Criminal Activities: Reading & Watching

My latest review on Euro Crime is for James Wolff's first novel "Beside The Syrian Sea". It's set in the Middle East and involves a son's attempts to get his father, an ISIS hostage, released from captivity. The father is an earnestly moral cleric and the son is a desperately introverted intelligence worker finding himself suddenly without the boundaries he has so carefully maintained and quite literally in a new land.
I was gripped by it, not just by plot and thrill but by  its characters and their relationships. I also somehow found it "terribly British" ... in the nicest possible way. Read the review in full detail here at Euro Crime.

Meanwhile, as they say, there has been much to watch on telly. I haven't really enjoyed Season 2 of the Belgian thriller "Salamander" but I still watched it through. Nor, I must say, am I enamoured of Belgian thriller "Rough Justice" either. But still watching. Perhaps my dissatisfaction lies in the completely straight-faced, lugubrious main characters of each series? My Belgian favourite? (Sounds like a variety of iris, don't it.) When it comes to Belgian thrillers on British screens over the last 12 months - my highlight remains Season One of "Professor T". Not at all to everybody's taste, (sigh) it was to mine. The Old Man gave up on its fantasy musical breaks and opted for the washing up, but I was hooked. Although ... I realise now ... it carries the motif of straight-faced Belgian leads to bizarre extremes with its emotionally locked-in, germ-obsessive, forensic genius that is Prof T. Yes I know there have been other series predicated on emotionally damaged, clever-clogs analysts - but they don't have fantasy musical numbers! End of.

Aah! Not Belgian I know - but I forgot  season Four of "The Bridge". Now there's another "straight-faced" lead  - but no fantasy musical numbers - yet.
Am I watching? Of course I am.

The Miniaturist

One of the British telly programmes I enjoyed over Christmas was The Miniaturist. Well I would, wouldn't I ... all those miniature lovelies destined for Nella's dollhouse; a touch of the supernatural; lovingly detailed Dutch interiors; a flavour of family saga (although exceeding brief - a touch, a blink as such); an insight into the religious and social politics of that place and time.

I didn't understand why the BBC broadcast it in two unequal-length parts (one and a half hours and then an hour) which tripped up the pace of the ending for me.

But it was very sumptuous, visual ... and lovingly miniaturised.

Grey Doll Will Be Watching ... The Handmaid's Tale

Without a doubt  I shall sit myself down for the new TV serial based on Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" -  Episode 1 of which is due to be aired UK telly on Sunday evening (28th May 2017) - Channel 4 at 9pm.


Margaret Atwood  is a great writer, I genuinely think so. I read The Handmaid's Tale and think it is one of the most chilling pieces of speculative fiction, alternative histories whatever you like to call it - since Orwell's 1984. Was that a lazy comparison? Possibly. But I am old, hot, tired and want to get back to drawing. Incidentally, this also means that I am old enough to remember the mindset of things before late twentieth-century feminism reared it's "nasty", "castrating" Medusa head ... and I am referencing just such a mindset here.
Finally and a propos watching the new serial, I just plain want to see what they have made of the book.

I give you a link to Atwood's own article (published in the New York Times earlier this year) on her writing of the novel and her thoughts about it.

Read Atwood, Yeah!

Current State Of Obsessions

We are a household filled with obsessions. Aren't you? For me, Bike Girl, it's fantasising a life on the road with my bike and my dog. Have you met my dog?
 Mrs D "arranged" him for me. I'd thought I'd like one of those rangy Lurcher guys. But I think some Chow Chow got in to Dog's mix by the look of him. Whatever, he is a good-natured old boy.

So what are these current obsessions? Grey Doll still reads crime novels and has just reviewed "Fatal Crossing", a crime debut by Danish journalist turned crime writer Lone Theils for Euro Crime. You can read The Doll's review in this post on the Euro Crime blog.

The Doll's eyes are tired and rectangular from her evening TV-viewing as well. She and The Old Man did give up on multinational crime thriller The Team ... and she is beginning to think that the third series of French dirty-politics and PR-villainies series, Spin, has ... spun. But she is happy to see Hinterland back on the screen. It's a Welsh crime series set in almost total darkness and packed with monosyllabic conversations... except for the Welsh bits. Loves the photography though, does the Doll.
Other viewing she has recently enjoyed includes globe-trotting situation comedy Gap Year. And, Oh, how she misses the weekly slot filled with pillage and war, tattooed Danes, prissy Saxons and the muscular, jaw-clenched Uhtred (nee Osbert) of Bebbenburg in The Last Kingdom.

