In a small island off the coat of Maine the three staff of the local newspaper, The Weekly Islander, have just finished lunch with a big city journalist from the mainland who’s searching for unsolved mysteries. He goes away empty handed but the youngest of the three, 22 year old intern Stephanie, presses her older colleagues, surely someone unusual has happened on the island?
The two men, 65 year old Dave Bowie and 90 year old Vince Teague, tell her that they have, and proceed to recount the curious story of a man who was found dead on the beach 25 years ago, having asphyxiated on a piece of steak. At first the man is simply a John Doe, eventually he’ll be termed the Colorado Kid and finally his real identity will become apparent, and that’s where the mystery really begins, because the man seems to have got from Colorado to the island in a short amount of time, the question is, how? And was his death accident, or was he murdered?
At less than 200 pages it’s possibly unfair to call this a novel so much as a fairly long novella. It was written for the Hard Case Crime imprint, which publishes pulp crime novels in the style of those popular in the 1940s and 50s. Even the foreword of the book makes it clear that King’s story doesn’t really fit in with this concept, but I guess if one of the most popular and successful authors ever offers to write a book for your budding publishing house, you’d be kinda dumb to turn them down.
The important thing to understand about The Colorado Kid is that the mystery at its heart is intriguing, it’s also a mystery without a conclusion—that’s no spoiler, the foreword makes this point and even Vince and Dave only have theories. King’s view on this seems to be that mysteries of often more fun when they don’t have a conclusion and that the solution often disappoints, as such it seems he set out with the intention of not providing a definitive conclusion. Dave and Vince don’t even provide many theories, though there’s enough information included that the reader can formulate their own thoughts, and these are likely to range from the reasonable to the downright impossible.
The fun of the book is in the telling of the tale, and the slow unravelling of what information there is, an interesting story, albeit one without an end. The characters of Dave, Vince and Stephanie are fun too. It’s also interesting to note that this slim little tome inspired the TV show Haven.
It isn’t perfect, something King does at times is lean too heavily into the New England dialect, which is great for local colour, but can make reading it a little more of a chore than it ought to be. And the central mystery is, well in some respects it’s a trifle mundane, but maybe it’s its mundanity that makes it so intriguing, and it is intriguing.
And as it’s such a quick read it doesn’t get to outstay it’s welcome. If you like King and/or like a mystery it’s worth a punt, just don’t expect any answers!
Directed by Andrew Haigh. Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell.
Adam (Scott) is a lonely screenwriter living in an almost deserted tower block in London. After a fire alarm sends him outside he waves at another man still in the building. Later that evening the other man, Harry (Mescal) turns up at Adam’s door, drunk and with a bottle of whiskey he’d like to share with Adam. Adam is tempted but also wary of connection with other people and so he sends Harry away.
Adam begins to write a treatment based on his youth, and this prompts him to take a train to his childhood home. He is surprised to find his parents are still there because they died in a car crash when he was just 12 years old, yet they seemed to have been preserved just as he remembers them in the late 1980s. He has dinner and promises to return.
Back in London he encounters Harry again. This time he invites him in for a drink and after talking for a while, they have sex. As his feelings for Harry grow Adam also finds solace in visiting his parents, allowing him to deal with the trauma over their deaths he’s hidden from all these years.
A wonderful example of what film can do with little beyond an amazing script and four superb performances. On the face of it this is a relatively simple story, albeit a simple story told very well.
Haigh loosely adapted the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, although that book is more obviously a horror story than this, and at its heart there’s ambiguity over whether Adam is visiting the ghosts of his parents, or whether he is imagining the contact he has with them as a way of processing his own grief. In the end I don’t think it matters, as his mum says to him at one point; “Does it feel real?” and that’s the important thing, whether it’s genuine or illusory Adam needs to talk to them.
The film is about several things, grief obviously, but also loneliness. The fact that Adam and Harry seem to be living in a practically empty tower block in London is improbable, but it reinforces the isolation that Adam feels, he is a man who’s cut himself off from others, not because he is gay so much as because he fears losing those closest to him, although this is very much a gay love story as well as a meditation on loss and loneliness.
The film excels in the scenes between Scott and Mescal, the awkwardness of those first fumbling encounters that are universal no matter what your orientation, although it’s nice to see a budding relationship told from this perspective. The two men have a lot of chemistry and their nascent romance feels very real.
