Well, she’s also 68 years old. She purportedly has avoided any serious cosmetic surgery (though she has indicated she is not opposed to very minor non-invasive work) and mostly sticks with clean-living and a vegan diet. For that matter Nicole Kidman is now 59 and claims the same.
I enjoyed Margo. I preferred Fanning’s last role in The Great, but she has a lot of charisma and I think does a fine job in this one. The ensemble cast is also pretty solid to quite good. Any let downs are minor and seem more down to the slight source material and IMHO some plot choices. It’s not top tier IMO, but it’s entertaining.
May and Hammond both have their own respective YouTube channels that evoke the spirit of classic Top Gear. They both include their daughters in many episodes that are wonderfully funny comfort-watching.
Thanks, I’ll have to take a look, particularly at May’s, I think he’s a good bloke and entertaining to watch. Have you seen the travel series he has done on Prime? The first one in Japan was superb, Italy was also good but India was a bit of a letdown. I’m still hoping he does some more but it’s been a bit sporadic so I’m not holding my breath. That thing be did where he looked at machines and took them apart before rebuilding them was quite good too, and when he built giant lego bridges and miniature railways etc. He’s the nerdiest/geekiest of the three by far and that’s probably why I like him.
James May doesn’t have any children, so whoever you’re seeing is likely just a production assistant.
Absolutely, I think everything we see on camera is really happening (i.e. unscripted), but if we don’t see it on camera, someone else is doing it. I still think it’s valuable for understanding the struggles of farming.
I recommend you watch it, though, because it’s better than you might expect.
Ah thanks, Eve and Lucy are apparently siblings to each other, but not daughters of May, I stand corrected. They all interact with each other in perfect relation-weary exasperation so it fooled me
I just binge-watched The Bear Season 2. It definitely rates as one of the all-time great TV drama series. If you’re short of time just watch the amazing Episode 6 with its great acting and dialog.
I don’t know how to describe The Bear. Wikipedia calls it a comedy-drama but any comedy is laughless black comedy. (I’m afraid that laughless black comedy is my favorite genre.) IMDB calls it psychological drama.
Without even looking, I’m assuming that’s Seven Fishes.
That’s not unheard of these days. Some shows will classify themselves as comedies for awards reasons. Calling themselves a comedy lets them go up against shows like Abbot Elementary and Only Murders In The Building and Wednesday instead of being in the Drama category and going up against shows like Severance or Squid Game or Better Call Saul.
Yes. Synopsis: Mother is excited to prepare a special Christmas dinner, while guests share their intimate feelings. Mother then goes for a drive in her car.
Smid So I do think you’re making some assumptions that are unfair criticisms, in that a lot of your points are addressed in the show. He actually does make a big deal out of the fact that things such as the farm shop and restaurant (he’s trying to build it in season 2, which is where I’m at) gives his farm a leg up that other farmers don’t have. So he begins actively soliciting business from other farms in the area in order to buy their goods or give them space in his shop to sell and provide them with a better price than they could get through the normal channels.
While you are correct he doesn’t sell tea, you’ve completely missed the mark on why. This again is a huge deal in the shop because he’s required by law (statue? I don’t know what the correct UK term is) to only sell things produced in the immediate local area. He gets in trouble for selling meat that came from Gloucester, he can’t sell t-shirts and hats because they weren’t locally made, etc. So no, he can’t sell tea or coffee because it doesn’t grow there.
I know you’re (understandably) trying to make a point, but I’m afraid you let your preconceptions lead you in the wrong direction on some of this.
Having looked at this, it does seem to be a valid thing, and a local authority choice to do this. But the reality is that it is to stop using farmland to do something else, ie: some rich guy (him) deciding to use his farmland to not farm (he does), and he tries and bypass it, which apparently did not go well with the council (getting a free tee shirt from china when buying potatoes apparently).
Ok, I’ll pass on this one, but get it on the restaurant. Sometimes you get so used to him being a dick in one way, you miss him being a bit of a dick in another way.
The speedrunning through the stories is the most annoying aspect of this show. The episode last season with the Goblin Queen, for instance, could have been stretched out two or three episodes and gotten us some more depth with the characters and pulled us in more.
I’ve been binging Slow Horses, and like it even more than the first time through. What a great production and cast. There’s a new season coming in the fall. I’m wondering if it will be the last.
Ok, so, I finished season 1 (all there is of the series so far), and… it was actually pretty good. From episode 4 onward, I was impressed.
Until, that is, we got that completely unnecessary side quest for Daisy to see June.
I think I can distill what I don’t like about this series and its predecessor (to the extent I don’t like things about them) down to a 90% pure solution of “Gilead’s projection of itself outside its borders.” Whenever we see Gilead from outside of Gilead, or Gilead trying to project power beyond its borders, it just breaks the suspension of disbelief for me.
Gilead works best when viewed from within, as if in a vacuum with no outside world to speak of except what Gilead’s own propaganda machine might say about it. With the exception of the season of The Handmaid’s Tale that dealt with June’s arrival in Canada, scenes and especially episodes set outside Gilead have been both series’ worst. Because as I said above, the writers have a nasty habit of making it cartoonishly easy for just the right characters to pass in and out of Gilead.
And then of course there is the problem with Gilead’s power projection. It’s one thing if we don’t really know WTF is going on with the rest of the world. It could be a dumpster fire for all we know. But the moment you show functioning societies with modern (to us) technology at their disposal, Gilead’s apparent reliance on little more than Planet of the Ape’s level weaponry (almost exclusively small arms) just seems ludicrous by comparison. I know, I know. There is one episode where it is established that Gilead does maintain air defense infrastructure. Trouble is, when it comes to what we actually see, even when it’s whats-his-name (June’s driver, an eye, who becomes a commander) on his way to the front to command forces in… Chicago (?) all we see are small arms. We never see any kind of a war machine, or even industry that would lead us to believe Gilead is capable of maintaining complex machines of war. Honestly, it’s a wonder they can even keep their cars running.
But I digress.
All that to say, I think Testaments was mostly good, and it can stay good if they are just wise enough to keep the focus on life inside Gilead.
Season 6 comes out in September and it’s been renewed for a seventh. There are nine Slough House novels plus several novellas, so who knows? Maybe they’ll just keep going.
