WATCHED - Mare of Easttown ( 2021 )

Erin (Cailee Spaeny) is a teenage single Mum. Bringing up a child is not easy for her, and though she loves him to bits, she is struggling.  She never gets out much, and rarely meets up with friends her age, or goes on a date.  Then one evening she arranges for her son's Father to look after the kid, and goes to a wood where all the young set hang out, to meet a blind date. Erin never returns from this trip. She is found the next morning her body abandoned in a stream, murdered.

Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) is a local detective. She's pretty much known or is related in some way to everyone. Divorced, she lives with her catty Mum Helen ( Jean Smart), her eldest daughter, and the boy her son had before he took his life. Her ex-husband lives with his new girlfriend just across the lawn from her house. Mare. Is bad tempered and unpredictable, doesn't really look after herself. She's never really come to terms with the suicide of her son. Solving crimes keeps all that messy emotional stuff at bay, just about. Her police department aren't sure she's able to handle this case alone. so bring in Colin Zabel ( Evan Peters ) as her side kick, which she initially deeply resents. But as the investigation progresses the case and everything related to her starts messily coming home to roost.

Mare of Easttown is by far and away the best crime drama since The Killing. And it shares a few common qualities. It has a great sense of place, the character and landscape that Easttown sits within, the range and type of individuals who live there. The script does not put a foot wrong. It's a crime procedural, but this one has a heart and a soul, that paints a vivid picture of the consequences for people of the murder of someone you loved, of people not being able to handle their grief. The characters are all believably well rounded. They take their time just letting you get to know and love them for all their flaws and eccentricities. All of this makes Mare of Easttown dramatically punchy. By the time you reach the final episode you are left drained and emotionally moved by the overwhelming sadness and tragedy, with all the hurt, betrayal, guilt and loss on screen. Deservedly it won Emmys for the scriptwriting, and the performances of Kate Winslet, Julianne Nicholson and Evan Peters all won gongs.

Highly Recommended 

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

WATCHED - The Way Down (2021)

The first settlers in America came to escape religious persecution, and to practice the religion of their choice without government interference or restrictive institutional supervision. It is unsurprising then that freedom to practice whatever your religious belief or none, became a First Amendment clause in the US Constitution. Such idealism has over the centuries of the United States existence allowed hundreds and hundreds of religious denominations to surface. Even though within the burgeoning ranks of evangelical Christianity, they sometimes appear to stretch or stray from the essential teachings of Jesus, to the point of perversion and beyond. The Way Down, comes as yet another documentary about an idealistically driven Christian sect that becomes an oppressive cult. And over its five episodes it becomes clear exactly what needs to happen for even the most well meaning of religions to slip into becoming a cult.

Gwen Shamblin was brought up in the Southern Baptist tradition within her own family. And its apparent that their hardline approach to Christianity, influences The Way Down Workshops and the Remnant Fellowship that Gwen develops, pioneering her own unique approach to religious practice. Its a weight loss regime, that sees obesity as a prime indication of a lack of godly focus. As Gwen puts it, too much bowing down to the fridge, and not to God. The implication being that the depth of your devotedness to God will manifest in your being slim. You hear this, and you look at Gwen Shamblin and her preposterous pile of hair, and you wonder quite how anyone could fall for this load of buncombe. But they did, and that is what makes this documentary compelling viewing.

There are plenty of to camera confessions from former Remnant Fellowship members. Often concerning the all male hierarchy of elders, directed by Gwen, controlling the lives of men and women in the movement. Often using their children as leverage to keep them there. Threatening they could take their children from them if they left. Cruel punishment regimes for troublesome children recommended by Gwen, resulted in the death of one child.  Men or women who could not loose weight would be ostracised as defective practitioners to be treated as suspect. This movements growth cannot be based entirely on Gwen Shamblin's manipulative behaviour or dubious charisma. it's also about creating a self reinforcing belief culture where your level of fervent practice will receive its own reward. So people dedicate themselves to this devotedly. And when things do go wrong, no one is allowed to publicly acknowledge why this has happened, to question why it happened, or make recommendations to prevent it happening again. They are just told to move on and forget it.

Had not Gwen been killed in a plane crash, these scandals might never have never come out. Her own children Elizabeth and Michael exhibit all the signs of being quite damaged personalities. The Remnant Fellowship gradually at her instigation, become entirely self contained and self referential. Businesses and services were all managed in house, drawn from and serving members only. All the power, direction and control of the movement came from Gwen and a small group of male elders acting as her administrative acolytes. The Fellowships hierarchy became both judge and jury on the rectitude of its members, that moved swiftly to discredit anyone who left or criticised the Remnant Fellowship. 

This self containedness, barricaded against the influence or censure of the surrounding culture, which meant it was difficult to question or contradict any of the ideas held, both from within and outside of it. Impossible for anyone to ascertain quite how wealthy the movement had made Gwen Shamblin and her family. It seems the First Amendment itself provides statutory protection for these religious sects, from outside interventions unless an illegality or heinous offence can be proven to have taken place. I guess those founding fathers naively put more trust in the good nature and moral upstanding of religious practitioners than we would these days. 

CARROT REVIEW 5/8

The Way Down, can currently be seen on HBO Max.

WATCHED - Mr Nobody Against Putin

Pavel Talankin is a teacher in an ordinary school in Karabash, Russia. The widely renowned unhealthiest town in the world. Existing, as it does, cheek by jowl with a huge copper mine. To us this looks a truly grim place, grey and bleak, full of poorly kept Soviet era housing.  Pavel, however loves the town he grew up in, its people and his work. Apart from teaching, part of his job is to document on film the day to day events taking place in the school. His office becoming a hang out space for a particular type of arty bohemian student. Pavel is a nerd working within the school system, he doesn't ever quite fit the mold. But he has discovered a way that he can creatively contribute that works for everyone's benefit. He loves and cares about his students and their future. All is going fine, until Putin invades Ukraine.

