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Tick, Tick... BOOM! (by and on Netflix), titled after one of its hero's musicals, is the film directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the acclaimed creator of Hamilton . Perhaps appropriately, it is about musical theatre and, itself, turns into a musical; covering the few days, in early 1990, leading to star-crossed composer Jonathan Larson's 30 birthday.  At that time, Larson, who went on to write Rent , was in the throes of completing his first musical, on which he had been working for eight years, before a crucial showcase in front major players in the industry. With social puritanism and the AIDS epidemic as background – with close friends getting infected, or sick; some of them dying, Larson, a straight man, struggles to write a final key song for his show, while confronting existential questions about creativity, his life choices, and his priorities. The film features numerous examples of Larson's work meshed into the narrative of those few days. Some are part o...

Having just was watched ( and reviewed )  Paris Police 1900, I find it interesting to be presented with another series with very similar theme to indulge in a little comparison.  Ridley Road, also available on iPlayer and only 4 episode long, is set in 1960s Britain, where a Jewish ingenue finds herself infiltrating the ranks of the National Socialist Movement (the British Nazis). There is actually a fairly similar subplot in Paris Police 1900.  In both cases historical events and characters are drafted in to anchor the narrative, and in both cases, the viewer is presented with a quality piece of television drawing on past events to entertain and potentially illuminate a worrying aspect of our current society. I think it is no coincidence that those two series should appear at this particular moment in time. That is however where the similarities stop. Where Paris Police 1900 is dark and dangerous, even brutal at times, Ridley Road is solid and safe. It offers al...

Paris Police 1900 is a French series currently on iPlayer, that somehow only took about 6 months (rather than the usual 2 years) to make it across the channel (who said Brexit made exchanges more difficult?!). The series is set in... err... Paris, in 1899. On the surface it is a gory police thriller, following the meandering investigation of the murder and dismemberment of a young woman. So far, so Nordic Noir; were it not for the 'exotic' setting, and the lack a truly central investigative figure. While the handsome Inspecteur Jouin is suitably aloof and monosyllabic, and works as the connecting character in the story, he isn't a dominating presence in the narrative, which includes a number of interrelated subplots with their own leads. Crucially, as made abundantly clear by the jaw-dropping(!) opening scene, the makers of the show have created an unique, and unprecedented portrait of a not-so-Belle Époque, as, literally, a fin-de-siècle society, decadent, violent, crue...

This is a brain dump written as soon as I got home from the show. More a more cogent review (which I completely agree with), check out:  Review: The Normal Heart at National Theatre , by Hailey Bachrach. I know lots of people have been raving about this production of Larry Kramer's largely autobiographical play at the National Theatre, but I was disappointed. Despite being fairly wordy and rather on the long side (at 2hr40), it did sustain my interest and I was never bored. The performances are great (loved Liz Carr) but it's not a great piece of writing to beginning with (the structure is anaemic and it ends very abruptly), and some very questionable directorial decisions didn't help.   The Olivier Theatre has been set up to be in the round (centered around the revolve as a the stage), but the director didn't seem to bother to take that into account one bit (it could have been as simple a flipping the switch and have the stage going round all the time, if he really co...

Green Book, currently on iPlayer, is the heart-warming tale of an unlikely friendship between a famous sophisticated black musician and a rough-around-the-edges Italian-American self-styled bullshitter. It is based on a true story. This is a story of prejudices overcome and differences accepted. It is also about privilege. But, rather than being preachy and worthy, as it could so easily have been, it is, most of the time, funny, and just utterly lovely. The film came under criticism when it was released for embracing a white saviour trope, but I think this is overlooking the extent to which both characters learn from each other and end up changing each other's outlooks. It is perhaps in some ways utopian or overly optimistic in its presentation of race relations in 1960s America (or indeed in the 'Western' world nowadays) but it can't hurt to dream for a couple of hours. The performances by the two leads are great too and the film looks beautiful. This middle-class ...

Not a little ironically, considering its premise of a group of young people taking part in a literary workshop, L'atelier (The Workshop - 2017), currently on iPlayer, is one of those French films where seemingly not much is said and even less happens. And yet it manages to be utterly intriguing and quite thrilling too. The story is set in La Ciotat, a notorious former shipyard near Marseilles, where a (socially and ethnically) diverse group of teens is meant to be writing a thriller together under the guidance of an established author. This leads to explorations of the creative process and the act of writing, but also of the social and political climate of a France still reeling from the Bataclan and Nice terrorist attacks. Perhaps because the book to be written has to be a thriller, violence is not only also discussed, but lurking just below the surface: Reality, in the shape one of the members of the group, threatens to overcome fiction right up to the last few minutes of the ...

