TV Catch Up May

Three TV shows that I watched in 2023, bringing my TV reviews for last year to a close. Still some reviews of other media to come before I draw a line under the year.

City On A Hill

It’s Boston Massachusetts in the 90s. Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon) is a veteran FBI agent, survivor of both criminals and corruption. He has fingers in every pie, he lies, cheats, breaks the rules. He cheats on his wife, he takes cocaine, he’s at war with his mother-in-law, he’s a bad man. He’s a Boston man through and through.

DeCourcey Ward (Aldis Hodge) is a lawyer. He was on a commission to investigate the Boston police, recommending jail time for corrupt cops; they didn’t get it. He’s now working as an assistant district attorney. He, and his wife, have political ambitions. As members of the black community they’re part of the Genesis Coalition, an anti-drugs, anti-gun, anti-gangs movement of local churches, activists and politicians. He needs a big win to prove to the police he’s not against them, to get criminals off the street, to keep his career on track.

The two of them team up to try and catch a gang of armoured car robbers. The robbers are led by Frankie Ryan, an Irish-American produce manager in a store, assisted by his wife Cathy, who runs a hair salon where they launder the money. Jimmy Ryan, Frankie’s brother, is a drug dealer and drug addict, always in trouble, always trouble. Jackie sometimes uses him as an informant. Jackie and DeCourcey use an old disappearance – murder – of a man who was involved with the gang to try and get leverage over one or other of the gang. It’s a little complicated.

There are three agencies involved, the Boston Police Department (we follow one detective as a secondary character for a while, he’s trying to put pressure on drug gangs who are linked to gun dealers  of interest to both Jackie and DeCourcey) looking into various crimes. The FBI who technically aren’t involved with the murder investigations, but maybe could be with the armoured car heists (assault weapons and crossing state lines). Jackie has contacts with the police and breaks jurisdictional boundaries everywhere. Meanwhile DeCourcey technically works for the Suffolk County District Attorney, which is not identical to the City of Boston, but makes up most of it and works closely with the police and less closely with the FBI.

All the legal and bureaucratic constraints are what DeCourcey and Jackie have to work within (or not) to get anything done; occasionally this means the right thing gets done. This spine of the story spreads out to their families. Jackie’s daughter gets in with a wrong crowd, eventually becoming an addict, and is abducted. His wife is too friendly with the priest; when she finds out he’s been unfaithful she throws him out and the path to their reconciliation is very rocky. Cathy and Frankie have children and an unwell mother; Jimmy is estranged from his daughters and ex-girlfriend in Florida.

This is all season one; season two has Jackie and DeCourcey at odds until that season’s case (drug gang shoot out kills a girl; one of the Genesis Coalition activists who is a housing trustee turns out to have family members involved) drags DeCourcey’s wife, also a politically ambitious lawyer, into the fray. There was a third season, briefly on Paramount Plus, but by the time I thought to look for it it was gone and so is no longer legally available in the UK.

Watch This: Convoluted, family and crime drama with some excellent performances
Don’t Watch This: How can the 90s be a period, I lived through them, also a lot of plot coincidence stitched together by Jackie knowing a guy

 

Thunderbirds

It’s the 1965 puppet show. They’ve got the puppetry working pretty well by now after several earlier efforts. There are limitations, especially the number of characters who can be in a scene, in close ups and when they have to move.

None of that is too important. International Rescue is a secret organisation with advanced machinery to rescue people. Run by former astronaut Jeff Tracy from his tropical island*, the engineer Brains has devised the “Thunderbird” machines. Operated by Tracy’s five sons they fly across the world to various disasters.

Set a hundred years in the future (2065) this is a world where giant machines are built to perform titanic feats. A great US Army walking machine to gain access to remote regions of Africa to put down brushfire wars. (No reason for the brushfire wars is noted). An enormous nuclear powered transporter to move the Empire State Building when the area is being redeveloped (That’s a large portion of Manhattan that’s been demolished for the works – and the foundations do not seem to have been properly surveyed). A road building machine on a deadline will need to take risks to demolish a mountain pass. (Workers put in danger because risk management took a backseat to the engineering possibilities). The US Navy has a high-speed carrier that shoots at unidentified craft, the RAF patrol the channel, there are secret civilisations with their own jet fighters, and terrorists target the new Fireflash jet-liner**.

Hence presumably the need to keep the Thunderbird technology secret. Their adversary is the Hood, an Asian man with hypnotic powers. He’s gleaned knowledge of International Rescue because his brother and niece work for Jeff Tracy. Kyrano is Jeff’s manservant (?) and his daughter Tin-Tin works as Brains' assistant, also gets on some missions when they need extra people. One crew per vehicle is a bit light for rescues, but if it’s not underwater then Gordon the aquanaut can come along. This review is from watching thirteen episodes; because of the broadcast order it takes nine before they get to use Thunderbird 3, the space rocket, when they realise that maybe John Tracy in Thunderbird 5 the space monitor station ought to be relieved. In theory a mission would be space-based, so they can take several on the rocket, or not, so the astronaut can be a warm body for earth-bound missions; in practice when Thunderbird 3 has to rescue the sun probe the ground-hugging members have to fly out to put in a relay.

Because of the threat of the Hood, and possibly other spies, Tracy Island looks like a luxurious resort, where Jeff and his lazy good-for-nothing family hang out and do nothing. Inconveniently people come by to visit or consult Jeff. They don’t know that Thunderbird 1 launches from under the pool, Thunderbird 2 comes out from under a cliff and Thunderbird 3 appears dramatically from within a ring-shaped guest house.

