One Day (Netflix 2024 British television series.)

February 20, 2024 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | Drama, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS, TV SERIES |

If you can be bothered starting this listless series, we recommend that you binge watch all 14 (!) episodes because once you switch off, you’ll never bother going back. To start with, the plot is suspense-free. Rich golden rich boy Dexter meets socialist Emma (a girl from the wrong side of the tracks and of another race) at a posh university. They go their separate ways until..! Whatever could happen?! Even this hackneyed story could be worth watching – Leo Woodall (previously seen in White lotus 2) is terrific as the languid upper-class Dexter – although he could do with…

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The Following Events Are Based On a Pack of Lies

October 27, 2023 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | Drama, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS, TV SERIES |

(Foxtel Go. Binge) (2023) Creators: Ginny Skinner, Penelope Skinner; Directed by Robbie McKillop and Nicole Charles. The name and set-up of this sleek five-part ITV series leave the viewer suspecting a twist at the end.  So that the reader will not be disappointed, we will tell you that the twist never comes.  The narrative is pretty straightforward, if not always credible. But that’s ok.  This is bite-sized entertainment of the fairly predictable, non-demanding type, with fairy-tale themes. While pushing her bike around Oxford wearing a peculiar, self-designed red cape, our heroine, middle-aged sad-sack Alice Newman (Rebekah Staton) spots her Big…

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Happy Valley : BBC One

July 12, 2023 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | Drama, TV SERIES |

No-one does grief and resentment like Sarah Lancashire. (See Last Tango in Halifax, BBC One 2012, series 3, episodes 3 & 4).  After Happy Valley  this sterling actor can add loathing, despair and massive disappointment to her CV.  Indeed, no-one in Happy Valley experiences much of anything else.  The West Yorkshire grit, damp, poverty, addiction, disease, treachery  and crime with which they all live is made palpable and visceral in this most excellent 3 series show.  The only person to escape the poverty bit at least, is the one rich man in the village (see The Vicar of Dibley) –…

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The White Lotus, Series 2, episodes 1 – 6 (director and writer Mike White) 2022

December 7, 2022 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | THUMBNAIL REVIEWS, TV SERIES |

Those who were charmed and a little shocked by the intrigues of the first series of HBO’s The White Lotus, might come to series two with the wrong expectations. This series, set in a sumptuous Sicilian hotel in the eponymous chain, has little charm, but plenty of shocks. It looks beautiful, some of the clothes are beautiful – although we’d like to know what Hayley Lu Richardson did to upset the the wardrobe, hair and makeup departments so much.  Sadly, Murray Bartlett’s marvellous manager character did not survive series one, but the manager of this White Lotus, lovelorn, man-hating Valentina…

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The Descent of Comedy

October 8, 2022 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | AUSTRALIANIA, Comedy, POLITICS, TV SERIES |

Oh dear. Shaun Micallef was once a genius of the Theatre of Embarrassment. But if you’re going to “go political” in comedy, you need to visit a plague on all houses. Not merely pander to the cognitive elites, smug in their infallible bubbles. Alas, he’s now the Australian Stephen Colbert.

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