What happens then, is that the state begins to interfere in the day to day running of the school curriculum. Teaching becomes a mere repeating of daily statements from the Kremlin, about the nature of the war, and the people's role and responsibility to support it. Daily he is forced to record on film the pseudo military assemblies, the absurd nationalistic propaganda statements being presented as education. There is one gruesome scene where a group of Wagner mercenaries come to the school to tell them about the war  and show off their military hardware and it's explosive capacity to kill and maim. At one point the Head states that the level of pupils educational attainments are falling. This is entirely a result of the additional burden of their teaching becoming a propaganda arm of the war effort. Pavel can't stand it, and hands in his resignation. 

Then, after someone from the West contacts him about the films he's made, he decides to stay. Simply in order to better document what is happening, and the decline of the school into a source of recruitment for the war effort. As his own students are drawn into being future cannon fodder for Putin's war. He makes small acts of rebellion, like broadcasting the Star Spangler Banner sung by Lady Gaga through the schools sound system. His taciturn librarian Mother, sits repairing books to make them last longer, and shakes her head at Pavel telling him 'to engage his brain, and eat more sweets' for she can sense where this is all leading. People start to be suspicious of him, and his filmmaking. His students becoming hesitant to hang out in his office or be filmed. Pavel knows it's only a matter of time before the authorities come for him, The most touching moment in this documentary is the speech he makes at the Graduation celebration he organises, the day before he leaves and escapes Putin's regime altogether. Everyone attending understanding what the sub text of it means.

This is a very humbling documentary film to watch, about one quite ordinary chap, who attempts in his own way to resist an oppressive regime. I don't think we understand, just how easily any country can fall into becoming an authoritarian state. Look how American democracy has rapidly declined in the space of just one year. Where it suddenly becomes dangerous to mock the leadership or hold certain opinions. How much people start conforming to whatever the regime demands them to be, in order to survive. i might like to think I'd fight back, but would I really?

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

Oh, yeah, and this just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature 2026.
Can currently be streamed in the UK on I Player as part of its Storyville documentary series. 

WATCHED - The Importance of Being Ernest

You are currently able, for the next month only, to watch this National Theatre production of the Oscar Wilde classic for free on You Tube. It's definitely worth a watch. It takes a quite radically new approach to the presentation of Wilde. It's colourful, camp and makes some bold casting choices. The sort that will get a right wing anti-woke homophobe foaming from all their inflamed orifices. Which has to be a good thing in a free society. It's the second time I've seen it, and whilst it is an engaging production, a repeat viewing does double underline it's weaknesses. The things that are lost due to this style of production. And the expressive limitations of some of its actors. 

Wilde, as a playwright is always deceptively light on the surface. So much so, that modern audiences do not read some of the queer code he wrote into a play like The Importance Of Being Ernest. That the Victorian gentlemen in particular might disconcertingly recognise. The living of a double life where a respectable home life, wife and children, is kept separate from an alternative lifestyle that inhabits a darker, clubby, more sexually deviant lifestyle. Wilde knew all about this from personal experience, of course. And this play was the highpoint of his West End success, literally months before scandal and the infamous trials erupted. Some people didn't like the way he lampooned and exposed the moral hypocrisy of his era. So were more than happy to put an additional boot in.

There is always a character in his plays that is the main cypher for the Wildean viewpoint on society. Here it is Algernon ( Ncuti Gatwa ) the free living batchelor with a conveniently ill friend Bunberry. Who he has to visit at short notice whenever he wants to disappear from town. He is flamboyant and devil may care, and tries to influence his friend Ernest (Hugh Skinner) to be likewise. But Ernest is in fact far too ernest in his concern for status and respectability, But finds he cannot marry Gwendolyn (Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ ) because her mother Lady Bracknell ( Sharon D Clarke ) in examining his background found it wanting. Though he is not without money or property, he was adopted, and doesn't know who his parents were. His alter ego, when he is in the country is called Jack, and he is the guardian of his 'little cousin' Cecile ( Eliza Scanlen ) The ludicrous extent to which he is willing to go to maintain this deception, is where the main farcical thrust comes from. Everyone is trying to be something they are not.

The production opens with Algernon appearing in a vivid pink gauzy froo froo dress, playing a piano in a gentleman's club. It all turns a bit transgressive and raunchy, then we are suddenly back in a respectable elegant turn of the century drawing room. This sets the general approach of this production. It's full of big broad camp infused gestures, and an almost Carry On level of winking and nudging to the audience. Ncuti Gatwa undoubtedly has charm, and self evident charisma by the bucket load and plays his character's flamboyant knowingness well. He crowd pleases, with plenty breaking of the fourth wall. I have yet to observe in anything I've seen him in so far, whether there is any more to him as an actor than this well honed affable quality. 

This directorial approach works only because it is prepared to sacrifice nuance to nudge nudge comedy. Wilde's satirical wit is playful, and this is often hidden in an elegant turn of phrase that requires pointing out by the actor. The problem with this production is that it is frequently tone deaf to these, and walks over subtleties needing emphasis in its rush for an easy guffaw. This broadness of tone, however, is consistently adopted by everyone in this production from Lady Bracknell to Gwendolyn to Ernest to Cecile. Though Cecilia is supposed to be a naive fanciful ingenue, inexperienced in worldly matters. She is played here as someone who is somewhat emotionally retarded for her age, which is far from what is required. 

The production doesn't hang about. Thankfully, it keeps a brisk pace, and performs an enjoyable romp. Though on my second viewing, by the interval I'd begun to find its constant titivating of your chuckle muscles with a feather boa, somewhat tiresome. Though it makes nods towards there being a subtext, they are just nods. Sometimes in order to amuse, you have to take comedy with great seriousness. This play does not benefit, ultimately, from being presented as though it's an end of the pier / drag revue. It's an absolute riot to watch once, but twice just reveals how little more it can offer you.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

WATCHED - The Veil

It opens in a refugee camp in the depths of snowy winter, on some high wind swept border. A truck with food arrives, people jump on and start distributing its cargo to the ravenous crowd. Then someone in the crowd shouts that the women handing out food, Adilah (Yumna Marwan ) is a notorious member of ISIS and is responsible for numerous murders and atrocities. The mood changes quickly to a riotous mob set on killing her. The camp's troops save her, but hold her under guard, whilst it's decided what to do with her. 

