Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Let’s finish the job.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

You cannot shame the shameless.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

We still have time to mess this up!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

The words do not have to be perfect.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

You are here: Home / Guest Posts / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – We’re Back!

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – We’re Back!

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.  We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – We're Back!

After three months in a maximum security facility working like crazy on a writing project, recharging my aging batteries, and watching my kid grow up too fast, we’re back with Medium Cool. I’ve been lurking on some of the threads (especially where Betty and Mr. Mix ravage the anti-vaxx numbnuts), and it’s good to see the jackal pack in full cry.

For this first week back, let’s catch up. What have you been watching and reading, listening to or playing? I’ve seen some excellent TV recently and some good films, and I have a few books to recommend.

Starting next week, we’ll return to some more specific topics, and I might even give you some homework.

Reader Interactions

146Comments

  3. 3.

    MomSense

    Missed you, BG.  My heart is so full today.  My parents got to see my son’s band perform at a packed venue with everyone dancing and so into the music. I mean I got to get down on the dance floor with my stepmom.

  4. 4.

    BGinCHI

    We just started “Squid Game” last night (Netflix). Anyone watching it?

    It came highly recommended. It’s like a Korean Hunger Games, etc., but more grown up. Pilot episode starts slow, but once it gets going….damn. I’m hooked.

  7. 7.

    BGinCHI

    @MomSense: I love it!

    Photos of the boogying might be a good visual for MC. Just sayin’…..

    What’s his band’s name? This is a crucial question for me.

  10. 10.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    Just read The Plot from the library, after being the 53rd person in the Hold line. Pretty good, but not great, despite all the hype. I didn’t figure out the main twist early, but I was suspicious of one character, which turned out to be a good call. Also just completed a Vera Stanhope mystery by Ann Cleeves, after getting hooked on Vera on PBS.  Brenda Blethyn is wonderful.  I also loved her in Pride and Prejudice (the one with Kiera Knightly), which was an excellent movie.

    TV: Mare of Easttown rocked. I was glad to see all the Emmys the program won. My husband and I are almost done watching Guilt on Masterpiece Mystery, and enjoying it a lot.

  11. 11.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Jaguar on Netflix was good.  Also, i am alternating between German and French mysteries on Prime.

  15. 15.

    BGinCHI

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
      We watched “The Defeated” (a pretty decent American/German hybrid, set just after the war ends, Berlin). The cast is much better than the writing/plot.

    And are about to start Ganglands (French), which I hear is excellent (Netflix).

    What shows would you recommend?

  18. 18.

    Tehanu

    I just finished re-reading all my Terry Pratchett books, except for about 4 or 5 I don’t have copies of. Such an awful shame he died at age 65 — I’m sure he had many more wonderful books in his head that we’ll never see.  Reading them all in a bunch was a good idea as I picked up on lots of connections within the series I’d previously missed.

  21. 21.

    MattF

    Watched the first few episodes of Foundation on Apple+. Not bad, but it’s unclear whether they will solve the dilemma of how to make a narrative hold together without really having a protagonist. Having all the Emperor Cleons be clones is clever, though. But we shall see.

  23. 23.

    Craig

    @BGinCHI: going to start watching Squid Game tonight. Psyched cause an old friend is in it. He’s The White Guy in a bunch of bit parts in a bunch of recent Korean movies and TV. It’s been fun watching his career take off since he moved to Seoul. I think he wears a big gold mask in this one.

  24. 24.

    BGinCHI

    I know we’ve talked about the Murderbot series of books (novellas and one novel), but just want to reiterate how much I loved them, now that I’m all the way through.

    The novel (#5, Network Effect) is, I think, a masterpiece. I was completely enthralled by it. Wells is really at the top of her game there.

    What a great, great series.

  27. 27.

    BGinCHI

    @MattF: ​
      I made it through the first episode, barely. But then 15 minutes into episode 2 that was it for me. Too languid and unfocused. Not great character-building, for me.

