Material Witness

Stranger Things and the irresistible power of nostalgia

Stranger Things grabbed me by the throat from the first episode of Season One back in 2016. Its combination of homage to the kids' movies of my youth, the effervesence of the writing and the sheer exuberance of the young cast was just wonderful. It didn't hurt that Winona Ryder, with whom I have been in love since Beetlejuice, was there too. 

And while I didn't think seasons two or three quite lived up to the sheer unexpected brilliance of the first, I loved it all, and in particular the character development. (And Robin and Stevie in the ice cream shop outfits). 

 

But Season Four is everything. Writers, cast, designers and cinematographers are all back at their best. Everyone is a little older, of course. The story lines are a lot darker. Eleven is more terrifying and more vulnerable at the same time. Winona is still fire. 

But with all of that there is suddenly huge urgency in the plot. The danger is real and kids are dying horribly and so our heroes need to get the band back together one last time (sob!) to save the world.

And it is magnificent television. During lockdown we bought an absurdly large TV that is way too big for the house because there wasn't anything else to do. Now I know why we have it. The colour, the drama, the emotion and the brilliance fill every last previously unnecessary square inch. We should have gone for the 75 inch and just got rid of the kitchen.

The now famous scene that has relaunched Kate Bush back to the Top of the Pops - when Max is in peril in the upside down - is the most riveting television I have watched in years. Maybe ever. First time round I was out of the seat yelling, "Come on Max!" as if the whole thing was real. I've watched this scene - Stranger Things - many times since.

And here's the secret of Stranger Things. Despite its essential otherworldliness, it feels real. And I've been reflecting on why that is so, why the show is so moving and so compelling (on top of other qualities already mentioned). And I have come to the conclusion that it's because it reminds us what is to be young. 

In Season One, it's because you're suddenly remembering how great ET and The Goonies were the first time you saw them. In Season Four, you remember what it is to be foolish, to be brave, to have a best friend, to fall in love, to have an enemy, to have an adventure. And that's the most addictive of all the drugs. 

I can't wait for Season Five or Season Four.One or whatever the hell they decide to call it. But it also brings the end, and goodness me that will be a sad day. 

If you haven't seen Stranger Things, I envy you. Get started right now. 

Why The Bear should be your next binge watch

It took me two hours to watch the final episode of season two of The Bear. The show itself is about 40 minutes . The additional 80 were mostly spent not wanting the season to come to an end and hiding behind the sofa from its dramatic tension.

It's an unusual premise: celebrated Michelin chef Carmy returns to his hometown of Chicago to run The Beef, the sandwich shop left him by his brother. Early episodes - most episodes you learn eventually - depict the chaos and conflict of the restaurant and the chaos and conflict of Carmy's tempestuous extended Italian family. Carmy tries to impose some of the discipline of his haute cuisine experience on his motley crew of cooks and cousins in The Beef, while also trying to bring financial order to the debt-ridden money pit. There is no prospect of bringing order to the family. 

I liked The Bear instantly. It is noisy and busy, with whipsmart dialogue and intense, exhausting performances. It is beautifully shot, moving seamlessly between the wide-angled beauty of Chicago and the close-up hostility, emotion and rawness of The Beef. It also changes up the pace of the narrative nicely, chopping between chaotic restaurant scenes that might as well be fight sequences and more considered time spent with individual characters, taking time to make them real. 

And although the first season, and the first half of the second, make for innovative, compelling and entertaining viewing, The Bear achieves genuine greatness in the final three episodes of season two, perhaps the best three episode snap I can recall.

The first is a retrospective examining the dysfunction in the Berzatto family. The second takes a member of the crew on a journey of discovery and redemption. And the third, and season finale, takes us inside the restaurant on an important night and places several of the team under the most intense scrutiny.

These episodes features two memorable cameos, and I won't name those involved because they come better as surprises. The episodes are not only tours de force in their own rights, but there is also a balance between them that gives the series power. And finally they strip back yet more layers of the onion of each of the series main characters, whose motivations, emotions and stories have been under the microscope across 20 breathless episodes. 

