Friends From College

What on earth is this?  A spin-off show from Friends?  No, it just has the name of that programme in its title.  This isn’t about six young people making their way through adult life in 90s New York City.  This is about six older people making their way through adult life in today’s New York City.

I didn’t even plan to watch it.  It all came about during that classic moment when you’re travelling through Japan with a friend (we’ve all done it, right?) and you’ve booked into a traditional hotel where you have to take your shoes off and they roll a futon out for you on the floor.  You’re in a tiny mountain town where the only thing to do is visit the thermal baths for awkward communal nudity (once you’ve hobbled between each one in wooden flip flops).  After you’ve dined exquisitely and drunk all the sake, how on earth do you entertain yourself for the evening when everything has closed down?  With Netflix of course.  Friends From College got watched as it was the only show one of us was prepared to watch again.

This is important for two reasons.  The first is that it came to me highly recommended, and here I am passing on that recommendation.  The second is that this show is best watched when you find yourself in front of the Netflix menu with a friend and you can’t agree what to select.  Maybe it’s a netflixandchill evening and you won’t be getting very far with it anyway, or maybe you’re just hanging out, but you can’t bear the thought of explaining what’s going on in series three of Bojack Horseman or you don’t want to sit through a second viewing of Stranger Things.  This show will fill that gap.  And then you can finish it off on your own in no time at all.

So that’s how to watch it, but what are you actually watching?  At the show’s heart are a group of friends who went to Harvard together.  They are now in their forties, but have remained friends, taking with them through the decades all of the emotional baggage you would expect.  In fact, episode one kicks off by contriving for two of the friends, married couple, Ethan and Lisa, to move from Chicago (where they have been living away from the friend group) back to New York.  The gang is finally getting back together!  The problem is: Ethan (played by a heroic Keegan-Michael Key) has been having a long-distance affair with Sam.  Now they’re in the same city, how will they keep their college romance secret from her husband and his wife?  Cue hilarity.

I appreciate that sounds sardonic, but the show really is a barrel of laughs.  I went into it thinking it was a comedy-drama, which means there are a few chuckles in between people crying and shouting and being serious.  But given the farcical nature of the characters’ exploits, their combination of physical comedy and things spiralling out of control, I was surprised to find myself in sitcom territory.  There is an episode where the friend group attends a wedding and I totally lost count of my laughs out loud.  In a sense, while the show is cruel in its portrayal of the well-educated professionals that form its cast, the writing’s strongest vitriol seems saved for the institution of marriage itself.  Nobody respects their vows because nobody can be honest.  It’s only Marianne, played by the incredible Jae Suh Park, who fully rejects the concept, screaming at her friends when she realises they have encouraged her lover to propose.  She’s happier with her rabbit, Anastasia.

Along with Marianne, outside of the love triangle, Nick and Max form the rest of the six-person friend group.  And it’s these characters that are most interesting, yet about whom we find out the least.  Tune in for Marianne’s amateur dramatic productions, including a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire with role-reversed casting (her rape of Blanche demands a ten out of ten for effort and conviction), but stay for further episodes where Max’s boyfriend Felix voices what we’re all thinking: this friend group is a terrible bunch of people.  With each episode at 30 minutes, it’s a bit like Girls: you always want a bit more of everyone (even though everyone is terrible).

We’ve all got a friend group like this.  We might not be forty, live in New York, or have gone to Harvard, but we all know there are people that hold us back.  Yet, we can’t get enough of them.  The fact that the characters are supposed to be intelligent (having studied at boffin box, Harvard) makes their bad choices all the funnier; they deserve what they get because they have acted so selfishly and should know better.  Miraculously, they remain likeable.  Each time they whine something about the friend group being to blame, a little bit of you wants to be in the friend group.

Sorry for saying friend group so much, but this is the term the show uses and it’s made me aware how hard it is to find a good alternative.  Gang?  Crew?  Brethren?  The English language really has let us down, so the show knowingly adopts this lame term for the social construct the characters use to organise the dregs of their adult lives.

Let’s pause for breath and conclude there is a lot to love about Friends From College.  Series two will come to us like an old friend, hopefully bringing more depth to the peripheral characters, and spending a bit more money on any special effects (as the season one finale completely undoes itself when something precious ends up in the swimming pool with graphics that look like a watercolour illustration).  Will it replace Friends in our hearts?  It doesn’t need to, and it’s unlikely it will ever form 80% of Comedy Central’s programming schedule, but it’s certainly up there as The One Where We Realise That Even People With Harvard Educations Are No Better At Adult Life Than We Are.

