Crazy Carrie

All those years ago, when Homeland launched, then carried on into season 2, then further and further until it seemed like it would never end, Brody died and Carrie went crazy.

Now there's a new Crazy Carrie, the protagonist of an outstanding TV series on Sky (which by the way is now owned by Comcast and Rupert Murdoch is not involved) called All Her Fault.

A child goes missing and the series - based on a book of that name by Andrea Mara - is a thriller which, alongside the search for him, follows the dramatic effects on his family as they become ever more paranoid. There are two particular moments of brilliance: after a cliffhanging ending to episode 6, E7 is given over totally to Carrie's background and the circumstances leading to her abducting Milo. It enables the viewer to take a deep breath after the shocks of the previous episode and adds greater dimensions to the mystery. In the final episode the twist in the tale is revealed, with devastating effect. There are feminist elements to the story in its treatment of the characters.

The production and the acting are tremendous and it's the best series I've seen for a while.

I'm not going to go into any spoilers, just tell you - if you're a TV addict, watch it; if you're a book person who loves a good mystery, Mara's book is probably for you (I haven't read it). 

If you take the plunge and read or watch, let me know what you think.

BBC2 has it all wrong

Regular readers will know that Monday night is Quiz Night on BBC2. Very entertaining and stimulating it is; our public service broadcaster has a duty to inform, educate and entertain.

Tonight, Quiz Night is cancelled in favour of...bloody football! And not just any old football, it's the mighty clash between...Northern Ireland and Germany. Oh my!

A few points to make here.

1. The BBC has a Northern Ireland channel, as variants of BBC1 and BBC2. Just as viewers in Kent get your local news and weather on BBC South East and we in Cornwall have BBC South West, so the lovely folks in Belfast can get their own stuff. Which could easily show the footy and leave the quizzes for the rest of us.
2. Mastermind, Only Connect and University Challenge regularly pull in one and half (Mastermind) and two (the others) million viewers. Let's be conservative and assume there are all the same people - devotees like me.
3. The population of Northern Ireland is roughly 1.9 million. Let's assume that half them are women and 100,000 are boys below the age of 5, based on recent census data. I'm not being sexist, just making a reasonable assumption that the goodly ladies of Derry have better things to do than watch their awful (FIFA ranked 71st in the world) football team lose to Germany (9th). Take away the 18,000 who will actually go to Windsor Park to watch the game, plus let's say 15% of the men who couldn't care less about football, and you are left with a potential audience of (being generous) around 700,000. 

So how does the BBC justify junking a 2 million Quiz Night audience for 700,000 Northern Irish football fans who could actually watch it on their own local channel?

It makes no sense.

But I will get to watch England's Under 21s play live on YouTube, without missing any quizzes!

Proper interviews

I’ve become a fan of Amol Rajan’s interviews on his YouTube channel “I’m Amol Rajan”. Recently he interviewed Kemi Badenoch and before that John Major. His first question to Sir John Major was why he agreed to the interview when he rarely did so. The answer was that most TV interviews are short form and inevitably lead to sound bites rather than considered debate. In contrast, Rajan offers a one hour, thoughtful examination of past, present and future.

I like Rajan’s style. He doesn’t indulge in hectoring; his approach is genuinely to allow his interviewees the opportunity to inform the audience and he doesn’t treat them as adversaries. That isn’t to say he ducks difficult questions, just that he doesn’t treat such questions as attempts to trip them up. After Baadenoch dissed her old school as displaying "the soft bigotry of low expectations", he quoted the school principal as denying this; Badenoch responded with, "I don't know who that person is." Although she comes across as thoughtful and likeable much of the time, this dismissal came across as patronising. Her self-description as "culturally Christian" feels shallow.

