Suits - Waiting for Godot on Steroids

Warning

This guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,

and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.

                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.

As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.

 

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Suits TV Series 2011 Ongoing U.S.A. --DVD, Netflix

Lawfirm chatfest held together by soapy melodrama, hokiness, and wit.

Mike Ross has never been to law school but talks his way into a job with a prestigious New York City Law Firm. His immediate boss, Harvey Specter, juggles the twin challenges of mentoring Mike and keeping Mike’s lack of qualifications a secret. This is Lord of the Flies meets Waiting for Godot on steroids.

 

We only need three adjectives to explain 80% of all there is to know about Suits: it’s a talkfest, it’s witty, and it’s a soapie.

The Manhattan law firm for which most of the characters work is a practice specialising in negotiating and deal-making rather than going to court. A lot of the “action” consists of people

• talking while sitting,
• talking while walking, or
• talking about what they should say when it’s time to talk.

For the most part, the cases in this show are ho-hum, sketchy on detail and pose no great moral dilemmas – issues that would be “worthy” in any other series would just seem out of place in Suits. The show is mostly about how to play the game of life successfully, where life is defined to mean “career”.

Despite the usual law-firm intrigues for control of status and clients, nothing much happens but somehow the dialogue just keeps coming. There is a limited range of standard interior set-ups, for example, e.g. Jessica and Harvey walk towards each other then stop at reception to exchange two lines before they walk on. There are movie quoting competitions, slabs of free life coaching and tonnes of character-driven wit that make the series work even when the already-thin episode storylines lack credibility.

 

Harvey: “Do you know how we won World War Two?”

Mike: “Yeah, of course. Spock didn’t let Kirk save Joan Collins from getting hit by that car.”

 

Harvey is 40ish, white, suave and a James Bond Type. His boss is a very tall, attractive black woman named Jessica Pearson, and Harvey respects her; he doesn’t care about her race and is not threatened by her gender. Gender and race are rarely issues on this show, which is to say it is not based in the real world but mostly avoids stereotypes. (Suits is no morality play).

 

 

 

Suits is set in NYC where rents are high, and Jessica wears a new bespoke outfit every time she appears on screen, so the default setting is privilege; only Harvard graduates are hired as lawyers, but there is no class divide on this show – paralegals and other non-lawyers are assumed to have equal value (but not in any lefty kind of way).

 

People work a gazillion hours a week because life is synonymous with career.
It follows that workmates are family and we rarely become emotionally over-invested in outsiders. I’ve no idea where the series will go when Mike and Rachel are out of the picture because if we were not romancing vicariously through them, what would be left apart from the jokes?

 

      Louis:   “You let that man inside your cubicle!”

 

Once of the things about shows like this, where lifestyles are all about conspicuous consumption, is they provide a good context for stepping back and re-evaluating national accounting systems that hold

GDP

= The Income of Everyone in the Country

= Value of All the Goods & Services Produced

i.e. The more money you are paid the more value you have as a human being. You know – the sort of crap that sounds important in parliamentary debates and makes it seem like democracy would fall if the Harveys of this world could not do their thing, but it would not fall if the pretzel maker went out of business.

 

The writing is solid enough that my interest didn’t really flag til the 6th series. Posturing and pissing contests aren’t my personal faves unless David beats Goliath but I was happy enough these contests were offset in early seasons by witty exchanges and by the firm bully being a buffoon.

 

 

 

By season 6 the world tilts; Goliath seems to hold all the cards, the kids in what’s left of the law firm just squabble all the time, and after 6 years none of the grownups have learned yet to stop lying to themselves or each other – I found it increasingly difficult to care about them and there were not enough laughs or surprises to make any of it worth enduring.

 

 

Nails on a Blackboard: English characters played by real British actors who do not use the words “bring, take, come or go” the way speakers of British English as a First Language would use them.

 

Bingeability – 6 out of 10. Not something that made me lose sleep wondering what would happen next, but for the first 5 seasons it was entertaining enough.

After bingeing on a whole 6 seasons of this, the biggest laugh is I never once twigged the actor playing Mike (Patrick J. Adams) is the same guy who made my heart sing with happiness for Helena on Orphan Black. Duh.

