Breaking Bad

“I don’t watch television, but I hear Breaking Bad is very good.”  So goes a line from Toast of London (sixth most popular post on this blog, incidentally) that has stuck with me even more than shouting out “Ray bloody Purchase” whenever I feel like it.  For me, though, only half of it has ever been true.  I do watch TV.  In fact, I’ve watched enough to churn out 200 posts about 200 different programmes over the last few years.  But I have spent my recent life hearing that Breaking Bad is very good.  People have asked me over and over again if I have watched it and, until now, I’ve had to say no.  So, I thought, with the 200^th post spectacular coming up, what better boxset to go out on?  I sat through all five seasons on Netflix.  I had heard Breaking Bad is very good, but I didn’t like it all.

While I brace myself for onslaught of abuse this revelation will earn me, let’s go back to the beginning so I can justify myself in the order my thoughts occurred to me.  Years back, when Breaking Bad was all the rage, I pursued my characteristic route of ignoring whatever everyone else was focusing on.  Like The Sopranos and The Wire, I was determined to reach this big American boxset in my own time.  What’s more, its premise never really appealed.  I’ve talked previously about my lack of interest in drug dealing as a concept, though I have made numerous exceptions by covering shows about the business here, from Narcos to Top Boy.  But this was drug dealing, chemistry and cancer, polar opposites to my preferred themes of the apocalypse, zombies and high schools.

Bravely, though, a few months back I clicked play on episode one, series one, ignoring all the other things in my Netflix menu I would rather have been getting on with (including hipster haircut festival, The Last Kingdom).  In those early days, I was fully under the impression that I had, following many recommendations, finally uncovered the perfection others rave about.  The set-up, while unappealing on paper, was masterful in establishing tension and storylines.  For a while, I wondered if anyone would ever better it.  The grittiness, while still slightly Hollywood-esque in the Arizona sunshine, showed an unglamorous flipside to American life.  Here, Walter White struggles to make ends meet as an undervalued high school chemistry teacher (and part-time car wash attendant) while his heavily pregnant wife supplements their income with online auction sales of tat and their disabled son comes of age.  He’s about to find out it’s not so easy being diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Using his chemistry skills, he comes up with the idea of cooking crystal meth with a perfect recipe, making sure he’ll leave his family well provided for.  There’s a slight setback in that his brother-in-law is a DEA agent, but he’s not too sharp so we’ll save for that for a later series.

The drama is at its best when White, propelled by his expiring mortality, steps out of his family-man responsibilities into a world of dangerous risk-taking.  He takes on hardened criminals while driving a sensible car and calling home to apologise for being late for his tea.  He’s unhinged, unbridled and out of control, yet it’s all coming from a place of love – he just can’t tell his wife why he’s being suspicious.  The geek in me also enjoyed the science, while the marketeer appreciated the top-notch product he launches.  But, we must acknowledge Jesse Pinkman as the crucial key that connects his criminal and domestic lives.  This former student and current loser becomes White’s business partner.  Where White brings scientific knowledge and exceptional problem-solving, Pinkman brings chaos and incompetence.  His endless messing up irritated me more and more with each episode.  Occasionally, a spectacular twist would mean that their fractious relationship would be laid bare, with one needing the other before a reversal at a future fracas, but their main mode of operation was just white men shouting at each other.  It got tired.  Plus, Aaron Paul is a beloved voice from Bojack Horseman, so all I could ever hear during his whining was lovely asexual Todd.

Each season, our novice cook-dealers take on a different baddie to control the Phoenix meth trade.  Huge personal sacrifices oddly never fail to dissuade White from cooking again.  Their running of their business lurches from problem to problem, yet I just wanted to know more about Skylar or Walter Junior.  And if they weren’t around, I would find myself preoccupied by the inhabitants of the various crack dens where White would go looking for Pinkman.  The human cost of their drug baking only ever looms as a backdrop for their own dramas, with addicts given as much backstory as the walkers in The Walking Dead.  I can accept the customers are never the focus of Breaking Bad, but I can wonder if their development would have lent greater richness.  Pinkman’s addictions come and go and never really feel true.

Back to the brother-in-law.  Schrader begins as an uncouth bigot, beloved by his nephew, but a bit of a gaffman.  His out-of-dateness eventually elicits sympathy, even while he misses staggering clues about the origins of White’s prosperity.  I found myself rooting for him as he started to put two and two together.  But don’t worry about that cat-and-mouse situation concluding too quicky, as constant car crashes serve to derail things whenever convenient.  Thus, we go round in circles.  Everyone falls out, makes up, ends up in hospital, the cancers seems occasional, White’s reasons to cook become reasons never to do it again.  Everyone is unhappy, everyone is shouting, shocking violence interrupts arguments just before they burn out.  By this point, Breaking Bad had become a background show for me.  I didn’t care.  Episodes would play on while I cooked (lasagne rather than meth) or baked or cleaned.  I missed a key death while vacuuming.  Some instalments even have the highest IMDB ratings out there for single TV episodes, but I just wanted it all to be over.  I’m not really sure how it all ends, but I’m not arsed either.