He gives the feeling of actually liking his victims and relished spending an hour with them. His response to Badenoch's saying she snitched on a fellow 15 year old pupil at school for cheating (he got expelled) was "No wonder you were so unpopular, you sound really annoying", the kind of thing you'd say to a good friend, knowing they won't take offence. Does she do herself any favours in this interview? Not really; she's more like a think tank researcher than a politician. There was not much on policy, because she is still in the learning/thinking stage: "You can give easy answers if you haven't thought it all through. I do the thinking and what people are going to get with new leadership under me is thoughtful Conservatism, not knee-jerk analysis.” So more Keith Joseph than Margaret Thatcher, Anthony Giddens than Tony Blair, Steve Hilton than David Cameron, and who ever heard of them? If Kemi Badenoch is not careful, her innate caution will be swamped by her party's desire for - above all else - winning elections. And there is indeed a sense of vulnerability: "I'm somebody who people have always tried to write off, and I have always succeeded and I believe I can do that with the Conservative party".

John Major, in contrast, has no pressure on him; he's been there, done it, he is free to speak to truth. He comes over as despairing about modern British politics; about Brexit in particular of course but the standard of public discourse and of political debate too. He dismisses a question about Boris Johnson and "partygate" as completely unworthy of his attention. On the Conservative government's Rwanda policy: “I thought it was un-Conservative, un-British, if one dare say in a secular society, un-Christian, and unconscionable and I thought that this is really not the way to treat people. We used to transport people, nearly three hundred years ago, from our country. Felons, who at least have had a trial … I don’t think transportation — for that is what it is — is a policy suitable for the 21st century.” Brexit was “the most divisive thing in our party in my lifetime...Britain has become “weaker, poorer,” isolated from European alliances and diminished on the world stage."

Rajan finishes his interviews with some quickfire questions:

What time do you wake up in the morning? KB: 5.45 (weirdly precise) JM: Around 5.30–6.00am

What time do you go to bed? KB: midnight JM: Usually around 10.30–11.00pm

Greatest achievement in politics (so far)? KB: "getting the postmasters' convictions overturned" JM:  “I think the peace in Northern Ireland is the thing I would most like to be remembered for … though it was not mine alone, it was the work of many hands.”

How would you like to be remembered? JM: fondly

What would you still like to achieve? JM: "I think I’d like to live long enough to see my country at ease with itself"

What's your guilty pleasure? KB: taking my shoes off. JM: lemon drop martinis (to Amol Rajan's confession that he doesn't know what that is, JM: “Then your life needs to be enhanced”)

What makes a good leader? KB: "Honesty, grit, determination, conviction" JM: “You need to carry people with you — the country, your colleagues, sometimes even your opponents. If you can’t, you don’t really have leadership, you just have noise.”

Making a comparison between the Conservative party's (and the country's) past leader and the new, as yet unproven, manifestation, might be unfair. Kemi Badenoch is at the beginning of her journey and I'm sure the ever-courteous Sir John Major might have some helpful advice on how best to succeed in her goals; does she yet have the experience and wisdom to seek it out?

I look forward to more of these ever-courteous encounters.

Quiz Night

I love quizzes. To be fair, you wouldn't want me on your pub quiz team because I know next to nothing about the staple diet of those - popular music, soap operas, celebrities. Although there's always a bit of sport where I might be able to contribute. 

But Monday night is Quiz Night on BBC2. Mastermind at 7:30 followed by Only Connect and finally University Challenge.

When I was a teacher at Chetham's School, as Head of Sixth Form I organised a team to compete in the Manchester Schools' Challenge. I got my good friend who was the physics teacher to build the electronics required to enable the buzzers and we had a lot of fun. I don't think we won anything (musicians don't know much about normal life) and one of the teaching staff, a dour Scottish Presbyterian, denounced us as "prostituting our knowledge", which I found difficult to answer because (a) I was shocked and (b) I didn't know what that meant.

At home when the kids got older, University Challenge was a regular watch (it's been going for over 60 years, only one year less than Coronation Street) and involved a cushion.

Anyway, back to tonight's quizzes. Mastermind is my least favourite because half of the questions are unanswerable except in very specific circumstances, i.e. you actually need to know something about the specialist subjects chosen. Here are those from the most recent three episodes:

• Stage plays of Sir Tom Stoppard
• The music of Led Zeppelin
• Penguins
• The Empire State Building 
• The Glorious Revolution
• The career of Novak Djokovic 
• Caravaggio
• Premier League Darts
• Inside No. 9
• Grace Hopper

See what I mean? Esoteric doesn't come close. The contestants also answer a general knowledge round, which starts with a very easy question and gets progressively harder. Which is OK for me as I'll get a few. Of course for the contestants it's much more difficult because there is clock pressure.

