Here We Go Again

Stuff we watched over the past few months, catch-up time!

The Residence - Netflix. Utter delight. It was promoted as Upstairs Downstairs set in The White House, which it is, but also it's a classic manor house murder mystery. Genre-clashing fun!

When a White House staff member is discovered dead during a state dinner, the world's foremost consulting detective is called in to solve the case. The list of suspects is everyone in the building, and so many people have motive. The cast is great - Uzo Aduba is fabulous as the detective, Giancarlo Esposito as the (dead) White House usher, and Kylie Minogue as the evening's entertainer 🤣 They get straight in with the tropes and the subversions and the writing is fabulous. Oh, and the President is gay married, so clearly we're well into the realms of fantasy...


Untamed - Netflix. Crime drama set in Yosemite National Park. A young woman dies falling from El Capitan - did she jump or was she pushed? And does her death tie into an earlier disappearance in the park?

Eric Bana is fantastic as the park cop with a tragic past and Sam Neill was also great in his last TV role. The plot was fine overall, I guess, but at one point it did make me really mad. A female cop has a restraining order out against her ex, he rocks up at her house one night being all aggressive and she grabs her kid and runs. Fair enough as a starting point. But she goes to a friend's house and... that's it??? She doesn't report his arsehole self to the cops with jurisdiction and have him arrested??? She just does nothing??? That seems really unlikely - she knows the law, she knows her rights, she knows what he's like and that was terrible writing to force a plot point. Character assassination, quite frankly.

I came close to bailing at that point, but the series is only short (6 episodes), so I persevered. And honestly I was glad I did, because the last episode made it worthwhile. It was nailed. Really brought everything together in a surprising way and the acting was brilliant and truly emotional. I wish someone with a brain and a feminist streak had taken an editing pass, because the dodgy part could have been fixed. It didn't have to be that way!

Untamed has been renewed for a second season and The Residence hasn't, which is the wrong way around IMO.


The Fall of the House of Usher - Netflix. Gothic Horror miniseries loosely based on various stories by Edgar Allen Poe.

I see what they were aiming for with this, but it didn't hit for me. The cast is fine (Mary McDonnell was great as Madeline and Mark Hamill had a good role, along with a solid cast of unknowns (well, unknown to me at least)). The story had potential but I don't think they went far enough. If you're doing Edgar Allen Poe, you really have to lean into it! And they did by the end, but it started out too not-Poe for its own good. Were they trying to drag in a more mainstream audience? That's going to fail. And the early episodes weren't Poe-y and gothic enough to really get that audience either. It would have been better if they'd gone for it all in from day one instead of hedging their bets and ending up not quite enough of anything.


Midnight Mass - Netflix. An older one (2019) that I'd vaguely heard about for years and kept thinking I might check out, and eventually I did. Weird goings-on in a small, failing island community - the elderly local priest goes off on a vacation and never returns. A new young priest turns up in his stead, saying the old guy had an incident and is hospitalised.

I liked this. It's a little slow, takes a while to get where it's going, but it really establishes its characters and the community in a way that holds everything together for later. There was one truly surprising twist (that was not the reveal of what was actually going on, but something else). It has a lot to say about cults and fanaticism and the power of personality and delusion in a way that resonates even more now than it would have done at the time.


Widow's Bay - not Netflix for once, LOL. Pretty much everyone's heard about Widow's Bay by now anyway, right? The comedy that swept the Emmys. Also a series about supernatural goings-on in a small, failing island community, which didn't help that I was watching it simultaneously with Midnight Mass and had to keep reminding myself which one was which 🤪

Look, it is good. Matthew Rhys, Patricia Flynn and Stephen Root all deserved their Emmys. It did start too slowly - it's a comedy! It needed to be funnier from the start. It has a very dry humour, but even for that, it was lacking in the beginning when it was all set up. There were a couple of truly stand-out episodes and some scenes that absolutely killed it with the genre pastiches, could not have been bettered. We had fun with it. Did it deserve to win more Emmys than the opening season of any TV series ever? No it did not. There have definitely been better TV series that could have swept the board. It's enjoyable, not world-shattering...

Another hike I hadn't done before, this one just over the Cascade crest on the far side of Snoqualmie Pass. All the trip reports said this was a fairly quiet hike, not well travelled, and there was nobody but me there all day - no other cars in the parking area and no sign of humans. This was probably helped by the area only recently reopened after being closed due to a nearby fire. There was still a sign at the trailhead saying it was closed, though the forestry service website listed the change.

There was no smell of smoke or any hint of haze in the clear blue skies and no sign of forest damage the whole way, though the area to the west and north was still closed.