So too does Adam’s interactions with his parents. The fantastical nature of those meetings hardly matters because they are so grounded, so heartfelt and genuine. For saying Foy and Bell are younger than Scott, all three do a fantastic job of selling the parent/child dynamic without it ever feeling ridiculous—though there is humour to be had, Adam in his childhood pyjamas for example. The illusion is helped by har and makeup, and clothes, that make Bell and Foy look way older than they are, and as a child who grew up in the 70s and 80s this resonated a lot with me, people looked a lot older back then, gotta love Foy’s perm and Bell’s moustache.
It isn’t just about the sets and the outfits though, the attitudes of Adam’s parents are era appropriate as well. Take the somewhat different reactions of both parents upon learning of Adam’s sexuality.
Mescal, Foy and Bell are all magnificent, but it’s Scott who is the beating heart of this film, who lays his emotions on the line and drops any defence to leave himself incredibly vulnerable, whether he’s sharing intimate details of his grief with Harry, telling his mum he’s gay, or discussing the bullying and unhappiness he encountered at school with his father.
Beyond the script and performances the film looks gorgeous as well, despite its limited number of locations. I enjoyed this film a lot when I saw it and it’s stayed with me, whether that’s simply because it’s so good or because parts reminded me of my own childhood is anyone’s guess, but whichever way you slice it this is a very good film.
Scorpio is in orbit of the planet Malodar. With a noxious atmosphere and freezing temperatures, Malodar isn’t a welcoming place. They’ve come in response to a message sent to Avon, but Avon says he gets chilblains and so encourages Tarrant and Dayna to go down. He asks it Vila wants to join them and Vila responds; “You know I like to stick with you, Avon. Where it’s safe.”
On the planet an old man named Pinder calls for a man named Egrorian to tell him that Scorpio has arrived. Egrorian slaps Pinder but then they both laugh.
It becomes clear that the message sent to Avon was from Egrorian, a renowned genius who vanished ten years ago (along with several million credits of the Federation’s money). Egrorian contacts the ship and demands that Avon go down alone, and uses a shuttle that Egrorian will send up to dock with Scorpio. When Egrorian reveals that he has an assistant Avon demands that he take his own assistant to watch Egrorian’s assistant and the scientist reluctantly agrees.
Avon takes Vila. “Well, who else? After all, you always say you feel safe with me.”
Down on Malodar Egrorian reveals that he has created the ultimate weapon, the Tachyon Funnel, a device that can destroy any target at any distance. He demonstrates by destroying a moon that’s 17 light years away. He’s willing to gift the Tachyon Funnel to Avon, knowing he’ll use it to defeat the Federation. All he wants in return is to know that the people who resented his genius are punished…well that and he wants Orac too.
Avon agrees, but all is not as it appears to be. Egrorian has a secret backer (you get one guess) and Egrorian also has an overly complicated plan, and Vila? Well Vila weights 73 kilos…
Spoiler warning because I am going to dive right into things here.
Still here?
Ok then.
I can still recall the first time I watched Orbit, and I remember completely missing the obvious, namely that Kerr Avon was fully prepared to dump Vila Restal out of the airlock to save his own skin. Maybe it was naivete, maybe I just didn’t want to believe what I was seeing, but for years I remembered the episode this way; Avon always knew how to save them, he always knew about the dark matter, unfortunately Vila got the wrong end of the stick and so Avon had had to save them both on his own.
Foolish child.
Let’s be honest, Avon has always put himself first, remember Dawn of the Gods? Liberator swallowed by a black hole and what’s Avon doing? He’s trying to get into suit, telling Tarrant there’s a chance…for one of them, and Avon’s already decided which one of them that should be.
That was different though. He wouldn’t have been killing the others, he’d just have been leaving them to die. This, however? This time the implication is clear. It’s doubtful Vila is going to throw himself out of an airlock so Avon’s probably going to have to shoot him first.
As cold blooded as Avon can be, he’s probably never been quite this cold blooded, and that it involves Vila, if not his friend then perhaps the closest thing to a friend he has left, just makes it worse. He doesn’t even hesitate, there’s no flicker of a debate in his eyes. Orac points out that Vila weighs 73 kilos and Kerr goes for his gun.
As an aside let’s not forget Orac’s part in all this. If I were Vila Orac would be “accidentally” knocked on the floor first chance I got.
There’s little for Tarrant, Dayna and Soolin to do this week (although Dayna and Soolin taking the piss out of Vila is hilarious), it’s mainly about Darrow and Keating, and they’re wonderful. We’re three episodes from the end of the show and this is our last chance to see team up (to be honest they probably team up less than you think they do.) This is no comic adventure ala Gambit, this is something altogether darker, something that should have had ramifications for the pairing for some time to come.
And if I had a major complaint (and I do have some minor gripes) it’s that Orbit comes so late in the season. Ideally there’d have been a chance for Vila to get some measure of payback, or at least the opportunity to show that things will never be quite the same between them again. Sadly no.
