Like "Hail Caesar", I am surprised that I am the first to mention this. I missed the first episode but Mrs Bored loved it and insisted we watched it now that our Sunday night "Orange is the new Black" watching has finished. I wanted to get on with the long delayed second half of the West Wing but to no avail.
I was really impressed by this. As someone that is completely unimpressed by the Daniel Craig Bonds, this struck me as exactly what they should be. The plotline was much more relevant and nuanced than the "foreign - especially brown - people are bad" narratives of most bonds (although "The Living Daylights" had arms dealers as villains). I thought the camera work and production values were ace and, again, up there with Bonds. There has been a lot of moaning about licence payers' money being used to blow up planes and villages but, to be honest, I would rather it used for good drama rather than Top Gear blowing up caravans or Phil Mitchell destroying a portakabin.
The cast was generally good. Hiddlestone was, perhaps, a little too smooth but a certain shoe-in for the next Bond (should they not go for Idris Elba as has been lobbied for), Olivia Coleman is always good (playing a character that was male in the book apparently), Hugh Laurie carried on in the vein of his "House" misanthropic nature well, Tom Hollander played it perhaps a bit too camp but not off-puttingly so. The supporting cast were all the sort of stalwarts that you often see in good quality drama so there were never going to be any issues there.
The only performance - or, perhaps, casting - that jarred was Elizabeth Debicki. I didn't think that she was such a good actress that she made the role her own, she was way too young (10 years younger than Hiddlestone, 30 years younger than Laurie) and too tall. She is actually a similar height - 6ft 2 - to Hiddlestone and Laurie but as she spent most of her time in high heels towering over them. I appreciate that this sort of mismatch happens all the time but, when casting, you would want to have actors that match up physically. With the age issue, I appreciate that younger women are attracted to older richer men but, even so, this was rather stretching it. Of course, they could have cast her first and worked the make actors around her but that wasn't going to happen here obviously.
Maybe because of this, the suspension of disbelief needed to believe that someone as professional as Quill/Pine would endanger an operation - that he had gone to such extreme lengths to work - was hard work. He had faked a murder, got himself beaten almost into a coma and cut himself off from almost all safety nets and then compromised it all for a hotel quickie. Maybe seeing the first episode would have made this more believable for me.
Anyway, I have made too much of this niggle and the romantic interest in anything like this often requires a suspension of disbelief. A nicely multi-layered plot, great characters and performances and an excellent satisfying ending slightly reminiscent of "The Long Good Friday"
Unfortunately, the West Wing has again been put off as it looks like "The Night Manager"s Sunday night replacement "Undercover" is very good as well
I was really impressed by this. As someone that is completely unimpressed by the Daniel Craig Bonds, this struck me as exactly what they should be. The plotline was much more relevant and nuanced than the "foreign - especially brown - people are bad" narratives of most bonds (although "The Living Daylights" had arms dealers as villains). I thought the camera work and production values were ace and, again, up there with Bonds. There has been a lot of moaning about licence payers' money being used to blow up planes and villages but, to be honest, I would rather it used for good drama rather than Top Gear blowing up caravans or Phil Mitchell destroying a portakabin.
The cast was generally good. Hiddlestone was, perhaps, a little too smooth but a certain shoe-in for the next Bond (should they not go for Idris Elba as has been lobbied for), Olivia Coleman is always good (playing a character that was male in the book apparently), Hugh Laurie carried on in the vein of his "House" misanthropic nature well, Tom Hollander played it perhaps a bit too camp but not off-puttingly so. The supporting cast were all the sort of stalwarts that you often see in good quality drama so there were never going to be any issues there.
The only performance - or, perhaps, casting - that jarred was Elizabeth Debicki. I didn't think that she was such a good actress that she made the role her own, she was way too young (10 years younger than Hiddlestone, 30 years younger than Laurie) and too tall. She is actually a similar height - 6ft 2 - to Hiddlestone and Laurie but as she spent most of her time in high heels towering over them. I appreciate that this sort of mismatch happens all the time but, when casting, you would want to have actors that match up physically. With the age issue, I appreciate that younger women are attracted to older richer men but, even so, this was rather stretching it. Of course, they could have cast her first and worked the make actors around her but that wasn't going to happen here obviously.
Maybe because of this, the suspension of disbelief needed to believe that someone as professional as Quill/Pine would endanger an operation - that he had gone to such extreme lengths to work - was hard work. He had faked a murder, got himself beaten almost into a coma and cut himself off from almost all safety nets and then compromised it all for a hotel quickie. Maybe seeing the first episode would have made this more believable for me.
Anyway, I have made too much of this niggle and the romantic interest in anything like this often requires a suspension of disbelief. A nicely multi-layered plot, great characters and performances and an excellent satisfying ending slightly reminiscent of "The Long Good Friday"
Unfortunately, the West Wing has again been put off as it looks like "The Night Manager"s Sunday night replacement "Undercover" is very good as well
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