shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2022-03-20 02:55 pm
shallowness) wrote2022-03-20 02:55 pm
Entry tags:
Fictional TV assassins and spies
Killing Eve 4.1 Just Dunk Me
I came to it with appropriately lowered expectations, and it didn’t really exceed them. It was entertaining enough, as we caught up with Eve, Villanelle and Carolyn, though I had to remind myself that this was fantasy!Russia.
The opening sequence was trying really hard to be iconic, I wasn’t surprised that the writer was Eve, and her encounter with Konstantin was probably the one I laughed at the most, but I never thought she’d kill him, and while I can see there’s an arc for Eve as to whether she’ll shoot to kill after shooting to maim (which speaks of good aim) maybe that’s a problem. At least Eve is living somewhere better than that awful flat.
I was a bit needlessly confused about her co-worker/lover/mentor, until it was confirmed that no, we hadn’t met him before. So she’s working for a private company, but on her own obsessive mission.
Carolyn was a cultural attaché itching to get back into the game, warned off by that posh bloke who was collateral damage to the Eve and Villanelle of it all. I didn’t recognise who he met at the end, but he is that thick, then. Fine. I do expect him to be killed off.
Villanelle was hanging out with Christians and trying to be good to achieve her own salvation or at least get Eve to think that she had, at any rate. Daddy vicar was not so sure of this “Nelle” as his gullible daughter with Villanelle’s type hair, although if he hadn’t asked Nelle if she believed in God until so close to the baptism, he wasn’t very good at his job. The killing of the cat was surprising and funny/sad, but the attack on May seemed so random in the moment, and a part of me wondered if it was just so that they could get maximum use of the underwater camera. Anyway, we ended with Villanelle seeing visions/delusions of herself as Jesus. Oookay. I thought that was all less shocking than it was meant to be.
We only had the one interaction each between Eve and Carolyn and Eve and Villanelle.
They were really pushing the costumes, with Villanelle’s white baptismal gown and Carolyn’s dresses contrasting with Eve’s looks. And the soundtrack felt a bit relentless, even if I like the show’s musical idiom. This just underlined that the story wasn’t gripping. Ah well, there was some vicarious pleasure in the globetrotting.
Oh, and poor latest baby assassin.
The Ipcress File
I’ve seen the first episode and most of the second (something peculiar happened with the adverts, ITV HUB.) I liked it, and wanted to find out what happened next enough to go on immediately to the next episode, which is more than can be said for Killing Eve. I haven’t read the book/books or seen the film adaptation/s, all I knew was that Harry Palmer (Michael Caine doing his accent in glasses) was a counterpoint to James Bond in the sixties. Of course, they didn’t realise when they commissioned it that a Cold War spy drama featuring nukes would have added resonance for the viewers.
I am probably the worst person to appreciate the stylishness, and I admit I got grumbly at the subtitled German at the start (I have only a smattering of German words, I have been sulking at subtitles for two years now) but that passed. And there was substance to go along with the style, solid storytelling, lifted by telling details and nuance, and hypocrisies. It came off as less gritty now, and I can’t tell how much is modern-day interpretation,
We have sympathetic protagonists – Harry the clever working class soldier turned smuggler now working for upper class spies to stay out of prison; Jean, a posh working woman in a world where women were expected to give up their job when they got married, oh, and her fiancé doesn’t know what she does. To add to the sympathetic outsiders, Jean’s CIA contact was black (at this point, I don’t know what to make of his inconsistencies over drinking.)
Joe Cole has got IT (sex appeal and talent) as the lead, and he must have known this was an iconic role going in, but, like Lucy Boynton, he underplays, if anything, which works. I don’t think I know either from anything, but I stand to be corrected. Anyway, Tom Hollander plays their boss pitch perfectly, of course. Has he reached national treasure status yet? And it’s deep in the sixties – well, possibly there’s a degree less smoking than there was IRL, because a little goes a long way for today’s audience. Also striking? Jean’s headwear. The production people have gone to town. I look forward to the rest.
