Hijack 2.3: On Counting on Actors Who Play Good Guys Not to Play Bad Guys

We find out lots of essential things in Hijack 2.3. 

[And there will be spoilers ahead .... ]

First and foremost: Of course Sam Nelson was not going to sacrifice any innocent person's life for anything he had planned for the train he had hijacked.   His threatening to sacrifice that man was just a ploy to get the people running the trains in Berlin to do what he needed them to do.

This raises, at least to me, the interesting question of can you predict what a character will do in a TV series or movie based on who the actor was, or more specifically, what characters the actor has previously played.  Even in The Wire, in which Idris Elba played someone high up in a drug cartel in Baltimore, he displayed a conscience and a heart.  That in itself was why I was sure that Sam, who was an honest man with a big heart in the first season of Hijack, wouldn't trade in an unthreatening person's life in the second season.

Of course, actors occasionally do switch from playing heroes to villains. Elba has indeed done that a few times.  Ronald Reagan played a bad guy for the first and last time in his acting career in The Killers.  He would go into politics after that, and become Governor of California and then President for two terms.  Not the greatest President, in my humble opinion, though almost any predecessor looks good in comparison to the current occupant.  I was surprised to see Eddie Redmayne play a villain in the brilliant  Day of the Jackal -- after his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything -- but he was charismatic in Jackal, and I saw, after a bit of research, that he's played lots of villains in his career.

Back to Sam, we also in the third episode of this second season find out that the reason he hijacked the train was to save his former wife from the brutal people who hijacked the plane in the first season, and in between the two seasons killed his son.  Lots of tension building up, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

See also Hijack 1: Don't Miss It! ... Hijack 2.1: A Tale of Two Vehicles ... 2.2: What Is Sam Nelson Really Up To?

Hijack 2.2: What Is Sam Nelson Really Up To?

Hijack 2.2 on Apple TV+ intensified and deepened a mystery which, at least thus far, is becoming central to this second season:  What is Idris Elba's Sam Nelson really up to?

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

In the previous episode -- 2.1 -- we learn at the end of the hour that Sam has hijacked a train in Berlin, in his quest to punish the person or people ultimately responsible for hijacking the plane in the first season, presumably because they have done something horrendous to Sam since he got back on the ground after stopping the hijacked plane from crashing into a populated area in London and killing lots of people.

The hijacking of the train is confirmed in episode 2.2, which ends with Sam about to do something much worse than the train being hijacked: he's apparently ok with, though not happy about, someone being killed due to his hijacking.  He makes it clear that he doesn't want this to happen, but he's willing to accept it, if that's what it takes for Sam to continue with his new mission.

I have trouble completely believing this.  Maybe it's because I can't quite see Idris Elba playing a character who can accept that his actions were causing the death of an innocent person.  I guess, if we follow the utilitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, that allowing one person to die is the ethical choice if that was the only way of stopping the death of many people, but if that's the case in this narrative, it would be helpful to see some indication that this is what Sam was trying to prevent.

At this point, we're still not clear about Sam's motive.  If it's personal retribution, that would not be a case of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.  Perhaps Sam's motive is both personal and utilitarian.  Or perhaps Sam knows for whatever reason that the individual will not be killed. I'm looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

See also Hijack 1: Don't Miss It! ... Hijack 2.1: A Tale of Two Vehicles

Hijack 2.1: A Tale of Two Vehicles

So, I reviewed the first season of Hijack in August 2023 after I saw the final episode.  It was a wonderful series.  Idris Elba in the lead role has been one of my all-time favorite actors since he played Stringer Bell in The Wire in the first decade of this century, and he was better than ever in Hijack, with standout acting from Eve Myles and other well-known actors.

The first episode of the second season, just up on Apple TV, has less action than the first episode of the first season, and almost no one other than Elba that I know in the cast.  It takes place -- or starts taking place -- in Germany, and features a train rather than a plane.  As my wife pointed out, that follows the pattern of Departure, with a first season featuring a plane crash and a second season a train derailment.  Come to think of it, Archie Panjabi starred in Departure, and also put in an appearance in the first season of Hijack.

There were two notable aspects of the first episode of the second season of Hijack [spoilers ahead]:

• Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) is on the trail of whoever it was who was ultimately responsible for the hijacked plane and most or all of the other crime in the first season.   Good -- that person or person eminently deserves to be brought to justice.
• The big reveal at the end of the first episode is that Sam is hijacking a train in Berlin in his drive to bring the ultimate instigator of the plane hijack to justice.  I'd say that's a pretty dramatic and cool twist, that I don't recall seeing before.

Idris is equally convincing in high-powered action and more low-key emotional turmoil situations, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out on this train and beyond.