Jeremy Allen White as the shy, repressed and traumatized culinary genius Carmy is irresisitble and the camera loves his uncertainty and vulnerability.  The Bear is defined by Carmy and his relationships with "cousin" Richard, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri).  Moss-Bacharach brings anarchic energy to Richard, for whom anger and potential disaster is rarely more than a hair's breadth away. And Sydney brings balance to the screen, a rare island of relative calm in a sea of frenzied movement and noise. Edebiri is a born scene stealer. 

Elsewhere, there are tremendous supporting performances from Abby Elliott as Carmy's sister, permanently exasperated and worried by her brother's choices, and Oliver Platt as a mafioso uncle bank-rolling the thing.

It's vibrant, smart, challenging television, made with care and great craft and beautiful music and it tells fascinating and intimate stories. I'm hoping that a season three awaits. 

Farewell then, the truly marvelous Mrs Maisel

It is the season of goodbyes. Tomorrow we bid farewell to the ghastly Roy family and next week will see Ted Lasso's last match on the sidelines at AFC Richmond  (why you should watch Ted Lasso). I'll miss both of these outstanding series, but not nearly as much as I will miss The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, who completed a five season run on Amazon Prime on Friday.

The final episode was a perfect microcosm of those series, filled with the sharpest writing, superb performances and an exuberant production design that has brought rampant colour and irresistible style to our television sets since its 2017 premiere.

It was entirely fitting that the final scenes saw aging versions of Jewish housewife-turned-stand up-comic Midge and agent Susie zinging one liners at one another down a phone line and laughing as the screen went black. It is Midge and Susie, brought to life magnificently by Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein, who have given the show heart and soul as they fought together to build names and careers for themselves in a late 1950s world built and managed by and for men. 

As soon as the final episode ended I flicked straight back to the first, in which we are introduced to Midge on her wedding day, when she shows her fearless talent for both comedy and controversy making an impromptu champagne-fuelled speech that closes with a declaration to her predomininantly Jewish audience that, "yes, there is shrimp in the egg rolls". The first episode closes with Midge being arrested after flashing her breasts at the audience in the Gaslight club where she is making her first unplanned stand-up appearance. Susie watches from the audience her expression awe-struck as she spots the natural talent.

I was hooked all over again by what I think might best be described as the creative and charming chaos of Mrs Maisel. And it made me realise that for all the brilliance of the performances of an exceptional cast and the luminous design it is the writing of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel that is the real star of the show. This is the writer's craft at its finest. The scripts are dynamic, moving the story along at pace, but also sensitive and true to character. It has a structure and shape that is complex and expressive but always feels natural. And it's funny and fearless, poking a sharp and pointed stick at everyone and everything from Jewish mothers to misogynistic producers. 

With so much of the streaming world occupied with swords and sandals or spies and cops, Mrs Maisel was a breath of fresh air when she burst on the scene exploring an entirely different world than that which television audiences have been trained to appreciate. Like all long running shows, it has had its peaks and troughs, but in season five Mrs Maisel recaptured the freshness and purpose of the first season and finished, as all the very best shows do, on the highest of highs. 

 

Why Babylon Berlin should be your next binge

If it hasn’t grabbed you already by this point, there is a scene in episode 2 of the first season of Babylon Berlin that will destroy any residual doubt that you are watching television drama of the very highest calibre.

In a night club in Berlin in 1929, drunken revellers are dancing with reckless abandon to exuberant music while downstairs a scene of betrayal and police corruption plays out. Woven into this sequence, whose soundtrack is only with the music from the club, is a machine massacre taking place in another building across the city.

 

The scene is utterly spell-binding. It draws together many of Babylon Berlin’s multiple and complex threads into one violent, raucous, sleazy pastiche.

This is Weimar Germany at the bedraggled tail end of the roaring twenties. Reds are on the streets, with the Soviets pulling strings. Ordinary Germans are broken and battered by the poverty brought about by the desperate economic situation. A whole generation is still shell-shocked by the horrors of the trenches. Those who can afford to crush their fears and misery with wine, song and dance in a setting that evokes the last days of Rome.

