The Late September Dogs

Watched completely on Apple +: Down Cemetery Road, a new series (I would have written miniseries, except I hear there'll be a second season), based on an earlier novel by Slow Horses author Mick Heron. Starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, both cast somewhat against type and having fun with it. Emma Thompson plays Zoe, a cynical private detective right out of the hard boiled age, if that one had female cynical hard drinking PI's, Ruth Wilson plays Sarah, starting out as somewhat naive, idealistic and disorganized. (I have seen Ruth Wilson in roles where she isn't a brilliant sociopath before! I swear I did! But Alice and Marisa Coulter are just so memorable!) Zoe starts out the story married, to another P.I. who is more the benevolent goodshoe type and whom she has feelings for but cheats on and generally argues a lot with, while Sarah is with a guy hiding total jerkness between a placid facade, but before the pilot is over, neither of these relationships are existent anymore. Both women - who live in Oxford, not London, which is a change, but the action doesn't stay there - through different ways find themselves uncovering the central dastardly plot which unsurprising given the author the show is based on involves fuck-ups by awful government agencies and the attempt to cover this up which leads to an ever higher body count. The Zoe and the Sarah storylines after a brief meeting in the pilot stay apart for half the season, and I was about to complain, but then the second half reunites them and gives me these actresses playing superbly against each other. If I have one complaint, it's that there wasn't really a pay-off for the existence of Talia the new defense secretary. But presumably in the second season?

Started to watch and stopped watching: Gunpowder on Amazon Prime. Look, show, two podcasts managed to turn me around on James VI and I and got me interested in Stuarts beyond the Restoration era, I'm in the market for this ! I'm also with you pointing out Catholics got a truly rough deal in the late Elizabethan and in the James era. But Kit Harrington brooding as Robert Catesby isn't going to cut it, and who does Mark Gatiss as Robert Cecil think he's playing, Shakespeare's Richard III?

Started watching, may or may not continue: The Name of the Rose, new tv version on Disney +. I mean, if there is an early 1980s novel begging for the miniseries treatment, it's absolutely that one, the OG Murders at a Monastery story. I would have thought a mniseries could offer the chance to include a lot more from the novel than the movie was able to, but foolish me, the show creators instead thought they needed some adiditional subplots. Adson now starts out as not really a novice, though he wants to be, because his father wants him with the imperial army instead. That's right, he now has Daddy Issues. (This is where you can tell there must be some American money involved.) William of Baskerville, aka the cleverest Holmes avatar in another setting before House, is played by John Turturro, who doesn't look anymore like the (reddish blonde) William of the book than Sean Connery did but does a decent job playing him. Somewhat unsurprisingly, like the movie, the series beefs up the part of Bernard(o) Gui. Who in the book shows up only in the second half and leaves again long before the big showdown, but Jean-Jacques Annoud already decided he didn't want an evil inquistor going to waste, but apparantly so did the creators of this one, so while Gui still doesn't arrive in the monastery before half point, we see him being evil and fanatical en route in every freaking episode. Did I mention there are new subplots? About which Adson, who is our narrator (voiced as an old man by Peter Davison, omg, that was a nice surprise), can't know?

( More spoilery observations for the first part of the series )

Incidentally, the excellent podcast History of the Germans (currently in its "Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg" season where the family with the famous chin and lower lip first seemingly hits rock bottom in three generations before young Maximilian marries Marie of Burgundy) did a great episode last year about the actual political and theological background of the rl events The Name of the Rose touches on, hilariously summarized as "Der Kurverein zu Rhens - starring William of Ockham and the cast of the Name of the Rose". You can listen to it or read the transcript here.

