Reading/Watching Log #78

This month was a month of duality: two films from 1944, two more Babysitters Club books, two Tolkien stories from Middle Earth, two questionable Sapphic relationships, and two redemption arcs for men who don’t deserve it (topped off by the news that Kite Man of all people is going to get an animated spin-off. Kite Man. Oy). Also, black comedy. A LOT of black comedy.

I also took my first trip back to the theatre for the first time since Covid was released into the community (and wore two masks the whole time, just to be safe).

Speaking of, my parents came down with it, but thankfully weren’t too badly affected. They had sore throats and headaches, but mostly just slept it off. Thank you triple vax! By some miracle I managed to dodge the bullet considering I made dinner for them the night before Dad tested positive, and I spent the following day shouting advice through the porch door (turns out the glass in that door is very well insulated).

But they were well-stocked, had a plan, and the Canterbury District Health Board was very good: on reporting their positive tests, my parents received a phone call and were given instructions for how to isolate successfully. The death toll in the country is still rising, but we seem to be over the very worst of it – though I can’t help but wonder how many of the deceased were anti-vaxxers, as that particular contingency has gone very quiet lately.

And yes, I did watch The Adventures of Maid Marian this month, but having already made such a fuss over it, I'll postpone discussing it here so I can give it a proper blogpost of its own.

The Girl on the Train (Court Theatre)

This was sprung on me at the last minute – as in the night before – and I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it of my own volition, especially during a pandemic, but friends of the family had to drop out, it’s one of my mum’s favourite movies, and it is exceptionally difficult for me to pass up an outing to the theatre.

As it happens, I don’t think Paula Hawkins’s novel is particularly good, and the film is even worse (I could not for a second buy Emily Blunt as a washed-up alcoholic). But when adapted for the stage, the story finds its mojo, helped along the way by some ingenious set choreography. Imagine a massive sliding wall made out to look like the side of a train, which can be rolled aside at various points to reveal rooms where the action takes place: Rachel’s apartment, the therapist’s office, the underpass and so on.

The actors push and pull these sliding walls into place as they walk by between scenes, capturing the bustle and confusion of a station (which was impressive considering there were only seven actors in the whole thing) with the ambiance further accentuated by rumbling train sounds. Additionally, pre-recorded images of Rachel’s fractured memories are projected onto the sides of the train, which appear whenever she tries to remember what happened the fateful night Megan Hipwell disappeared.

Basically, it was fantastically staged. Rachel Watson spends most of her days drinking and riding the trains, going past her old house and daydreaming about the couple that live a few doors down. She’s given them names and imagined a perfect life for them, and there’s more than a little projection going on considering her own marriage has fallen apart and she’s recently lost her job after turning up to work drunk.

Her ex-husband Tom is still reasonably supportive, though he has other responsibilities now: a new wife and their infant daughter. But then the woman that Rachel has been voyeuristically daydreaming about goes missing, and Rachel is one of the main suspects given that she can’t remember where she was or what she was doing the night Megan Hipwell disappeared.

I’ll always equate this book with the likes of Gillian Flynn and Liane Moriarty’s novels in the “difficult white woman” subgenre of crime fiction. Renee Lyons wasn’t afraid to play Rachel as caustic, rude, uncooperative and self-destructive while still going out of her way to solve the mystery of another woman’s disappearance. She’s our heroine, but also not someone you’d want to know personally, and that’s still a rare thing in the depiction of female protagonists.

The rest of the cast was solid, even if they clearly felt uncomfortable with dropping so many f-bombs (you could just feel their reticence). Emma Katene played Anna Watson and Kira Josephson was Megan Hipwell, both fairly dull characters on the page (Wife #2 and Murder Victim, respectively) but elevating the material with their performances, and finding the common ground between all three women.

That common ground is Tom Watson, who each one has been romantically involved with at some point. Cameron Douglas (who apparently guest-starred on Legend of the Seeker, though I definitely didn’t recognize him) is the Walking Spoiler of the piece, a man who seems calm and considerate, but is actually a gaslighter and dirtbag extraordinaire (and incidentally, the murderer). It’s a twist on “the husband always did it” cliché since it’s not Megan’s but Rachel’s (ex)husband that turns out to be the killer, and the actor handled the two sides of the character’s personality well. I knew the story going in, but it would have been interesting to see if any newcomers picked up on his true self.

It works largely through the ingenious staging, lifting what I always found to be a fairly ho-hum murder-mystery into something a bit more special. It’s interesting that something as seemingly basic as a change in format (from page to screen to stage) can have such an effect on the story that’s being told.

Through the Moon by Pater Wartman and Xanthe Bouma

How long ago was the last season of The Dragon Prince? It feels like forever, so when I picked up this graphic novel that’s designed to bridge the gap between seasons three and four, it took a while to recall what exactly happened last time we saw these characters. Protagonists Callum (human) and Rayla (elf) hooked up. Ezra became king. Bad guy Viren was presumed dead, only for the stinger to reveal he’d entered a weird type of chrysalis. Siblings Claudia and Soren (the best characters by a country mile) became estranged over loyalty to their father, the aforementioned Viren. Some unified armies defeated... a dragon? I think?

Maybe I should have run through a YouTube recap before committing to this book, but it was easy enough to catch up. Callum, Rayla and Ezra are reunited, with the latter having a mission for them to complete: return to the moon nexus so that Lujanne can perform a ritual that will bring Phoe-Phoe the phoenix back to life (I remembered Lujanne and the moon nexus, but have no recollection of any phoenix).

The trio, along with Soren, head out and reunite with the wise Moon Shadow elf, who has since kindled a romantic relationship with a human called Allen (apparently the kids have come across him before, but – you guessed it! – I couldn’t recall him either). Phoe-Phoe is reborn, and the mystical environment gives Rayla and Callum an idea: what if they cast a spell to open a portal between life and death? That way Rayla could get some answers on her parents, her guardian Runaan, and Viren.

This of course, is very dangerous magic, but when has that ever stopped fictional teenagers from meddling in things beyond their understanding? Rayla ends up on a sort-of spirit quest, where – because of the fact that none of the people she’s looking for are actually dead – she instead just gets a bit of closure from the fellow elves that were part of the assassination attempt that kicked off this whole story, and confirmation that Viren is still alive.

It does end on a note that will have implications for the return of the show: Rayla sneaks out in the night to hunt down Viren, leaving behind Callum despite him insisting that they search for him together. Will the return of the show retcon this a little, or will it pick up with Callum waking and realizing she’s gone? Time will tell. But hopefully not too much time, because it really does feel like years since I last saw this show.

The Truth About Stacey by Anne M. Martin

The truth about Stacey was actually revealed in the first Babysitters Club book: she has diabetes. This doesn’t sound like that big a deal, but Martin turns it into the reason that she and her family moved to Stoneybrook in the first place: because her ongoing illness before diagnosis made Stacey something of a pariah in school.

It’s a fairly striking portrayal of a girl living with a chronic illness, especially for those readers who may have never come across such a concept before, whose arc in this particular book is wresting back control from her parents regarding decisions about her health. The McGill seniors are convinced that there’s a miracle cure for diabetes, while Stacey just wants to monitor it safely according to her doctor’s medical advice.

