Month: April 2011

French TV

Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 3×3-3×4

11 April 2011 Natalia Romanova 9 Comments

In France: Some time last Summer
In the UK: Saturday 9th April, 9pm, BBC4. iPlayer: Episode 3, Episode 4

Well, the people have spoken and as many as three of you want me to do episodic reviews of Spiral aka Engrenages aka “the good French TV programme… that BBC4 keeps showing but no one watches”.

So let’s give it a go. No doubt my reward will come in Elysium rather than in this life.

Anyway, season three of Spiral looks like it’s going to be a little bit different from previous years. As I mentioned last week, usually each episode of Spiral has an A-plot and a B-plot that randomly taps into some random injustice of the French legal system. This year, however, both a-plot and b-plots seem to be focused on just a couple of questions.

The first: will the current reforms planned to the French justice system produce a better system?

The second: it’s all very well wanting police to be “over-zealous” in a Life on Mars stylee, but what happens if our ‘heroes’, rather than being the good guys who know the truth but are impended by a system that values the rights of criminals over their victims, are in fact over-zealous because they’re incompetent, in-fighting screw-ups? What happens if they start bribing prostitutes with coke, threatening other car drivers with pistols because they’re having nervous breakdowns – or they end up torturing and framing the wrong guy because they think they’re right?

Here’s a poor-quality trailer in French for episodes three and four.

Continue reading “Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 3×3-3×4”

Radio and podcasts

Another podcast recommendation: In Our Time

11 April 2011 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

In Our TIme

Time for another of my occasional podcast recommendations. This time it’s for Radio 4’s In Our Time, which is roughly speaking a weekly "Cabinet of Curiosities". Each edition involves three learned people talking with Melvyn Bragg about an erudite topic from science, history or philosophy that you’ve probably never heard of, or if you have, not really considered it.

To show you what I mean, here’s a list of the subjects covered in the last few editions:

  • Octavia Hill, the Victorian welfare reformer and co-founder of the National Trust
  • The Bhagavad Ghita, the famous Hindu holy text
  • The dawn of the iron age
  • The medieval university
  • The nature of free will – is it an illusion or not?
  • The age of the universe
  • The Taiping rebellion
  • Maimonides, the Jewish medieval philosopher

Next up: neutrinos.

It’s only about 40 minutes long, you can listen to it every Thursday on Radio 4 or download it as a podcast. And although Melvyn Bragg is a little smug and irritating, it’s well worth listening to.