Reading/Watching Log #54

That’s it for another month; I spent most of it watching the news in a spectrum of emotions ranging from hope to grief to fury, which leaves you spent and exhausted and so very weary of the world.

So unfortunately there might be a bit more negativity than usual below the cut, as I’m sure my mindset left me far more critical than I otherwise could have been about a bland Charlie’s Angels film, a flaccid third season of Killing Eve, and an increasingly obnoxious take on Anne of Green Gables in its third and final season.

Still, there was plenty of good stuff too: a time-travelling Cleopatra, the triumphant return of Phryne Fisher, a delve into the life and times of Emily Dickinson, and Harley Quinn driving off into the sunset with the woman she loves. I also went on a bit of a Lois Duncan bender, so that was a fun trip down memory lane.

Oh, and just one more male-centric/directed story managed to sneak past: I had to watch Onward, and was stunned by how good it was in the face of such lacklustre reviews. Seriously, it’s one of the best things Pixar has put out in ages. 

Cleopatra in Space Books 1 – 5 by Mike Maihack

Well, it’s all the title: Cleopatra… in space! I was sold on that premise alone, though the story is an imaginative space opera involving galactic warfare, a time-travelling heroine, and plenty of allusions to Egyptian culture, mythology and ancient history. Basically, my jam.

It’s also recently been adapted into an animated show which I haven’t been able to track down yet, but if it remains loyal to what’s in the source material, it’s going to be highly reminiscent of She Ra’s sci-fi/fantasy aesthetic which in turn bears more than a few resemblances to Star Wars (like, there’s literally a BB8 cameo featured in these pages).

At the age of fifteen, the future Queen of the Nile and her friend Gozi are practicing with their slingshots when they discover an abandoned temple. While exploring, Cleopatra touches a strange glowing tablet and finds herself catapulted through time to the far-distant future, where an evil dictator called Xaius Octavian has successfully stolen all electronically-stored data, giving himself a profound advantage when it comes to his military conquests.

But with the arrival of Cleopatra, P.Y.R.A.M.I.D. (that is, Pharaoh Yasiro's Research Academy And Military Initiative of Defence) now have – I’m gonna say it – a new hope. Yup, there’s a prophecy and she’s the Chosen One, though she’s got plenty of training to do before she’s ready to face anyone in battle.

She’s surrounded by a strong supporting cast, including fellow cadets Akila and Brian, and a wise cat mentor called Khensu (one of a council of talking cats) who offer her assistance in her acclimation of the future – though she catches up surprisingly quickly! The first five books involve missions and espionage with a few twists on the stock tropes of the genre, and the aforementioned nods to its Egyptian inspiration. Some of it is downright ingenious, like Cleopatra sneaking herself into a city by hiding in a roll of carpet, or her main antagonist being a young thief whose name is Antony.

The artwork is great too – all the characters are very cute, but the story isn’t afraid to go to some pretty dark places, with illustrations to match. Characters die, places are destroyed, and a few instalments end on a sombre note. I’d had my eye on these graphic novels for a while and they didn’t disappoint – now it’s just the usual trouble of having to wait longer for the next publication.

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

I’ve been on a bit of a Lois Duncan spree this month, delving right into the storerooms of the public libraries to dig out the original copies of her work. It’s been a mixed bag, as though some of the stories have aged reasonably well, others not so much.

This one is obviously her most famous thanks to the nineties slasher flic with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar (and it’s where she met Freddie Prinz Junior! Aww. Also, why does everyone in that movie have three names?) In any case, the book is drastically different from the film in that the teenagers ending up killing a child in a hit-and-run, only to cover it up and try to get on with their lives.

One summer later, and the inevitable “I know what you did last summer” note appears, which thanks to cultural osmosis, isn’t quite as scary as I’m sure it was in the seventies. In any case, they start scrambling around in a bid to discover which among them has spilled the secret, or if not that, who was witness to their original crime.

I can’t say it was hugely compelling, and I prefer Duncan’s books when there’s a dash of supernatural in the mix, but at least now I can say I’ve read it.  