This I recalled, though I’d totally forgotten about the whole other subplot of the book involving older girls starting a Babysitters Agency and poaching some of the Club’s best clients. They can sit later hours and have a wider array of sitters to call upon, leading the Club to come up with their own ideas to stay in business. It’s resolved in a reasonably satisfying way: quality wins out over the Agency’s slipshod methods of babysitting, and eventually the Club comes out stronger due to the fact they don’t leave children unattended, smoke inside, or have boyfriends over while parents are away. It would be nice to believe that real-life worked this way.

To be honest, Stacey was my least favourite of the Babysitters Club members, as she was defined mostly by her diabetes, her parents’ (eventual) divorce and her sophistication and boy-craziness. I couldn’t relate. She did get a couple of good mysteries, but for the most part I gave her books a miss. Reading as an adult, there’s a vulnerability to her that I never noticed as a ten-year-old, and her much-vaunted maturity arises from the fact that a portion of her childhood has been taken from her due to diabetes and the responsibility she has to exercise in managing it.

I’m curious to see if I’ll warm to her as the series goes on.

Mary Anne Saves the Day by Anne M. Martin

The first Mary Anne-centric book of the series manages to achieve quite a lot: it not only deals with Mary Anne’s relationship with her strict, overbearing father, depicts the first massive fight of the Babysitters Club, and has Mary Anne handle a child’s medical emergency with maturity and calm, but also introduces Dawn and her mother, setting up the long-running plot-thread between these two and the relationship between their parents.

Perhaps the weakest part of the book is the fight that erupts between the four girls – even having just read the book, I can’t even remember what it was about, and despite the fact they’re all still just twelve years old, it grows increasingly stupid the further it drags on. Club meetings are held by one person at a time because they can’t bear to be in the same room together, and they almost ruin little Jamie Newton’s birthday party with their squabbling. It’s the first, but by no means the final, fight between the club members and unfortunately these plots were always my least favourite.

One thing I did remember with perfect clarity though: that although Claudia and Mary Anne initially retain their friendship after the first big squabble, Claudia ends up livid when she overhears her grandmother call Mary Anne “my Mary Anne.” The possessive adjective is something Mimi only affixes to Claudia’s name, and she’s jealous that it could be shared with someone else. That deeply personal “betrayal” rang true to me as a child, and still does as an adult. It was something special to Claudia that she didn’t want shared with anyone else, and that she blames Mary Anne for it (even if it’s obviously not her fault) falls within the parameters of twelve-year-old logic. Funny how the little things stick with you.

Turns out that Mary Anne saves the titular day when she ends up babysitting for a child with a dangerously high fever and cannot get in contact with the parents – instead she calls an ambulance and gets little Jenny Prezzioso to the hospital safely. As well as this, she befriends Dawn and talks her father into relaxing his rules a little. More than any of the other main characters in this series, Mary Anne’s overall arc is one of growing up and finding one’s own identity (supplemented by the fact that she never knew her mother). I related a lot to her arrested development and shyness as a kid, and her character development is probably the most stark of any of the other main characters in this series.

Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

With Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings prequel on the horizon, I naturally turned to rereading The Silmarillion, upon which the series is supposedly going to be based. To be honest, I’m feeling a little hesitant about the show after that trailer, but any excuse to read The Silmarillion for the second time is an excuse I’m prepared to take.

But what I’m doing this time around is stopping every time I get to a chapter that encompasses what Tolkien himself called a “Great Tale” (of which there were three) from his Book of Lost Tales, the first iteration of what his son Christopher Tolkien would eventually compile into what was published as The Silmarillion. Tolkien was a notorious procrastinator and tinkerer of his own work, constantly stopping and starting and reworking his material, and his vision of a “mythology for England” never reached total completion.

But from the broad swathe of events that make up the mythology and/or history of Middle Earth, there are three “sub-stories” that Tolkien paid particular attention to, which were included in the text of The Silmarillion in summarized form, but also expanded upon by Tolkien throughout his lifetime. Because these stories are so interconnected with the history of Middle Earth, it’s extremely difficult to read and enjoy them as singular narratives. As Christopher Tolkien says in his preface to this book: “restricting myself to a single legend from among the legends that make up the Lost Tales... would be [difficult], because one would have to explain so often what was happening elsewhere, in other unpublished writings... Beren and Lúthien did not live, love and die, with their friends and foes, on an empty stage, alone and with no past.”

His solution is to provide an introduction to the context of this tale at the beginning of the book, though mine (as stated) has been to just read The Silmarillion in its entirety, stopping whenever I get to one of the Great Tales (Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin and The Fall of Gondolin) and switching to the expanded text.

This technique worked most successfully with The Children of Húrin, which was Tolkien’s most completed manuscript, with a clear beginning, middle and end that easily replaces the briefer sketch of events in The Silmarillion. This is presumably the reason it was published first of the three Great Tales (in 2007) even though the tale of Beren and Lúthien came first chronologically. Does that all make sense?

The glaring problem with the idea of Beren and Lúthien as a self-contained story is that Tolkien never really finished what he started. What’s compiled between the covers of this book are several variations on the same story, which go through drastic changes in both content and format, with Christopher Tolkien’s stated aim having less to do with delivering an expanded take on the story, but rather demonstrating the evolution of the tale and the many changes it went through before reaching the “canon” version (or closest to canon that we can get) that is presented in The Silmarillion. As such, it’s much more challenging to read than The Children of Húrin, though fascinating if you’re particularly interested in the writing process.

Long before the events of The Lord of the Rings, the central conflict in Middle Earth was a prolonged war between the Elves and the godlike Valar known as Morgoth (essentially Lucifer after the Fall), who stole the three Silmarils (precious jewels crafted from the light of two holy trees) from the Elves and hid them away in his great fortress. A lot of shit went down in the Elves’ generational attempts to retrieve them, and that’s putting it mildly.

Mankind was also banging around at this point in time, and one of their number, Beren, was an outlaw of particular note. Having suffered the loss of his father and comrades, he stumbles away into the wilderness and eventually happens upon a forest glade, where a beautiful Elven princess is dancing alone. The inevitable happens, but on returning with her to her home to meet her father, Beren is told there’s only one way to win her hand in marriage: to bring back one of the Silmarils from Morgoth’s fortress.

In what is obviously the most personal and beloved of all Tolkien’s stories (apparently his wife Edith once danced for him in a hemlock grove, and the names Beren and Lúthien are etched beneath the names of husband and wife on their shared gravestone) the lovers surmount every obstacle that’s put before them, even death itself, in order to win their togetherness. It’s quite a story.

That is the narrative found in The Silmarillion, but its primary version, titled The Tale of Tinúviel has several key differences: Beren is an Elf, not a mortal man, and Lúthien is called Tinúviel (which later became her nickname, meaning “nightingale”). Morgoth is referred to as Melko (which was eventually changed to Melkor) and – strangest of all – Beren is described as a Gnome and Tinúviel as a Fairy (these were old words that Tolkien borrowed in his crafting of a whole new language, but later discarded due to their connotations with garden gnomes and winged fairies). Place and character names have been changed, and there’s a whole subplot devoted to Tevildo the Prince of Cats, a giant talking feline that captures Beren and puts him to work in the kitchens. Seriously.

