Baptiste 2.1: Souls on the Edge

Baptiste is back for a second season on PBS, starring Tchéky Karyo as Julien Baptiste, the quirky genius of an investigator who has a dogged, uncanny talent in finding missing people, as amply demonstrated in two seasons of the prior series aptly entitled The Missing.

The first Baptiste season saw him applying his talent with a weakened brain, which turned out more than sharp enough to do what was needed.  The new season shows Julien in top shape, beginning to help a woman (Emma Chambers, played by Killing Eve's Fiona Shaw) whose husband and two sons have suddenly and unaccountably gone missing -- and Julien in not such good shape, a year later, when Emma, also not in such good shape, in a wheelchair, comes to see him to plead for his help.  Julien has long hair, which actually looks pretty good, but he's unkempt and almost dissolute.

So, in addition to where are the missing sons -- we learn before the episode concludes that the husband was murdered -- the big questions are how did Emma wind up in that wheelchair and why is Julien in such ragged condition?  The veering back and forth between the present and a year earlier works well, and adds to the harrowing quality of the narrative.

Actually, all of Julien Baptiste's attempts to find the missing have been harrowing, but there's something especially desperate, souls on the edge of the precipice, in this second or fourth season, depending on how you're counting.   This keenness makes me only keener to see what the next five episodes have in store for us.  If I have a chance, I'll try to report back here with a review of each episode.  

See also Baptiste 1: Logic, Passion, and Unflappability ... The Missing 1: Worth Finding and The Missing 2: Unforgettable

Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos

As I mentioned in my review of Mrs. Wilson tonight, it was good to see Fiona Shaw play almost the same role in Mrs. Wilson and Killing Eve: a commanding role in MI5.   At this point, her Carolyn Martens in Killing Eve seems to have more integrity that her Coleman in Mrs. Wilson, but Mrs. Wilson ended on a highly ambiguous note, and the second season of Killing Eve is just getting started ....

So, let's get to that  Although Coleman in certainly an intriguing character, the real stars are Sandra Oh's Eve and Jodie Comer's Villanelle.  The latter takes the former's nearly stabbing her to death - in bed - as an expression of Eve's love for her, Villanelle.  It may be that, or something slightly else, but nonetheless potent and somewhat mutual.  On the other hand, if we believe in Freud's reaction formation, then what Villanelle thinks she senses in Eve may be mostly a reflection of what Villanelle herself feels for Eve.

I say "mostly," because Eve is clearly deeply affected by what happened in that bed in Paris.  But is that, at least in part, a deep attraction, a kind of love, or just trauma about having nearly killed someone?  The easy answer is it's likely a mix, but, that's an easy answer.

In any case, the hunter and the game are now reversed, with Villanelle now in England, driven to look up Eve, and do who knows what?  The options range from killing Eve to getting Eve to run away with her.   This first episode of the second season had a nice time getting Villanelle to London, with the high - or low - point being Villanelle killing Gabriel in this hospital.  This shows that, however much she may have been affected and even transformed by knowing Eve, Villanelle's sociopathic tendencies remain securely intact.

I reviewed all of season one in one post, after binge watching it last summer.  This Spring, you'll see me here with a review of each episode every week,

See also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended

Mrs. Wilson 3: The Spy Who Made Up Stories

Well, we already knew from the first two episodes of Mrs. Wilson last week that Mr. Wilson was a spy novelist.  In both senses of the phrase - he was a spy, and he was a novelist who told spy stories.  The question was and is: did he also tell stories in his real life, stories about his spying, and stories about whom he was spying on to his employer, MI5?

We also already knew that Alexander Wilson told stories to Alison, his wife, about his personal life - he was married to four wives, including Alison, at the same time.  So he definitely told stories about his real life.  But did he tell stories about his spying?

That's the question raised, not really explored, and therefore left unanswered in the third and final episode of this excellent little docudrama.   Alexander's superior - played by the same fine actress, Fiona Shaw, who plays a very similar character in Killing Eve (the debut of the second season was tonight, and I'll review that soon) - tells Alison Wilson that Alexander was fired in 1942 because he was making up stories about the Egyptians.  He was a fiction writer, after all, she says.

But Karim - well played by Anupam Kher  (who is in New Amsterdam, with much less hair) - tells Alison that it's MI5 that's lying.   According to Karim, they set Alexander up.  Who's a widow to believe?

Well, seeing as how Alison knows of two other widows of Alexander, she's not likely to believe  Karim, but she does.  She tells her children that their father loved them and his country.  But then she finds out about a third widow.  That shakes her belief, at least a little, in her husband vs. MI5.   And in the end .... it's still a puzzle.  A perfect ending to a puzzling story - which, as far as we know, is true.

Other things to like about this episode:  Some great Britishisms to my American ears, including "pay rise" for "pay raise," and phone "calling out" for an outgoing phone call ringing.  And the photos at the end, where you can see Ruth Wilson the actress with her large extended family, were just wonderful.

See this!

See also Mrs Wilson 1 and 2: Uh, Oh Mr. Wilson