See also Hijack: Don't Miss It!

A House of Dynamite: MAD -- Mutually Assured Destruction -- In Our Day and Age

I grew up in a world in which Dr. Strangelove was a plausible movie, a world in which we lived with the Soviet Union, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, as were we, and our best chance that we wouldn't blow up the Earth, if not to smithereens, to an uninhabitable planet, was MAD -- the mutually assured destruction that a nuclear war would engender, which would stop we human beings from ever starting such a no-win war.

As A House of Dynamite on Netflix tells us, at the beginning, we the world gradually learned to scale down our armaments, but the world has gone back to at least verbal apocalyptic belligerence in the past decade, with Russia, in particular, refusing to rule out nuclear weapons if the US and NATO attacked it in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, or maybe if we gave Ukraine too much assistance.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

A House of Dynamite posits such world in which a missile is launched towards the United States.  Attempts to intercept it with our missiles unaccountably fail.  Maybe our defense system has been compromised by prior surreptitious cyber attacks.  Maybe the system wasn't that effective in the first place. We’re told that stopping a missile like that is like “a bullet hitting a bullet”.

We soon learn that Chicago is the target.  (Here I'll say that the movie was made before Trump unconstitutionally targeted Chicago for National Guard deployment.  Just sayin'.)  We see this story play out from three different simultaneous angles, from the standpoints of American military and political leaders and personnel.  The actors are top notch: Idris Elba as US President (he's been great in everything I've seen since Stringer Bell in The Wire), Jared Harris as Secretary of Defence (Hari Seldon in Foundation), and Rebecca Ferguson as a Captain who finds herself heading the White House Situation Room (Juliette Nichols in Silo), are just three of many examples.

All three stories end with the missile seconds from hitting Chicago, and the President struggling to make a decision.  Retaliate?  Against which country?  Russia, China, North Korea?  And what kind of retaliation -- how much of the presumed enemy will be destroyed?  How much of the Earth will be left inhabitable?

And here the movie ends.  Right.  Just like the last scene of The Sopranos.   We the audience need to fill in the ending.  Or at least think about it.   Is this good movie-making?  I actually thought it worked great in The Sopranos (see my reviews, beginning here, for what I think happened to Tony).  But The Sopranos was clearly a totally fictitious story about familiar characters in our reality.  A House of Dynamite is fiction, too, but somehow seems less a fiction, much closer to our reality, the world I grew up in, the world we now inhabit.

And as a denizen of that world, I found the ending unsatisfying.  But maybe in such a scenario there is no narratively satisfying ending.  A happy ending would have been the missile hitting Chicago with no bomb, or no bomb going off.  Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (played by Gabriel Basso, who believe it or not played J. D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy) tells the President this a possibility, in an attempt to caution him not to launch a massive nuclear counter-strike.  This of course goes against the military advice of General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts, Elvis and Nixon -- hey, it's a movie about a President).

So who would the President listen to?  I'd hope it would be Baerington not Brady.  But maybe that's not realistic, after all.  

The Madness: A Brilliantly Sane and Relevant Thriller

All eight episodes of The Madness went up on Netflix last week.  This is a good thing -- a savvy thriller like this deserves to be seen in just one or two sittings.  I saw it in two.

Here's its story (and I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum).  A rising star at CNN, currently doing guest anchoring, but on a path to get his own show, goes up to the Poconos for a few days of peace (he's doing his CNN gig from Philadelphia).  And, of course, he finds the complete antithesis of peace, getting caught up in a murder involving white supremacists and a billionaire whose company is all about data.  Sounds all too familiar to our real world off-screen, doesn't it.

But to make matters worse -- much worse, with life-and-death consequences -- the local police and the FBI are uninterested in gong after the white supremacists or the billionaire.  They'd both rather go after the rising CNN anchor, Muncie Daniels.  Hmmm ... that also seems pretty familiar to our reality off-screen, in which law-and-order like to take the easy way out.

Especially if they can pin the crime on a black man (in this case, played by Colman Domingo, whom I've seen in Fear the Walking Dead and a few other shows).   Muncie's family is difficult for him, too.  He's divorced, his teenage son is struggling to find his bearings, and Muncie also has a daughter whom he hasn't seen in far too long.  A large part of the story is Muncie's family, and how in their own ways they rally behind Muncie, while speaking much needed truth to him.

A great example comes near the end, when Muncie thinks that by denouncing the billionaire on CNN, Muncie can put an end to his baneful influence and deeds.  His son Demetrius (well played by Thaddeus Mixson) tells Muncie that television does not have the power to change the world for the better.  That right there is a profound lesson indeed -- one that we all should ponder -- especially needed in the world we're all living in right now.