Darrow is wonderfully cold, but Keating? When Vila’s scrunched up in hiding it’s an absolutely heartbreaking performance.
It isn’t just about Avon and Vila of course, the reason they’re in this position is because of a man named Egrorian. Let’s be honest here, Egrorian shouldn’t work, he’s practically a pantomime villain, but he works because he’s such a comedic bad guy, because every so often while we’re laughing at him we’re actually a tad scared of him. John Savident plays him to a tee, the man who would go on to play butcher Fred Elliot in a thousand episodes of corrie, and who of course was Fleet-Warden General Samor in Trial, is unrecognisable. Arrogant, possibly insane and something of a bully to poor Pinder to boot (come on we all cheer when Pinder gets his revenge, right?) also you do have to wonder if Vila’s comment that Avon should have taken one of the girls wasn’t completely off base, because Egrorian seems quite enamoured of our Vila (and clearly once had a thing for young Pinder, when he still was young Pinder).
Of course Pinder’s wonderful too, Larry Noble playing him like a cowed, unloved child, but occasionally letting his childish glee show through, and his obvious jealousy at Vila is great.
Now Egrorian might have a thing for golden haired striplings, but he also has a thing for black cats with large golden eyes and long silver talons, and for once Servalan is almost out-camped.
Almost.
Jacqui is great, but you do get the feeling she’s just there because they wanted another episode with Servalan in it, and once again there’s no contact between her and any of the crew.
Flaws? A few. Egrorian’s plan is a trifle ridiculous, and does he or Servalan really need Orac? They have the Tachyon Funnel, and yes it looks, let’s be honest, a tad shit, but it can blow up moons 17 light years away, is it worth risking just to get your hands on Orac? And how do they know that moon’s been blown up? (apparently there’s a deleted scene that explains how) It’s also a stroke of luck that Avon has a copy of Orac that he made, for some reason presumably. It does give us Servalan’s wonderful line; “It’s just a box of flashing lights!”
One final, very petty gripe. Darrow does a good job of pushing the dark matter and making it seem…so…very…heavy. And then once inside the airlock he gives the little trolly a gentle push and it rolls several centimetres.
Any gripes are minor though. This is Robert Holmes’ final Blakes 7 script and it’s a doozy. Probably his best. There aren’t many shows that would go where Blakes 7 went forty odd years ago. Could you imagine Spock shoving McCoy out of an airlock? This episode is more than just its final act however, there’s treasure to be found from start to finish. A stone cold classic.
* Author’s note. I should point out that with this post almost finished we learned today of the sad death of John Savident. The universe loves serendipity, but I’m glad I got to laud his wonderful performance, today of all days *
Scorpio docks with a ship we soon discover is named the Space Princess, a played out old pleasure cruiser. The only person on board is the purser, a man named Keiller who says he’s an old friend of Avons. Avon somewhat disagrees with this assessment. The Space Princess is heading home after a refit, home being Zerok, or the gold planet as it’s sometimes known. Gold has been virtually mined out everywhere, but it’s still plentiful on Zerok. Keiller informs them that gold is purchased by the Federation and transferred via the Space Princess with practically no security because no one would expect it to be carrying gold. Keiller explains that every so often they send up a heavily armoured transport and someone attacks it and gets killed, which is nuts, because that ship is carrying fruit.
Keiller is a poorly paid purser, so he wants the crew of Scorpio to help him steal a gold shipment that will be worth seventeen billion (credits presumably). Avon isn’t stupid though, he knows there must be a snag, and there is. Before being shipped via Space Princess the gold is processed to change its chemical composition, making it black until someone uses the correct code to turn it back again at the other end of the trip. Keiller has an answer to this however, they break into the gold processing plant on Zerok and reprogramme the computer so the gold isn’t altered. Easy right?
So long as everything goes to plan…
Gold is a lot of fun, an episode I’ve always liked, so why on this occasion did it not seem quite as awesome as I remember? Maybe it just feels a tad too similar to Games which was, let’s not forget, the episode before last. That’s the disadvantage to watching things in order. There’s the crew embarking on a heist, and the presence of a, and apologies in advance, big guest star in more than one sense of the word.
It also all falls apart a little once you start to think about it. Given how many guards they kill getting into the gold processing plant, surely someone’s going to check on the gold before it gets shipped? I’m not entirely sure what you know who’s plan is either (Servalan, it’s Servalan ok!) Talking of which, given the lengths she was going to in order to keep her identity a secret, would she really leave a crook like Keiller running around? There’s always something a little irksome about the villain planning for every eventuality, unless it’s done very well, and while this is a well written episode, it kinda falls down here.
