugh out loud moment it's balanced with something so grim and bleak that you almost feel ashamed of laughing at it moments earlier.
Season 3 pretty much plays out over the space of what appears to be a week (we watched it in one night). Fuchs is still the primary psychopath in this series, but it's clear that just about every person in this show is batshit crazy and you wonder how the events in the first two episodes can possible allow there to be six more, but they do and because they do things start to fall apart, very quickly, for all the main characters. Apparently there will be a fourth season, this will be interesting given the way season 3 ended.
***
I truly want to say that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is the best thing I've ever seen on a small screen, but regardless of the spectacle it presents, it's just really fucking boring and dull. I mean, if we want to be honest about it, once The Lord of the Rings was made into a ten hour+ film split into three sections about 20 years ago by Peter Jackson, I think the passion and thirst for something Middle Earth on screen died, along with any cares about any of the characters, especially elves, who live forever and shit gold (but are sacrificed in a way that makes the ending of The Return of the King now basically really tragic, sad and unhappy - yes, spoiler warning: all the surviving characters went to heaven - end of, whether they'd died or not).
No one cares about made up stuff that happened thousands of years before the events we all know. It's a bit like the Game of Thrones prequel - yeah it's 'quality' TV but does anyone really want it? They might think we want it but it needs more than just being a brand. If Cadbury's brought out a chocolate bar that tasted of shit, I doubt even idiots would buy it, for long.
That said, episode three felt like there was an actual story brewing and the mysterious stranger helping the Harfoots could be a young(er) Gandalf. With the fourth episode things started to fall into place as far as signs and portents were concerned, but in general, it kind of feels like Willow from the 1980s but remade with special effects and someone else's story...
***
Speaking of House of the Dragon, I can almost feel myself warming to it. However, I think that might be down to the fact that it's simply more interesting than its illustrious cousin featuring on Amazon Prime. I might have thought a new GOT series wasn't really needed, but compared to the LOTR nonsense, I'm all over this like Valerian greyscale.
I think one of the reasons I've changed my mind a little is it isn't going in the direction I expected and it's already had a couple of red herrings/rug pulling exercises that make me think there might be some serious writers working on this, rather than the ham-fisted morons wot did GOT series seven.
I still don't care about the characters, but the young heir is growing on me because she's a proper underdog (despite being a princess) in this chauvinistic world order and while I personally can't see anyone but Doctor Who in a blond wig whenever Matt Smith is on screen, I get the impression that he's not the star of this show for nothing.
I also like the lurches in time in the opening episodes; like we're getting specific snapshots of an unfolding story rather than the sometimes plodding plotting used in GOT. Episode four however brought sex back into the show, but in a very discreet way and didn't appear to move the story along very far, apart from the suggest that Matt Smith and his cousin might be making the beast with the two backs before long - incest is after all a game for all the family in Game of Thrones land...
***
Brassic is back and for all of its problems it is still jaw-droppingly one of the crudest things on TV with added strangeness. Joe Gilgun is still brilliant, but the rather maudlin story line about relationships with Michele Keegan and the marginalisation of his supporting cast overpowers it a little.
It's a strange show but almost every series - now in its 4th - has me wondering why I watch it and then something unexpected happens or Dominic West turns up and steals the entire show and I fall back in like with it. Another problem I have is that it is starting to feel like it's set in a bygone era despite it being as contemporary as they come. It just feels like it might be better if it was actually set in the 1990s, rather than just having a bunch of characters who look like they've just walked out of said era.
***
She-Hulk now looks like it's going to be a guest star of the week affair. Two weeks of the Hulk, followed by two weeks of Wong, a week off and then Daredevil waiting in the wings for Charlie Cox to re-relaunch his MCU career (I say re-relaunch because he appeared in that woeful 3rd Spider-Man film catching a brick) and I expect someone else will follow him... It's like they didn't think it could work without 'spicing' it up with a few iconic guest stars.
As for the series... well, after a very promising start it's all a bit deflated balloon as we hit the middle section of the 13-part series. It still feels a little like Ms Marvel in that there seems to be a lot of characters appearing, either related or unrelated to Jen, that we don't really have a back story for, they're just there and it seems taken for granted that the viewer will understand the relevance.
Some of my friends baulked at the Megan Thee Stallion appearance, as I had absolutely no idea who or what she was it kind of washed over me, plus the Titania law suit episode - weighing in at 24½ minutes - was TV at its most disposable.
***
We watched Peter Jackson's 1996 comedy horror film The Frighteners the other night after we'd spent a week watching his remake of King Kong and the first thing that dawned on me was I remembered it far more fondly than it deserved and the second thing is that Jackson, up to the LotR films had made nothing but lo-quality B movies, in fact this Michael J Fox vehicle - made 5 years after his Parkinson's diagnosis and the first time he started to look a little less like everyone's favourite kidult - despite a good rating on IMDB, is actually really awful, with so many contrived moments and poorly scripted scenes I'm surprised it didn't finish off both Fox and Jackson's careers.
***
I'm a big fan of Jeremy Allen White. Not only was he the best thing in the almost faultless Shameless (US), he could play Robert Mitchum in a biopic with very little effort. He is a quite extraordinary actor and his new series The Bear (I have no idea apart from it might be his nickname) is more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary than anything else. JAW plays Carmine, one of the country's TOP chefs, regarded by anyone who knows him as up there with your Michelin starred jobbies. The thing is he has turned his back on NYC and stardom to run his late brother's sandwich shop in downtown Chicago and that business is up to its shutters in debt.
So far it's just been a cacophony of noise, blurry camera work and more shouting, but there's the beginnings of a story emerging that is playing out subtly and not like many TV series where it's almost beaten into the viewer. There are some great guest stars, interesting ideas and a spotlight on the fact he can turn fantastic street food into something even better. This doesn't seem to be the kind of thing I would normally watch, but so far so good.
***
A different kind of Beast is a rampaging man-eating lion in Idris Elba's latest eponymous B movie. This shouldn't be as much 'fun' as it is and despite lots of clichés, there's lots of red herring clichés thrown in to make you think there's more to it than four people being hunted by a very angry lion.
It offers up cod philosophy about nature turning on man and has, with the exception of Sharlto Copley's game warden buddy, some pretty dislikeable characters and dodgy dialogue, but it's 85 minutes of roaring action and wholesale butchery. It's more fun than a lot of things I review.
***
Next time - as I appear to be writing these more frequently than usual, probably I'll be talking about all the things from the last blog's next time thing. Some things will be concluding, new things will have started, it will have gotten colder.
No comments:
Post a Comment