As long as I'm talking about the acting, I'll tell you that I thought it was all excellent.  Marsha Blake as Muncie's ex-wife Elena Powell, Tamsin Topolski as a white supremacist's wife, and Alison Wright as Julia Jayne (I'm deliberately not revealing her role) were especially effective.  And the dialogue is top-notch, too -- at one point, Muncie's lawyer mentions Stringer Bell, one of the best characters ever to appear on television (and the first time I saw Idris Elba).  Hats off to Stephen Belber and the rest of the writing and production people for creating an edge-of-your-seat thriller that couldn't be more relevant to the time and planet we all inhabit.

Hijack: Don't Miss It!

Hey, if you're a fan of Idris Elba, check out Hijack, a seven-episode mini-series just concluded on Apple TV+.   Even if you're not a fan, if you have a pulse and an intellect, you're bound to like it.

I've been a big fan since Elba played Stringer Bell on The Wire on HBO -- I mean, second in command of a drug cartel in Baltimore, who went to night school and read the original Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations?  You can beat that.  There've been lots of shows about drug cartels, but none even remotely like that.

Hijack is about a hijacked plane. Right.  They've been lots of shows about hijacked planes, but nothing quite like Hijack.   Elba plays Sam Nelson.  He's on the hijacked plane.  Good thing for the plane and the passengers.  He's not a marshall.  He's some kind of corporate deal maker.  I'm still not clear what that is.  But the up side of that is that it makes just what Sam will do almost always unpredictable.  He's a good guy for sure, but with an inscrutable agenda, other than saving the plane.

Neil Maskell plays Stuart Atterton, clearly a bad guy, but also with an inscrutable agenda.  The inscrutability of these major characters comes in and out focus, and keeps the viewers almost as much on the edge of their seats as the passengers on the plane.  Ok, the two sides of the screen -- viewers at home and passengers on the plane -- are two different universes, but you get what I mean.  Maskell, by the way, played another inscrutable, charismatic villain -- Arby in Utopia.  

And while we're on the subject acting talent in this mini-series, we get Eve Miles (Keeping Faith) and Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) as minor but memorable characters in the London central control room.  Hey, I've told you nearly nothing about the plot, hence no spoiler warning.  But I will say there are big surprises in every episode, right up until to the very end.

And Hijack gives us one of Elba's very best performances, right up there with The Wire and Luther.  

Kudos to series creators George Kay and Jim Field Smith.

Luther: The Fallen Sun: The Risen Hero

I just saw Luther: The Fallen Sun -- the continuation of Idris Elba's Luther TV series, in a 2+ hour movie on Netflix, and thought it was excellent, in all sorts of ways, for all kinds of reasons.  In fact, minute for minute, I thought it was better than any of the many series we've seen of Luther since it came on the screen in 2010.

[I'll warn you here of spoilers, though you won't find too many here, other than what you see in the blurbs and the trailers.]

So, Luther's in prison, not because he was framed, but because of the corners he illegally cut -- what he "had to do" -- to get the criminals in the past.  His adversary is a brilliant sicko, Robey (played by Andy Serkis), who is adept on the Internet and in torturing and leaving his victims hanging, literally.  One of his victims is a young man, and Luther was on the case but unable to get Robey before Luther was incarcerated.  Fortunately for Luther, the storyline, and the ultimate resolution of this movie, DCI Raine, who is currently investigating Robey without much success, suffers her daughter being kidnapped by Robey.  This is fortunate for the story, because it obliges Raine, who starts out being adamant about not enlisting Luther, and keeping him in prison, to instead welcome him in the frantic hunt.

As most of you no doubt know, Idris Elba was at at one point being considered to play James Bond, but recently actors his age were ruled out of that running.  First of all, Elba looks young enough to me.  More important, he's an outstanding one-of-a-kind actor who played and defined the indelibly memorable Stringer Bell in The Wire and continues to do the same in Luther.  He would have done the same for Bond.   I mention this because the Luther is this story has Bondian aspects, especially in snow and ice-water action near the end of the movie.   The Luther in the TV series rarely if ever made it out of London, if I remember correctly.  The Luther in this movie is now both literally as well as figuratively a man of the world.

But apropos both Bond and previous Luthers, I did miss any love interest (such as Indira Varma's Zoe Luther) or even the partially erotic spark (with Ruth Wilson's Alice Morgan) in this Luther movie.  Maybe that's because two hours is a little too short for such relationships to really start, let alone play out, when there such a demonic psycho to be caught.  But that absence is yet another good reason to make another Luther movie.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive" ... Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit ... Luther 5.4: Lethal Love

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form

Luther was back for its fifth season on BBC America last night.  First and foremost, it stars Idris Elba in the title role, one of my all-time favorite actors since I first saw him in The Wire as Stringer Bell, second-in-command in a drug empire, so erudite he was studying economics in night school and quoting Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations.