But there’s still an awful lot to like. The notion of the Space Princess being used to transport gold with no guards while a heavily armed transport transports fruit is delicious, and is a nice call back to Control. Boy that empty room seems a long time ago now! Also great is the conceit that the Space Princess doesn’t actually take a pleasure cruise, instead it flies straight to Earth, the passengers are drugged enough to buy that what they see out of the window is real rather than the recording it really is, another nice call back to The Way Back.
Inestimable Roy Kinnear is wonderful as Keiller, a man whose obviously as slippery as they come, and his realisation that the ‘pretty one’ as he keeps calling Soolin is infinitely more dangerous than she looks is nicely done. Darrow’s delivery of “Soolin killed them both” is good.
The balls up on Zerok is a nice dramatic touch, even if we don’t for one moment imagine Avon and Soolin are dead. It does lead to a nice scene on Scorpio where Vila Tarrant and Dayna threaten Keiller as well. “We have to find out, you see. For the sake of our friends. For the sake of our dead friends.” Simon’s delivery is wonderful.
With the original plan scrapped they resort to plan B, cue Pacey and Barber get to have some fun by pretending to be drugged up passengers (shame the Space Princess only seems to have about six passengers) while Simon draws the short straw of acting the part of the person who has actually been drugged. On the subject of the Space Princess, it’s a cool model, and the effects work of Scorpio docking with it is nicely done. Those docking tubes are a health and safety nightmare though. Twice they’re used in Blakes 7, and some poor bloke gets killed in them both times (ok Raiker probably wasn’t deserving of the poor bloke tag).
Soolin gets to shoot some people, Vila gets to be distrustful of another crook, and offer some useful advice (the scene where he and Avon decide how much to ask for the gold is priceless) There’s also the fact that this is the one and only time this season, believe it or not, that Avon and Servalan come face to face, in fact it’s the last time Servalan will see our heroes, and the only time she’ll meet Soolin.
And then there’s that ending as the rug’s pulled out from under our heroes, yet again (another similarity with Games, although that time at least Servalan had the decency to lose too.) Orac’s half laugh is so snarky; I think he enjoyed this.
Tarrant: We’ve just risked our lives, for nothing.
Soolin: Not for nothing, Tarrant. We risked our lives to make Servalan rich!
Gold is a lot of fun, just don’t watch it and Games close together.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Starring Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller.
It is 1943 and Rudolf Höss (Friedel) is commandant of Auschwitz. He lives outside the camp in a large house with his wife Hedwig (Hüller) and their five children. They live an idyllic life, while a few hundred metres away the horrors of the concentration camp unfold.
When Höss is promoted to become deputy inspector of all concentration camps it seems like they life of luxury will come to an end, but Hedwig convinces him to ask that she and the children are allowed to stay at Auschwitz while he travels to Berlin.
The idea of a film that examines the horrors of the final solution while not showing any of the horrors of the final solution is an interesting one, and in other hands this could have failed miserably, but Glazer is such a good director that he makes it work.
What we see is the lives of the Höss family. Our view is almost totally from the outside of the concentration camp, though its presence is always there, from the smoke pouring from the chimneys to the ambient soundtrack of the camp; machinery, gunfire, trains arriving and departing, it pervades everything and is in stark contrast to the privileged life of the Höss family.
The mundanity of their lives could have made for dull viewing, and yet it is strangely compelling, and lest anyone think that this approach might humanise the Nazis, the opposite is true, if anything the ordinariness of their lives, and their acceptance of the horrors happening just a few hundred metres away, makes them even more monstrous.
“That banality of evil” is a term that has perhaps been overused in recent times, but here Glazer uses it to great effect. Thousands upon thousands die, yet Rudolf is appalled that the camp guards have trampled his flowers. Meanwhile Hedwig gets her pick of the prisoners’ belongings, swanning about in a fur coat and telling the story about how one woman found a diamond hidden in a tube of toothpaste because ‘they’ are very clever.
The Höss residence looks beautiful, a calm, splendid place at odds with the camp behind it, and its all the more unsettling for this.
Friedel and Hüller are superb, and you will hate Rudolf and Hedwig, though in some ways Hedwig comes across more grotesque, because she revels in the horror, whilst Rudolf seems to derive satisfaction only from the mechanics of the operation he has overseen.
It’s the tiny moments that encourage our revulsion. From one of their sons playing with human teeth, to Rudolf finding human remains in the river he and his children have been frolicking in.
