Every month, TMINE lets you know what TV the BFI will be presenting at the South Bank in London
After January’s sluggish start, the BFI is kicking things up a notch for February. The centrepiece is a season of forgotten black TV plays – expect lots of Don Warrington as well as Sammy Davis Jr – but there’s also a preview of the Channel 4/Netflix spy drama Traitors that’s followed by a Q&A with star Keeley Hawes, a Bill Hicks event and an airing of Doctor Who story Logopolis to coincide with its Blu-Ray release. All that after the jump…
As regular readers might imagine, TMINE is something of an acquired taste. After all, I tend to review things from around the world before they air in the UK, so I’m talking about shows that for the most part most readers haven’t actually seen. When they air in the UK, you can of course see what I wrote about them at the time if you’re prepared to search, but that still doesn’t make TMINE’s reviews an essential daily read – except for the most highly refined, Galaxy Brained individuals, of course.
Still, there’s the catchy idea of “the long tail” and I guess if any TV blog is a long tail TV blog, it’s TMINE. So it’s always interesting for me to see at the end of the year what have been the most popular posts over the year – inevitably they’ve been from previous years but not always.
Now, I can’t tell you why they are the most popular, but we can all hazard guesses. So here, for your delectation, is 2019’s first problem-solving conundrum: why on Earth were these the most popular TMINE posts of 2018?
Surprisingly decent reboot of the classic 80s private detective series remains faithful to the original while making it more diverse. In a world of cop and medical procedurals, a private investigator procedural also feels surprisingly fresh. The first episode is a bit too Fast and Furious for its own good, but fortunately, it settles down soon afterwards to become a solid piece of light fun.
Netflix original created by and starring Idris Elba. Charlie (Elba), a struggling DJ and eternal bachelor is given a final chance at success when he reluctantly becomes a manny to his famous best friend’s problem-child daughter. Also stars Piper Perabo, and features JJ Feild, Angela Griffin, Guz Khan, Jocelyn Jee Esein, Jade Anouka, Cameron King and Dustin Demri-Burns.
In the US and UK, monolingualism feels like the default. Speak more than one language? Crazy, particularly if we’re aiming for fluency rather than asking “¿Donde esta la biblioteca?’, ‘Où est la Gare Saint-Lazare, s’il vous plaît?’ or ‘Wie komme ich am besten zum Bahnhof, bitte?’ and hoping that the answer is short, slow and sweet.
Yet, more than half the world is at least bilingual and there are whole continents and sub-continents where being able to speak more than one language is the norm. And there are people who in the US and the UK who are among that number.
Even in Hollywood.
Normally, Bradley Cooper is the one everyone points to when they want to be wowed by an American actor speaking a foreign language. After all:
He is sexy
He speaks French, which is sexy
He’s a man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_v6HztMeU4
Perhaps more impressive is Ed Norton, who can speak Japanese:
However, point 3 – Bradley Cooper is a man – highlights an important point. It’s usually men who get the credit for this. So today, let’s spare a thought for some actresses who get less credit for bilingualism.
Okay, Charlize Theron is from South Africa, so her ability to speak Afrikaans (or Flemish) isn’t necessarily hugely impressive:
And Sandra Bullock has German family, so her speaking German isn’t necessarily miraculous:
But let’s spare a thought for Texas-born, Spanish family-less Amber Heard, who speaks fluent Spanish and has done entire interviews in Spanish for Aquaman:
And then there’s Natalie Portman who can speak – deep breath – Hebrew, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic and ASL.
It is of course worth noting that Portman has an Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath number of 11, so is clearly a smart cookie in other fields, too. However, that’s not quite as good as either The Wonder Years’ Danica McKellar and Blossom‘s Mayim Bialik, both of whom have the highest EBS number of any actor or actress: 10. Whether they speak anything other than English, though, I don’t know.