A British woman, Imogen ( Elizabeth Moss ) turns up, she appears more interested in this alleged member of ISIS than the vital laudable work with the refuges. The camp is a barely contained tinderbox, and in the middle of a conversation with Adilah about leaving, a gang enters intent on executing her. Ruthlessly efficient, Imogen kills or maims them all, taking Adilah away. Imogen is a spy, tasked with trying to establish for sure whether Adilah is the head of a terrorist cell or not. 

Written by Steve Knight of Peaky Blinders fame, The Veil passes as an effective spy chase drama, though it is more than a little creaky in places. Both Imogen and Adilah are adept at weaving truth and lies together, so you cannot easily establish who is being honest here. And for most of this short series you are happy to go along with the 'is she isn't she' scenario. There are a number of points where the writing just indulges in extremely broad stereotypical cultural caricatures and the heaviest of heavy handed writing. This series would not stand the remotest chance of remaining credible were it not for the superlative performances the two leads put in.

Max Peterson ( Josh Charles) the CIA agent sent to extract information from Adilah, is described as the most American American you can imagine, brutal, insensitive and self righteously over assertive. The French are presented by him as time wasters, more concerned about having their lunch breaks than solving the case. Whenever, the plot wants to exhibit any depth or profundity, a character will reach for a meaningfully appropriate Shakespeare quote to over emphasize. Which lands like the stinking dead fish it is.

In the final episode, Imogen reluctantly seeks refuge with her old lover and mentor Micheal (James Purefoy). One can understand her hesitation, because Purefoy can never resist a posh bit of scenery chewing. Though admirably restrained for him, the storyline starts feeding him all these opportunities to be a devilshly irresistible ham. There are a series of interminable points in the final episode where the story could have been quite efficiently concluded. But one suspects they only learnt halfway through production, there wouldn't be a second series. 

Knight then, rather unnecessarily for the most part,  tries to close as many lingering loose ends as he can in the last half hour. So instead of one dramatic conclusion -The End - we get one after the other of a little self indulgent thread in the storyline being tied up neatly in a bow.  The Veil therefore concludes with a series of short explicatory farts, which leave an unsatisfactory stench lingering, even as the credits finally roll.

 CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

WATCHED - The Traitors

I'm aware that what I'm about to say is not a viewpoint that is commonly held. None of us likes to believe we live in a bubble, but in one way or another we all do. Mine involves avoiding some modern TV reality game shows. This began with Big Brother in 2000, and my current must avoid at all costs are Squid Game and The Traitors. I do this largely because I distrust, or find distasteful, the essential unethical and crude exploitative underpinnings of them. So I've placed myself outside of all this charade, looking on from my very own semi distant bubble, and to be honest remain baffled and appalled. 

I'm not unaware of how huge popular The Traitors is. How can you avoid all of that? The answer is you bloody well can't. It's like someone drip feeding wine into the veins of a reformed alcoholic. You will watch this, because it's your duty to.  I have only viewed an episode or two when Hubby and I have been with his family at New Year. Whilst I have found this happenstance instructive as to how it actually operates as a game, it has not substantially changed my opinion. I still find the format makes me grimace, and suck through my teeth. Even as I sense its attempts to get its sticky tentacles around attaining my own active involvement in its machinations. I do have a clearer sense now for how the programme panders to the worst in us.

There are subtle methods by which it gently softens you up to receive it. This is largely achieved by having a popular presenter up front, like a sort of loveable mischievous Auntie.  Claudia Winkleman's magic is spread like homemade jam all over it, her charm and emollient presence renders whatever is to follow perfectly acceptable  This also allows the viewer to be drawn unquestioningly into engaging with the format. Set it in beautiful countryside, in a magnificent castle, it's all set to support the Scottish Tourist Board

Programmes such as The Traitors points you towards reflecting upon where our country might currently be at. To our straightened financial times, to just about surviving, to where making money is more important than how it's earned, to how our moral compass appears to have been misplaced, to living out a fantasy in the age of stupid.  People engage here with the execution of deceit. Who contestants say they are may be a total lie. The choice of contestants, the type of person they are, hasn't happened by accident. This is not just about being encouraged to fib and dissemble, contestants are chosen for how they fit into particular character types, to which they are then goaded to play up to. This 'game' is then played out so one of them to win a huge amount of life changing money. Your asked to be convincingly yourself, no, sorry fake a convincingly hyped up version of yourself. To use dissimulation to climb to the top for this pile of dosh. The game plays it's own small part in legitimising the social collapse of trust, and it's dependence upon the unfettered individual pursuit of greed, widely active in the world outside of it.  Nothing is metaphorically out of bounds on The Traitors. you have to be prepared to murder to get access to that pot of money, via the round table mockery of a jury, which is often nothing more than an apologetic lynch mob

This process is an absolute minefield sociologically on people's ability, or more often clumsy inability,  to judge the motivations of other people. What people will do in order to gain money. This is only a reality game show, I have to keep reminding myself. It is both serious and facile, and that is meant to throw you off the scent of any qualms you might have. Never forget Traitors is now a valuable format with huge international reach. Some contestants try knowingly to game and second guess the format, with not much success. No matter how confidently they expound their sleuthing abilities to be. There's a lot of puffed up braggadocio on show, which is all the more pitiful when this falls flat on its face. 

Unanalysed mistrust fills the airtime. Clichéd views about men, women or people of colour hover like a malevolent shadow beneath the surface all the time. An inability to examine their own motivations, let alone those of others, becomes jaw droppingly apparent. It's a parody, nay a veritable pantomime, of real life opinionatedness. To massively take out of all proportion a small oversight, a stumbled word, a moment of embarrassment, the wrong time to look away or consider their groin. Major tantrums are thrown entirely for televisual effect, to improve ratings.