And so, it’s with slight regret that Just One More Episode bows out after 200 posts on something that didn’t quite cut the mustard for me.  I’ll admit I might have felt biased given the hype it could never have lived up to, but it began well and I paid real attention.  However it was liberating to realise I hated it and it’s been enjoyable to dismiss it here.  Let’s get things in perspective: nobody cares what I think and I’m not looking to persuade fans.  A few friends I’ve mentioned my conclusion to have agreed they found the show overrated or admitted to failing to finish it.  Breaking Bad has had huge cultural influence and blazed the trail for the boxset to take centre stage in our hearts, with quality TV supplanting sloppy blockbusters.  I can appreciate it for what it is, but I’m glad it’s over.  You might feel the same way about this blog.  My evenings can now be spent indulging in newly discovered masterpieces like Babylon Berlin (watch this immediately) or looking forward to the return of trash like Elite and Love Island, but take comfort in the fact I won’t be banging on here anymore about my unasked-for opinions about them.

The Last Kingdom

If you’ve ever wondered what is England and why does it keep on happening, this show is not going to answer that question.  Fair enough, this might be something you wonder more and more these days as you cope with the news telling you how old English people insist on voting, but, at best, The Last Kingdom will mostly tell you how the ninth century kingdom of Wessex stood up as a Saxon stronghold against those pesky Vikings.  In short, and, inaccurately, Wessex gradually became England and thus the whole mess we find ourselves in.  Politics aside, regular readers of Just One More Episode (hello to both of you) will remember fondly my September 2017 post extolling the pleasures of Vikings (the TV show, not to be confused with the general concept of Scandinavian marauders).  That programme ended fully in recent times, leaving a Norse-shaped hole in my viewing habits.  Yes, I like zombies, yes, I like things set in high schools, yes, I like prisons, yes, I like reality trash, but I’m recognising here another theme to add to the boxes that any boxset needs to tick for me: Viking-Saxon conflict.

This dichotomy lies at the heart of our hero’s story.  Uhtred is the Saxon son of a Northumbrian Elderman, but he ends up kidnapped into slavery, serving a Viking family.  Through his wiles and charm, he is elevated from property to relation and grows up more Viking than Saxon.  But, as per the pilot episode, Uhtred’s about to find out it’s not so easy being a Saxon who identifies as Viking when Vikings come for your Viking family, with the help of Saxons.  In fact, it’s a fairly stop-start beginning to getting Uhtred where he needs to be, which is down south in the Kingdom of Wessex.  But don’t worry if you’re confused, as every episode begins with Uhtred narrating a recap of his adventures so far.  And fans of proper Viking things will appreciate his persistent Scandinavian accent.

You’ve guessed it, then, that Wessex is the last kingdom in The Last Kingdom to hold out against the Viking onslaught.  The Danes are everywhere grabbing land and laughing at priests.  Contrast their ferocity, then, to the enfeebled citizens of Wessex who are more preoccupied with praying than strategising to defend themselves.  In steps Uhtred, overcoming Alfred’s deep scepticism regarding his loyalties, bringing a laddish touch to business.  And let’s be honest, Uhtred is the cool one.  He has better hair than the Saxons, scoffs at their Christianity and gets to strut around in Viking clobber looking an absolute boss while they scurry about in meagre rags.  Men want to be him (or baptise him) and women want to be with him (despite the track record of his women faring well in the relationship).

I’ll confess to only just breaking into season two of four, having recetnly begun the show at a friend’s recommendation, but it’s the boxset I find myself looking forward to most of an evening.  Not being a savage, I do my best to ration episodes to one per night so that I can bask fully in the glory of Wessex.  Indeed, the geek in me loves how the subtitles announcing each location give us the city names at the time, adding to the overall perception of historical accuracy.  There’s no way of assessing this for real, though, but let’s just say it feels bob on.  My linguist boffin could do with some acknowledgement of the fact the Danes and Saxons all seem to speak the same language, but why let that get in the way of a good story?

But yes, it was the most violent of times, and blood is shed all over the muddy streets of Winchester and beyond.  However, we don’t seem to be allowed to swear.  There’s no effing and jeffing from Uhtred and his merry band and this doesn’t impose a problem until we come to anything sexual.  In place of the beloved F word, we have humping.  Somehow, this registers a bit pervier, but gradually becomes part of The Last Kingdom’s own mythology.  And we do see some quite graphic humping, bringing to mind the late-night Channel 5 films of yore, so I’m wondering if we’re claiming that a naughty word is more offensive that the action it describes.

