We’re only half-done, 3 of 6 hour-longs, but this is a CRACKIN’ murder-slash-political thriller, witty and tense and very well-played. Great entertainment.
We’re only half-done, 3 of 6 hour-longs, but this is a CRACKIN’ murder-slash-political thriller, witty and tense and very well-played. Great entertainment.
Yes, excellent! At six hours it is a bit padded (the first two and the last two eps are the best). And I could probably have done without a certain romance and a certain caricature of a gay man, BUT . . . this is one entertaining crime thriller that makes journalism dead sexy (the upcoming film version could be, if handled correctly, All the President’s Men for the 21st century). Episode five, in particular, is a nail biter; one of the better hours of television I’ve ever seen. You can download it over at The Box.biz, a pretty good site for British television shows, and the download time was quite fast, but it is also available on DVD. Bill Nighy is wonderfully wry and for a political thriller this is one of the funniest series I’ve seen in some time. It’s ability to juggle complex tonal shifts (with the rare and unfortunate foray into domestic melodrama) is quite remarkable. This is the series that got David Yates (I think that’s the director’s name) his gig with the Harry Potter films and you can really see his command over the visual and temporal dynamics evolve over the six hours. Worth the effort.
http://thebox.bz
So, we liked this series so much I went digging ’round imdb about the creator/writer, and we’ve been checking out other of his works — and just watched the first half of a great, funny soap-opera called Shameless, set on a Manchester estate, involving a terribly im/amoral family (motherless, with a drunk dissolute barely-present dad, and an array of kids with various peccadilloes criminal, sexual, and/or psychological). It’s apparently quasi-autobiographical, if wikipedia’s to be believed, and it’s definitely generous and great fun to watch.
We watched a few episodes of Shameless. Soap opera is right. I rented it thinking it would be a comedy, but it’s not that. “Great fun to watch” isn’t a phrase I’d readily use on it, and I returned the disc before getting through all of the episodes on there. I was pleasantly surprised I guess, but after three episodes I’d felt I’d had enough.
i could have done without the gay-man-as-comic-relief bit, too, but i did like the domestic romance.
[SPOILER]
i think it makes cal’s drama, and his tragedy, more poignant. i don’t think it’s entirely convincing, but… when at the end cal loses the big story and the object of his love at the same time, all his previous running around and being in control come crashing down on him and you both.