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.

 

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.

Bridgerton

I don’t know how they do it, but Netflix always seem to know just what we need.  It’s Christmas Day 2020.  Everyone is coming to terms with substantial compromises to their celebrations, potentially stranded far from home by following the whiplashing advice from the old boys’ club running our government.  The weather is crap, the year is being wished over, and little do we know, the next one is going to be getting off to the most underwhelming of starts.  And pow, Netflix drops the most optimised dollop of delicious escapism right in front of our eyeballs.  That’s right, this week we’re doing Bridgerton.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to know that I was very late to this party.  Spirited away to my parents’ just before London was turned into an inescapable fortress, their loyalty to live TV had driven me away into my Louis Theroux documentaries.  Returning to my home and work (which have now been the same place for nearly a year – I can’t confirm if I will ever wear underpants again), everyone was talking about one thing: Bridgerton.  I resisted its call.  I didn’t need to follow the herd.  I was deep in other series (wondering if The Sopranos would ever end).  Its mania would pass.  But then, instead, it snowballed.  Every other Guardian article (I ignore all other news – no surprises there) was about its music or its fashion.  It was revealed as the most watched Netflix production.  My interest was piqued.  Then everyone chuckled at the explicit sexual content and, lo and behold, I was sold.

The eight episodes are based on the first in a series of novels that follow the fictional Bridgerton family.  Named alphabetically, they’re an A to Z (well, an Anthony to Hyacinth) of upper-class London society in 1813.  We’re with them for a social season, from the young ladies’ debuts through weeks and weeks of balls balls balls until a final climax that sees all the lords and such retire back to their country piles.  Here’s the first reason Bridgerton’s timing are spot on: all these well-attended events are spectacles we can only dream of.  Right now, a good day out is a mask-clad whiz round the supermarket.  A lavish night of dancing and drinking, dressed up to the nines, is as alien to us as most of the social conventions of nineteenth-century Britain, but it is so richly and colourfully brought to life on screen that it has the power to fill that part of our lives that is so sorely lacking.  There’s even a nod to our present day, with the string quartets treating us to classical interpretations of modern pop songs.

While we’re at it, the costumes are a second well-tuned route for vicarious living.  Most of us are now set in our leisurewear (please see earlier comment about underpants), but the lords and ladies of Bridgerton are never out of excuses to push the sartorial boat out.  Even the discomfort of very tight breeches or having your cleavage shoved up beyond your clavicle offers a welcome break to shuffling about our homes in slippers and hoodies, with the exception of the Featheringtons’ sickly colour palette.

Thirdly, the show is on the pulse of our enthusiasm for diversity, putting black Georgians front and centre.  No need to explain, no indulgence of anyone feeling threatened; it’s just a great time.  Any protest with reference to historical accuracy is farcical, and probably from the same people who wanted The Crown accompanied by trigger warnings.  Some people simply don’t deserve content this entertaining.

But lastly, it is just the story for the moment.  In a foreign world of ladies’ reputations, archaic courtship and primogeniture, there is a welcome frivolity to the various love stories.  Bosoms heave, sideburns protrude, and eyes are made across the ballroom, and we’re unable to resist caring about girls making a good match and marrying for love.  Some jeopardy is clunkily contrived, with Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey – a key player from W1A and Crashing) going from key barrier to his sister’s happiness to someone without quite enough to do, and the endless speculation regarding the real identity of Lady Whistledown (Gossip Girl gone Georgian) lacking compelling consequence.  But once the love making starts, we’re miles away from the grit and realism of something like Normal People and drinking in every romantic thrust of some good old-fashioned shagging.  You don’t get that in Downton Abbey.  Yet the shenanigans don’t feel gratuitous – they’re just another layer of fun in all the stories.  More remarkable is the sheer size of the cast, with every peripheral player committing wholeheartedly from the start, gradually coming forward as fully formed characters as the episodes progress.

Sure, the script could have done with one more proof-read to tighten the lines beyond the point of simply aping how people probably spoke in the olden days, and maybe some of the cast are guilty of doing theatre acting with their shouting and enunciating, but there’s little to fault with Bridgerton if you’re looking for a hearty romp.  I would even go as far to prescribe this as self-care at a time when reasons to be cheerful may appear to be lacking.  Switch off the 5pm briefing when we get put into surprise tier 22 and take yourself off to the world created by Julia Quinn and realised by Shonda Rhimes (How To Get Away With Murder, among many other things).  It’s a treat we all deserve, and it’s come at just the right time.

