Tag: UK

Let Us Prey

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★★★★
“The devil’s in the details.”

letuspreyI’m not religious, but I do enjoy a good religious movie. Say what you like about the Bible, it has some great stories, and inspiration for a ton of others [some day, I want to see the Book of Revelations filmed by Paul Verhoeven]. This certainly falls into the latter camp, but the small cast and claustrophobic settings work for it very well. On the way to take up a new post at a police station in a small Scottish town, Rachel (McIntosh) witnesses a pedestrian being hit by a joy-riding teenager, though the victim is nowhere to be found. Taking the perp to the station, the victim (Cunningham), known only as “Six” (after his eventual cell number), is located and brought to the station: but the doctor brought in to check his wounds tries to kill him. It becomes clear that Six knows a lot more, not just about Rachel, but her new boss Sergeant MacReady (Russell), and the other inhabitants of the station, on both sides of the bars. That’s dangerous knowledge, since some of those are definitely not intended for public consumption. Rachel, whose secret involved hurt done to rather than by her, has to figure out Six’s agenda – Devil? Angel? Bit of both? – to survive the night.

Right from the opening credits, depicting Six against a variety of ominous backgrounds, the creep factor here is severely amped up, and it keeps increasing the rest of the way – just when you think it’s reached its peak, O’Malley turns the screw another notch. It also benefit from very good performances. Cunningham has been a house-approved actor since Dog Soldiers, and exudes presence even when quite, as he is particularly in the early going, while McIntosh was striking in an equally disturbing film, The Woman, and brings much the same sense of physicality to her character here. The director has said one of the inspirations was the original Assault on Precinct 13, and I can see that; however, in a psychological sense, it felt almost like a psychological version of another John Carpenter film, The Thing, with people’s “inner monsters” bursting out to wreak havoc on those unfortunate enough to be around them. There are a couple of embarrassing mis-steps: at one point, for example, a character carefully and ostentatiously removes his glasses, only for them immediately to re-appear on his face! That kind of sloppy mistake is disappointing, and could easily have been avoided.

We also wondered why no-one makes much effort to call in external help, be that from another station or emergency service. For a while, I was thinking it was going to reveal that all the participants were dead already, which would have been a tough act to pull off. Does it end up going that way? I couldn’t possibly comment. But if they ever decided to make a sequel, we’d love to see it.  We watched this the same day as Jurassic World, and both my wife and I think this was the better movie.

Dir: Brian O’Malley
Star: Pollyanna McIntosh, Liam Cunningham, Douglas Russell

Our Girl

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★★★★
“GI Molly”

ourgirlMolly Dawes (Turner) has just turned 18, works in a nail-salon, lives on a council estate with her five siblings, pregnant mom and unemployable father, and has a Muslim boyfriend who is cheating on her. Oh, she looks kinda like a chav version of Daenerys Targaryen too, but given her unsurprising lack of dragons, has no apparent future. Throwing up at the end of a night out with her gal pals, she finds herself in front of an Army recruitment office, and decides it offers a potential way out from her dead-end life. Naturally, it’s not quite as easy as that, since her boyfriend is unimpressed, and her parents think the big announcement is that she’s pregnant. But she persists, and the film follows her journey through basic training, as the mouthy peroxide blonde turns into a combat medical technician.

Yes, it’s a fair criticism that this is heavily pro-Army, occasionally feeling like a recruitment video more than a movie. But it doesn’t soft-pedal the dangers at all. Indeed, a constant thread in the second half is Molly’s reluctance to write the “letter from the grave” required for all recruits, to be sent home in the event of their death, and perhaps the film’s most poignant moment has a ceremony at a war memorial, with a veteran reading John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Fields. But the film’s biggest strength is undeniably Turner, an escapee from long-running British soap EastEnders. She captures perfectly the multi-faceted character of Molly, who wants more out of life, but has no apparent way to get it. In that aspect, this reminded me somewhat of Dangerous Lady, and I could see the heroine here ending up slipping into crime to escape her situation – and doing just as well. But Molly lacks self-confidence – describing herself as stupid even when that clearly isn’t the case – and that, along with the opportunity, is what the military provides.

