A city's hero vs a village's heroines
Atlantis 2.11 Kin
And this is why the show was cancelled and I’m not too sorry about the cancellation.Lots too much stupid contrivance for effect, Jason being utterly unsympathetic and nobody much seeming to care about the fate of the city. So, I didn’t care much about what the episode was all about,
Medea’s sudden development of a conscience was ridiculous. One, these games have been carried out before, perhaps less cruelly, but where was Medea’s revulsion at all the executions that have been going on or at being called upon to torture someone? Those were the questions that came to mind, not sighing over the effect of kissing Jason on her.
Meanwhile, Pasiphae had gone soft over her son. (The Pasiphae of old would have had the bumptious lord killed for questioning her.)
Pythagoras, Ariadne (still the cook, apparently) and Hercules were mainly left behind in the Forest of Loyal Friends, until Hercules went off to save Jason and make up after their fight. Jason should apologise to the other two also, BTW. I won’t hold my breath for seeing that in the next episode.
I hope John Hannah was well remunerated for doing all the figurative heavy lifting in this episode. It wasn’t his fault that ‘I am your father’ had less resonance than ‘I am your mother’. At least the show borrowed from Romeo and Juliet as well as other stuff. The unasked question was why he sent Jason to the future (maybe to give his son modern Western attitudes towards leprosy?)
Yes, I am being flippant. As I was at the classic Jason shirtlessness.
I did think they followed through decently on Icarus’s plotline. Again, I don’t know if we’ll have time for Pythagoras finding out and being disappointed in his boyfriend in the last episode, but Daedalus’s suspicion will do.
Looks like the last episode will be swathed in literal darkness as per usual.
Home Fires episode 1
I decided to give this a try then. It's ITV’s latest drama in the period drama slot recently vacated by Poldark and Downton Abbey’s slot in point of fact (Samantha ‘Rosamund’ Bond is in it). Starting on the eve of World War 2, it focuses on the Women’s Institute of the village of Great Paxton.
Okay, so the characterisation seems broad, but that’s to be expected with lots of characters to introduce. Lots of familiar faces- it may take a little while to grasp all the character names.
Bond’s character is set against Francesca Annis’s character, Joyce Cameron (was Annis channelling who I thought she was channelling?), a martinet at home who proposes closing down the WI as the chair of the branch what with the coming war. Mrs Cameron has been accused of being resistant to change and of being a snob.
As there are various signs of how the war will affect these women and their community - an army truck commandeering the roads, all the men and boys having check-ups with a view to enlisting in the armed forces, the memories of those old enough to remember World War 1 and the audience’s own knowledge of what’s to come - the viewers know they’ll need the solidarity and support of this society in the coming conflict. (Or if their husband, like Pat’s, is an abusive bully.)
We got to see the various strata of this village society, with a nice eye for the detail of their humdrum, as the declaration of war approached. The women are clearly going to be all ages, all classes.
I liked the relationship between Bond’s character and Gemmell’s eye-rolling at-the-rebel younger sister. More, that Bond was able to take the leap after fighting Joyce of creating the new WI and being sympathetic, imaginative and inclusive.
And the we got jam-making, that thing the WI is associated with, as, well, political act, declaration of independence from Joyce and part of the invitation to all women, plus war effort - I simply grinned at that.
Of course little sister has her big sister’s back! She just disagreed with her big mouth methods. (The trailer for next week confirmed that she’s the vicar’s wife. How very dare you, Mrs Cameron.)
But that’s just one strand, there were lots of others, and, although it’s painted with a broad, broad brush [ETA: literally showing a moth attracted to the lamp after that metaphor had been uttered to describe young men's attraction to war was too much] the central idea is powerful enough. I thought the decision to use a female choir, not just over the titles, but in the soundtrack and as part of the episode, was perfect.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/173410.html.
And this is why the show was cancelled and I’m not too sorry about the cancellation.Lots too much stupid contrivance for effect, Jason being utterly unsympathetic and nobody much seeming to care about the fate of the city. So, I didn’t care much about what the episode was all about,
Medea’s sudden development of a conscience was ridiculous. One, these games have been carried out before, perhaps less cruelly, but where was Medea’s revulsion at all the executions that have been going on or at being called upon to torture someone? Those were the questions that came to mind, not sighing over the effect of kissing Jason on her.
Meanwhile, Pasiphae had gone soft over her son. (The Pasiphae of old would have had the bumptious lord killed for questioning her.)
Pythagoras, Ariadne (still the cook, apparently) and Hercules were mainly left behind in the Forest of Loyal Friends, until Hercules went off to save Jason and make up after their fight. Jason should apologise to the other two also, BTW. I won’t hold my breath for seeing that in the next episode.
I hope John Hannah was well remunerated for doing all the figurative heavy lifting in this episode. It wasn’t his fault that ‘I am your father’ had less resonance than ‘I am your mother’. At least the show borrowed from Romeo and Juliet as well as other stuff. The unasked question was why he sent Jason to the future (maybe to give his son modern Western attitudes towards leprosy?)
Yes, I am being flippant. As I was at the classic Jason shirtlessness.
I did think they followed through decently on Icarus’s plotline. Again, I don’t know if we’ll have time for Pythagoras finding out and being disappointed in his boyfriend in the last episode, but Daedalus’s suspicion will do.
Looks like the last episode will be swathed in literal darkness as per usual.
Home Fires episode 1
I decided to give this a try then. It's ITV’s latest drama in the period drama slot recently vacated by Poldark and Downton Abbey’s slot in point of fact (Samantha ‘Rosamund’ Bond is in it). Starting on the eve of World War 2, it focuses on the Women’s Institute of the village of Great Paxton.
Okay, so the characterisation seems broad, but that’s to be expected with lots of characters to introduce. Lots of familiar faces- it may take a little while to grasp all the character names.
Bond’s character is set against Francesca Annis’s character, Joyce Cameron (was Annis channelling who I thought she was channelling?), a martinet at home who proposes closing down the WI as the chair of the branch what with the coming war. Mrs Cameron has been accused of being resistant to change and of being a snob.
As there are various signs of how the war will affect these women and their community - an army truck commandeering the roads, all the men and boys having check-ups with a view to enlisting in the armed forces, the memories of those old enough to remember World War 1 and the audience’s own knowledge of what’s to come - the viewers know they’ll need the solidarity and support of this society in the coming conflict. (Or if their husband, like Pat’s, is an abusive bully.)
We got to see the various strata of this village society, with a nice eye for the detail of their humdrum, as the declaration of war approached. The women are clearly going to be all ages, all classes.
I liked the relationship between Bond’s character and Gemmell’s eye-rolling at-the-rebel younger sister. More, that Bond was able to take the leap after fighting Joyce of creating the new WI and being sympathetic, imaginative and inclusive.
And the we got jam-making, that thing the WI is associated with, as, well, political act, declaration of independence from Joyce and part of the invitation to all women, plus war effort - I simply grinned at that.
Of course little sister has her big sister’s back! She just disagreed with her big mouth methods. (The trailer for next week confirmed that she’s the vicar’s wife. How very dare you, Mrs Cameron.)
But that’s just one strand, there were lots of others, and, although it’s painted with a broad, broad brush [ETA: literally showing a moth attracted to the lamp after that metaphor had been uttered to describe young men's attraction to war was too much] the central idea is powerful enough. I thought the decision to use a female choir, not just over the titles, but in the soundtrack and as part of the episode, was perfect.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/173410.html.