This retelling is the most complete depiction of the story in its entirety, though the volume also includes piecemeal passages and extracts from The Lay of Leithian, which is the story told in ballad form, laid out in rhyming couplets. I have to admit I found these parts difficult to read, though it's fascinating to note the changes with each rewrite: Tevildo is one of the first casualties of the editing process; replaced by a hunter called Thû who eventually evolves into Sauron (who at the time, wasn’t the Lord of the Rings, but a lieutenant of Morgoth).

The book can be a bit laborious at times, particularly since you’re essentially reading six different versions of the same story, but as someone who’s taking the opportunity to do a deep-dive into the history of Middle Earth and Tolkien’s process, it’s ultimately a rewarding experience.

The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

As noted above, the events of The Children of Húrin occur after those of Beren and Lúthien in Middle Earth’s chronology, but due to Tolkien’s relative success in creating a full account of Túrin and Niënor (the titular children of Húrin) it was published first in 2007, presumably due to the relative ease with which it could be translated into book form.

But if Beren and Lúthien was a chivalric Romance, then The Children of Húrin is a Greek tragedy. That one happens so quickly on the heels of the other makes the contrast all the more bleak, for there are no happy endings for anyone – not even the slightest supporting character – in The Children of Húrin. We’re talking hubris, accidental murder, deliberate murder, prolonged torture, madness and memory loss, genocide, unrequited love, suicide, and honest-to-God incest between unwitting siblings. It’s a lot.

As ever, Christopher Tolkien provides a pronunciation guide and introduction that lays out the ‘historical’ context of the story, and as with Beren and Lúthien it’s fascinating to see the changes that occurred in the retelling of this story – though in this case the differences are less variation and more expansion. The entire saga is told in a single chapter of The Silmarillion, but here Tolkien has more space and time to introduce more characters and subplots, describe more of the world they inhabit, and delve more into the psychology and motivations of the core players.

All of Tolkien’s work is shot through with bittersweetness and melancholy, but here there is a note of despair and desperation as well. When Túrin is just a child, his father Húrin rides away to war against Morgoth, where he is captured, set on a stone seat, and forced to watch Morgoth’s curse against his family unfold: “upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair.”

With their lands slowly being overcome by enemy forces, Túrin’s pregnant mother Morwen sends him away at age eight to seek refuge with King Thingol. He’s fostered there in the hidden kingdom of Doriath, and grows to manhood among the Elves, taught in warcraft and wisdom. But never does he forget his parents or unborn sister, and after an escalating argument with an Elf that ends in the latter’s accidental death, Túrin leaves the sanctuary of the forest to become an outlaw.

Things go from bad to worse, but in the spirit of Greek tragedy, this “worseness” is not always immediately apparent. In a way it stands out among the stories of The Silmarillion, as although there aren’t exactly an abundance of happy endings in that volume of work, there is at least a promise of life going on and of evil being one day defeated. But Túrin’s story is more personal somehow, and ends with complete despair and ruination.

Tolkien was all about portraying a time and place that never really existed, with elevated language and larger-than-life heroes. In that, The Children of Húrin succeeds more than any of the ‘Great Tales’ as a standalone, self-contained story that could just as easily be read without any foreknowledge of either The Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings. If it wasn’t for the grim content, this would have been an obvious choice for Amazon’s television adaptation.

Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart

Have you ever read the perfect book? Okay, so no book is ever going to be perfect, but this one comes pretty close. My usual phrase for stories like this is a “puzzle-box plot”, but I read another review somewhere that described it as a “ticking timepiece” which works just as well. Naturally, the success or failure of a puzzle-box plot depends entirely on whether or not all the pieces, no matter how seemingly random, come together in a perfect whole by the story’s climax... and this one does. Every little detail is important and interconnected and means more than it initially appears to be.

Set in a “China That Never Was” and inspired by that country’s mythology and folklore, Lu Yu (nicknamed Ox Number Ten on account of his strength and birth order) lives in a quaint little village that thrives on farming and the silkworm harvest. But one year, a pair of unscrupulous con-artists unwittingly unleash a plague that infects the children of Ku-fu, one that puts them in non-responsive state that is interrupted only by their mutterings of an ancient riddle.

At a loss with how to treat them, Ox Number Ten is sent with the village’s savings to seek out a wise man that might solve the mystery, and returns with Master Li Kao, a drunkard “with a slight flaw in my character” who nevertheless takes it upon himself to rescue the children by finding the miraculous ginseng root. The quest that follows takes Master Li and Ox Number Ten into bustling cities and underground caverns, opulent palaces and searing deserts, mountain ranges and peaceful pleasure gardens. To paraphrase The Princess Bride there are monsters, princesses, fights, torture, revenge, chases, escapes, ghosts, treasure, and most of all – love.

And twists. So many twists and revelations and perspective flips. It’s just wonderful, but to say too much more would be to give them all away. The only way to best appreciate this story is to read it yourself, play close attention, and then marvel at the way it all comes together by the closing chapters. Here’s a little teaser though, which Master Li says at about the halfway point: “nothing on the face of this earth — and I do mean nothing — is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac.”

I first read this book years ago, and returning to it did throw up some issues that I didn’t notice the first time around: the dark comedy can take some getting used to, and it’s not particularly kind to its female characters, with most portrayed as victims, courtesans or grotesque monsters (though when combined with the black comedy of it all, they very much fit into the caricatures you’d expect from bawdy fabliaux).

All in all, I loved it then and love it now and deeply appreciate that there is so much story packed into what is a very slender book. These days a decent fantasy novel is about fifty-thousand pages long and divided across at least sixteen volumes (the latter of which never get published) but this is a self-contained gem with an ending that’s powerful enough to bring tears to my eyes. Do yourself a favour and read it.

Lifeboat (1944)

To be frank, nothing about the premise of this film particularly interested me, and I watched it simply so I could tick another Hitchcock project off my list. That said, it held my attention throughout and had a few twists and turns that I didn’t see coming. Released at about the midway point of his career, it showcased most of his strengths and few of his weaknesses, sustaining the all-important suspense through its claustrophobic setting: a lifeboat adrift in the ocean.

After a passenger ship and a German U-boat sink each other, a disparate group of survivors struggle to the only available lifeboat: various crew members, an upscale journalist, a mother and child, an army nurse, a wealthy magnate... and a German officer. Many of the Americans want to dispose of the German immediately, while others argue for civility and cooperation. As the days stretch by, rations dwindle and tensions grow. One of their number is convinced that the German isn’t steering them toward Bermuda as promised, but a German supply ship. Another’s leg injury becomes infected and has to be amputated.

It’s all very harrowing, though kept in check by the “keep your chin up” mentality of the time. Even as people start to succumb to dehydration, everyone remains surprisingly upbeat. Tallulah Bankhead (who was largely a stage actress and only did a handful of films) is the cast standout, as a wealthy reporter who is first seen sitting in the lifeboat in an expensive mink coat, impeccably groomed. Across the course of the story she loses everything, from the coat to her typewriter to her diamond bracelet, only to rally herself each time.

The film did take me by surprise in one respect, though in hindsight I really should have seen it coming. On bringing the German aboard, the other characters are naturally divided in what they should do with him: toss him overboard or let him stay. It goes to show how accustomed I've become to the current state of media (complete with “see both sides” discourse, redemption arcs and villain apologia) that I assumed those advocating for working together in a life-or-death situation would be proved correct in their judgment, while the surly nay-sayer would realize we're all part of the human race or something along those lines.

