I've been alternating between watching episodes of the 1980s Miss Marple with Joan Hickson and the 2000s Marple with Geraldine McEwan, and it's been fascinating to compare their approaches to adapting the books. The Hickson version is mostly faithful, with a few tweaks here and there, most of them things to dramatize something that might have been ( Read more... )

Thanks to my sister's excellent advice, I signed up for BritBox so I could watch Gardeners' World. I think I would like all my entertainment delivered by soothing British gardeners from now on. I mean, The Irregulars was fun too. But this show somehow offers the closest thing to the uplifting, restorative feeling you get from being in an actual ( Read more... )

I was doing homework or restricted from watching such horrible violent television or something back when Xena: Warrior Princess came out, so I decided to watch a couple of episodes. Only 20 years behind!

I can already see how the Xena/Gabrielle relationship could get really compelling quickly, but it is so hard to focus on that when the show keeps ( Read more... )

For some unfathomable reason, I started watching Alphas. I... well, I think I keep watching because there are things I like about the concept and I keep hoping the show will live up to what it could be ( Read more... )

The TOS episode "Requiem for Methuselah" has got to be one of the best examples of giving the designated "smart" character random knowledge for plot purposes. Okay, Spock can play the piano--that's fine. He already plays the Vulcan lute, and it's not uncommon for musically-inclined people to play a second instrument ( Read more... )

I have approximately three million backlogged, half-finished thoughts on Stuff I Have Read/Watched Lately. Here's a few to clear out the queue.

( A Stranger in Olondria / Sofia Samatar )

Inevitably, whenever someone expresses discontent about how a movie/book/TV show had plot holes you could drive a semi truck through, or characters so shallow they evaporated before your eyes, or big ugly smears of sexism/racism/homophobia/the rest of the vile package, someone will pop up and say, “But it’s just a fluffy movie/book/TV show and isn’ ( Read more... )

I am well aware of series rot from long experience. I know that those nagging problems at the beginning are highly unlikely to be a set-up for subverting cliches and stereotypes and will probably grow until they overwhelm everything that was once good about the series. And yet I keep hoping. Futilely, so far.

Some recent disappointments:

The ( Read more... )

One of the things I like about Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is its end: rather than gaining valuable experience from this adventure which Makes Him A ManTM, Jim Hawkins tells us that he still has nightmares about his ordeal. Shipping off with pirates might be fun for the reader, but it isn’t character-building or fun for anyone involved ( Read more... )

I've started watching Elementary, because Lucy Liu is Watson and we all know that Watson was a woman and how awesome to see that on screen? What a pity that they didn't make Holmes a woman as well. And/or Moriarty, who has not appeared yet but surely will. Me, I nominate Nicole Wallace as an arch-nemesis to shake things up. Surely Goren isn't the ( Read more... )