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So, just a few quick observations and comments about recent things I have watched on television.
Slow Horses (Season 5): This is the weekly-released British spy drama on Apple TV+ adapted from a series of novels by Mick Herron concerning a team of MI5 agents who have been disgraced and assigned to a dead-end office where, instead of waiting out retirement, they get tangled up with active threats, becoming heroes, but in the eyes of the agency, never redeemed. My sweetie-wife and I adore this show even as it continues to off some of my favorite characters. The writers never ever let the ironic humor remove the danger these characters face. I cannot say that season five is my favorite, but it is still top shelf television.
Mobland (Season 2): This is a Paramount+ series centered on the Irish mob family, the Harrigans, and their fixer Harry Da Souza. While the family survived, mostly, the crisis from season one, internal fissures are prompting a war for control, and the perception of weakness from without threatens to wrench them from their spot as the dominant organized crime family in London. This show is still great, bloody, and sexy, with a cast that is utterly stacked with the likes of Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, and Tom Hardy.
Carrie: I am now three episodes into Flanagan’s adaptation of King’s debut novel, and it is still working. One aspect of the production that I must salute is that, though the performers playing the girls are actually college-aged, they, for the most part, look like high schoolers. They are incredibly attractive high school girls because the industry is never not going to go for gorgeous, even with characters who are underage, but I am not for a moment pulled out of the story because you have adults trying, and often failing, to pretend to be children. This does not hold true for the actor playing Tommy, who is supposed to be a high school senior but looks very much like a college sophomore or better. In the first three episodes Tommy hasn’t had a lot to do, but since this is a very well-known story, we know that there is a lot more to come from poor doomed Tommy.
VisionQuest: The concluding entry in a trilogy started by WandaVision and continued with Agatha All Along, this series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe follows the artificial lifeform Vision and his quest to regain the humanity he had discovered within himself during his brief life. While Disney continued its tradition of releasing two episodes for the premiere before returning to a weekly model, we only watched the first this week. I thoroughly enjoy the mental illusionary space created where Vision confers and debates with the various artificial intelligences that he has incorporated. The writers did not delay the reveal that, at least in part, this series is going to be dealing with the other missing Maximoff twin, Tommy, eschewing the mystery approach they took with Billy in Agatha All Along. I found the initial episode set up the situation and the stakes quite well, but, of course, the real test is, does the whole story hang together, or does it crash and burn before the end?
