Summer of Rockets reviews
May. 31st, 2019 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI’d forgotten this was on, and so caught up on the first episode. The boxset is up on iPlayer, but I’m going to try to watch it live.
Episode 1
It’s less off-putting than the last Poliakoff drama aired on BBC (I don’t think I made it past the first episode). I noticed that it was semi-autobiographical, and the children, Sasha and Hannah were the most sympathetic figures.
I really liked the use of the perspectives of the deaf staff and staff in general, like the driver who witnessed the Shaws in the rain, even though they are definitely the supporting characters.
Toby Stephenson’s accent sounded more German than Russian to me, but he played clever Samuel, desperate to fit in in the upper echelons of a society that saw him as an outsider for class, race and religious reasons, not unaware of this, and so not a caricature to laugh at or entirely a man to wince for, but so enthused by science and possibility. The women in his life weren’t so excited by (phallic) rockets.
Actually, such a good cast. I liked the spirited daughter, but a lot of the bit players who turned up could easily lead a show like this. Hawes was wonderful as a buttoned-up woman falling apart, kind – and one noted in her kindness to Sasha that she and her husband had no children – and by the time we had an explanation for her husband’s disappearances (probably shouldn’t be in a public, responsible job like that if that’s how you’re dealing with his episodes), I was on her side.
I liked the innovative devices – the light for the fishbowl, the early headphones and portable radio, heightened by the use of Cliff. It reminded me that this would be the age of the Jetsons. And the costumes, of course. Poliakoff’s stiffness and unwillingness to be too naturalistic works in this milieu.
Episode 2 (watched live)
I was glad that a character referenced Cinderella for Hannah’s adventures. All her dreams show that she’s as imaginative as her younger brother. I liked the friendship with Sorry I’ve Forgotten Her Name, who has a bob and smiles a lot, who works for her dad, although it seems a bit one-way. I thought that going to volunteer (alongside her former etiquette teacher, no of course there’s no romance there) might be a good way of working through her fears, but it wasn’t, worsened by Hannah’s inability to follow orders. (Her perpetual tardiness was starting to get on my nerves.)
As for the mother’s dismay at her husband having been detained talking to Kathleen Shaw, even as a fellow introvert, I felt a little impatient with her for refusing to go to the musicale. If she’d chaperoned Hannah to the palace, there is no way her daughter would have wandered off, missed being presented to the queen and had to lie and lie. Of course, the suggestion is that what Samuel thinks his wife wants is not what she wants.
Unsurprisingly, he was being followed by MI5, and learned more of how little he’d been trusted by the state, (ouch) before being blackmailed into spying on the Shaws. Lord Walsingham continued to be awful.
We learned that the Shaws had indeed lost a child, although he wasn’t a child when he went missing (maybe the school will yield clues as to his disappearance, as we saw Sasha’s unhappiness there). So, there’s even more reason for Kathleen’s misery under the fifties English lady façade, although the appeal of the family seems excessive. Seeing Sasha must be as much pain as pleasure. Maybe it’s a release valve to open up to Hanna and Samuel, although not the most obvious figure in the family.
And the episode ended with a decent, perhaps too optimistic, brilliant man being compromised.
Episode 1
It’s less off-putting than the last Poliakoff drama aired on BBC (I don’t think I made it past the first episode). I noticed that it was semi-autobiographical, and the children, Sasha and Hannah were the most sympathetic figures.
I really liked the use of the perspectives of the deaf staff and staff in general, like the driver who witnessed the Shaws in the rain, even though they are definitely the supporting characters.
Toby Stephenson’s accent sounded more German than Russian to me, but he played clever Samuel, desperate to fit in in the upper echelons of a society that saw him as an outsider for class, race and religious reasons, not unaware of this, and so not a caricature to laugh at or entirely a man to wince for, but so enthused by science and possibility. The women in his life weren’t so excited by (phallic) rockets.
Actually, such a good cast. I liked the spirited daughter, but a lot of the bit players who turned up could easily lead a show like this. Hawes was wonderful as a buttoned-up woman falling apart, kind – and one noted in her kindness to Sasha that she and her husband had no children – and by the time we had an explanation for her husband’s disappearances (probably shouldn’t be in a public, responsible job like that if that’s how you’re dealing with his episodes), I was on her side.
I liked the innovative devices – the light for the fishbowl, the early headphones and portable radio, heightened by the use of Cliff. It reminded me that this would be the age of the Jetsons. And the costumes, of course. Poliakoff’s stiffness and unwillingness to be too naturalistic works in this milieu.
Episode 2 (watched live)
I was glad that a character referenced Cinderella for Hannah’s adventures. All her dreams show that she’s as imaginative as her younger brother. I liked the friendship with Sorry I’ve Forgotten Her Name, who has a bob and smiles a lot, who works for her dad, although it seems a bit one-way. I thought that going to volunteer (alongside her former etiquette teacher, no of course there’s no romance there) might be a good way of working through her fears, but it wasn’t, worsened by Hannah’s inability to follow orders. (Her perpetual tardiness was starting to get on my nerves.)
As for the mother’s dismay at her husband having been detained talking to Kathleen Shaw, even as a fellow introvert, I felt a little impatient with her for refusing to go to the musicale. If she’d chaperoned Hannah to the palace, there is no way her daughter would have wandered off, missed being presented to the queen and had to lie and lie. Of course, the suggestion is that what Samuel thinks his wife wants is not what she wants.
Unsurprisingly, he was being followed by MI5, and learned more of how little he’d been trusted by the state, (ouch) before being blackmailed into spying on the Shaws. Lord Walsingham continued to be awful.
We learned that the Shaws had indeed lost a child, although he wasn’t a child when he went missing (maybe the school will yield clues as to his disappearance, as we saw Sasha’s unhappiness there). So, there’s even more reason for Kathleen’s misery under the fifties English lady façade, although the appeal of the family seems excessive. Seeing Sasha must be as much pain as pleasure. Maybe it’s a release valve to open up to Hanna and Samuel, although not the most obvious figure in the family.
And the episode ended with a decent, perhaps too optimistic, brilliant man being compromised.
