TV Series Review – Luther S5

Warning: Contains EXTREME spoilers. Reader’s discretion is advised.

So, for me Luther was not just the TV event of the Christmas break but the event of the Christmas break. Afterall, we’ve only been waiting three years since season four ended (which really only counted as a two-part special if we’re honest with ourselves). We got our first glimpse of that red tie and that jacket way back in June when Idris Elba announced via Twitter that they were filming. Release date set for “later this year”. I got so excited I got heart palpitations. This is nothing unusual for me and TV series, but still notable. Idris and the BBC then spent the next SIX MONTHS lying to us, its loyal viewers, about the release date, releasing snippets and trailers all saying “later this year”, when in fact it premiered on the 1^st of January 2019. This is why I have trust issues.

Anyway, back to the review. Another short season of only four episodes, the BBC’s saving grace was that they would be screened on consecutive nights. Four glorious nights of Luther, back-to-back. Episode one was quintessential Luther – exactly what my soul needed. It even opened with him chasing down a perp in the characteristic beat-up Volvo (why does our risk-taking maverick still insist on driving a car with an impeccable safety record?!). He got out and did the Luther Walk, which is somehow just as fast as the Baddie Run. They exchanged quips, he took him back to the station where Schenk and Benny were waiting and it felt like coming home. Then we were introduced to the real Baddie of the season, a Baddie so Bad you’ll only find them in Luther. And the real world. Which is what makes them so terrifying. I won’t go into detail on Jeremy, mostly because I don’t want to, but I think he is by far the worst (and by worst, I mean best) killer the creators have brought to fruition. He was absolutely terrifying. As was his wife, played superbly by Hermione Norris, meaning Cold Feet will never be the same again.

As all this was going on, Luther was dragged into a side story involving George Cornelius, the gangster he handcuffed to a radiator in season four when he was trying to find out what happened to Alice. And thus began what I believe was ultimately season five’s downfall – the incongruent parallel storylines. Episode one ended with a cheer as Alice was back, one of my favourite characters in anything ever. (Unfortunately, soon to become one of my least favourite characters in anything ever). The tension built over the next two episodes as Luther simultaneously tried to catch a killer (half-heartedly it must be said), appease Cornelius, and try to stop Alice from killing everyone (the usual).

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty of what didn’t work. There is absolutely no way Alice would have been able to kill Cornelius’s son in the way in which she did. First of all, even with her stupid wig on, someone would have recognised her. Secondly, even if they hadn’t recognised her, Cornelius’s men wouldn’t simply have taken her word for it that she was a ‘welcome home present’ – they would have checked with Cornelius first. Lastly, even if they hadn’t checked with Cornelius, there is absolutely no way his body would have gone undiscovered until the next morning – someone would have checked on him during the night. Not such a big deal, but annoying at the very least.

Luther’s treatment of DI Halliday was completely out of character. In fact, the show’s treatment of DI Halliday was completely out of character. She was almost a caricature of a young black female detective. She is given absolutely no personality or individual character traits beyond that. Luther just barks orders at her, with no explanation, often making her do things that have nothing to do with the case at hand, saying he’ll explain later but never doing so. Or he simply pulls rank. He treats her as a skivvy and puts her in uncomfortable situations. Personally, I felt this made Luther look like a sexist arsehole. But I don’t think Luther is a sexist arsehole. It was completely out of sync with how he has treated people, and woman in particular, in previous seasons. It just didn’t make sense. Her whole character didn’t make sense. She was extremely intelligent and made breakthrough discoveries on the case, yet was never shown any acknowledgement of any kind. I don’t think this was intentional by the writers, but I do think it was weird. As for the decision to have Alice kill her, I think that was unnecessary and was done purely for the shock factor. Which was achieved. I will admit it. I was shocked.

