Oh, the deliciously lurid world of an Emerald Fennell film. She has a penchant for exploring life’s underbelly—the sordid bits, the discomfiting bits, the awkward bits. All the bits that make you squirm. But they are also beautifully filmed, ridiculously stylish and she always, always chooses fabulous music which is used to maximum effect. Fennell adores exploring our seedier emotions to their extreme, and while being provocative doesn’t always hit the mark, occasionally wobbling into the daft, it’s impossible not to admire her exuberant vision. She also seems to have a dense array of fabulous actors at her disposal too,…
Category: <span>WATCHING</span>
Years And Years A near-future drama that follows the Lyons family of Manchester as their lives unfold against a backdrop of accelerating political, technological, and social change. Beginning in 2019 it covers roughly 15 years, tracking how each member adapts—or fails to adapt—to an increasingly unfamiliar world. Muriel, grandmother and great-grandmother becomes the moral centre of the story. As life becomes more unstable she grows stronger and more clear eyed, consistently understanding what matter most when the ground is shifting. Edith, a humanitarian worker and activist, can always be found at the heart of the current global crisis. Rosie, a…
Miss Fishers Modern Murder Mysteries This is a spin-off of the beloved Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, which reinvents the formula with a bright, playful 1960s twist. Peregrine Fisher, the previously unknown niece of the glamorous and legendary Phryne Fisher, unexpectedly finds herself stepping into her aunt’s world of mystery, murder, and high society — and, much to her own surprise, discovers that she has quite the knack for detective work herself. Most of what made the original series so charming remains intact: feisty independent heroine, slow-burn detective romance, the gentle tackling of social issues beneath the glamour, but perhaps most…
A Long Way Down On New Year’s Eve four people from very different walks of life find themselves together on the roof of Toppers Building, a notorious suicide spot. There’s; Martin (Pierce Brosnan), famous but toppled by a sex scandal; Maureen (Toni Colette), a mother with a severely disabled son; Jess (Imogen Poots), heartbroken after a breakup; and JJ (Aaron Paul), an American musician with brain cancer. After much humorous discussion, they come to the decision that they will delay their impending deaths until Valentine’s Day, offering each other emotional support in an attempt to make suicide unnecessary. When the…
These shows have a few things in common. They are neither violent, nor aggressive, nor depressing yet are substantive enough to make them worth watching. They are undemanding, kinda cozy and provide lots of love and laughter with some getting bonus points for exquisite scenery and beautiful settings. Basically they tick all the boxes for enjoyable, bingeable TV. (And yes, I am shamelessly stretching British to include the Commonwealth – two of these shows are Australian. ~Brief Encounters In 1980’s Sheffield, a group of women of all ages and walks of life are brought together when they get into the…
The English It’s the 1890’s in the days of the Wild West and Lady Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt) arrives at a remote outpost in Kansas in pursuit of the man responsible for the death of her son. She is met by Mr. Watts (a deliciously wicked Ciaran Hinds), who has the body of Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), a Pawnee Indian and former scout for the US army, currently strung up. When Cornelia tries to buy Elis’s freedom, she is beaten for her trouble. Some pretty awful things take place next but, ultimately, Cornelia asks Eli to accompany her on her…
Mrs Harris Goes To Paris The always wonderful Lesley Manville stars as Mrs. Ada Harris, a widowed char woman in 1950’s London. When she becomes smitten with a gorgeous Dior dress at the home of a client, Mrs Harris sets her sights on having one of her very own. Eventually, the stars align and Mrs Harris finds herself in Paris, at the iconic House of Dior, where she immediately ruffles a few feathers. Turns out Dior is run by a rather snooty bunch who are certainly not interested in dressing the likes of Mrs Harris. But a lovely gentleman steps…
Rivals For anyone not familiar with Jilly Cooper, she is an iconic writer of naughty, glitzy-glam romance novels full of rich privileged people behaving very, very badly. Escapist reading at its finest. Rivals is the televised version of her book of the same name and let me tell you, this show starts as it means to go on — with a couple having sex in the bathroom on Concorde and reaching that pinnacle moment just as the plane breaks the sound barrier. Subtle, this show is not. The overall plot goes something like this: Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) owns a…
Recipes For Love And Murder Maria is a food columnist for a small local newspaper in South Africa when her editor, Hattie, informs her that the paper is demanding an advice column. Maria pivots and becomes Tannie (Aunty) Maria dispensing advice each week, and cheekily managing to include a recipe designed to help cure the problem at hand. When Martine, the writer of Maria’s first letter, turns up dead, Maria does some sleuthing, aided by Jessie, the newspapers young and ambitious journalist who longs to sink her teeth into stories more serious than the fluff pieces she’s relegated to. The…
Four iconic British TV series — two from the seventies, two from the nineties. A little long in the tooth perhaps and lacking some of the bouncy lushness of a Bridgerton or Downton Abbey, but I like to think that these shows have a classic meets retro vibes feel that’s all their own. ~The House of Eliot Sisters Evie and Beatrice, brought up by a stick-in-the-mud father who gave them little in the way of niceties and education (their mother died giving birth to Evie) despite being an affluent physician, find themselves in dire straits when he dies. Turns…