Why I Loved Love Child

Warning
This guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.

 

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Love Child – TV Series 2014 -2017: The Nine Network Australia / DVD

Great drama set in Kings Cross, Sydney, 1969

Looks at an Australia on the verge of social change, from the point of view of inmates of a Sydney maternity home for unwed mothers.



The forced adoption industry was not really shut down until the 1980s in Australia, and the detail in this script provides a shuddering reminder of what a hideously sexist world 1969 Australia was. Ecchh.
Yes, the pill was available by prescription but that was in theory only; the health system was still very much in the grip of the AMA, and we'd had decades of unchallenged conservative government. Doctors did not like to prescribe the pill to single females nor would they prescribe it for married women without their husband's approval. Catholic doctors would not even contemplate it at all. Socially, Australia had not caught up with technology and girls were still left in ignorance to deal with the inevitable exploitation, shame and humiliation of living in a sexist culture. Fucking Lucky Country my arse.

Once we escape the establishing episode things get brighter, with a chance to focus on the more upbeat personalities of inmates of the maternity hospital and see where the writers might plan to take us.

Although the key setting is a maternity home, the commentary on social and moral issues over four seasons ranges far and wide, always delivered through drama so the tone never becomes preachy.
Having Miranda Tapsell as a regular cast member is more than a token decision – through sub-plots, or even throw away lines like “I thought you people had your own place to live”, Love Child makes a multitude of comments on Assimilationist Era Australia – and fair enough, because there is a great deal to be said on that topic alone.

As a refugee from an RC upbringing I found it was worth every cent I paid for the DVDs, just to hear an Indigenous Australian deliver this one line about limbo where the African babies go.
It belongs at the top of a countdown of top ten moments, ever, on Australian film.

Add the dying stages of the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the new wave of Feminism to the mix for some interesting and very entertaining viewing.

Bingeability: Extremely high. Loved every moment of this – there was nowhere for the story to go after the 1972 election brought the Dark Ages to an end, though if the end of the show was a tragedy I can’t say the election result was.

Definitely a desert island set, if only because it shows I wasn't making up half the stuff I have told people about "then", and proves Twain's maxim that truth isn't obliged to stick to possibilities. Actually, it doesn't even scratch the surface...

Killjoys - Oh Gods, We Are a Family

WarningThis guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.

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Killjoys - 2013 Canada – Sci Fi TV Drama Series

Highly Engaging and Entertaining

Follows the adventures of Dutch, John, and D'avin, a trio of hard-living bounty hunters who, travelling in their sentient space ship, Lucy, work a portion of space known as the Quad.

Although Killjoys doesn’t set out to be a comedy, it just can’t help itself. This might be because it was created by Michelle Lovretta, who gave us Lost Girl. It might also be because the writing is excellent, character-driven writing. On top of that, the world in which the Killjoys live is brilliantly conceived, and the characters are brilliantly drawn. – Can you guess how much this show has impressed me?

The first one or two episodes are a bit “clunky”, but I was instantly tickled by the idea of a currency unit called “Joy”, and delighted to learn the world of Killjoys was owned by a few privileged, wealthy families and run by a corporation which, for the sake of efficiency, simply issued warrants to get things done. None of these concepts sounded at all difficult to follow.




But beyond reflecting society, Killjoys is not really out to change anything. The real appeal is in the characters.

The space ship Lucy is owned by Dutch and so it sort of follows that the team of Killjoys is her team – it’s not a “chick’s show” but it is a story with a strong female character at its heart. When they are at the Royale for a drink the Killjoys help the bar owner, Pree, maintain a little order.

 

Pree is gay but does not conform to some boring stereotype, which is what I love about shows like this. Nothing is a big deal, and nothing conforms to stereotypes; people simply are who they are.

 

There are two utterly cold and calculating heartless bitches for villains on this show who just happen to be lesbians, and I love every minute we get to spend with them.
If anyone doesn’t like having lesbians portrayed as cold, calculating and heartless bitches then they should get stuffed – how refreshing to see people just being people.