How stupidly wrong I was. The German Nazi is a bad guy, who hoards water, steers the lifeboat off-course, and eventually kills one of the passengers. They should have shot him on sight. In fact, I found out afterwards that the film was controversial at the time of its release not because they had the angry mob eventually kill the Nazi and toss him overboard, but that the character is initially depicted as intelligent and formidable. In any case, it made for a timely reminder: Nazi lives don’t matter.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

I promise it’s a total coincidence that I watched two films from 1944 this month, and they couldn’t be more different. I discovered afterwards that this story originated as a stage play, which made a lot of sense in hindsight given the fairly limited setting and stagey directing.

Notorious anti-marriage womanizer Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is forced to eat crow when he weds his neighbour Elaine Harper (the super-cute Priscilla Lane). Good luck to the poor girl; they’re secretly married in a registry office while he wears sunglasses to hide his identity out of shame. It’s not the most auspicious start to married life, but when they return home to pack their things, inform their families, and embark on a honeymoon, Mortimer learns a horrifying truth about his two elderly aunts: they’re murderers.

On discovering a dead body in a trunk, Mortimer questions Aunt Abby and Martha, who cheerfully inform him that they’ve killed a number of men and buried them in the basement. But it’s okay, because these men were lonely bachelors who were better off dead. Mortimer is astounded beyond mortal comprehension, though – thinking it over – it does make a certain amount of sense. His brother Teddy believes he’s Theodore Roosevelt, while his other brother Jonathan is a serial killer that has his own dead body to dispose of, and choses that very night to break into the family home. Turns out that insanity runs in the family.

Taking place over the course of a single day and night, this black comedy grows increasingly madcap, until you’re not sure how much more facial contortions Cary Grant can possibly make. I had no idea what to expect when I started, and once again managed to underestimate the amount of suggestion and innuendo that a black-and-white movie can slip into its story. In many ways it’s a parody of murder mysteries, with Mortimer actively describing what a character like him would do in a situation like this at one point, and then falling into his own narrative traps.

It’s a strange little film, but a fun one. Knowing next to nothing about it before I went in, I was surprised at how kooky it could get at times, but that’s what keeps you on your toes.  

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)

Yikes, I totally forgot about these films! I’d been following along for several months, and then they just sort of fell off my radar. But here we are, the ninth film of what’s known as the DC Animated Movie Universe (whew) which keeps its focus on the Teen Titans after the events of Justice League vs Teen Titans.

It opens with a flashback that introduces Starfire to the team (and to Nightwing) before heading into familiar territory: Terra is the Titans’ latest member, but she’s secretly working with Slade Wilson to take them down from the inside. Slade in turn answers to Brother Blood, who is planning your standard evil super-villain takeover, complete with stealing the abilities of the team to use against them.  

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the second season of the Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans, which covered this exact same arc, only with less sex and violence. There really is no other genre like the superhero one when it comes to telling the same stories with tweaked variations – and I don’t necessarily mean that as a bad thing. I suppose it’s comparable to stuff like Robin Hood and the King Arthur cycles: a general flow of narrative that gets shuffled and recast and played around with by each new writer.

That said, I did know exactly how things were going to play out. Though they keep Terra’s true loyalties under wraps for a significant portion of the runtime, it’s obvious who she’s working for and why she’s so reticent when it comes to bonding with the rest of the team. Beast Boy’s established crush on her oversteps a couple of times, as she makes it very clear that she’s not interested, and there’s a genuinely disturbing scene in which teenaged Terra tries to seduce Slade by wearing bad makeup and a skimpy dress (he doesn’t go for it, and it’s clearly meant to be deeply uncomfortable, but yikes).

The most interesting characters for me are Raven (I love her in any incarnation) and the latest Robin, Damien Wayne, which is funny because he’s apparently something of a Scrappy in the comic books. And to be fair, he’s definitely a lot to deal with in these films – but the writers seem aware of that, and his ludicrously intense tenacity not only makes sense in regards to his upbringing, but is also pretty amusing.

Not the best addition to this branch of the franchise (Justice League Dark still has that honour) but not the worst either, and a glance over the list of these films tells me that I’m nearing the end of this particular continuity.

The Hollow Crown: Wars of the Roses: Henry VI Part I, Henry VI Part II, Richard III (2016)

It is a matter that creates no small amount of confusion that Shakespeare’s first Henriad tetralogy covered historical events that occurred well after the events of the second tetralogy he would pen later in his lifetime. In other words, The Hollow Crown has adapted the works chronologically, even though the plays exploring the Wars of the Roses was written earlier in Shakespeare’s career, and generally considered of lesser quality as a result.

As an adaptation, it works better this way, not simply because it provides a chronological flow to the historical events, but because some of the themes, motifs and concepts of the later tetralogy feed into the underlying psychology of how the characters operate here (specifically, how everyone feels about the murder of Richard II and how that effects whose backside they think should be sitting on the throne).

And it’s not technically a tetralogy anymore, but a trilogy. The events of Henry VI’s lifetime were originally spread across three parts; here that has been pared down to just two. That’s a lot of material to do away with, as evidenced by certain characters that have only a few scenes before disappearing entirely. Behind-the-scenes footage on the DVDs claimed they removed anything that didn’t directly feed into the overarching theme of “power corrupts” (naturally culminating in the rise and fall of Richard III).

That’s not a bad choice to make, though a part of me feels that if you’re about to go all-out on an all-star, high-budget television production of Shakespeare’s histories, you may as well do ALL of it. The abridgement allows for the show to skip over the somewhat unsavoury treatment of Joan of Arc (Shakespeare depicted her as a bloodthirsty hypocrite who tries to lie her way out of execution by claiming she’s pregnant) but that fascinating bit of Tudor/English propaganda is excised here – perhaps not only for time constraints but because The Hollow Crown continues to undermine any Shakespearean glorification of war.

Henry V ended on the titular character’s funeral, in which the next king is seen as just an infant in his mother’s arms. That moment is picked up again as the connective thread between the two series, with Henry VI beginning in the wake of his father’s death where he’s once more glimpsed as a baby before a flashforward brings us to his youth and the height of his reign.

As you’d expect, the production is jampacked full of British thespians that are also to be found in the likes of Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. Tom Sturridge plays Henry VI as wavery and uncertain, with a wobbly voice and a halting manner. Though comparable to Ben Whitshaw’s Richard II, he’s not effeminate like his predecessor, but rather childlike with a plaintive “why can’t we all just get along?” air.

It’s obvious that his complete inability to keep his court from infighting is what will damn him, and he’s swallowed up by every other powerful personality that surrounds him... especially his wife, against whom he doesn’t stand a chance. Sophie Okonedo as Margaret of Anjou is unsurprisingly excellent as the She-Wolf of France: strident, haughty, mercurial – even when she’s pretending to be humble and modest, the inner queen simmers close to the surface. Her jaw is quietly set as Somerset and her father discuss her marriage prospects, she bursts into what feels like performative tears when Lady Gloucester refuses to pick up the fan she’s deliberately dropped, and pivots into genuine cruelty at the attack on the house of York.

