Hand of God: Powerful Second

I binge-watched Hand of God - second season - on Amazon the past few days.  The long and the short of it: I enjoyed the second season much more than the first, and am therefore really sorry there won't be a third season.

The story is about a tough "hanging" judge, who has more than a God complex.  He actually thinks he's receiving directions from above - or maybe he actually is - and all of this emerges as his family and then he get embroiled in a murder-of-a-cop case.

On one level, this is a top-notch police and whodunnit story, which was a little murky in the first season but became clear and riveting in the second season.   On another level, this is a story about what is really going on in the judge's head.

The second season features him undergoing a thorough mental evaluation via a cutting-edge specialist - who finds there's nothing physically wrong or different in the judge's brain.  This rules out all the possible sources of the judge's visions, such as Lewy body (which afflicted the Mayor in another wild series, Boss) and epilepsy.

And there's also this: the judge receives directions to where his wife is, when she's in deadly danger, twice.   How could he have known where she was?

So we're left with: Is he some kind of genius, who somehow figured out where he wife was, on no evidence that we saw (highly unlikely), or is God really speaking to him?

The acting is excellent - especially Ron Perlman as the judge, Dana Delany as his wife, and Garret Dillahunt as his loyal, religiously passionate accomplice, willing to whatever it takes to help the judge.   The dialogue is snappy - with even a shot at Fox News.  And the accoutrements, which revolve around privacy in the digital age, sharp and timely.

My recommendation: see both seasons, and don't let the slightly discombobulated first get in the way of your seeing the altogether excellent and philosophically provocative second.

Marseille on Netflix: Enjoyable and Relevant

I just finished binge-watching Marseille, all eight episodes released this month in this made-for-Netflix French TV series with English subtitles, and I liked it a lot.  I mean, it's a little over the top with key points in the plot hinging of suddenly revealed family relationships, but the grit and dialogue and relevance to politics today, and probably yesterday as well, more than compensate.

The series was savaged by French critics, at least according to Wikipedia, check it out if you're interested, but c'est dommage,  I couldn't care less what French critics or for that matter critics of any nationality think about a television series or a movie.  Ok, I do think André Bazin's Qu'est-ce que le cinéma is a masterpiece, and I often quote it, but he wrote that a long time ago, and though he was a film critic, the book presents a theory of how film works, what it does and is, and is not a critique of any particular movie.  Regarding those, I find they more often then not miss the mark.

But back to Marseille, it doesn't, and in fact presents what I suspect is a pretty accurate portrayal of the democratic process at work in any city in today's free world, that is, the part of the world that is free, in other words, in which elections count.   But those elections are so subject to such noxious manipulation and deceit on all levels that you can see why Churchill quoted some unknown source to the effect that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others," and the venerable Socrates hated it outright.   Well, Marseille does a riveting, colorful job of exposing just why that is so.

Now, I'm about to start pointing out the special relevance of Marseille to what's going on in the United States today, and I know what you're thinking, and you would be right: Donald Trump represents the worst of the democratic process writ large.   E. M. Forster, another critic of democracy who thought there was no form of government that was better, expressed his views in Two Cheers for Democracy (published in 1951 but composed of material written earlier) - and had he known of Trump, he likely would have entitled his book One Cheer.

Fortunately, Trump has not yet won, and doesn't even formally have the nomination, so Marseille can be appreciated at least at this point as fiction with no quite analog in the real world, joining Boss, Borgen, and of course House of Cards as searing political drama, with lots of sex, crime, local flavor, and good acting - especially by Gérard Depardieu as the Mayor, Benoît Magimel as his deputy, and Stéphane Caillard as his daughter - as well as edge-of-your-seat vote counting.  So, see it and enjoy.

And if you're interested in the connection of Socrates to Trump, check out this little essay, Socrates, Time Travel, and Donald Trump, published just a few days ago.

 

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Murder in the First: A Review

Catching up at summer's end with a review of  a series that I watched and liked a lot, but didn't have time to write about, finishing my latest novel, swimming as much as possible, and everything else: Murder in the First.