All in all, though, it’s a yes please to The Last Kingdom.  It may have tempted you in your Netflix menu before now, but ended up rejected in favour of newer, more hyped-up fare, but sign yourself up for all four series if you fancy some wild storytelling peppered with religious fervour, ethnic conflict and a bit of a history lesson thrown in.  At least it can distract you from England today.

The Night Of

You might be wondering what I’m doing talking this week about something from 2016, but over the previous 197 posts I think we’ve established well enough there is no method to my madness.  The Night Of was one of the first boxsets recommended to me at the very beginning of this project, and it’s been lodged in my brain ever since.  It even got downloaded (by me, on purpose) to my Sky box at the start of the year when I finally decided that I must get down to following up on its recommendation.  But there it stayed, cruelly ignored while I worked through Fargo and a variety of other Netflix trappings (Call My Agent!, Last Chance U: Basketball).  But then, with Oscars season upon us, its star, Riz Ahmed, was everywhere.  I needed to see what all the fuss was about and conveniently had a slot in my viewing schedule.

I’m ruing the day I didn’t dive in as soon as this show was recommended to me.  Episode one immediately got its claws into me and I tingled with smugness at the thought of finding something to watch that was not going to disappoint.  There was intrigue from the first minute, all against a backdrop of the much-missed city of New York (what with foreign travel being an impossible offence while the sniffles keeps on going round the world).  Knowing something terrible is going to happen: there’s nothing more compelling than that.  From the moment Nasir (played by Ahmed with wide-eyed conviction) gets invited to a Manhattan party from his Pakistani enclave of Queens, the show’s very title makes it clear this isn’t just a pleasant evening in the city.

I’m not going to get into too many details, as these would all be spoilers, and I know for a fact you’ll be following my pleas to see for yourself this exquisite boxset.  Needless to say, there’s a certain amount of being led astray, of trying things for the first time and of cutting loose from a conservative upbringing while potentially ill-equipped to deal with its consequences that makes this fateful night all the more significant.  The tension then takes hold, with us as the viewer violently willing Nas to slip out of the precinct while awaiting processing for his initial misdemeanour.  Cleverly, we are left in doubt regarding his innocence as far as the evidence shows, but we are desperate for him to be cleared of all charges at almost any cost.

Along the way, every character that enters the universe of The Night Of comes with such depth and richness that we almost don’t notice Nas’s long absences while they work their way into our lives.  John Turturro’s John Stone oozes New Yorker, hardened and brash, and with no shits left to give about what anyone thinks of him or any of his skin conditions (at least, so his outer shell would have us believe).  I did wonder at the size of his out-of-home advertising budget as his Subway posters are everywhere, especially if he only charges $250 a case.  Nas’s parents do a huge amount with very little, dignity burning behind their eyes, while Detective Dennis Box earns our sympathy as he retires and Helen Weiss, the district attorney, even as she works against us, carries a certain charm.  The Wire’s Michael K. Williams haunts as Freddy, showing us everything that’s wrong with the American justice system.

That said, it was the cat that I got most excited about.  It just goes to show that great writing and great character development are lost on me when there’s a purring feline rolling about on the floor.  I felt I could have cured John Stone’s allergies simply by wishing them away.  So, from New York night life, the episodes progress to a taut court case.  At points, all seems lost.  At others, the characters’ behaviour aggravates both you as the viewer and their own sorry situations.  But we’re kept guessing till the end, fed some red herrings to keep us going and distracted by artful production design and cinematography from the fact this is (apparently) a rehash of a 2008 British show.  I don’t care where it came from, this gem was a great find, and maybe the story is more universal than as specifically New York as I had thought, but it’s elevated by so much else that it’s definitely one for the boxset list.

Shtisel

It’s been about 50 posts since I went on about how impactful I found Unorthodox.  As a result, I bought and read the book, and then looked about for any similar sort of drama that might have a Haredi setting or element.  Turns out that that show’s star, Shira Haas, is already known for just the thing I was after: Shtisel.  But where would I find a boxset about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family living in Jerusalem?  Netflix of course.  Praise be that we live in an age of instant international distribution.  About a year ago, then, I started making my way through the first series.  Now, you’ll have seen me post here about all sorts of shiny and glamorous productions (Bridgerton, The Mandalorian), so let’s manage our expectations that this was a bit of a departure.  Hailing back to 2013, we’re not awash in expensive special effects or high drama.  Instead, this is a simple, sometimes delicate, sometimes clanging piece of kitchen sink banality (with a huge dollop of strict religious doctrine) that potters along with charm and pain, just like any family’s life (give or take the religion part).