Finally, Alice. Oh Alice. How to completely fuck up a character in five minutes. Tut tut writers, tut tut. First of all, she comes out of nowhere and shoots Halliday in the head without hesitation. Psychopath. Then she confesses her undying love for Luther and gets annoyed with his inability to love her back. Um… but she’s a psychopath. She’s incapable of love. She only cares about herself. You’ve spent four seasons telling us this. She just shot an innocent person in the head at close range without a care in the world and now you want us to believe she’s capable of love. Huh? Then she falls off the scaffolding, Luther dives to save her – season one flashbacks – instead of letting him help her back up onto the ledge, she stabs his hand and falls to her death. Um… Alice has always been about self-preservation first, before anything else. She would rather go to jail than die. So, what’s she doing falling to her death? You have just tried to un-psychopath her in the time it took from Halliday’s murder to get to the top of the building site – all of five minutes. And in attempting to do so, you destroyed everything that was so awesome about Alice’s character – that she was a psychopath, but an extremely likeable one.

Oh, and in the meantime, I forgot to mention, you’ve left the most evil serial killer you ever created ALONE handcuffed to a radiator. ALONE. You left him ALONE. ALONE. Are you out of your minds?

It’s hard to put a verdict on this one. It’s Luther, so even if it’s crap, it’s still gonna be at least an 8/10. Episodes 1-3 were outstanding but episode 4 just became an absolute farce. There were things wrong that have never been wrong with Luther before. The thing that always made Luther special was the balance between his personal life, his police work and his weird relationship with Alice. In this season, there was absolutely no balance in sight. I think there was too much story for four episodes and they tried to cram too much into the last 15 minutes. Overall, there was just too much story. Luther himself was all over the place and I felt all over the place with him too at times. It was definitely the weakest season there has been and I can’t see where they’ll go from here. I’ve heard rumblings of a movie. I hope it’s not true. I don’t think it would translate onto the big screen. I might have to re-watch it and re-visit my review, but for now I’m choosing to pretend there are only four seasons of Luther.

Film Review – Molly’s Game

My second movie review of the year, and it’s another biopic – the life story of Molly Bloom, or as she’s known in most circles – the “Poker Princess”. Before we delve into an analysis of history vs. Hollywood, let’s take a look at the story as the movie tells it. Molly Bloom, daughter of an ambitious and very pushy father Larry, is an accomplished skier. During the final stages of qualifying for the Salt Lake City Olympics, a cruel act of fate causes Molly to have a terrible accident after she collides with a twig in the snow. Abandoning her skiing career, she moves to L.A. to stay on a friend’s couch for a year, before going to law school. That’s the plan anyway. She takes up a waitressing job, which eventually leads to a personal assistant job for a really vile real estate entrepreneur. As with most PA jobs, she is often tasked with very random assignments and one day he tells her he needs her to organise what will become his weekly poker game at the Cobra Lounge. He gives her a list of numbers to text and the rest is up to Molly and Google.

Although no names are mentioned, we are told that the poker games attracted Hollywood A-listers, professional athletes, politicians, and Wall Street billionaires. Players were encouraged to tip Molly generously if they wanted to be invited back, and that’s how she made $3000 on her first night. This certainly motivated her to learn as much as she possibly could about poker and to run a tight ship. With Molly doing practically all the work, and an increasingly abusive boss who eventually fired her because “she was making too much money”, it didn’t take long before Molly made the poker games her own. With the help of a character denoted “Player X”, Molly essentially “steals” her former boss’s weekly poker game and moves it to an upmarket hotel. She is very careful to make sure she isn’t breaking any laws. The laws are clear. As long as she isn’t taking anything from the pot, she’s fine. Everything is going well until she discovers that Player X is lending money to other players in the game. That means he has a vested interest in the outcome of hands he’s involved in. This will ruin Molly’s credibility. She needs to get rid of Player X. But when she does, he takes everyone with him and Molly’s Game in L.A. is essentially over.