And so it is, with much of the ruling class still smarting from the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and plotting to make the Fatherland great again.

In the background, barely mentioned but with ghostly and insidious presence, is the shadow of Hitler and the ghost of  massacres yet to come.

It is heady, intoxicating stuff, shot beautifully with no detail spared or overlooked and directed with a verve and fearlessness that surprises over and over again. The plot is rich and complex, never taking the easy or clichéd turn, but instead opening up the twisted, dark and bloody insides of a fascinating and pivotal moment in modern history.

At the heart of the story are Gereon Rath, a police detective from Cologne assigned to the capital and Lotte Ritter, police assistant by day and hostess by night. Each is seeking to overcome their own demons while also solving a cryptic puzzle in front of them: why is there a train from Russia full of phosgene and lost aristocratic gold in Berlin? Who appears in the lost pornographic film that Rath is sent to find? And how does all this tie in to the battle on the streets between communists and a police force using all measures to subdue them?

The leads, Volker Bruch and Liv Lisa Fries are magnetic and it’s impossible to look away whenever they are on screen. They carry a magnificent cast that delivers beauty, menace, hope and despair in equal measure.

Babylon Berlin is adapted from the eponymous book series by Volker Kutsch (with thanks to my former colleague Marco Lange for the introduction) and it is as good as any historical or police drama I can recall watching.

If its language were English you’d have seen it, read about it and watched it picking up awards by the wagon load. Don’t let the language put you off. The German actually helps because it makes you focus on the screen and the nuance and detail of the story playing out. This is five star television and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Babylon Berlin is on Sky / Now in the UK, Movistar in Spain and Netflix in the US.

The return to Westeros: episode one of House of the Dragon

It has to be nerve-wracking, doesn't it? That moment when your follow up to the most successful fantasy show of all time goes live. In your hands, the future of a powerful, much-celebrated franchise, and on your shoulder there's Amazon, which has gone full Hobbit in pursuit of the sword and sandals mantle. It's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power show starts in two weeks. 

So there's quite a bit at stake for HBO and the makers of House of the Dragon, set 200 years before the events that took place in Game of Thrones.  The final episodes of GoT weren't loved by everyone, which perhaps made the first episode's landing even more important. 

So, how did they do? Well, I thought they absolutely smashed it. 

All the things that made GoT a massive success are on display. Just to remind you where you are the scene opens with dragons soaring through the sky before depositing a Targaryen princess at King's Landing. There is politics, palace intrigue, plenty of violence, more than a hint of Targaryen lunacy, a huge amount of sex and loads and loads of great acting.

And in particular there is Paddy Considine as King Viserys and Matt Smith as his dangerous bad boy brother and heir, Daemon. Smith, with his flowing silver locks and the playful menace in his eyes, is every inch the Targaryen trouble maker, while Considine carries the weight of the Iron Throne and his family's status heavily. One scene between them is electric, and Smith in particular dominates the screen every time he appears. 

They are well supported. There is surely more to come from Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys, another potential pretender to the throne and Steve Toussaint as her courtier husband Lord Corlys.  Anf Milly Allcock is great as Visery's daughter Rhaenyra. 

The first episode is well paced, making the introductions and seeding the storylines as required, but with plenty of action to off-set. So far, it's a smaller world than GoT and a narrower storyline, and that might work well even if there is, of course, plenty of room to expand. And of course the sets and design are sumputous and everything looks great. 

So, so far so good, and I'm looking forward to episode two.  

REVIEW: Intimacy / Intimidad on Netflix

Exactly how the Netflix algorithm delivered the Spanish drama Intimacy to me just as I had a few hours to spare, I don't know. I'm just grateful it did.

It's extraordinarily good television, as compelling as anything I've seen this year, as well as topical, brave and honest as it confronts difficult but critical issues facing women in contemporary society. 

The story focuses on the devastation wrought in the lives of two women by the violations of their privacy through the distribution of photos and videos of them engaged in sexual activity. 

 

The first is Malen, the deputy mayor of Bilbao, whose shaming is public as footage of her having sex on a beach with a man who is not her husband is broadcast on the mainstream and social media. The second is Ane, a factory worker, who suffers when footage of her is sent around ny men at her work place. 

