Great TV you should be watching: The Shield.

The Shield - Where to Watch and Stream Online – Entertainment.ie“The Shield” (2002-2008) is proof that we are actually living in television’s golden age, if only because so many of you haven’t heard of it. The fact is, there is now so much good US TV around that we can’t possibly see it all, and as a result shows like “The Shield” were pushed to late night slots on TV3 where they are never seen except by the drunk and the stoned and the drunk having sex with a slice of still warm pizza stuck to their bum.

The show centres around a special anti-gang “strike team” operating in a poor Los Angeles neighbourhood, led by possibly the greatest TV anti-hero of all, (At least until Dr. Gregory House came along.), Vic Mackey. Mackey is played by a brooding, thuggish Michael Chiklis, who will stun anyone who remembers him from the gentle family comedy drama “The Commish”. Indeed, the whole ensemble cast is superb, in particular Jay Karnes’s socially inept but dogged detective Holland “Dutch” Waggenbach.

The show is rough and hugely politically incorrect, but what really defines it is its moral greyness. Mackey and his team, indeed most of the characters, are either corrupt or at least compromised, and yet when you see what they have to face on a daily basis one can’t help rooting for them. Viewers find themselves hoping that Mackey prevails as he steals drug money from the dealers. One scene in particular, when Mackey faces off against a paedophile who has kidnapped a young girl will turn even the staunchest liberal into a right wing lynchmobber.

As I said, this is adult drama, and as I’ve said before: Go on, treat yourself.

Great DVDs you should see: A Perfect Candidate.

A Perfect CandidateThe American political documentary has really come into its own in recent times, and “A Perfect Candidate” is up there with the best of them. It chronicles the 1994 US Senate election battle between sitting Democrat Charles Robb and posterboy of the right Oliver North. The movie chronicles the nightmare (For the Dems.) mid terms of 1994 when Bill Clinton looked like he was about to become another Carteresque one-termer, and when Newt Gingrich’s Republicans took over the Congress for the first time since the 1950s.

What is fascinating about the movie is the cultural background, and how an essentially decent but dull (One cringeworthy scene of him looking for voters to canvass in a supermarket is painful to watch.) candidate Charles Robb, a two tour Vietnam veteran, is wrong footed by the conservative right on cultural issues. Bill Clinton makes a very short appearance in the movie, and yet manages to display why he was so highly regarded by black voters.

Don’t miss the “Angry Young Pachyderms” singing “Don’t you know it’s your fault!” during a Republican convention at the opening of the movie, a song that is as catchy as it is offensive to liberals.

A real treat for political junkies, although sadly only available on region one.

A Curious DVD I watched: The Trojan Horse.

The Trojan Horse [DVD]I’m not really recommending this, as it was a bit slow and struggling to be profound, but worth mentioning because of  its curiousity value.

Basically, The Trojan Horse is a Canadian mini-series starring (And co-written by) Paul Gross, whom you may remember as the eccentric mountie Benton Fraser in the tv series “Due South” . It’s about a joint Canadian-EU plot to rig a US presidential election.

The series is actually a sequel to a series called “H20” where Gross played the Canadian prime minister dealing with a mysterious conspiracy.

The conclusion is unusual, and based on a real life event, but what is notable is a rant Gross gives during the movie about his vision of the world. Curiously, it is worded in such a way that would shock most Americans, yet as a European sounded quite reasonable!

Only available on region two with Dutch subtitles at the moment.

Great movies you should see: The Spanish Prisoner.

Mmmm! Hitchcockian!David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner is one of those hidden gems that you stumble across and wonder why you’ve never heard of it. Written and directed by the same writer as Glengarry Glen Ross, it’s a slow burning mystery drama that entices you in, littering twists and red herrings all the way to the end.

Campbell Scott plays the brilliant inventor of an industrial process (A classic Hitchcock McGuffin if there ever was one.) that is set to make both him and the company he works for an obscene amount of money, until he starts to doubt whether he’s been treated fairly or not.

Steve Martin puts in a straight performance which will have you wondering why he doesn’t take more straight roles.

A great Saturday night in with a Chinese (Meal, partner, or both) movie.

A Great Movie (and book): The Day of The Jackal.

Repost.

jackal bookFrederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel “The Day of the Jackal” has already secured its place in novel history. The concept, about right-wing French fanatics hiring a professional assassin to murder President de Gaulle in 1963 is daring for two reasons. The first is that it reads pretty much as a cold heavily detailed step by step almost journalistic expose of the plot rather than a thriller. The second is that we all know the outcome: President de Gaulle survived a number of assassination attempts, but died peacefully in an armchair in his home. In short, not as much a Who-Did-It as How-They-Did-It.