In a way, all ten episodes were like a top-notch Law and Order story, with a murder, arrest, trial, and then police work again, except presented over ten hours rather than one.   Did it work?  Yes, it did. Murder in the First was always enjoyable, sometimes outstanding, and memorably surprising at times.

My favorite part was the lawyerly action, with superb work by James Cromwell as Defense Attorney Daniels and excellent work by Richard Schiff as Hertzeberg, the defendant's personal attorney. Meanwhile, Tom Felton - best known for his performance as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies - put in a chillingly effective performance as Erich Blunt, a character who could be described as Mark Zuckerberg, if he were a sociopath.

Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson (who was fabulous in the first season of Boss) did a serviceable job as the detective team, Terry and Hildy, investigating the murder.   This creates an interesting issue as far as renewal, with one of the best characters, Blunt, no longer on the show, and Hertzberg not likely to be around, either.

But if Daniels is back as defense attorney with another good murder mystery, a second season of the Murder in the First could be excellent.   Indeed, it could be better than the first, if Terry and Hildy are pushed to take more chances, not only professionally but personally.   Their kiss made some critics uncomfortable, but I would've liked to see them go all out with a continuing liaison nibbling at the edges.

I do hope the series is renewed - I promise to be a more diligent reviewer if it is.


 another kind of crime story

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The Following 2.2: Rediscovering Oneself

The thing about The Following is that when it works best, Hardy gets a least a few victories.   Joe and his Following still get most of them, but for the story to work, Hardy has to at least save a life, rescue a victim, once in a while.  Tonight's episode 2.2 gives us that.  Although the Following in New York City - that is, the evil identical twins - kill a couple and then have dinner with their dead bodies at a well set table (killing and then pseudo-living with the victims is the twins' motif), they don't manage to dispatch Lily Grey (good to see Connie Nielsen back on the screen last week and this after Boss).   Lily is clearly Ryan's new love interest, and the question with The Following always is whether, when the intended victim survives, if that was the intention of the killers all along?  My wife even thinks it's possible that Lily may be part of the Following, and while I wouldn't rule that out, my sense at this is point is that she's who she seems to be. Still ...

Meanwhile, it's worth noting how fractured the Following itself seems to be. Most of them including Emma are out of touch with Joe - Emma apparently thought he was dead - and they're in constant low-key war with one another, or in groups versus groups.  In a way, this mirrors what we're seeing in law enforcement on The Following, where Hardy's at odds with the FBI, especially Mike, and with the NYPD, too.  Presumably this won't last as long - certainly not between Hardy and Mike - as the battles among Joe's adherents.

Meanwhile, Joe's story is, unsurprisingly, the most chilling tonight.  He rediscovers his killer instinct - obsession is the better word - when he kills the Reverend who is sleeping with his woman, herself a part of the Following who had been corresponding with Joe when he was in prison.  But Joe's reasons for the killing are rational, as they usually are - the Rev has realized that the Southern cracker with a beard and a half-baked accent is actually Joe Carroll.  So what did choice did Joe have?

Before the killing, we're treated to a dueling Socrates debate between Joe and Rev, which Joe - again, unsurprisingly - gets better, when he quotes Socrates about the benefits of death.   The Following is off to a very good - that is to say, disconcerting emotionally and philosophically - start.

See also The Following Is Back for Its Second Season

And see also The Following Begins ... The Following 1.2: Joe, Poe, and the Plan ... The Following 1.3: Bug in the Sun ... The Following 1.4: Off the Leash ... The Following 1.5:  The Lawyer and the Swap ... The Following 1.7: At Large ... The Following 1.9: All in a Name, Or, Metaphor in the Service of Murder ... The Following 1.13: At Last Something of a Day for the Good Guys ... The Following Season 1 Finale: Doing Dead

 

Like Socrates woven into modern conflict?  Try The Plot to Save Socrates

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Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy

A stunningly powerful Luther 3.3 that connected on all sorts of levels, like a kick in the solar plexus.