Deep Water is an Australian murder mini-series (4 episodes) currently available on Netflix. Despite being set in Sydney (around Bondi Beach), this is in many ways one of those dark, brooding serial-killer stories, recently popularised by the "scandi-noir" genre, although Detective Tori Lustigman (played by Yael Stone, of Orange is the New Black fame) is thankfully not quite as tortured as so many of her nordic colleagues. She is, in fact, a fairly-straight-forward, tough woman on a mission, which, in its own way, is quite refreshing. The story is complex, the writing is tight and the performances are first class; all coming together to form a gripping and tense, sometimes even moving, thriller. However, what could easily have been a slightly formulaic, if not predictably stereotypical, plot, also functions as an unflinching and often disquieting exposition of homophobia that feels grounded in historical truth. Its various and numerous guises, as well as its manyfold cons...

Uprising on BBC iPlayer is a three-part documentary series, directed by Steve McQueen, centered around the New Cross Fire in January 1981, in which 13 black youths died at a house party. The event took place in a context of heightened racial tensions, only a few months before the Brixton Riots and other violent protests across Britain (England, really, it seems), which are also covered in the programme. The documentary presents archival footages and testimonies from survivors of the fires, their family, and civil rights activists, to create a powerful, moving, and sometimes shocking, narrative of grief, lives upturned, social injustice, racism, and institutional callousness. Although stark in its simplicity and never sentimental, it is a gripping piece of cinematic storytelling, vividly bringing to life a dark moment in the history of the country, exactly 40 years on. Stunning, in every way.

I discovered Good Trouble, a spin off another series I haven't seen (The Fosters), by chance, lurking on iPlayer. The show is in its third season and is, to be frank, a wet dream of wokeness. Gammons should stay well clear of this or their already congested heads will most definitely explode. The show covers pretty much ever subject that would make the average Dail Mail reader froth at the mouth at the very thought of them: from feminism and the gender pay gap, to polyamory, bisexuality, lesbian adopting parents, gender non-conformity, body image, left-wing policies, or systemic racism and black lives matter (two of the movement's founders actually play themselves in several episodes). It's queer, it's diverse, it's inclusive. And what is great about it is that it doesn't wallow. Yes, things can be bad but it is first and foremost an affirming and empowering show, where, in a world that, let's face, isn't always understanding and welcoming (to say the...

In reaction to the flurry of gayed-up corporate logos, the Hornby story earlier this week, and a visit to my local Sainsbury's this morning, I ponder the subject of corporate pinkwashing and how sticking a rainbow in the (real or virtual) window is no longer enough to show support.   This morning, as I reached the tills in my local Sainsbury’s, I noticed a string of bunting bearing (pictured) the colours of the Progress Flag and proclaiming the company’s proud support to the LGBT+ community. A cursory look around showed no other evidence of this support being displayed in the shop. My immediate, and perhaps ungrateful, reaction was that not only most customers would most likely not notice the thing, it also felt rather tokenistic and half-hearted.   There was a time, perhaps ten to 15 years ago, when seeing a rainbow flag in a business you visited would be something meaningful, something feeling daring and perhaps slightly dangerous. It was in any case an occasion r...

Constitutional law history is perhaps not the first thought that comes to mind as a vector of emotion and excitement. It is, in fact, probably likely to be the opposite. Amend: The Fight for America (now on Netflix), fronted and produced by actor Will Smith, is a sweeping journey through 150 years of legal and social US history that tells how the oddly unloved 14th Amendment of the US Constitution came into being, and what the repercussions of this fundamental piece of legislation have been and continue to be during that time. The amendment, with the likely unwittingly inclusive nature of its language, creates a promise of justice and fair treatment from the state to its citizens and visitors. And, from giving the newly emancipated slaves a place in US society to women's rights, allowing same-sex marriage and beyond, it has underpinned the major advances in US civil rights since its inclusion to the constitution in 1868. The six-part documentary brushes the portrait of the fight...

