It’s me again and I have 3 great shows to recommend…
If your idea of entertainment is getting all stressed out, screaming expletives at the TV and tearing your hair out, then Netflix’s Baby Reindeer is the one for you. Don’t pay any attention to the cute title, this one might just bring the dark side, you never thought you had, out into the open.
Based on a compelling true story, the hit 2019 Edinburgh Fringe one-man stage-play Baby Reindeer follows the writer and performer Richard Gadd’s warped relationship with his female stalker and the impact it has on him as he is ultimately forced to face a deep, dark buried trauma.
The synopsis makes it out to be a psychological thriller, it isn’t. It’s profoundly complex although it might get you laughing at Donny Dunn’s plight (Richard Gadd) for a while. It’s all darkly funny and then suddenly it isn’t. The shift in tone is so sublime that I didn’t see it coming. From peals of laughter, it became streaks of anger. Dunn could have shut it down fast, but his actions kept encouraging Martha (a fabulous Jessica Gunning). It is easy to be on this side of the TV as we judge, criticise and say I-told-you-so, but Gadd convinced me that sometimes it isn’t as easy as it looks. Theirs is a relationship that is symbiotic – Martha and Donny feed off each other like parasites, giving each other the attention the other party craves, and I have not even touched on Dunn’s past sexual trauma when he was groomed. Even though I cringed and at times get so stressed from watching the proceedings, I understand how complex human beings are and we can’t pigeonhole characters like neat cardboard cut-outs.
I have no idea how much of Baby Reindeer is true, but it couldn’t have been easy for Gadd to come right out into the open with the horrid experience he had been through. It is all the more compelling because Gadd is a victim and is a dude. Stories about stalking usually have the female as a victim, so it is brave of Gadd to lay it all out.
It is early in the year but I have already witnessed some incredible performances on television – Andrew Scott for Ripley, Anna Sawai for Shōgun and now Jessica Gunning as Martha. She brings such a sublime balance between a maniacal and a vulnerability to her role that it is impossible to hate her completely. At times my heart goes out to her but her next tirade will reel everything back in. This is acting you need to see to believe.
All through to the ending I was pondering how is everything going to get resolved. I mean the bad guy and mean gal need to get a hurting right? That has to be the moral message right? The ending left such a bad taste in my mouth and it made me so pissed. However the next morning I managed to come to terms with the ending because it’s an ending that reflects reality. It’s me who wants everything to be tied up in a bow. We all know in real life, karma takes a long time to take effect and that evil continues to flourish. But you know what? Forget about the wall of words I wrote because my wife has the best review of this show. On the same morning I woke up feeling enlightened with the ending, my wife told me she hardly slept a wink the previous night because she had a string of nightmares about Martha. If that’s not the best double thumbs up for the show, I don’t know crap. (4/5)
These days I don’t play games except Pokemon Go which literally takes the better part of my daylight hours and night time just before 12am (if you are nodding your head that means you know why and this is me high-fiving you). The only computer games that I really played till I didn’t want to go to work were Command and Conquer and Red Alert back when I was a young dude.
It’s a careful and tricky art that comes with adapting games which has the flimsiest narrative structure. The good ones know how to find a balance between paying fan service and satisfying the craving of a great story by an audience who had never played the game. Prime’s Fallout is a prime example of a successful adaptation that scores marvellously for both types of audiences.
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits. A violent raid by bandits on an underground fallout shelter forces one of its residents to set out into a barren wasteland filled with radiation, mutated monsters, and a lawless society of those who remained on the surface.
The world-building is superbly and meticulously done, as with the characters and the worlds they inhabit. We first see an underground bunker whose residents are taught to adhere to the ideals of peace and brotherhood, but all that quickly goes to crap when they are raided by people on the surface. We get to follow Lucy (Ella Purnell) who ventures to the surface to save her father who was captured by the leader of the resistance. Then there is a soldier named Maximus (Aaron Moten) who wants to be a warrior and is never given a chance until something happens. Finally, there is The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) , the Man in Black, the man who sees all and has all the answers but he is not sharing. The three characters gradually intersect in imaginative ways.
I like the themes explored – capitalism in a dystopian world and what is the concept of freedom in a world decimated by nuclear war. Lucy is our surrogate and tour guide through this crazy world but this is really The Walton Goggins Show. I think this is his best role on television, even more outstanding than the ones he did for The Shield and Justified. He is a fascinating character in the dystopian world and even as an actor in the extended flashbacks.
The action sequences are gratuitously violent with body parts flying in slow-motion across the screen. I read this is a creative aesthetic from the game so fan boys will get a hoot. Me, I didn’t know this is a game and I watch this from the eyes of someone who digs clever storytelling and it was such fun watching how everything unfolds. The show cleverly digs holes in the plot but fills them up as it progresses to a rousing finale. Some questions are answered, but most aren’t which served to whet my appetite for S2. (4/5)
I was 12 years old when I was totally hooked on the mini-series Shōgun (1980). I remember being hypnotised by the classic story of a clash of cultures and a fish out of water narrative, and I would be lying if I wasn’t captivated by the budding love story. I owned the DVD but I have a feeling the show would feel dated if I watch it again, so I welcome this latest remake that is quite a masterpiece from start to finish.
Pilot Major John Blackthorne (Cosmos Jarvis) and what remains of his crew arrive in Japan in May 1600. The Pilot, whom the Japanese call ‘Anjin-san’, is thrust into a world of dangerous politics and intrigue between rival Japanese Warlords, the Regency, the Catholic Church, and the Empires of Spain and Portugal. With the help of a beautiful young lady, Lady Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai) he navigates the treacherous waters under the auspices of one of the most powerful men in the world, Yoshi Toranaga (Hiroyuki Toranaga).
You can at once see the love the creators have for this project, both behind and in front of the camera. The attention to details, the set designs, the costumes, the writing, the acting, all on a level that screams epic. If memory serves me right, this remake has a more complex story than the original mini-series. The inter-play between Blackthorne, Mariko and Toranaga is gorgeous, the ebb and the flow between them is a thing of beauty. The writing and delivery has a cadence like nothing I have seen for a long time. Words are double-entendres, carry an invisible knife-edge, all delivered in polite manner like a chess game between two masters of the game.
Ep9 has to be the finest hour of television this year bar none. This was when I learned life has meaning because we can die and even in death your life has purpose. It was a feast for the senses with the writing and action up the wall, real ballsy stuff. At one point my mind was screaming “noooo… don’t let it happen” and then a sense of relief washed over me. Soon the unthinkable happens and my heart sank to the pits, but yet I felt the poetry in motion.
One more episode to go and I thought the finale is going to up the ante. I mean, that’s what Hollywood does right? The bombastic action-filled finale is a must right? Nope, the writers did something that completely surprised me in a good way. It ends on a philosophical tone with closures to every character arc. The big battle was fought in the mind, heart and soul. It was an audacious ending and it hit me in the feels, but I have to confess that it didn’t sit down well with me the moment it ended probably because I was weaned on the typical final flourish of Hollywood fare. I also have another issue with the ending in that Toranaga is too much of an omniscient presence and his ability to work out all the permutations from a single play feels like a superpower, but then again his uncanny ability was established from the onset. I guess I will have to live with that. This is the second masterpiece on television this year. (4.5/5)
Reel Thoughts 