There’s an interesting subplot where Molly talks about basic training with another recruit, who compares the Army to a cult, designed to break an individual down so they can build you back up the way they want. He means it disparagingly – and later is tossed out, as “unfit for Army service”, apparently not having fooled anyone. But the film seems to be making the case that this is not necessarily a bad thing, because the end product, particularly in this case, appears to be a much more productive member of society than the one who enlisted in the cult. Even if it’s also someone who is now estranged from her pals, her boyfriend  and some of her family as a result. Thought-provoking and engaging, this was turned into a five-part series, that I think I may now have to track down.

Dir: David Drury
Star: Lacey Turner, Flossy Grounds, Daniel Black

Restless (2012)

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★★★½
“Before she was Agent Carter…”

restlessWatching Atwell walking the streets of forties New York as British agent Eva Delectorskaya does little to dissuade you from the feeling that this could be a prequel to Agent Carter, telling about some of her wartime exploits, before she goes to work for the Strategic Scientific Reserve. There’s actually a good deal more going on: the two-part TV miniseries starts 30 years after the end of the war, when Sally Gilmartin (Rampling) reveals to her daugher, Ruth (Dockery), the truth about her identity as the former Miss Delectorskaya, recruited in pre-war Paris by British intelligence, after her brother is killed by fascists. After things kick off, she is sent first to Belgium, and then to New York where she works on efforts to get America into the war, and continues a relationship with her boss, Lucas Romer (Sewell). However, sent on what appears to be a simple courier mission to New Mexico, she finds evidence pointing to another agenda, and which suggests a traitor within the department. It’s this which leads to her going off-grid: but it appears her fake identity has been compromised back in the present day, with her home under surveillance, by person or persons unknown.

The vast spread of this, taking place over four decades or so, requires the use of two actresses to play the lead, and that can often be an issue. However, here it’s possible to imagine Atwell aging into someone like Rampling – if you look at pictures of the latter from the seventies, they are not entirely dissimilar. [It certainly works much better than the idea of Sewell becoming Michael Gambon, which is the other half of the equation] At three hours, this may be a bit over-stretched, particularly in the second half, where there seems to be a lot of going from one place to another without much purpose. Contrast this to the tenseness delivered by the first part, in particular when Eva and Lucas go to a Dutch border town, where a Gestapo officer is supposed to be defecting, only for the operation to go horribly wrong after a botched exchange of pass-phrases. But whose fault was that? I’d like to have seem more of these thriller aspects, as Hall (who has worked both on Spooks and Strike Back) seems to have a good handle on these.

The ending was a little bit of a damp squib as well: it became apparent early on who the traitor is, if only because all the other credible candidates get bumped off. From that point, you are more or less waiting for the inevitable face-off between the parties concerned, although the acting abilities of those involved certainly help. After a few years, in the acting wilderness, Rampling seems to be undergoing a bit of a late career renaissance, between roles like this, and in Dexter and Broadchurch. Maybe she’ll follow the footsteps of Helen Mirren and become an action heroine for the older generation: on the basis of this, she would probably do rather well.

Dir: Edward Hall
Star: Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Dockery

The Machine

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★★★½
“Rise of the Robots”

the machineA little way in the future, a cold war between China and the West is beginning to heat up. In an underground base, Vincent McCarthy (Stephens) is doing research into cybernetic implants that can help injured soldiers lead productive lives. He’s also working on a fully self-aware android. His boss, Thompson (Lawson) likes this because of the potential military uses; McCarthy is actually doing it as a potential way of helping his mentally-disabled daughter. He gets a new assistant, Ava (Lotz), whose radical politics are viewed with suspicion by Thompson, yet there’s no denying her knowledge, and McCarthy also uses Ava as the template for his android’s persona. When she is killed by a Chinese agent, McCarthy activates the android, called “Machine”. and Thompson sees his chance to shape into a prototype for a new generation of artificial soldiers., super-strong, lightning fast and unburdened by that pesky morality thing. He blackmails McCarthy into removing Machine’s conscience, only to find she has entered into an electronic alliance with the soldiers that received implants, who are now working as guards on the base.