Rudolf seems soulless at times, at a swanky Berlin dinner party all he can think about is the most efficient way he could gas all the guests, while Hedwig’s first thought upon hearing of her husband’s promotion is how this means they’ll lose their fine house and servants.
It isn’t an easy watch, and I think some people will find it boring, but I thought it was captivating.
Despite everything Glazer provides a modicum of hope, from Hedwig’s mother who isn’t as comfortable with things as she first appears, to the young woman who seeds the ground with food for the prisoners, at the risk of her own life (based apparently on a real person, the bike used is the actual bike).
If there is a flaw it is the lack of resolution. Rudolf was hanged after the war, but Glazer shies away from this. He doesn’t give us the catharsis we crave, and it’s up to each viewer to decide if that is a good thing or not. Instead, there’s an odd flash forward, presumably contrasting the banality of evil with the banality of remembrance, and again it is a bold, if perhaps not wholly satisfying choice, but one thing you can say about Glazer, he’s not in the habit of giving you what you want, perhaps only what you need.
A young girl grew up in poverty in Mississippi before going on to become one of the most famous women in the world, a pop icon worth millions, yet she struggled with mental health issues, an intrusive press and, most damning of all, abuse from her own family. This is her story.
I have been a fan of Britney Spears since the first time I saw the Baby One More Time video all the way back in 1999, I own her albums and I even went to see her live in Vegas (something that now, for obvious reasons, provokes mixed feelings in me) so when it was clear she’d written her autobiography there was no way I wasn’t going to read it.
She talks about her childhood, how from an early age she loved performing, she talks about her time with the Micky Mouse Club (where she met the likes of Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling) and her early successes. There’s her relationship with Timberlake, her drunken Vegas wedding that was annulled almost immediately, and her wedding to Kevin Federline, father of her two children. She goes into the breakdown of both relationships, and her own personal breakdown, which led to her father eventually filing for a conservatorship whereby he and other family members took control of every aspect of her life, and it talks about how she finally escaped that conservatorship.
What her story tells us is that she was a woman who was used by others, from an early age, and it shows the hypocrisy of the media and record labels, who wanted her to be increasingly sexualised in her music and her outfits, whilst also simultaneously being some virginal girl next door (she admits in the book she lost her virginity at 14). It was an impossible situation to find herself in. And of course, there are the double standards. When she and Timberlake broke up everyone put the blame on her, and when Timberlake sowed his wild oats (and she implies he was doing so even while they were together) it was seen as a normal, healthy thing to do. Heven forbid that a young woman do likewise. Of course, Britney wasn’t the only woman unfairly tarred in the early 2000s (see also Paris Hilton), and sadly she won’t be the last. Even now in the 2020s there are still double standards at work when it comes to men and women.
What’s interesting is that you’d imagine Britney would be angrier than she is given all that’s happened to her, and while she clearly is angry, in many ways she’s the same polite girl she was raised to be. There’s an innocence that none of the bad stuff seems to have erased,
I’m assuming there was a ghostwriter involved here, although the prose is raw enough in places to suggest maybe there wasn’t, or at the least that she had more of a hand in the book than you might think. It’s an interesting read, but it also feels thin, and I can’t help wondering if there was a rush to get it out, you feel there’s a lot more she could have said, and sometimes you want the book to dig deeper into things, too often if feels just surface.
But if you’re a Britney fan this is a must read and I hope writing it has proven cathartic. Whatever you may think of her, she is a woman who deserves the freedom she now has.
The planet Virn is a desolate, sand covered planet with no sun, and it never rains. In voiceover a man named Don Keller talks about how all the machinery is playing up, and there’s a plague that’s killing them all off. He asks for help.
It becomes clear that this is a recording from five years ago being watched by Servalan on a ship approaching Virn. With her is Investigator Reeve, a nasty piece of work who doesn’t seem at all threatened by Sleer’s position. He asks why the head of the pacification program is going to Virn. Servalan gives him a vague response.
On the recording Keller makes it clear that everyone died except him and one other, a woman. They seemed to be immune. Servalan ends the tape and points out that they obviously weren’t immune, the girl shot herself and soon after Keller got plague after all. The only reason the Federation is going to Virn is because, before all their instruments failed, Keller’s team determined there was something unique on Virn, unique and valuable.
On Xenon the crew are also discussing Virn and Don Keller. Orac intercepted Federation transmissions so they know all about the planet, and its unique secret, and they know that the Federation is sending an investigator. Despite Vila’s objections they decide to head to Virn rather than risk the Federation getting their hands on something useful. Avon tells Vila he can stay at home, but he refuses (he may regret this later).
