Bragging rights
Sep. 16th, 2018 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe Beeb is still showing off about Bodyguard’s viewing figures. It’s annoying enough for me to tut-tut about the unseemliness, but not to stop contributing to the Beeb’s moment. It probably won last night.
I watched Strictly the Best, which was a clip show dressed up as past contestants giving advice to this year’s lot, so it was basically there to get us (more) excited about the new series. I think there is a more comprehensive show to be made with the pro dancers and judges, including past ones, but this wasn’t it. The talking heads were seated on a sofa – just like us!
We had all the obvious clips and I was reminded that I’d meant to rewatch some of my favourite routines from last year. The idea that they all have code names is hilarious, as if David Budd should turn to protecting them, although Melvin;s ignorance about Puck from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream irritated me and I spend most of his whining grumbling about that year his fellow contestants gave him the Christmas show undeservedly. Scott Mills and Ann Widdecome were seated together in the most !!!! grouping. He clearly didn’t know what to make of her, but she managed not to let rip when he showed his petulant little boy side. It took me a while to work out who Daisy Lowe was, not helped by the fact that she didn’t speak. Matt Dawson and Harry Judd were particularly entertaining. Debbie McGee putting Tom Chambers in his place was beautiful.
As expected, the advice was the hooks for all the aspects you’d expect (why put Blackpool before Halloween?) and it was knowing, but not too knowing. We then saw some clips of the new lot – so many people! Too many for me to start opining yet.
And then I was back with the Beeb for Killing Eve. I’ve been very excited by the trailers, because who doesn’t love a fictional female psychopath? And I thought it lived up to the hype. It was very character driven, and by the first fifteen minutes, all of the characters we’d been introduced to had done unexpected, human things, although the workplace banter might be in MI5's offices or in between orders about a hit to carry out.
Jodie Comer is utterly brilliant as amoral anti-heroine Villanelle – apparently the actress is a Liverpudlian. Villanelle is utterly compelling to watch. I’d been spoiled for her first scene with the kid, but not the one where she was unhelpful to the grumpy Parisian neighbour, which said so much about her. She’s competent at her job, partly because most of the world doesn’t expect her to be doing it. I’ve noted patterns in her MO – the clothes thing and she does keep leaving her DNA everywhere, but I guess it’s usually in unexpected places (the case!).
I hadn’t seen Comer before, nor Sandra Oh’s, and Eve feels like a multi-layered character (why is an American working for the British security services, though?) you can allow yourself to sympathise with more. She’s definitely weird, as in finding the killing method in Vienna cool and stabbing herself as a test, and she just scored herself a new, more interesting job.
In many ways, then, it’s a two-hander, with Villanelle firmly on Eve’s radar, and their paths having crossed just the once, in a low-key but significant scene. I’m sure they’ll milk everything out of Eve’s realisation of who the nurse was. It’s fab that a cat-and-mouse relationship, which will no doubt twist this way and that, between two women is at the heart of this.
I love the female perspective of it all. They’ve been pushing that Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the show’s writer so hard, but deservedly so. There’s the fact that the old white male victims underestimated Villanelle, and Eve is awake to this. So too is Fiona Shaw’s serious MI6 lady boss, stepping forward only when need be in this episode. Villanelle’s relationship with her handler is amazing, even more so than Eve’s with her karaoke buddies/colleagues. And, frankly, I am enjoying the fact that there are no mothers and women are having more hostile relationships with kids, for once. Obviously, that grandson is going to be terribly traumatised, but at least he’s not dead! The show kind of allowes these thoughts.
Eve’s nice husband’s moustache probably has its own Twitter account.
And I hoped Villanelle’s silk throw was nice and soft because I thought it ugly.
The soundtrack was very cool, but if I had a criticism, it’s that there was a little too much of it, but that’s a minor one.
I watched Strictly the Best, which was a clip show dressed up as past contestants giving advice to this year’s lot, so it was basically there to get us (more) excited about the new series. I think there is a more comprehensive show to be made with the pro dancers and judges, including past ones, but this wasn’t it. The talking heads were seated on a sofa – just like us!
We had all the obvious clips and I was reminded that I’d meant to rewatch some of my favourite routines from last year. The idea that they all have code names is hilarious, as if David Budd should turn to protecting them, although Melvin;s ignorance about Puck from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream irritated me and I spend most of his whining grumbling about that year his fellow contestants gave him the Christmas show undeservedly. Scott Mills and Ann Widdecome were seated together in the most !!!! grouping. He clearly didn’t know what to make of her, but she managed not to let rip when he showed his petulant little boy side. It took me a while to work out who Daisy Lowe was, not helped by the fact that she didn’t speak. Matt Dawson and Harry Judd were particularly entertaining. Debbie McGee putting Tom Chambers in his place was beautiful.
As expected, the advice was the hooks for all the aspects you’d expect (why put Blackpool before Halloween?) and it was knowing, but not too knowing. We then saw some clips of the new lot – so many people! Too many for me to start opining yet.
And then I was back with the Beeb for Killing Eve. I’ve been very excited by the trailers, because who doesn’t love a fictional female psychopath? And I thought it lived up to the hype. It was very character driven, and by the first fifteen minutes, all of the characters we’d been introduced to had done unexpected, human things, although the workplace banter might be in MI5's offices or in between orders about a hit to carry out.
Jodie Comer is utterly brilliant as amoral anti-heroine Villanelle – apparently the actress is a Liverpudlian. Villanelle is utterly compelling to watch. I’d been spoiled for her first scene with the kid, but not the one where she was unhelpful to the grumpy Parisian neighbour, which said so much about her. She’s competent at her job, partly because most of the world doesn’t expect her to be doing it. I’ve noted patterns in her MO – the clothes thing and she does keep leaving her DNA everywhere, but I guess it’s usually in unexpected places (the case!).
I hadn’t seen Comer before, nor Sandra Oh’s, and Eve feels like a multi-layered character (why is an American working for the British security services, though?) you can allow yourself to sympathise with more. She’s definitely weird, as in finding the killing method in Vienna cool and stabbing herself as a test, and she just scored herself a new, more interesting job.
In many ways, then, it’s a two-hander, with Villanelle firmly on Eve’s radar, and their paths having crossed just the once, in a low-key but significant scene. I’m sure they’ll milk everything out of Eve’s realisation of who the nurse was. It’s fab that a cat-and-mouse relationship, which will no doubt twist this way and that, between two women is at the heart of this.
I love the female perspective of it all. They’ve been pushing that Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the show’s writer so hard, but deservedly so. There’s the fact that the old white male victims underestimated Villanelle, and Eve is awake to this. So too is Fiona Shaw’s serious MI6 lady boss, stepping forward only when need be in this episode. Villanelle’s relationship with her handler is amazing, even more so than Eve’s with her karaoke buddies/colleagues. And, frankly, I am enjoying the fact that there are no mothers and women are having more hostile relationships with kids, for once. Obviously, that grandson is going to be terribly traumatised, but at least he’s not dead! The show kind of allowes these thoughts.
Eve’s nice husband’s moustache probably has its own Twitter account.
And I hoped Villanelle’s silk throw was nice and soft because I thought it ugly.
The soundtrack was very cool, but if I had a criticism, it’s that there was a little too much of it, but that’s a minor one.