Of course there are also heterosexuals on this show so nobody needs to feel slighted – I’m just making the point that Michelle Lovretta  brings a sane and relaxed approach to creating human characters. People do sex stuff if and how they like and that’s fine by her, and I like her approach. And Killjoys laughs at life in an adult way without resorting to crude language which is to say it is often clever.

Killjoys’ humour is not relentless because this is no comedy or dramedy, but when this show does use humour to balance out the drama the humour is really, really hilarious. I love it to bits. I sometimes spend days chortling to myself, not just over a few of the lines Mayko Nguyen delivers in Killjoys, but over her always masterful delivery.
(By Season 4 I’m beginning to think Delle Seyah Kendry, the supporting character played by Mayko Nguyen, is one of the best supporting characters written in the last 30 years. Thom Allison, who plays Pree, is obviously a huge talent and the role of Pree gives him a chance to show this, but the character of Delle Seyah Kendry is just "out there" in another galaxy even the Killjoys have yet to visit.)

If no show on earth is perfect this is just because life is not perfect – we accept that all countries have armies and law enforcement agencies as a matter of course. In one episode, a plot device requires the Killjoys to take a child permanently from his father and escort him to a school for gifted children. Killjoys enforce the law; they don’t question it. It’s just a plot device, not what the episode is “about”, but this episode still smacks of “Australia's Stolen Generations was perfectly okay as a policy”. It was probably an accident that this plot device jolted me out of my complacency, but sometimes I like to be reminded to question what I accept as “normal”.

Apart from the “Stolen Generations” accident, the dramatic stuff in Killjoys does sometimes deliberately include some powerful Western Union messages. I'm especially impressed with what the show has to say about "family", and the characters of John and D'Av often say things that impress me so much I get all weepy.
But Killjoys is not all life, death and the meaning of the universe either – it is engaging on a very entertaining level too: We get to do some armchair travel to the Killjoy’s corner of space and time and work out the backstory of the characters as well.

From the very first episode we find ourselves wondering why the seemingly “normal” character Dutch is actually a trained assassin who had a secret childhood with a different name. Season 5 will wrap up the bigger story arc of intergalactic alien doo-dah, and I will be sorry to see it all end and say goodbye to my friends from the Quad.

So, what should a white person like me make of the casting of this show?  Fancy Lee is a regular, and far from the biggest arsehole in The Quad.

I get why some POC are peeved that people of mixed race are more likely to be cast in major roles than much darker people no matter how much this is an improvement on the situation that prevailed a generation ago. I can't say I know much about Canada where this was made, but if it were made in Australia it might be a struggle to find access to a steady stream of "non-white" actors at all, so, you know, glass houses and all that. TBH, just one of the reasons I don't watch a lot of Australian shows is because ultra white casting makes everything bland (not to mention the often stupid content). It can be like watching an episode of Beverly Hills White-Wasp and when there are four blonde women on the screen all with the same hairdo and breast implants and eye colour I have no idea how to tell them apart. "They all look the same to me!" (Or are my eyes just getting old? No, your mind is just wandering again, Maude. Focus.)

Where was I? The casting is also disappointing here because in a show like this there is not one sane reason to make any assumptions about the demographic make-up of the schoolyard. At least there is a steady stream of supporting roles for darker people, if that's any consolation, for example, amongst the higher ranks of society or "The Company" and so on. But don't get me wrong - I love this show to bits!

Ma 15+ Strong Violence The violence on this show is not frequent or excessive, but if you are vulnerable, occasionally the images may be triggering.

Babylon Berlin

Warning
This guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.

---------------------------------------------

Babylon Berlin - Limited TV Series - 16 Episodes 2017 - Netflix

Delicious, visually rich drama set in the Weimar Republic

Take the visual appeal of Bauhaus and the joyful sounds of Weimar Kabaret, then stir them with some good old-fashioned grinding poverty at one extreme, relieved only by gross self-indulgence at another.
            then...
Throw in an occasional post-traumatic flashback to life on the front during World War I, some counter-counter espionage that would make anyone’s head spin, and be glad you are watching this from the relative comfort of the 21st Century.  But do be glad, because this is really great story-telling.