Servalan’s ship makes a rough landing on Virn, while Tarrant and Dayna teleport down from Scorpio, which remains in very low, and very dangerous, orbit.
It will soon become clear that Virn isn’t as desolate as it appears, and as danger threatens enemies will have to work together, and perhaps get closer than either of them might have ever imagined…
Lots of TV series have a will they/won’t they dynamic. In Sand we have a did they/didn’t they dynamic. I’ve seen this episode many times and I’m still undecided.
More on that later.
As I’ve said before, this rewatch has made me reappraise certain episodes, and Sand is definitely one of those. I’ve always loved Sarcophagus, but if you’d asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of Tanith Lee’s second Blakes 7 script you’d have probably got a shrug and a half-hearted “meh.”
Turns out me from several weeks ago was a fool, because Sand is actually rather good, and in a season where several episodes are a trifle generic, Sand dares to do something different. Is it as good as Sarcophagus? Probably not, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
As she did in Series C, Lee plays around with horror tropes, introducing the gothic into Blakes 7, yet still grounding it, somewhat, in science fiction rather than fantasy. Vampiric sand doesn’t sound remotely believable, but she does couch it as a scientific, biological threat rather than something supernatural, even if that’s how it appears. The fact that the sand is just sentient enough to want its own breeding stock is a wonderfully gruesome conceit as well.
You have to love the way Lee introduces thunder and lightning into the mix to shake those on the planet, and on Scorpio, like they were actually in some old dark house.
Originally it was to be Avon down on the planet with Servalan, but I’m glad they switched things around. We all know how Avon and Servalan feel about one another, but we’ve rarely seen Tarrant go toe to toe with her and it works surprisingly well. Tarrant is allowed to be smart and resourceful in a way he isn’t always allowed to be when Avon is around, and Servalan manages to be ever so slightly vulnerable without appearing weak, I’m not even sure it’s entirely an act.
The episode is chock full of great dialogue, from Servalan telling Reeve that there are no women like her “I am unique” to the wonderfully flirtatious…
Servalan: “Oh, Tarrant. I’m just the girl next door.”
Tarrant: “If you were the girl next door, I’d move.”
Servalan: “Where would you move to, Tarrant?”
Tarrant: “Next door.”
There are some lovely callbacks, Tarrant hasn’t forgotten that Servalan had a hand in his brother’s death and Lee harks back to her previous script as Soolin wonders if they’re all cursed (though not sure how she figures the others are affected, as only Vila seems to be) and while maybe it’s because he’s frightened by Soolin’s idea of a malign alien influence, it’s interesting that it’s at mention of Cally’s name that Vila gets angry. I don’t know if it was intentional but given he mournfully asks “who cared about Cally?” minutes later it seems clear to me. He misses her (don’t we all?)
Servalan explains her escape from Liberator, and at least it isn’t completely illogical, plus it gives Dayna chance for a vicious “Did she excuse it as well?”
We learn a little more about Servalan, that Don Kellar was her lover, when she was eighteen. He left her and that’s when power became her lover. Whatever you think of being jilted as Servalan’s inciting incident, it’s a lovely speech and Jacqui delivers it beautifully. By all accounts this was her favourite episode, and I can understand why.
So did they or didn’t they? They kiss, and the next we see Tarrant is waking her up to show her what her tears have done to the sand. It’s feasible they did sleep together, and just as feasible they didn’t. Tarrant’s wonderful “I’ve said all I’m going to say” later aboard Scorpio is great (as are the dirty looks he gets from everyone. I’m pretty sure even Orac is probably horrified.)
I think they did, but maybe we’ll never know, and maybe it’s best that way.
A delightfully eerie little tale that manages to be spooky and romantic at the same time, with some wonderful dialogue between Tarrant and Servalan (backed up by two lovely performances) and some great snark on Scorpio just in case you think the others get short shrift, from Vila’s pulse being weak (like the rest of him) to Dayan’s sarcastic “You are the dominant male,” to Avon.
And just in case you think Servalan’s gone soft, she ends a melancholy little speech about Tarrant by saying she didn’t kill him…
Yet!
Next time. For the sake of our friends. For the sake of our DEAD friends!
Directed by Mahalia Belo. Starring Jodie Comer, Joel Fray, Katherine Waterston, Mark Strong, Nina Sosanya, Gina McKee, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Seen in January
A young woman (Comer) is on the verge of giving birth. She lives in a nice house in London and is very much in love with her boyfriend. It’s raining heavily but that’s ok because that’s outside. Except it keeps raining, and as rivers breach their banks and flood defences are overwhelmed, London, and other parts of the country, are deluged. As water begins to seep into her house she goes into labour. Taken to hospital she’s joined by her partner R (Fry). The hospital is under massive strain because of the floods and when she, R and her baby leave they can’t return home and so they drive out to the house of R’s parents (Strong and Sosanya) although they almost don’t make it. With so many people made homeless many smaller communities are refusing entry to refugees and R has to convince the police that this is the place he grew up in.