Malen, strong, driven and, partially at least, supported, fights for her political life and the chance to achieve her ambition to become mayor. Ane, who holds her secretly privately until it is too much, takes her own life. 

Intimacy then tells the story of Malen's struggle for survival in a Machiavellian, male-dominated political enviornment and the search for justice for Ane driven by her sister Begoña. If the power and intensity of the performances of both Itziar Ituño as Malen and Patricia López Arnaiz as Bego could be captured as energy, climate change could be halted in an instant. Bego, a quiet school teacher thrust into an unimaginable situation, spends perhaps half her time on the screen in tears. And as much as there is sadness for her lost sister in those tears, there is also vast wells of anger and frustration as well as incredible strength. At times it was hard to watch her, but harder still to stop. And in Malen, we see an indomitable will and the heart of a lionness combined with razor sharp political instincts as she fights first for herself and then for her family as her perfidious allies and unscrupulous enemies seek to use her public shaming to unseat. 

I am sure these two will both be in the frame come awards season, but the nominees from this series alone could provide another three. Despite announcing her own death in the opening scene, Ane's story is told through a series of flashbacks in a harrowing performance from Verónica Echegui whose life unravels as she deals alone with her own sense of shame and guilt. Then there is Yune Nogueiras as Malen's daughter Leire who struggles to cope with the fallout of her mother's public humiliation. And then Emma Suárez as Alicia, the cop charged with investigating both cases, who is also dealing with her own demons. These are five phenomenal performances. 

Intimacy is part political drama, part police drama and part domestic drama. Ultimately it is a story about guilt and blame. Malen, Bego, Ane and Leire are victims, and yet the system, the media, the public and even their friends and family are quick to blame and shame them. And such is the shape of the world we live in each blames themself for some element of their situation. And in the background, the men who are responsible deflect, dissemble, conspire and commit crime without the slightest compunction. Theirs is the world and they act accordingly. 

Intimacy follows Unbelievable as a Netflix drama that takes on complex issues with intelligence and subtlety and lays bare the fault lines in our society. With incomparable acting, sharp writing and imaginative cinematography it delivers a powerful and emotional package. See the trailer here. 

 

 

REVIEW: Slow Horses on Apple TV

There is a moment in Real Tigers, the third of Mick Herron's Slough House novels, that almost perfectly encapsulates the awfulness of Jackson Lamb. 

With his team of misfits in action, Lamb needs a ride to the scene and has only his socially awkward tech genius Roddy Ho around to help. Lamb orders Ho to go and get his car, and in doing so tells him: "chop chop". 

As Ho disappears down the stairs of Slough House, Lamb calls after him: ‘Oh, and when I say “chop chop”, I hope you don’t think I’m being racially insensitive?’ ‘No'. ‘Only you Chinks can be pretty thin-skinned.’

From the first time they encountered Lamb and his team of MI5 rejects, most dedicated Slough House readers will have asked themselves the question: "How can they ever bring this to screen?"

Because Lamb is everything that modern cultural norms cannot tolerate: a cruel bully whose discourse with his inferiors - and more or less everyone else - wonders into racist and misogynist stereotypes that were all the rage in the 1970s but not so much now.

So for the producers of this sharp and dark anti-spy thriller any chance of success meant getting one critical element right: the portrayal of Jackson Lamb.

With the casting of Gary Oldman, they took a huge step in the right direction. With his disheveled, gone-to-seed air and a demeanour dripping with disdain and loathing, Oldman looks and sounds the part.

Just as much as the actor's consummate skill, the writing delivers the perfect Jackson Lamb for television. While the appalling personal hygiene, the acerbic and cruel wit and the general awfulness are there, the awfulness is contained on just the right side of the acceptability line. And, critically, he is very funny.

And as a huge admirer of Herron and his books, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and settled in to enjoy the ride.

Slow Horses is everything I hoped for. It is well-paced and beautifully crafted with high production values. The script and performances crackle with the spirit of crushing disappointment and even more crushing hope that makes  the books so successful.

