Reviews

This short is only five minutes long but packs a lot in. There's a load of back story that cleverly comes out, especially about the supposedly straight boy Max.

Antoine's initial overtures are rejected and the mellow scene becomes hostile. Accusations are hurled and it slowly becomes clear that Max is in the closet and afraid to come out. Eventually a fight breaks out between the lads that leads to a breakthrough. It's not a case of a straight boy giving homosex a whirl with a friend.

For the future, we have to imagine. Will the best friends become a couple or is this a one-night stand? Either way a barrier has been breached for the good.

I declare an interest immediately. I worked in Social Services in the UK for many years with "problem" children. Pert of why I gave up is exemplified here in this series. Children who are hurting, many for reasons to do with childhood abuse, need to feel safe. They cannot feel safe without boundaries and consequences. As shown in this series, and was happening in the UK there are few consequences and fewer boundaries. Misbehave and be fined tuppence. Hit a social worker and be let off. This was on show in these episodes. Yet a cop who restrains a violent kid during an arrest gets put on supervision.

The plot was driven by this ethos with misplaced leniency leading to further damaging events. We even saw kids laughing up their sleeves at the "stupidity" of the judge and social worker.

This was overdone at times in this series especially in the final episode. And I don't believe for one second that any Western European social services department would allow a delinquent teenager to live with an ex-con Dad without proper investigation.

Was it worth watching? Yes. I wanted to know what would happen in the next episode. And I wanted to have my guess at the murderer confirmed or otherwise. So this is a definite recommendation despite how angry the series made me feel at times.

It's just not my world. Screaming queens and butch women complicit in an attempt to celebrate the acceptance of a marriage proposal. I'd have been far more furious in André's place than he was. And his arguments against the affair were pretty good too.

Do people really do something like this? I know marriage proposals are made out of the blue sometimes but to have a load of friends listening in on it just wouldn't happen in any gay world I've been in.

This film gets three stars because I laughed out loud once. It was at the only cruel moment in the film and I wish there had been more of them.

This film about a couple of straight guys having to rehearse and then perform a gay sex scene together is a real gem. First of all, an aperçu about the leads. They are both straight hunks, the sort of man most gay guys would hope might be gay or, as a minimum, bi.

As they rehearse their rôles together the director and scriptwriter cleverly and slowly engender a feeling of "are they actually really gay". In the end we see the film they are meant to be appearing in and all doubts are gone. These guys give a convincing performance of a pair of gay lovers forty years ago.

Except there's an epilogue. The guys appear in real life explaining their sexuality and life circumstances. They're straight. But, blooming hell they were so convincing as queers.

As a glimpse into make believe this film would be hard to beat. Despite the coda, I'm still left wondering.

I truly dislike violence either in a sexual relationship or engendered by one. In fact, the violence at the end of the film is so gratuitous and extraneous that it simply doesn't ring true. Who would best a man to a pulp in front of a witness, moreover one who's seen the moment of intimate congress between attacker and victim? It doesn't make sense. The attacker is going to go to prison for a very long time.

The film reminded me of the loathsome short "Bramadero" which also culminates in a dreadful and unwarranted act of violence after consensual sex. At least that film had something going for it in the sensuous and unsimulated scenes before the ghastly ending. This film was well, discreet. That's Norway for you.

As a side observation, the actor playing the attacker clearly couldn't punch his way out of a paper bag in real life. It was unreal to watch him take on and beat a strapping lad.

I'm glad I wasted a few minutes of life to watch this if only to debunk in my own mind the huge praise this film has garnered so undeservedly.

I used to try religiously to watch Omnibus every week. As the series ran for many years, I obviously missed loads of them. In addition to the ones on David Bowie, Leonard Bernstein, as well as programmes on classical composers, I particularly remember the one on Edith Piaf. She'd been dead for a couple of years before I had my first sojourn in France but she remained ubiquitous in a similar way that Um Koulthoum still is in the Arab world. I came back from France with a heap of EPs and LPs of her.

So when it was announced that this Omnibus edition would be about her, I made sure of tuning in. Over fifty years later I remember little except that I was transfixed. I do have a memory of her performing Milord in the programme and clearly having a great time using the whole stage as a prop. IMDb tells me Charles Aznavour appeared but I don't remember that. I wish I did.

I'd love to see this again. In black and white!

This was one of the Scandinavian series that proved that a British audience would watch a complicated, intricate, foreign series that was subtitled. It was of particular piquancy to me because I understand some Swedish and it was perfectly bizarre to be able to know what some characters were saying and moments later when Danish was being spoken to have to carefully read the text again.

All four series were of a uniformly high standard and the fourth season ended appropriately, on a high. Any more and the quality would have suffered, I think.

