Month: December 2024

Black Doves–”Slow Horses” meets “The Americans”?

Written by Diana Paul on December 30, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. 2 Comments on Black Doves–”Slow Horses” meets “The Americans”?

The six-episode Netflix mini-series Black Doves is being promoted as a Christmas holiday spy thriller, full of such fun scenes as explosions, intense gun-fight street battles and stylish upper-class British banter to mix up with the tinsel and ornaments. Helen Webb (Keira Knightley of “Pirates of the Carribean”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Bend It Like Beckham”) is an unlikely agent in a highly secretive espionage group called the Black Doves. Selling intel to whomever is willing to pay for it, Black Doves has no allegiance to the British. Married to the Defense Minister, Wallace...

Day of the Jackal–Hunt or Be Hunted

Written by Diana Paul on December 22, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Day of the Jackal–Hunt or Be Hunted

In this Peacock mini-series released November 2024, British assassin-for-hire and super-sniper is known only as the “Jackal” by police and those paying him millions. Of course, he has multiple aliases and disguises. An update of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel and the 1973 movie, Day of the Jackal is a modern high-stakes thriller of international politics, espionage, and the dark web. It is not a sequel to the movie. A cold-blooded, shapeshifting chameleon, the Jackal (Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne for “The Theory of Everything” and nominated for “The Danish Girl”) masterminds...

The Americans–Cold War at Home

Written by Diana Paul on December 16, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on The Americans–Cold War at Home

In this multiple award-winning six-season Hulu series (2013-2018), The Americans has invaded the hearts of countless viewers. The Americans takes place during the Reagan era of 1980-1987, the Cold War with Gorbachev and what was known then as the Soviet Union. Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Catherine (Keri Russell) Jennings are high-level Soviet KGB spies who live in Falls Church, Virginia close to where the action is in Washington, DC. Matched as husband and wife by their KGB handlers, all allegiance in the first few seasons is to their homeland. Their two American-born children,...

Paranoid–Someone’s After Me

Written by Diana Paul on December 9, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Paranoid–Someone’s After Me

Paranoid, a British police procedural crime series (2016) set in the small town of Woodmere, opens with a brutal murder of a general practitioner pushing her young son on a swing in a public park. The woman is murdered in public by an unknown man in a black hoodie. Who could be the murderer? And what can the witnesses sitting in the park provide as clues to a possible suspect? Mysterious notes sent by a “Ghost Detective” contribute valuable evidence for identifying and tracking down the murderer. Three detectives–Nina Suresh (Indira Varma of...

Penguin–A Waddle of Weirdness

Written by Diana Paul on December 1, 2024. Posted in Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on Penguin–A Waddle of Weirdness

Based upon the DC Comic Batman and one of his nemeses, Penguin, this HBOmax mini-series is a spinoff of the 2022 Batman movie. Premiering on September 19 as a weekly installment, each episode tightly leads the viewer to the next surprising and noirish plot point. Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), rather derisively called Penguin because of a limp and a disfigured face, no longer wants to be the nebbish that the mob boss, Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong of “Law and Order” fame), orders around contemptuously as his driver and go-fer in Gotham City. Not unlike...