For a time life is idyllic as they watch from afar the chaos engulfing much of the country, but with food running out, and after several tragedies, they have to flee. Soon Mother (no one has a name in this film) finds herself having to enter a refugee camp with her baby.
Can she keep her baby safe and will she ever be able to go home again?
It would be wrong to say that I loved The End We Start From, but it’s a solid take on the post-apocalyptic survival story. Sure, in some respects it is the kind of story we’ve seen before, with a lot of the same tropes, but the choice to show survival from a new mother’s perspective is an interesting one. Comer’s Mother (the lack of names feels pointlessly pretentious) not only has to try and keep herself alive, but also her baby, and the film is definitely looking at a disaster from a female perspective and it’s to be lauded for that.
It’s also good to see an environmental catastrophe rather than the tired old nuclear war/plague/zombies etc, and in the midst of one of the mildest winters I think I’ve ever known, and following on from a lot of floods last month, the film feels very current. It’s also an intriguing take to examine the concept of becoming a refugee in your own country. In tone at times it feels like Children of Men (only nowhere near as effective) and it even segues into something reminiscent of 28 Weeks Later towards the end (sans rage zombies obviously).
Comer is superb, which is just as well as she’s on screen for the entire film. The only slight niggle I have is that she never quite looks dishevelled enough, but it seems churlish to complain because she can’t help being naturally beautiful and her performance is very good.
Katherine Waterston is great as the fellow mum she befriends in the refugee camp as is Joel Fry as Mother’s increasingly frazzled partner. Strong and Sosanya don’t get a lot to do, and McKee feels slightly wasted as well. There’s also a cameo from Cumberbatch (one of the production companies involved is Cumberbatch’s) that could have felt jarring, but outside of Comer and Waterstone he manages to be the best thing in the film despite very limited screen time.
The effects are good, especially given the film’s limited budget, and while scenes of a flooded London are sparse, they’re also very effective, as is the refugee camp.
Where the film falls down is in the plot. There just isn’t enough to justify the length of the film and after a strong start the film sags quite a bit and meanders to a conclusion that feels welcome, yet also strangely unearned. In part this is down to the film’s grounded nature, and inserting more action would have probably detracted somewhat from everything that makes the film interesting.
In the end it’s an appealing film that’s too slight to be truly memorable, but is buoyed by a great central performance from Comer who continues to show she’s a damn fine actor.
Slough House is a drab, dilapidated office block buried in the middle of London. To the outside world it might belong to a firm of accountants or down at heel solicitors, but in fact it’s the dumping ground for spies, for MI5 agents who have spectacularly failed, or had issues with drink or drugs, or worse. Men and women christened ‘slow horses’.
It’s where spies go to die, or at least be forgotten about. Slough House is run by Jackson Lamb, himself a spy deemed surplus to requirements, an overweight, scruffy failure with poor personal hygiene.
River Cartwright is one of Slough House’s newest recruits, an agent on the up before he failed an assessment. He refuses to quit and dreams of getting back to real spying, of getting back to Regent’s Park where MI5 is based (In Herron’s world anyway) but the truth is that no spy dumped at Slough House ever got back to the big time.
But when a young man is kidnapped, and his captors threaten to cut his head off live on the internet, it might be time for the Slow Horses to prove they’re not ready for the glue factory just yet.
Full disclosure. I haven’t seen the TV series, in fact I haven’t even seen so much as a trailer, but I have seen stills, but I can only assume that Gary Oldman is spot on casting for Jackson Lamb because I couldn’t get him out of my head when I was reading this.
This is definitely one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, a real page turner with twists and turns I didn’t see coming and a partially great cast of characters. I say partially because if the book has a flaw, it’s that there are a lot of people in Slough House, and while they do get whittled down somewhat, It was a little hard to keep track and a couple of them kinda merged into one.
There’s no mistaking Jackson Lamb though, not with him farting everywhere, but the idea of a slovenly old man being a top spy, and still able to mix it up when he has to, is great. River is good too.
The temptation with a spy novel might be to go big, but Herron subverts this. It isn’t about stopping terrorists exploding a dirty bomb, or Russia from stealing an experimental jet fighter, instead it’s grungier, a down and dirty story of angry, nasty men with a plan to get revenge. Oh, and there’s a plethora of people you can’t trust as far as you can throw them.
