Belgravia, based on “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes’ 2016 novel of the same name, opens two days before the Battle of Waterloo at an aristocratic ball. Two London families—the Earl (Tom Wilkinson) and Countess of Brockenhurst (Harriet Walter) and the up-and-coming merchants, Anne (Tamsin...
“High Seas”–“Death on the Nile” meets “Murder on the Orient Express”
In this Spanish melodrama (Spanish: Alta Mar) , two sisters discover some very disturbing family secrets aboard a ship sailing from Spain to Brazil just after World War II. Agatha Christie’s style of mystery plotting, overlaid with the Spanish love of melodrama and telenovela, makes High Seas an unusual series.
Following the...
“Humans”–“Dark Mirror” Meets “Ex Machina”
The Amazon Prime sci-fi series, Humans (three seasons), takes place in the not- too-distant future where the affluent purchase “synths”, artificially intelligent human-looking robots that can perform a multitude of tasks from housecleaning, surveillance, and sex-toy services. A suburban family buys Anita (the exquisitely...
“The Alienist: Angel of Darkness” (Season Two)–Stranger Things Happen
In this relatively seamless sequel to “The Alienist”, based on Caleb Carr’s second psychological thriller, season two is a retelling of Carr’s Angel of Darkness. But this is much more than a sequel. (For my review of season one, see my April 29, 2018 review: “The...
“I’ll Be Gone In the Dark”–Don’t Watch This Alone at Night
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, a six-part HBO documentary series based on Michelle McNamara’s book, explores the author and her obsessive investigation into the dark world of the “The Golden State Killer” who terrorized California in the 1970s and 80s. It is mostly due to McNamara’s...
“Mrs. America”–A Closet Feminist?
Mrs. America is the history-packed and binge-worthy nine-episode Hulu series created by Dahvi Waller (of “Mad Men”). We see a dazzling sweep of history from the early 1970s to 1982 as the fight against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment unfolds. Still unpassed, the ERA would create a constitutional ban on...