One need not be a history buff to enjoy this, though this show is so beautifully made it's a perfect opportunity for armchair travel to another time and place - a chance to get a feel for Berlin when it was at the epicentre of a Europe trying to work out what a rational system of government might look like.

 

Feel free to enjoy Babylon Berlin as it is. But if you want to know more about history or if you are an art buff, go to

http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/2018/04/the-truth-about-babylon-berlin.html

for a really, really, really top quality review with extensive notes - I can't write a review one-fifth as interesting or informative, but I do want to let you know this show is way better than average.

MA 15+ Rating Some Drug taking, and small amount of sexing associated with pornography, prostitution and blackmail. Nothing gratuitous for the era.

Bingeability This is very watchable, but it is solid drama with no comic relief. Not made for bingeing.

 

 

Shows No One Should Miss – The Good Wife

WarningThis guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.

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The Good Wife  - 2009 Drama Series  - CBS USA 7 Seasons - Dvd or Netflix

In 2018 I don't know many other places people have access to more nourishing "infotainment".


After 13 years as a good wife and mother Alicia stands by her man, Illinois state's attorney Peter Florrick, when he is jailed following a sex and corruption scandal. She must now suck up the embarrassment and provide for her family by returning to work as a lawyer.

Soapie aspects of the 7 seasons include ups and downs of her relationship with husband Peter and their two children, but most of the air-time is dedicated to legal and social issues.

Apparently the idea for The Good Wife started with the big question of “Why?” - Why do wives stay with dodgy husbands?
I think it was a dig at the Hillary Clintons of this world.



Of course, that was just a starting point – it doesn’t tell us anything about the real Hillary at all – but it does start out on a reasonably interesting note. How much courage and character would it take to suck up all that negative publicity at the very time you need to go begging for a job? Why not divorce the bastard? What sort of coalhole treats his wife like that, anyway? What sort of anyone would treat their partner like that?

In Season One, The Good Wife does a good job of introducing a range of characters and making them real, including enough characters to make sure we don’t get bogged down in Alicia’s domestic problems (though these do help to humanise her).
One of the most interesting characters is Eli Gold who is hired by Alicia’s politician husband Peter, half way through the first season. The part of Eli is played by Alan Cunningham who is both a brilliant dramatic and comic actor, and once the writers work out what they can do with him, Eli quickly becomes a major part of the show’s appeal.




Chicago is not a pale town. The law firm on this show is large and only has a few token POC amongst its partners and associates. Diane (played by Christine Baranski) is a privileged leftie, while Will (played by Josh Charles) is indifferently non-racist rather than idealistic. Alicia as a character gives the series a chance to show how hard it is for women – even those of privileged backgrounds – to battle sexism and a precarious economic climate to find jobs unless they “know” someone.

Kalinda, the firm’s investigator, is a nationalised American of Asian Indian subcontinental appearance (yes I’m playing that game but it’s part of the storyline, does that let me off the hook?) and Cary is a recent white graduate of Harvard who is competing with Alicia for a permanent job placement 6 months down the track.

Alicia worked for two seconds as a lawyer and then became a Professional Political Wife - not the sort of woman likely to be a Social Justice Warrior. For The Good Wife to be a legal procedural with any sort of conscience, the writers have to find creative ways to involve the show’s characters in cases that raise socially relevant questions. This includes ways for a show based in a predominantly white law firm in a town like Chicago to talk about race.

Episode 01x04, for example, when the crew are preparing for a trial, has a lot to say on the subject.

The show also makes a lot of mileage out of Michael J Fox's physical disability;

 

 

Alicia is white, so it takes a while for us to meet her, her family and learn to navigate her world before the casting eventually becomes more representative of the real Chicago, but the casting does get there. I love the look on Renee Goldsberry's face in this scene from 04x12. (The road to Black Hell is paved with the good intentions of "non-racist" whites...)

 



By Season 2 there were already hints that the writers on The Good Wife wanted to comment on broader issues – for example, the question is raised in a few episodes about how civil liberties were eroded in the U.S. following 9/11.

While some shows run out of puff or freshness after a few years, it seemed to me that with each successive season The Good Wife just grew stronger and more interesting; the questions raised became more worthy of our attention, and the writing more entertaining.