Then there's Only Connect, probably the most difficult quiz show around. You have to work out the link between four apparently unrelated clues (or sometimes three and you have to guess what's coming next). Pure inductive reasoning, of the type used for solving cryptic crossword clues. They're often deliberately misleading. Try this:

• 14
• 39
• 50
• 55

The connecting wall round gives you 16 words and you have to group them correctly in four groups of four. Example:

• maroon, volume, horse, desert
• count, vanilla, strand, weight
• dump, chocolate, age, standard
• measure, matter, plain, normal

It's fiendishly difficult (contestants are on the clock too) but fascinates me. Answers tomorrow!

Finally, University Challenge is basically a pub quiz for nerds. I guess that's me. 

I'm the archetypal couch potato.

Don't Lose Damian

It's a well-known fact (to me anyway) that Homeland lost the plot after Damian Lewis left the cast. I'll long remember that iconic image of Brody hanging from a noose in Iran at the end of season 3; what came after for Homeland is instantly forgettable. Homeland's point was always the question of Brody's loyalty and Carrie's relationships - professional and personal - with him.

Lewis leaves the cast, Homeland dies.

Now there is a repetition of this point with Billions. This excellent TV series hinged around the tense relationship between two protagonists - Paul Giamatti's District Attorney Chuck Rhoades and Lewis's hedge fund billionaire Bobby Axelrod. It was one of those shows where your empathy with the characters constantly shifted. Brilliantly written and acted, it was an outstanding watch. At the end of season 5 Rhoades wins, Axelrod has to sell his company and go into exile in Switzerland; Lewis leaves the cast. In the last few weeks we have seen season 6. What a let down. The new owner of Axe Capital is Mike Prince, who turns out to be ... nice. He is going to clean up the hedge fund, only accept squeaky clean investors (good luck with that) and bid for the Olympics. What? Rhoades is baffled - he hates billionaires and here's an acceptable one!

In the latest episode we, the viewers, are confronted with the strange device of graphic images overlaying the appearance of each character, the graphics showing their clothing and accessories and their valuations. It's like one of those movies where you see things through the lens of a robot or android - I think it may have been Blade Runner but I'm not sure; maybe Terminator or Ex Machina? Anyway, it's a very irritating device for two reasons: 1. There is so much text that you can't read it before it's gone (Louis Vitto Manhattan $10,000, Gucci Jeans $3,100, Gucci Stuart Hughes Bel ... wait, it's gone! I haven't got to the shirt yet!) 2. It's pointless flammery, as if the producers need to remind us of the show's title. Not for me.

Lewis leaves the cast, Billions dies.

If you're thinking of casting Damian Lewis in a TV show, people - make sure he's contracted through to the final episode ever.

How well do I know my sons?

I recommended Money Heist to Dan, my younger son. The recommendation was a success as he rated it "probably in my top 10 [TV series] ever". Which led me to think what the other 9 would be. So I'm going to give it a go and he can tell me my score in the Comments. Maybe he could even take up my offer of a guest blogger spot!

Bear in mind he's 35 years younger than me so I have to avoid some of my own preferences - e.g. Only Fools And Horses - he was 2 at the time. Here goes. No particular order.

The Sopranos

Game Of Thrones

Stranger Things

The Wire

Breaking Bad

Dexter

Friends

The West Wing

For the final guess it's a toss up between Succession, Billions, The Thick of It and Homeland. I'll go for...

Homeland

I eagerly await my score..... 

Other readers can post their top 10s!

The Sinner

I was brought up in an evangelical Christian household and spent my formative years in membership of the Salvation Army. The SA was founded in the east end of London in the middle of the 19th century, where the alleviation of poverty as its central social mission was fuelled by a deep hatred of alcoholism and other vices of the poor. So I had an instinctive understanding of the concept of Sin - the sins of drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco and much more were a fundamental part of the organisation's message and of the prohibitions of membership.

You can imagine the temptations this brought to an inquisitive and intelligent teenager; they were probably the origins of the rebel I became and arguably continue to be.

