It follows four women who were part of a girl group named Girls5eva, which was briefly popular around the year 2000 before fading into one-hit-wonder status.
Now unfulfilled in their various lives, they reunite to try to find musical success again.
I quite like Daniel Breaker as Scott, Dawn’s husband. He plays the one normal person in the show.
He decides to confront his fears and moves to his vacation house on Dark Score Lake, known as “Sara Laughs”.
On his first day, he meets Kyra, a 3-year-old girl and her young widowed mother, 20-year-old Mattie Devore.
Mattie’s father-in-law is Max Devore, an elderly rich man who will do anything to gain custody of his granddaughter. He was the bad guy when I quit the book.
Well … there is humour, mainly around quirky Ida — some sort of online detective hacker. She’s terminally ill so doesn’t much worry about anything she does.
The plot is confusing.
Opening Shot: “1994.” The camera pushes in on a house on a lake. SWAT teams arrive in rafts and put up their weapons.
The Gist: The SWAT teams are there to invade the house, in the French Alps village of Levionna, which is the headquarters of a cult led by Caleb Johansson (Stefano Cassetti). Johansson ends up being the only survivor after a mass suicide …
… set during World War II. It revolves around the characters Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French girl who takes refuge in her great-uncle’s house in Saint-Malo after Paris is invaded by Nazi Germany, and Werner Pfennig, a bright German boy who is accepted into a military school because of his skills in radio technology.
It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Overall, I was disappointed.
Too long. Poor storytelling. It rambled too much.
There were dozens of scenes that could have been left out — leaving the core story stronger.
WHY have 4 diamonds? That added nothing but unnecessary pages.
I’m astonished that the Pulitzer judges were impressed.
The mini-series — 4 episodes — is MUCH BETTER.
Don’t listen to the critics who gave it only 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I commend the screen writers for improving so much of the messy book.
Werner Pfennig is a much stronger character on screen.
Marie-Laure is played by Aria Mia Loberti who is legally blind. She responded on a whim to an All The Light We Cannot See open global casting search posted online. An amateur. Well cast.
I’d agree with critics that the NAZIs are cliche in the TV series . No nuance.
That was my biggest complaint with the mini-series.
I wish he’d do something without having to rely on the shock value of ultra violence.
Casting is excellent.
Theo James carries the show and almost makes the absurd story believable.
Michael Vu as James “Jimmy” Chang, Susie’s chief weed grower is my favourite.
Edward Horniman has unexpectedly inherited an estate of 15,000 acres (6000 hectares) and the title of Duke of Halstead at the reading of the last will and testament of his deceased father.
He learns that the land has become part of a weed-growing empire run by Susie Glass.
He must navigate a world of eclectic and dangerous characters with nefarious agendas, whilst also trying to protect his home and stay alive.
… a fictional story that follows the life of an orphan chess prodigy named Beth Harmon from the age of eight to twenty-two during her quest to become the world’s greatest chess player while struggling with emotional issues, with drug and alcohol dependency. The story begins in the mid-1950s and proceeds into the 1960s.
The Queen’s Gambit is sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years—for the pure pleasure and skill of it. — Michael Ondaatje (cover of Vintage paperback edition, 2003)
Stanley Tucci as Jefferson Grieff, a former criminology professor on death row in an Arizona prison. Always excellent on screen.
David Tennant as Harry Watling, a British vicar forced into a difficult situation
A prisoner on death row in the US and a woman trapped in a cellar under an English vicarage, cross paths in the most unexpected way.
Atkins Estimond as Dillon Kempton, a serial killer on death row in Jefferson’s prison who acts as Grieff’s assistant, is excellent, too. Very memorable.
Rick McCharles 