And yet modern sensibilities prevent us from buying into the “bad woman” narrative that Shakespeare is trying to sell. Just as the screenwriter was clearly uncomfortable with Shakespeare’s depiction of Joan of Arc as a charlatan (though of all the characters, Laura Morgan is horribly miscast, being both far too old to pass as a nineteen-year-old and inexplicably putting on a regional English accent) we can’t help but view Margaret through a contemporary lens.

I don’t know about you, but I’d also be pissed if my son was disinherited thanks to my husband’s questionable decision-making skills, and Margaret proves herself more than capable of leading men and winning battles. The show goes out of its way to keep her around: portraying her as a combatant in the titular wars, having her appear as a sort of deranged tour guide to Richard’s litany-of-sins nightmare, and even giving her the final shot of the show, as she looks around in numb grief at the thousands of dead on the battlefield.

Perhaps due to Okonedo’s charisma, perhaps due to the fact we’re no longer living in 1589, it’s difficult not to be on her side – especially when Gloucester is saying things like: “these are no woman’s matters” about things that very obviously matter to her.

As played by Hugh Bonneville, Gloucester is the show’s Ned Stark – or should I say, Ned Stark was the Gloucester of Game of Thrones. (It’s rather ironic that the Wars of the Roses inspired Game of Thrones, and that this in turn seems to have been inspired by that show, with considerably more gratuitous violence and gore on display).

He’s the unassuming protector who plods along and simply tries to do the right thing, which makes him a sitting duck to the machinations of the more conniving minds at court. He’s not helped by his ambitious wife (Sally Hawkins) who has her eye on the throne, though I was surprised that this adaptation (rather questionably) amplifies the charges of witchcraft laid against her. If I recall correctly, the play has her merely hiring occult practitioners to foretell the future; The Hollow Crown has her messing around with a poppet of the king and sticking pins in it.

It’s an odd angle to take, as is the portrayal of Warwick as a loud bruiser instead of the subtle kingmaker, and the love (or lust) at first sight meeting of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. That she dramatically unveils and that he’s instantly smitten is pretty par for the course, but what on earth possessed the director to have her situated at least five metres away from his throne when he first lays eyes on her? How can he fall in love at first sight with someone he can barely see?

Perhaps it’s meant to underlie the shallowness of his “love”, but surely there were less absurd ways of achieving this.

Andrew Scott has a single scene as the King of France, Phoebe Fox and Judy Dench are sadly underutilized as Anne and Cecily Neville (though that’s Shakespeare’s fault more than anything, and I doubt the greatest actress alive could make sense of the scene in which Anne is seduced by Richard over the grave of her former husband). Another Robin Hood alumni pops in as George, Duke of Clarence: it’s Sam Troughton, a.k.a. Much! Ben Daniels neatly manages Buckinghamshire’s mini-arc from enthusiastic skulduggery to reluctant unease, and Ben Miles just manages to err on the subtler side of scenery chewing (if such a thing can be said) as Somerset-merged-with-Suffolk, playing for the second time in his life a man embroiled in an illicit affair with a royal princess called Margaret.

But of course, the real star of the show is Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III. That character pretty much provides the thoroughfare between all three instalments, from the glimpse of him as a child in silhouette at the conclusion of Henry VI: Part I (admittedly, a very cool visual) to his death at the end of Richard III. This is obviously one of Shakespeare’s most famous villains and there’s plenty to work with, but Cumberbatch is another of those actors who never really disappears into characters to me, and at times it feels like he’s trying too hard. He chooses to go maniacal instead of manipulative and cunning, complete with weird facial gyrations and annoying character tics (I have no doubt the incessant tapping of his ring on the chessboard was his idea, and it’s not nearly as effective as he seems to think it is).

In other words, it’s Cumberbatch doing his Cumberbatch thing. But by paring the whole thing down to Richard’s arc and the continuation of last season’s motif of “the hollow crown” (is it really worth the personal cost of wearing it?) the adaptation completely ignores any and all references to the myriad of working-class characters that populate these plays. Gone is the whole subplot involving Jack Cade, along with Saunder Simpcox, Walter Whitmore, Margery Jordain, Thomas Horner, and the entire House of Commons.

They all had active and class-specific interests, and consistently speak out against the relentless violence that (when you take it all into consideration) a handful of cousins are inflicting on each other, destroying countless innocent lives in the process. And like I said earlier, if you have the time and the budget, why not include everything? In keeping itself so wrapped up in Richard’s machinations and the family feud, the show is sorely missing the perspective of those that are actually suffering at the nobles’ hands, those that rise up in anger with the cry: “down with all of them!”

The Stranger (2020)

Adam Price has one of those idyllic lifestyles that are tailormade for thrillers penned by Harlan Coben: attractive wife, great kids, affluent neighbourhood, high-paying job. You know it’s just a matter of time before this successful and attractive middle-aged man is forced to confront his masculinity and other shortcomings when his life implodes due to frightening outside forces and internal family secrets. It’s pretty much Harlan Coben’s whole thing.

Sure enough, out of nowhere a complete stranger approaches Adam at the football club and tells him that his wife faked her recent pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage. Completely blindsided by this revelation, Adam does some digging and discovers that a recent bank statement reveals his wife Corinne purchased fake pregnancy paraphernalia from an online store.

But why on earth would Corinne do such a thing? On confronting her she’s oddly zen about the accusation, telling him that there’s “more to this than you realize” and then texting him a request for some time alone. It doesn’t specify how long exactly she’ll be gone, and as the days turn into weeks, Adam begins to suspect that something has gone very wrong.

The miniseries as a whole is chocka-block full of subplots and narrative threads. Adam Price isn’t the only one that “the Stranger” approaches with life-changing revelations, and we follow a few of her other victims in the aftermath of the truth-bombs. DS Johanna Griffin starts off investigating the strange case of a severed llama head and an unconscious teenager found naked in the nearby forest, which may or may not be connected to the Stranger’s attempts at blackmail. At least one of her work colleagues is nursing a secret agenda of his own, and Adam’s son is dealing with a crisis among his circle of friends. Oh, and then there’s Adam’s most recent legal case, involving an ex-police officer who refuses to leave his house that’s scheduled for demolition.

Does it all get almost impossibly convoluted? A little, and I’m told that the subplot involving the teenagers didn’t even exist in the original novel, but the whole thing rockets by at such a frenetic pace that you barely have time to notice how tangled this web truly gets. Seriously, I binged this over the course of two days.

There’s some great talent on display here. I’m always surprised that Richard Armitage didn’t end up a bigger star (especially given his fanbase) and Siobhan Finneran continues to shed her stint as the odious O’Brien from Downton Abbey (perhaps her most well-known role). Don’t be fooled by her placement in the opening credits, as Jennifer Saunders has a much smaller role than they would imply, and Paul Kaye (one of those character actors that pops up everywhere, including Jonathan Strange and Game of Thrones) does some solid work with a character who – on closer inspection – makes very little sense.

And of course, it’s always nice to see Hannah John-Kamen and Stephen Rea.

If anything, it wraps up a little too quickly, with plenty of threads left dangling and supporting characters left unaccounted for (plus a coverup that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever). But the journey is definitely worth the somewhat lacklustre ending, and the underlying theme of “how far would you go for love” is fascinating. Seriously, how far would you go for love? Fake a pregnancy to keep your husband? Release revenge porn and blame it on your crush’s boyfriend in order to swoop in on the rebound? Poison your own child? It’s the one thing that unites pretty much every single character.

