Back when this first aired, I didn't really expect much from it. The show was promoted as a sexy pirate romp with blood and gore and some girl-on-girl action designed to titillate. I watched it for fun, for the entertainment, for Toby Stephens.
In all of those, the show delivered, and more. So much more. But it wasn't until I decided to re-watch it years after its first airing that I truly appreciate the show for what it does.
The material is quite rich and dramatic. But what makes the story compelling is the characters. Their consistency and development all through the whole 4-season series is fascinating to see.
And it's not all men, too. The women have agency and their own agenda. Their stories do not depend on a man. They are not just damsels or love interests. They are pretty fucking kick-ass.
That said, I have other shows I'm watching this season:
An HBO show starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz, and in season 2 Meryl Streep. The cream of the crop star in this show. So what's it about?
It's about women, mothers, living in a quaint little seaside town of Monterey. They're different. They're the same. They come from different worlds, different backgrounds. Their children all go to the same school. They are friends. They are rivals. They are friends. They argue. And they fight with the fierceness of a mother. They fight for what's right. They are sometimes wrong. They are strong. They are broken.
But when worse comes to worst, they band together.
It's so refreshing to see so many women on my TV. Season 2 is currently airing.
I highly recommend the first season. Written and directed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and starring Sandra Oh as the titular character in what is a first for an Asian actress, I believe, and featuring Jodie Comer in an astonishing performance as the delightfully quirky international assassin with a penchant for high fashion, Villanelle.
The story is that Eve is an MI5 agent, a glorified desk worker, who unexpectedly catches on that the spate of high-profile killings all over Europe is done by one particularly skilled female assassin. At once, she is recruited by an MI6 agent, played by Fiona Shaw, with the main task of finding out everything she can about the assassin and the shady international group she works for known only as The Twelve.
Of course, Villanelle figures out that Eve is looking for her and decides to play her own cat-and-mouse game.
Villanelle is a psychopath, and Eve may or may not be a sociopath herself. The show is tense, smart, utterly serious about the kills, but also sidesplittingly hilarious. The first season was a solid A. The second season, not so much. Phoebe Waller-Bridge stepped away from the directing and writing helm in the second season to work on her other show, Fleabag, and the show lost some of its flavour as a result. But never lose hope for I hear she is coming back for the third season. Yes!
Speaking of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, she has another show called FLEABAG, which is a slice-of-life dramedy about a woman named 'Fleabag' who lives in London where she runs a hamster-themed coffee shop that she used to co-own with her now dead best friend. She's quite blasé about everything and treats everybody, including herself, the same.
As we follow her quirky little life, we are also introduced to the people around her. There's her stiff, brilliant but over-anxious sister trapped in a bad marriage. There's her bumbling idiot of a dad who always means well. There's the stifling stepmother who always goes for the jugular if she can help it. And then there's the dead best friend who is portrayed through the rose-tinted screen of memory, alternately tragic and hilarious.
The main conceit of the show is that Fleabag often breaks the fourth wall, as if to show us, the audience, that she's in on it. We're all in on it. And we are not just watching her story unfold and gasping and reacting. She's watching it right along with us, and having the same reaction.
There are only 2 seasons, and each one is perfect.
A funny sitcom about a bunch of Irish Catholic school girls and an English boy. The setting is Derry in Northern Ireland in the 90s at the height of the period known as the Troubles, when the political unrest between the Unionists (Irish who wish to remain with the UK) and Nationalists (Irish who wish to establish their own Irish Republic) went through its most violent phase.
But despite the otherwise dark setting, this show is not dark at all. In fact, it's very funny. It's one of the funniest shows I've ever watched, and so well made, too. The script is witty, featuring weird Northern Irish humour delivered in the kind of flawless accent that requires subtitles. It's so good. And I can't wait for Season 3 to come out.
I've watched other shows, too. Like Stranger Things and Harlots. I've yet to watch the third season of Jessica Jones, which is my next project. The final season of Orange is the New Black is coming out, too, so there's that as well. But the above shows I mentioned are top-notch and my faves so far.
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