The Luther character is a detective genius who has been through the mill in his personal and professional life, which often are the same and almost always intertwined.  As the trailer for this season aptly shows, Luther's wife and young partner were both murdered in previous seasons.   In the first episode of season 5, Luther continues to take a physical pounding, from the likes of a crime boss we saw in fine crafty and brutal form last season, but the apex case is a sadistic serial killer who's getting more frequent and gruesome in his killings.

Luther's opponent here is not just the serial killer, but a shrink, Vivien Lake (played by Hermione Norris, who was so good as Ros on MI5).  Lake is understandably protecting the serial killer, Jeremy, from the police. He's not Lake's patient but her husband, and likely her partner in sexual kinkiness, which may or may not extend to the killings.   At very least, Lake sacrifices one of her troubled patients, James, setting him up to take the fall for the recent spate of murders that presumably her husband committed.   James commits suicide before the police can nab him, but the case isn't closed.  Luther's new partner, Catherine Halliday, shows her mettle and realizes something is not adding up with James as the killer.

So Luther's faced with the fine kettle of depraved fish we've come to expect on this series.  But the knock on his door in the last scene was better than icing the on cake.  It was from Alice, back from the dead, played by the inimitable Ruth Wilson, back from our side of the Atlantic in The Affair.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Ray Donovan 6.1: The New Friend

Ray Donovan returned for its sixth season last night, with Ray in New York, and fished out of the river, alive and punching, by a New York cop.   That's not too surprising - no one at all expected Ray to die - but what is of note is how quickly in the hour and the passage of narrative time Ray and Officer Sean ‘Mac’ McGrath become friends and allies.

He's well played - no, perfectly played - by Domenick Lombardozzi, whom I first remember seeing on The Wire.  Hey, it becomes increasingly apparent, year after year, that there were no actors on the The Wire who weren't and aren't superb at their craft.  (Well, the "were" part was clear to anyone who saw The Wire).   If you think about how many subsequent TV series The Wired alum have lit - The Affair, Fringe, etc - not to mention Idris Elba's career as a movie as television actor (his Stringer Bell on The Wire will always be one of all-time most brilliant characters) - The Wired almost seems like the launching pad for at least the subsequent decade and more on the screen.

But back to Ray: he's quieter, more introspective, and I'd say more interesting in New York than he was in Los Angeles.  When he declines Lena's invitation to come back with her to L.A., it's no surprise, and that's not just because he associates L.A. with Abby.   He's like a fish in water in New York, though maybe that's not to best metaphor giving his dive into the water, which he correctly insists was not an attempt at suicide but just following his hallucination of Abby.

Ray in New York is far less connected to his family than he was in Los Angeles, though that may change.   Not only is Lena out of daily sight, but so are Ray's brothers (his kids were already scarce). Mickey's in prison, so he's in his own world, anyway, but the coming attractions show that will change, too.   But for now, Ray has no one in New York that he can trust at all or bond with, which makes Mac all the more important - more important than a replacement for Avi, though that would be pretty important in and of itself.

I'm very much looking forward to this new locale and season.

See Ray Donovan 5.1: Big Change  ... Ray Donovan 5.4: How To Sell A Script ... Ray Donovan 5.7: Reckonings ... Ray Donovan 5.8: Paging John Stuart Mill ... Ray Donovan 5.9: Congas ... Ray Donovan 5.10: Bunchy's Money ... Ray Donovan 5.11: I'm With Mickey ... Ray Donovan 5.12: New York

See also Ray Donovan 4.1: Good to Be Back ... Ray Donovan 4.2: Settling In ... Ray Donovan 4.4: Bob Seger ... Ray Donovan 4.7: Easybeats ... Ray Donovan 4.9: The Ultimate Fix ... Ray Donovan Season 4 Finale: Roses

And see also Ray Donovan 3.1: New, Cloudy Ray ... Ray Donovan 3.2: Beat-downs ... Ray Donovan 3.7: Excommunication!

And see also Ray Donovan 2.1: Back in Business ... Ray Donovan 2.4: The Bad Guy ... Ray Donovan 2.5: Wool Over Eyes ... Ray Donovan 2.7: The Party from Hell ... Ray Donovan 2.10: Scorching ... Ray Donovan 2.11: Out of Control ... Ray Donovan Season 2 Finale: Most Happy Ending

And see also Ray Donovan Debuts with Originality and Flair ... Ray Donovan 1.2: His Assistants and his Family ... Ray Donovan 1.3: Mickey ... Ray Donovan 1.7 and Whitey Bulger ... Ray Donovan 1.8: Poetry and Death ... Ray Donovan Season 1 Finale: The Beginning of Redemption


 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

The Cast of The Wire at the Paley Center

Here is a video of a panel that took place the other day at the Paley Center for Media in New York City.  The panel featured prominent cast members from The Wire.  At a little over an hour, this is the best panel I've ever seen - in this case, online - but also in person.