I Hate Suzie

Something terrible happened towards the end of last year.  As a liberal hipster, my easily distracted thumb was pottering around on the Guardian app and I came across an article counting down the top 50 TV shows of 2020.  Like you, I did wonder for a moment why I hadn’t been asked to write it, but then realised I am not actually a professional journalist.  But, as an amateur connoisseur of boxsets, I quickly clicked it and read it, anxious to see whether I could nod in reassuring agreement or reel dramatically at their choices.  Naturally, in first place we had I May Destroy You.  Well done me; I had watched this.  But, at number two, was I Hate Suzie.  For shame, I had never found the promos of this show appealing.  I had in fact ignored a friend’s recommendation to try it, even though he was the same rascal that turned me on to my beloved Industry.  With lockdown going on forever, I made my way through its eight episodes on Sky Boxsets.

Billie Piper is as much a part of British culture as xenophobic newspaper headlines and voting in comedy prime ministers.  A massive popstar when I was in secondary school, she purveyed pop songs so cheesy and catchy that we laughed derisively about how uncool she was.  We were much cooler, being obscure, untalented children and all.  Until recently, though, my household did contain a CD single of Honey To The Bee, an underrated subsequent release of hers that almost references my surname.  It might still be around here somewhere.  But, thanks to my own perception of her as a singer, I never engaged with any of her acting up till now.  Secret Diary Of A Call Girl was a mainstay of pre-Love Island ITV2, but not of my viewing schedule.  Yet my friend, and the Guardian write-up, promised something worth investigating.  As a sufferer of FOMOIEOYCRL (fear of missing out in end-of-year cultural ranking lists), the completionist in me was prepared to embrace Billie and welcome a bit of Piper back into my life.  Because I wanted to.

Our premise is eerily similar to Piper’s own real-life trajectory.  She plays Suzie Pickles, a national sweetheart shot to fame on a reality TV singing show (hello X Factor) before transitioning into a TV actress.  She’s one of those people in the magazines and on the gossip websites and just doing this now.  Only the last thing she’s just done, putting at risk her entire career, is suffer a leak of private, explicit photos to the media.  Sadly, the shots are not a solo performance and her accompaniment comes in the form of an extramarital phallus, so there’s all that to deal with as well.  Each whirlwind instalment focuses on a single one of the eight stages in Pickles’ response to the trauma.

In the process, Piper and co-creator (and full writer) Lucy Prebble (as previously collaborated with on Secret Diary Of A Call Girl) use the unfolding disasters to provide deliciously inventive commentary on a huge number of our daily staples: the treatment of women, motherhood, fame, disability, loneliness, sexuality and so on.  From the audible diarrhoea-induing first discovery of the pics to a proliferation of meltdowns, via awkward family events (the wedding of Pickles’ sister is outrageous and universal at the same time), frustrated self-loving (for more or less a whole episode) and the ripest sending-up of celebrity culture, Piper’s performance is everything.  The camera often just gives us all that face and it becomes our anchor in the madness, trapping us with Pickles in her nightmare.

Yet more intriguing is her agent and best friend, Naomi (Leila Farzad).  The dynamics of their relationship creak under years of irreconcilable imbalance until we scream at Naomi to respect herself and prioritise her own needs.  Naomi gives one of the best ever shutdowns to casual, micro-aggressive racism I have ever seen, but her wronging by men knows no end (that train journey).  Pickles’ husband is himself human collateral in the fallout.  Daniel Ings (one of the joys from W1A) is exasperated as Cob, eagerly weaponizing their deaf son to his advantage yet less than keen to lose the perks of having a famous wife.  Even with her success, it is he, as the man, who expects to be more important in everything that happens.

I admit to lacking patience with some episodes, but I am learning to love this freewheeling style (as seen in I May Destroy You) where creativity and storytelling gang up not to care about what you’re expecting.  By the final scene of the final episode, my sympathy for Suzie Pickles was at its peak.  I had never hated her and I don’t know who did.  Having it all is simply another thing to feel lonely in spite of, only it emphasises the unjustifiability of that loneliness, so you feel even lonelier.  Does Suzie’s preoccupation with herself drive others away, or do they give up on her when she doesn’t give them what they think they need?  I still can’t work it out.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond

A lot of things surprised me in 2020.  The pandemic was one thing, chuckled about as some distant news story on a ski holiday with doctor pals in January and then ruining things throughout the rest of the year and beyond.  In August, I broke my hand on a barbell, which was in itself a nasty surprise, especially as I was in a cast during a number of weeks when gyms actually were open.  But also on that list of unexpected events is the appearance of a second spin-off programme from the universe of The Walking Dead.  There was me, one evening during some of lockdown, scrolling through my screening platforms and strategising to decide what to watch so I could join in with all the chatter and ensure a completed boxset each week so I can keep up with these nonsensical weekly posts.  Picking my way through Amazon Prime with low expectations, wondering if Jeff Bezos really needs any more money off me in this day and age, and there, nestled among subsequent series of Mr Robot and The Man In The High Castle that I will never sit through, was the recognisable font of The Walking Dead.  But, this wasn’t in the characteristic dark hues I normally associate with this horror series.  It was bright and neon, exciting and new.  I didn’t need to think twice before clicking play on The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

