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    Another tick for Jason Watkins as Wilson. All the more creditworthy that he hasn't dialled up a caricature accent, and there's no sign of a pipe yet.

    Ever since seeing him as Heric the boss vampire in Being Human I can't recall Watkins being anything but excellent.

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      The Mandalorian (or as the boss calls it, The Mandalay) is watchable if you like Star Wars. Youngest even joined us to watch it. Quite handy as he has all the back story and context for it all in his incredibly large brain.

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        I've just watched the Aberfan episode of The Queen. The desperate nature of the subject matter is beautifully handled. Has there ever been a dramatic interpretation of the disaster elsewhere? One that's bearable to watch?

        I know everyone is probably suffering from an Olivia Coleman overdose, but she is properly brilliant in this. Doing a complete cast revamp is a very bold move in a series this popular, but it has worked on absolutely every level.

        I agree with everything said above about Wilson. At first I thought, oh no. But it's a brilliant warts and all interpretation of perhaps one of the most enigmatic, flawed but decent prime ministers we've ever had.

        I had to be led kicking and screaming to watch The Queen, expecting it to be just another dose of fawning sycophancy. But it's worth watching if only because it's beautifully crafted, superbly made television. And actually way more balanced than you could ever have expected it to be

        ​​

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          Yes. I wanted to hate The Crown, but now I enjoy it. It's brilliantly acted, well written, beautifully produced, and has forced me to look up all kinds of recent British history and historical figures that seemed to be part of the ether - well known by everyone but me.

          But I still watch it with the nagging reminder at the back of my head that it's really not been critical of the monarchy at all, and seems to be brilliant propaganda for them - it's not hagiography. It's better propaganda than that. It makes them seem like real, flawed, people. Yet they always seem to basically end up doing to right things...

          Anyway, I watched Episode 2 yesterday where Margaret is off in the US, and it was fantastic.

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            Yes the stuff with LBJ. I wonder how accurate it was.

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              Everything everyone has said, especially the portrayal of Wilson. I also liked the fully realised Marcia who I'd had no sense of previously, and the detail of his inner cabinet, only viewed briefly in the background, with a red-headed woman who's obviously Barbara Castle.

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                Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                Yes. I wanted to hate The Crown, but now I enjoy it. It's brilliantly acted, well written, beautifully produced, and has forced me to look up all kinds of recent British history and historical figures that seemed to be part of the ether - well known by everyone but me.

                But I still watch it with the nagging reminder at the back of my head that it's really not been critical of the monarchy at all, and seems to be brilliant propaganda for them - it's not hagiography. It's better propaganda than that. It makes them seem like real, flawed, people. Yet they always seem to basically end up doing to right things...

                Anyway, I watched Episode 2 yesterday where Margaret is off in the US, and it was fantastic.
                Agree with that, but I suppose they aren’t too bad as absurdly wealthy and out-of-touch royal families go.

                I’ve watched the whole season. It shows Margaret to be a tragic figure, which I suppose she is, but I don’t think she was actually as interesting and fun as she is on the show.

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                  The Princess Alice episode was fascinating, if only half true. I'm ashamed to say knew nothing about her whatsoever, a remarkable woman by all accounts.

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                    Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                    Been watching Dublin Murders. After the first two it's watchable, but full of implausible bollocks. Even the Gardai can't be as thick as they seem here with recruit vetting. Also very jarring that the little brother of our piss poor housing minister is the lead, and now he's older and thinner faced than he was in Love/Hate, is a ringer for the bastard.

                    I do like the way they've made the location shots (bar docklands/Blackrock) as generic "big bad city" as possible, I still can't work out which building is masquerading as Garda HQ.
                    The reason you can't recognise anywhere is it was mainly shot in Belfast, it was wrecking my head until someone told me.

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                      Christ!

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                        'The Crown' has some digs at what the monarchy as an institution does to parenting: Elizabeth's coldness towards Charles is really quite brutal, and in the previous series he had a nightmare school experience. But it has bigger digs at the Americans: LBJ and Neil Armstrong are treated in ways unimaginable on US TV.