I pondered this when I started watching the Netflix series The Sinner. It's a psychological  drama covering four seasons, each of eight episodes. The central character, Harry Ambrose, is a detective who appears in all four seasons although the rest of the cast of characters changes for each season. In each case there is a murder and we know the perpetrator straight away. But Ambrose looks beneath the plain facts and seeks to understand the murderer's motivations, believing that there may be ameliorating circumstances which could affect the justice system's treatment of the case. With the perpetrator he acts as therapist as much as investigator.

As the seasons follow, the scenarios grow darker. Season one features a - on the face of it - perfectly normal wife and mother who unaccountably stabs someone to death on the beach. Season two gives us a glimpse into an ugly cult through the eyes of a young boy who poisons two of the cult members.

As things progress, we learn about Ambrose's own background and understand more of why he relates to these abused people whom he sees as victims (of their pasts) rather than offenders. It seems to me that he is the eponymous Sinner.

Season three for me just got too dark. A teacher, husband and father is involved in the death of someone whom he knew and was very close to. As we are shown flashbacks to their relationship we come to see that person as someone very destructive indeed. He came across to me as almost the personification of evil and I simply felt - halfway through episode four - that it was disturbing me too much and I should stop.

So I did.

I spent some time debating whether I should post this. But, if I'm going to describe movies and TV shows which I enjoy and think you might too, I felt a responsibility to mention those which I would dissuade anyone whose sensibilities are similar to mine from watching. It's fair to say that there has been a degree of critical acclaim for The Sinner and it has many good points. It's just that, for me, it went too far into the dark side.

Bella Ciao

Bella Ciao is a folk song originating in World War II resistance movements in Italy. It continues to be a part of anti-fascist protests throughout the world. I came across it in the wonderful TV series Money Heist, which glorifies anti-establishment themes and in which Bella Ciao occurs as a leitmotif to characterise the robbers' anti-authoritarian instincts. Freedom for the people! Of course, they also set out to steal billions of euros' worth of currency and gold bars. The song provides moments of joyous celebration when things go well - which they don't always. Absolutely no spoilers, though, because you'll want to watch this.

You can sing along:

One morning I awakened,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao!
One morning I awakened
And I found the invader.

Oh partisan carry me away,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao
oh partisan carry me away
Because I feel death approaching.

And if I die as a partisan,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao
and if I die as a partisan
then you must bury me.

Bury me up in the mountain,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao
bury me up in the mountain
under the shade of a beautiful flower.

And all those who shall pass,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao
and all those who shall pass
will tell me "what a beautiful flower."

This is the flower of the partisan,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao
this is the flower of the partisan
who died for freedom

Credibility Stretch

Man turns up at his wife's memorial and makes a speech in which he accuses her of selfishness in committing suicide.

Man (same man, let's call him Our Man for brevity), a surgeon, hooks up with a dodgy cockney (we'll call him Lee, because that's his name), who is an eco-eccentric and survivalist with a whole suite of 'rooms' deep underground beneath Temple [remember that, you'll need it later] tube station. They run a business providing medical services to those who are unwilling to go through the usual medical channels. Patching up gunshot wounds, for instance.

We discover that Our Man's wife isn't actually dead. She is in a 'hospital ward' in the underground complex, next to a laboratory in which he is continuing her research into a possible cure for her illness.

Lee brings in a mate (we'll call him Jamie) with a gunshot wound. Jamie arrives with £2 million in a brown paper bag (actually a sports bag). He ran away with the cash from a robbery, leaving his fellow robbers at the mercy of the police. Who are now looking for him. The robbers that is. And the police of course.

Jamie needs a blood transfusion but they have run out of the universal O negative. Our Man phones the only person he knows with that blood type - Anna, his wife's co-researcher and his ex lover - and 'invites' her to see his new home, where she is knocked out with chloroform and her blood used on Jamie.

Anna finds Our Man's wife and agrees to help the research.

Jamie's pregnant wife is given a 'burner' phone with which to communicate with Jamie - the underground complex has full WiFi, obviously - and not surprisingly she gets interrogated. By the police. And the mates of the by now incarcerated robbers.