We’ve discussed the importance of the colon here before.  And no, I’m not talking about the large intestine (shout out, IBS sufferers).  I’m on about those two dots you sometimes see between words.  In TV shows, they separate an original title from its spin-off progeny.  You know, like Narcos and Narcos: Mexico.  Such a tiddly pair of punctuation points can carry a very large responsibility.  If you’re an impassioned fan of the original show, then this extra facet better be a welcome addition rather than an embarrassing dilution.  High hopes were had.  The Walking Dead, abandoned by many, remains my definitive zombie boxset.  Despite running for so many series, it always maintains its edge in finding new ways to bring to life the horrors of an ongoing undead apocalypse.  Its companion show, Fear The Walking Dead, was one of the first programmes I ever wrote about here and itself attained similar heights to its originator.  To recap, then, I had high hopes.  I have now written some paragraphs about my disappoint.

Just One More Episode was meant to be an exercise in boxset worship, but it’s developed a side hustle as the internet’s definitive home of zombie TV content blogging, so it’s only fair I speak frankly about World Beyond.  What made those hopes all the higher was the interesting angle of the concept.  With the initial outbreak of walkers now so far in the past of The Walking Dead’s universe, World Beyond would tell the stories of the first generation to come of age since the end of the world (a bit like the future youth of the UK now we’ve been dragged out the EU).  Our protagonists are enjoying their teenage years at the Campus Colony, a university-based satellite settlement of a grander network of civilisation that has sprung up.  For me, simply seeing how life is conducted there would be compelling enough, but this would clearly lack any real jeopardy.  Cue the Civic Republic, a more enigmatic political entity with whom our heroes’ community is forging a new relationship.  Hope and Iris are sisters whose father has gone to lend his academic skills to the Civic Republic but, suspecting him to be in danger, they sneak out of their safety bubble and embark on a journey across the devastated USA to rescue him.

So, we’re dealing with sheltered teens here.  Understandably, they’re not used to brain-injuring countless walkers while out and about.  In fact, they’re so pathetic, they tend to scream and lie down, allowing a zombie to get on top of them and try to bite them, only for an adult to have to come along and sort them out.  How they avoid getting bitten is beyond me, but this not only makes the walkers look like a non-threat, it makes it hard to respect our heroes.  By its very nature, the most kick-arse Walking Dead characters are the ones that can handle themselves around zombies with skill and flair.  Sure, the kids in our ragtag gang of rescuers all have the comic book-inspired looks we would expect, clutching weapons that give their character a signature or dressed individually to showcase that they’re hard as nails/troubled/a bit intellectual.  But it’s all mouth and no trousers.

Then there’s the fact they’re on a voyage.  Our setting is therefore a stream of southern scenes that don’t really ever establish a sense of place and theme.  Each season of The Walking Dead has a settlement at its heart, but in World Beyond we stumble from one tire fire to the next disaster, giving the episodes a cumulative effect of never really going anywhere.  We know Hope and Iris’s dad isn’t going to be rescued until things have been drawn right out.  This diminishes the tension and, ironically for Hope, drives in a feeling of hopelessness you can’t really escape.

The Civic Republic itself is squandered as a source of intrigue.  Too over the top to be that credible, yet too mysterious to be a true threat, they top and tail this first season of ten episodes in a way that makes you wonder if they’ve been forgotten.  There’s no real reason for them to be so sinister beyond the well-established concept that, even in a zombie apocalypse, humans will always be the biggest monsters.  We almost rush through any substantial grounding of the political and civil landscape to focus on the inner emotions of our teen stars, but watching them come to terms with smashing the head in of their first zombie of a multi-episode character arc just isn’t what bloodthirsty Walking Dead fans are looking for.  Naturally, the only way to script such psychological storytelling is with clichés, driving down the show’s originality score even further.

You have to be cruel to be kind, so let’s hope the second series finds some edge, otherwise this could be the beginning of the end for a character universe that has compelled so many viewers up till now to follow its adventures.  My hunger, quite literally, for zombies, means I will sit through this stuff, but treat yourself to something like Black Summer or Kingdom (킹덤) if you’re serious about living your life under the constant threat of the dead coming to life and eating you.  You never know what 2021 might bring.