More than that; Jeffy Tracy has a number of friends who helped set this up. One of them is Lady Penelope. She and her butler/driver Parker get involved with various bits of cloak and dagger nonsense when required. For example when a camera detector alerts them that Thunderbird 1 has been photographed she chases after the suspect in her pink Rolls Royce in a high speed pursuit, and shoots them off the road with the machine gun mounted in the bonnet, causing them to crash, following which she leaves them for dead at the side of the road. Fortunately it’s the Hood, and he escapes without the pictures so it’s all good, but are destroying pictures of Thunderbird 1 really grounds for potentially murdering someone?

I am a little hard on this, a puppet show for children that’s mostly about big machines going wrong or blowing up and then other machines rescuing the people trapped by the accident. But only a little; if International Rescue want to be private and anonymous so be it, but the violence they use to protect their privacy seems beyond the pale. Is Brains really the only one who can come up with this stuff? And if the world is too dangerous and unstable to release his designs, maybe they should consider doing something about that?

The show is interesting enough that these questions don’t need to be answered. But sadly the cast of characters mostly aren’t that interesting, one note heroes, which is why I wonder what all this implies for the world.

Watch This: Excellent puppet and model action
Don’t Watch This: If giant machines going wrong does nothing for you

* Canonically in the South Pacific, almost all the, frankly vague, geography would have it better placed in the Atlantic, perhaps the Caribbean.

** Thunderbirds as dystopia?

 

The Wheel Of Time (Season 2)

At the end of Season One Rand al’Thor was revealed as the Dragon Reborn, a male channeler (wizard) and so doomed to go mad as all male channelers do. He confronted the Dark One in The Eye Of The World and defeated him, then chose to vanish, leaving Moraine, an Aes Sedai channeler, to report his death. She in turn has had her magic taken from her.

There’s layers on layers of falsehoods there. Rand shaves his distinctive red hair* and is in Cairhien, living with Selene, his lover, an innkeeper. He works in an asylum and plots to be able to contact Logain, an inmate who was a False Dragon and male channeler whose powers have been taken away, hoping he can teach him how to keep the magic under control.

Moraine has had her magic taken away, and as part of her intrigue with the head Aes Sedai, The Amyrlin Seat, banished from the tower. She lives with two (mostly) retired Aes Sedai, trying to get her warder al’Lan Mandragonan to leave her, maybe become a warder for someone else. But she’s not given up her intrigue, she’s seeking artefacts and records. And Cairhien was her home once, it is not a coincidence that Logain was sent there.

Nynaeve and Egwene are novices in the tower. Nynaeve isn’t fitting in well, and her power won’t come. With her frustration and constant defiance she neglects Egwene, who’s coming along okay; Egwene befriends Elayne, a royal heir and also novice, who understands the politics and situation better (though is often arrogant). Liandrin, a red Aes Sedai who is a rival of Moraine offers to train Nynaeve, but initially this is refused as previously novices under her instruction have come to harm. Secretly (though not from Moraine, I think) Liandrin has Matt, the Two Rivers lad who abandoned the others before the confrontation at the send of Season 1, as a prisoner.

Perrin, the last one of the Two Rivers group, and Lolai, an Ogier, have joined a troop** of Shieriens who are searching for Padan Fain, who stole the Horn during the confrontation at the end of the last season. They’re joined by a tracker, or sniffer, who has great interest in Perrin. They’re heading west.

West though is where an enemy has arrived, the Seanchan empire from across the sea. They wish to conquer the whole world so they can fight the Last Battle on behalf of the Light. Just like the Dragon Reborn is supposed to. They keep channelers enslaved, leashed with magic collars that won’t let the wearer turn against their controller.

This would be bad enough. But it turns out that Rand and Moraine made a truly horrendous mistake. They didn’t defeat the Dark One, they released his greatest servant Ishamel, once a friend of Lews, the previous Dragon three thousand years ago. He has a mastery of channelling unknown in this age. And he’s released other followers of the Dark One, and infiltrated his way into the Seanchan.

This is a step up from the first season, in part because everyone actually has something they’re trying to do, not just follow Moraine to the Tower or later to the Eye Of The World. And there are lots of things making those goals difficult. Moraine, always secretive, tries to push away anyone who might actually help now she’s lost her magic***. Rand wants to hide, but has to take chances to try and learn how to control his power, and avoid the inevitable madness. Meanwhile he’s been tricked and trapped from several directions. The channelers will have to go through tests, that are designed to break them because the evil reaches right into the tower itself. It’s not just fun and exciting adventure, our characters are forced down dark paths that make them struggle and sacrifice. They have hard, possibly impossible things to do, and then the Seanchan invasion comes in and urgently breaks everything – yet they still need to do what they were originally up to.

I’ve still not read the books.

Watch This: Already a cut above the average fantasy show, it builds and improves
Don’t Watch This: Betrayal and people taking stupid chances aren’t for you

 * It marks the nation his mother came from, who have distinctive and amazing fighting skills and fought a war in the backstory. Frankly it’s still obviously ginger, he’d have done better to dye it, or as it turns out, not bothered.

** So, horses. The troop has exactly as many horses as riders. In theory this might be them down to the last remounts, but you’d surely buy or commandeer more, if only as pack horses. They don’t seem that heavily laden yet the troop is discovered with quite an extensive camp, including canvas on tall poles – poles that aren’t on any of the horses. We don’t see that again so maybe they abandoned them. I’m just saying, one packhorse would have covered up a lot of sins.

*** Horses again, maybe spoilers. At one point Moraine and two others need to flee and there are four horses. Take them all! No, she kills one rather than keep a remount. Oh well. Then later they trick the pursuer by having one person lead horses away. In theory the killing the horse will add to that trick, but how do they know how many people and horses there ought to be? It shows Moraine’s desperation and ruthlessness, sure, but it’s an error on her part.