I know what you’re thinking – this would be the perfect time to go to Law School, right? Probably. But instead, Molly decides to move to New York and start a game there, and this is where the lines begin to blur. She’s still running a tight ship, she always has, doing thorough back-checks on her players to make sure they can cover the bets they place. But she is also taking a lot of drugs so that she can survive on very little sleep to keep a lot of games running at once. People are screwing her over and Molly, refusing to resort to violence, is writing the cheques to cover their debt. She is haemorrhaging money and has to cover it somehow. So, she started taking a percentage of the pot, and that is when Molly Bloom broke a federal law. After a raid in 2011, all of her assets were seized by the FBI.

Finally, Molly stopped running games. She wrote a book, “Molly’s Game”, but she refused to name the names of any of her high-flying players and as a result there wasn’t much interest from publishers. The book was published, but she received a miniscule advance. Then two years later, the FBI came knocking again. This time she was being charged with profiting from hosting illegal games. It was part of a larger scale investigation into the Russian mob and money laundering operations. Unbeknownst to her, high profile members of the Russian mob had been some of her most loyal customers and the FBI were convinced she had intel on them. It was time for Molly to lawyer up. Enter Idris Elba. *sigh* Oh how I love a bit of Idris. With his $250 000 retainer, Charlie Jaffey’s treatment of his young daughter who spends her after-school hours in his office is oddly reminiscent of Molly’s relationship with her own dad. Jaffey, who has already read part of Molly’s book, is reluctant to take her on as a client, least of all because he knows she has no money. He can’t understand her unwavering determination to protect the names of her former clients who are absolutely nowhere in sight now, even though she is in desperate need of their help, even if only through an anonymous donation. Molly is offered various deals for her cooperation but her unwavering determination to protect her name means that she faces real jail time.

It might sound like I should have lead with *spoiler alert* but in truth, knowing most of the story doesn’t ruin the film. In fact, the trailer itself tells you as much. The story is told magnificently, jumping between past and present, it has you on the edge of your seat. Molly is an incredible character, with such complexity and so many dimensions to her, you really are in awe of her and what she managed to achieve with nothing more than her wits and a great deal of determination. There are a great deal of other interesting characters thrown into the mix too and it can be fun to speculate who they might have been in real life.

When it comes down to history vs Hollywood, this one stuck pretty close to the truth. Unlike the opening sequence however, it wasn’t a skiing accident that lead to Molly hanging up her skis for good, rather just a desire for change. The “Cobra Lounge” where the poker games first began was really the “Viper Room”, the infamous club owned by Johnny Depp, where actor River Phoenix famously died from a drug overdose in 1993. The characters’ names in the movie are changed but for the most part, everything else is 100% true. She did make $3000 in tips her first night. Her boss was a dick. She did steal the game from him. The game did get stolen back from her. She did move the game to New York. She unknowingly let members of the Russian mob join her game. She became addicted to drugs. She got beaten up for refusing to pay protection money. She started taking a cut from the pot and she got bust by the FBI. She wrote a book to try and make some money. She got bust by the FBI again.

The biggest difference: Charlie Jaffey is entirely fictional. Molly Bloom’s real-life lawyer was named Jim Walden. No disrespect to Walden, but Jaffey’s character allowed the filmmakers to add an extra dimension to the film that allowed us to compare Molly’s relationship with her dad to Jaffey’s relationship with his daughter. It also gave them the freedom to make Jaffey judgmental of Molly in ways that didn’t need to be historically accurate to Walden. Plus, we got a bit of Idris, and who doesn’t want a bit of Idris? The one similarity is that they both took her on despite the fact that they knew she didn’t have their $250 000 retainer.

In my research I have watched a few interviews with the real Molly Bloom, and I can’t help but admire her. At no point does she try to excuse her actions. She 100% accepts responsibility for the fact that she broke the law and that she knowingly did so. And even more than that, she admits that she did it out of greed – because she got addicted to the money. The plan had always been to get enough and then get out; but somehow enough was never enough. To add to that, when faced with federal charges, she was offered deals that would give her her $4 million back that the government had seized, and spare her a five-year jail term, in exchange for information and client names. But she refused. Not to protect her clients, but to protect their families and the lives of other, innocent people whose lives would be destroyed, even though they had nothing to do with her games. If that’s not honourable, I don’t know what is.