Our Man discovers that his wife is suffering renal failure and needs a kidney transplant. He makes contact with an underworld supplier of kidneys and needs £100,000 to buy one. So he steals the money from Jamie's stash.

Sounds a promising plot for a TV show? It. Does. Not. Unless it's a comedy. Which Sky's Temple is not, being presented as a 'medical crime drama'.

I've watched some dross in my time as an armchair TV critic but this takes the proverbial biscuit. Want a recommendation? Avoid it like the plague. The above summary covers five episodes of this ludicrous show. There are many more but I won't be watching.

Farming news

Clarkson's Farm: I don't much like Jeremy Clarkson, or his alt-right libertarian spoutings. However, Richard Wagner was probably an unpleasant man, with anti-Semitic leanings, but I enormously enjoy his music and I approached this TV series with a similarly open mind. Not a fan of Clarkson's petrolhead stuff, I thought perhaps he couldn't murder farming and, in this eight episode 'account' of a year on his Cotswold farm, he doesn't; at least not all the time.

It's apparent that a great deal of this is staged and scripted (as is the majority of TV), so it's possible that the whole thing never happened in the way that it was portrayed but you either suspend belief and enjoy it or switch off. I chose the former. Clarkson claims that the tenant farmer of his farm decided to retire and so our Jeremy (I can't believe I wrote that, it sounds ridiculously familiar) decided to have a go himself - with, it has to be said, an Amazon film crew in tow. Fair enough, he's a TV presenter by trade so do what you do best.

Did you know that the luxury sports car manufacturer Lamborghini started as a tractor manufacturer? You can buy new Lamborghini tractors today, although they are now made by someone else, albeit still sporting the iconic name. Obviously the first thing Clarkson did was to purchase one. Only around £100,000, I think. I don't know how much tractors cost but I'm guessing that's high end. More expensive machinery follows, as he sets out his initial aim to grow crops. Not surprisingly, he doesn't have a clue how to do that. It's a bit of a soap opera really, but Clarkson shows some empathy engaging with various locals whom he recruits to help. These people form the dramatis personae of the production.

In a way it's a Del Boy epic - grand schemes (such as a rewilding project), flitting from project to project, an inability to be interested in detail (selling spring water in the farm shop before it has been tested - sounding very much as though inspired by the Only Fools And Horses episode Mother Nature's Son) and a propensity to ignore rules (the farm shop stocks pineapples when the planning permission specifies local produce only). It is brought to his attention that, in order to get a government grant available for leaving a field as grass (I'm pretty certain there's a technical term for that), the grass has to be mowed regularly; he opts instead to get a flock of sheep. Which proves to be an economic disaster but, predictably, great television, telling us everything about this show. Clarkson sets himself up as a lovable buffoon, kept in order by his cohorts - and by his Irish girlfriend Lisa who flits in and out of the show, adding colour, from time to time.

It's Laurel and Hardy to an extent but, interestingly, there is a deal of serious comment about the economics of farming today and the mountains of paperwork required. As the year progresses, Clarkson changes: he becomes more serious, engages fully in hard physical work and, with his new mates/advisers, is prepared to work through the night on occasions to get things done. Throughout, and particularly at the end of the year, when all the crops have been harvested, he reflects that these months have been some of the happiest in his life. I have no reason to doubt his sincerity. For me, a very enjoyable show.

Is impartial news a thing of the past?

Where do you get your news? Do you cross check other sources for corroboration?

I thought I'd check out the new TV channel GB News, recently launched by the 'big beast' of political journalism, Andrew Neil. Neil has been one of the best, most forensic political interviewers of recent years and has appeared to be scrupulously impartial in his verbal destruction of politicians of all stripes. A surprise, then, to see Neil as the face of a news channel that doesn't pretend to be impartial - indeed loudly claims to be 'anti-woke' and against the 'metropolitan mindset', 'identity politics' and cancel culture'. If you turn on to GB News, therefore, you wouldn't expect to be surprised by the thrust of its 'news' reporting.

You'd imagine Priti Patel, of all our British politicians, would be pushing her way to the front of the queue for an 'interview' (i.e. a platform for her views). And there she was: 'taking the knee is gesture politics' - you can see it on the GB News Twitter feed, if you feel the kneed.

