Pink Sauce

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...