                        Anne seems far too progressive (so far) compared to the cold fish she's always seemed to be in real life. Philip is almost impossible to play as written because his contradictions are too deep.
                        Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 20-11-2019, 16:21.

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                          Are there any ideas about who will be cast for seasons five and six? Apparently, Helen Mirren doesn't want the role.

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                            Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                            Been watching Dublin Murders. After the first two it's watchable, but full of implausible bollocks. Even the Gardai can't be as thick as they seem here with recruit vetting. Also very jarring that the little brother of our piss poor housing minister is the lead, and now he's older and thinner faced than he was in Love/Hate, is a ringer for the bastard.

                            I do like the way they've made the location shots (bar docklands/Blackrock) as generic "big bad city" as possible, I still can't work out which building is masquerading as Garda HQ.
                            I started this one as well. I'm with you: I like it so far but it's not blowing me away. In fact, I've been doing something I never do with 60-minute dramas: watching half, going to bed, finishing the next half the next night. Only two episodes have aired in the US as well and I've been a few days behind the broadcast date. Part of this approach is my obsessive watching of Euro qualifiers and CAN qualifiers. But I'm also not hooked in the same way I have been for other police dramas. With that said, the second episode certainly opened up a broader mix of characters whose livers are intertwined in ways that are more engaging than the first episode.

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                              Finished 'The Crown'. It makes clear how each character stood in 1977. Series 4 presumably takes us through the Thatcher years, the crux being when Charles starts seeing Camilla, I assume. Andrew's portrayal is also going to be a vexed issue if much of the audience now assumes that he's always been a sexual abuser. Making his wife sympathetic will need some good acting, although I think you can make a case for her just being way out of her depth and lacking Diana's manipulative media skills. I'm also not sure how far they take the arc in one series: 1981-1997 is clearly Diana's "timeline" but they also need to cover Mountbatten's killing, Thatcher's accession, Falklands, etc. And how do you deal with Thatcher in a politically objective way? She's a far more divisive figure than any previous PM of her reign.

                              Casting wise: Olivia Colman surely stays (although she'll be 20 years younger than QEII by the 1990s) but Charles, Camilla, Queen Mother Anne and Philip all need older actors. Colman's ability to "age" in the role will determine how much they can do from the 90s, I suspect.

                              Broadly, I get more nervous about this series the more it moves into events I remember because it can clash with my recollections and feelings.

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                                I think they already said there'd be a whole new cast for the last two seasons, so I don't think Colman will stay. I don't think she'd want to. She's an oscar-winner now and has lots of opportunities to do other things so she'll probably not want to do more than two years of this.

                                They've already announced that Emma Corrin will play Diana. I've seen her on the weird but compelling Batman-prequel (of sorts) called Pennyworth. Hardly anyone else has seen that, however. It's on a fairly obscure streaming service.

                                I haven't been following the Andrew situation. Just too many crises to be worried about, but international and personal, so I've let that one go. Something about the Pizza Express in Woking. I don't know where Woking is, but we've established that Pizza Express is like the Bertucci's of the UK - the best major pizza chain.

                                Was Mountbatten really that much of a parody of an old imperalist dickhead? Somewhere I read he was considered "progressive."

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                                  He was a paedophile. His mishandling of the negotiations for Indian independence led to the death of millions.

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                                    Have we talked about The Mandolorian? It's basically a western/samurai movie in the Star Wars universe. In fact, it lays on the "this is a western" very thick. It's on a desert planet - possibly Tatooine, but I'm not sure it's been specified - The music is much more Ennio Morricone than John Williams. So far, I really like it. I generally like such-and-such-genre-but-in-space! stories and connecting this one to Star Wars just makes it even better.

                                    Last night I also started watching The Black Hole and The Black Cauldron on Disney+ just because I could. They're both films I remember fondly from childhood that I never got to see more than once.