    I wanted to like it, but there’s too much content elsewhere to stick with something I can’t get into. Jared Harris is great, btw.

  30. 30.

    Delk

    The third episode of the 22nd season of Midsomer Murders premiered last week on Acorn. Fun ‘trapped on an island’ episode with some great guest appearances.
    Been watching The Mire on Netflix. It’s Polish language and I’m learning Polish so I’ve been playing it with and without subtitles.
    Anyone watching Midnight Mass?
    BG: we ate at Calo’s last month. Haven’t been there in ages.

  33. 33.

    BGinCHI

    @MattF: I knew about it but still haven’t read it. I’m kind of saving it for when I REALLY need a fix (so to speak).

  34. 34.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    I am here to report that at least one 11 month old baby LOVES Never Mind The Bollocks.

  36. 36.

    mali muso

    Sped through season 1 of Ted Lasso and am now watching each new episode as it drops. For my mileage, it has lived up to the hype. And the Great British Baking Show is back, so that’s good peaceful fun.

  37. 37.

    BGinCHI

    @Delk: ​
      Got Midnight Mass teed up too. Not sure about the horror elements, but I heard it’s good. Want to give it a try.

    You were in my hood! Calo’s still has some of that magic. Hey, you know what’s terrific is that new(ish) place that took over Jerry’s, just down (south) Clark on the same side as Calo’s. It’s called Fiyah. Sort of Middle Eastern, Israeli, Midi-style food. Good prices and really solid food.

  38. 38.

    Craig

    Welcome back, I really like this feature on Sunday.

    I read The Last Watch, and The Exiled Fleet, two books from JS Deers. Good sci-fi about what happens when the universe we think we understand changes the rules we thought we knew. Good solid characters, cool multi POV structure, believable physics (at least for this non physicist). Good, enjoyable reads.

  39. 39.

    BGinCHI

    @mali muso: We are definitely going to have a Ted Lasso MC very soon, since Season 2 is about to wrap.

    For the record, I LOVE Ted Lasso. The show and the man. As you’d guess, my favorite fucking character is Roy Kent.

  42. 42.

    Renie

    Succession on HBO is great and the 3rd season starts this month. I prefer to wait until all episodes air and then binge.

    You on Netflix also starts it’s third season October 15.

  43. 43.

    mali muso

    @BGinCHI: He’s here, he’s there, he’s every-fucking-where, Roy Kent, Roy Kent!

    Looking forward to seeing how they land the end of the season.

  44. 44.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @BGinCHI: ​
      In French: Art of Crime, Blood on the Docks, Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games (reworkings of AC’s stories set in 1960ish France, very stylish).

    In German: Anatomy of Evil, Murder by the Lake, The Weissensee Saga (I haven’t gotten to it yet, but Valdivia recommends it highly*).

    *She also recommends the original Belgian version of Professor T (I didn’t really get into it. Academics might get some vicarious amusement from the way he interacts with students. He obviously has tenure).

  45. 45.

    dmsilev

    @MattF: I’ve enjoyed it so far. The Foundation Trilogy was one of the first “serious” book series I read as a kid, so lots of good memories there. Not an easy thing to translate to the screen though considering the huge sweep of time involved and just the nature of the story. So far, anyway, it’s good enough that I’ll keep watching. If nothing else, whoever is doing the visual design for things like the Imperial Planet is very very good.

  47. 47.

    narya

    I’ve been rereading the Inspector Shan novels–I hadn’t read the last two, and I like to reread series when I’m catching up. Also: FINALLY started watching Ted Lasso (got a new phone, so a year of AppleTV+ free), I’m 7 episodes in, and I absolutely love it. I haven’t figured out how to stream to my TV (and I may not be able to do so), so have to watch on the laptop. And last night we watched the Michael Schumacher documentary on Netflix. (I follow F1, and we’ve also dipped into the F1 series on Netflix, which is quite good.)

  48. 48.