( Easton Ridge )

The hike of the week this week was a new one! Goat Lake is a longer hike (10.5 miles/16.9km) and it's a fair drive to get there, so I had to allow a longer window of time in the day. But the combined drive time and hiking distance were still within the bounds of the Palisades Lakes that I did earlier this year, so I found a day with no other responsibilities and went for it.

( Goat Lake )

This week's hike was a short one, but still lovely. Apparently it's four years since I first went to Lodge Lake, I would have said two!

( Lodge Lake )

Going through the last few months of TV watching again...

Spider Noir We enjoyed this A LOT. Nicolas Cage playing a cross between himself and Humphrey Bogart as a 1930s New York private dick who also happens to have spider powers. It knows exactly what it is and leans into it the whole way - it's a pastiche mash-up of two different genres and everyone is having a ball. There are a couple of genuinely interesting twists too.

Watch it in black and white. We watched the first ep in B&W because it's noir, then the second episode in colour. It becomes apparent pretty quickly that the colour palette is limited and forced because it's spliced onto the black and white. Once you see it you can't unsee it. Why is his tie those awful colour combinations? Because we only have five colours we can use. We switched back to black and white half way through that ep.


The Boroughs (netflix) Delightful. There's something very strange going on in a retirement community and a stellar cast are throwing themselves all in. Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Clarke Peters, Geena Davis and aliens, what more do you want? DO NOT think about the science or how cathode ray tube TVs work. That doesn't matter, it's a MacGuffin. Forget the physics and enjoy the ride. It's a fun ride to enjoy, though also with some commentary on loss and grief that add layers.


Half Man (HBO) I was definitely interested in Richard Gadd's follow up to Baby Reindeer because that was so good. Half Man is just fine. It's really well acted (Gadd's physical transformation from Baby Reindeer is astounding) and it's well directed, but the plot is thin. We know where we start and we know where we're ending because of the flashback premise of the writing. So it's all about the journey of how we get from A to B and I kept waiting for the twist. The thing I wasn't expecting that would thoroughly surprise me, that would cast the point B ending in a totally different light, and it wasn't there.

It has the Baby Reindeer themes of abuse and trauma and how they beget more abuse and trauma via their victims, it's just not as well executed overall. Which is understandable. Gadd had been honing Baby Reindeer for years, refining his one man play before it made it to screen. Half Man is the difficult second album written from scratch with a set time limit. It's not in any way bad, I was just hoping for more. The bar was set very high.


Legends (netflix) British mini-series based on an early 90s undercover mission by customs agents to infiltrate heroin dealer gangs and make a huge drugs bust. Tense, entertaining and well done. It's a pity the premise is bullshit (prohibition doesn't work, it never has and it never will) but that was a premise based on a political soundbite and customs had to follow through. It has a great cast, most of them unknowns to me. Steve Coogan cast against type in a dramatic role is impressive. Hayley Squires seems to have found a role for herself playing spy games after her spot in The Night Manager.

This series was very clearly aimed at out age bracket, with a soundtrack full of early 90s bangers. Good show, fantastic music, the pitch worked :-)


We Are Ladyparts (Peacock) An older show from 2021 which I'd heard good things about from various people and we finally got it to the top of The List. A group of Muslim women in London form a punk band. It's a sitcom about Muslim culture and the lines between being Muslim and being English with very clever, funny songs, and then as they grow more famous, it becomes more about the music industry too.

The writers did a fantastic job of covering the whole range here. We have young Muslim women with conservative parents and a woman who is more conservative than her parents. The friend group include a Niqabi, a Black Muslim and a woman who wears western clothes and doesn't cover her hair. It's very entertaining with a fair dash of social commentary along the way.


And then I ended up simultaneously watching two series that involved women being kidnapped. Not a deliberate choice, that's just how it panned out!

Mare of Easttown (HBO) Another older one that I heard a lot about at the time, also from 2021. Mostly what I heard was that Kate Winslet is awesome in it, and that is true. She definitely got to show range here that her earlier career did not. She's not an entirely sympathetic character and she makes all aspects of it work.

The murder of a teenaged girl in a small town raises questions and leads to the re-investigation of a case of another teenaged girl who disappeared a year before. Are the cases connected? Is there a serial killer? There are the usual murder mystery array of potential suspects and small town secrets uncovered along the way, and the threat of neighbour-on-neighbour vigilante justice. The writing is solid, but not outstanding. It's a perfectly good series, but not one I'd rave about.