Twisted Window by Lois Duncan

This is probably the worst of Duncan’s body of work, simply because the protagonist has to be so profoundly stupid in order for the plot to work. As with IKWYDLS, there’s not a trace of any paranormal activity, instead it involves a teenage girl being talked into helping kidnap a child by a handsome, charismatic peer.

That she’s being set-up is obvious from the get-go (not in the text itself, but by dint of the fact you’re reading a Lois Duncan book) and the reader has to struggle through her abject stupidity in buying the guy’s bullshit story about how the baby in question is actually his little sister, that she’s been kidnapped by his stepfather, and that he wants to take her back to his mother. Duncan does her best to push her heroine into the frame of mind required for an otherwise mentally-sound person to go along with such a ludicrous scheme, but she’s pushing it…

Summer of Fear by Lois Duncan

Now this made for an interesting read, as it turns out that I had completely forgotten about having read it as a teenager, and got about halfway through before a completely random detail (that a witch can cause death by walking backwards around a bed, thereby putting hospital patients at extra risk since their beds are on wheels) triggered my memories. It takes a lot for me to forget a book I’ve read (perhaps it was the painfully generic title) so it was a strange experience to have it all come back to me midway through the story.

In any case, Rachel Byrant is looking forward to her summer when her family receive tragic news: her mother’s sister and brother-in-law have been killed in a car accident, leaving behind their daughter Julia. Obviously Rachel’s cousin will now have to live with them, but just as naturally, her arrival sparks all sorts of conflict within the household.

It’s a fairly typical take on a home invasion story within a YA setting (the interloper arrives and starts taking over the family dynamics) and was probably the best of the author’s stories I read this month. It has the requisite supernatural touch to it, though I liked that Duncan never fully commits to whether Julia is a real witch or not. All of her apparent powers could be explained through rational means, and the things she did are horrifying either way.

And it ends on a genuinely lovely heart-warmer, in which Duncan finds a way to ensure that love is what finally circumvents Julia’s evil, in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or corny.

The Third Eye by Lois Duncan

Last of all, babysitter Karen discovers that her latent psychic powers are growing after the disappearance of a young boy in her care. What’s interesting is that this has less to do with the psychic abilities and more with their effect on her life, family and community. Her mother hates that she has this gift, her boyfriend wants to exploit them, and when the public find out what she’s capable of, she’s inundated with request for help with other missing children.

It would have been fine if the book had carried on with this material, though Duncan has to up the ante by introducing two child kidnappers who take off with a few dozen babies from the local nursery school. Having befriended a young police officer whose nephew is among the missing, Karen defies her parents wishes to go in search of the children, using her still-unpredictable powers to try and discover their location.

Having read five Duncan books in the last two months, this one is her quintessential fare: a teenage girl, preternatural occurrences, a strained relationship with a parents, a handsome young love interest that may or may not be trustworthy… the only thing I would recommend is reading the original editions, since (for reasons that elude me) many of the later publications have seen fit to “update” the text with modern slang and technology. It’s always glaring, as these books were very much of their time, and any attempt to change the setting just leads to an abundance of cell-phone outages at the most inopportune times.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Bardugo’s original Grisha trilogy had its detractors, but I honestly loved the world-building and dark fairy tale ambience. With the Netflix series on the horizon (and having skipped ahead to read King of Scars, which was probably a mistake) I ended up buying the Six of Crows duology thanks to its pretty, pretty cover art.

The original trilogy was very much a fantasy/coming-of-age story, with plenty of the familiar tropes wrapped up in pseudo-Russian coverings, and an emphasis on the beautiful elite. Six of Crows instead looks to “the Dregs” (that’s literally what they call themselves) to make up the ensemble; a collection of thieves and outcasts that gather under the leadership of seventeen-year old Kaz Brekker to pull off a nigh-impossible heist.

They’re promised a fortune if they successfully break the scientist Bo Yul-Bayur out of the Ice Court, a prison complex in the hostile realm of Fjerda, though the dynamics of the assembled team form just as much of a challenge as the mission itself.