Empire

We need to talk about Empire.  But first, welcome to the 40^th blog post special, where we talk about Empire.  Because we need to.  It’s batshit.  It’s so crazy that I’ve actually stopped watching it, so I’m not sure how many series there are now.  No matter how many there are, it won’t be enough.  Please make more.  I’m not going to watch them though.  I can’t anymore.  If days were, on average, two hours longer, then I probably would.  Am I saying life’s too short for Empire?  Let’s read on and find out.

At the heart of Empire is the record label of Empire Records, founded by former criminal-turned-rapstar Lucious Lyon.  Played by a Terrence Howard who looks annoyed just to be there, the first series revolves around his impending death from a terminal disease and the associated conundrum of who should inherit his music empire.

There’s his wife, Cookie.  Nothing I write here can do her justice.  She’s played by the spectacular Taraji P. Henson with such abandon that you wonder the walls won’t come down in response to her undeniable sassiness.  Cookie has just emerged from 17 years in prison after taking a fall for her husband.  If that had happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to function following the institutionalisation, but she is draped in furs and tottering in heels within minutes, like the boss that she is.  She also doesn’t seem that cross with Lucious about it.  I mean, yeah, she’s livid, but only for a bit.  Two episodes later she’s trying to seduce him.

Then there are the Lyon sons.  There’s Jamal, the son that sings.  Another son raps; that’s Hakeem.  There’s surely no doubt that both only have their successful recording careers thanks to their dad, but that doesn’t really get investigated.  Instead, Hakeem tries to act the hard man while womanising to his heart’s content (which makes a scene where Cookie throws a broom at him as punishment all the more hilarious) and Jamal tries to earn his father’s respect, despite Lucious being iffy about his (mostly) homosexuality.  The latter gets a bit heavy-handed, so it’s best to focus on the silliness around Hakeem.  He also has a song called Drip Drop (lyrics: drip drop drip drippity drop), so if that doesn’t give you an idea of the show’s level, then there’s really no point carrying on.

Sadly, the eldest son, Andre, has no musical talent and instead runs the label’s accounts, which involves wearing lots of sharp suits and acting as a voice of reason, until a storyline about his mental health spirals out of control.  All of these, then, vie to inherit the Empire empire, which results in untold double-crossing within the family and beyond.  The fact there is more than one series should serve as a clue about what actually happens to the business.

Let’s be honest though, the biggest star is the music.  Thanks to Timbaland, most songs have the exact same beat, but I bloody love that beat so it doesn’t bother me.  The plot contrives to weave in multiple occasions per episode where the characters that are popstars perform to each other.  Jamal might be demoing something on the piano to Alicia Keys, and she might just join in.  Hakeem might be dropping his new joint at Leviticus, the club Lucious owns that serves as almost the only performance space.  Cookie might be overseeing a rehearsal that one of her family members needs to burst into with urgent news.  Luckily, most tracks are available on Spotify for me to relive these moments while on the 137 to Battersea Park.

Nevertheless, for the characters’ pop music careers to feel real, you’d need to hear the same songs hammered to death, just like real hits are on the radio.  But this would make the show unbearable, so each seems to be lost to posterity the moment it’s performed.  This is impressive, given they are all original songs.  These are my top three:

Never Let It Die

Jamal sings his heart out.  Things build and crescendo and then Hakeem rips in with some of his most aggressive rapping.  I am not fit to describe it so just listen here please.  It’s about the two brothers standing together against all the hardships in their lives, such as being given recording contracts by your father.

Chasing The Sky

This tear jerker shows that Empire can turn it all around and bring some real emotion to its music.  Just digging out this video has got me goose-bumping again.  It might be all hippity hop most of the time, but sometimes the cast put down the gold chains and get together as a family to harmonise about their problems.  We should all do this more.  Even Andre is allowed to nod along.