    Delk

    @BGinCHI: been going to Calo’s for almost 40 years! It was A LOT better than the last time I went but not even close to what it used to be. The free bread basket used to have pizza bread, garlic bread, cheese, and pepperoni. A whole meal for a broke student, lol.

  50. 50.

    billcinsd

    I’ve been reading The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science early on it is mostly a biography of his time at West Point and the issues he had with sort of adopted father

  51. 51.

    dm

    My current rave-to-friends book is Sixteen ways to defend a walled city, by KJ Parker. Imagine a narrator with the voice of Terry Pratchett’s Sam Vimes of the Watch, who is an ex-slave promoted (because his bridges don’t fall down) to be Colonel of the Corps of Engineers in a thinly-disguised Roman or Byzantine Empire.

    Orhan and his corps, having gotten themselves out of the way of angry bureaucrats by finishing a bridge in a remote corner of the local province, return to the capital city, only to discover that the army has been wiped out. The only thing standing between the barbarian hordes and the fall of the empire is them.

    Orhan uses his street smarts to get competing gangs from the city streets to pull together to defend the city. He recognizes talent and lets it flourish with the same skill that lets him find loop-holes in bureaucratic entanglements (or lets him tangle the bureaucrats long enough to be able to ask forgiveness rather than permission), all narrated with a cynical, wry humor. He’s also very lucky.

    There’s a sequel out — How to rule an empire (and get away with it) — narrated by the actor pressed into the role of emperor to keep the public unaware of the true (and believed-to-be Hero of the Defense) emperor’s demise, which is nearly as good.

  55. 55.

    prostratedragon

    Welcome back, BG!

    Poking around just now on Britbox I see there’s a series from the mid teens called Tales from Northumberland, a series of short programs hosted by Robson Green. They only have season 3, but it sounds interesting, especially for us Vera fans. Episode 6 is a trip down the Tyne.

  58. 58.

    MattF

    Also read Piranesi by Susannah Clarke. I gave up halfway through her previous novel, so I was dubious about trying the new one— but the reviews all said the new one was very different from the old one… and it was. A very unreliable narrator who took some getting used to, but I liked it a lot.

  59. 59.

    zhena gogolia

    New season of Grantchester starts tonight. We aren’t enthralled by the new star, but we’ll give it a chance again.

    I enjoyed Julie Delpy’s My Zoe (rent or buy on Amazon Prime), and not just because RA is in it. It’s very gripping. And when people speak Russian in it, they’re really speaking Russian!

    I broke down and joined Netflix so we’re catching up. We watched The Chair (totally inaccurate but Holland Taylor is hilarious and the romcom aspect is nice), and started The Crown last night. The Crown is really a star-studded wallow for us. I have really zero interest in learning any more about that family, but I love all these actors!

  61. 61.

    Craig

    Been reading Joe Abercrombie’s The Age of Madness trilogy. A continuation of his First Law world. Swords, barbarians, flesh eating Sorcerers, politics, wars. Great characters, great humour, fun, exciting stuff.

  62. 62.

    Steeplejack

    New season of Grantchester starting on PBS tonight. I’m a little lukewarm, because I think they sort of ran off the rails last season, but it’s been so long that I don’t remember clearly. I think maybe the housekeeper and the assistant gay vicar went a little nuts? Damn those British series with their long vacations!

    I have been going through Foyle’s War in chronological order, thoroughly enjoying it but also getting a better sense of the timeline. I first started watching it somewhere in the middle when it was first on and then circled back to the earlier episodes in reruns, so it was a bit jumbled for me, and I think there are a few episodes that I never did see.

    Going to do the same thing soon with The Venture Brothers, now that it’s on HBO Max, although there the issue is that I lost the thread in the later seasons.

    Rewatched Out of Sight (Soderbergh, Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, all-star supporting cast) and Ghost World (Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, Scarlett Johansson, directed by Terry Zwigoff), both from around the turn of the century. Both hold up very well.

