Television reviews – Unhealed Wound

I, Jack Wright– ”Succession” British-style?

Written by Diana Paul on June 16, 2025. Posted in Television reviews, Travel (Domestic). No Comments on I, Jack Wright– ”Succession” British-style?

This Netflix six-episode British thriller I, Jack Wright (2025) unravels a highly dysfunctional family’s secrets and betrayals. Each member of a multi-millionaire’s overly privileged family has motivation to murder the aging septuagenarian patriarch and business tycoon, Jack Wright (Trevor Eve), found dead in the opening scene. The legal and interpersonal conflicts fester when Jack Wright’s will is read with unexpected consequences to the succession and governance of his multinational corporation. All the major players in the family had astonishing benefits to gain for...

Dept. Q–”Slow Horses” Wannabe?

Written by Diana Paul on June 10, 2025. Posted in Television reviews. 2 Comments on Dept. Q–”Slow Horses” Wannabe?

Written and directed by American Scott Frank (of “Queen’s Gambit”), the Netflix series Dept Q in nine episodes is based on Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s crime thriller The Keeper of Lost Causes. Filmed in Edinburgh, Dept. Q opens with a terrifying misfiring (literally) of a crime scene gone wrong. Detective Morck (Matthew Goode of “Downton Abbey” and “The Crown”) and two of his colleagues are trapped by a masked murderer and left for dead. Morck is carrying the burden of this tragic incident, unable to openly discuss what happened on the job. ...

Continue reading

The Handmaid’s Tale (final season)–An Acknowledgement or Acceptance?

Written by Diana Paul on June 2, 2025. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on The Handmaid’s Tale (final season)–An Acknowledgement or Acceptance?

Keeping things fresh in the sixth and final season of Handmaid’s Tale, this award-winning drama moves the story ever closer to authoritarianism embedded in a hellscape of a misogynistic dystopia. Gilead is attempting to remake itself, presumably for public relations more than anything else. Smoothing the edges of its own religious extremism with a more feminine touch, New Bethlehem is created as a place where Gilead’s “handmaid” refugees can return and live under a kinder regime. Handmaid June Osborne (the masterful Elisabeth Moss) and the resistance know better than...

Continue reading

Towards Zero–Where is Agatha?

Written by Diana Paul on May 19, 2025. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Towards Zero–Where is Agatha?

This three-part BritBox series, Towards Zero is set in 1930s England, based upon the 1944 Agatha Christie’s eponymous novel. It opens with Lady Tressilian’s lawyer, Frederick Treves (Clarke Peters), giving a warning, a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of events to come: “Every murder has its moment of origin, its point zero.” Set at the seaside mansion of Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston), she is bedridden and annoyed by everything and everyone in her life. Years before, Lady Tressilian watched from her window as her husband’s yacht capsized at...

Continue reading

The Gardener–Root Rot??

Written by Diana Paul on April 28, 2025. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on The Gardener–Root Rot??

In this six-episode Spanish psychological thriller (now #3 on Netflix), we see two mother-son pairs who are cold-blooded killers. The Gardener (Spanish: El Jardinero) showcases a quiet studious young gardener, Elmer, who lives with his mother, China, owner of a nursery. He has frontal lobe damage from a car accident. Avoiding a fatal end, Elmer and his mother, who was severely injured as well, become inexorably intertwined in a cat-and-mouse game of murder. China grooms her now adult son to be a contract killer. Having no feelings for his murder victims, Elmer seems...

Continue reading

Jewel in the Palace–Shining Through

Written by Diana Paul on April 15, 2025. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Jewel in the Palace–Shining Through

Based on a true story about the first woman physician in Korea, Jewel in the Palace (2003) takes the viewer on a 54-episode journey. Part melodrama, part court-intrigue, part-Shakespearean. An orphaned little girl, Jang Geum, born of aristocratic parents who were betrayed at eighteenth century court, finds herself homeless and desperate. After becoming literate as well as accomplished watching her mother cook, she soon excels in both scholarly classics and the fine art of cooking. Though only ten years old, Jang Geum wishes to avenge her parents’ wrongful deaths as well as...

Continue reading