There’s a second series from 2015, and then, come 2020, Netflix step in to revive things for a third.  Needless to say, as much as I was hooked by the Shtisels’ stories, the show was never quite first choice for evening viewing when things like Watchmen or Atlanta were on offer.  Thus, Shtisel evolved into the show I watch in the bath.  This is typically a weekend moment where I need an Epsom salts soak after too much gym, but don’t have the attention span to sit still for 45 minutes, yet know with certainty that any book I take in there will be dropped (the smartphone isn’t even allowed in the bathroom as I am guaranteed to submerge it).  My trusty laptop perched on some storage boxes at a safe distance, I’m able to use my physio-prescribed dips as a viewing occasion.  But, occurring only once weekly, this has meant it’s taken the best part of a year to get through everything.  That said, I’ve been able throughout to respond to well-wishers’ enquiries about my current viewing with a very smug answer: “Oh just this Israeli drama that’s most in Hebrew, you wouldn’t know it…”

And here we have one of my other joys with the show: the languages.  I don’t know any Hebrew, but the older characters occasionally switch to Yiddish, which is much easier to decipher.  Hebrew remains, however, a great language for shouting at relatives in, whereas the Yiddish lines really suit moments when the elder generation want to lament the lack of religious observance of others.  Plot-wise, we have father-and-son combo Shulem and Akiva at the heart of Shtisel.  Akiva is, by his community’s standards, late to be wed, and it’s his hunt for the right bride that propels his narrative, mostly because he is wont to pursue inappropriate matches.  Maybe it’s the artist in him, but Akiva’s status as a dreamer is a source of much bafflement to his chain-smoking father, Shulem.  A widower himself, Shulem too dabbles in the marriage market, sometimes via the matchmaker, sometimes with his actual wife, but mostly with a view to dropping by for some homemade food under the auspices of any available excuse.  Dvora, the late matriarch of the Shtisel family, looms large over all our characters, and, in fact, Shtisel has a preoccupation with death.  From Malka, the grandmother rattling about in an old people’s home, to the untimely passing of some other characters that I won’t spoil here, our transience on this Earth is never far from the matters in hand.

For heathens like me, every moment of religious pageantry adds richness and depth to the stories, and whole plots will revolve around a taboo or ruling that simply won’t exist in the lives of others.  All our menfolk are dedicated to studying the Torah (and carrying around plastic bags), whereas marriage and motherhood dominate the Shtisel ladies.  We do need to contrive plot, so characters will occasionally use dishonesty to pursue a holier route or admit to being cruel to be kind so their relative stays on the right moral path.  Giti, Shulem’s daughter, is often caught in a conundrum where she must tread a narrow tightrope, bringing her into conflict with her eldest child, Ruchami (played with incredible maturity by Shira Haas from our first paragraph).

Storylines wander in and out of focus, some almost going nowhere, some veering in for what appears to be no reason, but I was throughout compelled to find out what would happen next.  The languid pace is soothing.  The intricacies of observing a long-held faith are interesting.  And there’s entertainment in wanting the best for the whole family.  Don’t get involved if you’re expecting to laugh out loud, as the show often feels quite heavy with seriousness, but join in if you can look through cultural, religious and linguistic differences to enjoy the nuances of how other people live their lives.  I was even moved to tears a couple of times, with one such moment occurring on a busy Tube while I cheated on my bath viewing policy and watched an episode on my phone simply because I had to find out what poor old Akiva would do next.  My mask luckily hid anything embarrassing but, if anyone had asked, I would have been desperate to show off my eclectic taste in boxsets.  Fortunately, I can do that here, and you can read it.

 

The Fast Show

As we reach the end of Just One More Episode (and, in fact, there are just four more episodes to go of this nonsense) I wanted to dedicate some time to rambling about a very influential show that people don’t seem to talk about anymore.  I’ve mentioned before my passion for sketch shows, both the terrifying highs of jokes that come off well and the dizzying lows set ups that never really pay off (see post on Little Britain), so it’s only right that I touch on The Fast Show before bowing out.  I was recently assailed by an irresistible urge to revisit some of my beloved sketches and managed to track down a handful of episodes downloadable from Sky Comedy.  Sadly, given that series one appeared in 1994, some of the footage looks like it was filmed on Vaseline (but don’t worry, guys, as the adverts that are inserted everywhere are crystal clear HD) but the humour still shines through and I found myself laughing my head off all over again, despite having seen all of it many times before.

These days, my attention span is so much shorter than it used to be, ruined by years of little whatsapps and incoming office work on multiple fronts (emails, calls, instant messages, someone standing next to your desk coughing lightly back in the days of actually working from anywhere but home), so it stands to reason that The Fast Show’s delivery of its very name’s promise (it’s quite fast) has helped to ensure that I’ve only grown fonder of it with age.  Most sketches are fairly rapid, some are even a few seconds and a single sentence.  Perfect if you’re itching to get the next one without delay.  This results in a vast population of characters and scenarios that I could never do justice to here, but my recent viewing has yielded two conclusions.  Firstly, the writers and actors love silliness as much as I do, as each sketch plays out in a parallel universe of messing about.  Secondly, their target is always anything that takes itself too seriously.  Sign me up.

