Mrs 10 and I watched that recently. It’s excellent. It goes a lot further than the book, which is strictly factual and also excellent, but the bits it adds are quite possible don’t go so far as to assert. I’m afraid I don’t know how to blur text so SPOILER ALERT. Eg it shows Philby putting Roger Hollis’ name on a list of other Russian agents still in Britain (along with Anthony Blunt), but does it in a way that leaves it quite possible that Philby was trying to make trouble, rather than actually giving up a real agent.
It does have the obligatory nod to political correctness by having the fictional Anna Maxwell Martin character married to a black West Indian doctor, which would have been, to say the least, extremely rare in the mid-60s in England.
Back in the days of the great ScandiNoir books where Stieg Larssen and Henning Mankell started the surge,I was recommended to try Jo Nesbo, a Norwegian writer and singer-songwriter. His hero is Harry Hole (pronounced Hoolay), a brilliant detective but self-destructive alcoholic. A few of my friends at the time had a bit of a problem with the demon drink, and being the unsympathetic ■■■■■■■■ that I am, struggled. He got into a relationship with a good woman, but blew that for good when he got maggoted.
Anyhow, a new series on Netflix is Detective Hole, two episodes in, and it is very true to my memories.
They don’t do sunny and positive in three Scandi countries, except maybe Sandhamn Murders.
My great-grandparents left the East End (Stepney) in the 60’s (1860’s). I did the Heritage Tour in 2016. Not many really old buildings left after the Luftwaffe’s urban renewal scheme. Got off the DLR at Shadwell and rejoined the Tube in Mile End Road. Don’t recall seeing a single white person. Don’t think it would have been like that in 1868. I’m not sure when the East End copped a truckload of Jewish immigrants.
Maestro in Blue is a Greek drama series set on the island of Paxos, where a local businessman who wants to become mayor organises a music festival on the island, and gets an orchestral conductor to come from Athens and run the music. The businessman is a typical go-getter type - he does nothing for the festival, leaving it up to a local woman to do all the hard work. Paxos is a beautiful place, with an intricate local community, calm on the surface, but with a lot of strong currents flowing underneath. We view it through the eyes of the members of two families, with three generations taking part. Gradually we find that “all human life is here” with every human emotion and vice on display.
There are three series currently available on Netflix. Series 1 (2022) has 9 episodes; Series 2 (2024) has 6 episodes; and Series 3 (also 2024) has 4 episodes. A fourth series is currently in production and is scheduled for October this year. Each episode is an hour long.
The whole thing is the brainchild of Christoforos Papakaliatis, a leading light in the Greek film and TV industry. Papakaliatis originated the series, writes the scripts and plays the lead role of the musician who accepts the invitation to organize a music festival on the small Ionian island and moves there immediately after the COVID lockdown period.
The quality of the writing is superb, with intricate dialogue which is based on the idea that the audience is intelligent and does not need to be battered over the head, American-style, in case it might fail to understand the most basic of concepts. The acting, too, is of the highest standard imaginable.
I’m halfway through Series 2 at present - and can only recommend this as a drama series whch must not be missed.
Just started a new Spanish series on Netflix - The Map of Longing (El Mapa de los Anhelos)
One for @em2009 I suspect. Two young Spanish actresses star in this story about grief. Alicia Falcó (Billionaires’ Bunker & That Night) and Georgina Amorós (In Love All Over Again).
Alicia plays Greta who, essentially, was conceived to produce stem cells to save her sister Lucy from leukaemia. The two sisters become best buddies but Lucy dies, but before dying, conceives a “game” to protect Greta from being overburdened by grief and enrols a friend, Will Tucker (strangely named for a Spaniard but is Spanish, not American as we all feared).
Really enjoying it so far, but it helps that the two girls are both very attractive in a non-glitzy way.
With the main murder in Brocéliade having been committed 20 years earlier, just about everyone involved fell under suspicion. the actual murderer…I didn’t pick.
I can see the Yanks remaking The Map of Longing and totally, absolutely screwing it up. I loved it.
There’s a new Elisabet Benavent series starting on Netflix. She wrote Valeria and A Perfect Story, so pretty high on the Spanish rom-com list.
This one’s called something like All the Truths in my Lies.
I just started a French series on Prime…something like Family Detective.
Female police captain returns to her hometown of Rennes, expecting her boyfriend to follow her shortly, but when she gets to her parents’ house, finds that he’s chickened out….and she’s starting to have vomiting attacks (hint, hint). He’s cancelled the house they’ve arranged so she has to stay with her parents who are delighted that they can “help” investigate her cases.
Babylon Berlin final season sept 10 in Germany, very timely for that country and many others, which is deeply farked. The end of the Weimar and the rise of the bloke with the moustache, something tells me there will be no happy endings.
Not the cheery sunny Stockholm of Sandhamn Murders
Emergency calls are made with a woman screaming that she’s about to be murdered so cops attend…and are both murdered with their heads taken.
Cops are a little worried about attending emergency calls.
one episode to go, which I’ll do next.
I am impressed that the American translators didn’t translate 112 into 911 so Yanks would understand it’s the emergency number.
Finished this one. Not sure how I feel about the last ep.
Then started Juliet on SBS.
Juliet is a detective from Brussels who has to return to her hometown on the Belgian-Flemish seaside when her father dies. Her brother has abandoned his teenage daughter in the care of his father, and the daughter is not old enough to live independently so Juliet is under pressure to leave Brussels and return home permanently.
She has a case dropped on her when a teenage girl is tied up and thrown into the canal to drown.
I have a feeling I’ve seen this episode in the past but FIIK.