Adios

This track is sung by Tiana, one of Empire’s artists who comes and goes in the plot as suits, while the opening credits still roll.  The video (please excuse the Portuguese subtitles but we can all do with improving our lusophone abilities) shows exactly the scenario where choreography and dancers are all in place, only for the song never to be heard again.  Apart from in my earphones when I’m going round Clapham Sainsbury’s.  Another epic contribution from Tiana is Look But Don’t Touch, which features more award-winning lyrics: “Look at my body.  Look at my body.  Look at my body.  Look at my body.  Don’t I look sexy?  Don’t I look sexy?  Don’t I look sexy?  Don’t I look sexy?”  You don’t get that in The Get Down.

So, come for the music, stay for the plots.  But it’s the plots that I can’t be doing with.  I’ve mentioned the whiplash-inducing double-crossing.  All the forgiving and betraying again doesn’t really go anywhere.  My other bugbear is that each scene seems to get the most lavish set up: an excessive location, hundreds of outfits, extras etc.  But then the cast will only exchange a few lines before moving on to the next one.  I think I sometimes like to settle in and stay a while.  The jumping about creates a distance and it’s hard for any character to move beyond caricature in a fur coat.

We all know I love a trashy watch.  And why should a show be held back by pace, or story arc, or steadily building to a climax?  Why can’t it just be a hot mess of everything at once, as long as there’s some toe-tapping hip hop thrown in?  All I’m saying is that it absolutely can be.  I’m just not going to carry on watching it until I have more time on my hands.  I’ll be retired in 100 years so there’ll be loads to catch up on then.

The Man In The High Castle

I don’t want people thinking I only watch Netflix.  There’s also a password for Amazon Prime in the household, so I’ve been spreading my muck about when it comes to content streaming services.  People don’t seem to be as enamoured with Amazon.  It’s not made it into common parlance; nobody asks Tinder prospects about Amazon and chill.  Maybe we can’t move past the fact that it basically used to be an online bookshop.  Soon, it will control every aspect of our worthless lives, and, frankly, Amazon is welcome to them.  Their only content heritage lies in their acquisition and dissolving of Lovefilm, the postal DVD rental service that helped me pull together one of the most shameful film lists of all time (since my taste in cinema is as questionable as my predilections in telly).

Amazon’s big hitters, as far as my biased views are concerned, are Vikings and Mr Robot, but I’ve already done them.  So let’s do The Man In The High Castle.  I also haven’t finished anything new recently as I’ve been spending the last ten days clutching a Lonely Planet while strolling about Japan, like the middle-class cliché that I am, away from my beloved boxsets and sofa.  Now the karaoke caterwauling and onsen (thermal bath) modesty-shielding are over, I might as well use some downtime on my journey home for another one of these posts (because they’re not going to stop, by the way).  I’m speeding from Kyoto to Tokyo on a bullet train, before another train, a night in a pod, a plane, a stopover in Helsinki, another plane, three Tube lines and a bus till I am back in front of my favourite screen.  So I’ve got time to kill.

Is that enough about me?  Probably.  So, what’s The Man In The High Castle, then?  Well, there are two series and the opening credits make it seem like it’s going to be very strange.  And that’s because it is.  Based on a book by Philip K Dick, the drama unfolds in an alternative imagining of reality where World War II’s victors were the Axis countries, led by Captain Moustache himself.  That said, things are mostly set in the USA, as that’s where TV drama happens.  On the losing side, the States are split between the Japanese Empire on the west coast, and the Nazi Reich on the east, a bit like 1990s hip hop rivalry.  In between, there is a curious buffer zone which helps the plot along when people can’t be in the other two territories.  The US is basically a shit sandwich – suddenly this history doesn’t seem so alternative.

It takes a while for the storylines of a disparate bunch of folk on all sides to come together, but when they do, things get very tense.  I was about to see if I could type out a beginner’s guide, but let’s just take some examples.  There’s Obergruppenführer John Smith, played by Rufus Sewell, a classic Nazi with a heart-sy (does that work?  Probably not).  High up in NYC Nazi HQ, he has inner conflict about the regime’s view of his son, forcing him to choose whether his loyalties lie with his ideologies or his family.  Seeing his white-picket fence lifestyle harbouring and promoting racist ideology is not that much of an alternative reality from the Trumpism of today (oh right; I’ve already made this statement but just in case anyone isn’t keen on subtlety).  Over in San Francisco, there’s Robert Childan, played by Brennan Brown, an antiques dealer whose coping mechanism to the occupation is to suck up to the Japanese as much as possible.  His obsequiousness makes your skin crawl, but his severe anxiety makes him a highly identifiable character for an Asperger’s spectrum kid like myself.  Then, watching him get sucked unwillingly into the resistance movement is even more entertaining.