  64. 64.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl: The same guy as last season. I guess this is really his third season, but I still think of him as “new.” He had a good episode with Nathaniel Parker as his father, but generally has been undistinguished.

  65. 65.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: My dad got my mom hooked on that.  He had watch a buch of it before he got her into it, so he rewatched.  I think they are about half a season from being caught up.

  66. 66.

    MattF

    And King Bullet, by Richard Kadrey. It’s the last of the Sandman Slim series, worth reading if you’ve read the previous dozen. And the whole series is good, although it kinda sags in the middle, IMO.

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    All right! I was hesitant to mention it, but MHz is very good. I got hooked when it was an actual channel on my cable system.

    Will put in a(nother) rave for the Italian series <em>Detective Montalbano</em>. (Should be “Inspector,” grr.) The first episode is a little slow, but after that it’s f’amazeballs.

  71. 71.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack:

    I think maybe the housekeeper and the assistant gay vicar went a little nuts? Damn those British series with their long vacations!

    Me too! I was just trying to remember where we are with Mrs. M. and Leonard, and I couldn’t really. I did watch the preview, and it looks as if Leonard is going to be blackmailed, which is tiresome.

  72. 72.

    raven

    @Omnes Omnibus: It’s hard tp believe it’s the 10th season. Besides the fact that the East London street scenes seem a little sterile we have really enjoyed it. I guess my wife being such a big breast feeding advocate makes it more special for us.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack: ​
      It has also been recommended to me. I find, though, that the French and German shows work better for me. Language-wise. I do not have to stare at the screen every second in case I miss a subtitle. Ten years of studying French and three and half years of living in Germany count for something.

  78. 78.

    Craig

    I really enjoyed the 3 seasons of Mr. Inbetween on Hulu. Aussie show about freelance tough guy who’ll do just about anything for money. He has an 10 year old daughter, an ex wife, and a brother with a neuro disease that leaves him fairly immobile. Really well written and acted by Scott Ryan, guy has a charming and terrifying smile. Surprising, and deftly side steps a lot of the cliches of this kind of TV.

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    Got it. Might have to watch a bit of the Brady/Belichick reunion. I’ve got PBS Passport, so I can catch it later.

  82. 82.

    raven

    You know those shows that you start and the suck but you watch them anyway because you’ve already invested time? Clickbait has Zoe Kazan and it sucked.

  84. 84.

    BGinCHI

    @MattF: ​
      Under 300 pages!

    I really liked J Strange & Norrell, parts of which were especially mind-blowing.

    I’ll give this a look. Thanks for the reminder!

  85. 85.

    Bex

    Read and loved Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford.  It was long-listed for the Booker Prize.  It’s about the V-2 attacks in London in WWII and what the lives of five children would have been like had they not been killed.  The sixth person on the cover represents Spufford’s tribute to the city of London.

  88. 88.

    zhena gogolia

    @BGinCHI: It definitely takes courage. I could write a 30-page essay on all the maddening inaccuracies. But if you let go of that, it’s kind of amusing.

    It’s hard to believe one of the writers has a Ph.D. from Harvard. She must not have been paying very much attention.

  90. 90.

    BGinCHI

    @zhena gogolia: ​
      Probably the other way round: Harvard prepares you to not know shit about anything in the reality-based world, but to write about it as though you do.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Salvo Montalbano has a bit of an Italianized Foyle vibe. Calm center of his moral universe, always two steps ahead of everybody else—including the viewer. And Sicily is a lot better looking than Hasting and environs.

    Also interesting this time around to see how many actors are in Foyle’s War that show up in later series: Inspector Thursday and the superintendent from Endeavour, a guy or two from Sherlock, etc. And a lot of minor actors who make equally minor appearances in Midsomer Murders.

  93. 93.

    Morzer

    @BGinCHI: Squid Game starts well, but gets tediously repetitive along the way. Not impressed by the way it handles women and foreigners.

  95. 95.