Towards the end of its run The Good Wife was downright subversive, and there were lots of moments that had me roaring with laughter. Well, even before then.

Bingeability Very High. This show is not for everyone. If people are looking for legal stories alone, or for human drama alone, they will probably not love it beyond the first few seasons – I enjoyed the fact that the human and legal stories provided opportunities for exploring deeper issues. In later seasons, the humour was so polished it almost became surreal.

There are one or two characters I didn’t like and I found it no problem to just fast forward through episodes where they appear. I’m fairly broad minded, but the Colin Sweeney stuff is just plain offensive, because there is a point beyond which sexualised violence doesn't seem to have any redeeming dramatic purpose. Sweeney aside, there are still more than 150 episodes of pure gold in this series.

If you have never watched The Good Wife, why not give it a try? If you have watched it and enjoyed it, keep your eye peeled for my post in which I review The Good Wife – with spoilers.

The Thin Blue Line (UK Comedy Series)

Warning
This guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers. 

The Thin Blue Line - Comedy Series 1995-6 UK 2 Seasons

Brilliant comedy series about a British Police Station

This show has all the staples of traditional British comedy – clever word play including smutty double entendres and talking at cross purposes; effeminate but definitely heterosexual males, sex-starved females, incompetent superiors (a variation on the tradition of Plautus) and an insane middle-class reverence for upper classes.
Stereotypes have been upgraded so that discrimination is not “awful” as it once traditionally was.
No surprise - it was written by Ben Elton who cut his teeth on The Young Ones and Black Adder scripts and has since gone on to bigger and better things, including writing and publishing 15 novels.

Rowan Atkinson stars as the pompous Police Inspector Raymond Fowler. Though I never really warmed to his Mr Bean character Atkinson has a wonderful, plastic face and has always been rather brilliant in sketch comedy, especially with clever, wordy dialogue so he is perfect in this part.
Fowler is shocked when Constable Habib suggests literary hero Biggles and his sidekick Ginger are lovers.



Constable Goody longs to win the heart and hand of Constable Habib. Although he’s convinced he’s irresistibly virile and butch, he’s as camp as a row of tents. He’s also rather dull-witted but not bright enough to realise it. When Fowler announces he has bought the Queen a birthday present and would like everyone to chip in, Goody promptly raises his hand to announce he doesn’t want to buy her a present because she’s an anti-Christ.

The Thin Blue Line features word-play at its best – a rare treat for a lexophile like me. Every member of the cast is also a consummate character actor, which brings me to one last special mention – David Haig who plays Detective Inspector Derek Grim.

The Wikipedia description of his character refers to Grim’s “butchery of English phraseology” as special – I have to admit it is definitely a big part of his appeal. I can’t think of any actor other than Haig who might be able to make this part work so well. 

• “It’s my arse on the line – so you’d better pull your finger out!”
• “My cockup – your arse!”
• “It’s my backside on the line, and I’m right up to my neck in it!”

Bingeability: Very High
 

Raised By Wolves (the UK one)

Warning

This guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,

and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.

                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.

As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.

 

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Raised By Wolves - Comedy Series 2015-2016 UK 2 Seasons


Warm comedy with an aware, lefty, feminist slant

Della Garry lives in a Midlands council house with Germaine, Aretha, Yoko, Wyatt, Mariah, baby Cher and Grampy. Raised by Wolves is built around a loose but updated version of the upbringing of the two sisters who wrote the sitcom, Caitlin and Caroline Moran.

This is a show about characters who live in a Midlands council house. Della has a lot to say and each episode is less than 30 minutes long. Three cheers for subtitles while our ears adapt to different accents and topics.




Yes, I know that elsewhere I have commented that women doing stand-up can be a bit yawny about women’s stuff – in this show when Yoko gets her period for the first time the topic is handled with warmth, humour and drama, not preachiness. Plus, the menstruation material is only a small part of the whole episode and woven well into the total fabric of the storyline.