Very few "Scandi Noir" series have reached the heights of this one and I'm glad I got into it right at the beginning.

I guess that not many people have watched this. I sat through the lot and it's not a raving success at all unfortunately. It's a police procedural that relies on superstition and signals from the ether on many occasions to move forward. Added to that, the goodies are meant to deduce clues from the main protagonist's books which we have no access to because they're imaginary to this series. So this isn't a detective story to derive pleasure from by working out whodunnit. Indeed, the nutter is blindingly obvious from episode two and revealed in episode four so the programme becomes an exercise in signs and portents to reveal the whereabouts of the miscreants.

There were a couple of subplots that had a vague interest - a closeted gay affair, an unknown father. However, these had little bearing or influence on the main plot.

I'd say give it a watch if one has loads of time and wants to switch off one's brain entirely. Otherwise watch a couple of good films instead.

I had been fascinated to see that this was a series from Bosnia Herzegovina as I'd never seen anything from that country before. The first impression I got was that it does the country down - it's corrupt. Prosecutors want fake confessions just to close a case, museum directors are fiddling the books, cops are bent.

I managed one and a half episodes before giving up completely. The over elaborate plots, wooden acting, washed out photography all conspired to convince me there was no point in inflicting more of this on myself. Even though there are only five episodes I wanted those hours of my life to be spent on something worthwhile.

I can't get over how bad this was. Don't make my mistake and start watching.

This was pretty bad. A ridiculous story involving superstition and messages from spirits. I also had difficulty understanding why an actor of Turkish descent had been chosen to play a cop with a quintessentially Germanic name like Larssen.

Neither did I swallow the side story about the ex-lover and son. Both Larssen and his lover were clearly being followed and observed. Very careless to leave incriminating evidence around that led to blackmail.

The weirdo family in the forest were a ridiculous addition to the mix. Added to werewolves and spirit-ravens that give the game away the plot got weaker and weaker.

In the end, no one "nice" got killed despite red herrings indicating the contrary. It all ended happily ever after.

Honestly it was totally risible.

What on earth was Alexandra Rapaport doing in this? She can't be short of a bob or two from her work in Murders in Sandhamn. Perhaps she accepted the commission without reading the script. Whatever the reason, her presence couldn't redeem this mixture of fantasy and tosh. We watched as a woman who was clearly mentally ill was allowed to continue working as a policewoman after two previous hospitalisations for psychosis. All the time we were being asked to believe that delusions of dead people appearing were actually real and were aids to solving murder cases. I've got news for the scriptwriters. Delusions are just that and the illness causing them needs to be treated.

I realise why the mental illness angle was pushed so forcefully. There were no actual clues in these cold cases susceptible to police work so the hallucinations had to be used to solve the case.

In the result this was a totally unbelievable scenario that should have either been binned or rewritten.

Just as an aside, I had never realised how tiny Rapaport is. The men in the series towered over her, particularly her screen husband.

I sat through the lot but it got more ridiculous as it went on. I'd advise giving this a miss. 2 stars because I got to the end.

This was a somewhat fictionalised account of the relationship between King Gustav V and Kurt Haijby, a restaurateur and ex convict. It is also a truncated version of the several miscarriages of justice and outright persecution of Haijby by the Swedish establishment to prevent the affair coming to light.

The production values and acting in the series were good. Sets and clothing were excellent although there were some jarring dissonances. Haijby was sent to Germany before the war but the music accompanying his first night there, despite being an appropriate song of love and longing for the King, was in fact "Ich weiß es weird einmal ein Wunder geschehen" by Zarah Leander and was not recorded until 1942 and taken from the notorious propaganda film "Die Große Liebe". It really was an annoying niggle!

The actor playing Kurt really got into his rôle and underwent the full gamut of emotions and aging.

As an indictment of the ruthlessness and spite of the Swedish deep state, the series was spot on. Sweden's façade of democracy and openness has always been skin deep.

This is a definite recommendation.

I watched this over a couple of days. At times I was willing time to pass more quickly so I could get it over and done with. Little things irritated me that just weren't believable or likely. Side plots that weren't relevant had clearly been stuck in to culminate in the next twists and turns.

I wish I knew the location of the prison. It's a magnificent piece of architecture. However, for what appeared to be a thousand women, there only ever seemed to be five or six prison screws present at any one time. No wonder crime was so rife there.

The finale was not at all credible especially in terms of who lived and who died. And I refuse to believe that the survivors would not have been restrained.

All in all this was unsatisfactory. Ok, I watched till the end but I can't really recommend it. There's much better out there.

