42/21
Graham Norton and guests: Cher/Keira Knightley/Michael Fassbender/Josh Brolin/Jalen Ngonda (2024)
Helen embarks on a passionate affair with a man who has no idea what her secret identity is. Caught in the crosshairs when her lover falls victim to London’s dangerous underworld, Helen’s employer turns to Sam to protect her. Bingo, the owner of the guitar shop where Sam gets his guns, is played by Rat Scabies, a member of the classic punk band The Damned. A Tale from New YorkWritten by Jem Finer, Shane MacGowan Performed by The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl.
The trio have been working together, but alone, to uncover some grand conspiracy
This 6-part Netflix spy thriller promised a lot, but ultimately didn’t quite deliver on all it could. With a top-notch cast including Keira Knightley as the ninja-kicking, gun-toting action hero, as well as Ben Whishaw as her former mentor and now colleague, expectations were high. They both work for the top-secret mercenary espionage organization Black Doves, which is controlled by Sarah Lancashire and does its best to impress Judi Dench’s “M” in a terrifying platinum blonde wig. It really starts with a bang when we see three young people murdered in central London.
Sharply directed, with a stellar A-list cast, it somehow failed me
There’s a separate plot thread involving the death of the Chinese ambassador to Britain, whose party central daughter has also inconveniently disappeared, threatening to ignite various international political feuds. It’s no surprise that the two events later converge, both stories echoing Knightley and Whishaw’s work, not least because, as well as being married to the government’s defence minister, she herself. has fallen into political turmoil over the ambassador’s death, she has also had a passionate affair with one of the three men who died at the beginning. Other characters are drawn into the kaleidoscopic narrative as Knightley and Whishaw become increasingly entangled in an increasingly impossible plot, while a mountain-sized body count piles up around and around them, sometimes in their hands, and Whishaw still has time to revive an old romance.
When it was all resolved at the end, I felt like it had all happened
It betrayed its early promise, flying into a cluttered plot that relied too much on chance, gun violence and strange, offbeat characters. fell somewhere between James Bond-like fantasy and Le Carre-like realism, and the escapism unfortunately won out in the end. When I started watching it, I felt inclined to binge-watch the rest of the series for the first time. It looked so good, but around episode 4 or so, I’m afraid there were cracks that no amount of sharp dialogue and quick wit could make up for (and there were some good ones).
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It picked up again for a tense and exciting finale, even if it relied heavily on exposition and didn’t seem to know when to stop. But it did eventually, and even did it in a Die Hard-like Christmas setting, but ultimately it all felt too contrived, complicated, and confusing to really work for me. One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the biggest TV and streaming premieres this month.