In the first episode we also see

• Grampy work hard to get his leg over;
• Della take her children to the Common to forage for food (because they'll need survival skills when capitalism collapses); and
• oldest daughter Germaine obsess about her unrequited lust for local plumber’s son, Lee.

When she learns Yoko has reached menarche, Della is determined she’ll have a positive view of the fact she is now a woman:

DELLA:

Right, Yoko. Let's get you kitted out. You probably want to start off with these. They're basically a small mattress in your pants. They're simple, and they get the job done. We'll leave the talk about what they do to the environment and how you're basically better off with a flannel for another day…

YOKO:
I don't think I want to be a woman, Mom.

 

DELLA
No-one does, love - but the men are too chicken-shit to handle it, so here we are.
Aretha, go next door and get one of those fuck-off big Toblerones.

No real spoilers – I’ve omitted some great lines from this transcript. The object of the exercise here is simply to give you an idea of the show’s values and what the characters are like.

Della’s “not a date” outing is good value. She challenges Michael to park his big truck in a tiny space and even though he warns it will be a tight fit he rises to the occasion.

 

Bingeability: AND MA 15+ Rating:

Raised By Wolves is a clever, warm show. Grampy might be a pot head who sometimes has acid flashbacks, and the family might have some unconventional ideas, but they are not your “normal” dysfunctional family. I loved every minute I spent with them.

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What Makes Outlander Awesome - Or Not

Warning
This guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
Also, hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers. 

Outlander - TV Series 2014 – Ongoing. Starz.

Fantastic story telling, with a  Saturday matinee adventure serial feel

Just after WWII a British combat nurse Claire Randall is swept from the 20th century back to the Scottish Highlands of 1743 – yes, a perfectly strong, independent woman falls through time to a superstitious age when the British are invading Scotland, and women are supposed to know their place.
(Ha ha ha ha ha ha.)
Also, Claire can’t let on she is from the future but has to work out how she got where she is and how to get back where she came from.

I don't think the "spoilers" needed to tell you what this is about will spoil anything.

In the 18th century Claire finds herself attracted to Jamie Fraser, a hunky highlander hunk. This is a worry because she already has a husband in the 20th century, and she takes her wedding vows seriously. But Jamie is a hunk. And besides, in the 18th century men are more likely to leave a woman alone if she “belongs” to someone, plus she has normal “needs”, plus she is not sure she will ever get back to her own time and her 20th century husband Frank... And did I mention Jamie is a hunk?

 

 

 

 

This is a great “fish out of water” story, based on a series of bestselling books by Diana Gabaldon that have been around for decades. I saw an intriguing few minutes of one mid-season episode one night but had no way of watching the pilot or working out what was going on, so I bought the first of the books. In the few years since I’m sure I’ve read all 8 books (and spin-offs) right through more than a dozen times - the writing is not “arty-farty” but I swear they are the best stories I have read in 60 years of being a book worm.

Adapting books for screen is a challenge. It’s almost impossible to get it perfectly right, but with books like these, which were definitely not written with film in mind, the challenge is huge, and not just because the books have such a massive cult status. If you decide to watch this show be prepared to go where the story takes you –

Season one is set mainly in the Scottish Highlands where rebels are fighting British invaders, blokes duel with swords, and there is even a witchcraft trial. There is a definite Saturday Matinee adventure serial feel to this season, a fair amount of humpy pumpy and there is also some confronting violence because a Redcoat Captain who wants to break Jamie is a very sick unit.

The first half of season two has little humpy pumpy at all, and moves to 18th Century France. I luuuurved the whole Versailles thing, because that is a period of French history I find endlessly fascinating and I loved the way this show handled it. Claire and Jamie do eventually end up back in Scotland. Claire even ends up back in the 20th Century for a while.

The whole book saga moves back and forth between the 18th and 20th Centuries, which is handy. This means people from Gen X onwards can eventually catch a glimpse of just how things really changed for non-White people, or for white people with no dicks, during that period.

It helps a lot that Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan (sometimes pronounced Sam “Huge-One”) have more on-screen chemistry than any other two actors in the last 30 years - and that includes more chemistry than Angelina and Brad in the movie Mr & Mrs Smith, which is saying something.