Herron’s prose is quick and nimble and he’s a master of the cliffhanger. Yes, sometimes he is a bit sneaky with his words, tricking you into thinking the story is going one way when something else entirely is going on. Occasionally this feels like cheating, but mostly it feels like smoke and mirrors that contrive to make for a better reading experience.
If you like spy thrillers this is hugely recommended.
There is only one problem, and that’s finding out there are many more books, because I think I am gonna have to read them! (and I probably need to watch the show too!)
On Scorpio the crew watch footage of explosions. The footage is from the planet Agravo, a worked out planet the Federation had got all they wanted from, Feldon Crystals that focus energy infinitely more efficiently than a burning glass, the crystals are the hardest and most valuable substance in the universe. Vila perks up at this and asks where?
“Where what?” replied Avon.
“Where do we steal them from?”
It turns out they steal them from the planet Mecron Two where a man named Belkov is playing chess with his computer Gambit (amazingly this isn’t a Robert Holmes script). Gambit tells him that intruders have boarded ‘Orbiter’. Belkov isn’t concerned, Orbiter’s defences are better than Gambit’s he jokes, thinking he’s about to win.
Back on Scorpio Avon gets a message from Academician Gerren, one of the men who’s boarded Orbiter. He was supposed to wait for Avon and the others to join him in his heist, but instead he goes early with two companions. They’re faced with one of Belkov’s games, a quick draw contest where you have to outshoot yourself. Gerren’s companions don’t do very well, and he is wounded, though he manages to escape and calls for help from Avon.
Soon the crew of Scorpio will need to play Belkov’s devilish games, but there’ll be a new player entering the board. Sleer!
I think sometimes Games gets overlooked because of the episodes that follow—especially Orbit—but this really is a corker of an episode, full of action and adventure, twists and double crosses, cool lines and, best of all, it’s a script that gives every member of the main cast (including Orac and Servalan) something to do, which is more than you can say about a lot of episodes.
Or maybe I just love any episode where Vila gets to be vaguely heroic, which he does here. Sure his early moments aren’t great—note to self, when infiltrating an enemy base under no circumstances take a knife from the back of a dead Federation guard and keep it on you—but he gets the computer circuits Avon wants by sweettalking Gambit, saves Tarrant and Dayna, offs a Federation guard (apparently the only time Vila deliberately shoots someone, though obviously he did stab someone in Cygnus Alpha) and still finds time to thwart one of Belkov’s games and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by stealing Belkov’s Feldon crystal necklace…ok, he doesn’t do that last one but for a moment at least he’s allowed to be rightfully smug.
Plus he gets some great lines. “I’ve been shot at, trodden on, nearly captured twice, and now I think they’re trying to blow me up. A fairly average day.”
For once the quarry location doesn’t jar, it’s supposed to look like a mine after all. Nice to see the sea in the background also. The Mecronians are fun, a native people not dressed up like the stock native people we usually get, and yeah, those knives don’t make a lick of sense but they look cool, and Belkov’s ploy in getting them to do as he tells them is nicely done. Stratford Johns makes for an effective antagonist, and his interplay with Gambit is nicely done, especially the way Gambit outplays him, not one but twice.
The games on Orbiter are surprisingly effective. Soolin having to outdraw herself is cool, as is her sardonic remark that it’s finally a game worth playing. Tarrant flying the flight simulator isn’t bad either, it’s nice to see everyone using their talents; Dayna reverts to those ‘ancient’ weapons she loves by coopting a Mecronian knife, Vila circumvents some security systems and Avon? Well Avon is a bit of a bastard, from blackmailing Gerren to taking Scorpio out of orbit for a while, leaving those on the ground up to their necks in something brown and sticky. He dislikes playing games where someone else makes the rules and sets themselves up as the referee as well!
For the one and only time we get Scorpio firing its weapons (though we never get any idea what kind of armament it’s carrying).
A lot of action, a lot of twists and turns, explosions and pithy one-liners. Games is a lot of fun, but it isn’t perfect. What happens to Servalan and Gerren? The last we see she’s interrogating the academician but then what? Does she just go home? Does she, presumably, kill him or is it off to Cygnus Alpha for Gerren?
I’m also still not entirely sure what happens at the end. Avon says there never were any crystals, but there must have been or else what is locking onto the black hole? Belkov’s demise isn’t something that bothers me though. His ship exploding was filmed but not used, but I don’t think it’s essential we see it destroyed, it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen.
It might not be perfect, but this is still a fun episode and one of the highlights of the final season.
werewolves on the moon 