new year, new TV
Jan. 8th, 2018 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessMcMafia ep 1
Or James Norton does his bit to get in the conversation to play the next Bond, whatever he says in interviews. It’s going for the The Hotel Manager audience, of which I was a part, focusing on the Russian mafia and the role of banking in international crime. We meet Alex Godman (Norton) who is trying very hard to be ‘British’ (eh, call it English) but is a Russian exile, and his family, one of whom is carrying out a deadly vendetta against a rival. Will the threat to Alex’s immediate family be enough to get him to stop keeping his Russian heritage (which is more than food and the language) at a distance? Or will he remain the guy his ethical banking (!?!?) English girlfriend fell for?
Well, obviously, he wasn’t going to walk away or we wouldn’t have an eight-part series.
Strathairn is very good as the family connection with big plans for his crooked affairs. There were some gorgeous camera shots and a lot of globe trotting already.
I thought the central culture clash of children who have been brought up in one country with a different language to the motherland and mother tongue of the older generation was relatable. At Boris’s funeral, one realised their Jewishness added another layer to the issue of identity.
Ep 2
Really is a globe-trotting show, as is the nature of international crime. It must have been a job to co-ordinate.
Alex got deeper in ‘to protect his family’ with the Cobra, who his father insinuated might have been lying/using Boris. First a few mouse clicks, then he’s being a lackey, and when he saw an opportunity to hit at Vadic (or win? He is in finance, after all) he took it, but where else did he think his words were going to lead? From the grim face at the end of the ep, he hadn’t quite faced up to that beforehand.
Plenty of juxtapositions between the storylines – the two falls, as a depressed Dimitri tried to kill himself and the Czech crime boss got killed, but also with the trafficked Russian girl, and Vadic taking his daughter along as he acquired a dog (the dog of his enemy to ward against Boris’s associates.)
I'd caught up on them on iPlayer and watched the next episode live. Ep 3
The gorgeous and sunny south of France did a lot of heavy lifting as contrast to everywhere else in this ep. What was quite telling for me was that I kept hoping someone would turn out to be from Interpol, either the fake Harvard student or David Strathairn’s driver – but it’s not that type of show. It looks like Alex is going to turn into the kingpin he keeps showing the potential for being, no matter how stressed he is at work or how much he says his girlfriend reminds him of who he is. This is a bit grimly hopeless for my liking. I found myself laughing bitterly at the chauffeur claiming his boss was a good man to the trafficked woman who'd been, essentially, bought by him to be used as a honey trap. I then found myself urging the Russian in Prague to get his act together or his boss vould probably terminate him. Like that. A funtime comedy this is not.
Norton did a very good job on ‘smiling at the girlfriend’/’giving death glares at the blackmailing drug dealer who wasn’t blackmailing him at all.’
Poor Rebecca. I wonder if she’ll have married him and/or got pregnant by the time she realises how deep into the murk Alex is and how much he’s deceived her.
Meanwhile Vadic’s daughter is so innocent and sweet that she’s bound to come to a sticky end. (If she didn’t notice and ask why her father’s shirt changed colour, she’s a dupe, though.)
Mr and Mrs Godman had epic Russian marital drama.
Also, I'll probably give Next of Kin a try tonight because Archie Panjabi and Jack Davenport.
Or James Norton does his bit to get in the conversation to play the next Bond, whatever he says in interviews. It’s going for the The Hotel Manager audience, of which I was a part, focusing on the Russian mafia and the role of banking in international crime. We meet Alex Godman (Norton) who is trying very hard to be ‘British’ (eh, call it English) but is a Russian exile, and his family, one of whom is carrying out a deadly vendetta against a rival. Will the threat to Alex’s immediate family be enough to get him to stop keeping his Russian heritage (which is more than food and the language) at a distance? Or will he remain the guy his ethical banking (!?!?) English girlfriend fell for?
Well, obviously, he wasn’t going to walk away or we wouldn’t have an eight-part series.
Strathairn is very good as the family connection with big plans for his crooked affairs. There were some gorgeous camera shots and a lot of globe trotting already.
I thought the central culture clash of children who have been brought up in one country with a different language to the motherland and mother tongue of the older generation was relatable. At Boris’s funeral, one realised their Jewishness added another layer to the issue of identity.
Ep 2
Really is a globe-trotting show, as is the nature of international crime. It must have been a job to co-ordinate.
Alex got deeper in ‘to protect his family’ with the Cobra, who his father insinuated might have been lying/using Boris. First a few mouse clicks, then he’s being a lackey, and when he saw an opportunity to hit at Vadic (or win? He is in finance, after all) he took it, but where else did he think his words were going to lead? From the grim face at the end of the ep, he hadn’t quite faced up to that beforehand.
Plenty of juxtapositions between the storylines – the two falls, as a depressed Dimitri tried to kill himself and the Czech crime boss got killed, but also with the trafficked Russian girl, and Vadic taking his daughter along as he acquired a dog (the dog of his enemy to ward against Boris’s associates.)
I'd caught up on them on iPlayer and watched the next episode live. Ep 3
The gorgeous and sunny south of France did a lot of heavy lifting as contrast to everywhere else in this ep. What was quite telling for me was that I kept hoping someone would turn out to be from Interpol, either the fake Harvard student or David Strathairn’s driver – but it’s not that type of show. It looks like Alex is going to turn into the kingpin he keeps showing the potential for being, no matter how stressed he is at work or how much he says his girlfriend reminds him of who he is. This is a bit grimly hopeless for my liking. I found myself laughing bitterly at the chauffeur claiming his boss was a good man to the trafficked woman who'd been, essentially, bought by him to be used as a honey trap. I then found myself urging the Russian in Prague to get his act together or his boss vould probably terminate him. Like that. A funtime comedy this is not.
Norton did a very good job on ‘smiling at the girlfriend’/’giving death glares at the blackmailing drug dealer who wasn’t blackmailing him at all.’
Poor Rebecca. I wonder if she’ll have married him and/or got pregnant by the time she realises how deep into the murk Alex is and how much he’s deceived her.
Meanwhile Vadic’s daughter is so innocent and sweet that she’s bound to come to a sticky end. (If she didn’t notice and ask why her father’s shirt changed colour, she’s a dupe, though.)
Mr and Mrs Godman had epic Russian marital drama.
Also, I'll probably give Next of Kin a try tonight because Archie Panjabi and Jack Davenport.