 

Without providing spoilers there is not a lot more I can tell you about the story itself. The appeal of the books is not just the characters, but their unique combination of history and religion and humpy pumpy and moral ambiguity and philosophy and mystery and nursey bits and the things the characters experience … and did I mention the chemistry between Jamie and Claire?

The production quality of individual episodes varies in the first two seasons between appalling and pure genius. To be fair most of them deserve a minimum rating of 7 or more out of 10 and work well as entertainment.
If you have no interest in the books you can skip the next bit and just start watching - though if there is any chance violence can be triggering you might want to scroll down to the discussion of the show’s MA 15+ rating first.

How well does the TV series serve the books?

It’s probably different for each of us, but I do know that once I see something on a screen there is a strong chance the screen version will overwrite the home-made movies I’ve already got in my head from the original books. Some structural changes are inevitable with any adaptation as are new characters introduced or some characters eliminated.

Most book fans around the world are seriously happy with the Starz TV version. In season 2 one of my very favourite characters was introduced, and the character was nothing like I had imagined. The way the character was written (Brianna) in that season seemed to me to be appalling.
Although I swore I would not go back for season 3, I did eventually weaken and that was, in part, because Brianna does not feature much in book 3.

Season 3 of the TV series is of a much higher standard than the book (not my favourite). It’s not perfect but the story line is much tighter and eliminates some potential criticisms. (At one point there is a serious hole in the story arc between TV seasons 2 and 3, but better to fix a mistake than continue with it.)
But… the next season sees the return of an adult Brianna and now I’m really sure I can’t go back to the screen version of her – it’s just too awful for words.

MA 15+ Strong sex and violence
Sex
Well, I’ve warned you above about the humpy-pumpy. This series of books and therefore the TV show are about human nature. People do sex stuff. So what? You will see sex scenes in this show, and everything including male genitalia (but not a vagina).

Violence 
What you need to be aware of is the violence aspect - including sexualised violence. Can't discuss this without spoilers.

The first two seasons of this story are set during the early expansion of the British Empire and without giving you a whole blah blah blah, it was a time when life was even cheaper in the West than it is now. Breaking Jamie Fraser (the handsome hero) becomes something of an obsession for a sadistic English Captain. Jamie’s horrific flogging is a recurring motif in season one, but in one episode in particular, he is raped and otherwise treated quite brutally by the Captain. Why does the Captain do it? Because he can. Most of it is suggested and off-screen, but it does freak some people out.

It took me a long time before I could watch the episode (0115) right through and realised it was actually better to watch it than imagine worse things happening. None of it is gratuitous (if you accept that the English Captain is a sick fuck) but while too many of us are inured to the idea of women being treated badly, the idea of males being raped freaks some people out even more, etc, etc, etc and lots of other stuff to discuss. The rape happens in one episode, and there is more of it in the following episode because Jamie is trying to process it in flashback. (No wonder Jamie was not looking for a lot of humpy-pumpy in the beginning of season two, heh?)
There is only a total of about 5 minutes that is gross, including suggested stuff rather than blatant stuff, but it grosses people out, big time. Our imaginations are powerful beasts.

There is no scene anywhere near so brutal in any of the following books til book 6 (tho everything is relative) and so there is no reason for the TV series to show anything so extreme either, in future episodes.

Bingeability – Yes. You will definitely want to know what happens next. Even if you have read the books, you will be curious about how the TV series handles the characters and the storylines. And yes, there are episodes even I could watch again and again and again, because they are brilliant; the episodes that work are really, really, really, really good.
This series would be on my Desert Island list, but only if I could not take the books.

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For Readers - if you have not read the books but might like to try them, and if you are in Australia or another Commonwealth country, and if you are looking for an English language version of the first book, you might consider trying to get a U.S. version which will most likely mean a hard copy through a company like Amazon.

Whenever possible I buy eBooks now through iTunes, but in Australia I still ended up with the British version of book one which was tampered with (and in my opinion wrecked) by some pompous English editor when first released in the UK yonks ago. Later books in the series were not affected. The Brit version of book one, (now called Outlander in UK so it's the same name as the original & TV series) still "works" but is not so good as the first, US version.