                                    The Black Cauldron was based on the Lloyd Llewellyn novels that I loved. It's not nearly as good as the books, of course, but it's hand-drawn animation and I always like to see a bit of that when I can. I recall liking it at the time, even though it didn't really do justice to the books, because during the 80s, the handful of Disney animated features were the only decent animation around. Most of it was very cheaply done and barely "animated" at all.

                                    Both those films are also examples of what Disney trying to do in the 70s and 80s. That was the period between the end of their golden age (Merry Poppins, etc) and the the rejuvenation that began, as I recall, with The Little Mermaid. That started a run of success with formulaic musical animated films, largely driven by sales of the VHS tapes that kids wanted to watch until the tape broke.* Then, of course, they made the deal with Pixar and ABC and have become a massive media juggernaut, but in the 70s and 80s, they were making most of their money from theme parks and nostalgia.

                                    Most of those films were not successful and have largely been forgotten, but are generally better than people remember and Disney+ is giving us a chance to look at them. I also plan to watch Tron again, but I've seen that lots of times since the first time.

                                    https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/...he-70s-and-80s

                                    * I've also noticed that adults who were kids in the late 80s/early 90s are fiercely loyal to those movies the way people of my generation love Star Wars and Tron and Atari 2600. Now, of course, Disney is making live-action/CGI versions of those films. I've only seen the Beauty and the Beast one.

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                                      Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                                      He was a paedophile. His mishandling of the negotiations for Indian independence led to the death of millions.
                                      I'm not sure The Crown mentions that, but then the India thing was mostly before the show starts, IIRC. It does show that he was helping to plan a coup in the late 60s. I read up on that and it seems like he may or may not have really wanted to do that, but I don't understand why all of those involved didn't go to jail. In the show, the Queen finds out and gives him a stern talking to. He should have been, at the very least, put out to pasture for not immediately blowing the whistle on the coup. A fucking COUP. In Britain. In the 20th century. C'mon, man. Get it together.

                                      He just comes off as a pompous dickhead, played by Charles Dance, who played Tywin Lannister pretty much the same way. Well done.

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                                        Charles Dance has carved a great niche playing ageing, posh, flawed authority figures. And very well he does it. All the more impressive considering his background - I think it was someone here who told me about that.

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                                          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

                                          I'm not sure The Crown mentions that, but then the India thing was mostly before the show starts, IIRC. It does show that he was helping to plan a coup in the late 60s. I read up on that and it seems like he may or may not have really wanted to do that, but I don't understand why all of those involved didn't go to jail. In the show, the Queen finds out and gives him a stern talking to. He should have been, at the very least, put out to pasture for not immediately blowing the whistle on the coup. A fucking COUP. In Britain. In the 20th century. C'mon, man. Get it together.

                                          He just comes off as a pompous dickhead, played by Charles Dance, who played Tywin Lannister pretty much the same way. Well done.
                                          Lots of chinless ex forces/current secret service cunts really really hated Harold Wilson.

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                                            Originally posted by Sits View Post
                                            Charles Dance has carved a great niche playing ageing, posh, flawed authority figures. And very well he does it. All the more impressive considering his background - I think it was someone here who told me about that.
                                            Probably me. I overlapped with Charlie at Leicester College of Art in the late 60s. He was in the typography department, me in photography. Nicest, softest spoken guy you could wish to meet. One day he said "I'm off to be an actor." "Oh yeah?" we thought. "That'll end well." And so it did.
                                            Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 21-11-2019, 21:18.

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                                              That's great to hear. He's so good in even the worst drek. Even Alien 3.

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                                                That's lovely. It's always good when famous people are genuinely nice people too.

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                                                  Delighted to hear from one of the writers that the BBC have This Time with Alan Partridge back on iPlayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...alan-partridge. I was going to pop down the local CEX shop and buy the DVD for £4.

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                                                    Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                                                    That's great to hear. He's so good in even the worst drek. Even Alien 3.
                                                    The best Alien film!

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