You may ask about The Old Man's obsessions too. But why ask? Didn't you know that in the UK we have a General Election coming up? Shouting at the telly and radio has gone to maximum decibels in this household. Grey Doll joins in and then Dog starts barking.  Then I have to rev up the bike and dream of faraway hills and open roads.

Boxed Set Time: Fortitude

The Old Man and I have just worked our way through the boxed DVD set of "Fortitude: Series 1". (Series 2 is due out in 2016)...

This £25 million budget chiller looked right up my Nordic-Fandom street... Set in the Arctic; murder and mayhem in an isolated town; greed, hints of skulduggery and plenty of gore; big name actors and actresses. What's not to like?
Ah-Hem. Let me just say that viewing the entire series took all of me and The Old Man's ... fortitude. I don't mind stretching the boundaries of my imagination, psycho-chill..and sci-fi tolerance but the final episodes broke us. And set me back greatly in my attempts to build up The Old Man's tolerance of crime thrillers. The bad science enraged The Old Man... and the script and editing enraged me. Oh Dear! I couldn't agree more with poor old (Stanley Tucci's) DCI Morton when he do say towards the end ....
"I hate this place."

Grey Doll Turns From A Life of Crime...To Magic: Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell

I loved the BBC TV serial adaptation of the novel "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke which ended last month. The story is a blend of alternate English history and fantasy with perhaps... an element of satire. The production is a terrific blend of script, performances, visual effects, sets and props... which re-creates the book's world beautifully. And I find this a great relief..... because I am a little tired of visuals produced by over-clocking the CGI in a production so that everyone and everything, including the light, appear to have been been fed through a single smoothing filter.

Not so with this one. So...every hat I own is taken off to director Toby Haynes and adapter Peter Harness. Eddie Marsan's "Mr Norrell" is pitch perfect - all timorous distrust, dull wig and little pot belly. Berti Carvel's "Jonathan Strange" is as dashing and Byronic as you could want. (The whole thing seems to take a nod at the distinctions and conflict between the Augustan Alexander Pope's "Norrell" versus the Romantic Lord Byron's "Jonathan Strange"....er... I think). Most of the performances were really strong so I would if I could not stop here with me glowing praise but......

Anyway, I love it all so much that I have downloaded the hours and hours of the spoken word version of the book from Audible and am plunging into its world of Georgian England alternate history and the battle between Theoretical Magicians and Practical Magicians all over again. A wonderful book, wonderfully written... and a long-time in writing (am I surprised?).

Note: Whilst researching Susanna Clarke, I see that she is the partner of (perhaps under-estimated) British sci-fi writer Colin Greenland, quite a few of whose books sit on my shelf from my sci-fi-reader phase. Well. There you go.

Saturday Night Thrills... On the Telly: "The Code"

How did you get on with BBC4's Saturday Crime Spot of "Crimes Of Passion"? Well... I was having my doubts after Episode One but thought I would give it a more generous go..... And then I gave up. It just continued with its strange red herrings and retro fashion bloops. Sadly, it was not for me and The Old Man refused point blank.
We had to substitute DVD Saturday nights....

So, I shall look forward to the new series for viewing. As of  Saturday 11th October at 21 hrs.... (er... tomorrow/today whatever...) BBC4 will be showing its UK viewers the Australian series "The Code" ....billed as a political thriller. Once again, I look forward.
I shall be there.... sat in my chair ..... glued.
Some people view Saturday nights as curry nights, I do view them as foreign telly nights. Hurray!

Wagner By The Hour...

OK. I am not referencing Wagner's Ring cycle with this hat. Sometimes I just need to wear my rabbit's ears hat.

So.... we do watch Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, and Siegfried .... (see previous post if you don't know what I'm on about...) Hours and hours of declaiming and singing and swording and swashing buckles. Nice scenery. Some very nice singing. Much as I don't Wagner... it does leave me hiyata-ho-ing around the place. Next is "Gotterdammerung" (again!). The finale.

But tonight "Celebrity Bake-Off" may just win out on the telly front.... (Blimey, just realised that this series beloved by the nation is made by the same outfit as outrage du jour - "Benefits Street". Jam for some but not for others....  I see.)

And yes... The Old Man do still have a hand like a bunch of sausages... we may learn why today. But meanwhile I shall wear my comfort hat.

BBC 4: Serving One's Past As a Cultural Stew

One of the unexpected side effects of being elder is to find one's lived past regurgitated as edutainment  in a garbled form.

So it be for me when I do settle down to BBC 4's "Fabric of Britain: The Golden Age of Knitting" the other evening.

