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dolorosa_12Staying at home over Christmas certainly meant Matthias and I were able to finish up a lot of TV shows this past month: six in total (plus a three-part BBC documentary about 1990s/2000s girl bands which was very good, but didn't say anything you wouldn't have expected from a documentary on that topic, so I don't have a lot to say about it myself).
The other shows were:
House of Guinness, a glossy, soapy historical drama about the quartet of 19th-century siblings who were heirs to the real-world brewing empire. This is another Steven Knight vehicle, with all his hallmarks: stylised comic book sensibility, anachronistic music, very broad-brush engagement with the politics of the era (in this case 19th-century Ireland), and larger-than-life characters whose various attempts to deal with their considerable problems just keep escalating the situation and spawning new problems. I enjoyed this, although I felt the tension was slightly dampened by the fact that most of the characters were insulated from any serious consequences due to their wealth and social position.
The third season of The Diplomat, a blackly comedic geopolitical thriller starring Keri Russell as a career American diplomat who, after postings in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, ends up posted as the ambassador to the UK. She's expected to be ceremonial and decorative in a cushy job, but suddenly lands at the centre of an international political conspiracy and scandal reaching into the highest levels of power, and struggles to deal with her embassy's, her country's, and her own personal responses to the fallout. The balance between comedy and political thriller is much more on the political thriller side of things this season, although there are still some hilariously awkward moments, but ultimately what I felt it was really about, at its heart, is the appalling tension between the undeniable benefits and utter indignity of being an ally of the United States from the 'democratic West' (quote marks because geographically some of the countries I'm including here are located in the Asia-Pacific part of the world), even when its government is led by people who at least aspire to the ideals of the post-WWII international order.
Season 10 of Shetland, which I'm continuing to enjoy with the new leads. The mystery this season had an almost Icelandic saga feel to it (cycles of grief, buried secrets, and revenge in a small, isolated community), the landscape and settings remained as starkly gorgeous as ever — and more fun to me this time because literally every Lerwick location was now familiar, and Matthias and I had a great time spotting various landmarks.
The Beast in Me, a psychological thriller in which Claire Danes plays a critically acclaimed author suffering from writer's block and struggling under the weight of grief at the death of her young son, which ended her marriage. She's living in upstate New York alone with her dog in the family home, which is quite literally falling apart around her, when she becomes tangled up in the saga and scandal involving her new neighbour — a wealthy New York property developer accused of murdering his wife. This has an excellent cast (the neighbour is played by Matthew Rhys with brittle intensity), and the story is tightly told, if a bit too conveniently wrapped up at the end.
Season 3 of Dark Winds, the historical mystery series set in the 1970s and starring Zahn McClarnon as a Navajo Tribal Police officer investigating various murders that take place in his community. This was, as always, excellent, with a stellar cast, a tremendous sense of place, and a really subtly written undercurrent of the ongoing effects of intergenerational, colonial trauma, what justice really means in such a context, and the limits of such justice. It always takes ages for new seasons of this show to make their way to the UK, and I'm already impatient for the fourth season.
The final season of Stranger Things, which I'm counting as a December show, even though I only watched the final episode last night. I have to admit that I was losing patience with the show by the last season (I had no idea the fourth season wasn't going to be the last, found watching it something of a slog that I was doing for completion's sake, and then realised with a great deal of irritation that there was no time in the final episode of Season 4 to wrap up all the various plot threads, at which point Matthias informed me that there was to be an entire additional season), and when I discovered that most episodes of the fifth season were going to be the length of short films, it felt like a self-indulgent last milking of the cash cow. So my expectations were low: it was bloated with characters, overloaded with the weight of its mythology, and the idea that it would be able to find satisfying ways to wrap things up, conclude convincing character arcs, and tie up all the various dangling interpersonal character relationship threads seemed to me far-fetched — but I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed several of the middle episodes, the more clichéd emotional beats seemed perfectly calculated to appeal to me (the conclusion of Will's story this season in particular really hit me in the heart), and for the most part I felt the whole thing was handled in a satisfying way. I've never felt the slightest bit fannish about this show, so my investment is quite superficial, but on that level, although I was losing patience last season, the destination was, overall, worth the journey.
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