Ironic then that I should be writing this from Japan, the politest nation on earth.  The ticket inspector just bowed at the whole carriage in case we didn’t feel respected enough cruising along at 230km per hour in luxurious comfort (though me tapping away on the keyboard is hopefully ruining it for some people).  Tokyoites are so polite, that even when you’re a gormless tourist blocking their path while they rush around, they will go out of their way to get out of your way (and there’s a lot of getting out of ways in that place).  People in Osaka are a bit more prepared to shove but, either way, it’s hard to picture this nation ruling California under an iron thumb.  But it’s all about creative license and this has really just been another excuse to brag about my travels.

But, the question I hear you all asking is who is this man and what’s this high castle that he’s in?  Well, I can’t really work that bit out.  People in the show keep finding films that seem to show our reality (I think) of the war’s end.  Not clips of box office-gold Dunkirk featuring Harry Styles with wet-look hair, but old newsreels and that.  Suddenly, the drama is poised to take a potential shift into the paranormal – are the characters about to try and swap their reality?  I’m asking it as a question as I haven’t followed the plot as closely as I should, as the pace can be a little slow and people keep Whatsapping me.  In the background, a threat also builds from the deteriorating relationship between the world’s two superpowers, Japan and Germany, so nuclear war might arrive before anyone has a chance to get in the high castle and find this man with the films.  Keep up.

Ethically, I know questions have been asked about whether it’s right to imagine alternatives to history where the baddies won.  HBO and Amazon have both caused controversy with their reported development about shows where the American Civil War ends up with the shoe on the other foot.  It’s not a new phenomenon.  Robert Harris’s amazing book, Fatherland, uses a Nazi victory as the setting decades later for a story whose incredible narrative tension is only possible because of its framing.  There’s also SSGB by Len Deighton, a very dated spy classic, ripe with period misogyny, recently turned into a drama by the BBC where everyone mumbled their lines so much I had to give up.  With The Man In The High Castle, you’re rooting very much for the characters who represent opposition to the regimes in which they find themselves.  Even those who probably loved the evil at first are seen to be having second thoughts, so it doesn’t feel like Amazon is asking us to look at what we could have had in an attempt to cause a Nazi uprising.

Hopefully these ramblings have given some insight into the mystery and intrigue available to those who take up the challenge of watching The Man In The High Castle.  In fact, I’ve just read them back and they make hardly any sense at all, so it’s a tick in that box as far as I am concerned.  Most importantly, I’ve proved I don’t just watch Netflix.

Peaky Blinders

“If I catch this next train, I’ve got time for a Peaky Blinders when I get in,” said a colleague in the pub one evening, swiftly seeing off the dregs of a gin and tonic before grabbing her handbag and flying out of the place.  Picture the scene!  It’s not actually a true story though.  As we all know, whenever my workmates suggest a drink after office hours, I flat-out refuse so I can spend more time with my real friends: boxsets.  I also lost the ability to handle alcohol in 2014.  But there was a time a few months back when Peaky Blinders was the boxset of choice for all the folk back in my nine-to-five world, especially those in various stages of pre-married and married life, settling down buying homes in zone 17 and therefore commuting on timetabled trains (the best excuse for being late everyday there ever was).  Let’s unpick why people with stable, conventional lifestyles enjoy programmes about crime, shall we?

First, we must ask ourselves: what is a Peaky Blinder?  Well, my phone’s autocorrect would actually prefer that we called it a Pesky Blinder.  You change one letter and suddenly it’s like you’re at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode when the villain is unmasked and revealed to be harmless.  In fact, I don’t even really need the letter change.  Every time someone in the show unleashes a hail of bullets and quips “Courtesy of the Peaky Blinders” I’m transported to a world of Hanna-Barbera animation for children.  I just don’t deserve good television, do I?

The Peaky Blinders are a criminal gang run by the Shelby family, with the first series joining their story in 1919.  The accents that the cast approximate are brummie, as the show is set in Birmingham.  It’s nice to see Britain’s second city getting a bit of dramatic attention – it’s as if the place doesn’t get out much.  People claim it’s boring.  One of the very few decent talks I have been to in the media industry posed a good question about the city in light of billions being spent to improve its rail links to London.  Why not spend billions making Birmingham worth visiting in the first place?  It’s very unfair, as I once had the time of my life there at the Watch The Throne tour, including a night out at Gatecrasher that BEGAN with a bouncer throwing a clubber down the stairs after punching him.  Good times.

