Guilt is a four-episode Masterpiece Theater mini-series, a darkly sinister and acerbic Scottish thriller about two Edinburgh brothers who leave a wedding drunk and eager to get home. We see the elegant lawyer Max (Mark Bonnar of “Shetland”) and his ne’er-do-well younger brother Jake hit an elderly man who steps in front of Max’s car. Jake (Jamie Sives) is driving because Max thinks his brother is less inebriated than he is.
Jake wants to report the accident to the police, but Max is concerned about his professional reputation so they agree to cover up...
“The Chair”–Academic Patriarchy
The Chair, a Netflix series created by Amanda Peet and Annie Wyman, is executive produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners for Game of Thrones. This comedy drama startles with unexpected energy. After all, any theme involving university professors promises to be a snooze fest.
The opening scene features Professor Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh) as the newly appointed first female Chair of the English department and the first person of color. On her first day, her office chair collapses, foreshadowing the circumstances soon to overtake her.
The English department...
”The One”–A Perfect Match DNA-Style
Can true love be analyzed and dissected by science? That is the premise of the Netflix mini-series, The One. Entrepreneur Rebecca Webb (Hannah Ware), uses her own husband Ethan (Wilf Scolding) as living proof that genetic matchmaking can produce “the one” against all odds. Her own match is purportedly the perfect soulmate identified through algorithms and DNA analysis. Her message: “You’re not going to end up alone.”
As CEO of the start-up MatchDNA, Rebecca becomes unimaginably wealthy manipulating...
“The White Lotus”–White Gaze
In this HBOMax six-episode mini-series (which ended August 15), we watch two uber-wealthy families on vacation in Hawaii (at the upscale Four Seasons) make themselves miserable in a perfectly-seeming tropical paradise. Their privileged existence is the luxury not to be concerned with others.
In White Lotus’s opening scene, at the airport, Shane Patton (Jake Lacy), an insufferable, narcissistic scion of a wealthy and powerful family, explains with great disdain to fellow passengers that his wife, Rachel, has died…on their honeymoon. A cardboard coffin marked “human...
“Silent Witness”-or Dead on Arrival
Silent Witness, one of the longest running BBC television series (broadcast in more than 235 countries), focuses on a team of brilliant forensic pathologists who investigate a crime every two episodes. First broadcast in 1996, there now have been twenty-three seasons, making Silent Witness the entertainment industry’s longest running crime drama. The title character is a corpse lying on a slab prepared for a post-mortem analysis–a “silent witness” providing evidence of a crime, suicide, or death by natural causes. ...
“Unforgotten” (Season 4)–And Unforgettable
Season 4 of Unforgotten has been breaking records with over 7.5 million viewers tuning in every week for the latest developments in the cold case drama (PBS Masterpiece Theater premier July 11, 2021). It is, in this reviewer’s opinion, the most powerful and cleverly written season of the critically acclaimed cold case crime drama. As in the past three seasons, all suspects are interconnected though not revealed in the beginning. Red herrings abound and it is very difficult to sort out motive, means, and opportunity in this...