    Craig

    Recently watched The Green Knight. It was pretty fascinating. Just really in no hurry to get where it’s going, really confident from the get go. I got kind of turned off by Dev Patel till I figured out Gawain wasn’t supposed to be some swaggering badass out of John Boorman’s Excalibur. Gorgeous photography. Great typography. Just great loose lyrical filmmaking that kind of reminded me of Wong Kar Wai for some reason.

  96. 96.

    BGinCHI

    @Morzer: My biggest issue in most of ep 1 was that I HATE the main character. I assume that’s on purpose.

    We’ll see how it goes. Will watch 2nd ep tonight.

  97. 97.

    citizen dave

    We’ve had HULU this summer so watched Nine Perfect Strangers.  Meh.

    We (me and my wife, by the way–sixty-ish) liked Reservation Dogs, though.  My wife a few times said it was “cute”.

    We watched the movie The Starling last night on netflix and I thought it was fairly bad, although well enough acted.

    We watched The Chair as well and although I’m not intimately familiar with the world, I did do 4 graduate years in the 1980s, and in that department the Chair was basically whoever wanted to do it–not really any power–more administrative stuff.  Series was OK.

    We’re enjoying the Steve Martin Short Selena Gomez “Only Murders in the Building”.  I love Martin Short anyway so…

    Perhaps the best thing we watched this year was the sweet Eurovision movie on netflix with Rachel McAdams and Will Ferrell.  Eurovision Song Contest: The Legend of Fire Saga.

    Looking forward to the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm!

  98. 98.

    BGinCHI

    @Craig: ​
      We are going to do a Medium Cool on The Green Knight in the next few weeks.

    So, homework everyone: Watch The Green Knight.

  100. 100.

    Morzer

    I have a recommendation for a book series: Ed Lin’s Chinatown Mysteries. It’s really well-written and catches the complexity of Chinese immigrant culture(s) better than most fiction I’ve seen. The first book is This Is A Bust set in 1976, which was an interesting year both in China and America.

  103. 103.

    BGinCHI

    @citizen dave: ​
      “Reservation Dogs” is the other series I wanted to recommend here.

    I really, really love what they do in that season (which just concluded, on Hulu). All Native American cast, crew, writers/directors. Filmed on location in small-town OK. Both funny and very moving, taking up a number of important issues, which I won’t spoil here.

    A must watch.

  105. 105.

    Morzer

    @BGinCHI: The hero is a somewhat generic Korean loser man for whom I personally can find little sympathy. The actor who plays him tends to play bad guys, which might be an indication of how we should view him. I wouldn’t rate Squid Game among the best K-dramas I’ve seen, personally.

    I also have some doubts about whether you could find quite so many bad debtors even in Seoul. Koreans tend to be absolutely obsessive about repaying debts incurred by their family members – people will drop out of school and open a small business to pay off dad’s debts etc.

  107. 107.

    Craig

    @zhena gogolia: I kinda freaked out for a minute watching Game of Thrones one year when it suddenly clicked that Qyburn was Superintendent Bright on Endeavor. I didn’t ‘see’ him initially in Wolf Hall either. Anton Lesser, just such a great actor.

  110. 110.

    citizen dave

    @BGinCHI:  Yes I should have been more effusive about Reservation Dogs.  It is beautiful, real and really well done; as you mention, native american everything.  I also noticed that Taika Waititi helped out with it, which I’m sure helped the whole production.

    We did recently watch the movie The Mauritanian, which was very well done–highest marks–as well as very very sad.

  112. 112.

    dm

    @MattF: I listened to Piranesi as an audiobook (pretty much the only way I consume fiction these days).  I couldn’t wait for it to be over, though I stuck with it out of loyalty to the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.

    It probably didn’t help that I’d just gone through strange-tale-in-a-decaying-beyond-a-mansion Gideon the Ninth for the second time in preparation for its sequel, Harrow the Ninth.  Piranesi can’t hold a candle to either Jonathan Strange or Gideon.

