Recommended Television Programmes

[LMcD]

I'm happy to take up Stanfordian's suggestion that we have a thread devoted to TV programmes, and would like to start the proverbial ball rolling by recommending Ed Balls's 'Travels in Trumpland' the second episode of which is on BBC2 tonight at 2100. Episode 1 is, of course, available on the iPlayer. Even if you admire neither Mr Balls nor Mr Trump, it's fascinating watching the former getting to grips with the attitudes and beliefs of the admirers of the latter.
I feel I must congratulate those concerned for managing to set this series up in direct competition with both 'Unforgotten' (ITV1) AND 'The Handmaid's Tale' (Channel 4). As a pretty selective viewer, I find it ironic that 3 of the best programmes of the week should be made to behave like No. 11 buses.

[jayne lee wilson]

A timely thread....and, just last night, a wonderful, partly dramatised-documentary on the life of Angela Carter....Angela Carter: Of Wolves and Women, BBC2, 2100 04/08/18.
Hattie Morahan (as Carter) judged her enactments beautifully; Sally Philips' narrative had the perfect balance of sly, suggestive wit, (tongue-in) cheek and gravity; contributors like Rushdie, Atwood and Jeanette Winterson were short, devoted and to-the-point.

Anyone who, like me, was bowled over by The Bloody Chamber will love this. (Or indeed anyone who never yet read it, or a word of Angela Carter. They soon will after seeing this....)..

***

Handmaid 2 has, yes, been very grim, but the prolonged scenes last week, culminating in Offred having her (second) baby, alone in a remote, shabby-grand, snowbound house after futile attempts to escape, had a magnificently earthy grandeur and was very, very moving; when after all her solitary birthing agonies, before a roaring wood fire she'd built herself, she finally held her baby close and said "Hello... Hello there..." ....I'm sure I wasn't the only one tearing up.....very tender, poignant, joyful, heartbreaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhyNym8NlGI

This scene from ep 2/8, with Janine singing Dusty's I only want to be with you, so sweetly and gently, to the baby, taken from her at birth in the Gilead way, she'd so long been deprived of (and, being deprived of a mother's love itself, had almost died) was just as wonderful.
I keep going back to see it again - something about the simplicity of it, the pure, soft bright light, the way that Aunt Lydia discovers the miracle....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RLmdf51AQE

How many mother-and-child scenes have we had on TV and Cinema? Yet these two made such a universal rite of passage so new, moving and memorable.
Wonderful film-making on every level.

[LMcD]

Time and again The Handmaid's Tale series 2 has apparently shown me light at the end of the tunnel, only for this to once more prove to be an oncoming train. Offred/June's travails are increasingly coming to resemble the Brexit negotiations
Who's going to blink first, as it were - Serena (most likely), Aunt Lydia (possible) or The Dear Commander (unlikely)? This being an American series, albeit an unconventionally brilliant one, is a soft, happy ending inevitable?

[johncorrigan]

Can't recall who it was, but someone on 'The Bridge' thread mentioned another Swedish series which aired on Channel 4 called "Before We Die" ("Innan vi Dör"). Looking for something to watch lately Mrs C and I headed out on this one, available on All 4. Quite thrilling and unsettling, I have to say, and as is usually the case with Swedish drama, some very fine performances from a very good cast.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/before-we-die

[DracoM]

'Cardinal' BBC4 / Frids
I'm a bit addicted to Friday / Sat noirs, but I switched off this appalling guff and went out for a walk instead. Chief misery is the whispering tec at the centre of it, and utter confusion about what is happening in the de rigeur private-life-of-hero-going-badly-while investigating-nastiness schtick they all have.

Yawn.

[Stanfordian]

TV Programme - Not to be missed - We loved it.

BBC Two - 'Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing', Series 1

Comedians and lifelong friends Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse, both having suffered life threatening heart surgery, share their personal and hilarious life experiences while travelling around the UK fishing for elusive species. They make the backdrop of mainly river fishing both interesting and very funny. Don't be put off by the fishing topic. There are 6 in the series all available on iplayer.

[Richard Tarleton]

We watched the first two episodes of a promising new series on Sky Atlantic - Succession, a 10-parter which in the words of the Sunday Times TV critic Victoria Segal "staked out the territory between King Lear and The Thick of It. Thursdays, or binge via catch-up. Brian Cox as the Lear-Murdoch figure. The rest of the cast new to me.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm happy to take up Stanfordian's suggestion that we have a thread devoted to TV programmes, and would like to start the proverbial ball rolling by recommending Ed Balls's 'Travels in Trumpland' the second episode of which is on BBC2 tonight at 2100. Episode 1 is, of course, available on the iPlayer. Even if you admire neither Mr Balls nor Mr Trump, it's fascinating watching the former getting to grips with the attitudes and beliefs of the admirers of the latter.
I feel I must congratulate those concerned for managing to set this series up in direct competition with both 'Unforgotten' (ITV1) AND 'The Handmaid's Tale' (Channel 4). As a pretty selective viewer, I find it ironic that 3 of the best programmes of the week should be made to behave like No. 11 buses.

Weeping like a 9-year old on tonights Episode 2 at being on hand for the aftermath of a school shooting, for the first time in my life I felt some empathy with Balls; he also seemed to stand up much better to American show hosts on gun control than to any British interviewer during the time of his political tenure.

[LMcD]

Weeping like a 9-year old on tonights Episode 2 at being on hand for the aftermath of a school shooting, for the first time in my life I felt some empathy with Balls; he also seemed to stand up much better to American show hosts on gun control than to any British interviewer during the time of his political tenure.

It's hard to decide which were more jaw-dropping - some of the statistics or some of the attitudes.

[DracoM]

Yes, Ed Balls - hardened poitician 'n all - brought to genuine tears by the sheer inscrutable, unfathomable madness of the American gun obsession and what it can and does do to communities. 2nd Amendment yes, but................... And the telling Trump quotes that gave the NRA such smug confidence but what it did to the rest of America.

Blimey.

[LMcD]

I've been revisiting a couple of Alistair Cooke's 'Letter[s] from America'. I don't think he could be said to endorse the NRA/Heston/Trump interpretation of the constitution.

[LMcD]

May I strongly recommend 'Hang Ups' on Channel 4 - it's hilarious! Episode 1 on All4.

[Stanfordian]

Weeping like a 9-year old on tonights Episode 2 at being on hand for the aftermath of a school shooting, for the first time in my life I felt some empathy with Balls; he also seemed to stand up much better to American show hosts on gun control than to any British interviewer during the time of his political tenure.

The programme with Ed Balls has certainly been an eye-opener! At times I've been watching with my mouth wide open at some of the things I've seen.

[Flay]

unfathomable madness of the American gun obsession and what it can and does do to communities. 2nd Amendment yes, but...................

Blimey.

It's only a bloody amendment. Why on earth don't they simply AMEND it???

[gradus]

It's only a bloody amendment. Why on earth don't they simply AMEND it???

Apparently they might still need to raise a Citizens' Militia - no, nor do I.