The start of this rang bells. I think I made an effort to watch this before, and gave up for some reason, likely related to it taking a while to get anywhere beyond its obvious low-budget limitations, i.e. early on, it forgets the need to show, don’t tell and is frankly, too chatty. However, once Ava turns into Machine, it becomes a good deal more interesting. It remains somewhat derivative in certain aspects, though it’s hard for any low-budget SF film ever to be entirely original: Species and Blade Runner would appear the most obvious inspirations, asking what it means to be human, yet taking the form of a very non-human life-form. Chuck in some Frankenstein, a bit of 2001, and it seems to have some Eve of Destruction in there as well, through the “military experiment gone rogue” angle. However, it’s most effective when going its own way, whether in storyline or style: there’s one stunning sequence where Machine isn’t doing much beyond walking, and is literally glowing from within. Beautifully executed, it shows what imagination and ingenuity can do, even on limited resources.

The movie’s other strength is Lotz who, as the picture above shows, genuinely looks like she could kick your ass if she wanted to, a refreshing change from some of the wispier action-heroines I’ve seen recently. [I’m looking at you, The Lady Assassin…] I may have to start watching Arrow, on which she plays Black Canary: her background as a dancer serves her well, and she also projects a wide-eyed innocence which appears appropriate to her “newborn” status. But the latter might be as much for show, since it’s coupled with a steadily escalating awareness that the things Thompson wants her to do, might be morally ambiguous, at the very least. More intelligent than the average genre entry (if perhaps not as smart as it thinks), Caradog and his crew demonstrate a clear talent for making a little go a long way. I look forward to seeing what he does in future – and Lotz is likely also a name on which to keep an eye, as well.

Dir: Caradog W. James
Star: Caity Lotz, Toby Stephens, Denis Lawson, Pooneh Hajimohammadi

Warrioress

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★★★
“Cecily, Warrior Princess”

warrioriessThis is one I’ve been aware of since as far back as 2010, but it seemed to have been lost in post-production hell, so I was surprised to see this had finally got a release, coming out on DVD in its home territory of the UK last May. It’s one of those films where you need to know, going in, that this is not a slick Hollywood blockbuster with massive production values, and instead is clearly a work of love for those involved, doing their best with limited resources. In fact, I can’t really do better in setting those expectations than another review, which said the film was, “Best described as ‘Xena filmed on a Doctor Who-circa-1980 budget by way of a Robin of Sherwood LARPing weekend'”. I can’t really improve much on that, though would perhaps add, “Set on Steampunk Sunday at your local Renaissance Festival.”

The story is triggered by a prophecy, which sees Boudiccu (Fey) first win custody of a pair of legendary weapons, then journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape, where humanity has largely reverted to tribal savagery. However, the crypto-fascist Falonex clan still appear to have a handle on some old-school technology and appear to be massing to establish their dominance. On the way to the prophesied location, where she will face another warrioress in a battle which will hopefully lead to a champion rising who can defeat the Falonex, Boudiccu is joined by White Arrow (Simpson), who is seeking revenge on those who killed her family. Or something. They have to fend off attacks, share flashback sequences and, eventually, have a twist revealed in their relationship that should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone paying attention.

What works? Simple: the action, led by Fay. She’s a tiny thing – 4’9″! – yet it’s entirely convincing, because the style of her fights don’t show her using strength and power to beat her opponents (which would be implausible), they instead emphasize skill, quickness and agility, which she has in spades. Credit, too, for Boyask, who consciously avoids the rapid-fire style of editing, knowing that the best thing he can do with a talent like Fay, is point the camera in her direction, then let her get on with it. [Sometimes, knowing not to do anything is more important than trying to do it] There’s a battle, not long after Boudiccu leaves her village, in which she takes on half-a-dozen other women, which is just glorious: it’s probably the best action heroine sequence ever to come out of the UK. But therein lies a problem, in that nothing during the hour thereafter is as great: good, sure, sometimes very good, but the final battle in particular feels like a letdown.