I understand how this so easily becomes addictive light entertainment. That's why I'm so proactively resisting watching it. Indulging as it does in a comforting voyeurism, you self identify with particular contestants, laugh and sneer at the sheer stupidity on show. And feel moments of faux superiority because, after all, you've known all along who the traitors are. Meanwhile the contestants flounder around in stately comfort, swimming in an over heated pool of contrived deception and lies, trying to correctly ascertain what is really going on. 

It's a two dimensional puzzle game involving real people, cultivating their worst motivations, to create extremely good viewing figures. No one learns anything remotely useful from this entire process. Everything is as lightly glossed over as the staggering expense of Claudia Winkleman's wardrobe bill. Wherever you look, at whatever level you view this format from, you find a grubby commercial venality. The Traitors is perhaps then the perfect mirror for our time, it's like watching a ship sink in slow motion.

There, that's my Mary Whitehouse moment over with.

CARROT REVIEW - 2/8

WATCHED - Titanic Sinks Tonight

We might believe we know all we need to know about the sinking of the Titanic, through all the repeated films that have been made of this disaster at sea. A large luxury liner hits an iceberg, sinks to the bottom of the ocean with a huge loss of life, end of story. This BBC series of four programmes, Titanic Sinks Tonight, takes you through the two hours plus of its sinking in 'real time', showing you minute by minute how the disaster developed and it's aftermath. What gives this programme its power to grip you, even though you know what the outcome is, is the vividness with which it portrays what is happening through its dramatic reconstruction, and the verbatim accounts  from the surviving passengers and crews testimony.

It also makes great use of  historians, disaster, migrant and trauma survival experts, and most significantly here the writer Jeanette Winterson. Who is amazingly good at conveying the often curious logic behind human behaviour, when its put in the pressure cooker of a highly stressful situation. How we think and respond when we are in heightened panic mode. She is just so down to earth and humane, touchingly reminding you not to jump to moral judgements here. For no one knows how they would really respond in the midst of such a crisis. How we believe we would react, is just wishful thinking. When it comes to self preservation, to survival, something much more instinctual kicks in, and that might be far more selfish and ignoble than we'd like to imagine we would be.

As it takes you through the agonising process of sinking, the number of missed opportunities, and individual failings or mistakes start to pile up. You get a vivid picture of why this turned out so badly. How much the 'unsinkable' claim, made everyone complacent and slow in their responses. Early warnings about icebergs that were ignored because it wasn't flagged up via the correct terminology. The complete lack of a ship wide communication system, to convey information from the ships boiler room, eg - to the captain, or to inform passengers. The Captain who decided that in order to avoid panic,  he told hardly anyone, even in his own crew, that the ship was in the process of sinking. No one knew what to do. People had to decide for themselves what was happening and how best to respond. One officer misinterpreted the 'women and children first' ethos, as women and children only. Which made married couples reluctant to get on the boats, the boats that were inadequate in number anyway. The assumption that there would be a ship near by to come to the rescue, which there wasn't. The list goes painfully on.

Its a very tense and distressing watch, because you really feel for the wide range of people whose testimonies are being brilliantly portrayed here by actors,  The chilling fact that those who got in a boat could hear the screams and pleas of the hundreds of passengers floating in the ice cold water, and could also hear the slow descent of an eerie quiet as hypothermia silenced those sounds of distress. There is also a sense of the real injustice that the engineers who'd heroically and doggedly fought on to the last moment trying to keep the ship afloat, were the last to reach the upper boat deck, only to find there were no boats left to take them.

If you were a first class passenger you were far more likely to survive. If you were a woman or a child you were far more likely to survive. If you were a man, or a member of the crew, you'd be forced into a pose of stoicism and stiff upper lip about your prospects of surviving, which were incredibly small. The men who did survive, had to face public disapproval that their survival was a dispicable dishonourable stain upon their moral integrity. Of the nearly 1500 passengers who died, nearly 1100 of them were crew or third class passengers. There was a hierarchy of survival at work here based upon the implied greater value in being wealthier. Which is quite shocking when laid so factually bare like that.

I highly recommend watching, its quite compellingly told, one episode and you're hooked

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8  

Available to stream on BBC IPlayer.

WATCHED - The War Between The Land And The Sea

Enthusiastic as Russell T Davis is, as a fan for the whole Whoniverse franchise, I've ceased thinking of him as the show runner who can salvage it from ultimate retirement. I see him as part of the problem. It needs someone with less reverence for its history, to break the mold that he once re-made, and is now stuck in. A whole mess of accrued 'tymy wymy' nonsense needs binning, and starting afresh as though sixty years of existence never happened. So in some respects The War Between The Land And the Sea as an offshoot, does end up exhibiting some of the same flaws as the last Dr Who iteration, the one that Disney pulled the plug on. 

The drama centres around an ancient sea people, referred to by humans as Homo Aqua, who emerge from the depths because of the ravages of the sea by human industry and economic activity. They throw back everything that's been dumped into the sea, in a rain of plastic refuse on human cities. Their leader Salt ( Gugu Mbatha Raw ) demands that Barclay ( Russel Tovey) a lowly civil servant, becomes the chief negotiator with her. Their growing respect for each other blossoms first into a rebellious partnership, and later into a love affair. War breaking out between the peoples of the land and the sea becomes increasingly inevitable.

One thing that this drama largely gets right is its casting. Russell Tovey's abilities as a leading actor are frequently under valued, but here he has a part where he can fully exhibit his acting talent and his torso, and does both superlatively. I was, on occasions, deeply moved by his performance as the archetypal everyman who often feels like he is floundering, as he reluctantly gets drawn into being a heroic leader. Without the solidity of his presence, this drama would sag far more than it does. The other actor also worthy of praise is Jemma Redgrave, as the devoted head of UNIT, who here gradually falls to pieces through over commitment to her work and personal bereavement. Combined, these two actors are the emotional core of this series. They bring to it the sort of gravitas, the script frequently struggles to realistically grasp.

