Pop Culture - A 'Slow' Week

It's mostly about TV this week. I've tried to avoid spoilers but I might not...

The MI5 Run-Around

As we have grown accustomed, Slow Horses starts off with one thing and invariably will end up somewhere else entirely. This superb show is anything but predictable, however there is an element of predictability in the opening episode of the fourth season... 

Gary Oldman is back as Jackson Lamb, the guy running the department where all failed spies go to waste away until they die or get killed off. But of course, as we've discovered, Lamb has apparently no time for his team, everyone thinks they're shite and yet they seem to spend more time solving MI5 problems than MI5 does and this is likely to be another one of those cases. The new series kicks off with Jonathon Pryce (River Cartwright's grandfather, David, who is suffering from early stages of dementia) accidentally killing his grandson with a shotgun, except when Lamb is called to identify the body of his most able bodied but accident-prone team member, he seems less than bothered - usual par for the course antics from a man who makes the Steptoe brothers look well kept. It soon becomes clear that someone wants David Cartwright dead and as he used to be First Desk - ie: head of MI5 - this could be important.

Obviously, MI5 are way behind everyone else, except for Kristin Scott Thomas's Diana Taverner, who hasn't become First Desk like we expected her to be, but is running around sorting out the new #1's problems because he's got chocolate teapot written all over him. She suspects something is going on, but apart from River's apparent death doesn't think this is a Slough House thing. Meanwhile, Jackson has already visited Saskia Reeves' Standish and worked out most of what is happening and mobilised his team of misfits into doing some work. Jackson has a new PA who has already pissed him off - just by being there - and there's a new team member who doesn't appear to do anything and seems deeply disturbed. It's great to have it back. I'll conclude my review next week.

Second Thoughts

This week was all about Victor (Rhenzy Feliz); the boss's apprentice in The Penguin. Oz's young assistant, recruited because Oz could see something of himself in the stuttering young Hispanic, is at a crossroads in his life and has to make some decisions. This played out by looking at Vic's days before the flood and before Gotham's fall. Things didn't seem that bad for him - loving family, girlfriend and mates. Then the Riddler came along and anyone who doesn't have money in Gotham has been paying the price ever since. This episode was really more about decisions than actions. In this case, specifically Vic's reasons for being Oz's new kid; Oz's reasons for now being on Sofia's side (or is he?) considering his betrayal of her a decade earlier and the reasons both want revenge over the wide Falcone empire. This week includes extortion, double crosses and admissions of guilt, but it's just part of the long game. The only problem I have with this is Sofia might be a psychopath but she's as sharp as a razor and some of Cobb's moves can't be going over her head quite as far as they appear to be...

Afterthought

You remember the other week when I was filling space by talking about shit I won't watch, anime with ridiculous names and ... oh yes, talking about anime with ridiculous names, does anyone fancy a season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World? Who knew? Aristocrats have an appraisal skill; that's what they do! I mean, is life so fucking exciting in Japan that they make boring anime as anti-dopamine for the masses?

Stretch Armstrong

I think Ryan Gosling is a lucky man because he is a film star, a veritable A lister, and yet, by and large, he comes across as really fucking dull, so who better to play Neil Armstrong. First Man is a biopic of the first man on the moon and I'm amazed it weighs in at over two hours, because Armstrong was never a charismatic individual and always came over as a bit boring - almost the perfect choice for first man on another planet - no hyperbole from Neil. It's not an exciting film as you can imagine because you know everything that's going to happen, it's just the bit beforehand that we weren't really clear about. I don't know if this is factually accurate; I can't say if Armstrong and his first wife had a strained relationship (they lasted another 25 years after he walked on the moon) and I don't know if he dropped beads belonging to his dead daughter on the surface. I didn't really care, to be honest. I don't know what I expected really; I knew about NASA and the moon landings and I knew Armstrong was as exciting as watching paint dry. I shouldn't be disappointed that his biopic was meh.

Shameless Copy?

The entertaining thing about Brassic when it started was how it felt like a derivative, there was a charm that made it feel more authentic, not a knock off. Then, at almost the perfect time, ten minutes from the conclusion of season four, it really looked like they were going to wrap it all up and let Vinnie and his chums go their own way, we got a cliffhanger epilogue and everything changed.

It was from that fourth season that things changed. Joe Gilgun started to sound like he wanted to be somewhere else; Damien Molony wanted to be somewhere else, so he did and Michelle Keegan's bright future had come to a stuttering halt - Brassic was now the only thing she had left. There was also a massive drop off of Dominic West from that point as well - he's Vinnie's psychiatrist and large buyer of weed as well as being so much more at times... The thing is, Brassic had its faults but it was fun, even the serious subplots had a pantomime feel about them, but with season five, to try and reinvigorate things and to try and replace what they'd lost, they started to delve into the worlds of Vin's supporting crew and the thing is you don't need to do that. Vinnie has dodgy mates, we don't need to know how they got dodgy.