Mildred and Richard Loving should never have achieved fame. Dirt-poor, uneducated, and living in a backwater in Virginia, their only ambition was to be with each other and to lead a life devoid of trouble. Their apparently innocent decision to get married in 1958, however, was to change the legal history of their country, leading to a Supreme Court decision striking down miscegenation state laws (in the so-aptly named Loving v Virginia case) and arguably paving the way, decades later, for another Supreme Court decision, allowing same-sex marriage, by declaring marriage a fundamental right. Loving, which is currently available on iPlayer, is not a court drama. It's not a romance, or even a civil rights epic, full of senseless, gruesome violence and triumphant victory scenes. It is a pared-down, understated study of reluctant heroes, depicting two people buffeted by circumstances bigger than them, and, certainly at the beginning, mostly beyond their understanding. Most of the ...

When I decided to start watching S.W.A.T. (on Netflix, and apparently Sky), I was expecting the cheap and undemanding thrilled of a mindless action series, with lots of fights, car chases and explosions.  The show delivers those things in droves, and some of the writing (the expositionary bits particularly) can be pretty clunky at times. I wasn't however quite prepared for the deeper, sometimes fairly sophisticated layers on offer. One of the catch-phrases of the show is "stay liquid!" and it seems the producers have adopted this as a motto. It starts right from the first episode (filmed in 2016), which delved straight into what it can mean for a black man to become a policeman in the US.  I have now watched the two seasons available on Netflix (the 5th season has apparently already been commissioned by CBS). Even the plotlines of the more run-of-mill episodes feel fresh and often refuse to adhere to the expectations of the genre. Beyond that, the viewers regularly fin...

The second and, sadly, final season of Special has just dropped on Netflix and it is as much a pleasure to watch as the first one.  The semi-autobiographical, award-winning show follows, Ryan, a twenty-something, gay, mama's boy with cerebral palsy navigating the pitfalls of the heteronormative, ablist world as he decides to let go of his mother's skirts. There is the inevitable fag-hag (is that still a word we can use?), who conforms to all the tropes of the type, except for her vibrant sex life, and a couple of weird caricatural characters in the background of Ryan's work life. Everybody is very queer though.  It is the sort of super-woke, inclusive comedy programmes that give broflakes their worst nightmares and that Netflix can be so good at producing. It is kind and generous, and it is exactly what we need right now.  There are a few moments that don't completely make sense, and Ryan's love life is not particularly believable, especially in the number of guys t...

I read the book and liked it better than Mitford's more famous (and sequel to this), Lone in a Cold Climate, and very much enjoyed it, so I was very much looking forward to this BBC adaptation. The buzz has been very positive too but I find myself having reservations. If you can bear to sit through the first episode and a half, or perhaps even the first two, episode, and make it to the third, you will, I think, see what the reviews are raving about. The story is one of women's lib before the time and the production looks absolutely stunning, with a great cast (including Assaad Bouab, of Call My Agent fame).  Unfortunately, you have to sit through the first episode and a half, or perhaps even the first two, episode, and make it to the third to get the full effect.  I can see what the producers are trying to do in that first half and a bit: translate the rebellious anarchic spirit of the main characters in a modern, pop-video idiom. They only end up with a coarse and clumsy ca...

In the next installment on my pointless reviews of (mostly) French content on (mostly) Netflix that nobody reads, I will take a look at two films I watched last night.  Both are period dramas (though it grieves me to say that some of the events depicted in the first one happened during my lifetime!) and both are tales of morality with women at the heart of them. Here the similarities stop.  The first film has just been released: Madame Claude is based on the real life story of a woman (real name Fernande Grudet, played by Karole Rocher) who organised a network of 300 high-class call-girls with access to the elite in the 1960s and 70s. She gave a hand to the French secret services until the establishment finally turned against her. Hers is a well-known name in France, due mostly to the sulfurous nature of the whole thing (mixing sex, power and money, with a soupçon of murder and spying), her high-profile trial in the 90s, and the thrilling existence of notebooks listing her cl...

It was the Friday before Easter - Good Friday - when everybody is sad but is looking forward to eating lots of chocolate in a couple of days. As he waited for the Easter Bunny to bring him his well-deserved chocolate eggs, little Keir decided to go to church. Because that is what nice people do on that day. No one is sure why he decided to go to that particular church, because it is quite well known that this is not a very nice church; one that didn't like fayries. Perhaps it was because all his posh friends - Theresa, Boris, Charles and Camilla - had visited that church before him and he wanted to be more like his posh friends.  So little Keir decided to go to that church, even though some of his best friends were fayries. And to make sure that everyone knew what a good boy he was, he decided to make a video for his social media. In the video, he explained how he liked what the church people did, and what a wonderful example the church was. You could even see him praying with the ...