It’s ages since I shared my watchlist and there’s been some great telly indeed over the past few months.
My top 2 binge watches have been both Mick Herron adaptations on Apple TV+. Series 5 of Slow Horses was darker than the previous ones – building up to series 6 which is already in the can. It ended with a close-up of Lamb’s (Gary Oldman) scarred sole of his foot – referencing a story Lamb had told earlier about a Joe who was tortured and had the soles of his feet flayed by the Stasi… was it Lamb? Probably!
Down Cemetery Road is the first book in Herron’s earlier series part set in Oxford featuring PI Zoe Boehm, played by Emma Thompson. I haven’t yet read these books, and was quite surprised by the turn that events took as a missing child investigation became fall out from a Dept of Defence Black Op! Ruth Wilson co-stars as the woman who hires Boehm to find a missing child, and probably has more screen time than Thompson. However, Thompson’s Boehm has a wonderful haircut, a punkish determination in not suffering fools at all, and a wonderful sense of humour, making her in a way the model for Jackson Lamb – another outsider. I have one episode to go!
At the moment I have NOW TV which I subscribed to for 6 months so I could watch Bookish, the Mark Gatiss period detective series. I didn’t take to Bookish really – there was something about it, especially with the young sidekicks, that felt false. However, Gatiss handling of his character’s lavender marriage to Trottie (Polly Walker) and portrayal of the covert gay community was well done.
Meanwhile, still at NOW TV (Sky Atlantic), The Iris Affair was utter tosh, but brilliant tosh! It has Tom Hollander as a good baddie who hides out in a mountain lair where a mad scientist was on the verge of a breakthrough with a sentient quantum computer thing. Naimh Algar plays Iris, a naturally gifted codebreaker who wins a competition to have a go at unlocking the machine’s final code – but steals the scientist’s notes instead starting off a cat and mouse chase around the Mediterranean. Good fun, Bondish villains, and lovely scenery, created by Neil Cross who did Luther etc.
I also caught up with the Eddie Redmayne reboot of Day of the Jackal (NOW TV/Sky Atlantic) which was rather good. Updating Forsyth’s classic novel to the present, and pitting secret agent Lashana Lynch against Redmayne’s jackal hit man. Both leads were excellent, and we were made to care for each of them – (viz Killing Eve).
Then on Netflix, there was season 3 of The Diplomat which added Alison Janney (I’ll watch anything she’s in) to the mix with fellow West-Wing-er Bradley Whitford as her husband. Always lovely to watch Rufus Sewell too, but I still fail to see how Keri Russell manages to get away with being the US Ambassador to the Court of St James. Her mind may be top notch, but she’s impulsive, always getting changed and smelling her pits in her office, trying to tame her wayward hair. Actually she’s refreshingly good at her job – if it wasn’t for the handsome Foreign Secretary and right-wing PM (Rory Kinnear) both having a thing for her.
I was absolutely delighted that Netflix aren’t just making films for younger audiences. In the past couple of weeks they have released two thoughtful and beautifully done films for grown-ups. I’m talking Train Dreams starring Joel Edgerton in a role far from his Star Wars one, telling the story of the life of a man who works as a logger on the Pacific railroad; and Jay Kelly starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler as a film star who has peaked and his manager respectively.
Train Dreams was adapted pretty faithfully from Denis Johnson’s perfect novella (reviewed here). It’s a beautifully shot film with stunning scenery, it’s laid back and contemplative, but it’s not without drama and tragedy. A nice extended cameo from William H Macy. Edgerton as Robert is a quiet man who thinks deeply, who misses his wife and child all the time he has to go away to work. He is haunted by dreams of them, and a Chinaman whom his co-workers bullied to death. Life is short and hard in this world, but there is light too. A lovely film.
Jay Kelly is a delight from start to finish. Clooney is Kelly – a Hollywood star who has passed his peak, but who hasn’t quite realised that yet. Sandler is his manager. The story hinges around Kelly being awarded a tribute at an Italian film festival, which he initially turns down, but when he finds his younger daughter is going backpacking in Italy before university, decides to go after all travelling on the same trains as she is after jetting to Paris to catch up with her. It’s a comedy, so there’s a superb running gag about cheesecake on his rider all the way through, but it’s also a film in which the leading man has to take stock of his life, leading to many moments where Clooney’s character is distracted by the beauty of normal life. Best of all it celebrates male friendship as he and his manager break up and then realise they need each other.
I am still watching Strictly. But last week’s dance-off was a travesty. For a capable dancer like Amber, the Charleston was an absolute gift. Easy to ham it up and given her fitness and skill and partner Nikita to score 40. Lewis Cope’s West Side Story salsa with Katya, who is one of the most innovative choreographers in the show, was one of the most difficult pieces of music a celeb has ever been given to dance to. He was brilliant and has had more drama than Amber for me the whole way through. Although both have had dance training, Cope’s was when he was a youngster in Billy Elliot, plus some time in a hip-hop group. Amber’s is recent. It is nice to see three dancers in the semi-final that began as non-dancers though, but Lewis was robbed! Rant over.
Finally, I got to the theatre to see Cyrano at the RSC Swan, Stratford starring Adrian Lester as the titular noble swordsman, who loves Roxane played by Susannah Fielding from afar. This was a new, modern speech, but historically set, adaptation of Rostand’s original by Simon Evans (Staged) and poet Debris Stevenson which worked really well. There was some superb comedy in the first half, but in the second shorter half, after the men have gone and only some returned from war, I did have to stifle a tear at the end. Lester was brilliant throughout with his suitably large proboscis!
I am rather annoyed though a) that I missed the members priority booking for Kenneth Branagh’s return to the RSC next year – just the day after it was almost sold out except for a few cheap seats, and b) that the prices for decent seats for Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palladium next summer with Sam Ryder are just too expensive.
What have you enjoyed watching this autumn? Do share…