Jessica Chastain was robbed of an Oscar nomination, absolutely robbed – now I just have to find out by whom. Fortunately, this year I am returning to an old tradition of watching all of the nominated movies, so I should get to the bottom of this travesty of justice soon. I suspect Meryl, with her 21^st nomination. It seems to have just become an Oscar tradition that she be nominated. Now I will be the first to admit that she is a genius of her craft and I am sure she was excellent in “The Post”, but she has been nominated for some shockers in the past that have even made her cringe, by her own admission. I really hope Jessica Chastain hasn’t lost out to a token Meryl nomination!

*UPDATE: Last night I watched “Lady Bird” (Review to follow soon-ish) and if not by Meryl, she was definitely robbed by Saoirse Ronan. First of all, a 23-year-old playing a 17-year-old. Um, are there no talented 17-year-old actresses in Hollywood? It was a nice movie. A sweet movie. An enjoyable movie. And she was very good in it. But it was not a challenging part to play. Anyway, that’s enough on that. For now.

In my most level-headed and unbiased opinion, Kevin Costner stole the show. I know I just said Jessica Chastain’s performance is Oscar-worthy and the real Molly Bloom said her depiction of the character was so accurate it creeped her out a little, but Kevin Costner’s performance was so unlike anything I’ve ever seen from him, it really blew me away. My first introduction to the “big screen” was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, at the tender age of four (yes, I know, my parents should probably be reported to child protection services for taking me to see such a violent movie so young) and Kevin and I have shared a special bond ever since. Thus, for him to invoke feelings in me of any level of abhorrence towards him would take a special level of acting (and he made me sit through Mr Brooks and Dances with Wolves). His portrayal of Larry Bloom, Molly’s authoritative, overbearing father who demanded more from her than any parent should ever ask of their child had me wanting to hit him over the head with a frying pan. Yes, Kevin. My beloved Kevin Costner. And then as if that wasn’t enough, he had to do a complete 180 and give her ten years’ worth of therapy on a bench in Central Park (you know how I love the Park) and shower her with emotional truth bombs that had me wanting to call my own dad for a real heart to heart. Anyway, suffice to say, I think he is the unsung hero of this piece.

So really what more to do you need? Riveting storytelling at its best, Oscar-worthy performances (even if no one on the Oscar committee thought so) and a little bit of Idris.

Rating: 4/5

Film Review – The Greatest Showman

The Greatest Showman had me since I first saw the trailer about six months ago. They had me at Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron. They had me at original musical.

The movie tells a romanticised and very Hollywood version of a portion of the life of P.T. Barnum, widely regarded as the man who originated showbusiness with his circuses, “freak shows”, music concerts and theatre productions. He began with a museum displaying human curiosities, but went on to establish a travelling circus and can even be credited with making theatre, previously viewed as “dens of inequity” accessible and respectable to the middle-classes.

The movie follows Hugh Jackman’s P.T. Barnum on a real “rags to riches” tale as he steals his childhood sweetheart Charity, played by Michelle Williams, away from her middle-class life with promises of a life of magical dreams come true. But flash forward and he is laid off from his menial job when the company goes bang and although they are perfectly happy with their two beautiful daughters, Barnum feels inadequate and disenchanted with the life he has created for his beloved Charity. Filled with inspiration, he dupes a bank into giving him a loan to buy a run-down museum which he slowly turns into the stage for a grand production of epic proportions for performers with extraordinary talents who have been living on the fringes of society due to their perceived oddities.

Although the show draws in adoring audiences, it also attracts protestors who are less than enamoured with the “freakish” performers. The ever-ambitious P.T. Barnum is also dissatisfied that his show is being ridiculed in the press and despite his success he is still met with scorn from Charity’s parents and the rest of the highbrow community. In an attempt to give his shows more credit with the middle-classes he teams up with the esteemed Philip Carlisle (played by Zac Efron) who becomes his business partner and eventually his young protégé. He also teams up with Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, whom he meets when being introduced to the Queen of England. Without even hearing her sing, he books her for a 150-show tour of America. Barnum puts everything on the line to fund the tour, leaving the circus in the hands of Carlisle, but for all intents and purposes abandoning the performers he rescued from a life of solitude.