Jack Lowden's River Cartwright bristles with the unfairness of his lost career as he itches for one more chance. Saskia Reeves is not what I imagined for the buttoned-up recovering alcoholic Catherine Standish but is all the better for it in a performance that matches Lamb's disdain with naked disgust.

And then there is the anti-Lamb: the imperious Diana Taverner, second desk at MI5. This is a role Kristin Scott-Thomas was born for her. Her icy countenance and clipped vowels deliver all of Lady Di's colossal self-belief, ambition and sly manipulativeness.

The combination is incredibly compelling and tied to Herron's simple but tense plot of radicalized white nationalists Apple, damn them, are releasing new episodes weekly.

The first two were fabulous, and I´m looking forward to more. 

Why is there so little climate emergency fiction?

Something I've thought a lot about in recent weeks is the role that fiction can play in bringing ideas to life - and specifically climate change. If you look at the main body of dystopian work, either in print or on film, end-of-days work tends to be focused around zombies, deadly viruses (where truth is scarier than fiction) or apparently unavoidable catastrophes such as meteorites, earthquakes or volcanoes. While a zombie apocalypse seems unlikely - although it would be unwise to rule anything out in 2021 - the others are clear and very present dangers, but neither clearer nor deadlier than the climate emergency. 

 

And yet, the climate emergency is largely noticeable by its absence in fiction and therefore two recent television shows stick out for me. The first was The Commons, a 2019 Australian series, that highlighted in the starkest terms both the geophysical perils of climate change and the human cost - a huge refugee crisis. Then this week I finally caught up with The Trick, a BBC film detailing the events of 2009 when data was stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. The data were subsequently manipulated and leaked to the media with the purpose of undermining the growing scientific consensus behind the dangers of man made climate change - in the run up to the 2009 COP meeting in Copenhagen.

What The Trick showed perfectly were the lengths that vested interests will go to undermine and discredit science that damages commercial activity. While the perpetrators of the data theft were never revealed, the evidence appeared to point to either state or commercial fossil fuel interests. Towards the end of the film, Professor Phil Jones, the leading climate scientist whose work was first discredited and then vindicated, estimated that the scandal may have cost us 10 years in the fight against climate change. While the science is now largely settled, those vested interests haven´t gone anywhere and will be in or around next week's COP in Glasgow, working to halt progress that threatens their wealth and influence.

And there's a great deal at stake here. As he prepares for a critical Select Committee meeting investigating the affair, the fictional Professor Jones (brilliantly played by Jason Watkins), is asked what would be the consequences of not halting climate change. "What happens if everyone ignores your measurements, your graphs? What happens Phil, for our children and their children? No numbers, just consequences."

"Well...," he says. "By 2100 dust bowl conditions across North America and Africa, Asia too. Sooner than that, a massive reduction in agricultural production, access to drinking water, migration in huge numbers. Bushfires on a massive scale in Australia, on the West Coast. Annual melting at the poles, the West Antarctic ice sheet, because of that the global sea level rise of, well, metres. In this worst case scenario 70% of the habitable world will no longer be able to sustain human life. Millions of species will become extinct. And coastal and delta cities will be underwater and if the methane in the permafrost and on the seabed is released, well, the climate will collapse and the world as we know it will be gone."

It's an incredibly powerful piece of television and the starkest of warnings. And made all the more powerful by being a dramatization charged as it is by emotion that no scientific paper could reproduce. So, I wonder again, why isn't there more of this? It feels like this is a serious deficiency in our armoury in the fight against climate change. Or maybe I've just missed it and ask for recommendations for reading material as I warm up for my trip to Glasgow next week. 

You may not like football, but you must watch Ted Lasso

Only once have we taken my wife to watch football with us at Atlético de Madrid, where my youngest daughter and I have season tickets. On a freezing cold December night in the upper reaches of the new Metropolitano, she spent the entire match reading the Guardian on her phone as Atleti played out an uninspiring 1-0 victory over Alavés. She has zero interest in football and was merely humouring the rest of us by participating in a family activity.

