The firsttwo seasons of Narcos demonstrated just what a truly global television company intent on producing quality output can do.
Shot on location in Colombia almost entirely in Spanish and using real-life news footage to reinforce its message, Narcos depicted the real-life efforts of the US’s Drug Enforcement Administration to stop the famous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s operations in Colombia and beyond. It was a slow-burning but ultimately mesmerising critique, showing the complexity of the drugs trade, crime, law enforcement and life in South America almost as well as The Wire did. It also had a tour de force performance by Brazilian actor Wagner Moura that dominated proceedings.
However, season two ends up with the capture/death of Pablo Escobar, so what would Narcos be about for its final two seasons, you might wonder. More importantly, given that the show thrived on its sheen of veracity, what would it do for leads, given not only the departure of Moura but also the fact its two DEA agent heroes (Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook) had little to do with the Colombian drug trade after their ultimate location of Escobar?
Answers at last
Now we have our answers, some of which were partly provided at the end of season two. Season three follows the fate of the four Colombian ‘godfathers’ (played by Alberto Ammann, Damián Alcázar, Francisco Denis and Pêpê Rapazote) of the so-called Cali cartel, as they try to negotiate their way to a surrender and a future as legitimate businessmen – something that not all of them want and that the other cartels might take advantage of.
Still at the DEA, though, is Pedro Pascal who also gets to take over narration duties from Holbrook. Although the CIA and even the US ambassador are playing a more strategic, political game, Pascal wants to do the right thing, and he’s going to try to bring all of Cali to book before they’re able to negotiate their own terms. There are also two new DEA agents (Michael Stahl-David and Matt Whelan), who unlike Holbrook have been trained from the outset to deal with the new sophistication of the cartels. Unfortunately, even they don’t quite realise just how deep and far the fingers of the cartels have penetrated every aspect of Colombian society.
Importantly, season 3 doesn’t quite follow the same template as the previous two seasons since a huge part of the season is Matias Varela’s smart, considered head of Cali security. A former engineer who’s looking to go legit, he’s not a bad guy at heart, so the question is whether he’ll be able to stomach Cali operations for much longer, particularly once his friends and their families start getting murdered by his own employers…
It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you each week what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching. TMINE recommends has all the reviews of all the TV shows TMINE has ever recommended, but for a complete list of TMINE’s reviews of (good, bad and insipid) TV shows and movies, there’s the definitive TV Reviews A-Z and Film Reviews A-Z. But it’s what you have you been watching? So tell us! Ah go on. Go on, go on, go on
As I mentioned on Friday, TMINE is easing its way back into this whole ‘talking about tele’ thing, following a rather long and self-indulgent vacation. But that goes doubly, perhaps even trebly for WHYBW, given there’s been a whole month of entertainment since the previous WHYBW. I’m also still playing catch-up a bit.
So rather than try to tackle everything in one go, I’m going to stagger it all into manageable chunks. At some point in the next week or so, I’ll look at the new shows and the episodes of the regular shows that I’ve been watching; I’ll also do a separate entry on all the movies I watched.
But today, it’s time to go boxset-mad. Yep, left to my own devices (literally) and with a whole bunch of streaming services offering downloads now, I was able to take a few boxsets of TV shows on holiday with me to watch. I didn’t manage to get through all of them, but as well as Marvel’s The Defenders, which I’ve already reviewed, I managed to get through no fewer than three boxsets, some old, some new – and then I only went and watched another when I got back.
After the jump, then, let’s talk about Netflix’s Ozark, and Amazon’s Sneaky Pete and The Tick. Oh, and The Pillars of the Earth, because my wife wanted me to watch it. That’s an old one you’ve probably seen, though.
Every Friday, TMINE lets you know the latest announcements about when new imported TV shows will finally be arriving on UK screens – assuming anyone’s bought anything, of course
A little bit earlier expected, I know, but hey – it’s nearly September and there have been a few announcements, so I figured easing back into the swing of things with a round-up of all of August’s acquisitions and premiere dates might be a good idea.
First off, in acquisitions:
The Good Doctor (US: ABC; UK: Sky Living)
Freddie Highmore is an autistic savant surgeon. Hasn’t aired in the US yet
Reformation (Germany: ZDF; UK: BBC Four)
Martin Luther biopic. Hasn’t aired in Germany yet!
Snowfall (US: FX; UK: BBC Two)
Cocaine drama set in 80s LA. I watched the first few episodes but it wasn’t that great.
Episode reviews: 1, 2, 3
The Valley (Germany: TNT Serie; UK: Shudder)
A young man who has lost his memory wakes up near the corpse of a young woman hanging in the harvested grapes.
Ronny Chieng: International Student (Australia: ABC; UK: BBC Three)
Ostensibly Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng in a semi-autobiographical comedy about life at an Australian University – but basically Oz’s answer to Spaced. I ended up recommending it
Episode reviews: 1-2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Marvel’s The Avengers was one of the highest grossing movies of all times. Small surprise therefore that Marvel should attempt to reproduce its unique superhero formula on the small (laptop) screen with its Netflix series, giving us four individual superheroes in their own shows before finally bringing them together in a fifth show – The Defenders.
And here we are at last. Two seasons of Daredevil (one excellent, one poor), one season of Jessica Jones (excellent), one season of Luke Cage (weak) and a season of Iron Fist (I’ve watched it three times now, so screw you, haters) has allowed some of the supporting cast to move around a bit, but here we finally are, getting all four superheroes interacting with each other, teaming up and even sometimes twatting each other with sticks.
The show picks up a few months after the other shows. Daredevil (Charlie Cox) is ostracised from his former legal partner Foggy (Elden Henson) and would-be girlfriend Karen (Deborah Ann Woll), and a bit mopey after his ex-lover Elektra (Elodie Yung) was killed by some immortal ninja called The Hand. He’s hung up his costume and is now trying to lead a normal life as a lawyer, mostly doing legal work pro bono for the downtrodden. But Foggy is looking out for his former friend and his new boss Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) might have some legal work for him, too – looking after a certain private investigator friend of hers called Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), who’s bound to get into trouble sometime soon…
Not yet, though, since she’s still buried in a bottle, following her murder of mind-controlling rapist David Tennant. Thankfully, she’s managed to brush off both the legal charges and infamy that came with that, but she’s not ready to take on any new clients yet. That is, until a woman comes to her door asking her to track down her missing architect husband and she starts to get threatening phone calls.
Meanwhile, Jones’ former boyfriend Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is just getting out of prison, thanks to some nimble legal work by Foggy, and has to work out what he can do to look after the people of Harlem, particularly the young black men who are succumbing to the allure of crime in his neighbourhood – particularly that instituted by a white clad man known only as ‘the African’ (Babs Olusanmokun).
Could it all have something to do with the errant billionaire Danny Rand (Finn Jones), currently off hunting down the Hand in the Far East with girlfriend and former Hand-member Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), following the Hand’s apparent destruction of the seventh city of Heaven, K’un-Lun, which Rand was charged to protect, being the immortal weapon known as The Iron Fist?
You betcha. And you can bet that somehow it’s all going to involve their various storylines intersecting at some point to fight a common enemy – Sigourney Weaver, as well as some ‘Big Bads’ from previous seasons.
Of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t the only time that a whole bunch of superheroes with independent lives ended up uniting to defeat a baddie: the once much-adored Heroes did the same thing on the small screen. I say once because as soon as everyone got together, the whole show went to pants.
So the question is: is Marvel’s The Defenders more Avengers or more Heroes? Answer coming up after the jump. Spoilers ahoy and liable to smack you in the face.
