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House Of Guinness – Steven Knight (series 2025)

Sir Benjamin Guinness of the famous Guinness brewery (who had already taken over from his father) dies and he has specific plans for his business, inheritance and children. He had three sons and a daughter. The inheritance is not to the liking of all the children and two of the sons think of a way to both honour the will of their father and rule the business as they themselves seem fit.

We are talking late 19th century, right in the middle of big tensions in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants. The Guinness family is Protestant. Catholics form the working class and start an organisation (the Fenian Brotherhood) to fight their oppression. This divide still shows in Ireland today.

Violent clashes, unlikely alliances, impossible romances; the series show a dramatised version of the rapidly rising star of Guinness beer, the influence of the family in politics, the scandals they were involved in and the way they tried to navigate this minefield.

A fairly interesting series about an interesting time in history. Judging the massive cliff hanger with which the series ends, I suppose more seasons are to follow.

Giri/Haji (series 2019)

Japanese cop Kenzo is sent to London to go pick up his brother Yuto who works for the Yakuza maffia. Pretending to be a student, Kenzo meets the British cop Sarah, first as his teacher, then as a colleague. The two develop a relationship that is one of the red threads of the series.

There are other storylines. Kenzo’s meets Rodney, a young gay prostitute of Japanese descent. Also there develops an odd relationship. Then we have Kenzo’s daughter who flees her parental home and also ends up in London. Kenzo’s parents live in his house and with him away, his wife has to take care of them, also when the father dies and that while their relationship is cooling down.

The series have crime and thriller elements, drama and especially the Kenzo/Sarah storyline is interesting.

An alright series.

Wednesday (series season 1-2) – Tim Burton (2022-2025)

These series had been in my Netflix watchlist for a while before I noticed that they are directed by Tim Burton. On IMDb the creators are listed. Is that perhaps because in many series different episodes are not directed by the same persons? I have not checked if Burton directed them all though, but I figured I would credit him.

The Wednesday from the title is Wednesday Addams of the Addams family. She is sent to a Hogwarts type school for “outcasts” where apparently her father and her mother met and where other family members also went to.

Wednesday is a “neo-goth”, grim looking girl with a too large ego. The series are full of the typical Addams family jokes in which the family members enjoy the darker things in life. The series are packed with interesting actors such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, Gwendoline Christie, Steve Buscemi and Billie Piper.

The stories are only mildly interesting, but the Addams family type humour is fairly enjoyable and the Burton atmosphere and stages are good. The result is a bit too ‘teen’ for my liking, but I suppose when the announced third series are available, I might watch them at some point.

Bodies (series) – Fortune/Haas/Okafor (2023)

In different times a naked, dead body is found at the same spot in Whitechapel. The different inspectors assigned to the case discover all kinds of strange details. The body is shot in the eye, but there is no bullet and later inspectors discover the earlier cases.

In a quite amusing story that reminds a bit of “Dark” the creators slowly explain the happenings. The story becomes rather complex, a bit too much so to satisfactorily wrap things up in the last episode perhaps.

Yet all in all “Bodies” is certainly one of the better (mini) series that I saw recently.

Baby Reindeer – Richard Gadd (series 2024)

Donny works at a bar. One day a woman comes in, both fragile and self-confident. When Donny is friendly, she returns next day, and the day after, and the day after.

Being both alarmed and fascinated, Donny is not sure how to handle the situation. Martha, on the other hand, knows exactly how to manipulate him and she becomes his stalker. From coming to the bar every day to massive amounts of messages, sitting outside his house, contacting people he knows, Martha becomes a growing problem for Donny. Things do not get better when Martha obviously does not take no for an answer.

Based on true events, the series show both positions, resulting in a descent drama series with a story that sounds quite incredible, but on the other side, contains elements of life that would normally not come to the surface.

Behind Her Eyes – Steve Lightfoot (series 2021)

Louise is a pretty single mom who almost takes a man home from a pub where she was actually supposed to have a drink with a friend. The day after, the man turns out to be her new boss. A strange relationship develops between the two.

But that boss has an even stranger marriage. He is a psychiatrist and his wife seems to be a patient. For most of the series it remains unclear who controls who though.

In six episodes a descent story develops. The last episode gave me double feelings. On the one hand, the two surprising plot twists were not really necessary; while on the other hand one element and the title of the series in a way I had not seen coming.