What doesn’t work? Sadly, way too much of the stuff between the fights, which feels like a slapdash grabbing of elements lifted from elsewhere, lobbed into a storyline which might just about have passed muster on a wet Sunday at my college D&D society. The efforts at generating any kind of broad, post-apocalyptic landscape are feeble, particularly the Falonex, who are represented by a ropey CGI backdrop and the interior of a single tent, which does not succeed in making them the kind of global threat they are supposed to be, especially since their scenes are play largely for laughs. But what’s really missing from the dialogue and performances, is any sense of intensity. They’re purely functional, intended to get the story from A to B (where A and B are almost certainly fight scenes). It’s clear from the action scenes, everyone involved had a passion for what they were doing there. Unfortunately, that passion is absent from everywhere else, and weakens the overall product to an extent that many will be unable to look past the flaws, and appreciate the positive attributes to be found here.

Dir: Ross Boyask
Star: Cecily Fay, Joelle Simpson, Christian Howard, Merrilees Fay Harris

Confine

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★★½
“Home invasion, English style”

Pippa (Lowe) is an international model whose career is ended after a car accident leaves her with a disfigured face. Her confidence shattered, she retreats to the safety of her apartment, not leaving it for any reason. But her stately isolation is disrupted by the arrival of Kayleigh (Bennett), an art thief who needs a place to hide out, and takes Pippa hostage while she waits for her accomplice, Henry (Allen), to show up. But when he does, Henry is knocked out and tied up too, as Kayleigh’s hidden agenda becomes apparent: she has few, if any, moral scruples, and is using Henry just as much as she is using Pippa. But is there perhaps even more going on than it seems? Was Kayleigh’s arrival in Pippa’s apartment purely the stroke of bad luck it initially seemed?

There’s something to be said of the claustrophobia generated by a confined setting: in some ways, this reminded me of 2LDK, though the adversaries here clearly have a different kind of relationship. The inability of the heroine here to leave adds an additional level of peril to the well-worn home invasion genre, perhaps making Audrey Hepburn’s Wait Until Dark another influence, with Pippa’s disabilities (which include OCD) standing in for blindness. Tobbell and cinematographer Eben Bolter seem aware of the potential limitations of their space, using a number of visual tricks to keep things interesting, such as overhead shots. While some work, it betrays an apparent lack of confidence in their material and its ability to retain the audience’s engagement. Perhaps this is tied to their lead’s inexperience as an actress – this was Lowe’s feature debut, though her “day job” as a model certainly makes her not inappropriate for the role, and her performance is respectable enough.

confineBennett certainly has the more interesting role, with Kayleigh’s background as much a mystery as her goals: is she genuinely the Sloane Ranger robber she seems? I can’t say I was ever convinced by her character, though it is still much more developed than Henry, who exists almost solely so he can be tied up and abused (between this and Theon Greyjoy from Game of Thrones, it seems torture is a requirement for Allen’s contract). The main problem, however, is a script which consists almost entirely of contrivance: people behave in a way necessary for the script to progress, and which doesn’t make much sense on any other basis. There’s one obvious signpost pointing toward how this will end, so when this comes to pass, it provokes less shock and more of a casual shrug. Maybe it’s all just too Britishly polite for its own damn good.

Dir: Tobias Tobbell
Star: Daisy Lowe, Eliza Bennett, Alfie Allen

She-Wolves – England’s Early Queens

Video

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In the medieval and Tudor world there was no question in people’s minds about the order of God’s creation – men ruled and women didn’t. Yet despite everything that stood in their way, a handful of women did attempt to rule medieval and Tudor England. Historian Dr Helen Castor explores seven queens who challenged male power, the fierce reactions they provoked and whether the term ‘she wolves’ was deserved. Helen looks at what happened when England was faced not just with inadequate kings, but no kings at all.

Matilda and Eleanor

800 years ago Matilda almost became the first woman to be crowned queen of England in her own right. Castor explores how Matilda reached this point and why her bid for the throne ultimately failed. Her daughter-in-law Eleanor of Aquitaine was an equally formidable woman. Despite being remembered as the queen of courtly love, in reality during her long life she divorced one king and married another, only to lead a rebellion against him. She only finally achieved the power she craved in her seventies.

jane mary elizabeth

Isabella and Margaret

In 1308 a 12-year-old girl, Isabella of France, became queen of England when she married the English king. A century later another young French girl, Margaret of Anjou, followed in her footsteps. Both these women were thrust into a violent and dysfunctional England and both felt driven to take control of the kingdom themselves. Isabella would be accused of murder and Margaret of destructive ambition. But as historian Helen Castor reveals, their self-assertion that would have seemed natural in a man was deemed unnatural, even monstrous in a woman.