The new villain is Tom, a classic vigilante killer who gets the drop on Luther, but lets him go, because he doesn't want to kill him.  After all, as Tom tells Luther, they're on the same side, both hunting bad guys.  But Luther can't accept that, because he's just a cop, he says, not judge and jury.

Now actually, as we know from the past two seasons, and even this one, that's not completely true. When sufficiently enraged, Luther's always ready to mete out severe corporal punishment.  In that sense, Luther is a British Jack Bauer, though his quarry are less apocalyptic, and Luther hasn't (yet) killed his boss for the greater good.

But Luther is an idealist, which leads to his sometimes going overboard in trying to bring the wrongdoers to justice, and also causes him to sometimes have too much faith in good people responding to their better angels.  His attempt, tonight, to get a woman who was raped as a girl by Tom's hostage  - to get Tom to free the rapist rather than kill him - was bound to fail.  Put on television to plead with Tom from afar for the rapist's life, she instead implores Tom to kill her rapist.  Who can blame her?

And, so, when Luther and Ripley - who have now thoroughly reconciled - come to the scene to stop Tom from hanging the rapist, you just know it's not going to turn out well.  But it turns out far worse than that.

Luther literally saves the rapist from hanging by holding him so the rope that Tom has left the rapist hanging from doesn't take its toll.  He does this in an act of extraordinary courage, battling off the crowd who are punching him and kicking him in an attempt to dislodge him from the rapist.

Ripley, on Luther's instruction, is off in pursuit of Tom.  British police aren't usually armed, so Tom gets the drop on Ripley, as he previously had on Luther.  Tom pleads with Ripley to walk away. Ripley says he can't.  And Tom responds by shooting Ripley dead.   He's not as lucky as Luther, though luck is the last thing you could say Luther had in this story tonight.

And there this dynamite of a television episode might have ended, with Tom running away, and Luther left grieving by Ripley's body.  But there's one more kick in the stomach left.  Mary the blonde, waiting for Luther in his flat, sees a man standing out in the street outside Luther's window.  It's Tom, come to exact some further retribution from Luther, for not accepting Tom's request not to make Tom his enemy.   And as a grace note to this peril, we hear a few bars of Robert Plant's "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" ... that hauntingly evocative song from Boss.   (This is apparently the season for series borrowing songs from other series, with Dexter playing "Make Your Own Kind of Music" of Lost fame.)  To the sicko murdering vigilante Tom, Luther has become Satan.

We'll learn how this plays out tomorrow night in the concluding episode of this short wallop of third season.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success




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download Luther season 3 on

House of Cards Season 1: A Review

Just finished watching House of Cards on my MacBook.   Watching a television series all at once, or over a few days time, rather than on a once-a-week basis, is nothing new.  And, in fact, ever since I saw the first few seasons of Alias, The Sopranos, and 24 that way back in the mid-2000s, I've been saying that's far and away the best way to watch television.  It's also a key characteristic of what I call "new new media," or the putting into consumer's hands the powers previously in the hands of producers - such as, in this case, being entertained on your not the producer's or network's schedule.

But House of Cards shuffles the deck in other new and crucial ways.  First and foremost, its entire first season debuted all at once on Netflix - unlike Alias, etc, in which the DVDs did not become available until after the season had aired on television.  This is a first, and made the series even more exciting.

The trappings of the series - the backdrops and tech environment in which the characters live and work - are also brand spanking new, and presented in the savviest way I've ever seen on television.  Texting, twitter, YouTube are not just throwaway references inserted in the story to make it seem hip, but crucial  components of the narrative.  Zoe, a reporter who moves from the equivalent of the Washington Post to the hypothetical successor to Politico, is aptly called a "twitter twat" by her rival in an early scene, and Zoe's knowledge of how information moves in our world is even more central to her success, or at least ability to stay above water, than her body, which she also uses to good effect.