The Morning Show: Season 2 (2021)

Holy shit, this was bad. I’m actually kind of stunned at how bad it was. It’s not that all the characters are now one-dimensional narcissists, it’s not that the storyline is all over the place, it’s not that the attempt to weave the Covid crisis into the narrative falls flat on its face, it’s that what the writers do here is utterly antithetical to what the first season achieved.

I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before – or at least not since Big Little Lies went from a show about how women who didn’t like each other instinctively rush to each other’s defense the moment they sense a predator in their midst, to one in which women are actually responsible for creating said predators and can’t be bothered to protect each other in the aftermath of an assault.

The first season of The Morning Show was far from perfect, but it did pull off a very impressive arc. In the wake of sexual misconduct allegations about her co-host Mike Kessler, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) scrambles to find solid ground in the kill-or-be-killed environment of a popular morning talk show. In trying to circumvent the machinations of her bosses at the network, Alex spontaneously announces a local reporter, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) as her new co-anchor; a powerplay that puts her in control.

Although the crux of the show is watching these two profoundly different women gradually become, if not friends, then at least allies to each other, the ingenious trick the show pulls off is how it relies on our (almost subconscious) conditioning in giving men the benefit of the doubt and trying to see both sides of any story.

Sure, Mitch Kessler has been accused of sexual misconduct. But he doesn’t seem like a bad guy! He’s contrite! He’s a good father! We get a glimpse into some of his bad behaviour, and it’s easy to see how he could have walked away from certain situations believing that they were consensual. (Perhaps the smartest meta-decision in all this was casting Steve Carell in the role. Who doesn’t like Steve Carell?)

And yet, from about the midway point of the season, once we’ve settled into the reasonable and considered arguments he’s made in his own defense, the episodes start revealing his darker side: the way he manipulated young women, the way he deflected and blackballed them, the way he hypocritically accused people of “playing the victim” when it’s obvious in hindsight that that’s what he’s been doing from the start. By the final episode, we’re kicking ourselves. How the hell did we fall for it? Even armed with what we THINK we know about power imbalances, gaslighting, bullying tactics and other red flags, Mitch Kessler managed to fool us.

We were enablers and defenders of his behaviour as surely as Alex Levy was, and his story ends on the perfect note: sitting alone and defeated on the day that’s supposed to be his big comeback, realizing the true depths of his vileness and the fact that the women in his life no longer need or want him.

It’s a satisfying ten episodes of television, and I definitely recommend it as a one-and-done limited series.

So imagine my genuine disgust when the second season decides to (and I’m dry retching just thinking about this) give Mitch a redemption arc. Why, just WHY? Why would you do this??

Poor Mitch is in exile... in a lavish Italian lakefront mansion. He’s lost his job, but he’s still a multi-millionaire in contact with his children and downing expensive bottles of champagne. A beautiful and intelligent Italian woman befriends him, because as everyone knows, beautiful and intelligent woman are ALWAYS ready to welcome known sex offenders into their lives and their beds. So much time is spent on Mitch, and I really can’t fathom why anyone would think audiences would be interested in him after the events of last season.

Granted, there is something of a twist towards the end of the season (SPOILER he dies in a car accident) but this only leads to more apologia and “he wasn’t that bad” commentary. His friend, confirmed as an honest-to-God statutory rapist in the first season, gives him a self-pitying eulogy that declares he was killed by cancel culture. Oh fucking SPARE me.

It’s not the only thing that’s going on in this season, but bafflingly, the one that gets the most screentime. Alex travels all the way to Italy, contracts Covid from Mitch, then returns to a social media maelstrom when a. a book is published that reveals she had a sexual relationship with Mitch, and b. that she’s just gotten back from seeing him. She responds to this by live-streaming her experiences in Covid isolation, which leads to a bizarre stream-of-consciousness rant that is framed as a “you go girl!” reclamation of the narrative, but honestly makes her sound like a crazy person.

Meanwhile, Bradley starts a relationship with Alex’s replacement Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies) and gets an unexpected visit from her brother, a drug addict who has little interest in getting clean and turns up at her workplace to make a scene. These two plotlines unsurprisingly explode on contact, and despite Laura giving Bradley some pretty sound advice on when it’s time to let go of toxic influences and concentrate on your own life, her seasonal arc ends with her brother abandoning rehab, going missing, and finally being found in a hospital in the middle of the pandemic with Bradley tearfully vowing she’ll never leave him again. This is apparently meant to be heart-warming instead of depressing.

Chip’s storyline is difficult to watch. Despite (somehow) landing himself a beautiful and intelligent fiancée, he ends up debasing himself over Alex, a woman who treats him like the dirt on her shoes, which eventually leads to him lying about contracting Covid so that he can get into her apartment and edit her livestream, ignoring calls from his aforementioned fiancée while doing so. Whatever, loser.

Meanwhile, Corey is nursing a stupid crush on Bradley and... that’s pretty much all they give him this season. Apparently the aftershow panels among the writers and cast had them rooting for Corey to declare his feelings, which... WHAT? Why in God’s name would anyone want that? Wasn’t the inappropriateness of boss/employee relationships the WHOLE ENTIRE POINT of the first season??

As for everyone else? Someone on Previously TV amusingly described the workplace dynamic as “the omnidirectional firing squad that is the diversity-Olympics.” Stella is judged for being too young and abused by a racist on the street for being Asian. Yanko the Cuban weatherman is censured for calling the groundhog his “spirit animal.” Daniel becomes convinced that he’s being denied a promotion for being Black and gay, so makes an idiot of himself on live television by (badly) serenading Alex. Chip is called a “mediocre white man” by a mediocre white woman ... it just goes on and on and it’s exhausting.

Everyone hates each other, everyone is miserable, and Laura Peterson is the best character because she’s an adult who gets the heck out of dodge when she realizes she’s in a madhouse that’s about to go down with Covid, though I didn’t buy her for a second as a warm and charismatic news anchor.

Most bewildering of all, Alex and Bradley have maybe... two scenes together? Yeah, the central dynamic of the first season is non-existent in this one. Go figure.  

Basically, it feels like this whole project has been taken over by pod-people who have no memory or understanding of the entire central thesis of the first season, and instead chose to run around in contradictory circles with a cast of one-dimensional narcissists. I seriously doubt I’ll be back for season three.

The Great: Season 2 (2021)

According to Tumblr, this series of The Great pulled off a wonderful enemies-to-lovers arc, and the tag is filled with cute gif-sets of them together, complete with gushing commentary about how Peter supports Catherine’s newfound status as a girlboss who wears great outfits.

This disappointed me a little, since (as with The Morning Show) it seemed to be completely at odds with what the first season had accomplished: an intelligent, driven, progressive, brilliant woman taking power from her doltish, abusive husband (who among other things, punched her, tried to drown her, cheated on her repeatedly and casually murdered the man she loved) in order to forge a new future for herself and her country.

Yet the tedium of yet another redemption arc for a male character who doesn’t need or deserve it (and what are the odds I’d watch two in a single month?) bothered me slightly less than The Morning Show since a. this is a black comedy, and b. sooner or later historical precedence would have to assert itself.

And then I actually watched the season, and realized that (as usual) fandom is stunningly selective in what it chooses to absorb, while simultaneously getting frustrated by the amount of wheel-spinning they do regarding Catherine’s development.