Russel T Davis at his best, can be an adventurous writer, effortlessly summoning all sorts of moods and responses, whilst also making a drama that has salient political points to make or social commentary, without them feeling laboured. Just re-watch Years an Years, and Its a Sin, if you need reminding. The difficulty here, with The War Between The Land And The Sea, is that its environmental messages are decidedly unsubtly performed. An evil manipulative businessman all but cackles and twists a moustache archly. Politicians venal and only concerned with their public optics or salvaging their reputations. It offers you a series of lazily written cliches, not perceptively presented or revealing of new insights. The right wing press might complain that Davis makes the Whoniverse too woke for its own good, but actually its that it delivers its messages so feebly and stereotypically that's irritating. 

Whilst the series is structured to stretch over five episodes, its pacing feels all over the shot. Spending the first three episodes as though they were literally treading water. Everything develops so incredibly slowly, single scenes are given far too much air time. So it was the end of episode four before it began to propulsively come to life. Its almost as if they'd decided on the scheduling first, and had to stretch out the script to fit into it. I have an issue with the soundtrack, which happens with Dr Who too. It is so loud, too dominant a presence, constantly imposing what you are meant to feel about a scene, upon you. This incessant emotional signaling, becomes a substitute for a poorly conceived dramatic scene. A lot of ramped up aural telling, often unsupported by what you are actually being shown. And that creates an ongoing dissonance to our engagement throughout the series.

Now having said all that, the final episode was really moving, and revealed more fully that this series has really been built around love affairs. I have enjoyed watching the series, whilst all the time being aware that it fell short of being compulsive viewing.  I could have bailed at any moment and felt I'd not missed much. So what kept me there? Russel Tovey mainly. Plus the joke Salt makes about his ears making wonderful gills. That sort of wry wit was sadly far too rare here.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

FAVE RAVES OF 2025 - Film, TV & Streaming

Streaming & TV Series

Andor Series 1-2 (Disney +)
This brilliantly written drama, highlights the fear, conflicts and fragilities present when organising and financing a rebellion within a highly militarised authoritarian state.It was a tense, perceptive and tragic drama from start to finish. Why this has not won all the awards hands down is completely beyond my understanding. It was the best thing I've watched all year.

Leonard & Hungry Paul (BBC)
Based on the bestselling book by Ronan Hession, this is a simple hearted, genial drama about two thirty something men who both realise they need to breakout of living at home, to launch a hopefully more fulfilling life. It's utterly ordinary, but holds huge amounts of charm and is beautifully played by all its cast.

Alien Earth (Disney + )
The first series of the Alien franchise, transposes the threat to earth. Though this is really a study in what defines a human being as human, and if you are a synthetic body containing a human consciousness, what does that make you? 

Shogun (Disney +)
An English ship lands in Japan intent on breaking the trading monopoly of the Portuguese. Its Captain John Blackthorne rapidly gets drawn into the bafflingly formalised conflicts going on within the Shogunate. Power struggles, love and intrigue, this series had it all

Virdee (BBC)
I'm always a sucker for a good detective crime procedural. This one was a cut above most in an admittedly crowded genre. Virdee, is your classic slightly dodgy police officer, whose own dysfunctional family tensions spill over into his professional life and corrupt his moral judgement.

Films 

Sinners (2025)
A mythic ode to the inspirations and the people that made the blues. This film has atmosphere by the truck load, and one central musical dream sequence that was one of my highlights of the year. Fabulous

A Real Pain (2024)
Two cousins take a road trip to Auschwitz and along the way discover just how chalk and cheese they are. It has wonderfully funny moments mixed with deeply affecting ones. Kieran Culkin is a bloody marvel in this film and deserves all the acclaim.

Past Lives (2023)
It might seem like a great idea to reconnect with someone, twenty years later, who was your childhood sweetheart. This film imagines just such a scenario and is simply the most touchingly gentle but ultimately heartbreaking mistake. 

Perfect Days (2023)
A philosophically minded cleaner of the most avant garde lavatories in Tokyo, has a highly organised life that is disrupted by the arrival of his rebellious niece. Their friendship causes him to realise just what he's missed by becoming this sage like semi-recluse. A Wim Wenders film that has such a simple hearted joy.

Drive Angry (2011)
Ever find a film so bad, but it knows its bad, that it almost celebrates and luxuriates in its crassness? Well, Drive Angry is that film. The dialogue is so so knowing. Nicholas Cage is brilliant. But the real star here is William Fichtner as The Accountant, literally from hell

Documentary

No Other Land (2024)
Two documentary makers, one Israeli and one Palestinian, start documenting the build up and constant aggression on a Palestinian village by Israeli forces, aiming to rob them of their birthright to provide land for further expansion of Israeli illegal occupation. Shocking and deeply upsetting at times, this shows you the strain and very human cost of constantly being harassed by your nearest neighbour.

WATCHED - Nine Perfect Strangers

 

Nine people arrive at the Tranquillum retreat centre. Each of them has chosen to come here not really knowing what to expect, but all have reached a moment of crisis in their life. They need some time away from all that. The retreat centre is directed by Masha (Nicole Kidman) a woman whose immoral high flying past came to an end with someone trying to murder her. There are elements in this previous life that are still unresolved, even though she has developed this therapeutic retreat on the basis of her own experience and route back to psychological wellness. 

All the retreatants were hand picked by Masha, some paid through the nose, others a discounted price. As the series progresses the turbulence in their personal lives comes into sharper focus, as well as Masha's reasons for choosing them. But her therapeutic methods are highly unconventional. if not illegal. And its clear that things on previous retreats did not always go well. Masha is receiving threatening texts and emails,someone from her past has it in for her.  

With Micheal Shannon, Melissa McCarthy, Samara Weaving, Luke Evans and Regina Hall amongst the cast, this is packed with star performers. The script is witty and often playfully irreverent. As the retreat progresses elements of backstories get pieced together. Relationships fracture and mend, people's motivations become mixed or morally dubious. As a whole Nine Perfect Strangers is quite effective, with a low key 'who done it' element to it. Kidman, Shannon and McCarthy in particular shine out here, primarily because a large part of the drama circles around them. Samara Weaving and Melvin Gregg's characters are woefully underwritten, and could easily have been written out at no loss to the dramatic narrative. Luke Evans does his best with an unappealing character, whose story arc never quite becomes fully rounded or his eventual turn around explored or explained.