Plus and especially last series, I started to get increasingly hacked off with the filming schedule and the subsequent editing. What is it with Northern dramas and television? Is it not possible to shoot things chronologically any longer? In the opening episode - a jaunt to Dublin for a 'Fools and Horses' styled 'heist' episode - the filming took place in the spring, summer, autumn and winter and was then spliced together. It might be a small and simple thing but it is disconcerting if you notice it.

There is a familial comfort about this series, but I no longer think it has the strong characters it once had. However, this new season appears to be an ongoing plot inside of an existing narrative - if you know what I mean - there were many questions left unanswered at the end of season five and so far each episode has dealt with one of those questions, while simultaneously introducing new stories that help the story flow. The wife said, 'this is better than the last series, isn't it?' and she's probably right; it does feel as though some of the mojo has been rediscovered. We're halfway through, the remaining episodes will be talked about next week.

Cheated?

The extremely strange Outer Range, the time travel, black hole, neo-western series starring Josh Brolin was cancelled in July; after two seasons and a massive cliffhanger, Amazon pulled the plug on the show leaving anyone who followed it (and enjoyed it) a little disappointed. Brolin said in an interview recently that he'd like to see the story concluded but it was unlikely to happen in the current climate.

This was a TV show with big bucks and big stars but was a difficult watch at times because you never really had a clue where things were going. Brolin played Royal Abbott, the head of a family of ranchers, who it seems came out of nowhere in the 1970s and was adopted by the Abbott family. On his land is a black hole; a seeming portal to different times and alternate existences. Included in this was his wife played by Lili Taylor, his two sons - Lewis Pullman and Tom Pelphrey and his grand daughter played by Olive Abercrombie and Imogen Poots. The biggest problem the Abbots have, apart from themselves, is the Tillerson family who own the next door farm and want to acquire the land where the mysterious hole is. By the end of season two it was more like a game of time-related snakes and ladders than a straight forward narrative, but it was a cracking series that felt like a re-imagining of the brilliant German time travel series Dark - despite there being absolutely nothing to suggest this other than the time travel business. Hopefully someone will come along and try and get a final season made, but with many of this show's stars having moved onto bigger and greater projects, I expect that will be unlikely.

Agatha OMG

Do you know, I almost forgot I watched this, it is having such a profound effect on me... One thing is certain about episode five of Agatha All Along is the comedy (what little there was) was drained away with this, rather dark and foreboding instalment.

This is still dull and little boring, although we're learning some things, a couple of them should not surprise anyone. Agatha is an absolute bitch; she's a bad guy and no one has anything decent to say about her. She uses people, manipulates them and then 'absorbs' anything positive from a situation and turns it into her advantage and all of her coven knew this but they still came along for the ride. The biggest problem this show has apart from very little happening is the absence of jeopardy and threat. None of the characters - apart from Agatha - have been seen before, therefore no one has any investment in them and subsequently when one 'dies' it's more of a shrug moment than anything else. The underlying mystery of who 'Teen' is might be interesting now it's clear he isn't Agatha's sacrificed son, especially the closing scene of this part, which suggests he's going to be one of the Romanov twins - the children Wanda had in WandaVision but, of course, were just constructs from her warped and damaged mind. To be honest, that works for me because we're talking magic here and I figure it's a template for 'no holds barred, we can do anything'. 

This week was also another opportunity for the cast to dress up in groovy, multi-coloured outfits like they're about to appear on a 1980s Noel Edmonds TV show. There were also some nods to other MCU films that include magic in them and the Salem Seven showed up again - a genuinely scary bunch of characters, I'm hoping they offer some resistance in the closing four parts because at the moment they're a creepy looking damp squib. This series will not go down as a glorious success.

Next Time...

It's been a busy week and most of the TV viewing has been parts of boxsets. Next week, as well as the latest instalments of Agatha All Along and The Penguin, there will conclusions for Brassic and Slow Horses. In the queue waiting to be watched are season two of The Old Man, that 2022 HBO series Let The Right One In, there's also Grotesquerie and Teacup to be started. We left Grimm at the end of season three with a cliffhanger, but we're trying to have some variety in what we're watching, so we might try and go another week without dipping back into creepy Portland...

There are films on the FDoD and on the set top box hard drive; Caddo Lake and Speak No Evil are two films recently released that will be prioritised over the older stuff. It will be what it will be and you'll be the first to see it, next Saturday...