It shouldn’t work, yet it does, and brilliantly. So brilliantly in fact, that one finds oneself reading it again despite knowing the outcome and pretty much every twist in the story. Forsyth’s great success is his ability (honed as a foreign correspondent) to communicate great detail in a absolutely readable and enjoyable manner. For years later many believed it was a true story.

The book (and even more Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 masterpiece movie) also conveys nicely the Europe and France of its day. The shadow of the war still there, yet a continent on the verge of huge integration.

The movie is a stylish joy to watch. Cold and methodical, with minimal use of music, Edward Fox as the Jackal and Michel Lonsdale as the French police chief pursuing him steal the movie. A wealth of British TV stars of the 1970s fill the background.

Both the book and the movie are an absolute treat.

Great movies you should see: The Last Hurrah (1958)

Fianna Fail, Boston Cumann.

Yet another must for the Political Junkie’s DVD library, The Last Hurrah   has Spencer Tracy ( Now there’s an actor) at his finest as a charismatic old school Irish American mayor seeking re-election one last time.

If you want to know how the old Democratic machines locked up the cities, and indeed how Fianna Fail used to do it, this is textbook stuff. The party is everything, with loyalty, decency and just the faintest whiff of corruption keeping the whole thing together. Very watchable, especially the ensemble of yes men the mayor surrounds himself with.

Sadly, only available on Region 1 DVD, but really, isn’t it time you invested in a multi region DVD player. It’s not like they’re dear anymore.

Pay close attention for a reference to a certain Fianna Fail politician, by the way.

Review: “Cheers” on Paramount Plus.

I’ve recently been rewatching the sitcom “Cheers” on Paramount+, where the entire series is currently available. It’s easy for people under the age of 45 to not be aware of the show or how huge it was when it originally aired. Running from 1982-1993 for 275 episodes, and then occasionally resurfacing in spinoff “Frasier” crossovers which ran another 11 seasons, when the show finished in 1993 it was watched by over 90 million people in the US.

The show centred around Sam Malone (Ted Danson), a charming, womanizing, recovering alcoholic ex-professional baseball player who owned the bar, a below street lower middle class bar frequented by regular customers which provided a home from home for them. Whilst the initial seasons focussed on Sam’s relationship with haughty waitress Diane Chambers (played brilliantly by Shelley Long) the real source of the show’s eventual “Friends” like domination of the ratings was the ensemble cast, from kind but dim Coach and Woody, sharp-tongued waitress Carla, know-it-all postman Cliff and failed accountant Norm. When Long left after five years she was replaced by Kirstie Alley’s Rebecca Howe, Sam’s neurotic boss (he’d sold the bar) whom he constantly tried to bed.

Cheers is both genuinely funny but also charming, with a cast that regular viewers came to love as an extended family, all flawed but all lovable. Looking through today’s eyes Sam Malone would be a sex pest who would be either swamped with legal bills or long dismissed by his employer for inappropriate behaviour, but it’s fascinating to watch as a snapshot of the time, before mobile phones and social media, with plots based on misinterpreted phone messages and Cliff’s barside pontifications not being open to challenge (“You know Sammy, it’s a well known fact that…”)

One particularly interesting feature of the show is how female characters deal with Sam’s constant sexual advances. This was the post-1970s, where the “Women’s Lib” movement was petering out against the New Conservatism of Reagan’s America (Reagan was only 20 months in office when the show first aired) and the female characters tend to fend off his passes through sarcasm. Having said that, many of his lovers are as equally sexually aggressive and promiscuous as he is. You can’t help grimacing at his wandering hands, all the same. He’s never grabby, but can be overly touchy.

File under cosy stress-free nostalgic viewing, and keep an eye out for the many guest stars who went on to be much bigger, although none will be as big as Kate Mulgrew’s hair.      JanetEldridge - Twitter Search / Twitter

The US through a TV lens.

 

Previously published in the Irish Independent.

I was watching an episode of “NCIS” recently. You know “NCIS”, right? Actually, chances are you flicked through an episode if you were watching TV because it seems to be perpetually on one of the murder channels, yet have never watched it. 

A regular staple of American pensioners, “NCIS” can be watched as an intriguing insight into how mainstream middle America sees itself.

Every week is a collection of pre-baked tropes: a body is found, with some tenuous connection to the US Navy (NCIS is the Navy’s detective division). The victim used to be a marine or is wearing Old Spice or something.  

Special agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his team investigate. 

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