Let’s take, for example, Jazz Club.  I remember only ever waiting patiently for this one to end when I was a child.  The punchlines were buried and subtle and, probably, it was too similar to real programmes at the time.  But it’s proven a revelation this time around.  John Thomson’s compere is unflinchingly earnest in his curation of various jazz musicians’ backstories, delighting in their hilarious-yet-subtle made-up names (hello, Toast Of London), before throwing with real enthusiasm to the stage where something terrible always unfolds, yet with every artist believing they are a heaven-sent gift to the music scene and the world in general, all conveyed through the medium of the rest of the cast messing about.  There’s an interpretative dance where you can just see Caroline Aherne (princess of The Royle Family) having the time of her life, channelling every pretentious performer she’s probably had the displeasure of coming across.  It’s at this point there’s a great moment of self-reference when the amazing Tom Bola and Jack Pot waddle into shot with their creepy dance.  I think about them all the time and have recently taken to whatsapping friends a video of me laughing along to this without any preceding explanation.

The two first appear in a sketch from Chanel 9, the brightly coloured pastiche of foreign telly, set in the scorching hot Republicca Democratia Militaria.  While it feels a bit Brexit-y and jingoistic these days, the sleaze of the presenters, the chaotic unfathomable action of the shows and the superbly coined and indecipherable language are all so well observed that you really do have the impression of having switched on the TV in a Spanish hotel room.  The linguist in me immediately starts decoding to find units of meaning, relishing in each Chris Waddle as much as every sminky pinky.  The awards show must have busted the budget, but it’s the lottery numbers that take me to my favourite farcical territory, with the multisyllabic word for five pushing the very boundaries of credibility, yet still erring on the side of plausibility.

Call me simple, but sometimes the repeatability is exactly what the fragile mind needs in comedy.  I’m going to channel my inner Simon Day with a “someone’s sitting there, mate” at the next opportunity.  I still maintain that every one of Jessie’s Diets and Fashion Tips is superbly written, and brought to life as an individual and unique performance by Mark Williams.  I didn’t even realise my habit of saying “no offence” in a South African accent after something offensive is generated by an Arabella Weir character.  Inevitably, I do need to question how well everything has aged, as it mostly, and shoot me if I am wrong, seems ok.  Upper class superciliousness and affectation seem to be The Fast Show’s target for its most extensive ruthlessness.  A few other lines have become a bit dud as our attitudes have improved, but I think the things we now deem sexist were in fact highlighting our imbalanced expectations from women, from “does my bum look big in this?” to the competent female employees who turn into simpering idiots at the first sight of a man.

I have to mention Paul Whitehouse, even if just to make it clear that my sister and I still whisper to each other “you ain’t seen me, right?” and Charlie Higson as Johnny Nice Painter, because we two siblings still re-enact the moments he finally utters the word black and asks mother why we must stick pins in our eyes.  Even all those years ago, some of the humour is eerily prescient, with Sir Geoffrey Norman MP a spot-on rendering of today’s chinless Tory, refusing to accept any assessment of reality by simply shouting nooooo.  I’d like to end outrageously by claiming The Fast Show invented humour as I now know and love it.  From the crude, such as the couple who have to pause briefly to explain that they’ve “just come” in inopportune circumstances, to the uncanny depiction of my childhood, as shown in the sketch which I now know is called The Hurried Poor, where a family constantly run about with too much luggage while the dad shouts “come on!”, the breadth of The Fast Show is as much a part of its charm as each sketch’s brevity.  I laughed then, and I laugh now.  Which was nice.

Call My Agent! (Dix Pour Cent)

There’s nothing smugger than asking friends what foreign language programme they’re enjoying currently, only for them to stare back blankly, forced to reveal they don’t like things with subtitles.  I’ve been banging on about Call My Agent! to anyone who’ll listen for the last few weeks, acting like some sort of unappointed Walter Presents in my attempts to make everyone watch it.  Sure, the smugness has been advantageous bycatch (a phrase borrowed from the harrowing Netflix documentary Seaspiracy), but I’ve genuinely enjoyed my hour an evening with Paris’s craziest talent agency, so there’s been a touch of altruism in my evangelising.  I’ve already bored everyone here with my inconsistent keepings-up with the French language, covered in my post on Lupin, but Call My Agent! actually came into my life following a flurry of articles on the Guardian extolling the show’s virtues.  Suddenly, I was the recipient of smugness, unable to nod knowingly as I read the journalists’ words celebrating a secret club of enlightened British folk who enjoyed comedy dramas that were almost too French to function.  I didn’t want the Guardian thinking I can’t keep up, so off I went.

