It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching this week
Hmm. Not many new shows out this past week. How strange. That means that as well as catching up on all the regulars I missed last week, I’ve mainly been concentrating on movies, such as The Avengers: Infinity War, and passing verdict on Killing Eve (US: BBC America; UK: BBC One/BBC Three).
Cobra Kai (YouTube Red) came out today and Danish YA dystopian drama Rain (Netflix) is out on Friday, so although it’s a Bank Holiday Weekend here in the UK, I’ll be giving them a whirl before next WHYBW if I can – I imagine the torrential rain we’ll no doubt be getting might help no end with that.
After the jump, though, I’ll be having a gander (at last) at Trust (US: FX; UK: Sky Atlantic), as well as the regulars: The Americans, The Good Fight, Harrow, Krypton, Legion, SEAL Team, Silicon Valley, Timeless, and Westworld. Plus Lovely Wife and I made it through the first episode of the returning The Handmaid’s Tale – we can talk about what larks that was, after the jump.
In the US: Sundays, 9pm, BBC America
In the UK: Acquired by BBC One/BBC Three. Will air in 2018
Spy comedies are hard to pull off. All too often, they end up as spoofs – and not hugely funny ones at that.
But with the first episode of Killing Eve, Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s adaptation of Luke Jennings’s Villanelle novels, it seemed like we had a rare success. Both stylish and funny, it saw desk-bound MI5 agent Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) realise that a series of murders were all the work of one female international assassin – Jodie Comer (Doctor Foster). While the nature of Comer’s job meant she went around killing people for most of the episode, it still had plenty of laughs: Comer’s mischievousness and little girl qualities leant itself to some black humour, while Oh’s lack of training meant her strand of humour stemmed from office and everyday mundanities.
What made that all work was it was still noticeably a semi-plausible spy show. Sure, it always had one eye on its locations, designer labels and groovy soundtrack, but it wasn’t outright comedy and it was prone to moments of genuine nastiness and realism. Comer’s chameleonic elusiveness was conceivable, and Oh and colleagues’ efforts to catch her were plausible.
Also written by Waller-Bridge, episode two at least carried on in this vein, with Oh setting up shop with MI6 to continue her hunt, while Comer continues to assassinate people all over Europe in an amusing manner, even while her handler, Kim Bodnia, begins to wonder if he has to start worrying about her as she gets increasingly out of control and cocky. It was a little less fun and stylish than the first episode, a bit more grotty office comedy, but it was still a good watch thanks to its cast.
Out of control
However, since then, bereft of Waller-Bridge’s scripting, the comedy has continued more or less as before, but the drama has lost much of its plausibility. While a trip to Berlin is normally welcome in a TV show, having Oh’s colleague David Haig stomping around a largely naked gay nightclub in episode 3 in single-handed pursuit of the hugely deadly Comer, while wearing jacket and tweed hat, was nonsensical. Even to have tried to have followed a supposedly top international assassin by himself, let alone dressed like that, is beyond extraordinarily silly. That might work in Austin Powers, but in a supposed proper spy show – and as a deliberate dramatic, rather than comedic choice? It’s fatal.
Similarly, the sheer lack of tradecraft on display is almost suicidal and less than even a normal person would do. For example, Oh turns up to a murder scene straight from the airport, carrying her suitcase with her home address written on it – something even someone with the vaguest sense of self-preservation, let alone MI5/MI6 training, would try to avoid. This kind of daftness overrides its stylishness, making it look plain stupid.
Episode four, however, did at least improve things and Darren Boyd obviously knows how to do spy comedy. Giving Villanelle a bit more backstory and people to interact with also worked and the humour was more subtle (albeit occasionally broad). Comer also got to play up her girlishness and unpredictability, making you remember why she made such an impact in episode one. There was also a return to spy nastiness. It wasn’t as good as Waller-Bridge’s first episode, but it was a decent continuation.
Killing it
When it’s at its best, Killing Eve is both a funny and a stylish spy drama with a great cast. Unfortunately, it’s also very variable and sometimes so silly, it stops being even slightly plausible and becomes an accidental sitcom. Depending on the consistency of the later episodes, it could still be a TV great. Or it could be yet another duff spy comedy.