The stakes are high but also specific to this world: Bo Yul-Bayur has been experimenting with jurda, a plant stimulant that enhances the innate powers of the Grisha, but now to such an extent that the Grisha are not only god-like in their abilities, but also instantly addicted to the substance. The consequences if jurda parem should enter the market are catastrophic, not only to Grisha but the way in which society itself is structured. Given that some members of the team are Grisha, there’s a highly personal motivation at work to successfully retrieve Yul-Bayur – though the massive pay-out is quite the incentive as well.

As with most heist stories, the enjoyment of the book comes from the team dynamics and the ingenuity of the master plan, as our six anti-heroes are forced to work together despite their differences in order to pull off the impossible. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but some of the relationships are a little dodgy (a Grisha is forced to work alongside a witch-hunter who once make a pretty serious attempt on her life) yet Bardugo is largely serious about exploring the injustices of the world and the shades of grey that they inevitably create. All the characters are vividly drawn (the banter is gonna pop as dialogue in the Netflix show) and I’m already halfway through the next book…

Lady Macbeth (2016)

SPOILERS

Well, that was cheerful – not. Granted, I’m not sure what I expected from a film named after one of our greatest villainesses, but the promise of Florence Pugh was too much. And the screenwriter was a woman. Alas, that doesn’t always make for a great film.

Katherine Lester is a young woman stuck in a loveless marriage to a much older man in the wilds of Northumberland. Her husband doesn’t want to touch her and her father-in-law treats her like shit, and eventually she takes one of the stable hands as a lover (they meet while he’s sexually assaulting her maidservant, and barges his way into her bedroom with deeply questionable consent – yeah, a real keeper).

After a while the whole thing becomes misery porn, as injustice upon indignity piles up against Katherine, and she responds with increasing ruthlessness, first inflicting her rage upon the guilty, and then the innocent. It’s a story about how people with different degrees of power work against one another, and the whole thing can be summed up with the words of Katherine’s ghastly father-in-law: “if you behave like an animal, you’ll be treated like an animal.”

In fact, it’s the inverse that is true: when you treat people like animals, they eventually start acting like them. As Katherine does when she’s pushed too far.

But to call Katherine Lady Macbeth is a false equivalency. Macbeth (and his wife) in the titular play have plenty of power, wealth and influence – their evil stems from the fact that both were hungry for more. Katherine doesn’t have any of these things, and her initial crimes are simply to free herself from degradation and abuse. But (as is the case in most cautionary tales about evil women) an attempt to free oneself from the cruelty of the patriarchy is apparently the fatal first step on a slippery slope.

It would seem female characters always turn evil due to the suffering inflicted upon them (see also; Maleficent, Daenerys) though most stories of this nature are entirely unhelpful in providing them with any other sort of potential path that they might take to save themselves. Here at least, Katherine’s options are to put up with suffering, or become a monster.

I’m always down for a good female villain, but the trajectory of Katherine’s Start of Darkness didn’t work for me, largely because her descent into true evil (the murder of a child) isn’t paced that well. I can believe that she would cold-bloodedly kill her abusive father-in-law. I can also believe she would do the same to her husband in a pique of rage and self-defence. But then, after discovering that her husband has had an illegitimate child that he’s legally named as his ward, and that she’ll lose her lover if the boy is allowed to stay, she takes the final step of suffocating the boy.

I could believe in a story in which a woman kills a child, but not in these specific circumstances. Not after she’s already bonded with the child, not when her lover Sebastian has already proved himself to be a bad apple, and not when her motivation changes from defending herself to trying to keep hold of him. And that Sebastian helps her kill the boy is equally nonsensical, as he was not only guilt-stricken over her husband’s death, but refrained from killing the child earlier when he found him alone by a waterfall.

If people are going to commit a crime this heinous, it has to be more psychologically and emotionally realistic than we got here.

And who ultimately gets the fall for the crime? The black maid of course, who has absolutely no chance of defending herself against the lady of the house. It was already a deeply uncomfortable film, but in the midst of current events, I felt a bit sick by the end.