On the face of it, a series about an accident investigation team doesn't seem like an enticing prospect. However, like many Finnish programmes, it was aimed at an intelligent and literate audience which most of Finland is.

The characters were well rounded with appealing and credible back stories. It wasn't all perfect! The adulterous affair between the wife of one of the injured victims and an investigator was not really true to life given his upbringing and beliefs. And the ending just prior to the team's press conference giving the results of the investigation was melodramatic.

This was a complete series with no cliffhanger but there's obviously scope to devise a season two. I enjoyed this and recommend it.

I watched it all and more fool me.

Just the premisses we are expected to swallow are unbelievable. Chief prosecutors break the law, eminent psychiatrists prescribe illegal medicines, trainee prosecutors break into private and commercial properties. All this is against a backdrop of a Svengali figure training and controlling an army of Bene Gesserit-like fighting children.

One might say these kids were hidden in plain sight but their base is just about the most ridiculous one imaginable. Where would their food have come from in this industrial wasteland?

Contrived climaxes and discoveries abound. There's no actual detective work at all. Lucky coincidences lead to the next episode of ridiculousness. Horrifyingly, there's a semi cliffhanger at the end. We might be subjected to more of this nonsense.

I couldn't get the cause and effect. The arrival of Dayo, an asylum seeker, causes an upheaval in the lives of Niels and Antoine. I just don't see why an overnight set the momentous events rolling.

I didn't get the relationship between the two Belgians either. Niels is a confident, out, gay guy whereas Antoine is a married, uptight closet case. It's hard to imagine snatched, secret moments in a caravan before Antoine goes home to his family being satisfactory to a character such as Niels. What was he expecting?

Dayo's story was marginally interesting but in a timeframe of twenty two minutes, couldn't be developed properly.

The ending was equivocal. With Antoine out of the frame, are the other two going to get it on or will Dayo carry on to England? I'm glad it was left to our imaginations.

After the stinging reception from Hindu nationalist politicians that greeted "Tandav" and the grovelling apology by the producers, Indian filmmakers and TV moguls have lost their nerve. The mooted four seasons of "Sacred Games" will not all be made. Number Two will be the last. As the last episode ended on a cliffhanger, this is an extremely disappointing and frustrating conclusion to what was a good series.

I enjoyed the first season marginally more than the second, which was a tad over complicated. Nonetheless, both seasons were a faithful portrayal of the criminal underworld, the shallowness and fraud of religious communities and their leaders, the venality of politicians, the corruption of the police force. And the story was good too.

I'd read the book when it came out and it was an achievement to condense so much of it into a series. However, the book is a towering achievement compared to the TV adaptation despite the latter's quality.

The actors and actresses were convincing in their rôles and portrayed accurately the characters they were playing. Why was Inspector Sartaj always so sweaty though? I can't remember if this was a trait of his in the novel but either way, it was pretty revolting.

In sum, recommended but be prepared for a letdown in the end at the final moments. We're not ever going to find out what happened.

I really enjoyed this. But that's not to say that I found it full of credibility. That a disbarred professional fighting to get her job back would do what Vera does is a step too far, especially in front of witnesses.

That apart, I enjoyed the present day and flashback format of the series. The person playing young Vera was excellent too.

The actor playing the putative adult Billy was less convincing although I'm going to put this down to bad directing. From episode five onwards, he'd obviously been told to look menacing and he did this by baring his teeth when smiling. It didn't work.

I didn't guess what had happened to Billy but I had realised what Tommy's fate was and who the perpetrator must have been.

In a highly regulated state like Sweden, it seemed odd to me how people's identities couldn't be established. Even odder, why not demand a DNA test immediately instead of acting on supposition and intuition?

I'm glad I saw this and it filled a few hours. It made my brain work and surprised me too.

Recommended.

I've had this on a memory stick for yonks and I don't know why I hadn't tried it before. Well, I wasn't missing anything. This was another of those films with loads of dialogue that simply isn't interesting.

The "plot" centres around a group of gay Indian men who meet up regularly for soirées at one of the group member's house. The host introduces one of the regulars to a younger and fresh invitee and we see that the older guy is rich and the younger guy is a rent boy. These two strike up a relationship that remains strictly commercial, at least until I clicked out. Their conversations are what might be expected in any such transactional meetings - sex, acquaintances, word play. In other terms, boringness.

I was really struggling to keep my eyes open after thirty minutes. Ten minutes later I gave up.

And there was a technical error that was really annoying. The subtitles provided by the company were in minute script that made it almost impossible to watch the actors because they needed so much concentration from the viewer to read the tiny characters. On top of this, the subs attempted to explain nuances of the spoken dialogue in brackets. This meant that some of them, representing quite short lines, flashed up and away because the explanation was longer than the translation. This was really unsatisfactory.

