better a mile wide than an inch deep

Here are some suggestions of shows you might like, if you haven't seen them already. In ascending order of awesomeness.

This Is Going To Hurt Based on an English doctor's memoir, this is a black comedy and a moving documentary-style rollercoaster of his work through various hospital shifts in a London obstetrics ward. A bit grim and misogynist but thought provoking and funny.

Shogun. From a novel based on fact and set in 1600s Asia, this is the story of an English sailor who washes up in Japan and has to deal with love, political machinations, violence, and a culture that is so alien to him he might as well as be on Mars.

Line of Duty Fiction but draws on real life cases of a police internal affairs unit, with a strong cast who are led by a woman, an Irish guy, and a Scottish actor. So very enjoyable. Great relationships between the leads. Twisty plots, great acting, amazing writing. Nail-biting, edge of your seat stuff. OMG!

True Detective: Night Country Two women, detectives, in Alaska grapple with the fallout of the murder of an indigenous midwife and activist. The supporting characters such as the junior officer, the bar owner, and the lady played by Fiona Shaw were fantastic. This is the third series of True Detective; I hadn't seen the earlier ones and it didn't matter. Deeply spooky in parts and always gripping, I loved this and the ending had me literally punching the air in glee.

Happy Valley I can't say enough good things about this. A police officer in the North of England has a pressured life. She is a good person and has a backbone of titanium but she's raising her grandson after her daughter killed herself, and living with her recovering addict sister, and dealing with a very busy workload of some really vicious and brutal crimes. Then she hears that the scumbag who drove her daughter to suicide is getting out of jail. And then it really kicks off. The emotional depth of the writing and acting, the truth of what its like to have a recovering addict in the family, the fantastic fantastic fantastic plot, a vivid portrait of a whole community - I really think this is one of the finest and most enjoyable TV series that I have ever seen. And it's hilarious in parts too. I recommend this unreservedly.

My love for Severus Snape is unconfined. Imagine my glee when I stumbled across this shenanigans? It's a fan-made Marauders-era Harry Potter prequel. (I realise I came across this several years after it was made, but I don't care. :)



I haven't seen the sequels yet. I'm saving them for later.

* happy sigh *

It's funny, it passes the Alison Bechdel Test, and it has Alan Tudyk.

I just heard that Stan Kirsch has passed away. I liked his work in Highlander and other shows. He was only 51. What can I say? It's just so sad.

From the Highlander Facebook page: "Without Stan Kirsch, Highlander: The Series would have been far less. He brought a sense of humor, kindness and youthful enthusiasm to the character of Richie Ryan for six seasons ... Although Richie Ryan’s life was cut short on the show, there was little more to see; Richie Ryan had evolved into his own man, and it was Stan’s performance that made it true."

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

I'm delighted that the referendum passed and the bloody 8th Amendment has been repealed. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Legislation is due to be introduced soon. It's great! I can't quite believe it. I really thought that it would fail or just pass by one or two per cent. There was a referendum to introduce divorce a while back, which just passed by a mere 9,000 votes. I thought this would be the same - if we were lucky.

Boy, was I wrong! But in a good way. The exit poll results came through about ten minutes after the polling stations closed. I was on the phone to a friend at the time, who was in the middle of telling me tearfully how she'd been spat at and cold shouldered by No voters earlier that day while walking through her local village on the way to the polling station, and how she'd had to stop herself crying while actually voting. I was making sympathetic noises when I refreshed the Irish Times website, and hey presto - Irish Times exit poll projects Ireland has voted by a landslide to repeal the 8th. I told her about this and we were both so amazed. I mean, we never dreamt of a landslide!

Exit polls have been wrong before. Look at Brexit and the Trump election. We were on tenterhooks until late the next day when the official result was read out. We watched the counts progressing. We watched people leaving flowers and notes at the Savita Halapannavar mural in Dublin city. We were continuing to bite what was left of our nails. Eventually the result was announced at Dublin castle. It was official.

Mainly I felt a massive sense of relief and a bit of disbelief, which is slowly wearing off.

The joy will come later, once the result sinks in. And nothing is going to bring back Savita Halapannavar or Michelle Harte or Aisha Chithira or Sheila Hodgers or any of the other women who have died because of the 8th Amendment, or turn back the clock on all the women and girls who suffered because of it.

But still. This is a wonderful thing.

At the moment, analise010 is offering two tarot readings (I can vouch for her awesomeness) to anyone making a donation to rootsofthestories and balsamandash house move fund. Check out the post with all the details here.

I went to see La La Land last night and was underwhelmed by it. The acting's great, especially Emma Stone's, the songs are good, obviously a lot of work and imagination went into the whole thing, but the plot is paper thin. When one clear conversation could've dealt with the main conflict, the protagonists just appear immature. And the choreography wasn't too good. For a song and dance flick, it's pedestrian.

One of the group I went to see it with loves musicals. Even she didn't like it. "14 Oscar nominations, me arse!" she said.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is as good as the first one, in my opinion. It's fast paced, funny, and feels like a rollercoaster ride, which I imagine is exactly what Joss Whedon was aiming for. For me as a fan of the other Marvel movies and the Agents of SHIELD series, there was enough continuity to keep me happy without confusing the hell out of people who aren't familiar with the MCU. One of the group I saw it with hadn't even seen the first Avengers movie and could follow it, even though Loki's glowstick of doom and those Hydra scunners are big parts of the plot. What was amazing was how like fanfiction it felt. You may remember when Firefly was playing, it struck some people as fanfiction-esque, kind of like how all the scenes on the ship were a bit like 'behind the scenes' on the Millennium Falcon, with all the cosy dinners in the kitchen and so forth. Well, some of the sub-plots and secrets and backstory in this film are like fanfiction for the Avengers series. And that's a good thing IMHO, although the backstory for Widow got on my nerves a little, which is as much as I can say without spoiling anyone. Age of Ultron lacks the shiny first time charm of the first Avengers movie, and the sheer darkness of Captain America: Winter Soldier (which is the best MCU film for my money, so far), plus it's obvious that it's the Empire Strikes Back of the Avengers series, in the sense that there's a lot of setting up for the future going on. Regardless of all that, it's great craic and a worthy sequel. A near-perfect popcorn movie.

A Little Chaos is good too, but not great. The story is a candied apple with the odd razor blade in it. It's about a bereaved gardener in pre-revolutionary France being hired to design a wild garden in Versailles. She's played by Kate Winslet and the director is Alan Rickman who also stars as the King. The costumes and sets are lovely, some of the acting is great which is not surprising considering the cast, and it's all very uplifting. But, oh my god, the script. If it were a story on AO3, I would be leaving feedback along the lines of 'Great story, but have you considered more showing and less telling?' Don't tell me how you're feeling about the other character, show me! The dialogue is so clunky in places that it honestly came across as though it was badly translated in parts. And the fact is that our heroine doesn't introduce much wildness into anything. I liked the film, don't get me wrong, but it needed to be more gritty to be better. Dangerous Liaisons and The Last of the Mohicans are much better films set in the same period. This one is worth seeing but not worth seeing twice.

Enjoy!