TV Review Catch Up 3
Just two TV series today so let's get to it:
1. Stumptown
Dex Parrieos is a veteran of military intelligence looking after her younger, Downs syndrome affected brother, also a mess of one night stands, blunt talking, drinking and gambling bad habits. When her ex-boyfriend (killed in Afghanistan)’s daughter goes missing she’s hired to get her back by the girl’s grandmother who is a leader of the local native American community, and in charge of the casino (where Dex owes quite a lot of money). This doesn’t quite go to plan, but Dex finally manages to rescue the girl in a ridiculous finale in which she leads the cops who are chasing her to the bad guys, incidentally ignoring the client’s wishes.
She goes on to be a private detective working out of the bar Bad Alibi, run by her friend Gray who financed it with money from a heist back when he was a criminal. Everything in the show is basically this complicated.
It has every private eye trope, the fist fights, the drinking, the problems with love life, every case spiralling out of control, but given a slight twist and then turned up to maximum. I liked it a lot.
Watch This: For excessive private eye fun
Don’t Watch This: If watching a woman spiral around her problems and just barely making them work for her by turning them outwards on bad guys sounds depressing
2. Little Birds
Tangiers in the 50s, the last decadent gasp of colonial excess. American Lucy Savage arrives to marry Hugo, and English lord. It turns out he’s gay which doesn’t help their relationship; meanwhile her father, an arms manufacturer, wants him to sell weapons.
But this is based on erotic stories by Anaïs Nin, so we’re just as interested in La Serafina, Tangiers most notorious courtesan, and Lilly van X, singer and film-maker who is staying with the Countess and her two pleasure-seeking daughters. They all interact with each other, and find themselves more or less entangled into the political plot, revolving around the potential return of the king of Morocco and the probable end to the Colonial Secretary’s rule. Of course the Secretary is obsessed with La Serafina.
For a series with several scenes of weirdness and of sex, the hottest sequence was when Lucy went to lunch with the Colonial Secretary. First he fed her an ortolan in the traditional manner (a napkin on the head to hide such an act from the eyes of god). Then she shot a cigarette from out his mouth. She never misses. Extremely hot.
Maybe that’s more about me than the show.
Watch This: For a delirious, weird meandering set of intersecting stories, a bit more focus on sex than usual
Don’t Watch This: For a taut thriller or people just getting on and doing it