Ultimately, this film wants to say, this is where the evil structures of racism, misogyny and classism will take people. Monsters create monsters, we all live upon a chain of suffering, and pain is inflicted upon the weak, over and over again, until they grow the claws needed to inflict yet more pain upon those even weaker. Burn it all down.

Charlie’s Angels (2019)

It’s hard to know how you can go wrong with a premise as simple and solid as this one: three spies, all women, negotiating the world of espionage. And yet Hollywood is still struggling to craft any sort of franchise out of the cult-classic television series. The original show was before my time, a reboot in 2011 was almost immediately cancelled, and the Diaz/Liu/Barrymore films were blockbuster garbage that seemed more concerned with catering to every conceivable fetish – no matter how bizarre – than actually telling a decent story.

This continuation (not reboot; as both the show and earlier movies are acknowledged) is the flip side of that: built around girl power and female friendships and sticking it to the patriarchy. I’m totally down for that, but this… just didn’t land.

I’d say it was all style over substance, only the style – whether it be the costumes, stunts, performances, dialogue, cinematography – is all unspeakably bland. And how? How can it be so bland? You’ve got Elizabeth Banks as Bosley, a racially diverse trio of Angels, interesting locations around the world, the aforementioned focus on female solidarity (which granted, is wielded about as subtly as a sledgehammer, but even so…)

Yet something just isn’t working here. Honestly, it reminded me of that terrible X-Men: Evolution episode where the female members of the team decide to become a crime-fighting team of girl bosses in leather jackets and sunglasses. Oof.

Why can’t we get a Charlie’s Angels film that has the tone and weight of one of the later Mission Impossible movies, with a plot drawn around the personalities of the main characters and their dynamics with one another? I think the candyfloss gloss of this one is what makes the film feel so self-conscious. Just as the previous one went too hard in appealing to a male audience, this went too hard in catering to a young female one. Relax, guys. Just let the story and characters unfold.

(And even with such an intense eye on its feminist content, there are some odd notes. In such a woman-friendly film, why is Elizabeth Banks bemoaning the fact she’s “forty and single”?)

But hey, Jonathan Tucker turns up (he popped up in Westworld too) as a genuinely creepy assassin, though it only makes me wonder if we’ll ever see him again as Low-Key in American Gods.

Onward (2020)

The reviews for this one were lukewarm, and the coronavirus lockdown certainly clipped its wings at the box office, but perhaps it was because my expectations were so low that I got totally caught up in this. I watched it on my friend’s massive big-screen television, and we laughed, we cried, we gasped; the whole shebang.

As with most Pixar films, it has a high concept premise: in a world where magic exists but has long fallen out of use in the face of technological progress, two elf brothers are given a gift from their deceased father on the youngest son’s sixteenth birthday: a magical staff and gemstone that will resurrect him for twenty-four hours, giving them all the chance to catch up with each other.

However, the spell goes awry and the boys – Ian and Barley – are left with just a pair of legs, forcing them on a quest to find a new gemstone within the allotted period of time to complete the spell and talk to their father – which in Ian’s case is a big deal, since he never had the chance to know him.

What follows is an entertaining road trip with the two brothers which seems inspired by Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying, complete with puzzles, riddles, maps, chases, escapes, underground tunnels and mythical creatures. It’s great stuff, in which everything from the splinter-prone magical staff to the van’s air conditioner, their mother’s workout mantra to all the spells that Ian learns along the way have fantastic pay-off in the final act, all culminating in a quintessential Pixar moment, which can always be aptly described as the characters not getting what they want, but realizing they have what they need.

It’s colourful and beautiful and heartfelt, and will probably appeal to anyone who’s ever played a D&D game. One suspects that after the success of the Frozen movies and their emphasis on sisterhood, this deliberately cast its eye on brothers instead (though given Pixar’s less-than-stellar track record with female characters, one of the brothers could have easily been a sister).