Eighteen. Although there have been many more movies featuring Marvel comic book characters or that have been made by Marvel Studios, there have been 18 ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ movies since the studio began Phase One of its ambitious, interconnected franchise plans in 2008 with Iron Man. That’s more than an entire season of the average US TV show these days.
Getting to the end of your first season without getting cancelled is impressive enough. Getting this far with a relatively consistent continuity, despite numerous writers and directors, is even more impressive. But getting this far with at least some really good movies coming out of the endeavour is nothing short of amazing.
The key to the MCU’s longevity is that while some characters hop around and appear in other movies, each movie has had a different roster of superheroes to play with, ensuring a different tone and freshness to each one (hopefully). In addition, each main character’s franchise has stopped after three movies: it’s not Iron Man 18 we’re watching in cinemas, since we stopped at Iron Man 3, and Thor, Captain America and co have similarly bowed out after three movies or fewer in favour of new arrivals such as Black Panther and Doctor Strange.
However, one important feature of the MCUs is its periodic reunions of characters from all the franchises, both past and present, for something typically Earth-shattering that requires a combination of superheroes to defeat. These movies cement in the audience’s mind the idea that the MCU is truly interconnected and that missing out on one film is possible, but it’ll be like missing an episode of a serial TV show if they do. Iron Man might not have got a fourth movie, but he’s shown up in The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: Civil War, and Spider-man: Homecoming, too. And that’s before we even get to the ensemble The Avengers movies, in which everyone turns up, whether they’re dead or not.
Which is where we get to the problem. Movies aren’t TV series. Sure, you can stretch them to three hours or so if you want, but if you’ve got literally dozens of regular characters in separate movies, when you bring them all together in one movie, how do you give them enough screen time to properly service them as characters while still having a decent plot?
The Avengers: Infinity Characters
When Avengers: Age of Ultron came out, I suggested that writer-director Joss Whedon had done just about as well as anyone could be expected, given how many characters he had to squeeze into his script. In retrospect, my review was probably a bit more generous than the movie deserved, since it hasn’t held up so well on repeated viewings chez TMINE. But it’s still not bad.
One area I was also wrong about was in suggesting that Whedon was about the only person who could have pulled it off. Whedon was, of course, the king of Marvel’s Phase One, but since then, some unexpected new royalty has hit town: the Russo Brothers. Improbably picked to direct Captain America: Winter Soldier following their work on the paintball episode of Community, they immediately hit the ball out of the park with what to my mind is the best movie of the entire MCU – and a damn fine spy/action movie in its own right. No small surprise then that they got its sequel, Captain America: Civil War, to direct as well. That movie can also be considered The Avengers 2.5 in its own way, given how many MCU characters are in it, and while it wasn’t as good as Winter Soldier, it was still a really good movie.
Hopes were therefore high for their Avengers: Infinity War, the first of two movies designed to polish off the first three phases of the MCU – the season finale, if you will. By contrast, the once box-office transforming The Avengers and The Avengers 2‘s character rosters feel more like a small piece of local theatre, given there are probably twice to three times as many characters for them to juggle, both old and new. Infinity War also had to round off the massive storyline that’s been building since as far back as Thor.
No pressure, then.
Fortunately, they’ve certainly risen to meet the challenge, managing to out-Whedon Whedon himself.
The story so far…
For those of you who haven’t been following the linking storyline – and it does get explained in Infinity War, you’ll be glad to hear – there are six great big McGuffins known as Infinity Stones that have been popping up all over the MCU in the likes of The Avengers, Thor: Dark World, Thor, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Each of these has a different mega-power and the Big Bad of The Avengers, Thanos, wants to collect them as he’s basically an intergalactic Thomas Malthus – believing that life outstrips resources, it’s his mission to wipe out half of all life in the universe so that the survivors never have to worry about starvation, overcrowding et al ever again. If he gets all six stones, he can kill everyone with a single wave of his specially made Infinity Gauntlet (guess what that’s for).
Naturally, Earth’s mightiest heroes – as well as Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy – aren’t really inclined to let him. But even combined, can they really take on a Titan who can beat the Hulk in a fist fight, crush a god’s neck with his bare hands and hurl a moon at someone he doesn’t really like? And give that Infinity War is the first of two movies that answer that question, who’s still going to be left standing at the end of this one?
You may be surprised. Both non-spoilery and spoilery reviews after this trailer and then the jump.
