Television reviews – Page 4

Mary & George–Lust for Power

Written by Diana Paul on August 12, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Mary & George–Lust for Power

In the Starz historical drama, Mary & George, we see the fiercely ambitious Countess of Buckingham, Lady Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), groom her extraordinarily handsome son, George (Nicholas Galitzine) to be the boy-toy of King James 1 (1566-1625)(Tony Curran). This is not your usual mother-son relationship! Lady Mary, a formerly poor lower-class woman, has plotted and schemed to become a woman of noble rank through successive marriages to two wealthy aristocrats. However, her fear that her original social status will be discovered by her enemies at court...

Two Sides of the Abyss–Cat and Mouse

Written by Diana Paul on July 29, 2024. Posted in Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on Two Sides of the Abyss–Cat and Mouse

A disturbing German psychological crime thriller, Two Sides of the Abyss (2023) opens with an obsessive, grieving police officer, Luise Berg (Anne Ratte-Polle), determined to re-incarcerate the murderer of her teenage daughter. Berg is outraged that Dennis Opitz (Anton Dreger) has been released early from prison. His psychiatric evaluation suggests he is completely rehabilitated. Berg believes otherwise and is obsessively driven to achieve justice. Other murders occur shortly after Dennis Opitz’s release, including a brutal murder in a...

The Sympathizer–Displaced Sympathies

Written by Diana Paul on July 22, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on The Sympathizer–Displaced Sympathies

Based upon the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer opens in April 1975, during the fall of Saigon. This American War– or Vietnam War, depending upon perspective,– unflinchingly depicts the ignominious and callous withdrawal of American troops and their Vietnamese aids on helicopters and ships crammed with desperate people fleeing the country, often in the middle of the night. Straddling both countries on different sides of the Pacific, The Sympathizer flashes back and forth rapidly, in sharp cinematic cuts, from 1975...

Shōgun (2024)–Game of Thrones meets Last Kingdom

Written by Diana Paul on July 1, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Shōgun (2024)–Game of Thrones meets Last Kingdom

In this ten-episode Hulu mini-series, Shōgun, based upon James Clavell’s titular 1975 novel, we are introduced to the feudal society of Japan in the year 1600. When conflicts between ruling aristocratic clans have made the emperor impotent in maintaining control, chaos and coups threaten the very existence of peace and harmony among wealthy and powerful overlords. “Shōgun” means “commander-in-chief”, but more accurately, signifies the true power behind the throne. Becoming shogun is the end-game for a number of powerful warlords (daimyō –comparable to the noble...

Tokyo Vice (season 2)–American in Translation

Written by Diana Paul on June 20, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Tokyo Vice (season 2)–American in Translation

Based on an American reporter’s experience as a twenty-something neophyte journalist in Tokyo, Jake Adelstein, (Ansel Elgort from “Baby Driver”) is a cocky American. Living in Tokyo during college, Jake becomes fluent in Japanese, both spoken and written, in order to become a reporter for a major Japanese newspaper. He is the first non-Japanese to have such a position. In season 2 (see June 17, 2022 review of season 1) Jake continues his investigation of the Yakuza who control the police and the government. Again we see the unlikely partnership between the politically...

Ripley (2024)–The One Who Got Away?

Written by Diana Paul on June 9, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Ripley (2024)–The One Who Got Away?

Based upon Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 classic, The Talented Mr. Ripley, this neo-noir remake reinterprets good and evil, survival and triumph, guilt and psychopathology. Tom Ripley is a young intelligent grifter residing in squalor in the 1960s, sharing a filthy bathroom with sewage backing up into the drain. Feeling destined for the best that money can buy, Ripley is determined to set out to live that life, leaving his small-time operation as a con-man in Brooklyn. We know little of his backstory except he was an orphan having been abandoned after the death of...