Aka the third Benoit Blanc mystery plotted and directed by Rian Johnson. Now, each of these movies has a main character who is not Blanc whose fate and/or motivation to solve the mystery is at the heart of the story - Martha in Knives Out and Helen in Glass Onion respectively - and in this case it's Father Jud, played (well and movingly) by Josh O'Connor. In each case, the movie's structure harks back to the classic age of detective mysteries with various twists and turns and a grand denouemonet while also commenting on the here and now in its social satire. If Glass Onion among other things went for the tech bros and the self satisfied "disruptors", Wake up, Dead Man! is very much about the US under the Orange Menace despite his name not mentioned even once. And lo and behold - it even offers hope. And hey, there is even a Star Wars gag. (Just for the record, I still stand by The Last Jedi being the only one of the sequel movies which actually tries to do something new and creative with the franchise. #RianJohnsonwasRight . The gag has nothing to do with that at all, though.)

( Vague spoilers have to offer from their own free will in order for it to mean something )

Yes, about a year after it was released in the English speaking world, The Return finally made it to German cinemas, thus still arriving before Christopher Nolan's big budget take on the Odyssey next year. Like many another person, I assume sight unseen that Nolan's take will be pretty much the opposite, given that The Return focuses exclusively on, well, the story of the suitors harrassing Penelope and Telemachus and Odysseuys' return to Ithaca with ensueing consequences, has thrown out the Gods and any other magical elements entirely from the story and takes place solely on Ithaca within a few days with a small ensemble of characters. (Incidentally, the "Penelope and Telemachus on Ithaca/ The Homecoming" part of the story actually is the main tale of the Homeric epic, which reliably surprises everyone who reads it. The adventures with Sirens, Cyclops and Sea Monsters part is contained in the middle where Odysseus (not the most reliable narrator under the best of circumstances) is narrating it to his hosts and a relatively short portion of the story.) All this being said, having now watched it, I would call The Return a good movie with some stellar performances by our leads - Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes uniting their actory prowess for the third time - , but that it fails in one important regard as an adaptation of the Odyssey, and no, it's not because there are no Gods and other supernatural beings around. But again: as a film, it is great and immensely watchable.

( Tell me, Muse, about a PTSD ridden war veteran and an island under occupation )

More than a decade ago, the tv show Spartacus was a guilty pleasure of mine. I started watching because BtVS and AtS alumnus Steven DeKnight was the showrunner (since then, he's also gathered additional geek cred with the first season of the Netflix Daredevil), and kept watching because as gory and pulpy and trashy as it was, it (after a bad pilot) turned into something compulsively watchable, with interesting characters galore, complicated relationships and good acting. You can read my review of the first season and the prequel season here, of the second season here, and of the third and final season here.

Now a spin-off of said show has just started (in my part of the world, you can watch it on Amazon Prime, but this seems to be different in different countries - like the original show, it gets shown on STARZ in the US) with the first two episodes released. I was alerted to this a few months ago when Steven DeKnight entertainingly shot down the whiny "Woke!" complaints by the usual suspects that started as soon as the first pics were released, showing, OMG, a black woman in a central role among the cast. (Given the original show had several prominent female characters, some of which were poc, and also had canon on screen important m/m relationships, and of course had at its central subject a slave revolt, it beats me why anoyne familiar with said original show should have assumed the show creators being inclined towards the Orance Menace type of entertainment and (lack of) ethos beats me, but there we are. Anyway, the premise of the show per se didn't feel like a must watch to me (more about this later), and I might have hesitated given all the Darth Real Life stuff dodging me, but all the indignation of ignorant fanatics definitely worked as great advertisement. What is the premise? Basically a canon AU, with the title of the spin-off: "Spartacus: House of Ashur" being a giveaway. I.e. it shows what would have happened if one of the original show's villains hadn't ( spoiler for the original show ) - what would have to Ashur, personally, that is, since everything else that happened in the third season of the original show still did happen in the canon AU which starts in what sounds like not even a year after the original show ended. While Ashur had been a good and entertaining villain, I hadn't exactly yearned for a "What if?" about him, yet, see above, external circumstances plus the fact the show really HAD been compulsive watching for me made me tune in and check out the first two episodes.

( Gratitude! )