Maniac (series) – Fukunaga & Somerville (2018)

These mini series (10 episodes) are frequently recommended when someone is looking for something strange. The first episodes are indeed amusingly set in some surreal retro future, but following episodes are rather only strange because the concept allowed the creators to make weird episodes (dreams).

We follow the boring (and autistic) Owen who unsuccessfully tries to keep distance to his decadent family. Then we have Annie who lost her lust for life when her sister died. For different reasons, the two end up at some experimental psychological institute where in a combination of drugs and brain stimulation, they are exposed to their darkest dreams.

I never really noticed Emma Stone before “Poor Things“, but she is great. Especially what she can do with facial expressions is amazing. For some reason Annie and Owen encounter each other in their dreams. This and other encounters result in an unlikely relationship.

Then we have that odd institute led by James Mantleray (a great Justin Theroux) and Azumi Fujita (Sonoya Mizuno) which is based on an AI computer with psychological problems.

Indeed, not your average series, but “Maniac” is not that strange. Quite an amusing watch though.

Dark Matter (series) – Mallozzi & Mullie (2015-7)

A scifi series that made it to three seasons, 39 episodes and then suddenly stops with a couple of very loose ends. It was either cut abruptly or there are still plans for a new season.

A group of people wakes up in a spaceship with no recollection how they got there. It appears that their memories have been erased and they have been put into “stasis”. Naming each other in the order in which they woke up (“one”, “two”, etc.) the people, for better or worse, decide to team up and find out what happened.

Learning tiny bits about their pasts, trust-issues come and go. Also their past as the crew of the Raza, the ship they woke up on, catches up. This is the basis of a massive series of events in which the crew became better people than they used to be, built trust, friendship, occasionally help people, etc. The crew grows and shrinks, new characters and story lines are introduced and as the series go on, their are also ‘stand alone episodes’.

All in all the series are alright with better and poorer episodes.

True Detective (series, season 4) – Issa López (2024)

I only heard that there was a season 4 when it was named among Oscar nominations or something. “Night Country” has a crew almost entirely made of women. The main characters, the directors, the title song, etc.

We have a great Jody Foster as grumpy police officer who was transferred to the (fictional) town Ennis so far North in Alaska that the sun does not rise during the winter months. The rough climate and small community makes that everybody knows everything of everyone (or do they?), even when the ‘new Americans’ and Iñupiat (‘Alaskan Inuit’) have to live together.

As you will have guessed, just as in the previous seasons, “Night Country” is slow, dark, gritty and the case is extreme. The main characters have their problems and have had their problems in the past.

Danvers (Foster) is a demanding chief of police with a foul tongue and unorthodox methods. In a case surrounding the disappearance of the men working at the Tsalal Research Station, things seem to oddly align with an early case, the murder of a young Iñupiat woman, a sister of Evangeline Navarro a native who is now Trooper.

In an interestingly developing story, the cases are investigated, characters develop and Iñupiat stories are mixed with the cold, hard facts of the investigation. The little town also inhabits some odd characters.

A good series, but not of the level of the original.

Ragnarok (series) – Kaae & Price (2020-2023)

I had thought that a Scandinavian series about Scandinavian mythology would have had their sources better. Every episode opens with what is supposed to be an encyclopaedia quote. There you have things like: “Tyr is the God of war, he lost his hand in battle”. Right. And why would you give the ‘pater familias’ of the giants, the name of a son of Odin (Vidar)?
But, there are also elements that are somewhat amusing when you know the myths.

A mother and her two sons move back to the small town where the father of the family passed away. The village has the unimaginable name “Edda”. The small town is largely dependent on a rich family with a metal factory, which -as you soon learn- is led by giants.

One of the adolescent sons, “Magne” soon develops ‘superpowers’. There is a suggestion that he is in some way a God. His brother amusingly develops genderbending traits which easily connects him to another Norse God. Other funny details are the way in which the bloodbrothership between Odin and Loki takes place and a tapeworm that grows out to be the Midgard serpent.

On and off, Magne takes and leaves the role of being a God and with or without a team he sets out after the giants. Allegiances change, there is the usual adolescent (overdone) drama, whiny kids and often fairly shallow use of the myths. There are some contemporary themes woven into the story, such as environmental problems.

The series are not all bad, but they are certainly not great either. Especially the final episode is very poor.