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Author: Diana Paul

Slow Horses–Win the Race

Slow Horses,   a multiple award-winning  British spy thriller based on the Slough House series of novels by Mick Herron, will have at least a six-season run due to its phenomenal popularity.  [The first four seasons are available for streaming now.] MI5 recruits and some agents who have failed training or assignments are banished to Slough House, the tawdry hellhole (“slough”=swamp) for those destined to fail.  But they don’t.   The slow horses are ridiculed by the intelligence department at the top of the organization, particularly by the First...

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Moonflower Murders–M is for Murder

The PBS series Moonflower Murders, the eponymous mystery series by Anthony Horowitz, is the sequel to the PBS series, “Magpie Murders” (see my January 9, 2023 review).    Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville), book-editor-turned-sleuth, is known for having discovered and managed the Atticus Pund mystery series by the late Alan Conway (Conleth Hill of “Game of Thrones”).  What now develops is another mystery-within-a-mystery, following the first PBS series.  A murder in present day Suffolk, England parallels  a fictional murder in the Atticus Pűnd (Tim McMullan)...

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Operation Napoleon–Frozen Conspiracy

Operation Napoleon,  a conspiracy treasure-hunt thriller, will have you thinking you are watching an “Indiana Jones” drama.  Romanticizing parts of  a true story, Operation Napoleon opens in April 1945, when a Nazi airplane  flies over Iceland in the middle of a storm.  The plane crashes with no survivors.  Germany surrenders a few days later. Flash-forward to today.  A corporate lawyer, Kristín (Vivian Ólafsdóttir), is seen demolishing an arrogant entrepreneur’s deceptive business plan to finance  his company’s search for...

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The Perfect Couple–Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder

The Perfect Couple, an American seaside mystery based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Elin Hilderbrand, was released on Netflix in September.   Set in Nantucket in an opulent mansion, Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman), a famous murder mystery author, is obsessing over the wedding for her favorite son, Benji (newcomer Billy Howle), to a middle-class zookeeper, Amelia (Eve Hewson of “Bad Sisters”).  The wedding is abruptly interrupted when the maid-of-honor, Merrit (Meghann Fahy),  is discovered face down on the beach in front of their estate.   The wedding is...

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Civil War–Battleground States

In the 2024 film Civil War a van of war correspondents travels undercover from New York City to Washington DC to bear witness to the civil war between a dictator/president  (Nick Offerman of “Parks and Recreations” fame)  and violent secessionists.  There is no explanation of why there is a civil war, who is fighting whom, or what the expected outcome or mission is.  The protagonist is Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), a renowned war photojournalist, who seems immune to the horrors of wars she was assigned to  photograph in the past.  Her mentor and...

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Hotel Portofino–A Pleasant Stay?

In this three-season British historical drama, Hotel Portofino, Bella Ainsworth (Natasha McElhone),  the beautiful middle-aged daughter of a wealthy manufacturer of fabrics, moves to Italy in the 1920s to fulfill her dream of having a luxury boutique hotel in the resort town of Portofino.  Problem is that Mussolini is on the verge of seizing power in Italy and destroying what she has built.  On a personal level, Bella’s ne’er-do-well womanizing husband, Cecil (Mark Umbers),  is sabotaging her efforts to create a life of her own. Alice Mays-Smith (Olivia Morris), Bella and Cecil’s...

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