It’s not perfect. For instance, the film’s setting of a land where magic is obsolete (as in The Good Dinosaur and its conceit of the meteor missing the Earth and sparing the dinosaurs) has absolutely no thematic bearing on the story itself: the boys could have easily been humans living in our world, whose father just happens to bequeath them a magical staff. Likewise, no explanation whatsoever is given for why the spells goes wrong in the first place, and no obvious solutions (such as taking the dad’s shoe off and sticking a pen between his toes so he can write a message) are raised when it comes to communicating with the disembodied legs.

Oh, and can we all agree that leaving your children a magical staff that will give you twenty-four hours of life sixteen years after your death without telling anyone about it is a profoundly dick move? It could not only end up being more traumatizing for your kids, but it clearly doesn’t give a thought for the wife, who may (and in fact HAS) moved on romantically. As it is, she never gets to see her deceased husband, and the idea that she might have a say in all these life-altering shenanigans is completely glossed over.

Also, once again there’s a promoted gay character, but after the obvious route of fixing up the mum and the Manticore (who go on a road-trip journey of their own) is ignored, it ends up being yet another minor character with a throwaway line.

But having gone in expecting second-tier Pixar, I had so much more fun than I anticipated. Fun story: my friend and I spent some time debating whether the boys were trolls or elves and even stopped the movie to look it up on-line, only to restart the film and have the mum almost immediately yell: “have you seen two teenage elves?”

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020)

Thanks largely to a crowdfunding campaign, the big screen continuation of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries arrives as something of an epilogue to the three-season television series – much like the Downton Abbey film was to its show: that is, pleasant enough, though not hugely essential.

Sadly, the likes of Dot, Hugh, Cec, Burt and Aunt Prudence only warrant a short cameo appearance at the start of the film (Mac and Jane don’t feature at all) in which they’re grieving the supposed death of adventuress Phryne Fisher after her rescue attempt of a young Bedouin girl from imprisonment. Though we never discover how exactly Phryne managed to survive the dire straits we last see her in (hanging onto the roof of a train as it hurtles towards a tunnel) she turns up to her own London funeral in cheerful spirits, though of her Australian cadre only Jack Robinson is in attendance.

Still, I can understand why they weren’t involved. Big-screen adaptations of television shows usually require a shift in location to a more “exotic” setting, and there was really no way to involve Phryne’s supporting cast in a story that largely takes place in London and Palestine.

There is a plot at work here, involving the aforementioned Bedouin girl, a WWI war crime, and a giant emerald, but let’s be honest – no one watches this for the mysteries. It’s all about the costumes, the period setting, and the sexual tension between Phryne and Jack, which mercifully gets resolved by the time the credits roll.

Basically, it’s exactly what I expected: one last adventure with these characters (well, Phryne and Jack at least) and a final goodbye to the cast.

The Lovebirds (2020)

Another film that was quickly shuffled to Netflix in the wake of the lockdown, this Issa Rae/Kumail Nanjiani vehicle is (like The Crypt of Tears) exactly what you expect: a romantic-comedy in which a squabbling couple end up in a series of escalating situations that forces them to work together and re-evaluate their relationship.

Jibran and Leilani are in the midst of their latest argument (whether or not they could win The Amazing Race) when their car hits a cyclist. He gets up and takes off, seconds before a police officer hijacks their ride and speeds after him. One dangerous high-speed chase later, and the cyclist is mown down… several times. Realizing that the guy isn’t a cop, the couple are too scared to do anything but run when members of the public stumble upon the crime scene and call the police.

In the wake of recent events, the fact that the plot hinges on a non-white couple being too terrified to hand themselves in, instead deciding that the better option is to investigate the murder themselves shifts from a ridiculous premise to get the story rolling, to a rather tragic indictment of the American justice system. And even when it transpires that the cops knew full-well that the couple were innocent thanks to traffic cameras, the reveal that the murderer was actually a police officer is eerily prescient.

In an adventure that involves blackmail, frat boys, bacon grease and secret society orgies, it makes for a fun evening in, and the rapport of the two leads is definitely worth at least one viewing.

Wellington Paranormal: Season 2 (2019)

So… maybe I would have skipped a police procedural this month, only I binge-watched these before shit hit the fan, and honestly – New Zealand cops investigating paranormal activity in the Wellington area is about as far away as you can get from America’s ongoing crisis while technically still being about the police force.