Nicole Kidman is having one whale of a time playing the slightly spooky, maybe unhinged, Masha, her accent is light, its audiblity is slightly variable. But without her ability to dominate the screen, its clear this dramas creaking old tropes would have rattled a bit too noticeably. On the whole I enjoyed watching it as a drama, though it never quite became gripping essential viewing. They made a second series, I can't imagine at all why they thought that would be a good idea, but I wont be setting aside any time specially for it.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

WATCHED - The English ( Series from 2022)

 

Another fine series from Writer & Director - Hugo Blick ( The Honourable Woman, Black Earth Rising, The Shadow Line ). This has all the usual gorgeous stylistic polish and uniqueness of his productions. Set in 1890's mid western America, with all the background of mythic pioneering and entrepreneurial ventures one finds in stories set in this era. The English, however, takes you on a very unusual journey through it.

Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer) has ceased being a scout for the army. He hopes that he now can buy a homestead and land, to be left to live the rest of his life how he wishes. There is pain in his background, civil war atrocities, the loss of his wife and son. Realistically, no whiteman would ever let him own anything, nor leave him alone to live out his dream. But, still he has hope.

Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt) is an Englishwoman, initially a bit out of her depth in the mid west. She is searching for her former boyfriend Thomas Trafford (Tom Hughes), who is out here running his own cattle ranch. She knows him to be in some danger from David Melmont (Timothy Spall) his former business partner. Cornelia, however, has her own pain that she carries with her, the locket of hair from her recently deceased son. A talisman that only gains in significance.

Cornelia and Eli hook up with each other, because each finds themselves without a home to go back to. But somehow this unlikely pairing of Indian Scout with an English Lady brings out the fighting spirit in both of them. As the series progresses the real reason why she is here in the free wheeling mid west looking for Melmont emerges, and the emotional bond with Eli grows ever deeper. As both their past histories converge on the same place and the same man.

This series holds it's hidden secrets tightly to its chest, that are then allowed to arise slowly into awareness. It is a compelling watch. I don't think I've seen Emily Blunt act better, as she gradually blossoms out of her inhibited crushing loss into this fully fledged vengeful vigilante. Chaske Spencer plays Eli with aloof mystery, amid this regret filled life history that weighs so heavily down upon him. The real delightful surprise was Timothy Spall, so often cast as the genial lightweight, here gives us a truly monstrous creation in Melmont, about whom nothing good could ever be said. Without giving anything away, the ending of The English, is just truly gut wrenchingly tragic.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

Available on BBC I Player & Amazon Prime.

WATCHED - Alien Earth

 

Noah Hawley, as a writer and director has developed a reputation, for taking a popular film and making a TV version of them  Successfully adapting the Coen Brothers classic Fargo, which ran for five series. So you can understand Disney, when they wanted to create an Alien series, would make him their first port of call. Since the first Alien film the sequels/prequels have been very patchy affairs, that even Ridley Scott has not always pulled off successfully. An Alien series might then prove to be a tricky beast to manage. It has to an extent to pay homage to its predecessors, to some, but not all, the elements of the story lineage. But simply making it about a xenomorph that runs havoc in a situation, would run out of steam pretty quickly. A series brings an opportunity to really open out the franchise, give it fresh air and impetus. With an intriguing new story arc, with a breadth, depth of character development and themes, that a two hour movie really cannot achieve. Oh, and it also has to please, and not greatly upset, the die hard fans. So, no pressure.

When you watch Alien Earth, you realise just how clever Hawley has been in its placement within the frequently wandering infidelity of the Alien storyline. Setting it in a period two years before the first movie. So it can absorb all the period details of sets etc and the not fully fleshed out nature Wayland -Yutani and those troublesome synthetics. Earth, is now effectively run by a small number of high tech companies. Of which Wayland-Yutani is a major player, another one is Prodigy  

Prodigy, founded by Boy Cavalier (Samuel Blenkin),, has pioneered a new form of synthetic human that has the consciousness of a prepubescent child downloaded into it. Boy Cavalier is a self confessed genius, an eternally youthful Peter Pan to his synthetic creations -Wendy ( Sydney Chandler) & the Lost Boys & Girls. Always hoping to meet someone else as clever as himself, so he can at last have a decent conversation. His narcissistic self conceit makes him a poor judge of the morality of what he does, seeing himself as somewhat above such considerations.

A Wayland-Yutani ship crash lands back on Earth. Colliding into a skyscraper owned by Prodigy. In charge of the ship is Morrow, a human- augmented cyborg. It contains a long voyage's collection of alien species, of which our beloved xenomorph is only one. As this bizarre range of aliens escape, we learn what each of their special predilections are. Boy Cavalier decides to send his new synthetic creations into the crashed ship, as a sort of road test for how they will cope in real live situations. And so the scene is set for the rest of the series.  

Alien Earth brilliantly explores the contentious issue of what makes anything human. Morrow (Babou Cessay) is an augmented cyborg, Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) is a full synth, Wendy, throughout the drama is compelled by her encounters with the world, to dwell on what exactly she is. Her makers treat her like a slave that they own, Yet she can outthink and outperform any human, she is almost indestructible. Is she better or worse off for thinking herself human or synthetic? And all the synthetic and semi-synthetic creations exhibit differing responses to that question. Kirsh observes the synth/human hybrids with some curiosity. He is analogous to the synthetics in the first Alien film, a coolly dispassionate creation who has his job to perform, and does so with a certain logical efficiency. We are also led to consider what sort of level of intelligence do some of these alien species have.

Alien Earth employed all the tension and unexpected twists one might expect, and a great deal more. With thoughtfulness given to its narrative engagement, purpose and structure, than the film's now cliched format. Disney, with Alien Earth and Andor has produced not just two of the best reinventions of science fiction classics, but the two best dramas of 2025. They're on a bit of a successful roll at the moment, long may it continue.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

WATCHED - Forgiveness, Loneliness & Parenting Truths - The Sacred Q & A.

