Hacks – season 1

Not the best TV comedy of the year. But it is original. Brave.

100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Deborah Vance, a legendary Las Vegas stand-up comedy diva, needs to maintain relevance: the head of the casino where she performs wants to pare down her performance dates.

Ava is a Gen Z comedy writer who is unable to find work due to being “canceled” over an insensitive tweet. The two reluctantly team up …

Wikipedia

I really like Carl Clemons-Hopkins as the one smart get-it-done character.

Hannah Einbinder is intriguing. Here she plays an awkward loser.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Toronto HOLIDAY in December

Having traveled over 90 nations, IF you asked me where to go in December … near bottom of the list would be Toronto, OnTerrible. 😀

Yet for reasons I’m too embarrassed to relate, I ended up staying in a downtown hostel for 5 nights.

ON THE UPSIDE, the Planet Traveler Hostel in Kensington Market is excellent. I knew the eclectic Kensington neighbourhood from the  Canadian television sitcom which aired on CBC Television from 1975 to 1980.

The STAR of King of Kensington was Al Waxman, a household name in those days.

Waxman died in 2001 — but there’s a statue of him in a neighbourhood park. Crowded by homeless tents.

I really did enjoy funky Kensington, however. Weird shops, cafes, and restaurants.

I went looking for the #GardenCar. And found it.

There’s a lot of bad graffiti. And some excellent art.

My best meal was slow cooked ribs and brisket from Hogtown Smoke. I brought it back to the hostel where the wine was cheap. 😀

What do you do in a big city during wet, dark winter?

Photo by Vincent Albos on Pexels.com

MOVIES. MUSEUMS. STAGE PLAY. WALK. WALK. WALK.

First stop was an immersive van Gogh exhibit.

I attended my second NBA game ever. Toronto defeated the defending Champion Bucks — who were without their MVP Giannis that night.

My first visit to the Royal Ontario Museum was a surprise. Expensive. But excellent. The space compares well against the Prado in Madrid, for example.

My highlight? Light of the Desert, the world’s largest faceted cerussite gem, weighing 898 carats (179.6 g).

By Miranda1989

Next December? … Hawaii. 😀

My Name Is Rek” 

Killing Eve – books 2 & 3

Having now finished the trilogy of novellas, I’m impressed.

It’s a complex plot with many twists and turns. AND the relationship between nerdy Eve and the psycho killer makes a lot more sense than in the TV show.

Luke Jennings is an excellent writer.

Foundation – Apple TV+

As a teen, I wasn’t a big fan of Foundation — the book series — though I loved everything else written by Asimov.

Too sprawling.

It must have been intimidating to try to produce a coherent TV show.

Foundation chronicles “…the thousand year saga of The Foundation, a band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it.” …

Goyer pitched the series in one sentence: “It’s a 1,000-year chess game between Hari Seldon and the Empire, and all the characters in between are the pawns, but some of the pawns over the course of this saga end up becoming kings and queens.” …

Casting is excellent. Lee Pace is particularly good as Brother Day.

It’s beautiful to look at. Skillfully done. Critics love the show but it’s only 70% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I’ll probably continue to season 2. But it’s not must-watch for me.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

Codename Villanelle by Luke Jennings

The excellent TV series Killing Eve was based on this book series. The TV show is better — though the book is well written. Well researched.

It would appear — at the start — to be yet another Russian female super assassin. Villanelle is not much different than the last 6 Russian sexy super killers I’ve encountered. Another La Femme Nikita.

The slightly new twist is exploring Villanelle’s weird personal connection of sex and death.

In any case, I’ll be reading the next 2 books in the series.

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

The Flight Attendant is a novel by Chris Bohjalian, published on March 13, 2018.

It was quickly adapted for TV. AND a second season has already been lit. It’s had great reviews. Especially for Kaley Cuoco playing the hot mess alcoholic party … girl?

The TV show is better than the book. Quite entertaining. Of course the plot is silly silly.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

The plot premise hooked me right away. Woman has a drunken one night stand — wakes up next morning to find the guy dead. His throat slashed.

BUT the rest of the book is average at best.

Killing Eve – season 2

Now that the shock of Villanelle being an emotionless psychopath has been established, season 2 is not nearly as good as season 1.

One good plot thread concerned finance manager Aaron Peel. But it ended in an unsatisfying way. Writers couldn’t come up with anything better?

And the weird relationship between an MI6 specialist nerd and a Russian professional killer isn’t convincing.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Pembrokeshire Murders

Good TV.

This is the 13th in a series of ITV mini-series featuring notorious British murder cases of the past two centuries.

Pembrokeshire Murders is a British three-part television drama miniseries, based on the Pembrokeshire murders by Welsh serial killer John Cooper. …

In 2006, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Steve Wilkins decided to reopen two unsolved 1980s murder cases linked with a string of burglaries. New advances in technology for Forensic DNA analysis, witness reports and artists impressions of the suspect …

Luke Evans is excellent in the lead.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Killing Eve – season 1

Everyone loves Killing Eve. Surprising. Funny. Never boring.

I’ve always like Sandra Oh and she’s very good in this. Vulnerable. Conflicted.

But it’s Jodie Comer as the weird psychopathic assassin who steals every scene.

Stumbling, uncertain Sandra Oh taking on a super villain seems unfair. But they have some kind of mutual obsession.

All the other actors are good too.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

Doors Open by Ian Rankin (2008)

I’ve read all 23 of Rankin‘s Rebus novels.

Doors Open is a stand-alone thriller. No Rebus or Fox.

The plot is good.

With a vast collection but limited wall space, the National Gallery (on the TV adaptation, a Scottish bank) has many more valuable works of art in storage than it could ever display.

The plan is to stage a heist at the Granton storage depot on “Doors Open Day” during which a selected group of paintings will be “stolen”.

The gang will then give the appearance of having panicked and fled without the works of art, but will have switched the real paintings with high quality forgeries good enough to convince anyone investigating the matter that no theft has been committed. …

Like many Rebus fans, I found the book lacking.

The screen version looks to be more entertaining.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.