Sure enough, Peter’s characterization has gone from a mercurial, terrifyingly psychopathic man-child to a wise fool who truly loves his wife and son. Narrative “cheats” are put in place that justify Catherine holding off from assassinating him immediately after her successful coup (in reality, he was found dead eight days after she took power) and Catherine herself, despite all the above-mentioned abuse she’s suffered at his hands, is shoved into an arc that essentially revolves around her realizing that she’s in WAY over her head, and that she loves Peter despite all his homicidal foibles. Riiiiiiiiiight.

Again, I could (just barely) stomach it because of the black comedy of it all, and the fact that I too would be reluctant get rid of Nicolaus Hoult’s portrayal of Peter, who really is the star of the show and fucking hilarious to boot.

But at the end of the day, it’s not his story. It’s Catherine’s story. For her to become the woman that history remembers her as (the titular Great) then Peter needs to go. The show seems to realize this by its final handful of episodes, after which – and I swear I’m not making this up – Peter has sex with Catherine’s mother (played by Gillian Anderson) and accidentally fucks her out of a window. She falls to her death and Peter frantically covers it up.

First of all, Reign did it first. Second of all... what? Once Catherine finds out (only a matter of hours after she decides she’s in love with Peter) it’s depicted as the final straw. She now knows that she can never trust him, that his continued presence is a threat to her power, and all her dreams can never come to fruition if he remains alive. Which has been perfectly obvious to literally everyone else since she first floated the idea of a coup, including the entire audience and the real woman upon whom this character is based, who had her husband killed in a “mysterious accident” little more than a week after he abdicated.

It’s like watching Rey in the first two Star Wars sequel films: at the end of the first she realizes that Kylo is a mass-murdering Space Nazi who killed his dad and only cares about power. In the second she chooses to extend an olive branch to him... only to realize that he’s still a mass-murdering Space Nazi who killed his dad and only cares about power.

Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Why the writers decided to waste your and our time making you leap through these hoops twice is anyone’s guess. But then Star Wars forced poor Rey back to the well a third time in her repeated efforts to “save” Kylo. Hopefully in season three of The Great, Catherine will finally be ready to let go and move forward.

And if not, hey – it’s still a hilarious show. The supporting cast is wonderful, from the backstabbing court to the conniving Swedish royal couple to the long-suffering peasants to cameo appearances from the likes of Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, and it's gorgeous to look at. Plus, that dialogue. Tony McNamara is second only to Armando Iannucci in this regard.

Dickinson: Season 3 (2021)

I’m going to miss this weird little show, even if it did lose its way towards the end. If the first season was about Emily Dickinson finding her identity as a poet, and the second had her grappling with the challenge of putting her work out before an audience, the third is much more piecemeal. Naturally the Civil War provides a backdrop for questions such as “what value does poetry and the arts have during times of war and strife?” but the narrative thoroughfare isn’t as strong as in the preceding seasons.

In fact, a lot of the episodes feel disjointed. One episode has them visit a women’s sanitorium so that the show can provide social commentary on the treatment of women’s mental health back in the day (spoiler alert: it was awful). Emily helps some of the women escape the institution, only for them to never be seen or mentioned again (in fact there’s a weird joke that they just returned one of the women back to her husband, who is the very person who put her there in the first place).

Another has Emily and Lavinia time-travel into the future to learn about what Emily’s legacy will be, getting shown around the Dickinson house (now a museum) by a young Sylvia Plath, but we don’t get any real insights into the lasting impact Emily’s work had on American culture, and bizarrely, Lavinia loses all memory of the trip the moment they return.

Austin and Sue are having marital trouble, which isn’t surprising since Emily and Sue have been having an affair behind his back the entire time he’s been married, something he never learns about and so never has to grapple with. (Even weirder, that these two are guiltlessly cheating on Austin isn’t depicted as morally unethical in any way, despite the fact the two of them are completely incompatible – Sue wants security, and Emily wants an outlet for her passion. The most accurate thing said to Emily this season is: “you don’t love Sue, you love writing about loving Sue”, but again, this is never explored beyond the saying of it).

There’s also an entire subplot about two Black servants of the Dickinson household, Henry and Betty, involving the former having to train a Black regiment and the latter futilely awaiting news from home. It’s beautifully portrayed... but also has absolutely nothing to do with Emily Dickinson. (And what happened to Harriet?)

And honestly, I really wish they’d done more with the fact that it was Emily’s sister Lavinia who made sure her multitude of poems were published upon her death, thereby her securing her legacy.

So yeah, the show has always been rather cheerfully random and anachronistic, but this time around that randomness is inherent in the actual narrative arc as opposed to its singular episodes. For all of that, it had more hits than misses, provided plenty of interesting trivia about the period, and gave Jane Krakowski a showcase for her comedic talents. Seriously, she’s the funniest thing in this.

Killing Eve: Season 4 (2022)

Controversial opinion: I didn’t hate this. That’s not to say it’s good, because it’s not, but having lived through my fair share of disappointing shows and lacklustre finales, I’m well equipped to selectively canonize the stuff I liked and memory-hole all that I didn’t. Honestly, when it comes to seething over professional writers making bizarre creative decisions, the BBC’s Robin Hood is the only albatross I carry around my neck. As they say, the first cut is the deepest.

Plus, it was pretty obvious that Killing Eve was never going to live up to its first exhilarating, intoxicating, riveting first season. I have no idea why Phoebe Waller-Bridge didn’t stay on, but it’s obvious that the project was hurt by having a different showrunner per season, with no clear long-term arc in place. Recent interviews with cast and crew have also revealed they were initially gearing up for a fifth season, only for that to get jettisoned thanks to Covid and other issues, and that the ending of this season went through massive changes at the last minute.

Which accounts for the season’s piecemeal structure. It’s divided into lots of little segments that are fun on their own but don’t really interconnect, and I honestly couldn’t tell you what anyone’s motivation is. Why is Eve hunting the Twelve? Why does she shoot Lars after Carolyn specifically asks her not to? What was Hélène’s agenda? What was the point of Pam? Who the hell killed Kenny? What exactly was the Twelve, and why was I supposed to care about it?

From what I can discern, the basic gist of this season is that Eve is trying to hunt down the remaining members of the Twelve, the criminal organization (I guess?) that Villanelle used to work for, Carolyn has abandoned MI5 and turned traitor so that she can track down who put out the hit on her son Kenny, and Villanelle has reinvented herself as “Nell” and joined the church in the hopes of becoming a better person (or more specifically, to make Eve witness her becoming a better person).

There’s some fun stuff here. Villanelle starts hallucinating herself as Jesus Christ, Eve awkwardly tries to seduce Hélène, Carolyn plays the air guitar, Eve ends up on an island in Scotland with an assassin that’s even more terrifying than Villanelle and tries to escape her by climbing a tree, and there’s a flashback episode with some well-cast actors as Carolyn and Konstantin in their younger years.

Eve’s new boyfriend Yusef works surprisingly well as a sounding board and helpmate, who is also smart enough to not get embroiled in any of her mental/emotional baggage. There are some poignant little call-backs, from Carolyn mentioning her daughter (poor neglected Geraldine, remember how pointless she was in season three?) to Eve hallucinating Niko, Bill and even Elena cheering on her karaoke (though why wasn’t Kenny included?) and more of the show’s irreverent humour (the German taxi drivers are a particular highlight).