In any case, Officers Minogue and O’Leary, along with Sergeant Maaka, face down seven more cases of things that go bump in the night – including taniwha, witches, ghosts, demon-possessed dolls, sentient cell-phones and a return of the body-snatching aliens from last season. Favourite lines include: “the public have been complaining about this for twenty years, so we’ve decided to take immediate action” and “it’s quite common to have conflicting eyewitness reports, unusual to have them coming from the same person.”

The first episode even mentions that among ten missing people, one of them “has close links to the government”, and sure enough, Clark Gable (Jacinda Ardern’s fiancé) has a cameo appearance when the people are finally discovered. This level of nonchalant interaction between government and mockumentaries is pure kiwi, and Jools Topp even turns up as O’Leary’s mother (only to comment that a giant sentient robot made out of old cell-phones is probably feeling cold).

The key to the show’s humour is Minogue and O’Leary as two good-natured dolts with deliberate anti-chemistry, responding to the weird and wonderful world of the supernatural with little more than a casual shrug. Perhaps the timing wasn’t great, but having watched What We Do In The Shadows in the gap between seasons one and two of Wellington Paranormal, it’s extraordinary to think that an expanded universe is now being build around the premise. Perhaps I should check out the American spin-off…

Dickinson: Season 1 (2019)

Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson, yes please. This is a funny little show; deliberately anachronistic in a very different way than Anne with an E is anachronistic, yet still leaning into a modern soundtrack and dialogue for its young actors, all with a comedic, irreverent tone. Detailing Emily’s adolescence, sexuality and passion for poetry, it makes the brave decision to depict her as something of a spoiled brat, desperate for notoriety and attention, often to the detriment of those around her.

Obviously it’s easy to sympathize with a free spirit in such constructive surroundings as the mid nineteenth century, but the characterization of Steinfeld’s Emily walks a fine line between an early feminist and a child of privilege. Around her is the supporting cast of her friends and family, as well as a few fantastic guest-stars: John Mulaney as Henry Thoreau and Zosia Mamet as Louisa May Alcott stop by, and damn near steal the show.

Along with Emily’s creative output (her poetry is often dramatized on-screen as Emily’s imaginative fantasies) the show also touches on her best friend/love interest Sue, whose engagement to Emily’s brother Austin causes all sorts of household drama, and sister Lavinia, a girl cast deeply into Emily’s shadow, but eking out her own little life under the noses of everyone.

Sometimes the characterization is a bit weak; Emily’s father in a particular is all over the place: sometimes doting, sometimes critical, in the first episode berating at Emily at the dinner table for publishing a poem in a newspaper, and then only being mildly irritated in the second when she dresses up as a boy to attend a lecture – it’s hard to know what to think of him as the writers never get a fix on his personality or what his true feelings toward Emily are, and Jane Krakowski as Emily’s mother is largely used for comic relief.

But it’s a fun watch despite – or because of – it’s quirkiness, and will hopefully draw younger readers toward the real Emily’s extraordinary body of work.

Anne with an E: Season 3 (2019)

This show tries so hard. So hard. It’s pretty beloved on Tumblr, so I feel a bit of a dick when I say that some of the content can get a little too out of hand, but honestly – L.M. Montgomery’s humorous and heartfelt coming-of-age story is now a social tract on the evils of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and colonialism, in which 1890s schoolgirls discuss the importance of consent and protest their right to free speech. And it’s not like I disagree with the significance of these topics, but… why are they in an Anne of Green Gables adaptation?

In one episode Josie Pye is forcibly kissed by a boy (I KNEW they couldn’t resist getting a sexual assault into this show, I just KNEW it) leading to Anne writing a passionate defense of women’s rights in the school newspaper, creating a huge scandal, leading to the paper being banned by the town council, and the schoolkids presenting themselves in the town hall with gags and a sign that says: “freedom of speech is a human right” while Rachel Lynde gets teary-eyed and the eldest council member (I kid you not) smokes a cigar and glowers. I just…

Or am I just being an ass? In the world today, is it really so wrong that a show based on a popular book is taking the opportunity to discuss these issues, albeit in an extremely heavy-handed way?