Let’s start with the premise: bienvenue chez ASK.  Agence Samuel Kerr is a top-flight acting agency in Paris, representing all the biggest names in the French film industry.  I’ll stop you there if you can’t actually name any French actors or if you didn’t know there was a French film industry.  There are a lot of the former and plenty of the latter – don’t give me an excuse to be even smugger!  Our pilot episode introduces us to the four key agents that run the show, cruelling letting their boss and the agency’s namesake expire during a rare stretch of annual leave, meaning that four egotistical workaholics are about to find out it’s not so easy keeping France’s flightiest thespians on their books when to do so involves sacrificing their own happiness to see to their every whim.  Enabling and hindering them in equal measure is a team of assistants, papering over cracks, often of their own making, in order to solve that episode’s désastre.

You’ll come to adore the characters pretty quickly.  From Andréa’s extreme sarcasm to Arlette’s extreme honesty, via the relief that Gabriel does sometimes get a haircut and Mathias nearly always, eventually, somehow, sort of does the right thing.  Agents aside, though, I’m here for the assistants.  We’ve given all the best lines to Hervé, our sympathies lie with Camille as Mathias’s illegitimate daughter, Sofia injects a sense of fun and Noémie steals every scene with her madcap and manic antics.  All of them, in true French style, fly off the handle and deliver expletive-laden abuse at the slightest inconvenience.  This doesn’t seem to be a sackable offence in the workplace.  Rampant door-slamming is also positively encouraged, so sign me up.

With such a rich cast, you almost don’t need the show’s other main feature: A-list guest stars.  Just as Extras built each instalment around sending up the public persona of a household name, Call My Agent! does exactly the same thing.  I’ll admit to not recognising every big name to cross the threshold of ASK with unreasonable demands, but you can tell they’re really enjoying entering into the sense of fun, and who am I to deny them a nice day out?  But, dare I say it, I almost don’t need them…  It must be the uncultured Brit in me, so if you’ve recognised each one of them, caught all the references to classic French films (Amélie doesn’t count) then feel free to smug it all over muggins here.  My other slight adjustment at first was the episode length – clocking in nearer an hour, I always felt I was done ten minutes prior.  But by the time I was fully invested in seasons two, three and four, I ended up feeling wishes that it would never end.

Fans of silliness will fare well here, but given our Gallic cultural influence, it’s more of a sexy silliness.  There’s surprise nudity, as our neighbours across the Channel take a far less prudish approach to the female nipple, but snogging seems to be banned.  Any kissing is reduced to lengthy pecking which rings ever so slightly false when there’s so much passion elsewhere.  This is the joy of watching something from another culture: it’s not for you.  Much discussion takes place about fathers officially recognising their progeny, not just Camille, but also Andréa and Colette’s new-born.  I assume this is a piece of very efficient legislation we don’t have here, no different to having to cope with people paying for medical treatment in US dramas when we’ve got the trusty old NHS here funded by weekly clapping.

On that note, as we slide out of lockdown, you could do worse for escapism with Call My Agent!  Paris looks its best, but even in the drizzle, you’ll be itching to catch the train there, just so a waiter can be rude at your attempts to speak the language or you can be run down by Gabriel on his moped.  Most enduring of all, though, is the signature theme tune, oscillating through storylines with all the power of the music in Succession, elevating our sexy silliness to something a bit more artistic.

So, read along with Paris’s best agents, or, find your GCSE, A-Level and actual degree in French returning episode by episode so that, by the end, you’re suddenly able to meet a friend and spend the whole afternoon talking French after a gap of a decade.  Educational, and fun!  On that note, do be warned of the classic gopping translation of tu and vous.  English doesn’t distinguish by politeness between forms of the pronoun, you (and we only have one if you discount the archaic thou).  But in every French adult relationship, parties must elect to switch from the formal vous to the more LOL tu.  This is artfully done by using the verbs tutoyer and vouvoyer, but in the subtitles you simply have cast members saying “Hey, shall we be familiar with each other now?”  Call My Agent!, with a fifth series now promised after claiming the fourth would be the last, you can be familiar with me all you want.

The Simpsons (Seasons Six To Ten)

Since my last post on The Simpsons, in which I covered my stupid opinions on the first five series, as well as how the show came into my life in the first place, my loyal readers have been crying out for me to continue my ramblings and share opinions on subsequent instalments of the yellow family’s adventures.  So here we are, doing The Simpsons again, but make it seasons six to ten.  You might be asking yourself how I got through five sequences of around 25 episodes in under four weeks, but that’s one of the good things about lockdown.  There’s nothing else to do.  I let an episode roll while I lounge on the sofa with a morning coffee before I log on to the laptop for a bit of working from home.  A couple more play over lunchtime when I briefly step away from the laptop to eat some food that I have to make at home in my own kitchen, and then tidy up afterwards as well.  And finally, once I am finished with the laptop for the day, I step away to eat dinner, in the same room I have been in the whole time, only this time I play some more Simpsons episodes, eyes on the animation while I shovel in another home-prepped meal.  Don’t worry, my actual evenings, spent watching more telly (in the same room, guys), are filled with more adult and aspirational boxsets, like Fargo or Lupin.  I’m not a savage that simply canes hundreds of instalments of the same thing.