Watching this also cemented my view that The Wire is the single best show ever to have been on television.   I don't say that lightly - in their own ways, The Sopranos, 24, Breaking Bad, other shows including and even Lost in its good moments were superb.   But none quite compare to The Wire, for reasons that become clear, I think, in this panel discussion.  The only proviso is that the panel is replete with spoilers.  So, if you haven't seen The Wire - all five seasons - don't look at this panel video until after you do.

Part of the pleasure of watching this panel is thinking about how all of these stars first became known to me on The Wire, and have gone on to the other memorable roles.  But every time I see one of them, I say to my wife, hey, that guy was on The Wire ... Wendell Pierce in Treme and Ray Donovan, Michael Kenneth Williams in Boardwalk Empire, Lance Reddick (who wasn't on the panel, alas) on Fringe, Dominic West (also not on the panel) in The Affair, Chad Coleman (also not on the panel) in The Walking Dead, and Idris Elba in Luther and great movies such as Long Walk to Freedom, for which he deserved an Oscar but wasn't even nominated.   The list goes on and on - making The Wire a veritable directory of great actors in dozens of shows since then.  The Wire has seeded television with superb acting for almost a decade now.

My reviews of last season of The Wire, usually written shortly after the episodes were aired for the first time, follow ...

The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation ... 3. McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ...5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart ... The Wire Bows Out Gracefully: Kudos to the Cast and David Simon, the Charles Dickens of Television

See also this earlier Looking Back at the Wire

Two podcast episodes about The Wire -


    The Wire without Stringer        |   The Wire Season 4

Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

A thoroughly satisfying conclusion of these four nights of Luther with episode 3.4, and the hope that we'll be seeing Idris Elba again in the title role along with all the supporting characters who survived.

Satisfying because it was to good see Stark get what he deserved from the shotgun of Tom.  Satisfying because Luther made some good and right choices, only some of which were in his control.

For example, in the scene on the roof, where Tom with shotgun in hand asks Luther to choose who will die - Alice the evil genius or Mary the pixie - Luther after saying repeatedly he can't choose, says Alice should die.   Now I think Luther would be much happier and better with Alice in the long run than Mary, and he knows that, too, but because he's a such a fundamentally decent human being, he can't sentence Mary to death.

And, because the universe is ultimately on Luther's side, despite the terrible counter-examples it constantly dishes out to him, both Alice and Mary survive - Alice because Mary bravely pushes the shotgun away from Alice for moment, and Alice because she uses that moment to put a nail in Tom's neck, a nail she cleverly took from a wall a little earlier.

And this now leaves Luther with another choice to make: with Mary and Alice both alive and kicking, whom will he go with?   Alice reliably sets it up beautifully, letting the police think Mary is Alice, escaping, and getting a note to Luther to meet her on the bridge.

Luther first goes to see Mary in the police van - she'll be released soon, when the police realize she's not Alice - and Mary in effect tells Luther to go to Alice.  Not only does Luther know Alice is right for him, but Mary does, too.

And this is about as much of a happy ending as well ever see at the end of a season of Luther.   But it's more than happy enough for me,  because it's the way television should more often be, with the hero making the dangerous, unsafe choice.  I'm looking forward to a next season someday, before too long.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy




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download Luther season 3 on

Luther 3.1: Into the Blender

Idris Elba is back in his second best role on television as Luther - his best was Stringer Bell on The Wire, so you can see how highly I regard Luther.  Its first season was scalding, pull-no-punches, brilliant guts-in-your-face British detective work, with twists and turns that kept your heart in your mouth and your seat on the edge, and the second season was almost as good.

The third season - a short one, just four episodes on four nights this week - is off to a great start.  Luther is typically not only hunting psychos and vicious killers but is the target of what we here in the US would call an Internal Affairs investigation himself.  Not only that, but the cops investigating Luther have enlisted his loyal partner DS Ripley - not completely believable at first, but making a depressing, infuriating sense by the end of this first episode.

And not only that, but Luther's opponents are no dummies or cartoon-stupid police.  When Ripley realizes that Luther might be suspicious of Ripley being in a car with DSI Erin Gray, the high level inspector who is one of the two leading the investigation against Luther, Erin starts snogging (one of my favorite British expressions) with Ripley.  A smart move.

