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shallownessOn the Strictly news, a while ago, we learned which pros weren’t coming back, with Karen getting some extra attention for being on the show for so long. The rest do make sense given whether they’ve had partners or not and what they’ve done with what partners they had. Well, Gorka aside, but if he’s got a gig as a judge on the Spanish version, that makes sense.
The big news is the presenters: I’d read that the ones who got named were shortlisted, so it wasn't a total suprpise. I can see Emma Willis working as the new Tess, I’m most pleased about Josh Widdicome, because I really liked his attitude when he did the Christmas show that time. I don’t quite know how having Johannes as a ‘roving reporter’ will work, but it is a way of keeping a beloved dancer who has broken out on the show. We shall see how it works in practice, of course.
The Capture - 3.1 Don’t Look Into the Cameras
I wanted to finish watching Indira Vandra in The Other Bennet Sister before starting this new series of the nutty AI/deepfakes don’t work like that/surveillance conspiracy theory thriller. The returning faces broadly fell into two camps, the shifty looking people, and the trustworthy officers Rachel Carey had got to work for her. Okay, no, that’s a slight exaggeration.
It was one year after she and ambitious minister Isaac Turner had revealed Correction (Every. Single. Season I wonder ‘why call it “The Capture” when the tech is called “Correction”!?) to the world (well, the UK) with the help of TV presenter/journalist Kadija Khan. Rachel was now the acting commander of the counter-terrorism branch, and trialling Operation Veritas, a new sort of CCTV, to stop Correction, which a Russian operative was using to enter the UK illegally via Heathrow.
One result later and she had reason to expand the scheme throughout the country. But Kadjida had been avoiding her, possibly because she hadn’t broken all the news and evidence Carey had brought to her, so their interview was tense. Carey’s personal life was rubbish, as her stepsister turned down her offer for a drink to hang with a bloke. Instead, Rachel had CIA man (proper Hollywood star Ron Perlman) visiting her flat and ‘suggesting’ she kept quiet about the CIA’s involvement in the upcoming public inquiry into Correction so that she owed him a favour.
Her bosses then told her she wouldn’t be getting the job of commander permanently, but they’d like to use her for PR purposes. Rachel started to worry that the last year had been too easy. Her ex boss/lover was going to the inquiry to stonewall inquiries in the name of national security. Isaac was still ambitious, making up with his missus and had reason to believe he would be the next PM.
Only the press conference went badly wrong with live feeds and phone signals going down – ruh-roh – and then a gunman turned up. (It was clear that he had the advantage of being able to see and control the security feeds, but the physical security, considering this was a press conference about a counter-terrorism scheme featuring the Home Secretary, was abysmal). I did gasp at Turner getting executed. [So, like Callum Turner? Paapa Essiedu is too big for this show now?] The gunman came quite close to Rachel, who closed her eyes in the expectation she’d get shot, but although he pulled the trigger, she didn’t, because the shot was aimed up in the air.
Cue a chase scene, where the armed officers were more loyal to their ex boss (who was a manly man, instead of some relatively young woman), competent Carey picked up a gun, tried to relay intel over a walkie-talkie, but lost the suspect. The armed police, her ex and Garland (the smarmy lady spy from seasons past) irritated Rachel. She returned to the crime scene, which had been full of journalists, none of whom had really seen the gunman, but had captured some sightings of him on their cameras and phones, only the man on screen was not the man that Carey had seen. She hoped that the demo Correction-proof camera they’d had at the press conference would be a help, but it wasn’t, and she’d started taking it out at PR person Paige and losing her loyal staff when her boss turned up to introduce the new commander…
…and it was the gunman. I gasped. (I thought it would be her ex.) Two twists that make me gasp are good. The lighting is still way too dim, and the show continues to use BBC News studios, logos and its creepy robot cameras liberally. Obviously, realpolitik is quite, quite different to the nonsense on this show, and so is real tech, for although the ‘Can you trust what you see on screen?’ question is valid and timely, the way the everyone on this show falls back on tech – Rachel was still using her phone for pics, for conversations – is stupid, even setting aside the compromised establishment vibes. But Halliday Granger and her cheekbones are giving good heroine in a modern Kafkaesque tale.
