Liaison: Crime and L' Amour

So I just binged Liaison, a six-episode French/British spy thriller that streamed on Apple TV+ two years ago.  It's still up there -- one of the joys of streaming -- and I'm glad it is.  I don't how I missed it when it first aired.  I see that critics gave it mixed reviews, another example of the poor vision and/or hearing of some of the people who somehow continue to share their myopic assessments to hapless readers.

First, I should say that I'm not surprised Liaison was so good.  The French have a knack for putting up excellent police series.  They know when a couple running away from police, or in the police themselves, always find time when they're caught in tight spots, figuratively and literally, to hug, kiss, pull together even more, and do what comes naturally.  This mix of crime and l'amour always hits the spot, if done right. It made Spiral, a French police drama, one of the best ever on screen.  Thus a spy thriller with a French ambience, which after all is a kind of police drama, has big leg up in emotion.

In the case of Liaison, the British, who also have the own appealing ways of presenting a spy story -- epitomized of course by James Bond -- meld with the French to make an once combustible, sarcastic, and devoted production.  Eva Green (Penny Dreadful) and Vincent Cassel (Westworld the series) in the lead roles are in the middle of a high tech, terrorist tale of corruption and those who are struggling to stop it, and it's tough to tell, or supposed to be tough, to tell who is the hero and who is the villain.  Although--

[And here's my warning about spoilers ahead .,.. ]

I said "supposed to be tough," because I never lost my faith for a moment in the these two appealing heroes.  It was fun to see them driving from both sides of the front seat, as well as wielding knives and guns and avoiding their lethal result with a combination of prowess and sheer luck.

Now the short series ended in a way which leaves the tableau wide open for a second season.  I have no idea if that will or won't happen. But if it does, rest assured I won't wait two years to watch it.

Penny Dreadful: Intelligent, Shocking, and Promising

Penny Dreadful, which debuted on Showtime last night, was quite good!

The setting is post-Jack-the-Ripper London - a newspapers headlines which asked "Is Jack Back?" made me want to say yes, in 24: Live Another Day - but this is a good time and place for a tense, exciting, harrowing story.   It's already being mined with the BBC's Ripper Street, which I found a little too talky.  In Penny Dreadful, there's so far plenty of gore and horror and full frontal male nudity to go along with the talk, and the talk is highly and scientifically intelligent.

At its best, we have Dr. Frankenstein (played by Harry Treadaway, first encountered on Showtime in Meadowlands), revealed as such as the end of the episode, explaining to Sir Malcolm why he has such contempt for knowledge pursued for its own sake.  This was a disquisition on behalf of technology, or the application of knowledge, in contrast to pure science, that was worthy of being published in a philosophy of technology journal somewhere.  (More about this issue in my 1988 book, Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age.)

The acting is also outstanding.  Timothy Dalton as Sir Malcolm is brilliant, and Eva Green as Vanessa was compelling - her eyes stole every scene she was in.   It was also good to see Josh Hartnett on hand as a Buffalo Bill Cody kind of character, quick with the charm and the gun.

The plot looks promising - Malcolm assembling a team to find his daughter, who has apparently been taken by the evil beings in residence in the city.   The timing of the Frankenstein character is somewhat off - Mary Shelley's novel was first published in 1818 - but the character has become so iconic that he transcends the time of his creation.    And the "monster" - the assemblage of parts of dead bodies that Dr. Frankenstein brings to life - may not be such a monster, and in fact even smiles.

The next episode is on Showtime Anytime, and I'll no doubt watch it in the next few days, but I'll save the review for next week.



not quite as shocking, in the present day

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