And, typically and excruciatingly, the investigation into Luther not only endangers him, but the people he's trying to save - that is, the victims of the stone cold killer Luther is investigating.  Luther manages to put a call into a couple who are about to be attacked, to warn them - but he's interrupted by Ripley's badgering and his phone is left hanging.  A few minutes later, we see the devastating results.

What makes Luther stand out, in addition to Idris Elba's deftly powerful performance, is the way almost no one bars any holds.   So the most memorable scene in tonight's episode probably goes to another suspect, another killer, but not a bad person, who, receiving a call from Luther asking him to come in the next day so the police can get his fingerprints, put his fingers into a blender.  One way of not worrying about any fingerprints you may have left at the scene.

Not for the faint of heart, but for anyone who likes a story unafraid to confront human nature in all of its depths.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield




#SFWApro

download Luther season 3 on

Luther: Between The Wire and The Shield

I saw the six episodes of the BBC's Luther on DVD the last few nights - all of its first season - and I'm here to say the series is somewhere between The Wire and The Shield, the best two shows (along with Friday Night Lights) ever on television.   Which is not say Luther is as yet as good as those two shows - with just six episodes, how could it be - but it's playing in the same ball park, and its originality and power certainly puts Luther in that rarefied league.

Idris Elba, who lit up every scene he was in in The Wire, is John Luther in Luther.   Elba's Stringer Bell was a cool intellect, a drug dealing master who took evening classes in economics and had Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations on his bookshelf.   Elba's Luther is also an intellect, but a cop (Detective Chief Inspector) ever on the edge of giving into to his emotion, and in fact breaking the rules and the law when the impulse is too strong for him to resist.  So if Stringer is the criminal who partakes of the light of sweet reason, Luther is the police who skates and partakes of a dark side.   It's that breaking of the law that gives Luther a kinship of sorts with Vic Mackey of The Shield, though Vic is clearly in a harrowing law-breaking class of his own.  [Spoilers for Luther follow - don't read further if you don't want to know.]

Luther starts by letting a serial killer fall to his death rather than taking him in, with the nice complication that the killer doesn't die, and only goes into a coma from he could awaken and implicate Luther in his arrest procedures.   Luther crosses paths with Alice, a beautiful, brilliant sociopath who kills her parents, and does it so cleverly that Luther can't prove that she did.   But she's attracted to Luther and his intelligence, emotionally stalks him, and Luther - or a part of him - actually comes to like it.   Before the first season is over, Alice will save Luther's job and life, and establishes herself as one of more enjoyable sociopaths on television.

The denouement of the first season, spread over two hours, is a tour-de-force of major characters in collision with unexpected results.   DCI Ian, who works next to Luther, is involved in a diamond heist.  Luther is soon on to it, and this sets Ian and Luther into an escalating punch/counter-punch - much of it not planned - that culminates in Ian killing Luther's beloved, estranged wife Zoe (played by Rome's Indira Varma - her characters have no luck) and Ian pinning that on Luther.   Before the season is over, Ian will be goading both Luther and Zoe's boyfriend Mark to kill Ian - he tells them in detail how much Zoe appreciated every orgasm she "took" from him (you gotta love that British usage) - and Alice asking Mark to vote on whether she should put Ian out of his misery.   Alice wants to, Luther - who's grown from the first episode - does not, and Alice needs Mark to break the tie.

It's that kind of show, with every character memorable, including Luther's partner Justin, Luther's boss Rose, and DCI Shenck, who works for what we call IAD here, police investigating police, and is almost on to Luther.   If you're partial to police drama served up with almost equal portions of logic and passion in all directions, a Criminal Minds in which the lead investigator is close to taking up with one of the killers,  you'll be on to Luther.

Notes in the real world:  1. Memo to Cablevision in Westchester, NY:  Put BBC America on the air here already, so we can see Season 2 of Luther in real time.  2.  Congrats to Idris Elba for Golden Globe Nominations for Luther, well deserved. 3. Special treat for Law & Order: Special Victims fans:  Luther mentions Detective Munch in one of the episodes (don't ask me why).

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                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

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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 

The Wire Bows Out Gracefully; Kudos to Cast and David Simon, the Charles Dickens of Television

I sometimes, often, in fact, think The Wire is the best show ever to have been on television. It's hard to compare to The Sopranos, which was just about one person, really, Tony. The Wire was an ensemble show par excellence, with at least 15 to 20 centrally important players over the past five seasons. You can't compare it at all to Lost, which is in another - fantastic - universe, entirely.

The Wire is certainly the best cop show, ever. My previously favorite was Homicide: Life on the Street. David Simon was the brains behind that Baltimore masterpiece, too. And there were lots of other connections - including Clark Johnson, Meldrick in Homicide, Gus in this last season of The Wire.