I tell you this because it's important to understand that having zero interest football is no bar to loving Ted Lasso, the runaway Apple TV hit, that is staged in a football setting, but is not about football. Even if, as one of the characters repeatedly insists, "Football is Life".  Jane could not care less about football; but she loves Ted Lasso, and so will you. 

To be honest, even if you like football, the premise of Ted Lasso, was not promising and I wasn't sure I should watch it.

There is no way on God's green earth that it should have worked at all, let alone that it should have turned out to be a truly beautiful and inspiring piece of television. Every element of the set up was riddled with cliché starting with a fish-out-of-water plot in which an American football coach is transplanted to a Premier League team - essentially King Ralph at Selhurst Park. Then the players: an aging, cynical veteran; a chippy, arrogant hotshot too good for his own team; a wildly over-enthusiastic Latin American; a superstitious young African. Stop me if you've heard this before. Major League at Manchester City?

Then there's the disinterested owner, the inevitably hostile, the ignorant and cynical media, the profane and free-drinking fans, the WAGs... Please. 

My skepticism never made it any way near to cynicism. I enjoyed episode one when Ted arrives in London - and immediately visits Tower Bridge (on his way to Richmond from Heathrow!!!), tells us all he hates tea and is immediately thrown to the wolves in a disastrous welcome press conference - "Heck, you could fill two internets with what I don't know about football". 

By episode four, the arrival of the new Ted Lasso was a highlight of the week. And that's because none of the stuff above matters one bit. With its smart, sensitive writing, the Ted Lasso storyline became compelling and the clichés charming. On top of that, it's funny. And then there are quite wonderful performances across the board, Hannah Waddingham as the acerbic, scheming owner; Juno Temple is a perfect WAG and Brendan Hunt's deadpan Coach Beard is a great foil to Ted himself. The footballers deliver on and off the pitch and Brett Goldstein, also a writer on the show, is outstanding as Roy Kent,  the hard man midfielder raging against the dying of the light.

And then there is Ted himself, wonderfully played by the outstanding Jason Sudeikis. The show is not about AFC Richmond's fight for Premier League survival. It is about what Ted Lasso has to teach us about life and how we can all be better at it. Ted Lasso is the kindest, most generous, sensitive, forgiving and optimistic soul to have walked the earth. With his homespun wisdom and instinctive goodness he has an encouraging word for everyone and an effervescent optimism that can lighten even the gloomiest moment.

He arrived at the perfect moment - six months into the Covid pandemic, audiences were probably ready for more kindness, more optimism and more goodness in their lives.  The show is very funny, hugely entertaining and genuinely moving. Season two starts this week, and I can't wait for the arrival of my new favorite TV show. And so what if you don't like football. You'll love Ted, and if you don't you can go back to The Guardian. 

    

REVIEW: The Crown on Netflix

The triumph of The Crown, the Netflix dramatisation of the British Royal Family following the current Queen's ascent to the throne in 1952, is that it does so much with so little.

At its heart The Crown is the story of a young woman coming to terms with her new job and a young family with its new circumstances, albeit that those circumstances are of course somewhat extraordinary. Nothing much of anything happens. But writer Peter Morgan squeezes every last drop of drama and pathos out of what was likely lived as a fairly slow sequence of events. After the death of her father and her rise to power, three stories dominate the 10 episodes - the health of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his battle to hold on to power; the doomed love affair of Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, equerry to the late George VI; and the growing realisation of the young Queen that her life is no longer her own, that her every decision is now subjugated to whatever is best for the Crown. 

The result is a fascinating, often moving and entirely believable (even if exaggerated) drama that held us spellbound over its 10 hours. Even as the Queen becomes more Royal, more cold and calculating under the tutelage of her mother and a succession of politicians and private secretaries, she becomes more human. Her overwhelming loneliness and isolation, the essential sacrifices she made for her role, are strangely surprising. Claire Foy brings the young Elizabeth to life beautifully, mastering the uncertainty and vulnerability of the early episodes, then later the inner conflict and her growing confidence and assertiveness. BAFTAs and other awards surely reckon. 