    Now: Harrow the Ninth has “unreliable narrator” laid on with a trowel.  I can’t wait for the third book — and I’ll re-read Gideon and Harrow happily in preparation.

  113. 113.

    piratedan

    finished the latest King novel (Billy Summers) and the aforementioned Murderbot series.

    latest favorite waste of time is watching British game shows on You Tube… Pointless and Only Connect, lovely reminders that depending upon your cultural touchstones, just how easy it is to be clueless

  116. 116.

    Ivan X

    I’ve recently discovered Donald E. Westlake and have been enjoying his Dortmunder series.

  117. 117.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Anatomy of Evil was excellent! Nice little miniseries with a slightly off-kilter but appealing focus.

    I liked the Belgian Professor T, but I saw it before the British version (which is a pale imitation, in my opinion). Huh, it looks like what MHz has now is a third, German series. I haven’t seen that.

    Let’s see, dredging up from memory, with some help from the website . . .

    French: Blood of the Vine is pretty good in a laid-back way. Ditto for Detectives. Maigret is excellent, but it might be an acquired taste. Slightly astringent. Nicolas Le Floch is surprisingly good—basically a cop show in 1750s France. Spiral is very good, although for some reason I watched only one season of that. Need to get back to that.

    German: I liked Bukow and König. Cop show set in a former East German city (can’t remember which one) after reunification, and there is a lot of interesting subtext about how less developed than West Germany it is and how a lot of the characters, including some cops, have some pre-unification skeletons in their closets.

    Donna Leon’s Brunetti is pretty good, although you have to get used to Italian characters on location in Venice speaking German. And one of the Brunetti guys is much better than the other one (I think the second one).

    The Inspector and the Sea is somewhat similar—nominally Swedish characters on Gotland speaking German. But a good show with a big continuing cast.

    Italian: Some of the Italian cop shows are really goofy (and sexist!), but I recommend Detective De Luca. Semi-noir miniseries about a cop navigating his way through the end of World War II and the collapse of the corrupt Mussolini regime. The Octopus is a classic but might be somewhat dated now.

    Norwegian: I recommend Dirty Money, White Lies; Mammon; and Varg Veum.

    It looks like MHz has dropped a lot of series from when I was a more regular viewer. Maybe they went to live somewhere else.

  119. 119.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’ll check out Wolfland. I haven’t been on MHz much lately. Have this background feeling that I’ve seen most of it (not true), and the interface on Amazon Prime seems very awkward to me.

  120. 120.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    After looking at the MHz website, I’m wondering whether you saw the German version of Professor T and had a bad reaction to that. The Belgian version (three seasons) has moved to PBS Passport, at least here in the DMV.

  122. 122.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    That was a great series! The younger sister turned up years later as a detective on CSI for a season or two.

  124. 124.

    billcinsd

    @Ivan X: The Hot Rock is a good movie based around the Dortmunder Gang. Robert Redford plays Dortmunder, George Segal is good. William Goldman wrote the screenplay and Paul Sand and Ron Liebman have roles.

  126. 126.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @BGinCHI: I blocked that out.  I, however, can tell the difference between Flemish and German.  Even if the Germans need to clear their throats a lot.

  127. 127.

    prostratedragon

    @BGinCHI:  (Just got back from Grantchester)
    Yes, sort of a personal journey, as he’s from there. The Tyne River one stopped at a salmon hatchery, an osprey nest, and a rowing course, all more or less upland.

  129. 129.

    eddie blake

    glad to see this series continue.

    reading: a man called intrepid and dreadnought:  britain, germany and the coming of the great war.

    playing: assassin’s creed: valhalla and star wars: squadrons.

    watching: girls & panzers.

  131. 131.

    Jean

    @Steeplejack: I’ve just watched episode 2, and it’s good.  Young woman leaves her emotionally abusive husband, taking their 2 year old daughter with her.  Whole story is from her point of view, her struggle to survive.  It’s a little bleak, but you know she’ll thrive.  A review in NPR makes a point of all the little acts of kindnesses along her difficult path make a difference.  That struck me right away as I watched.  Loosely based on a memoir.  Author approved the film version.

