Not surprising that Tom Hardy seems well suited for the role, given that he and his father wrote the program.
Yeah, I had fun playing “spot the actor” without cheating using IMDb.
I recognized Posca almost immediately, but it took me two full episodes to remember his name, and even then I remembered it as Pasco. It took me a little longer to recognize Robb Stark’s bride, but not much.
I’m enjoying it. Love the grittiness and the whole backdrop of we’re folllowing the rules but we’re also kind of making the rules. Exampled best by “I’d hoped to settle this matter in a modern way” but instead we’ll have to murder him.
Last year or the year before, FX blazed the trail with profanity by allowing sporadic use of the word “fuck” on their shows. Very quickly the floodgates opened, to the point that Atlanta (great show!) was chock full of fucks.
Never one to rest on their laurels, FX has once again upped the game with the first (to my knowledge) basic cable utterance of the word “cunt.”
Just wanted to add… I had a very good feeling about this show just from the opening credits. Very well done. FX is doing all 3 Eps tonight, so I have them recorded. I think I dozed off a bit watching Ep 1 (I was dead tired, not the fault of the show), and glad I don’t have to rewatch it OnDemand were Comcast has FF turned off.
Wonderful, wonderful character acting from Mark Gatiss. Could NOT work out who it was though I knew I be annoyed if I gave in and looked it up. And I was.
I like how James isn’t Superman; he continually gets his ass kicked, like Raylan Givens in the early seasons of Justified. However, he’s kind of becoming Wolverine with his healing powers. I hope they ease off the throttle on that bit. Unless maybe they’re going to say he uses magic to heal himself?
In other “spot the actor” news, his criminal friend hit me like a ton of bricks from a single camera angle in last night’s episode: Al Capone from Boardwalk Empire. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of familiarity from him in previous episodes, but after that one profile it was clear as day, and now I don’t know how I missed it.
And of course the American doctor dude is Kevin Spacey’s lackey from House of Cards, but that was obvious from the get-go.
:smack: Not only did I not recognize Stephen “Al Capone” Graham, I had no idea (when watching BE) that he’s a Brit.
I’m trying to just sit back and enjoy the ride but I can’t stop myself from wondering how it will all end.I assume it’s just going to be the eight episodes as originally planned so I wonder if James will die a spectacular death, taking all the baddies with him, or if he’ll survive and his neurotic sister will be put out of her misery. It could go in any number if directions.
Actually, I’m wondering if maybe they’re trying to imply that he gets special curative powers from consuming the flesh of his fallen enemies.
Twice now we’ve seen him grievously injured, and both times they’ve made a point to show him eating pieces of the guy who did the injuring. Or at least heavily imply it, as in this most recent episode and the assassin who gave him that nasty head wound.
Hmmmm. Interesting. That did not occur to me. :smack:
By the way, I am enjoying the show. And I am good at “spot the actor”, but terrible at “name the actor” (or even figure out where I’ve seen him/her before).
For example, only now reading this thread did I realize that Hardy’s sister was Robb Stark’s bride. And for the life of me I could not place the lawyer, but reading here it clicked that it was Sherlock’s brother! I know, I know, I should name the actors, but, well …
Even though the show, so far, is little more than grunty Tom Hardy swaggering intimidatingly through one of the grimiest Londons I’ve ever seen, delivering and responding to threats, breaking bones and tearing out throats, and flirting and seducing his sister, I’m enjoying it quite a lot.
Nit pick: Georgian England. Victoria isn’t even born yet.
I’m finally caught up and very much looking forward to the new episode (though I won’t be able to watch it live tonight). Pretty much liking everything about this show.
I fully acknowledge, however, that they could make a mini series called “10 hours of Tom Hardy not being intimidated by people who are trying to intimidate him” and I would watch the hell out of it.
Enjoying it very much…love Tom Hardy for some reason…but in this I keep wishing he would take a bath! Actually everyone needs a bath.
That’s one of my favorite parts about the show! In my imagination, most people back then were really dirty (by today’s standards) most of the time.
Still loving the show and looking forward to the finale, but I have to object to the plan and result in this week’s episode.
Waterboarding? Seriously? That’s the worst they could do in the Tower of London in the early 1800s? I’m not buying it.
Googling seems to indicate that they stopped using the rack somewhere in the 1600s, but still. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that you could walk away from a Tower of London interrogation. I mean that literally, as in, you still have use of your limbs?
Waterboarding isn’t light torture. It’s one of the most horrific forms of torture there is. Have you seen this?
No, it’s really, really not.
Old-timey torture left you crippled for life. As in, you never walked again. You may never feed yourself again. Get broken on the rack in the Tower of London and never have use of your limbs ever again. That’s orders of magnitude more horrific than waterboarding.
And that’s my point.
All of that is irrelevant. The person in this example being tortured isn’t going to live the rest of their life. It’s clear they’re going to kill him. So they have to inflict something unbeararable as to coerce him.
If maiming is the measure of torture, is someone who was waterboarded for days less tortured than someone who had their leg painlessly amputated while under general anesthesia? Is Scylla somehow wrong when he said he’d rather have someone break all his fingers with a sledgehammer, or do you not consider that to be real torture either?
Besides, you’re trying to extract information from someone, rather than just torture them for the sadistic pleasure/fear it can cause, you’d want to use a method that has a low risk of killing them before they can give you that information.
And even besides that, we saw them engage in conventional torture before trying waterboarding. If he won’t break, it makes sense that they’d try different methods.
The scene makes sense. Really, this is just you trying to push a rather disgusting “water boarding is no big deal” agenda.
Ask them both two years later.
But yeah, for sure. how about I hold you hostage, and every day you wake up with another piece of you having been surgically removed. Eventually you’re just a torso with a head. But hey, waterboarding is way worse than that, right?
Scylla, the king of hyperbole?
How about this: Right now, 10 years after that post, would Scylla still be happy with choosing permanent disability over being waterboarded against his will 10 years ago?
Otherwise known as the rack.
Jesus Christ, ease off the liberal koolaid. I’m not saying water boarding is no big deal. It is undeniably torture.
But the tortures that permanently maim you are clearly much, much worse. That’s part of what’s so torturous about it: The horror that comes from the knowledge that you’re being permanently disfigured and maimed.