All is smooth going until we reach my own lifespan's experience - the 1950s onwards - and I admit to gagging a bit as 1950s home knitting culture is fed to me purely as some kind of desire to "make things for one's loved ones"....

Let me see now.... my recollection is that money is still tight post-war and into the mid-1950s at least. New "manufactured" clothes are considered expensive by many, hence... you make your own because that is all you can afford. To paraphrase The Old Man's grandmother ... "They's can't schemy must lowster." (If you can't be brainy you have to do physical work) or in terms of my argument..."if you ain't got the money you have to make it yourself."

By the time the "documentary" hits the 1960s my eyes are revolving in their sockets. Showing clips of young girls grooving in lacy mini dresses. Just to be pedantic. This is not knitting. This is crochet. I know. My big sis do crochet just such a dress for me at the time, white cotton.... And where does that fashion come from, I ask? Most likely the same street-savvy of "make because you can't afford to buy". Paris fashion of the 1960s features hand-crafted lace mini dresses and the nearest us plebs can manage as substitute is crochet. Voila! The crochet mini- dress.

The documentary then goes on about the "sweater dress" that all the "girls were crazy for". I don't remember that craze, and believe me I do have my eye on fashion even if I be too plump, rural and un-wealthy to get my hands on it. But I do remember the "skinny rib sweater" that everyone does want .... but is not mentioned in this piece.

So... by the time the doc have disposed of knitting in the 1980s without mention of Patricia Roberts but instead with a display of Gyles Brandreth's awful novelty items, I be weeping. Apparently there be no knitted fashion in the 1990s. But I do remember my black fine-knit Nicole Farhi dress as the clothes-love-of-me life at that time. Apparently I be buying and wearing knits in the 1990s in some alternate future/past.

The recent resurgence of "knitting groups" as tackled by the programme's pundits is something else. But it is glossed over. Perhaps it is nostalgia .... or a backlash against manufactured clothes? I dunno. But the fact which is unmentioned in this TV analysis of the "Golden Age of Knitting" - is that present day fashion/clothing industry economics is the very opposite of that of the 1950s. Then, hand-knitting was done with standardised woollen  and cotton yarns in various forms and the clothing manufacture industry was still largely a British affair. The designed, synthetic yarns of recent years, by contrast, cost a fortune. Buying enough yarn to make a fashionable garment - always bespoke patterns for these yarns because they are so individualised - is an expensive project. On the other hand the manufactured knitted clothes now available from high street and supermarkets... courtesy of the sweat shops of south-east Asia... cost a few pounds and are bought and chucked at whim.

All in all... a sloppy bit of documentary. And by the way... I never met anyone in the 1950s who do actually have one of they knitted toilet-roll covers shaped like a crinolined lady that the programme delights in displaying and smirking over.

Plainly... my entire life have been spent in an alternate fashion past.

For uplift and real inspiration on fashion and the older generation I do recommend taking a look at Channel 4's "Fabulous Fashionistas" repeated.....  Marvel and Enjoy. (OOPs my mistake on original post. Correct time and channel is Sunday 22nd September 20.00 hrs. on Channel 4-7) 

And May I Say How Much I Enjoyed...

... this last telly series of "Foyle's War".
Now that we've tipped the plot into the coldwar era, shady dealings abound and there are some tricky blighters about.

Wonderful production stuff, costumes, sets, etc. I do think that it's hard not to taint "period" style with current fashion but they did manage the period jolly well. Don't often watch retro crime but have always had a soft spot for "Foyle's War" and so I really do hope we have some more.

Jolly good show, I say.

Our Own Retro Film Season: David Lynch

I did post before that we be cracking open our DVD box set of Lynch's "Twin Peaks" a while back. We did indeed watch it all with the relish of the true "Peakies". The Old Man and I still have "Fire Walk With Me" to watch. So that be good. By the way did you know that Riverside Studios in London hosts a "Twin Peaks Festival" this October? Neither did I.

Anyhow I realise how much Lynchiana do fit in with Mrs D's crime thriller obsession... not just the "Peaks". So 'spect to say more on the subject as The Old Man and me do work our way through the feature films.

Jelly Time

OK. For all you out there celebratin' the Diamond Jubilee... I wish you a jolly good time.
We'se not the Jubilee celebratin' type. We be elder folks and have seen some Jubilees before. But I have made a jelly with strawberries in it....

And we are taking alternative time-out from the celebrations....
with a boxed set of Lynch's "Twin Peaks".
Yes we are that old, and we be indeed "Peakies".