Jane, Mary and Elizabeth

In 1553, for the first time in English history all the contenders for the crown were female. In the lives of these three Tudor queens – Jane, Mary and Elizabeth – she explores how each woman struggled in turn with wearing a crown that was made for a male head. Elizabeth I seemed to show that not only could a woman rule, but could do so gloriously. But at what cost?

How I Live Now

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★★★
“My Sweet Sixteen Teenage Armageddon.”

howilivenowThe extraordinarily surly teenager Elizabeth (Ronan), who loudly insists on being known by everyone as “Daisy,” is sent from American to spend the summer in rural Britain with relatives. Unsurprisingly, she hates it – at least, until she meets Eddie (MacKay), a local brooding hunk for whom she falls. Fate throws a spanner in the works, however, as escalating tensions eventually lead to a nuclear attack on London and the outbreak of World War 3, against an un-named foe. The kids try to fend for themselves, but the boys and girls are forcibly separated, with Daisy having to take care of young cousin Piper (Bird). Turning her willpower to topic other than, as she says, not eating chocolate, she and Piper escape the camp where they are being used as forced labour, and begin the hazardous trek back to where Daisy is sure Eddie is waiting.

The best thing here by far is the heroine’s character arc. In the first two minutes, it’s established what a totally unlikeable bitch Daisy is: she has clearly made up her mind to hate the trip and everything about it, and the audience hates her for the obvious narcissism. But by the end, she has been forged in the fire of adversity and completely transformed in just about all aspects of personality, to someone who has learned that it’s much better to live your life for others than for yourself. As Chris noted, it’d be funny if the whole thing had just been a set-up by her (unseen) father, just to teach his whiny daughter a good lesson. That isn’t the case: what it is, is another powerhouse performance by Ronan, backed by solid work from the rest of the young cast, particularly Piper, who could gives the likes of Abigail Breslin and Dakota Fanning a run for their money in the Adorability Stakes.

Probably the main weakness is the abruptness of the relationship between Daisy and Eddie. It probably needed more time taken to develop it, because as things stand, it seems Daisy falls head over heels for him at about the second glance. On the other hand, I’m quite glad it didn’t because it’s the kind of standard, young adult cliché which we’ve seen far too often before [this was based on a book from the genre by Meg Rosoff]. Much more satisfying is the second half, when Daisy is forced entirely into relying on her own skills, and becomes a much more interesting character as a result. Director Macdonald got his start in documentary film-making and brings much of the same urgency to proceedings here, not soft-pedalling the brutality and violence of armed conflict. Like a more contemporary version of The Hunger Games, it shows how inner strength can be found in the most surprising of places, and Ronan cements her position as one of the leading young action heroines in Hollywood.

Dir: Kevin Macdonald
Star: Saoirse Ronan, George MacKay, Harley Bird, Tom Holland

Shadow Dancer

  By

★★★½
“The informant who went into the cold.”

shadowdancerIt’s 1993, and the peace process in Northern Ireland is cautiously inching forward – though there are some who prefer a more robust method of rebellion, shall we say. Among them is Collette McVeigh (Riseborough) whose little brother was killed by the British Army when she was 12. Along with her brothers Gerry (Gillen, whom you’ll know as Littlefinger from Game of Thrones) and Connor, she is part of the armed struggle, until a mission to plant a bomb in London leads to her capture. MI5 officer Mac (Owen) gives her a stark choice: face a long stretch in prison, separated from her children, or become an informer on her own family.  Collette chooses the later, perhaps influenced by Mac showing her it was an IRA sniper who killed her brother. But it soon becomes clear more is at play, with Mac’s boss (Anderson) apparently intent on sacrificing Collette, in order to protect another, more valuable asset.

