Fleabag – TV Review

Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is a woman in her twenties in London who drinks a lot, hurts those around her and is barely coping with her strange café. Essentially, she’s a mess. But she’s a pretty lovable mess, and the reasons for it gradually become clear.

I love an unreliable narrator, and it’s so rare to see such a wonderfully unreliable narrator outside of a novel. As she is telling us and herself that she is fine, so much is showing us that she’s not. And what is even real… and what is her perspective of what is real, and… even just thinking back over it, the cleverness of the writing and the way it has been put together just keeps revealing itself.

And then there’s the second season. When this came out, everyone was talking about Hot Priest. I love seeing Andrew Scott in anything, he’s just wonderful. It just kept getting better and better. So wonderful.

Spectre (2015) Film Review

James Bond (Daniel Craig) is off around the world, against agency orders following some interesting leads. M (Ralph Fiennes) is not happy. Especially because there is a new group coming in, headed by C (Andrew Scott) who wants to put the 00 program to bed. Then there’s the bad guy, who’s name I’m not going to give because that alone is a bit of a spoiler alert, but he’s played by Christoph Waltz yet again doing a magnificent job as a bad guy. And there’s a lot of plot and action and the like.

And it is awesome. I was the only James Bond watcher in the world who didn’t like Skyfall (or so it seems), so I was glad to enjoy this. Bond films have a wonderful reputation for magnificent opening sequences, and this is no exception. Worth seeing for it alone!

 

Sherlock – TV Review

The BBC one that everyone was talking about, you know, with the guy from The Office and the one with the crazy name? That’s the Sherlock I’m looking at here. So, Dr Watson (Martin Freeman) is a recently retired army doctor looking for a way of staying in London when he is introduced to Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) a consultant for Scotland Yard and they start to share a flat, with Watson being drawn in to Holmes’ world.

It’s a great interpretation, I think (I’ve only read one Sherlock Holmes and that was quite some time ago). It’s certainly great tv. Witty, funny, clever, fast-paced and with lots of unexpected twists. And it’s introduced me to Andrew Scott who plays Moriarty and is fantastic at it. I read some complaints online about the third season, how it did not explain Holmes’s absence and then return, but I don’t mind some mystery. It’s just so fabulous.