Airing between 1994 and 1999, this is what I shall deem The Simpsons’ sophomore years.  Let’s be honest, I only watched these many years later, although I do recall we did actually as a family finally get Sky at one point and for a few expensive years we did watch premier episodes in real time.  I remember the Mayored To The Mob episode being trailed so endlessly that watching it live became an involuntary inevitability.  Worldwide, The Simpsons’ incomparable cultural influence was well established and undeniable.  They had the near perfect storytelling of the vintage seasons to build upon, heritage with the perfect balance of humour and heart and, goodwill surrounding their beloved characters.  Everyone wanted to know what was happening in Springfield.  Indeed, these are some of the absolute classic episodes, but their density among lesser instalments decreases with each progression from one series to the next.  From Lemon Of Troy and Homer The Great’s terrific heights, we slide down a slippery slope of relying on tropes that extinguish the original charm with repetition and unsatisfactory plotting.

Let’s just remind ourselves that I have no legitimate position from which to criticise any of this.  These series are still some of the best TV committed to my eyeballs.  Some sequences I have seen countless times yet they still bring irresistible amusement (such as all of Das Bus).  It’s only as a fan and through this slightly academic process of re-watching that I have been able to pinpoint where things began to lose their shine for me.  We shall go through each one in turn, exceeding only Comic Book Guy for geeky irrelevance.

Firstly, Homer has now become nothing but stupid.  Not just a bit silly, but utterly and unforgivably reckless.  When he is slightly childlike, yet ultimately sacrifices to put his family first, as in You Only Move Twice, he is at his best.  Or in The Joy Of Sect, where his impenetrability offsets cultish earnestness, playing him for laughs is an utter joy.  But when he’s repeatedly ruining Bart and Lisa’s lives, it starts to grate.  Often, he’s a foil to both sides of an argument, as in The Cartridge Family, but his actions veer into unpardonable territory.  He was always preferable as an everyman family man that at least had some, if only modest, aspirations.  This is why he’s always my least favourite character.

Compounding this is an increase in far-fetchedness.  The Simpsons are at their best dealing with the banal – literally managing the household budget or coping with the education system.  But to eke out plot, they have to go to new places or become new things.  Marge and Homer embark on CV-busting dalliances with any and every career:  Homer becomes a carny, Marge becomes a policewoman, Homer becomes a bodyguard, Marge becomes an estate agent, repeat to fade.  Even Bart and Lisa dabble in broadcasting, military academies and ice hockey.  As a cartoon, we have to return everything to how it was at the start, but, as we move on from season six, our routes to getting there become increasingly extreme.  By series seven, we’re having to take an epic approach, and this just isn’t the Evergreen Terrace I want to hang out on.

What makes this more curious is that The Simpsons have always had an outlet to exercise and exorcise nonsense: the Treehouse Of Horrors specials.  In fact, my favourite ever Simpsons story is The Genesis Tub, found in series eight’s anthology (actually instalment number VII), where Lisa accidentally creates life for a science fair.  The very meaning of our existence is lampooned, all while taking aim at Lutherans and teacher assessment.  With the rules out the window for these seasonal specials, couldn’t the standard episodes have retained more realism?  My preference for nuclear family humdrum is probably just a personal matter, but the more celeb cameos (playing themselves), the more destination episodes (New York, Australia, Japan) and the more Homer embraces and then abandons a different lifestyle, the less original charm remains, even though each episode still offers many moments of brilliance.

I don’t think I’m even whingeing about inconsistency.  I’m just a viewer, setting up a mythology in my mind about what rules a show should play by, applying those rules to the world without telling anyone, and then expecting something else to what I’m being offered.  Let’s end on a moment I had clean forgotten but which surprised me with its poignancy and hope to such an extent that my spine tingled.  In ’Round Springfield, Lisa says goodbye to Bleeding Gums Murphy.  He was never a popular character, but he represents to her a certain metropolitan quality that’s lacking in Springfield.  The show deals with loneliness, being remembered, and family.  Lisa only comes across her hero because of her brother absorbing her parents’ attention.  Appearing to her after his death, Bleeding Gums reprises the song Jazzman with Lisa, and I’ll have to admit here that it brought a tear to my eye.  I don’t even know why.  So, despite some imperfections, The Simpsons can still touch me all these years later.

 

Fargo

“Whatcha got there, Margie?” seems like a strange choice for the most memorable line from the 1996 film, Fargo.  A lot of crime goes on in that story, all against the backdrop of the snowy Minnesota landscape, but it’s the charming local accents and the banal interest in what people are having for their meals that has stayed with me to this day.  That said, I only saw the film during my university years in the early 2000s, during a period in which I felt the best way to round out my terrible personality was to make sure I had seen all those classic films people talk about.  Back in the days of DVDs, Fargo was easily procured from a now-defunct online rental company, viewed on a laptop intended for academic support, and sat through with an attention span that now seems alien as these were also the days that predated smartphones and their irresistible whispers of distraction when you are trying to concentrate on absolutely anything at all.