  132. 132.

    prostratedragon

    @zhena gogolia: Yeah, I’d say it was pretty good. Davenport doesn’t seem to be as compelling a central figure as Chambers* was, but the mystery tonight was pretty good, and the troubled waters ahead were well done; considering the times, early 1960s or so, that plot line is probably inevitable.

    * I always have to look up Chambers’s name, which is odd because my father’s successor at his last church was a Rev. Chambers.

  135. 135.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Tried The Art of Crime>/em> when the first season was available with Prime. Marginally watchable; decent (if esoteric) premise that never quite jelled for me; would have given up on it entirely but for the actor who plays her father. Liked him a lot in Spiral so was pumped when saw he was in the cast of TAoC.

    Recently ran through both short seasons of The Hour on Tubi. Has flaws aplenty (tends to wander over too many maps) but still held enough interest to stay with it. Expect a lot of its Britishness that is taken as read by the native audience is lost on this American. Regardless, anything with Ben Whishaw is usually worth checking out.

    Noticed that Endgame is also now on Tubi. Another in the still growing amateur detective with a major personality quirk genre. Memory is signaling that preferred it to Professor T.

  136. 136.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Didn’t feel up to it tonight. I’ll catch it on Passport this week. Might have to go back and refresh myself on the last episode or two of the previous season. I had this same problem with the most recent (short) season of Endeavour. Damn it, also Unforgotten, now that I think about it.

  140. 140.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    I am a bit disenchanted myself with Endeavour. I have a friend who kept asking me to explain plot details and such in this last season, and I realized that I had a hard time doing it because so many things didn’t seem to hang together.

  143. 143.

    meander

    I quite enjoyed most of “This Is Pop” on Netflix, an 8 part documentary series about pop music. The episodes about Autotune, Swedish producers (“The Stockholm Syndrome”), and BritPop were especially interesting. Regarding the Swedish producers, they had a huge influence on international pop, with connections to Brittney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, Taylor Swift, and many more top artists (and of course ABBA fits into the story too). 

  144. 144.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack: I don’t like what they’ve done with Thursday.

    I guess every series runs its course. I felt Lewis actually got better in its last season, and it ended on a high. So did Morse.

  145. 145.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Lewis got progressively better from start to finish. I mainly watched Morse in reruns; I just think of it as “good.”

    I think the combination of long gaps and short seasons (three episodes?!) has hurt Endeavour. They lose momentum, and I would guess that some of the principals lose interest or turn their attention elsewhere. And the writing has been less and less “inspired.”

  146. 146.

    way2blue

    So.  My current favorite film is ‘The Rider’ directed by Chloe Zhao, available as a Netflix DVD.  Follows a young Sioux recovering from a rodeo accident.  Amazing powerful film.

    We just finished the first season of ‘Tell Me Your Secrets’ on HBO Max.  Which sets up for a second season.  The main character is a young woman, Karen/Emma, who was jailed as an accomplice to her boyfriend’s crimes.  But can’t remember any of it.  Very good.

    And have just started ‘Widow’ on Netflix, a thriller which mostly takes place in the Congo.  We’ve just returned from Africa so were drawn to a series based there.  Also very good.

    Just finished the novel, ‘Red Island House’ by Andrea Lee.  (A birthday gift.)  The main character is an African American woman, Shay, an academic who grew up in the Oakland Hills and married an Italian.  Rich evocative descriptions of Madagascar where they live part-time as seen through Shay’s eyes.

    Just started ‘Clark and Division’ by Naomi, Hirahara for my thriller book club.  Takes place in the war years and follows an Issei/Nisei family from Los Angeles to Manzanar to Chicago.

    Thanks BGinCHI.  Missed this series—even if I’m way behind in watching/reading many of the previous, intriguing recommendations.

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