So all in all, a poor experience and one not to be recommended.

This film was dialogue-heavy and action-light. The problem was that the dialogue was so inconsequential that it bored the socks off one.

As for the "plot", I don't like whiffs of mysticism such as a near accident presaging a real one.

I stuck with this for fifty five dreadful minutes while watching the sort of conversations I could hear in a local café in a francophone country. This was during a wake! It was so untrue to life that I was staggered. With a further seventy five minutes to go, I just couldn't bear the thought of putting myself through any more and clicked out.

What on earth was Binoche doing here? Hadn't she read the script before accepting? She was the one point of light in the film acting properly and competently alongside a cast of nonentities. She's the reason why this got two stars instead of one.

It's always a matter of regret leaving a film halfway through. Did it get better towards the end? However, no one should be subjected to trite trivia to get there and an hour's worth of it to boot.

Told mainly in flashback by one of the participants of a bank cyberheist, this series pulled one in from the beginning. Of course, belief in reality has to be suspended and the characters were written to a formula but the story convinces nonetheless.

There seemed to be a twist in every episode and I didn't predict more than one of them. I guessed the very final twist and was certain there'd be a cliffhanger and what form it would take. So we are set up for a second series, I assume.

There's so much good television coming out of Flanders. I've seen several excellent crime dramas from there and this was another one.

I didn't like it. I didn't rate Part One much and this was slightly worse. The great themes that underpinned the novel were completely absent here, the undercurrents and interplay of the various groups that shored up the imperial system. The Guild was absent. The Bene Gesserit were a shadow of their actual selves.

As for the actors playing the parts, well the Emperor just didn't seem right. He looked like a tired old man and not an authority figure. We saw Margot but where was the Count in this installment? Timothée Chalamet was not a convincing Paul Atreides.

Lip synching in the invented languages was carelessly done. I'm going deaf and I pay particular attention to spoken dialogue matching the mouth movements which is why I never watch dubbed shows or films. On some occasions when characters switched language in one scene, it was really obvious that a different voice had been speaking the invented language and not the actor at all.

I'm not going to post spoilers so I draw a veil over the deviations from the book which were unnecessary and detracted from the story being told.

Do you know what? I prefer the TV adaptation! I'm going to look that up and watch it to remove the bad taste this version has left.

I'd read the book many years ago and had thought it was a wonderful mix of storytelling, facts and fantasy. I was so happy to have come to the series and realised that the show was inspired by the book and not an adaptation of it. Indeed, some of the characters in the series were inspired in their actions by Süskind's book too, which I found to be a neat twist.

I initially struggled with the affair between the inspector and the prosecutor but realised that it had to have a point and it did. One could almost say that this affair drove the episodes to their conclusion.

Just a word of warning. This is not for the literal minded. There has to be a suspension of belief in the laws of chemistry, biology and physics. Once this is accepted, the series unfolds in its own logical way.

Definitely recommended.

This was another view of Finland. What we get presented with abroad is the image of the happiest country in the world with the best education system that has led to one hundred per cent literacy. I'm not Finnish, but I have lived in Finland and know that there's a flip side to this. The Finland that's portrayed in the series is the one of hopelessness and alcoholism. Of violent Hell's Angels and drugs.

Thank goodness that I was little involved with this in my area of south eastern Finland living in a prosperous little village. However, in the now-demolished local motel the hopeless youth gathered to get drunk, some later joining the gangs of the nearest large town.

The series shows this world to perfection. However it's not one that I wanted to see so I bailed out partway through episode three.

I can't say the series is bad. It just wasn't for me. Nonetheless, I can't recommend it.

Well, phew, I got to the end of the ten episodes. I'm not quite sure how. It really is one of those productions where the plot, action and acting all get so bad that there's a sort of horrid fascination in seeing more.

Tucked into the storyline were a couple of soft porn scenes per episode, one of them portraying gay sex. I have to say that the actor portraying Fernando looked more convincing here with Bernardo than in his scenes with Miranda. Poor Rafael drew the short straw with portly Rita. Hunky Heitor was the most convincing lover but then who wouldn't be thrown off their feet by him?

As for the plot, it was devastatingly easy to grasp by the end of episode two who the baddies and who the goodies were. In fact, I'd worked out why all the machinations were going on by the end of episode four. The person behind the events didn't make a convincing nutcase. In fact their attempted evil and manic laughter and storytelling in the final episode were hilarious rather than convincing.

I actually didn't have anything better to watch due to a laptop malfunction. If I'd been able to get something else, I'd have dropped this like a ton of bricks.