Tag: Netflix original series

“Dead To Me”: A Balancing Act

Written by Diana Paul on May 15, 2022. Posted in Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on “Dead To Me”: A Balancing Act

Guest reviewer: David A. Kennedy, horticulturalist and author of the thriller, RICOCHET Mortality, deceit, redemption – these are bread-and-butter themes for the storyteller. Add a little meat to them bones, and you might have something special. Netflix’s Dead To Me (two seasons with the third coming this fall.) attempts that balancing act, and as a comedy-drama, no less. And, for the most part, it succeeds quite well. In the pilot episode, Jen (Christine Applegate) meets Judy (Linda Cardellini) at a group bereavement meeting. Jen recently lost husband Ted in a hit-and-run...

“The Chair”–Academic Patriarchy

Written by Diana Paul on August 29, 2021. Posted in Television reviews. 4 Comments on “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...

“Behind Her Eyes”–For All To See

Written by Diana Paul on April 25, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on “Behind Her Eyes”–For All To See

Behind Her Eyes, based on Sarah Pinborough’s best-selling novel of the same name, tells the story of Adele and her husband David, a renowned psychiatrist specializing in drug addiction. The couple live an ostensibly perfect life in an exclusive London suburb. The beautiful Adele Ferguson (Eve Hewson) was recently a patient in a mental institution where her husband was the presiding psychiatrist. Upon release she marries the handsome doctor. While a patient, Adele becomes best friends with a gay working-class Glasgow junkie, Rob (Robert Aramayo) who seems...

The Queen’s Gambit–A Passion for Winning

Written by Diana Paul on November 16, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 7 Comments on The Queen’s Gambit–A Passion for Winning

The Queen’s Gambit is a fictional story based upon the 1983 Walter Tevis novel by the same name. A Netflix original series released October 30 of this year, the drama opens with a scene of an eight-year old girl, Beth Harmon (newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy), soon to become an orphan residing at a bleak orphanage, Methuen, under a severe headmistress. It is the mid-1950s and there are few options for an orphan, especially a little girl. Struggling with loneliness, adoption and being a social misfit, Beth finds solace through learning...

“Ratched”–Ratcheting Up the Tension

Written by Diana Paul on October 12, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment on “Ratched”–Ratcheting Up the Tension

This Netflix quasi-horror thriller creates a backstory for Nurse Ratched, the heartless villain in the 1975 Academy-Award winning classic “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. “What made Ratched so vile and so unimaginably cruel and unempathetic?” The answer, of course, has roots in Nurse Ratched’s tragic early years, unhealed wounds that continue to fester. Ratched is a female-villain origin story. Ratched opens in 1947 as Mildred Ratched arrives in Big Sur to seek employment...

Marcella –Battling Inner Demons

Written by diana on July 10, 2018. Posted in Television reviews. 1 Comment on Marcella –Battling Inner Demons

Promoted as a Scandinavian noir detective series on the streets of Britain, Marcella is written and directed and produced by Swedish screenwriter Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of The Bridge. Two seasons on Netflix, Marcella delves into the psychology of a deeply troubled London detective. In Season One Marcella Backland (Anna Friel) investigates a cold case involving a serial killer who appears to have become active again. At the same time Marcella also has to deal with her disintegrating personal life, where her husband, Jason (Nicholas Pinnock), has made the decision to leave her and take...