There’s been a load of new TV series with potential, and a
couple of books I’ve quite liked:
New Girl – the one everyone’s buzzing about with Zooey
Deschanel. My Dad always used to say
that John Wayne wasn’t an actor; he only ever played himself, but it was so
good you wanted to watch it over and over, so he made a decent living out of
it. I suspect that Zooey might be the
same, but I’m not sure how long we’ll want to go on watching cute and kooky. Plus, when she’s 73 it might not work so well…although
Estelle Getty and Jessica Tandy seemed to manage OK on that one. Anyhoo, that said, New Girl is quite fun,
with an occasional nice twist. This week
Jess was being over-bearing about being emotional open and sharing about
something she’d seen, much to her male flatmate’s horror. This all seemed very predictable until the
moment Nick stopped her in her tracks by calling her on not being able to use
the proper words for what my daughter referred to as a “privacy area” when she
was little.
Verdict: I’ll stick
with it and see how it goes.
Suits – This is a bit of a hidden gem lurking away on
Tuesday nights on Dave. It’s about
lawyers and offices and business stuff, but in a rather interesting way. The two main characters are interesting and
nicely balanced, with good supporting characters, including the fact that the
head of the prestigious law firm in New York is a black woman. Yay for a good, strong female boss who kicks
butt. It fits into the slot in my TV
life filled recently by CSI and House.
Verdict: I’m
recording it for weekly watching so I’m impressed so far
The Big Bang Theory – saved the best TV till last. It’s just genius; really Sheldon Cooper ought
not to have any friends because he’s a nightmare, but he does and they are very
rich characters, although the humour often derives from them veering into caricature. It’s a bit like Friends, in that as you get
to know the characters you know how they’ll react so you start giggling when
you know what’s coming, but then there is an occasional curveball. So Rajesh is painfully shy and can’t speak in
front of women, unless he is drunk. One
night he gets drunk and he and Penny end up in bed. The next morning you think “Surely now he’ll
be able to speak to her” but no, he is still struck dumb!
Verdict: I’m hooked
Rivers of London and Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch – I do
love me some crime thriller, and I do love me some supernatural stuff, so put
the two together and I’m double happy.
These two books feel like the start of a series that could run and run,
and I really hope it does. The
characters are so well written, and the plots so tight and clever that I’m
feeling slightly bereft that I’m going to have to wait until June for number
3. If Harry Potter is Mallory Towers and
Billy Bunter meet magic, RofL is Poirot and Miss Marple meet magic, without the horrendous plot holes
Agatha Christie let slip. Also, they
would make fantastic telly, much better that the utterly ridiculous Eternal Law
(ITV) about which the less said the better.
Verdict: I’m pining
for number 3
The Ghost – a political thriller by Roman Polanski. The reviews on IMDB were very complimentary
and I cannot for the life of me fathom out why.
It was meant to be a dark sophisticated thriller with plot twists and
sinister overtones about global conspiracies but really it was just silly. It was blatantly obvious who was the baddy
from very early on, Ewan McGregor’s character was so thick and trusting it was
unbelievable and the film didn’t so much finish as stop because there was no
way out of the plot’s weird combination of simplistic and over-complex. It is not possible for even the CIA to
organise a hit and run accident in the time it takes for someone to walk out of
a building and cross the street!!! As
punishment, Mr Polanski should be made to watch Tinker Tailor (any version,
Alec Guiness or Gary Oldman) until he understands what a complex political
thriller really looks like.
Verdict: That’s two
hours of my life I can’t get back. The
only redeeming feature was the Malteasers my husband gave while we were
watching.
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| This is not the political thriller you were looking for |
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