Tag Archive: Television
Mare of Easttown (Foxtel)
(Directed by Craig Zobel) (HBO; Foxtel, 2021) There are more sombre crime series on streaming services than a world-weary detective can poke a blood-stained stick at. How then to choose which to watch – and why watch at all? Pull up a rumpled armchair, push away the AA booklets; give this one a go. Mare of Easttown, a Foxtel series written by Brad Ingelsby, has held our grumpy, misanthropic attention for four of its seven episodes. Mary-Something ‘Mare’ Sheehan (Kate Winslet,) an unsmiling Philadelphia small-town detective, tramps along, bottom lip dragging on the muddy ground, six-inch-long dark roots (seriously?) pulled…
Continue Reading →Eurovision Australia 2019
[Eurovision Australian Heats, February 9, 2019.] Since Australia’s first Eurovision entry in 2015 Guy Sebastian’s “Tonight Again’, we have cheered Dami Im (second in 2016 (she was robbed)) and have cringed at Jessica Mauboy, notably referred to by ‘The Spectator’ magazine as a ‘vast caterwauling aboriginal‘. Finally we antipodeans have had the opportunity to vote (as if it hasn’t all been decided beforehand) on our entrant. The final, from the appropriately kitsch Gold Coast, Queensland, was shown on SBS and hosted by a chipper Joel Creasy (“trilingual” in English, Millenial and Drag-Queen) and an uncomfortable Myf Warhurst in unflattering hot pink. Each of the…
Continue Reading →Look Homeward, Angel (Vale Della Reese)
Della Reese (July 6, 1931 – November 19, 2017) had a 60 year odd career as singer, actress, TV host and Minister of Religion. These talents combined in her most most lasting work, as Angel-in-Chief Tess in the series Touched by an Angel. In the first episode of Touched by an Angel that I saw, the lovely angel Monica (Roma Downey) was talking to a troubled woman out the front of her house at night. The woman’s sadly neglected child was inside playing with matches (we knew it but the mother didn’t and somehow the angel didn’t either). When a handsome…
Continue Reading →5 Things that Ordinary People say on the TV News
Something has happened in your street. The reporter has the microphone in your face. You know what to say when – A pit full of human bones has been uncovered in your neighbour’s basement – “He was friendly and kept to himself”, A car has ploughed into your front room. No-one has been hurt – “There were children playing just here, only three weeks ago”. A meth-lab has blown up, a service station has been robbed, or – well, anything – “First I heard a loud bang”, There’s been a collision – “First I heard a loud bang. We’ve been telling them…
Continue Reading →Play All: A Binge-Watcher’s Notebook by Clive James
Play All is James’ reflection on binge-watching box sets (yes, he says ‘box sets’. Perhaps he eats ‘fry rice’ while watching). He differentiates between a television drama in the “old sense” of a network weekly serial which just happens to have been boxed-up (box up?) such as The Good Wife, and a box set drama in the “new sense”, such as Game of Thrones. He adores both and watches 3, 4, 5 episodes of either in one sitting with his daughter. He sees “the main advantage that a long-form tv show has over a movie” as affording “room to search souls”, and explains the addiction : –“very soon…
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