No superhero movies this week. That’s got to be an improvement, hasn’t it?
In fact, I feel doubly impressed with myself this week, since I’ve gone totally foreign language. Following on from previous Orange Wednesdays’ forays into Japanese cinema, this week we’re heading to China for both our movies.
First up is The Wandering Earth, based on Hugo Award-winning author Liu Cixin’s novella of the same name and which despite having only been released in February is already:
China’s second highest-grossing film of all time
2019’s third highest-grossing film worldwide
The second highest-grossing non-English film of all time
One of the top 20 highest-grossing science fiction films of all time.
Secondly, we have the 1973 adaptation of that classic of Chinese literature, The Water Margin. That has more martial arts fights in it than that description might suggest.
In New Zealand: Aired on TVNZ 1 in April In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, Alibi. Starts May 14
On the whole, New Zealand doesn’t produce a lot of top-tier drama. Mostly, the schedules are filled with US and UK imports, plus some local entertainment shows, but original dramas are rare. Good dramas – and I do mean dramas, rather than comedy dramas such as Fresh Eggs and The Brokenwood Mysteries – are about as rare as unicorn droppings.
It’s unsurprising, therefore, that when an actual bona fide, home-grown decent drama shows up, New Zealand makes something of a song and a dance about it.
Dean O’Gorman and Matt Minto in TVNZ1’s The Bad Seed
The Bad Seed
The Bad Seed, based on two books by New Zealand novelist Charlotte Grimshaw, originally aired as an ‘event series’ over five nights on main channel TVNZ 1. Billed as ‘the birth of a new breed of New Zealand drama’, it’s certainly a bit different from its predecessors of the past five to 10 years or so in having an eye on both domestic and international distribution – the international language of TV being the crime drama. So dedicated to drama is it that Madeleine Sami (The Breaker Upperers) fails to make even one joke.
The show sees Matt Minto (The Blue Rose) and Dean O’Gorman (The Hobbit, The Almighty Johnsons, Trumbo, Westside) playing two brothers who are products of a broken home: dad seems to have done such crappy things to them that Minto’s getting sent to borstal was actually a welcome relief to him and who knows about what mum did.
However, Minto got his life together. He went to university and is now a doctor. He’s married to Jodie Hillock and has two teenage daughters. He’s caught the eye of would-be PM Xavier Horan (Westside) and his wife Chelsie Preston Crayford (The Code). He even lets his brother live in the guest house, in return for which he helps out with odd jobs and looks after Hillock and the daughters when necessary.
Unfortunately, Minto also has a bit of a wandering eye and is having an affair with Keporah Torrance for reasons even he finds a bit mystifying. Is he broken inside thanks to the years of abuse he suffered?
It’s a question that others start asking themselves when Minto is implicated in the murder of one of his patients and it’s discovered that he beat up a girl when he was 13. Is Minto a bad seed in the heart of his seemingly perfect family? Is there even a bad seed inside him? It’s something cops Sami and Vinnie Bennett hope to find out.
Full review after the jump, but a word of warning – I will have to reveal who the murderer is to discuss it properly, although the show itself does the same very quickly so I won’t be spoiling too much.
In 2016 a German language drama premiered on Channel 4; it has since become the most popular foreign-language drama in the history of British television with an audience of 2.5 million viewers.
That drama was Deutschland ’83, a gritty Cold War drama with a soundtrack that hit all the right nostalgic buttons (99 red balloons anyone?).
Three years later and the series returns – as Deutschland ’86: East Germany is broke, Perestroika is real, terrorism plagues Europe, the AIDS crisis intensifies and the struggle against apartheid rages on. And there’s still plenty of ’80s pop music, of course.
Banished for his sins in 1983, Martin Rauch wallows in limbo until his Aunt Lenora conscripts him into her plan to drum up hard currency abroad. They set off on an adventure through Africa, Western Europe and finally home to East Germany. Can mafioso-style Capitalism save Communism just in the nick of time?
Normally, gag reels are pretty limp affairs for people to laugh at at wrap-up parties when they’ve had a few drinks. However, The Orville‘s gag reel for season 2 is largely funnier than the show itself. True, it’s debatable whether The Orville is a comedy any more, but still.