The big news is the presenters: I’d read that the ones who got named were shortlisted, so it wasn't a total suprpise. I can see Emma Willis working as the new Tess, I’m most pleased about Josh Widdicome, because I really liked his attitude when he did the Christmas show that time. I don’t quite know how having Johannes as a ‘roving reporter’ will work, but it is a way of keeping a beloved dancer who has broken out on the show. We shall see how it works in practice, of course.
The Capture - 3.1 Don’t Look Into the Cameras
I wanted to finish watching Indira Vandra in The Other Bennet Sister before starting this new series of the nutty AI/deepfakes don’t work like that/surveillance conspiracy theory thriller. The returning faces broadly fell into two camps, the shifty looking people, and the trustworthy officers Rachel Carey had got to work for her. Okay, no, that’s a slight exaggeration.
It was one year after she and ambitious minister Isaac Turner had revealed Correction (Every. Single. Season I wonder ‘why call it “The Capture” when the tech is called “Correction”!?) to the world (well, the UK) with the help of TV presenter/journalist Kadija Khan. Rachel was now the acting commander of the counter-terrorism branch, and trialling Operation Veritas, a new sort of CCTV, to stop Correction, which a Russian operative was using to enter the UK illegally via Heathrow.
One result later and she had reason to expand the scheme throughout the country. But Kadjida had been avoiding her, possibly because she hadn’t broken all the news and evidence Carey had brought to her, so their interview was tense. Carey’s personal life was rubbish, as her stepsister turned down her offer for a drink to hang with a bloke. Instead, Rachel had CIA man (proper Hollywood star Ron Perlman) visiting her flat and ‘suggesting’ she kept quiet about the CIA’s involvement in the upcoming public inquiry into Correction so that she owed him a favour.
Her bosses then told her she wouldn’t be getting the job of commander permanently, but they’d like to use her for PR purposes. Rachel started to worry that the last year had been too easy. Her ex boss/lover was going to the inquiry to stonewall inquiries in the name of national security. Isaac was still ambitious, making up with his missus and had reason to believe he would be the next PM.
Only the press conference went badly wrong with live feeds and phone signals going down – ruh-roh – and then a gunman turned up. (It was clear that he had the advantage of being able to see and control the security feeds, but the physical security, considering this was a press conference about a counter-terrorism scheme featuring the Home Secretary, was abysmal). I did gasp at Turner getting executed. [So, like Callum Turner? Paapa Essiedu is too big for this show now?] The gunman came quite close to Rachel, who closed her eyes in the expectation she’d get shot, but although he pulled the trigger, she didn’t, because the shot was aimed up in the air.
Cue a chase scene, where the armed officers were more loyal to their ex boss (who was a manly man, instead of some relatively young woman), competent Carey picked up a gun, tried to relay intel over a walkie-talkie, but lost the suspect. The armed police, her ex and Garland (the smarmy lady spy from seasons past) irritated Rachel. She returned to the crime scene, which had been full of journalists, none of whom had really seen the gunman, but had captured some sightings of him on their cameras and phones, only the man on screen was not the man that Carey had seen. She hoped that the demo Correction-proof camera they’d had at the press conference would be a help, but it wasn’t, and she’d started taking it out at PR person Paige and losing her loyal staff when her boss turned up to introduce the new commander…
…and it was the gunman. I gasped. (I thought it would be her ex.) Two twists that make me gasp are good. The lighting is still way too dim, and the show continues to use BBC News studios, logos and its creepy robot cameras liberally. Obviously, realpolitik is quite, quite different to the nonsense on this show, and so is real tech, for although the ‘Can you trust what you see on screen?’ question is valid and timely, the way the everyone on this show falls back on tech – Rachel was still using her phone for pics, for conversations – is stupid, even setting aside the compromised establishment vibes. But Halliday Granger and her cheekbones are giving good heroine in a modern Kafkaesque tale.