The story is like Boss, but played on a much higher level, and without the literal insanity that the Mayor of Chicago had in that recently bygone series.  But House of Cards is also like Homeland, in that there are characters willing to commit murder to get to a heartbeat from the Presidency.

Kevin Spacey is better than ever as the lead character, and the rest of the cast, especially Corey Stoll, are the toppest notch.  I'd say House of Cards is among the top 3 best new television shows this 2012-2013 season, and I'm looking forward to more next year.

See also House of Cards Season 2 - Even Better than the First

     

Revolution: Preview Review

I caught the complete first episode of Revolution last night - set to premiere later this month on NBC - courtesy of NBC putting this up On-Demand. Herewith a review, with soft (non-specific) spoilers.

Revolution is J. J. Abrams' latest. Now, I know what you're thinking - or, what I was thinking, anyway. With the exception of Fringe and (to a lesser extent) Person of Interest, Abrams has not come anywhere close to his extraordinary triumphs of Lost or even Alias. Half of his efforts have been like last year's Alcatraz, promising at first but pretty soon an irredeemable turkey.

So I approached Revolution with caution, and - I found the debut episode superb! It's chock full of punch-in-the-gut surprises, with characters we think are major dying on and off camera, and big, unexpected revelations right up until the end. The set-up, though it might seem at first glance to have too much in common with the ill-fated FlashForward and the high-flying Walking Dead, turns out to be refreshing and original.

The world has been beset by a power failure from hell - all electricity is gone, including battery power (which, in our real world, the Amish use instead of electricity from power plants). This means that everything digital is gone - useless - too.

We follow a family - no Family Robinson - in the Chicago area. (You notice how often Chicago is popping up in television drama these days? Boss, Revolution, Chicago Fire, last year's Playboy Club - probably another good consequence of Obama, seriously). Charlie, the daughter - a little under 20 - is strong, attractive, and believable. The others are good, too, and I found myself disappointed when the first episode was over - disappointed that I couldn't see more.

There's an endearing hipness about Revolution - the Hurley-like character (we had one, Hurley himself, in Alcatraz last year) - was a big exec at Google, before the permanent blackout. So far, I like this guy better than the Alcatraz guy.

"You say you want a Revolution, well, you know ..." I'm looking forward to this one on NBC.




"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

"Daddy, this the best book I've ever read!" -- Molly Vozick-Levinson, age 12 at the time

"cerebral but gripping" -- Booklist

Boss is Back for Second Season

Boss was back for its second season last night on Starz.  Aptly compared to The Sopranos and Rome in its no holds barred intensity and life-and-death plotting and plot twists,  Boss stars Kelsey Grammer as the ruthless Mayor Tom Kane of Chicago, ready and willing to do anything to keep in power.  That's not easy, given that he has a neuro-degenerative, ultimately fatal illness (five years), and the anything includes betraying his own daughter (who had been helping him with his illness), and killing his second-in-command (Ezra) who at least did betray Kane.  All of this makes Kane one of the most appealing mixes of brutal and oddly sympathetic to come along on television well - since The Sopranos.   And, actually, Kane is even more ruthless than Tony Soprano, for whom selling out his daughter Meadow would have been unthinkable.

The second season of Boss looks to be in as good form as the first.   And last night's episode ended in something we didn't see in the first:  an attempt on Kane's life, after a rally, results in his beautiful wife Meredith getting shot.   She of course wasn't killed - thank you, coming attractions, for spoiling any uncertainty we may have had about that - though she's too important and charismatic a character to remove from the series.

But who did the shooting?  Or, more important, who put the shooter up to it?  I'm thinking Kane hired a sharp shooter to do the job.   Indeed, he had been hallucinating about Ezra right before the shooting.  Meredith had betrayed him too in the first season - not as badly as Ezra, and she had been suitably punished, but maybe not enough for Kane, who is a stickler for the right level of payback.  Or, maybe Kane needed the sympathy lift, which is what he got by busting his loyal daughter.

Should be provocative, riveting viewing, like first season, and I'm looking forward to it.

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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