[Edited for typos 27/12/24.]
I came to it with appropriately lowered expectations, and it didn’t really exceed them. It was entertaining enough, as we caught up with Eve, Villanelle and Carolyn, though I had to remind myself that this was fantasy!Russia.
The opening sequence was trying really hard to be iconic, I wasn’t surprised that the writer was Eve, and her encounter with Konstantin was probably the one I laughed at the most, but I never thought she’d kill him, and while I can see there’s an arc for Eve as to whether she’ll shoot to kill after shooting to maim (which speaks of good aim) maybe that’s a problem. At least Eve is living somewhere better than that awful flat.
I was a bit needlessly confused about her co-worker/lover/mentor, until it was confirmed that no, we hadn’t met him before. So she’s working for a private company, but on her own obsessive mission.
Carolyn was a cultural attaché itching to get back into the game, warned off by that posh bloke who was collateral damage to the Eve and Villanelle of it all. I didn’t recognise who he met at the end, but he is that thick, then. Fine. I do expect him to be killed off.
Villanelle was hanging out with Christians and trying to be good to achieve her own salvation or at least get Eve to think that she had, at any rate. Daddy vicar was not so sure of this “Nelle” as his gullible daughter with Villanelle’s type hair, although if he hadn’t asked Nelle if she believed in God until so close to the baptism, he wasn’t very good at his job. The killing of the cat was surprising and funny/sad, but the attack on May seemed so random in the moment, and a part of me wondered if it was just so that they could get maximum use of the underwater camera. Anyway, we ended with Villanelle seeing visions/delusions of herself as Jesus. Oookay. I thought that was all less shocking than it was meant to be.
We only had the one interaction each between Eve and Carolyn and Eve and Villanelle.
They were really pushing the costumes, with Villanelle’s white baptismal gown and Carolyn’s dresses contrasting with Eve’s looks. And the soundtrack felt a bit relentless, even if I like the show’s musical idiom. This just underlined that the story wasn’t gripping. Ah well, there was some vicarious pleasure in the globetrotting.
Oh, and poor latest baby assassin.
The Ipcress File
I’ve seen the first episode and most of the second (something peculiar happened with the adverts, ITV HUB.) I liked it, and wanted to find out what happened next enough to go on immediately to the next episode, which is more than can be said for Killing Eve. I haven’t read the book/books or seen the film adaptation/s, all I knew was that Harry Palmer (Michael Caine doing his accent in glasses) was a counterpoint to James Bond in the sixties. Of course, they didn’t realise when they commissioned it that a Cold War spy drama featuring nukes would have added resonance for the viewers.
I am probably the worst person to appreciate the stylishness, and I admit I got grumbly at the subtitled German at the start (I have only a smattering of German words, I have been sulking at subtitles for two years now) but that passed. And there was substance to go along with the style, solid storytelling, lifted by telling details and nuance, and hypocrisies. It came off as less gritty now, and I can’t tell how much is modern-day interpretation,
We have sympathetic protagonists – Harry the clever working class soldier turned smuggler now working for upper class spies to stay out of prison; Jean, a posh working woman in a world where women were expected to give up their job when they got married, oh, and her fiancé doesn’t know what she does. To add to the sympathetic outsiders, Jean’s CIA contact was black (at this point, I don’t know what to make of his inconsistencies over drinking.)
Joe Cole has got IT (sex appeal and talent) as the lead, and he must have known this was an iconic role going in, but, like Lucy Boynton, he underplays, if anything, which works. I don’t think I know either from anything, but I stand to be corrected. Anyway, Tom Hollander plays their boss pitch perfectly, of course. Has he reached national treasure status yet? And it’s deep in the sixties – well, possibly there’s a degree less smoking than there was IRL, because a little goes a long way for today’s audience. Also striking? Jean’s headwear. The production people have gone to town. I look forward to the rest.
[Edited for typos 27/12/24.]
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I really noticed this as well. Also having seen only the first episode, none of the "punches" landed for me. They're trying really hard in a way that doesn't feel natural at all.
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