 

Stepping briefly outside the usual Sacred format, to take questions from viewers, produces this really interesting wide ranging programme, Elizabeth Oldfield is her usual frank and open self, with her Producer Joe Downy providing a useful counterpoint. This certainly touches on a few areas I resonated with. Such as why in a spiritual community purity of ideology or one person becoming beyond questioning, is a bad thing. Realise you are living in a bubble, how do you break out of it? Why no church or spiritual group is perfect, and why its better if it is infuriating in its imperfections. Lots of pokey issues, to get you thinking. 

WATCHED - UnHerd - Are we in a Post Literate Society?

These days there appears to be a million You Tube sites positioning themselves as the place where viewpoints and opinions that are outside 'the norm' can be found and indeed herd. So if you hear anyone complaining about being silenced or cancelled, you sort of go 'Are you, are you really?' because it looks very like they are being heard loud and clear, and are all over the internet like a rash, which these days appears to be the very opposite of being silenced. 

An early entrant into this type of programming was UnHerd, owned and funded by the depthless pockets of Paul Marshall, hedge fund manager, philanthropist and media baron. Who, just to make sure you know where he's coming from also owns The Spectator and GB News, so a bit of a professional disruptor of the so called elite consensus. Unherd benefits from its main frontman and editor being the amiable Freddie Sayers, who gathers together a variety of subjects and viewpoints to create ocassionally quite interesting discussions. Yes, there are some frankly bat shit ideas too, that really don't have legs to stand on, from both right and left of the political spectrum. But that comes with the territory I guess.

This particular discussion, however, caught my eye, mainly because it features Jared Henderson a You Tuber who I rate quite highly for producing thoughtful content. Are we, in the age of AI and algorithms, on the verge of creating a Post-Literate Society, where people can't sustain reading anything long form, follow a complex argument or produce a thought through critique? And with widespread literacy in the past being the engine for democracy and social change, are those two things now doomed to become extinct? Discuss.

 

WATCHED - Chernobyl

On the 26th April 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine experienced a catastrophic explosion in one of its four reactors.  It was the world's worst nuclear accident, and over 31 people died from the immediate explosion. Yet modern estimates of those who died subsequently as a result of being exposed to the radiation from it, vary from 4,000 to over 60,000+ across Europe. These figures may be serious underestimations.

This five part mini series by HBO, painstakingly recreates the disaster and its calamitous aftermath. It is done with great realism, that you almost feel the radiated dust coming towards you as you watch. The out of control nuclear reactor burns with an intense glow as firefighters battle it.. You see the process by which someone who has been exposed to such huge levels of radiation, what horrific and painful things that does to the human body.   

What makes this tragedy still more horrific is how the people in charge of running Chernobyl try to downplay the severity of what's happened. They have radiation scanners many of which are faulty, though they can't read beyond a certain level anyway, but they blithely promulgate a lower manageable figure that they know to be incorrect. The true radiation level at Chernobyl was hundred's and hundred's of times more. The male Soviet hierarchy seemed to be all about pretending to be competent in order to gain further career advancement. People below a certain level of responsibility who had crticisms, were either ignored, ridiculed or told they didn't know what they were talking about. All of which meant the initial response to the disaster, was to deny that it was an explosion in the core at all, to treat it as a fire on a roof that could easily be controlled.

As an expert in atomic energy Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) is brought in by the government to advise them what to do. Initially he too has to fight against a level of leaden bureaucracy that really doesn't want to hear what he has to say. They don't want the world to know the Soviet Union has nuclear facilities that are incompetently managed and dangerous. He is sent to Chernobyl with Boris Cherbina ( Stellan Skarsgard ) to assess and make recommendations. Ulana Khomyuk ( Emily Watson ) a nuclear physicist from the Minsk, tells Valery that the reactor is at a critical stage and could well generate a thermo-nuclear explosion of massive proportions and millions of deaths across Europe. 

Just one of many crises they have to overcome, but each time they are overcome at the sacrificial cost of human lives. Men who heroically take the risk of going into the plant to open water gates or miners who spend days and days digging a critical tunnel under the reactor. The weight of this moral burden weighs heavy on all those responsible who are taking those decisions. Once the reactor is stablised, then they have to create an exclusion zone, including lots of critical clinical care and mopping up operations. The horror never seems to stop.

As it reaches the penultimate and final episodes, still more human lives are ruined. In preparing the reactor to be housed in a secure facility,  robotic removal of radioactive matter from the roofs around the reactor fails, so in the end humans have to do it. Women exposed to radiation through their fireman husbands, give birth to babies that cannot survive more than a few hours of life. Legasov is sent to tell the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna what happened, and is compelled by the government to lie by omission, to not tell them about the role structural flaws played in disaster. But later at the trial of the three engineers in charge on the night of the explosion, Legasov does expose the real truth. He loses his job and two years later kills himself, an act which itself ensured the world would now know what really happened on the 26th April 1986. His words 'Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth' resonating strongly with the shallow zeitgeist of our present time.

This series was compelling to watch, but I found it deeply deeply disturbing. My sleep was affected considerably as I tossed and turned restlessly through out the nights afterwards. There are a number of things which make it dangerous to see this as a completely verbatim account of what happened. Some of it draws on a collection of accounts Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, which she has been accused of inserting her own views and analysis into. The script created the fictional character of Ulana Kmoyuk as a conduit for the work of numerous scientists who worked to support Lagasov. most of whom were male and are unsung by this production. However, the effect of the drama upon the empathy of one's soul remains undiluted. The graphic truth with which they have tried to portray what happened, makes this worthy of being lauded with the highest praise indeed.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

WATCHED - Shogun

 

Gosh, this is a truly epic series, the scenery, the script, the fabulous costumes. Finally, Hiryuki Sanada ( Lord Yoshii Toronaga ) truly gets a meaty part to play in Japanese, rather than taking bit parts as Hollywood's go to oriental. Yeah, his face will already be familiar to you. Whereas Cosmos Jarvis (John Blackthorne) will be new to most of us, with that heavy set body swagger, the best theatrical pipes since Richard Burton, and more than a smidgen of raw sex appeal. And Anna Sawaii ( Lady Mariko ) plays this beautiful mysterious complex woman, she's the translator, the christian convert, but there is so much more going on behind that elegance and proper etiquette. In this series there is also a careful and judicious use of the really horrific, the bloodshed will come out of the blue at you, so be aware. Also quite a bit of seppuku, particularly by the end.

