Broadchurch season two divides viewers. Some find it a compelling continuation of the story, with strong performances and new mysteries, while others feel it lacks the impact of the first season, particularly due to the courtroom drama and the introduction of the Sandbrook case. Many critics and viewers found the courtroom scenes less engaging and the Sandbrook case less compelling than the initial murder.
That’s fair.
Great TV — but not as brilliant as season 1.
On the other hand, the cast is even better in season 2 (2015).
Phoebe Waller-Bridge has a bigger role.
Charlotte Rampling was fantastic as Jocelyn Knight Q.C., the prosecutor. The role was written specifically for her.
I read The Magic Mountain (1924) when I was young — not much appreciating it at the time.
Philosophical prose inspired by his wife’s letters from a Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, where she was being treated for respiratory disease.
His wife was one impressive person, Katia Mann. A secular Jew while Hitler was rising in power, she later converted to her husband’s Lutheranism.
She and Thomas had 6 children, all interesting characters. This was impressive, as well, because Thomas was a closeted Gay man.
Likely I wouldn’t have much interest in Thomas Mann but for my friend Brian taking a University elective course on him.
In 2025, I somehow downloaded an historical fiction account of his life ➙ The Magician by Colm Tóibín.
His life was even more dramatic than his novels.
His two elder children, Erika and Klaus, were flamboyantly unconventional – promiscuously bisexual, precociously talented as actors and writers, but too politically reckless and financially feckless to make careers for themselves. There were drugs. There were scandals. Eventually there was another, more devastating suicide – Klaus’s …
Erika Mann marries WH Auden, not for sex (they are both gay) but for a British passport …
He escapes (Hitler) first to Switzerland, moving on to the south of France, where he frequents the cafes where other German exiles gather – social democrats bickering with communists – and finally to the US. He watches the second world war from transatlantic safety …
The 23rd book in the entertaining Stone Barrington series is a good one.
Unnatural Acts (2012) find the saddest of sad sacks, Herbie Fisher, the hero of the tale.
These comedies require suspension of belief. Somehow Herbie is positioned to be the next Stone Barrington. 😀
Another surprise to me was finding Stone’s latest romance not killedoff. That’s unusual.
When a hedge fund billionaire hires Stone Barrington to talk some sense into his wayward son, it seems like an easy enough job; no one knows the hidden sins and temptations of the ultra-wealthy better than Stone.
But as Stone and his erstwhile protégé, Herbie Fisher, probe deeper into the case—and an old one comes back to haunt him—he realizes that even he may have underestimated just how far some people will go to cover up their crimes, and commit new ones.
Late afternoon, Virginia, and a woman is on the run. Her husband, a former U.S. Senator named Lincoln Bowe, has been missing for days. Kidnapped? Murdered? She doesn’t know, but she thinks she knows who’s involved, and why. And that she may be next.
Hours later, a phone rings in the pocket of Jacob Winter. An Army Intelligence veteran, Winter specializes in what he thinks of as forensic bureaucracy. Congress, the Pentagon, the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security — when something goes wrong, Winter kicks over rocks until he finds out what really happened. The White House is his main client, and the chief of staff is on the phone now.
If Bowe isn’t located soon, he is told, all hell will break loose.
It works because the cast and dialogue is so quirky.
I laughed out loud at every episode.
In a high-tech future, a rogue security robot secretly gains free will; to stay hidden, it reluctantly joins a new mission protecting scientists on a dangerous planet even though it just wants to binge soap operas.
The 1st is far from a brilliant murder mystery. There’s no way I could have guessed the killer from the clues.
BUT I was charmed by Lana Lee, our investigator.
It’s a short, easy read. A cozy mystery. Almost Young Adult.
The last place Lana Lee thought she would ever end up is back at her family’s restaurant. But after a brutal break-up and a dramatic workplace walk-out, she figures that helping wait tables is her best option for putting her life back together. Even if that means having to put up with her mother, who is dead-set on finding her a husband.
Lana’s love life soon becomes yesterday’s news once the restaurant’s property manager, Mr. Feng, turns up dead―after a delivery of shrimp dumplings from Ho-Lee.
But how could this have happened when everyone on staff knew about Mr. Feng’s severe, life-threatening shellfish allergy?
Now, with the whole restaurant under suspicion for murder and the local media in a feeding frenzy―to say nothing of the gorgeous police detective who keeps turning up for take-out―it’s up to Lana to find out who is behind Feng’s killer order. . . before her own number is up.
The book ends with Lana heading off on a date. There’s hope for her.
Weirdly, as executor, my name is currently listed as owner of Dad’s truck. (I’ve not owned a motor vehicle for much of the past 25 years.)
I still consider Calgary to be home.
Of course I’m totally disappointed with recent Provincial conservative governments. Current premier Danielle Smith is too Trump-lite for me. For example, as I post, the rate of measles in Alberta is even worse than in Texas. Smith encourages ReTrumplican misinformation on all kinds of topics.
On the other hand, born and raised in Calgary, I consider anyone NOT born in Calgary to be some kind of vermin. 😀
Unwanted immigrants.
If Trump was in charge of the 51st state, he’d spend a lot of taxpayer money to have Canadians attacking other Canadians. In Canada.
We could round up the invaders and drop them off the other side of the Alberta border. 😀
Rick McCharles 