Fast forward to 2014 and, a mere 18 years after the film’s release, a TV spin off emerges.  I’ve chosen the word spin off, as it really cheapens the programme, making it clear where the quality lies in this originator-progeny relationship.  Pah, I thought to myself, I shan’t ever be watching that.  But join me, if you will, in 2021.  More advanced in age, with greater maturity and self-assurance than my student self from decades before, I was no longer pursuing self-betterment through lists of must-see movies.  Oh no, I was looking at the IMDb list of top-rated television programmes.  And this is called growth.  There, at 38 (rankings may change over time) and with a score of 8.9/10, was the previously ignored Fargo TV series.  Well, this omission needed rectifying.  What kind of wildly successful TV blog would this be if, while having sat through the vast majority of top scorers (don’t worry, they’re all covered here, guys, from Rick & Morty to Our Planet) I allowed this oversight to continue?  And lo, thanks to Netflix, three quarters of my neglect has been rectified.

From my vantage point of having seen three of Fargo’s four seasons, I shall now offload all my thoughts and opinions for you to read.  Unfortunately the fourth series emerged while I was otherwise preoccupied and I haven’t been able to track it down on a platform, so we’ll just pretend we don’t care (though I truly do as it looks like a ripping period production with casting that finally offsets Fargo’s overwhelming whiteness).  But what I can say is that those first three outings of this boxset are cracking viewing to put in front of your face – how wrong I was about not expecting much from the TV version of a film.  What’s more, the stellar cast just goes to show how far TV has come in taking on cinema as the home of the big acting name or indeed of the quality production.

Each episode of Fargo is exquisitely crafted.  From the first frame, care and attention has been taken over every detail, as if all of it is a pilot that wants you to like it.  It’s how telly should be.  This is made all the more impressive by the fact that so much of it is shot in temperatures below freezing, as I can only imagine cameramen wanting to get out of the cold and therefore not really caring a toss.  I also like to think of everyone slipping over in the ice during the outtakes.  Not because I wish them ill, but because I am the sort of person that slips in ice, so I might as well assume it’s a universal quality.  One curious feature of our storytelling is that every instalment is preceded by a statement that the events are based on a true story, but that names have been changed to protect identities.  There’s no way of checking this as I simply cannot be bothered to type it into the internet, so again, we can just sit with it, wondering if we believe it, wondering if it matters, before moving on.

It’s pertinent, though, as the plots in Fargo are delightfully far-fetched.  To me, this is proof of veracity.  Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.  Right?  Each series tracks over its ten episodes a wholly different storyline.  This means you’ll need to jettison an old cast and get to know a new one.  Gradually, hints of how these worlds and timelines connect are revealed, with series two’s seventies setting engendering an aftermath that plays back into the first series, which in turn has repercussions on the third.  May I one day know how this comes to bear on the fourth.

Playing out over the real towns of Minnesota and the Dakotas, our cast is often split into three camps.  We have heroes, often nice folk with above-average yet underappreciated ability in their jobs, normally law enforcement, who have to put up with the nonsense that swirls around them.  These are our Margies, carrying a torch of affection over from our original film.  Then we have our malcontents.  Their morals are often dubious, yet we can’t resist rooting for them.  They’ve faced hardship and come out stronger, but their drive and effort often lead to their own downfalls.  And then we have some great straight-up baddies, doling out evil willy nilly, creating the murderous rampages and bloodstains in the snow that are required to propel much of the plot forward.

I’d venture to describe Fargo as gently soothing, even though it’s awash in ultraviolence.  Somehow, the gruesome gore is easy to forgive, maybe because it’s framed in a higher art form.  We have a top-notch ratio of intrigue resolution to new curiosity establishment in each episode, as well as exemplary season finale crescendoing that resulted in my own patented viewing strategy: episodes nine and ten of each series had to be back-to-backed simply because I would get so excited (what a sad little life, Jane).  I typically only ever watch one instalment of a drama at a time so it doesn’t become wallpaper, but don’t worry if you have an alternative approach – it just means I am better than you.

So come all and feast upon this ensemble masterpiece.  You’ll revel at whatshisface off that film once and whoshername that used to be in thingy.  Not everyone masters the accent as successfully as others, and all the “oh yah”s and “ok then”s are a crucial part of our charm requirements, but each player has a great time with their character.  There’s bold storytelling as far as the eye can see, and dusting everything else in snow covers a variety of other flaws that I simply didn’t notice.  So take a trip via your screen of choice to this slice of the USA and treat yourself to some of the nicest murder stories ever known.