But The Wire was much more than a cop show - in fact, the cops were less than half the story. There was the dock, in Season 2; politics in Season 3 and after; the school in Season 4; and the paper, the media, in this final Season 5. All of these were done superbly - though perhaps the cynical ending to the paper story this season, with fraud rewarded with the highest honor, was a little too much, though I suppose not unrealistic.

But the real star of The Wire, season after season, in addition to cops, was the street. I can't recall ever getting such a clear picture of life in the street - or, the corner, real and metaphoric, on which drugs are sold and life is lived - as we got, season after season, in The Wire. Not in any movie, or book. First the Barksdale crew, then Marlo's, were as vivid a tableau of intelligent, brutal, sensitive, savvy, focused characters as ever presented. One of the shows this season was called "The Dickensian Aspect" - and, the truth is, that could easily apply to the whole series. David Simon, just by virtue of The Wire, could be called the Charles Dickens of television.

If you'd like a look at the characters and cast of The Wire in all five seasons, HBO has put up a fine page of photos. My favorite is still the extraordinary Stringer Bell, second-in-command in the Barksdale crew, The Wealth of Nations on his bookshelf, played to perfection by Idris Elba, but that takes nothing away from the dozens of other razor-sharp performances in The Wire.

And how did it all end?

The Wire did something exceptional and original here, too. Totally unlike the brilliantly ambiguous ending of The Sopranos, the ending of The Wire had complete closure, and was brilliant, too. And against all expectations, it was happy. McNulty is stretched out on a table for his wake - but it's only a mock wake - he's leaving the police, not life at all. Carcetti is elected governor; Rawls gets an appointment as a high state cop; Daniels looks happy as a lawyer; Rhonda Pearlman is a judge ... well, you get the picture.

The street does as well as can be expected, too. Marlo's free, rich, and likely out of the game (though you never know). Bubbles is eating upstairs with his sister. Michael may be a stick-up man, not good, but maybe he's just doing this once. Dukie is, sadly, in the worst shape ... going doing the road to addiction that Bubbles just left.

My guess is we won't see a series like this again for a very long time. Even the music was perfect, from the different versions of Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole" that opened shows for each of the five seasons (Steve Earle did the honors for Season 5, as well a good performance as Bubbles' sponsor at Narcotics Anonymous), to the great music that ended every episode, to the special version of "Way Down in the Hole" that accompanied the montage near the end of tonight show.

~When you walk through the garden ...~

That's a walk I bet viewers will relish for decades to come.

See also The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation ... 3. McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ... 5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart

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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

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





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The Wire Season 5 Episode 8: Two Down

Omar's dead.

Live by the sword, die by the sword, and all of that.

I have to admit that, although I first felt really bad about Omar getting killed, I felt a little less bad when I recalled that Omar killed Stringer, still my favorite all-time character on The Wire, played to the hilt by Idris Elba.

It took two grown men, two fiercesome, stone killers, to kill Stringer - Omar and Brother Mouzone.

It took just a boy to kill Omar. A boy with a gun. Says something about the power of a gun, doesn't it.

The scene, and what happened after, was so powerful, it's hard to talk about anything else in this brilliant episode.

But there were some good developments. Dukie - well played by Jermaine Crawford - is getting an honest job. He's helping a trashman. The antithesis of glamorous, but it's filled with hope, because it's honest. And speaking of honesty, Gus is beginning to get the better of Scott on his dishonesty at the paper - and that's heartening, too.

Just two episodes left. McNulty had to tell Kima about his big charade, and she doesn't want to play, but that's not what I'm really worried about.

When Prop Joe was killed - see my review of Episode 4. One Down - I said I was concerned that maybe the three "prequels" were dedicated to major characters who wouldn't survive this season. Prop Joe was in the first prequel. Omar in the second.

And the third prequel features two characters - Bunk and McNulty.

I hope I'm wrong. It's just a wild idea, I have no spoiler evidence or anything. But I'm a little worried...




See also The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation ... 3. McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ... 5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart ... 10. The Wire Bows out Gracefully

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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

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

The Wire: Season 5 Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation

Ok, enough politics and political parody for at least this hour. Let's get back to the heart and soul of Infinite Regress: television! As in series on TV! As in The Wire! It's good for you!

Now, I saw the second episode of this final season of The Wire as soon as it went On Demand, on HBO. That would be Monday. And I was going to wait until after the regular HBO showing this Sunday to talk about it .... But, hey, you only live once, it's too good for me to wait any longer to talk about, so, here it is, with a spoiler warning:

DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T HAVE ON-DEMAND, UNTIL THIS SUNDAY NIGHT ...