And I will confess that I enjoyed the inclusion of a young Mi’kmaw girl called Ka’kwet, who befriends Anne before journeying to a residential school in the hopes of a formal education, only to end up with a Christian name, cut hair, and an abusive teacher. This is nicely done, historically accurate, and definitely a course-correction from Montgomery’s complete lack of indigenous inclusion in her books, barring one short-story of a First Nation woman that is truly one of the most condescending things I’ve ever read.

As for everything else? We get a truly strange love triangle between Gilbert, Anne and an original character called Winnie, who’s in her twenties at least, and has lengthy conversations with a medical skeleton model. Mmkay. I really don’t know what the point of any of this was – we know Anne and Gilbert are endgame, there’s no sign of Roy Gardner (who would have been a better option in illustrating Anne’s romantic delusions and how they fade in the realization of a love based on friendship and familiarity) and honestly, I’m not entirely sure why this Gilbert loves Anne, since she’s still operating way below his maturity level.

It’s deeply weird at times, as a sixteen-year old Anne in the books was already a teacher at Avonlea school, while even in those days, Gilbert and Anne were far too young to be considering marriage as teenagers (in the books, Anne marries at twenty-five). They’ve got the pacing of this show all backwards.

And you know the one thing Anne Shirley never was? Self-absorbed. She was rather vain and dramatic, but never wrapped up in herself, which is what this one is. Diana’s fling with Jerry becomes about Anne, Josie’s assault becomes about Anne, Gilbert’s friendship with another girl becomes about Anne – and not because the narrative inevitably leans in the direction of the protagonist, but because she raises her voice, stamps her feet, and makes it that way.

And often this doesn’t reflect well on her at all: after rightfully making a huge fuss about Ka’kwet’s enforced return to the residential school, she and Matthew are forced to leave by the authorities… and Anne has absolutely nothing to say about it in the following episode. Ka’kwet is simply left there, her storyline left utterly unresolved.

By all accounts the show is finished now, even as the final episode sets up a fourth season (with the Avonlea girls settling in at college) and despite my total bemusement at the creative choices Anne With an E makes, it’s a shame it’s come to such an abrupt close. I loved what they were doing with Diana, Ka’kwet deserves a better ending, and there was some beautiful material here involving Matthew and Marilla seeking out information about Anne’s parents. Ah well.

Killing Eve: Season 3 (2020)

I guess this was inevitable, as a show like Killing Eve comes with a very definite narrative use-by date. The third season was never going to live up to the first. Heck, the first season couldn’t even live up to its first four episodes.

Season three of Killing Eve flips the script on the previous season – this time it’s Eve recovering from a near-fatal injury that Villanelle inflicted on her, though no exploration whatsoever is given to the fact that Villanelle shot Eve and left her for dead. Seriously, how does Eve feel about that? The show isn’t interested in finding out. A throwaway line reveals that Eve was found by tourists, and nothing more is said about it.

Now separated from her husband, Eve commits herself to drudgery in a Korean restaurant, only to be drawn back into espionage (this time through an online investigative paper) after Kenny is killed off, thereby forcing us all to utter the longest-running gag from South Park. Meanwhile, Villanelle is approached by her retired assassin mentor Dasha, through whom she wishes to rise in the ranks of the Twelve.

It’s hard to really summarize what happens this season, as nothing much actually happens. Eve isn’t changed by her near-death experience, the investigation into Kenny’s death is never resolved, Villanelle meets her family and then kills most of them, and the likes of Konstantine, Carolyn and other assorted characters are just sort of there.

Carolyn’s hitherto unmentioned second child turns up, who provides absolutely nothing to the story and is a terrible waste of Gemma Whelan (I ended up thinking she would be Kenny’s killer, motivated by deranged sibling rivalry, but that never materialized). And what on earth was the point of Kenny’s girlfriend – or indeed, any of his co-workers – at the Bitter Pill?