Except. At 12:30 today, I watched Gloria De Piero (ex Labour MP and TV journalist) and economics/business journalist Liam Halligan co-hosting a three hour show "DePiero & Halligan" (so not "News at 12" or "The Lunchtime News", or indeed any pretence of being news). Gloria introduced an item from the Yorkshire Post on the number of Covid-related fines issued by the police in Nottinghamshire, which turned out to be largely breaking of Tier restrictions - remember those? - from however many months/years ago that those existed. Followed by someone called Sarah giving her opinions on the impact of continuing restrictions on 30 guests at weddings - cut to Gloria, nodding her approval of these views. There was no balancing item from someone in authority as to why it was necessary but, worst of all, it just felt very Radio 5 Live, members of the public blathering about local things no-one else is interested in. Basically provincial gossip. Is that it, Andrew?

I am a news sceptic, in that I basically don't believe there is such a thing as an unbiased presentation of news. If you are a reader of the Daily Telegraph, the Mirror, the Sun, the Guardian, you pretty much know the slant you will get on news items - indeed you read your paper of choice because you broadly agree with its general political stance. I read - and subscribe to - the Times, largely because its reporting of football and horse racing is supremely detailed and enlightening. I enjoy the Comments sections but always check out the authorship of a comment piece in order to evaluate its degree of impartiality. I watched last year's US General Election avidly on CCN, completely aware of (and enjoying) its anti-Trump bias.

I am absolutely not a fan of the BBC. Nothing to do with its impartiality or otherwise; I just don't believe it should exist. If there is a role for a public service broadcaster in a democratic country (something I dispute in an era of multiple news outlets), it should be restricted solely to news and news analysis. No competition with - and desire to eclipse - other media outlets, no drama, no sport, no provincial gossip and definitely no national cheerleading. And no licence fee.

So that's me; no pretence of impartiality, but I don't have to be. And no provincial gossip here.

Sharp Objects

I've not really connected to Amy Adams in  the past - I suppose early in her career. I actually haven't seen her in many movies. The one I do remember was a tsunami disaster movie with Ewan MacGregor. I can't remember what it was called and can't be bothered to look it up. I wouldn't say it was bad but it wasn't gripping - as disaster movies are supposed to be.

However, the TV series Sharp Objects is absolutely outstanding and stars Amy Adams.

I have an aversion to TV series which get an unwarranted second season - not because they are too bad to warrant it but precisely because they are too good to warrant it; they have said what they have to say and to contrive a follow-up undermines the quality of the original. So I hope Sharp Objects doesn't get a second season, because this is The Best.

It's easy to list TV shows that went on too long. Even the classic West Wing - should have finished when Bartlet ended his second term; there was no point to the rest. Homeland - should have finished when Brody died; the Carrie/Brody relationship was good, afterwards Carrie just went crazy.

Conversely, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (like West Wing, written by Aaron Sorkin) was so good and there was plenty left in it. The characters were ripe for further development. Don't know why the studio cancelled it. Ratings, I guess.

So, Sharp Objects, based on a novel by Gillian Flynn. Adams is Camille, a journalist who is assigned to an investigation into why a young girl - and others previously - have disappeared. In her home town, to which she is not keen to return. Camille is a seriously flawed character but gets to grip with the mysterious circumstances. She decides to stay at her family home. Her mother (Patricia Clarkson won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress) is not exactly delighted to see her and - what she (the mother) sees as - her disruption of small town life as she relentlessly probes into current and recent tragedies.

  

Eliza Scanlen (recently Beth in Little Women) plays Camille's rollerblading younger half sister and Chris Messina a detective (Willis) is brought in from another force to help with the investigation. He and Camille are the outsiders and are duly resented by the townsfolk. The interactions between these four main characters make a great show.

To tell more would be to spoil, so suffice to say that the acting is universally superb, the plot is a dark depiction of small town middle America and the music is amazing.

The 8 episode series aired on HBO in 2018, after which HBO announced there would not be a sequel. Well done, HBO! It simply doesn't need more.

One final thing: do not switch off during the final credits of the final episode; you will miss an important coda.