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diana-lyons
Reviews
The Holiday (2021)
Ludicrous!
How many times can characters wander around the scrub calling for their children? It seems like every episode devotes far too much time to this.
The characters were not people I would ever want to spend 10 minutes with, let alone go on holidays. The main character Kate was surly and grumpy, how someone so gullible had ever managed to get through police training is a mystery. Her husband Sean was the same - what a dismal pair.
The kids Odette and Daniel were beyond annoying and clearly had never been taught to obey their parents. The teenagers were stereotypes - grump, self-obsessed and always on their phones.
Even the scenery was dismal. I cannot believe I wasted time watching this crap instead of turning it off halfway through the first episode.
Operation Buffalo (2020)
Enjoyable fiction about a shameful episode in our past
I enjoyed this series. The cast was excellent, the camera work and locations stunning. I got the humour and enjoyed the contrast with the more serious aspects.
I had one minor quibble - the series was set in 1956, but "Eva" sported a wardrobe and hairstyles from the 1940s. I was ten years old in 1956, I can say no-one was wearing Victory Roll hairdos and baggy, high-waisted slacks with 1940s blouses then. What were the designers thinking!
Riviera (2017)
Season 1 passable, Season 2 - don't waste your time.
Season 2 is garbage. The biggest plot hole {and there are many) is the fort which Georgina turns into an art exhibition of the Clios collection plus a priceless painting from the Louvre. The fort has no security guards, no security cameras, no locks on the doors and as we see in the final episode, no fire,alarm or sprinkler system. Georgina wanders in and out of this crumbling old pile at will and is never stopped or questioned because there is never anyone to do that.
I cannot imagine the Louvre lending a priceless art work to a place with no security at all, yet we are supposed to believe that was exactly what happened.
The final episode looks like the writers ran out of ideas and opted for comedy instead of drama. Georgina is dumped on a clifftop by Christos. Somehow, after being driven kilometres away from home she makes her way (in high heels) down to the very beach where Ada is sobbing, apparently close to the mansions of both the Clios and Eltham families, tries to drown Ada (oh, if only she had succeeded) and then stumbles back (barefoot) up the beach, up the cliff and down a dirt road to the fort where she makes a Molotov cocktail, chucks it at the Louvre's on-loan masterpiece and burns the entire art collection while the timbers of the fort crash down in flames. Obviously she survives unscathed because - Lord Help Us - there is to be a third season.
The Georgina we see in this season seems to have suffered some sort of mental collapse early on, possibly caused by PTSD after killing the truly revolting Adam at the end of Season One, or has been taken over by a previously hidden dual personality, because her actions are so out of whack with the woman we came to know in the first season.
Will the third season begin with Georgina in an asylum for the deranged, where she gets a new identity? I can't see any other way out of the mess the writers have created. I won't be watching to find out. Season Two was as much badly written trash as I could take. t'd as shame the story in no way matches the fabulous scenery and camera work.
Poldark (2015)
Ten stars for Seasons 1 to 4, no stars for Season 5.
I loved seasons 1 to 4. I've read all the books and loved them too, so I was pleased to see this series stick so closely to those books.
Season 5 though was a complete fabrication by the writers. There was a 10 year time jump in the books between book 7 - The Angry Tide, which ends with Elizabeth's death, and book 8 - The Stranger From The Sea. The writers decided to tie up loose ends by making up a final season. They also wanted to avoid the difficulties involved in that time jump, for example explaining how Ross become a spy in Portugal. I really wish they had not bothered, because the result is dire.
For some reason Ross and Demelza's children have not grown older, neither have the other characters - except for Geoffrey Charles who seems to have missed the memo about no time jump, because he has aged years and is now a young man, not a schoolboy.
The plot reuses tired old devices from earlier seasons - another mine disaster, another famine, another prison break - and introduces new characters. Ned Despard was a real historical character, so was his wife, but they don't seem to have ever visited Cornwall. Horatio Nelson testified at the real Despard's trial, but doesn't get a gig here. They also introduce a silly young female "revolutionary" who brings a wealth of nastiness to what plot there is. They created a stupid romance for Geoffrey Charles, The season focuses on the sort of dark nastiness you might find in a bad American soap, without the inevitable rescues in the nick of time. The whole thing is beyond dismal.
Heaven knows what Winston Graham would have made of this tripe. The final season completely ruins all that went before.
Hereditary (2018)
If I could, I'd give it no stars.
So slow! I I watched some of this on fast forward because it moved at a glacial pace. Actually glaciers seem pretty speedy compared to some of the scenes in this movie. I thought some of it had been filmed in slow motion,.
Toni Collette gave a dreadful, over-acted hammy performance. Gabriel Byrne left me wondering why he had decided to be involved as both an actor and a producer.
At least the exterior shots were good to look at. I can't say the same for the dreary interiors of the house - dirty, gloomy, dusty.
Take my advice, give this one a miss, don't waste your time. At the very end, with the whole reason for this sad excuse for a movie revealed, I was sitting there thinking "Youtook two hours to get to this?".
I believe there is a sequel just released. I won't bother.
The Durrells (2016)
OK, but only just.
If you haven't read Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy, or just part of it, then you will probably think this is an entertaining series set in the 1930s. But I have read the books and loved them, and what really stands out for me is the way this adaptation has completely missed the delightful and wicked humour shown in Durrell's books. There are some mildly funny parts, but mostly it's a lot of hand-wringing from Keely Hawes as Louisa, who hardly gets a mention in the books, a lot of sulking and bad behaviour from the three older children and not much about Gerry, who should be the focus of the whole thing. I don't mind writers taking liberties with adaptations of books if it's clear they have read those works and have tried to capture the esence of them for the screen, but this one really misses the mark.
Bliss (2017)
Absolutely awful
If I could give this load of tosh a minus rating I would. In Australia we are being given half-hour episodes. I watched the first half hour and was seriously thinking about turning off, but kept going in the vain hope it would get better. It didn't. I gave the second half hour a go, against my better judgement, and gave up after ten minutes.
This is not a comedy, the jokes are stale and flat, and the subject matter demands a strong family drama. It could have been so much more, so much better. Mangan's dithery male act is beyond annoying, as is that dreadful floppy hairdo. How either of his women managed to stay with "Andrew" for more than five minutes is something I kept wondering about. He's one of the most annoying characters ever created.
Take my advice - don't waste your time.