In the end we get a not-very-satisfying answer to Kenny’s death, which leads me to suspect they had no idea who the killer was when they offed him, and which is vague enough to be retconned later when the writers of season four come up with something better. And how do they uncover the truth (or what passes for it) regarding his death? You’re not going to believe this, but one of Kenny’s co-workers remembers that he had a secret camera installed in the office THE WHOLE TIME, but doesn't whip it out until the final episode.

In other news, Dasha is nearly killed but survives, Konstantine nearly dies but recovers, Carolyn looks like the target of an assassination but isn’t, Niko gets a pitchfork through the throat but SOMEHOW pulls through, and I honestly would have traded any one of these characters for Kenny.

It’s at the point where the writers are clearly running out of ideas, which means they’ll inevitably let fandom start dictating their storylines, and that’s a sure-fire way of turning your show into rancid garbage. I mean, what is the endgame here? The repulsion/attraction dynamic between Eve and Villanelle is the show’s greatest asset, largely because it forces Eve to face terrifying truths about herself, but all fandom wants is the usual puerile nonsense about how Villanelle is secretly a poor frightened baby that only Eve can fully understand and control, and whose task it now is to delicately nurse her back into society.

For all of fandom’s passionate defense of “dark ships”, this dull domesticated fantasy is what it always boils down to, and the definite shift in focus from Eve to Villanelle as the show’s lead (one episode deals entirely with Villanelle’s family – it’s great, I loved it! – but we have yet to learn anything about Eve’s background) is pretty marked.

At one point Eve is reduced to scrounging around in a dumpster for proof of Villanelle’s interest in her, and I guess it’s meant to be quirky and funny instead of just sad and depressing.

So watching Killing Eve devolve from a story about a woman growing increasingly aware of her own internal darkness through her hunt for an alluring assassin into the redemption and rehabilitation of said assassin wasn’t fun, and the shippers’ deranged reaction to Jodie Comer’s opinion on what happens between the characters after the final credits is a sure sign that it’s time for me to get out while the going’s good. Next season’s writers will be scrabbling to appease and coddle the on-line temper tantrums, and – like so many other stories that’ve been shaped by the demands of fandom – it’ll be detrimental to the quality of the work as a whole.

Harley Quinn: Season 2 (2020)

Season two picks up where season one left off: Gotham City has been declared an independent state by the government (the rest of America is sick of dealing with its bullshit) leaving various criminals and mob-bosses to run riot and stake out their own territory. Harley is revelling in the chaos until Ivy points out that their current way of life isn’t exactly sustainable (she argues they can no longer buy fresh sushi; Harley kidnaps a teppanyaki chef, but the point still stands) and so Harley takes it upon herself to try and bring her criminal cohorts down a notch.

The episodes that follow are a little disjointed, with subplots focusing on King Shark, Clayface, the Joker, Batman and Batgirl, but the thoroughfare is the personal growth of Harley as she struggles to figure out just who she is and what she wants. Naturally this coincides with her feelings for Ivy, which take a turn for the overtly romantic about halfway through the season, despite the latter being in a relationship with – *sigh* – Kiteman.

I’ll admit I’m not entirely sure how we were supposed to feel about Kiteman, as the writing goes out of its way to demonstrate that he and Ivy are a pretty solid couple, only to derail the whole thing after Ivy sleeps with Harley at her bachelor party – twice. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the guy didn’t deserve that, and though they at least give him the dignity of calling things off on the wedding day (as the reception burns and the cops attack) I was left with the same issue I had with Imagine Me and You. If you’re going to write a gay love story between two women, why do you have to waste so much time on a male third wheel?

Is this the end of the show? Maybe, as the writers have clearly hedged their bets and ensured that most storylines and character arcs are satisfactorily tied up, with Harley and Ivy acknowledging their feelings by the final episode and getting a firmer grip on who they are, both to themselves and each other. Although there’s still plenty of material here for more seasons, the image of them going full Thelma and Louise and speeding off together into the sunset, chased by a squadron of police cars, is a great ending.