Foy is surrounded by a glittering supporting cast of royals and courtiers. Jared Harris is suitably understated as George VI, a shy man thrust into an unwelcome limelight, while Victoria Hamilton is spiky and  challenging as his widow, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The late Queen Mother, regarded with reverence, might be one of the few royals to come out of the show with her reputation dented. Hamilton plays her as a tough almost unpleasant figure, the stolid defender of the royal realm. Alex Jennings is typically superb as the Duke of Windsor, wearing his forced exile with a self-centred sense of injury and injustice, illuminated by the occasional blinding flash of insight and inspiration. His commentary on his niece's coronation from a Paris society party was one of the cleverest pieces of writing in a series that was exquisitely scripted. (Morgan truly is the star of this show). 

And then there's Phil the Greek, the Duke of Edinburgh played by Matt Smith. The Duke has rarely been one to elicit a lot of sympathy from his wife's subjects with his air of superiority and a history of rudeness and gaffes.  But here Morgan reveals the great difficulty of his position, married into a life that has stripped him of his freedom, his career and even his name - his masculinity if you like.

Matt Smith plays him as a restless cad, gadding about with his friends and coming in drunk at all hours while his tortured wife worries her way through another constitutional crisis. It's a strange performance, dominated by a coquettish-knowing-smirk-cum-smile delivered from underneath blonde locks. But just as the Queen Mother comes out as a much less sympathetic figure than the royal saint of tabloid yore, with Phillip the reverse was true. You genuinely wouldn't want his half life. 

Also living a half life, in the shadow of her sister is the most radiant of The Crown's jewels, the lovelorn Margaret, played by the iridescent Vanessa Kirby. Margaret begins the series as a carefree party girl  with an effortless cool, finishes it in the sloughs of despair. But Kirby, beautiful and elegant, shines regardless. We are going to see a lot more of her.  

And then there is John Lithgow  as Churchill, struggling with mortality. I never quite came to terms with Lithgow's face, but his movement, demeanour and speech captured the final age of Winston Churchill quite brilliantly and emotionally.

Naturally the whole thing - Netflix's most expensive original series - looked utterly magnificent. The 1950s may have been an austere decade of renewal and rationing, but it didn't much look like that in the Royal planes, trains, boats, automobiles and palaces. Costume and set design was absolutely spot on.

I've no idea what Netflix's plans are for The Crown, but if they come back for more, I'm with them.  

 

 

 

 

Foyle's War: Silence is Golden

I came late to Foyle's War. The wartime-detective-turned-spy series had already completed seven seasons by the time I watched my first episode in August 2013. By the end of the month I had binge-watched all 22 episodes I could find. 

It took me a little longer to work out why I liked it quite so much: Foyle, an intelligent and under-stated hero, only speaks when he has something to say. This is a rare quality in a character on television, where there always seems to be a compulsion to fill the airwaves with dialogue. 

Not so on Foyle's War, where a combination of smart scripts, excellent cinematography and  terrific acting often means that less can be more. Michael Kitchen, in particular, is terrific first as DCS Foyle and then, post-war, as an MI5 agent.Kitchen plays Foyle with a quiet humanity underpinned by steely resolve. He is unflappable, clever and - mostly importantly - entirely credible. And whether confronted by a villain with a gun or an MI5 bigwig with hypertension and ethical deficit disorder, Foyle deploys his most dangerous weapon: silence.

It is one of the truisms of fictional detectivess everywhere that while interviewing suspects, it is advisable to leave silences to develop, because generally people are uncomfortable with conversational voids and will seek to fill them, possibly with incriminating evidence. Foyle takes this to extremes and the patrician Kitchen fills the void eloquently with facial expression and body language. And it works brilliantly.

Underpinning this excellent show - one of the best detective series to have graced UK television screens - are Anthony Horowitz's excellent scripts which combine factual war time events, personal drama and artistic licence to near perfection. The first episode of the current series - the eight and PLEASE ANTHONY hopefully not the last - was perhaps the best yet. The narrative was wide-ranging and ambitious, pulling together corrupt American industrialism, middle eastern oil politics and the Nuremburg trials into one neat and satisying package.

If all television was this good, I'd never go out.