You'll be in for a treat. Avon Barksdale is back in the game! Ok, he's still in prison, but Marlo comes to talk to Avon, 'cause Marlo needs some help with some Greek or Russian (the crooks involved in the dock business from the 2nd Season), so Marlo comes to seek Avon's help.

Now, sure, I wished it was Stringer. He was the ultimate brains of the Barksdale crew, but Avon is no dummy, and, in fact, he always saw some things even more clearly than Stringer, since Avon was not complicated by the intellectual complexity that Stringer brought to every decision. It would have been great to have Idris Elba back on the screen as Stringer, but, hey, Wood Harris as Avon is fine, too.

I won't go over the details of the conversation - it was actually two conversations - but Marlo is certainly willing to pay Avon $100,000 for his help. And this is far from settled. I predict - easy prediction - that only one of them will be left standing by the end of this final season.

The other good thing about this episode is what McNulty is willing to do to get the cops focused again, after the budget-mandated cuts of last week. Let's just say maybe McNulty is watching Dexter....

No, he's not a serial killer, but ...

See ya next time!

See also The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 3: McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ... 5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart ... 10. The Wire Bows out Gracefully

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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

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Weeds 3 Ep 2

It may well be that the highpoint of Nancy's career was the brief-lived cartel and great crop she had last year ... before it all fell apart.

Last night's episode - the second of the new season - left no doubt that her current prospects are at least as grim as at the beginning, maybe even worse. Her crop is gone, drowned beyond redemption in her pool, courtesy of Celia. She's no longer in charge of anything, except struggling to pay off U-Turn. Whatever Conrad may feel for her, it's not enough to keep them together - not, of course, romantically, which they never really were, but in business.

I actually think these difficulties for Nancy make Weeds a better show. The humor is irrepressible - just about everything that comes out of Andy, Doug, and Dean is hilarious, not to mention Lupita - and U-Turn and his sidekick Marvin add both humor and realism. (And there's something about Page Kennedy's performance of U-Turn that sometimes reminds me a little of Idris Elba's Stringer Bell from The Wire - which is good).

But I'm missing some of the outright, in-your-face absurdity of the second season, and Nancy's insane marriage to Peter.

Too bad he was killed ... though ... I don't recall seeing him dead, not even shot ... and characters have come back from a lot less than that in television land...

see also Weeds in Perspective

and reviews of other Season 3 episodes: 1 ... 3: Appealing, Important Questions ... 4-5: Prius and Glutius ... 6. Ray of Hope ... 7. Conrad Rules! ... 12: Nancy and Conrad! ... 13. Shane Pays the Price ... 14. Just Nancy Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse ... 15. Finale: The Fire and the Clean Slate

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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

The Wire's "Way Down in the Hole" - Enjoying the Disappointment

I was thinking about HBO's The Wire, how much I love its theme song - Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole". It's probably my favorite tv song of all time.

Not just because you can't compare it to catchy light-weights like the Friends' theme song, or the many fine instrumentals like Lalo Schifrin's music for Mission: Impossible.

"Way Down in the Hole" is even better than The Sopranos's "Woke Up this Morning" (by A3)...

It's had an amazing life on the show.

Sung by four different artists, in four different ways, in each of The Wire's four seasons.

I loved the first rendition, by the Blind Boys of Alabama. Slow, soulful, melodic and harmonic. I couldn't believe how good it was.

And I couldn't believe it when they replaced it in Season 2 with Tom Waits' own version. I mean, ok, he wrote it, sure, and I like his voice ... but I really missed the Blind Boys' singing ... for maybe about three episodes, and then I was lovin' Waits' performance.

So, you can imagine how unhappy I was with the Neville Bros' version instead of Waits' (which by this time had become the standard for me) at the start of Season 3. The Nevilles - what I can say? I've been crazy about their singing since I first heard "Tell It Like It Is" in the 1960s. And I'll just throw in that Aaron Neville's voice can make a skyscraper sway, though I don't think he was singing on the Neville's version of "Hole".

Which I quickly came to think was my favorite of all the recordings, too.

Which is why I was so upset to hear DoMaJe singing the song in Season 4 - you'd think I would've learned by now - but, no, I was almost as irritated by DoMaJe's choppy version as I was that Idris Elba's Stringer Bell was no longer on the show (and I was plenty unpleased about that)...

But I came to be crazy about DoMaJe, too (and yeah, I thought Season 4 was outstanding - even though I still miss Stringer). And after the season was over, I listened to all four versions, and thought maybe I liked DoMaJe's the best...

But no, not really, I love them all ... each of them ... the hallmark of a brilliant song, brilliantly performed...

And I'm really looking forward to being really disappointed, yet again, when I hear what they've got going on "Way Down in the Hole" for Season 5...

See also Looking Back At The Wire

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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

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!