Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK
It’s been a couple of weeks since the previous What time, TMINE? and the likes of Walter have been busy. That means we’ve got a whole bunch of new acquisitions and airdates.
After the jump, you can find out when and where you can watch The Heights, Dead Still and Roswell: New Mexico. But first, all the new shows that don’t yet have premiere dates, as well as one show that is now available but I didn’t know it had been acquired – until now
Acquisitions
Walter Presents has picked up Start (Russia)’s Gold Diggers/Russian Affairs…
…VRT (Belgium)’s De Twaalf (The Twelve) and RTL4/Videoland/VTM (The Netherlands)’s Amsterdam Vice…
Sundance Now has acquired Elisa Viihde (Finland)’s Shadow Lines
Oops, I missed it
Seven Types of Ambiguity (Australia: ABC; UK: My5)
Seven Types of Ambiguity is a really interesting exploration of similar territory to Rashomon, but set in modern day Australia. Based on the Elliot Perlman novel of the same name, it sees a young boy abducted from school, only for him to be found relatively quickly by the police. Oddly, he’s unharmed and turns out to have been taken by the ex-boyfriend (Xavier Samuel) of the boy’s mother (Janet King‘s Leeanna Walsman); in turn, his potential accomplice turns out to have a connection to the boy’s father (The Slap/Secret City‘s Alex Dimitriades). Why did Samuel abduct the child? Was Walsman secretly having an affair with Samuel? Was Samuel stalking her for revenge? Or was there some other motivation altogether?
Over the course of the season of six episodes, the series follows the action from the points of view of various characters, each episode focusing on a different one. It starts with Dimitriades, then follows Samuel’s psychiatrist (The Matrix/Lord of the Rings/V for Vendetta‘s Hugo Weaving), Samuel’s neighbour (Crownies/Janet King‘s Andrea Demetriades), Dimitriades’s best friend (The Slap/Secrets and Lies‘s Anthony Hayes), Samuel’s lawyer (East West 101‘s Susie Porter) and ultimately Walsman, where all is finally revealed. But each episode is still really about one or more specific relationships and their ambiguities.
Roger Ebert famously said that cinema is ‘a machine that generates empathy’. The odd corollary of that is Netflix’s The Crown is a machine that generates empathy for the British Royal Family. A project that will supposedly run from Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in the early 1950s up to the present day, this quasi-biopic’s first two seasons took in the 50s before moving on to the early 60s.
But it’s The Crown, not The Queen (which was also created by showrunner Peter Morgan), so it’s not as much a biopic as you might think. This isn’t a languorous year-by-year examination of everything that’s happened to the Queen. Rather, it’s a look at the nature of the monarchy and its evolving constitutional position. While there are character stories that run across the seasons and the series, the episodes are largely episodic, dipping into years almost at random to pull up historical incidents that defined both the country and the monarchy.
For the first two seasons, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were personified by Claire Foy and Matt Smith respectively. Arguably exceedingly flattering choices, the pair of them made you care for the then-young monarchs with ease, portraying them as well-meaning, would-be modernisers, thrust into jobs neither of them wanted, constrained by the nature of their office, but doing their best to bring the country together.
We’re now onto season three and as befits a show that starred a former Time Lord, the Queen and Prince Phillip have regenerated. Olivia Colman (The Favourite) is now Her Majesty, while Tobias Menzies (Outlander) is Prince Phillip as we head into the late 60s and make it as far as the late 70s.
Colman and Menzies gives first-rate performances that verge on the supernaturally accurate – perhaps more so than Foy and Smith’s – so strangely, in season three, we’re less on the side of our former protagonists than we were: they’re not as likeable as they once were, because they’re closer to the real thing, who are no longer young modernisers but have become the establishment.
Perhaps even stranger still, we instead feel sympathy and indeed empathy for two people we never thought we would – the two new protagonists of the piece, Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Princess Anne (Erin Doherty). And Camilla Parker-Bowles (née Shand) (Emerald Fennell).
