Weekend telly etc
Feb. 28th, 2012 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightThe weather was lovely last weekend. Unfortunately for me, I spent most of it in a car on the motorway. Oh well, at least I got back in time for the Sunday evening tellyfest.
Spoilers behind cut for Being Human, Homeland and Game of Thrones, both show and book, because I have at last - at long last - finished the first book in the series.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm loving Being Human season 4. It's a breath of fresh air after the misery and angst of the last two seasons. I'm sorry about Nina being written out of the show without even a farewell episode, but I don't miss George and Mitchell at all. Tom and Hal more than fill their places IMO. In fact, I love the dynamic between them, and the 'I'm his boyfriend' scene in this ep had me in stitches. I thought that this episode was one of the best of the show ever, with the only fly in the ointment being how how slow Annie was to see through the incredibly creepy Kirby. In fact, she didn't at all, did she? And he had to threaten her baby to make her angry enough to retaliate (bit of a cliche, that).
But going down that road means you get to that place where, from a social justice POV, it's possible to rip the whole show to pieces, which I could also do to Homeland with no effort at all, as follows:
Lead female character is an emotional mess and not above offering sex in return for favours, dodgy-looking dusky people doing cliched stuff like having harems, heroic African American character who dies, while the white male hero/anti-hero/villain/whatever he turns out to be - is spared. Everything about said character's return home being about his manpain while his poor wife is made to look bad (actually, that last bit isn't fair, because I think most people would sympathise with a woman whose husband has been MIA for eight years assuming that he must be dead and trying to move on). Last on the list (for now), token African American character in a position of authority so no one can say the show is not being inclusive. Also, I'm fully expecting a 'good' Muslim character to be introduced at some point, to counterbalance to a small extent the fact that all the other Muslim characters are bad, bad, baddy-bad bad. Then there was the gratuitous female nudity, which was tedious and and annoying.
Also, in the second episode that hoary old cliche from 24 reared its head, of the intelligence operative promising their 'asset' that they wouldn't let anything bad happen to them. Audience instantly knows that the poor woman is doomed.
All that said, :shrug:, I actually enjoyed the episode very much (it's worth watching just for Brodie's foul-mouthed teenage daughter), even though I watch it with my hackles raised, as it were, and even though the TV listings had promised us a big shock at the end of it, and I had guessed what it was the minute I read about it, except that I'd thought Carrie would see Brodie praying and she didn't. It remains to be seen, I suppose, whether he really has converted or whether he's just acting out. (No spoilers please).
Moving on, with season 2 of Game of Thrones looming closer every day (yay!), I've finally - finally!-managed to finish reading the first book in the series. Have to say - and big apologies to fans of the books - I can't say I enjoyed it much (the fact that it's taken me so long to read - almost six months -is a clue). I thought the style ponderous, and of course was spoilered for the story, which probably didn't help. I did notice the differences between the book and the show, but, for the most part (not the exposition whore scenes, obviously) thought what the show did an improvement. I've decided not to read any further. I think doing so will spoil the show for me, especially as I suspect show and books will diverge more and more as the series continues.
I'm just glad to have finished the thing and feel I am now owed a Terry Pratchett in recompense.
ETA: I've given up completely on Upstairs, Downstairs, btw, but there are so many other things on at the moment I want to watch that they're stacking up on my iPlayer list - like the series about the Tube, for instance, and Jeremy Paxman on the British Empire (last night's ep went to show yet again how there's no hypocrite worse than a former terrorist), Melvyn Bragg on class, Prof Iain Stewart on how to grow a planet etc, etc. Mind you, with what is about to happen to BBC4, this is the glut before the famine. :(
Spoilers behind cut for Being Human, Homeland and Game of Thrones, both show and book, because I have at last - at long last - finished the first book in the series.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm loving Being Human season 4. It's a breath of fresh air after the misery and angst of the last two seasons. I'm sorry about Nina being written out of the show without even a farewell episode, but I don't miss George and Mitchell at all. Tom and Hal more than fill their places IMO. In fact, I love the dynamic between them, and the 'I'm his boyfriend' scene in this ep had me in stitches. I thought that this episode was one of the best of the show ever, with the only fly in the ointment being how how slow Annie was to see through the incredibly creepy Kirby. In fact, she didn't at all, did she? And he had to threaten her baby to make her angry enough to retaliate (bit of a cliche, that).
But going down that road means you get to that place where, from a social justice POV, it's possible to rip the whole show to pieces, which I could also do to Homeland with no effort at all, as follows:
Lead female character is an emotional mess and not above offering sex in return for favours, dodgy-looking dusky people doing cliched stuff like having harems, heroic African American character who dies, while the white male hero/anti-hero/villain/whatever he turns out to be - is spared. Everything about said character's return home being about his manpain while his poor wife is made to look bad (actually, that last bit isn't fair, because I think most people would sympathise with a woman whose husband has been MIA for eight years assuming that he must be dead and trying to move on). Last on the list (for now), token African American character in a position of authority so no one can say the show is not being inclusive. Also, I'm fully expecting a 'good' Muslim character to be introduced at some point, to counterbalance to a small extent the fact that all the other Muslim characters are bad, bad, baddy-bad bad. Then there was the gratuitous female nudity, which was tedious and and annoying.
Also, in the second episode that hoary old cliche from 24 reared its head, of the intelligence operative promising their 'asset' that they wouldn't let anything bad happen to them. Audience instantly knows that the poor woman is doomed.
All that said, :shrug:, I actually enjoyed the episode very much (it's worth watching just for Brodie's foul-mouthed teenage daughter), even though I watch it with my hackles raised, as it were, and even though the TV listings had promised us a big shock at the end of it, and I had guessed what it was the minute I read about it, except that I'd thought Carrie would see Brodie praying and she didn't. It remains to be seen, I suppose, whether he really has converted or whether he's just acting out. (No spoilers please).
Moving on, with season 2 of Game of Thrones looming closer every day (yay!), I've finally - finally!-managed to finish reading the first book in the series. Have to say - and big apologies to fans of the books - I can't say I enjoyed it much (the fact that it's taken me so long to read - almost six months -is a clue). I thought the style ponderous, and of course was spoilered for the story, which probably didn't help. I did notice the differences between the book and the show, but, for the most part (not the exposition whore scenes, obviously) thought what the show did an improvement. I've decided not to read any further. I think doing so will spoil the show for me, especially as I suspect show and books will diverge more and more as the series continues.
I'm just glad to have finished the thing and feel I am now owed a Terry Pratchett in recompense.
ETA: I've given up completely on Upstairs, Downstairs, btw, but there are so many other things on at the moment I want to watch that they're stacking up on my iPlayer list - like the series about the Tube, for instance, and Jeremy Paxman on the British Empire (last night's ep went to show yet again how there's no hypocrite worse than a former terrorist), Melvyn Bragg on class, Prof Iain Stewart on how to grow a planet etc, etc. Mind you, with what is about to happen to BBC4, this is the glut before the famine. :(