Modern Culture - Bromances & Dog Whisperers

The spoilers start straight away... Honest.

Swe.E.T

I really like Sugar, the television series with Colin Farrell as the gumshoe with a heart of gold, who is also quite handy in many ways and is incredibly nice. I had this theory about John Sugar almost from the off. We'd been warned by various publications that there was an absolute shark-jumping twist half way through the story and that twist finally arrived. However...

One thing is definitely for sure, if this is still about finding the missing Olivia Siegel then if she is involved in this much 'bigger picture' then it's going to get even more bonkers than it already is. We discovered in this episode that David Siegel who ended episode five by blowing his own brains out was still alive, except for his brains, which were probably left all over his bathroom. We discovered that Eric Lange's Stallings is involved in this somehow but I suspect it has little or nothing to do with Olivia, oh and that Sugar's reflexes are lightning fast and he really doesn't want to hurt people - he tells us this almost every week and we now find out why. Suddenly the missing girl angle has disappeared and been replaced by a what the absolute fuck moment (that I guessed correctly with my first review). I don't know how or why I got it, but the clues were there and continued to be played with over subsequent parts. We've got two more episodes to go and yet the entire reason for this series has almost entirely disappeared, apart from the fact Olivia has still not been found or if she's even alive. I expect John will solve this case but at what cost and will season two of Sugar, if there is one, even be about private detectives in LA or something considerably more Three Body Problem?

Pigs in Shit

Now that the rest of the critic world has woken up to the fact that while Clarkson's Farm is an entertainment show and is Amazon's most watched show in the UK and pretty high up in other countries, it isn't really about entertainment, as such, but is a hard hitting serious documentary about farming, the tribulations of farming and what happens when you put an arsehole in charge of a farm in the middle of deepest darkest rural Tory land who discovers that all his 'chums' are nimbys and bureaucrats with nowt else to do.

This third series literally carries on from the end of season two. At the end of that series, the gang were all sitting outside the new restaurant, enjoying a glass of bubbly and it was July 2022; we started this one with everything having gone to shit in a giant toilet handbasket. Restaurant shut. The West Oxfordshire council being such massive arseholes they made Clarkson look like just a wee sphincter. It had been so dry that many crops were lost. It was all anything but rosy. 

Obviously, my problem with the continuity thing takes a front seat with things like this, because you're being presented with a linear story, but it's actually chronologically all over the place and edited in a way to make you think it's just a linear story - I get pissed off by having scenes in the summer followed by scenes in November and told in such a way that it's the next day/week etc rather than an entire meteorological season. Other than that this is still excellent TV; it tells us how it is and while people might baulk at rick Oxfordshire farmers struggling while simultaneously talking about £300K budgets, £300K tractors and the skyrocketing price of fertilisers, it does a great job in making whoever watches it realise this is not just a game; there is serious farming going on while Clarkson mellows in his old age. It's a quality product that I get for Diddly Squat... [do you see what I did there?]

Welcome Home!

It doesn't feel long since we watched season two of Welcome to Wrexham, but after the tumultuous season the Welsh team just had again, I can see why it's been rushed into production and streaming so quickly. I think when season two was released everyone was well aware what Wrexham had achieved, they were already playing in the EFL League 2, so a lot of the jeopardy and suspense had gone. Releasing this a week after the club guaranteed their second successive promotion made more sense.

Obviously the result will still probably be known, but this series will finish before Christmas giving Wrexham's League 1 fun to be scheduled depending on how good or bad they're doing. This first episode back was all about the celebrations of winning the National League, the out-of-the-park USA tour, Paul Mullins' punctured lung and that opening game of the season when MK Dons went to the Racecourse and humped Phil Parkinson's side 2-5 to prove that the EFL might not be the walk in the park that many thought, There was a little bit about Ben Foster, presumably because in episode two he's going to retire again and Huge Ackman made a special appearance as Hugh Jackman. It was like Deadpool and Wolverine do bromance at a football stadium... Love it!!

Dead Boys' Perspective

I read somewhere that The Dead Boy Detectives is aimed at younger people and this got me wondering if it was going to be some YA series rather than a spiffing yarn from the Sandman universe. Given the number of fucks in the first episode I'm wondering if the place I read about this series might have not bothered to actually watch. It wouldn't be that outrageous a suggestion.