The story line, well, its too complicated to fully explain. Blackthorne turns up with his ship and crew, intent on kicking the Portuguese and their Catholicism out of Japan, and replacing it with a bit of good old English Protestant free trade. But all these plans go awry pretty quickly. He is given Lady Mariko to translate and introduce him to the bafflingly formal world of Japanese Court procedures, where no one says what they think, or really mean. In a way we see this exotic but uptight world entirely through Blackthorne's eyes.  

Toronaga is threatened with being impeached by his fellow Regency Council. But he knows how to fox them and plays many a cunning ploy. He is definitely someone who executes the long game, always with an eye set on where he wishes to end up. To do this he will manipulate both friend and foe if needs be. Blackthorne gets drawn into being used in this political intrigue and into a dangerous illicit affair with Mariko. For it turns out she is the daughter of a previous Shogun, who was wrongly assassinated for ultimately doing the right thing. And she has waited a lifetime for her moment of revenge. But really, none of this quite captures the tightly turned intricacy of this stories cat and mouse nature. The charming duplicity of Yorishige (Tadanobu Asano) is just one character in this series who is seemingly playing for both sides. And both sides know that.

Historically it takes some huge liberties, but it does very effectively capture the mood of internecine family conflict and often war, that the soon to be Edo period, Tokugawa Shogunate had to actively contain. Shogun was based on a novel of the same name from 1975 by James Clavell. It is set thirty plus years before the Portuguese and Roman Catholicism are thrown out of Japan, and subsequently closes its borders to the outside world for nearly four hundred years. 

There are just so many heart stopping moments in this series, of beauty. of tragedy, not to mention cinematography. Its no surprise this series has won 4 Golden Globes and a record breaking 18 Emmys, for its acting leads, as well as music and technical gongs. I was an emotional wreck by the end of it. A second series is promised, but just how they are going to top this one I do not know.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

WATCHED - Andor Seasons 1 + 2

Boy was this couple of series a truly outstanding pleasure. Brilliantly written and staged Andor is set in the Star Wars world of authoritarian Empire and a still nascent rebellion, just prior to the incidents in the film Rogue One. Many characters from that film featuring here. If you thought the three Star Wars prequels and the original trilogy were poorly written at the level of a pre-pubescent Boy's Own Annual cartoons, then be prepared to be surprised by just how adult and cleverly nuanced the script for Andor is. There is lot of waiting around, a lot of hiding, a lot of backstabbing scheming, a lot of political intrigue and betrayal, yet also a lot of action, and scenarios with real heart and humane wit on show here. The makers compare it to the carefully modulated and sophisticated narrative of a John Le Carre post war spy thriller, and one can see why. If you think you don't like Science Fiction then I encourage you to watch this. It very subtly and quietly revolutionises what a Sci-fi epic can be capable of.

There are a vast spectrum of interesting complex characters, too many to mention here, who over the two series you come to understand in more detail, there backgrounds and motivations. Though the story ostensibly centres around the miscreant anti-authority personality of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) a petty thief and chancer. Who is recruited as a reluctant mercenary by the evasive director of rebel activity Luthen  (Stelan Starsgaard )  but ends up being its primary motivating force. No matter how much he tries to get away from it, he keeps being drawn back in for yet one more mission. Another person to save.

Trailing him throughout is Syril ( Kyle Soller ) who imagines himself to be a tough minded resourceful officer, but ends up being demoted for his self-evident incompetence, and has to move back to living with his terrifying confidence crushing Mother (Kathryn Hunter). He envies and admires the hard ass ruthless brutality of Dedra (Denise Gough) who was brought up Empire through and through and who perpetrates the sort of unspeakable cruelties Syril would be totally incapable of doing. A strange odd couple romance does however emerge, that comes crashing down when Syril finds out Dedra lied to him about the real purpose of his mission in Ghorman.

Then there is the seemingly beautifully apportioned realm of Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) a wealthy Senator in the ruling Senate. Who is secretly the vehicle for laundering the money the rebels steal or raise through more respectable channels. Her under the radar financial maneuverings are perpetually in danger of being discovered. Her close childhood school friend and former lover Tay Kolma ( Ben Miles) who is now a high class banker, helps her out disguising funds as donations to a variety of charitable foundations. 

Mothma is probably the most fascinatingly morally compromised character in the whole drama. Icily cool, with an unruffled composure on the exterior, yet internally deeply disturbed by the personal cost to her family of her under cover activities. The standout episode of the entire Andor series takes place during the dance evening after her daughters wedding. Before it starts we see her being told by Luthen he has arranged for someone to resolve the situation with Tay Kolma, because he's been attempting to blackmail Mothma to give him a percentage on rebel money.  Luthen means to bump him off. And uncharacteristically she drops her ultra controlled external demeanour and dances like a person possessed, trying to lose her emotions, to drown out the overwhelming complex of sadness she is being totally consumed by. It is quite the most unexpectedly emotionally knockout scene.

And these are just a few characters from a wonderfully broad range on show in Andor.  Most of the sets are built physical sets or existing buildings cleverly montaged into a green screened city scape. They bring a distinct architectural style to these very different worlds, between the capital planet Coruscant and that of self consciously fashionable Ghorman say. Similarly the costumes are equally diverse, from the immaculately cut tailoring of the capital and the more rough rusticated fabrics of Ghorman. All round applause to everyone involved in this series, this is quite a magnificent achievement. It raises the bar so much for Disney + that even they are unsure quite how you could follow it. 

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8