Christmas/New Year Telly
Jan. 7th, 2014 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightOkay. :cracks knuckles:
Thought I'd finally get written down what I thought about the fannish stuff I watched on telly over Christmas/New Year.
This consists of the Doctor Who Christmas special, Death Comes to Pemberley and the first two episodes of Sherlock season 3, so spoilers for those behind cut. And I really, really didn't like the DW thing, so don't read if you loved it and don't want your squee spoiled.
I shan't say a lot about DW because I'm afraid I thought it was absolutely dire. Silly, schmaltzy, boring. It summed up all the things I've hated about Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor - none of which are to do with Matt Smith, who I like fine. But I'm sick to death of the silly, convoluted plots, of the lack of emotional continuity and most of all, of the endless succession of 'uber-special' companions (River, Amy, Clara) each touted as being vital to the Doctor's story (Clara so much so that she was inserted into the Doctor's timestream to nudge him along in the right direction throughout his whole existence, thereby detracting from his entire story since the very first episode in 196whenever it was, IMO).
Whey does the companion have to be 'special' anyway? Why can't she just be normal? Or at least start off normal. I didn't like Rose back when Tennant was Doctor (she was okay with Eccleston), but I'd swap her for all three of the Matt Smith companions in a heartbeat.
I feel sorry for Matt Smith, actually. He deserved better than that pile of old twaddle for his last ever episode.
Mind you, looks to me from the amount of love and attention Moffatt has clearly given this season of Sherlock that DW has been very much of an afterthought with him, 50th anniversary or no. I'm not actually a Sherlock fan. I don't fancy Cumberbatch, and the Sherlock character up to now has been pretty much guaranteed to get up my nose, with his irritating cleverness and constant putting down of other people because they're not as clever as him. But this season has changed all that. Somehow, the addition of Mary to the cast has softened the character of Sherlock enough that I feel I can see what John sees in him and feel much more kindly towards him. It also helps that the first two episodes have been packed full of humour, and the second episode in particular was very cleverly structured. It was fun leaping around all over the place trying to keep up with Sherlock, and I like that Mary (who I thought at first - and I think Sherlock also thought at first - would be antagonistic towards Sherlock) just accepts him as he is.
Best scenes so far: Sherlock trying to explain (unsuccessfully) to John why he didn't tell him he wasn't dead in increasingly lower brow eating establishments (from posh restaurant to coffee shop to elbows on the counter late night diner) and getting socked in the jaw and eventually head-butted for his pains.
Drunk Sherlock and John. Very, very funny! The whole thing, right up to Lestrade yelling at them in the police cell.
John taking charge when the guardsman was stabbed in the shower (though my experience of soldiers is that they never dither the way the other soldiers did in that scene, ie. they wouldn't need to be told twice to call an ambulance).
Sherlock's best man's speech.
The fan service in ep 1, especially the Sherlock/Moriarty snog.
It's been great. I'm still not a fan fan, but I do hope there'll be a season 4.
Finally, Death Comes to Pemberley.
I haven't read the book (K tells me it's not very good), and though I've read P&P, I'm not a mad Janeite, so there was nothing about this that could have annoyed me except it's being very bad. Fortunately, though, it was actually very good, I thought. The cast was excellent (Matthew Rhys was wonderful as Darcy, Anna Maxwell Martin was also very good, though not quite how I imagine Lizzy - a bit too pensive) and Jenna Coleman was perfect as Lydia. It all looked very beautiful and ended how you would hope it would, though also didn't shrink from showing us that justice could be very rough in those days (without ramming it anachronistically down your throat in the manner of that appallingly bad film of Mansfield Park with Harold Pinter as Sir Thomas Bertram). Plus there was a bravura performance from Trevor Eve.
Great stuff. In fact, I want to watch it again.
Thought I'd finally get written down what I thought about the fannish stuff I watched on telly over Christmas/New Year.
This consists of the Doctor Who Christmas special, Death Comes to Pemberley and the first two episodes of Sherlock season 3, so spoilers for those behind cut. And I really, really didn't like the DW thing, so don't read if you loved it and don't want your squee spoiled.
I shan't say a lot about DW because I'm afraid I thought it was absolutely dire. Silly, schmaltzy, boring. It summed up all the things I've hated about Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor - none of which are to do with Matt Smith, who I like fine. But I'm sick to death of the silly, convoluted plots, of the lack of emotional continuity and most of all, of the endless succession of 'uber-special' companions (River, Amy, Clara) each touted as being vital to the Doctor's story (Clara so much so that she was inserted into the Doctor's timestream to nudge him along in the right direction throughout his whole existence, thereby detracting from his entire story since the very first episode in 196whenever it was, IMO).
Whey does the companion have to be 'special' anyway? Why can't she just be normal? Or at least start off normal. I didn't like Rose back when Tennant was Doctor (she was okay with Eccleston), but I'd swap her for all three of the Matt Smith companions in a heartbeat.
I feel sorry for Matt Smith, actually. He deserved better than that pile of old twaddle for his last ever episode.
Mind you, looks to me from the amount of love and attention Moffatt has clearly given this season of Sherlock that DW has been very much of an afterthought with him, 50th anniversary or no. I'm not actually a Sherlock fan. I don't fancy Cumberbatch, and the Sherlock character up to now has been pretty much guaranteed to get up my nose, with his irritating cleverness and constant putting down of other people because they're not as clever as him. But this season has changed all that. Somehow, the addition of Mary to the cast has softened the character of Sherlock enough that I feel I can see what John sees in him and feel much more kindly towards him. It also helps that the first two episodes have been packed full of humour, and the second episode in particular was very cleverly structured. It was fun leaping around all over the place trying to keep up with Sherlock, and I like that Mary (who I thought at first - and I think Sherlock also thought at first - would be antagonistic towards Sherlock) just accepts him as he is.
Best scenes so far: Sherlock trying to explain (unsuccessfully) to John why he didn't tell him he wasn't dead in increasingly lower brow eating establishments (from posh restaurant to coffee shop to elbows on the counter late night diner) and getting socked in the jaw and eventually head-butted for his pains.
Drunk Sherlock and John. Very, very funny! The whole thing, right up to Lestrade yelling at them in the police cell.
John taking charge when the guardsman was stabbed in the shower (though my experience of soldiers is that they never dither the way the other soldiers did in that scene, ie. they wouldn't need to be told twice to call an ambulance).
Sherlock's best man's speech.
The fan service in ep 1, especially the Sherlock/Moriarty snog.
It's been great. I'm still not a fan fan, but I do hope there'll be a season 4.
Finally, Death Comes to Pemberley.
I haven't read the book (K tells me it's not very good), and though I've read P&P, I'm not a mad Janeite, so there was nothing about this that could have annoyed me except it's being very bad. Fortunately, though, it was actually very good, I thought. The cast was excellent (Matthew Rhys was wonderful as Darcy, Anna Maxwell Martin was also very good, though not quite how I imagine Lizzy - a bit too pensive) and Jenna Coleman was perfect as Lydia. It all looked very beautiful and ended how you would hope it would, though also didn't shrink from showing us that justice could be very rough in those days (without ramming it anachronistically down your throat in the manner of that appallingly bad film of Mansfield Park with Harold Pinter as Sir Thomas Bertram). Plus there was a bravura performance from Trevor Eve.
Great stuff. In fact, I want to watch it again.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-10 02:40 pm (UTC)