It’s an excellent anti-hero drama, that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. Technology and special effects are incidental to the story.
It’s gritty. The characters flawed and conflicted.
A BIG complaint about Star Wars is that it’s cliche. Andor takes pains to be surprising.
Of all the made-for-streaming Star Wars and Marvel spin-offs to shuffle off the Disney+ production line, few have arrived with less anticipation and lower stakes than Andor.
A prequel to a prequel, the series explores the origins of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a Rebel Alliance captain introduced in the 2016 wartime heist film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Rogue One was set immediately before George Lucas’s original Star Wars films and ended quite decisively …
With no Jedi or Skywalkers to be seen, this politically charged, slow-burn thriller adds human stakes and a real sense of the fascism behind Star Wars’s endless civil war.
The Body in the Library (1942) concerns the murders of two girls of outwardly similar appearance.
One of them was an 18-year-old dancer, and the other was a 16-year-old Girl Guide with aspirations to an acting career.
The identities of the two victims were deliberately left ambiguous by the killers.
Jane Marple eventually discovers that the dancer was the intended adoptive daughter and heiress to a wealthy man. She starts suspecting the other potential heirs to the old man’s fortune. …
Somewhat too complicated for me. I didn’t find myself assuming that everyone was the killer as I typically do in Christie stories.
Many of these old TV shows are available as full episodes on YouTube.
English actress Emilia Fox is Signora Volpe. 😀 Sylvia Fox in this excellent TV show.
Well, the first 2 episodes are great. I could have lived without episode 3.
Disillusioned with her work at MI6, spy Sylvia Fox travels to Italy for the wedding of her niece.
Although her relationship with her sister, Isabel, is troubled, Sylvia is welcomed warmly by her family.
But when the groom goes missing, leaving a dead woman behind, Sylvia feels compelled to investigate. The trail leads her from an empty pizza box and stolen children’s book to a deadly showdown.
The badass decides to move to Italy at the end of the first episode.
It’s Italy. Beautiful.
There’s romance. Charming.
An English language TV show set in Italy well done, with many Italian actors and Italian dialogue.
They did not make the same mistakes as Murder in Provence. 😀
Liverpool-based veteran cop DI Colette Cunningham uproots to Dublin when she learns that her estranged daughter, Stacey, has taken her own life.
Once there, Colette meets her two teenage grandchildren for the first time.
Despite having never known of their existence she’s their named guardian. Determined to do right by her daughter in her death, Colette joins the local Dublin Police and cares for the kids.
However, not everything about Stacey’s life is what it seems. Colette sets out to uncover the truth.
The first series sees the sudden arrival of DC Leila Hussain (Amara Karan) in the fictional Northern Irish town of Port Devine.
The local residents question the reason behind her arrival; only Inspector Finn O’Hare knows why Leila has been transferred, but is keeping it to himself. …
Too long. Too slow. But still worth reading as are all the books in the series aside from Ink Black Heart. Do NOT bother with Ink Black Heart. It’s gawd awful.
Well … perhaps slightly less irritating as he’s quit drinking and has lost weight, due to health concerns.
We still can’t imagine why partner Robin Ellacott likes him as a boss — or for possible romance.
I would have preferred if these two had finally got together. They don’t … quite … in this book.
But their detective agency is finally successful.
In this book they investigate the Universal Humanitarian Church (UHC) — a cult.
At one point Strike realizes it was formed on the site of a 1960s to 1980s commune, one of the places he, and his half-sister Lucy, had lived as a child, as his mother Leda Strike drifted around the country. The commune had closed after its leaders were arrested for child sexual abuse. Lucy was one of those abused.
Robin volunteers to infiltrate the modern UHC …
It made no sense to me that she stays so long. Not much was learned from her undercover weeks.
Rowling tries to defend the harm she’s done by attacking people who happen to be born transgender.
I’ve read some of her written defences, as well.
Rowling believes she’s defending feminists. It started by her defending Maya Forstater, who was fired for arguing against transgender people the right to live the life opposite their birth gender.
Rowling believes that you should be allowed to say that biological sex cannot be changed, even if that turns out to be wrong. Rowling believes in freedom of speech on that issue.
Most agree that after a wonderful life, it’s a disappointment that such a wonderful writer and billionaire picked this issue as the hill to die on.
I’m disappointed in Rowling, too.
This controversy is a big part of her legacy.
That said — I’m not cancelling Rowling. She’s 95% good. 5% bad.
In some ways having such a famous person talking about the issue is bringing daylight. We have a long way to go yet in terms of making life fair for transgender citizens.
I’d say the most convincing character is Toby Jones as David Pilcher.
The plot of Crouch’s first novel in the trilogy, Pines (2012), is covered over the first five episodes of the TV series. The second and third novels, Wayward (2013) and The Last Town (2014), make up the remaining five episodes.
I’d say the writers did quite a good job translating the longer, more convoluted trilogy into 10 hour long episodes that make more sense. Changes were for the good.
Very popular. So weird, it’s actually entertaining to watch.
James Walton of The Daily Telegraph commented, “Theoretically, this should add up to a right old mess. In practice, it makes for a thumpingly enjoyable piece of television …
… the plot is based on the ambiguity of Tyler’s predicament and the lack of clarity, to both the audience and the character, whether he has died, become comatose or travelled in time. …
The methodology and techniques of modern policing that Sam Tyler employs during Life on Mars lead him into clashes with other characters.
Gene Hunt and the rest of the CID appear to favour brutality and corruption to secure convictions, as shown by their willingness to physically coerce confessions and fabricate evidence …
Police who worked Manchester in the 1970s said the show got everything wrong: clothing, slang, procedures. 😀 Artistic licence.
Trivia ➙ she dated her Bohemian Rhapsody co-star Rami Malek from 2017 to 2023.
The book is a non-Marple, non-Poirot Christie, which gives the writer adapting it some freedom.
The mystery hinges on the cryptic question of the title – why didn’t they ask Evans? – pronounced by a dying man, after a fall from the cliffs on a north Wales golf course.
Bobby and his friend Lady Frances Derwent have adventures as they solve the mystery of the man’s last words.
The three-part series became available on BritBox on April 2022.
Rick McCharles 