Dept Q (netflix) More cops, more cold cases and once again copaganda that does not portray cops in the best light. A detective recovers physically from a shooting that left his partner paralysed and another cop dead, but mentally he hasn't recovered so much. He's made the 'head' of a new cold case department consisting only of himself to keep him out of trouble. He ropes in a couple of other cop rejects along the way as they re-investigate the disappearance of a barrister four years earlier.

This one takes a while to get going. The lead character is an arsehole. The set-up is slow, but then it pulls itself together, and it becomes more intriguing. The plot is labyrinthine and somewhat madcap, but the cast are rock solid and there are a couple of genuinely good twists. Good enough that it got a second series which is currently filming, and I will watch it.

The Death and Life of Martha P Johnson (netflix) A documentary from 2017 that covers much of Martha’s life and activism and also the efforts of her friends to reopen the investigation into her death. It includes interviews with the people who worked and lived with her. A solid documentary, sometimes sad and sometimes hopeful. Worth a watch.


Eo (on kanopy in the US) Eo is a donkey in a Polish circus. When the circus is disbanded, all the animals are sold off, and Eo is separated from his trainer and fellow performer. He’s determined to get back to her though, breaking free from his field to journey through towns and countryside to find her.

This is basically a study of humanity seen through the eyes of a wandering donkey. Eo encounters danger and brutality, but also people willing to take in and rescue an injured animal. A strange little film, sweet in its own way, but does contain scenes of animal cruelty for people who don't want to see that.


Marty Supreme A New York man in the 1950s is a great table tennis player when that doesn’t mean anything in America. He’s determined to get the money to go to the world championships and doesn’t care how – lying, hustling, stealing, the end justifies any means. But as his choices come back to bite him in the arse, everything spirals ever downwards.

Hmmm. I’m still not sure what this film wanted to be. It’s not funny enough to be a black comedy and too insanely cracked to be a drama. Marty is an unpleasant and deeply selfish human being who uses everyone around him, winging his way through life on his charm. It was vaguely entertaining, amusing now and then, but what the hell was with that ending? I’m supposed to believe that just like that he’s a changed man? One life event and suddenly he won’t be an arsehole any more? Um, no, I'm not buying that.


Sheep Detectives A sheep farmer in an English village is murdered, and his sheep set out to solve the mystery of who did it.

Absolutely delightful. Is it a bit cheesy? Yes. Does it follow the predictable plot beats? Of course. But it does it really well, all the cast are in it all the way, and the writing is solid. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, all the emotional beats worked and it gave me genuine feels ❤️


Hamnet A film based on the life of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes/Ann Hathaway, and the issues of marriage to a struggling, frustrated writer, worsened by the death of their only son Hamnet.

I was a little disappointed by this, given how much I’ve loved some of Chloe Zhao’s other films. I just wasn’t invested in the characters or their story, and found myself getting bored at times. I thought about bailing but decided to stick with it. And honestly, the last 25 minutes of the film are fantastic. Stunningly well acted and directed, those final scenes nail it as Agnes comes to understand everything her husband couldn’t tell her through watching his play – all the emotion, the cohesiveness that I’d felt was missing from the rest of the film, suddenly it was there. I just wish it hadn’t taken so long to build.


The Long Walk (HBO) Based on a Stephen King story. In a poverty-stricken America, 50 young men, one from each state, take part in a non-stop walk in which the last man walking gets rich and everyone else dies along the way.

It’s a typical non-supernatural Stephen King tale, with its themes of little people vs authority, friendships forged in adversity, and a dash of social commentary. It’s a solid film – well acted, well paced and directed. Did exactly what it set out to do. “Every moment matters. Especially at the end.”

This Wednesday was hot - really quite hot - so I abandoned plans for another longer hike and went for a shorter one closer to home. Shorter and with less elevation gain, so I wasn't climbing such steep hills.

( Source Lake )

Les Combattantes (Women at War) (Netflix) The story of four women (two of them ex-lovers) in France in the early months of the first world war as the Germans are invading. One is a sex worker trying to find her son, one is a nun in a convent turned military hospital, one is left in charge of the family factory when her husband goes off to fight, and one is on the run from the cops for performing illegal abortions. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t normally watch – I watched it mainly because I was looking for something French to practice my listening skills, and there’s less of the slang that makes modern-set stuff incomprehensible to me XD There’s a fair bit of melodrama, but the leads all made it work. Also gets into sexual abuse by priests, so don’t go here if that’s a thing for you.


