The Team
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Team is an eight episode television police drama produced jointly by Denmark, Germany and Belgium. It is in English, Danish, German, Dutch and French, with English sub-titles. It is about a case given...
Monthly Archive: March 2018
Occupied
Reading Time: 2 minutes Russia’s recent thinly veiled threats against Britain, and its political isolation make the Norwegian television series ‘ Occupied’ particularly pertinent. Norway’s most expensive television series is set in the near future and deals with...
‘Some Kind of Blue’ – Noir
Reading Time: 2 minutes Noir is a five member Sydney based band led by vocalist Jessica Mincher and guitarist Billy James. ‘Some Kind of Blues’, their first and only album, was released in 2017. The band classifies their...
Jonathan Elias – ‘The Prayer Cycle’
Reading Time: 2 minutes The beautiful and haunting songs on this album are sung in twelve different languages, by singers from different religious, cultural and musical traditions including rock/contemporary pop music represented by Alanis Morissette, Perry Farrell, James Taylor, and Linda Ronstadt. This complex and multilayered album deserves to be listened to uninterupted.
Collateral
Reading Time: 2 minutes Recently, police drama/crime series have been increasingly adopting the Nordic Noir style of classic television series such as ‘The Bridge’ or ‘The Killings’. While some of these shows have been spectacular successes, the Netflix...
‘The Bureau’ – Series 1-3
Reading Time: 2 minutes The first 3 series of ‘The Bureau’ have been described as the most realistic depiction of international espionage and intelligence work. The French seem to excel in presenting characters realistically, and so lacking in Hollywood sheen that they seem real. Perhaps surprisingly, this realism makes the show more, rather than less addictive.
‘Three Billboards…’
Reading Time: < 1 minute The only criticism that I have read of ‘Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri’ is that audiences have not liked the ending. Well I beg to differ and suggest that the ending was possibly the...
‘The Midwife’
Reading Time: < 1 minute ‘The Midwife’ is a 2017 French film starring the two Catherines (Deneuve and Frot). While two hours long, it is so well crafted and the storyline is so unpredictable that The film never drags....
‘The Last Man in Europe’ Dennis Glower
Reading Time: 2 minutes If, like me, you were both fascinated and terrified by George Orwell’s unforgettable classics ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, then Dennis Glover’s first novel, ‘The Last Man In Europe’ (2017) is likely to appeal. ...
‘Alias Grace’ Margaret Atwood
Reading Time: < 1 minute I just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s latest, as-ever fine, and perhaps most accessible book, Alias Grace. I was hooked from the start and remained so for all of the book’s 467 pages. The story...