The Shelbys are big names thanks to their illegal activities.  Their services are very diversified.  They start with running unlicensed betting operations and racketeering, before branching into publicanism, owning and training racehorses, legal betting and various other forms of roughhousing.  In later series, there is legitimate trade as well as smuggling.  I even think there are some contract killings but things get very complicated so I just focus on enjoying the period scenery.  As time passes, the running tension comes from the desire to do one last big job before finally going straight.  So let’s see who these Shelbys are (focusing on those that are there at the beginning, as some relatives’ appearances constitute spoilers):

Tommy Shelby

Not the oldest Shelby brother, but he’s in charge due to having the largest face.  The large face comes courtesy of Cillian Murphy (star of my favourite film, 28 Days Later, even finding time to get his willy out in something about a ‘zombie’ apocalypse) and I would watch that face do anything.  He’s all about being so mad he might just be a genius, and his word is law.  I expect it was him that decided all the lads would have hipster haircuts.

Arthur Shelby

Tommy’s older brother, but he’s happier as a henchman (most of the time).  You can take a picture of him to the barber and come out with a really fresh fade.

John Shelby

This is the cheeky Shelby.  Joe Cole plays him as if he is about to sneeze the whole time, but let’s remember that history was a dusty place, so it makes perfect sense.  He probably has slightly better hair than Arthur, but it’s a tough choice.

Finn Shelby

The baby brother who is just a boy at the start, but soon gets old enough to join in with the haircuts.

Ada Thorne née Shelby

Yes, women are allowed in the family too.  This is the Shelby sister.  She doesn’t do a lot of the crime, but tends to serve as a plot device as and when suits.  Wears hats.

Polly Gray née Shelby

This is the Shelby clan’s aunt, played by the amazing Helen McCrory.  There’ll be a cigarette hanging out her mouth and she won’t take any nonsense, but there are moments of beautiful vulnerability with this character, while her relationship with nephew Tommy is at the heart of how the family is run.

It’s often those around the Shelbys that are the most interesting, though.  Chester Campbell, the antagonist of the earlier series, starts off sympathetically, but ends up a focus for all your hate, despite the most extravagant Northern Irish accent from Sam Neill.  Derby Sabini, the leader of an Italian gang in London is always a pleasure, while you feel there’s more to Esme Shelby (one of the wives) and Lizzie Stark (a former prostitute whom Tommy hires as his secretary) than you ever get to see.  Tom Hardy even pops in, but you know he’s having too much fun swearing and shouting for this to be one of his best parts.  Series four also has some big household names, but Netflix don’t have that yet so we can’t talk about it (and I forgot to watch it at Christmas).

In conclusion, it’s sometimes the background of Peaky Blinders that’s more interesting that the main story.  A lot of the show is made up of the gang walking along in slow motion, all period hats and manly swagger.  Who on earth are the ones in the background?  Maybe they do part-time peaky blinding.  These moments are triumphed, however, in the third season when the Shelby women go on strike and get their own slow-motion swagger with cool soundtrack.  The set design, though, is cracking.  You have a real sense of the grime in the period, though there does seem to be a factory that specialises in balls of flame, like some sort of hellfire manufacturer.

But this is stand-out British drama.  Each series of six episodes grows and builds the blinders’ peaky world, responding to real-life actual history.  The First World War’s conclusion precedes the show’s beginnings, bringing to life all that war poetry you did for GCSE (Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori, anybody?).  There’s a Winston Churchill (but a bit younger than the old duffer in The Crown).  There’s communism and the fight for home rule in Ireland.  In series three, loads of Russian aristocrats arrive fleeing the Revolution and cope with this loss by having lavish orgies which characters try and act in front of but you’re just watching the background in case you spot a bit of tit.

While it’s fun to be irreverent, I will finish by saying that this show is the peakiest of all the blinders.  It’s like Downton Abbey with indie music, only more happens.  Go to work, come back on the train, do an hour of wedmin, pay a bill or something, then settle down to live vicariously through history’s best-dressed criminal family.  You’ll sweat buckets screaming at the telly and praying Tommy can pull off his latest heist.  Just don’t get distracted wondering where he finds the time to get his haircut done so often.