Spartacus: The House of Ashur It’s more Spartacus. It’s more politicking, double-crossing, back-stabbing , social climbing and hubris. It’s some people who deserve it getting their come-uppance and other people who deserve it less getting it too. Lots of murder, shagging and more murder. If you enjoyed the other Spartacus shows, you’ll enjoy this one too.

I have to say, it was fun watching Dexter Gamble from Burn Notice chewing the scenery as the lead. And that man is ageing very well; more than a decade later, he looks exactly the same, and he looks very good getting his kit off for the full Starz experience 🤣


Mr Inbetween An older one, this ran from 2018-2021, but it’s Australian, which explains some of why I hadn’t come across it. A black comedy about a career criminal, who has to balance his ‘activities’ with a more upright appearance for his daughter, his disabled brother and his girlfriend. If you’re familiar with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, this is basically a show about Mike Ehrmantraut if he was in Sydney. We liked it a lot. The ending was nailed. If you liked Barry HBO, check out this one, although this is another series that has a few episodes dealing with child abuse, both physical and sexual, but not perpetrated or condoned in any way by main characters.


Good Omens The Finale This was fairly divisive in the snippets that came across my tumblr dash. From what I saw, I felt I had a pretty good idea of where that dividing line lay, and what my take on it would be, and I was right.

It has to be watched in context, obviously, that context being that what was supposed to be another series written by Neil Gaiman was rapidly ditched when he was exposed as a predator, and it was handed to other writers who were told they only had 90 minutes to wrap up everything that Gaiman had set up in season two. It was a big ask, the plot is understandably rushed and a bit all over the place, but the plot is not the point. The characters are the point. The point is the point. The characters get an ending that works for them and their journey, an ending they deserve, and the people who hated on it were wrong and sometimes for some very shallow reasons, from what I saw of the complaints.


Deadloch season 2 Everything that was so entertaining about the first season of Deadloch, without the shaky start that afflicted season one. (We were very close to bailing around episode two or three of season one, but decided to give a bit longer, and then the very next episode we started to get the explanation for the things that had been really bugging us about it, so that it made more sense.) This is more of the same mismatched queer female cop buddy comedy in a new setting, and it has an absolutely perfect ending which I will not spoil ❤️


Trigun Stargaze I watched Trigun Stampede when that came out (why did they change the name to Trigun Stargaze? Why not just Stampede season two? Weird. Anyway…) and it didn’t really make an impact. I wasn’t a fan of the new character designs, I missed Milly (even though I did like Roberto far more than I had thought I would from the concept). They made some interesting changes, drawing from the manga more than the anime (good choice!) while constructing a third, independent narrative from the same bricks and main beats, but that lack of real interest in Stampede is why it took me a while to get to Stargaze after it came out.

So finally on to Stargaze and oh! Here is my Trigun! Vash looks like Vash (shallow, I know, but important), Milly is here. All the character dynamics are up and rolling how they should be. We get the full Livio/Lazlo storyline (I refuse to call him Razlo LOL). So many moments where I’m all ‘I know that panel from the manga!’ Wolfwood and his vials, Aunt Melanie and the orphanage kids throwing their paper for him, both in his mind and in reality. Vash infusing his Plant powers into his bullets.

The breakout from the Ark! The way they did that, Wolfwood hanging out on the Ark all those months, insinuating himself with his ex-friends and abusers while he waited for Legato to weaken, ouch. Vash’s decision to kill Legato. The fallibility of Rem, who tried so hard, but is still human, not the ideal who lives in Vash’s mind. Meryl convincing the hijacked Plants to take a side and making the most fervent of promises. Stargaze gave me the emotional feels!

I loved the Midvalley storyline – his character arc made sense, because he was only ever in it through fear and coercion; the Eye of Michael and the Gung Ho Guns were never his philosophy. Emilio I was less convinced by – he was an outlier child who made a bad choice, and then was indoctrinated through decades. I imagine that would be considerably harder to come back from than Stargaze had time for. Once again, there was no real attempt to explain Legato, which is probably for the best XD

And Wolfood gets to live, just this once. And Vash has all his people, refusing to let him brood, refusing to leave him, and they’ll all be fine ❤️❤️❤️

I’ll definitely go back and watch this again, both series. Maybe I’ll like TriStamp more the second time, knowing where it’s heading.

Last weekend was the annual Sevens group tour. Typically it's a four or five day event, but this year they were going up into Canada, which we are currently not inclined to do, so we only spent two days out in eastern Washington. At least we had the Seven though. Its electrical gremlin was finally found and solved, so we got it back three days before in full working order.

( It was a thorough test drive! )

I made a few stops along the drive home from the conference and found a couple of surprises along the way.

( Mostly wildlife )