How will the performers react to being left behind? How will Charity react to her husband being on tour with another woman? And when everything begins to collapse around him, will the greatest showman be able to pull himself together and pull off a performance that saves showbusiness and his family?

The storytelling draws you in and the characters hold you there. The performances are spot on; from the acting to the singing, dancing, acrobatics, trapeze artists and almost anything else you can imagine. But what really gets you is the music. From the opening beats of “The Greatest Show”, to Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron’s catchy duet “The Other Side”, your foot will be tapping. And I literally had tears rolling down my cheeks when Keala Settle, “The Bearded Lady”, belts out the movie’s anthem “This is Me”. It has become my personal anthem for the year. And the rhythm of the film’s closing number “From Now On” will lift your spirits and have you ready to dance out of the theatre and onto a mission to make your own dreams come true. It’s that kind of movie.

Hubby and I came home and immediately downloaded the soundtrack. It has been on repeat in our house and cars ever since. It is that good. It should have come as no surprise to me that all the songs were written by duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, known together as Pasek and Paul. Best known for their work on Dear Evan Hansen, a Broadway Musical I would give my right arm to see (and that’s my good arm), they have already won an Oscar for “City of Stars” featured in La La Land. This extra info also led me to discover that this movie was over seven years in the making, because studio execs just didn’t have faith that a feature length musical could be successful. I also came across this video where director Michael Gracey had finally accumulated roughly eighty big wig potential investors to listen to a read through and performance of the songs, only to discover that Hugh Jackman had just undergone a procedure to remove skin cancer from his nose and would not be able to sing at the showcase. Forced to get a stand-in singer, the power of Pasek and Paul’s song writing completely overcame him for the final number and he burst into song for “From Now On”, bursting his stitches in the process and sending a stream of blood running down his cheek. That’s the power of music for you.

So, by now it’s quite obvious I am a massive fan of this movie. Apparently critical acclaim has been mixed with some reviewers calling it “faux-inspiring and shallow”. Now that just makes me sad. In this terrible world we live in, what’s wrong with a little escapism, and a heart-warming musical journey that champions the outcast. It has also been criticised for the level of artistic licence taken, for instance, Zac Efron’s character is entirely fictional. I think it’s also important to point out that Hollywood is usually very loose with the biographical truth when presenting something historical, because let’s be honest, very often the truth was a bit boring.

However, in the case of P.T. Barnum, his life was anything but boring, and while I couldn’t find any historical accounts of him doing a musical routine down a main street, it’s important to point out that this film only depicts the very beginnings of his career, and this may be a case where the truth is more thrilling than fiction. Following the hugely successful Jenny Lind tour (which in the movie is conversely depicted as an epic failure), he set about changing the public’s attitudes towards theatre and built New York City’s largest and most modern theatre, displaying everything from watered-down Shakespeare to farces and even dog shows. He started a weekly pictorial newspaper and published an autobiography that sold over one million copies.

After a series of bad investments almost ruined him, he pulled himself out of debt and public humiliation, resuming ownership of his museum where he created America’s first aquarium. Against the odds, he revived his former magic and at the age of 60 established “P. T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome,” which survived fires, train disasters and other setbacks to bring entertainment to the country, and even London. Barnum was also involved in politics and spoke out strongly against slavery and racism in the period leading up to the Civil War. He served four terms in the Connecticut legislature and also became mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut where he worked hard to improve their water supply, bring gas lighting to streets, and enforce liquor and prostitution laws.

But most of these achievements get lost in the legend, the legend of a showman, an entertainer who could promote anything and everything and whip any crowd into a frenzy. He is credited with many, many quotes, some erroneously, but I think my personal favourite has to be “The noblest art is that of making others happy”. The Greatest Showman will make you happy. Go and see it.

Rating: 4/5

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