Man, this is chilly. Just about everyone in this is being manipulated by one or more of the other characters. It is particularly successful at bringing home just how much the life of an informant must become a gurgling vortex of paranoid loneliness: you can’t trust anyone, and your life could end at virtually any moment. There’s one scene which really brings that home, where Collette is taken to an abandoned apartment, and quizzed about recent security breaches by her cell’s “compliance officer” (for want of a better job description!). She’s entirely on her own, and not even her brothers would be able to help if the truth is revealed. But she’s certainly not the only one: Mac is equally being used by his boss as a tool, and with a coldness that’s particularly chilling, since they’re supposed to be on the same side. Enhancing this, is that the viewer can see the point: it’s like a game of chess where a knight is sacrificed to protect the queen. Doesn’t make it any less painful for the knight of course, but the greater good is not necessarily painless. As a result, there are no real villains here: there are, however, a number of people who have to do unpleasant things for others, either through coercion or because they believe them to be justified. Such is the murky world of terrorism and counter-terrorism.

Director Marsh is best known for his docudrama Man on Wire, about a tight-rope walker who strung a line between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 and crossed between them, 1,350 feet up. This provides a similar same sense of living on a knife-edge, and resulting ever-present peril – along with the threat of violence, which even infects something as solemn as a funeral. The double-twist ending is shocking, though I confess the second one seemed to appear out of nowhere, and appeared to offer little more than this shock value. Still, as a tense drama, this is solid enough, anchored by decent performances from all involved.

Dir: James Marsh
Star: Andrea Riseborough, Clive Owen, Gillian Anderson, Aidan Gillen

Dangerous Lady

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★★★★
“No luck of the Irish to be found here.”

dangerousladyBased on the debut novel by British crime writer Martina Cole, this depicts the life of Maura Ryan (Lynch), the only daughter in her family, whose brothers are making a push for increased power in the underworld of 1960’s London, much to the disapproval of the Ryan’s matriarch (Hancock). Leading the push is Michael (Isaacs), who has more than a touch of Ronnie Kray about him, being both homosexual and a borderline psychotic. Maura falls in love with Terry Patterson (Teale), and is shocked to discover he’s a policeman. When he comes under pressure from colleagues to use their relationship, he ends it – unaware that Maura has just become pregnant. She is forced to have an abortion, which leaves her insides looking like they’ve been weed-whacked, and vows she’s going to show him, by becoming every bit the gangster peer of her brothers. But the path to the top is littered with dead bodies, of foes, friends and family.

There’s not a great deal here which you haven’t seen in a million other dramas about organized crime, be they set in America with the mafia, or Hong Kong and the triads. The whole “trying to go straight and make an honest life” thing is certainly not new, and strapping a skirt on, isn’t enough to make it so. It’s really the performances which make this work, and the acting is top-notch. Among the men, Isaacs is outstanding, going from zero to brutal in the blink of an eye, and you certainly get the notion of someone who was turned into what he became (Cole doesn’t explicitly snort derisively at “born that way”, but it’s certainly implied abuse as a youngster by another mobster is behind many of Michael’s problems). He’s a bundle of conflicting emotions: fiercely loyal to family members, but capable of savage brutality to anyone who betrays him, or whom he considers a threat.

But it’s Lynch and Hancock who are the driving force here, and both are excellent. The latter was a veteran of 40-plus years in plays, films and TV, and portrays Mrs. Ryan as being a loving mother, but one who gradually comes to the conclusion that they are beyond her control, Michael in particular. However, by the time she has realized this, she’s helpless to do anything much about it, except bar Michael from the house, even though that causes her pain, probably only a mother can know. Lynch plays Maura with very much the same streak of stubborn steel. As the show develops over its 50-minutes episodes, she becomes someone who won’t let anyone, least of all her family, tell her what to do, because she has seen the consequences of those bad decisions. She may not be right, but if she isn’t, at least it’s her own choice. You can’t help rooting for Maura, a victim of circumstance, as she negotiates the tricky life of a woman in the era, especially one in an area certainly not exactly female-friendly.

It’s slightly disappointing that we don’t get to see Maura go all Scarface on anyone; despite the cover picture, I’m not certain I recall her pulling the trigger at any point. However, that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm  for a solid slab of television drama, and we were sad to reach the end and realize that there were only four episodes – it’s an idea which could certainly have sustained a full season. I’ve now acquired a few of Cole’s books, and look forward to reading them in due course.

Dir: John Woods
Star: Susan Lynch, Jason Isaacs, Owen Teal, Sheila Hancock