This didn't do much for me but the wife seemed slightly taken with it, but I was even wrong about that. This is essentially the tale of the two ghosts boys who have a detective agency, who meet a psychic who can see dead people and each episode there's a 'monster of the week' adversary. Unfortunately, it's set in the USA, which is all wrong for characters such as these and I'm really not convinced by this clearly-made-in-the-UK-on-a-small-budget feel. There's also a Japanese girl and lots of angsty, teenage paranormal sexual tension - as you do. I lost track of it at some point and couldn't really tell you what's going on. Suffice it to say, there won't be any more of these particular shenanigans, although it was good to see Kirby playing Death again. 

There also won't be any more than one episode of The Staircase, for no other reason than it all felt a bit meh. It was okay, but we sat there and wondered if this mystery could be spun out over 8 parts and be interesting because after the first part we weren't that interested in the family or the mystery... 

Testosterone

In what has been a less than inspiring week of TV so far, we watched the Brad Pitt 2014 war film Fury and I still think I should have made a Samuel L Jackson joke rather than writing this. As war films go this is a war film, with lots of war action between the good and bad guys. It involves the crew of a tank doing some jobs as they get further into Germany at the end of WW2. The film was essentially a baptism of fire for the newest member of the tank team - Logan Lerman - as we spend two and a half hours watching the violence and futility of war. This is very much a war film, for sure. As warry as a war thing can be. War out I was, completely FUBARed!

Objectivism 

One of the last proper films Peter Jackson made was in 2009 and it was about the aftermath of a murder. It's not a movie you would imagine would make you feel lifted after watching, especially as the main victim was just one of many killed by the serial killer portrayed by Stanley Tucci. Yet, The Lovely Bones is really about being able to move on after grief and how to cope with massive changes.

With this film it made me realise that deaths are just a horrid thing that inflict pain and anguish on those connected while the world simply carries on and you watch it - head slightly cocked - in a way you don't at other times and that's what this film tries to do; it has a horrendous killing, but because we're being told about it by the victim it loses its emotion and becomes a reflection of what people are like when they're consumed by grief. The victim doesn't feel sorry for herself apart from missing out on her first prom kiss, so your focus is firmly on the rest of the people in the film and how they deal with it and because the emotion is taken away there's a degree of coldness that makes this film work even better. In many ways the hint of something slightly supernatural adds to the otherworldly feel but subtracts from the impact it has. It's not going to satisfy people who want clear cut endings but that doesn't stop it from being a very good movie.

Phenomenal

It has been a bad week in Chez Hall; colds, chest infections and something utterly tragic happening that remains as in limbo as I feel; so maybe it wasn't a good idea to watch what is essentially one of the most tragic and sad love stories of the 1990s, possibly any decade...

John Travolta was having a proper renaissance in the 1990s thanks in part to Tarrantino but also for taking on roles that one maybe wouldn't associate him with. In Michael he played an angel - with problems - and in Phenomenon he plays a simple guy called George who suddenly becomes a genius. It's a big but gentle role for the man from Grease and I have to admit that when given the right material Travolta actually acts quite well. This is a film that lulls you into a false sense of security before hitting you with a fact that is crippling. This is, in many ways, a forerunner to the 2014 film Lucy except this was made in the 1990s and most films didn't have a special effects budget even if they needed one. George sees lights in the sky and from that moment on his brain begins to act like a sponge and he goes from mild-mannered but maybe not the brightest bulb to a genius... and of course it's when the genius appears that every form of life crawls out of the woodwork to either exploit him, fear or use him.

Despite it being a mid-90s set film, there is the clever thing that it almost feels like it could have been made at any point since the 1960s; even in the 2020s I expect there will be small towns like where George and his friends live; there might even by a small-town doctor and everyone lives in everyone else's back pockets. It's a great film without ever being maudlin, especially when you discover what the tragedy is and what the prognosis will be. I'd forgotten just how sad it was without ever feeling like it was slapped on. 

It also proves to me that all the best people are called George and it doesn't matter how much we love them, we always lose them too soon...

Next Time...

Two more weeks of Sugar, five more weeks of Clarkson and anything up to 26 of Welcome to Wrexham, there's the next fortnight sorted and I'm sure there's more... Life is a wee bit in limbo at the moment and TV has taken a back seat (the clue is the short para above Next Time...). 

There might be some films, but equally I might not be able to write a column. I will watch Godzilla Minus One so that might be a highlight or it might not, who can say? I was thinking of inserting a 'break' after Wrexham because the top three were all reviewed last night and telling you that my week has been full of poor TV watching, but I've had a chest infection, a tragedy, a reasonable week of weather that I haven't been able to appreciate, I read a book (Holly by Stephen King) and other stuff. 

Writing these 'next time' things has become even more difficult than the weekly opening spoiler warning...

Believe in miracles.