I didn’t even mind the Pam stuff – sure it was superfluous, but it wasn’t unwatchable.

But none of it adds up to anything, and I can understand why the final few minutes of the last episode left the fanbase so furious, what with Villanelle being gunned down by an unseen assailant on Carolyn’s orders (and apparently Eve was meant to die with her?) Who the hell thought this was a good idea? I was spoiled for it and so had no real emotional reaction, but damn – it was so awful that even the author of the original books spoke out against it.

Heck, I spent the entire season thinking that Pam was being set up as Villanelle’s killer: there would have been something oddly fitting about such a dull, nondescript foil taking her out, and it would have justified all that time spent on building up Pam as a would-be assassin. But... no? Instead she just decides it’s not the life for her and walks away. What a strange choice.

As for the Twelve, they were always a fairly blatant case of an Excuse Plot; existing to justify the fact that Villanelle was an assassin, and therefore someone who Eve had to find, leading to the real meat of the drama: the cat-and-mouse games between these two women. And here’s where the show ran into its immovable object: it’s not that Eve/Villanelle wasn’t thrilling to behold, but there was always a level of profound uncertainty inherent in the narrative when it came to where exactly this dynamic was going.

In the show’s third episode, Bill Pargrave, Eve’s colleague, friend and confidant is stabbed to death by Villanelle in a nightclub, leaving behind a grieving wife and baby girl. I don’t know about you, but the cold-blooded murder of someone I loved would be something of a dealbreaker in pursuing any romantic relationship, though the show itself seemed only dimly aware of the fact that Eve remaining besotted by her friend’s killer was... well, pretty fucking weird to put it bluntly.

But then, maybe that was the point. The show was called Killing Eve, and it seemed obvious that this was in reference to Eve slowly but surely losing herself to her ever-more obsessive pursuit of a young assassin she was wildly attracted to on physical, mental and emotional levels. And though it bugged me that the show never really delved into the psychological conundrum of Eve’s grief for Bill existing alongside her desire for Villanelle, the writing was so slathered in black comedy that at some point I just shrugged my shoulders and went with it.

Because maybe it would turn out to be part of Eve’s character study. Maybe she never really cared for Bill at all, no more than she cared for her husband or her friends. Maybe, just maybe, she was going to end up more dangerous than Villanelle. Except... they never pulled the trigger on that development either. That she was secretly a psychopath all along, in which Villanelle is but a catalyst to Eve’s own dark leanings, was certainly a narrative option, but nothing is ever done with this. She never reaches true darkness; never really gets out of Villanelle’s orbit.

And by this stage, she’s completely inexplicable as a character. I absolutely cannot fathom her, or understand any of her decisions or motivations. She just does stuff, almost randomly.

Perhaps the most bizarre scene of this season takes place after Eve and Villanella have (or so it’s heavily implied) consummated their relationship in a campervan and Eve fondly recalls an incident with Bill back when they were working at MI5 together. Villanelle recalls that this was the man she stabbed in Berlin and... nothing more is said on the subject.

I just... what the fuck are we meant to do with this? Does Eve really not give a shit that she’s just had sex with her friend’s killer? What does that say about her? But then why even bring it up if it’s not going to amount to anything? It feels like yet another case of the writers wanting to have their cake and eat it too: hold Villanelle accountable for all the innocent people she’s remorselessly killed over the course of the show by killing her, but also appease the shippers by throwing them some breadcrumbs along the way.

Basically, it’s The Rise of Skywalker all over again, and I just can’t fathom it. I mean, the final scene has Eve and Villanelle lovingly embrace after the latter has just killed the last of the Twelve... as well as the completely innocent caterers who are gassed to death in the kitchens. Eve doesn’t give a shit, because that gets in the way of her wondrous love for Villanelle. I guess. Who even knows.

So I can feel a degree of sympathy for final showrunner Laura Neal, as this really was a narrative conundrum: the unstoppable force of Eve’s fascination with Villanelle being the engine of the entire show up against the immovable object of Villanelle being a remorseless killer. Either they go with the absurdity of these two women living happily ever after over a pile of dead bodies (which makes Eve either immoral or insane) or one of them ends up dead. Or else, here’s my pitch:

Eve loses everything in her pursuit of Villanelle: her husband, her career, her friends, her normality, her sense of identity, but eventually finds herself in close proximity to the source of her fascination and desire. Now she has to make a choice: the excitement that Villanelle provides or her own humanity. She chooses Villanelle, only to discover that life with a murderous narcissist loses its lustre after a while, and she starts the slow, hard crawl back to self-respect and common decency.  

The shippers would have thrown a hissy, but the writers could have built something genuinely interesting from that push/pull dichotomy, ending with what (ironically) happens in the middle of this season: Villanelle turns up and realizes that she no longer has any power over Eve, who has moved on to a new purpose in life and treats her with casual indifference before calling in a SWAT team. That could have been a full arc for Eve, from obsession to rock bottom to self-reclamation. And because Kenny doesn’t die in my version of events, she goes and starts a detective agency with him, the only decent and level-headed person in this whole sordid affair.

Ah well, coulda/woulda/shoulda. It was a fun ride while it lasted.

Our Flag Means Death: Season 1 (2022)

I always planned to watch this sooner or later, but the sheer amount of buzz surrounding it means I’ve just devoted an entire Sunday afternoon and evening to binging the entire season. Set during the Golden Age of Piracy (which means you can expect appearances from the likes of Blackbeard and Calico Jack, and I’m sure Anne Bonny and Mary Read won’t be far behind) it focuses on the real-life Stede Bonnet, a foppish Englishman and wealthy landowner who gets bored with his life and so decides to become a pirate.

Incredibly, that’s a true story. Stede Bonnet came to a rather sad end, and so it’s not a huge surprise that despite this being billed as a comedy, there’s a sense of melancholy woven throughout most of its characters. None of them are particularly happy with their lot in life, and they hide that dissatisfaction beneath veneers of determined cheerfulness, frightening reputations or blatant lies.

Stede (good old Rhys Darby) is having the time of his life captaining a pirate ship, even if the only thing he’s brave enough to attack are small fishing vessels. But while trying to deal with a mutinous crew and the English navy to deal with, he’s thrown into the path of Edward Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) the most famous pirate of them all. The two men unexpectedly start vibing, much to the consternation of each one’s crew, but their teamwork leads to a substantial increase in their success as pirates.

As you’re probably well aware by now, the show commits to its queer subtext and makes Our Flag Means Death a fully-fledged love story between Stede and Blackbeard. There are also dozens of other queer characters, all of whom have their own development and subplots, not to mention cameos from the likes of Leslie Jones, Will Arnett, Kristen Johnston, Nick Kroll and Kristen Schaal. And Rory Kinnear! I’ve never seen him in a comedic role before, so that was eye-opening.

I always find it difficult to talk about comedy. It’s so subjective that you either find it funny, or you don’t, and that pretty much dictates your enjoyment of the whole project. In this case, the humour is very kiwi (obviously, it stars two New Zealanders) which means it’s very much based on characters in complete and absurd self-denial about who they really are, trying instead to live up to the image they’re desperately projecting onto the world. It’s only when those walls start coming down that the truth is revealed...

Given its success, a season two seems assured, so bring it on.