The 100 - a Simply Awesome 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.

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The 100 (“The Hundred”) TV Series 2014 Ongoing. CW / Netflix/ DVD

Riveting, kick-ass storytelling that never looks tired with repeat viewing


97 years after nuclear war wiped out life on earth the “ARK” space station is failing. 100 juvenile offenders are sent to Earth to see if the planet is now habitable.

Similarities to the story of Australian colonisation are ironic, as 4 of the main character parts are played by Australian actors – two of them former stars of the soap opera Neighbours. Irony is heaped on irony when Terra Nullius once again proves to be a lie.

In this brave new world the focus is on survival, and there are only two types of people – strong people or weak.
Because this is about a post-nuclear world the storylines have a darkness to them; what lends the series much of its appeal is that ordinary characters are extraordinarily heroic.

 

It only takes a few episodes to become invested in some of the characters - this is excellent, character driven storytelling that quickly developed a huge following, with fans adopting some of the sayings and language of the show - a sign that even if this isn’t the greatest story ever told, it’s still very engaging.

I've been intrigued to see which of the main characters’ moral compass never wavers: Where characters do sometimes lose their way, the about-turn somehow never seems improbable. Moral ambiguity is what prevents The 100 from being “just another good story”, and the series is always fresh because storylines aren't formulaic and don’t just re-hash old moral questions.

This is supposedly a young adult series - I know I’m not the only old fart who has relished every moment of this show.

Relationships are well drawn on this show, and sexuality is refreshingly fluid. Even more refreshing: - strong female characters.

Season 1 is a bit Lord of the Flies meets Lost in Space: At first the most interesting bits are about the kids who've been sent to Earth, while in deep space back on the Ark the grown up stuff is less exciting as survivors work out if or how to get everyone else back down to Earth.
This is all held together by a fascinating exploration of who survived the nuclear war on Earth and how they did or did not get along.

Spoiler Alert
You can scroll down to the Ratings part of this review – or if you don’t mind a few spoilers, read right through for a brief outline of where each season goes.

Season 2 is a little more dystopian vs utopian as we look at Earth survivors and later what happens when the grown ups from the Ark reach Earth and try to rein in The 100. (Seriously, I’m a geriatric and I just want to strangle the olds in this show, which means they work as characters because they really irritate.)
Mix in a Josef Mengele type and introduce the two impressive characters Indra and Lexa.

 

 

Season 3 delivers an interesting spin on “belief”. It’s almost an exploration of the way Nazi Germany replaced "Proper" Religion with a State Ideology, this is served up with a tossed salad of myth, science and nuke history.
Jaha, leader of the “cult” doesn’t dress like a Bishop or ask for money but he reminds me enough of Catholic School 50 years ago I just want to stab him in the eye every time his smug fake serene face appears on-screen. The whole City of Light/ ALIE / Flame thing is so well put together, though, that I can’t fault it.

The 100’s other, more likeable characters are increasingly awesome this season; there is a fight scene in 0304 that makes for a really special moment – and that’s just early in the season before it builds to a great final episode.

There is not a lot of humour in the scripts, but I found myself grinning like a Cheshire cat every time Prince Roan appeared on the screen.

Season 4 Jaha is no longer a Happy Clappy but I still wish he would get written out of the show for no other reason than just ecch. Murphy has grown properly into who he is and makes for good “set dressing”. The overall story arc and narrative framework continue to impress mightily as all the clans face new challenges leaving us still caring about what is coming next.

Season 5 is marginally less riveting. Some episodes gave us important answers we were desperately searching for. Things are also just not quite the same with the loss of a couple of characters (romantic leads) that had the biggest fan following.

 

 

On the other hand, the shift in focus and introduction of new characters prevents the series becoming predictable, and allows it to re-invent itself. This season did not end with a cliff-hanger, but although the novelty has worn off, the quality of the story-telling is still high. I’ll be curious to see where the next season takes us.

M15+ Rating: There is regular, gory, visual grossness which is not gratuitous, but which could make some episodes of this series triggering. Some interesting challenges, and riveting fight and battle scenes.

Bingeability – I did watch the first 3 series straight through, to see what would happen – no mean feat for someone who has never been able to sit through one whole Star Wars movie. After that I had to wait for new seasons to become available, and waiting was hard. Definitely a desert island set.

Misfits (The UK Series) - Awfully Good (Literally)

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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Misfits - TV Series UK Clerkenwell Films  - 5 Series 2009-2013 - DVD, Netflix

Probably the Best Brit-Anarcho-Dramedy Ever Made

A group of young offenders sentenced to community service work are caught outside during an electrical storm. After the storm they discover they each have different and quite odd new “powers”.

• This show is absolutely brilliant and very entertaining
• This show contains really truly offensive language and opinions, and other stuff

Misfits has been described as a “Sci-Fi comedy drama” which sounds like a stretch – someone has probably demanded a genre label for marketing purposes but there is no serious "scientific" justification for the powers these young offenders gain after an electrical storm. There are no logical laws to explain these or other events that follow – you just need to be willing to suspend disbelief and that’s why I’m going for the anarchy label instead.

The imaginative leaps of the writing are part of what make this show special – I can’t remember any show ever delivering so many delightful surprises, twists and turns as I enjoyed while I binged on the whole of the first two series of Misfits. Let go of your disbelief and enjoy the rewards.

While I’ve opted for an “Anarcho-Dramedy” label – this is not because I am really that fussed about getting the label right, but because if you are looking for something that follows a tried and tested predictable formula this show is probably not for you. So, how different is it?

Absolutely Fabulous was very clever because it built up and distorted a shallow stereotype and then took the piss out of that type mercilessly; AbFab delivered surprises but was not overly warm.

The Young Ones was radically anarchistic but bordered on existentially negative.

Crazy Head was clever but not good enough to sustain my  interest for more than a few episodes.

 

In Nathan, Misfits gives us one of the most relentlessly loathsome characters to ever appear on a screen but perhaps Nathan is what makes it possible for Misfits to give us what are, at times, some of the most moving moments TV has the power to deliver.

 

The writing is so brilliant I don’t want to do spoilers. Nathan is not just puerile he is so disgusting on so many levels he has become something of a cult hero – imagine something wildly offensive or inappropriate he might say in any given situation and he will say something far worse, but the show is so well structured and written it draws me back in spite of him. At the very end of season 1 it’s his predicament, not his gob, that gets the biggest laugh.

 

There is NOTHING likeable about this tool. So why do I like the show?
The answer is probably "honesty". Maybe.
Not Sure.

In season 3 Nathan disappears and the role of loathsome twat is taken on by the character of Rudy who is crudely and basely sexist. Unlike Nathan he has no intelligence or other almost-redeeming features at all. The first episode is a bit tedious because we don’t know him yet, but by episode 0302 the writing returns to full strength as Rudy’s crass nature gives us a chance to start exploring sexism. Although the writing is a little uneven at first, most of the season is as hilarious as ever.

 

MA 15+ Strong Everything

If you were sensitive you probably would not be reading my reviews at all but be warned the language used on Misfits is relentlessly and unapologetically crude. By season 3 it is as if the character Rudy exists for the sole purpose of saying or doing the crudest nonsense imaginable. As for violent images, most are hilarious because they are just ludicrous in context, but if you are at all vulnerable and likely to be triggered you should be aware the humour takes on a dark tone near the end of season 3 and occasional images may be triggering from episode 0307 onwards.

 

Bingeability The first 2 seasons (a total of 13 episodes) blew my mind. Then I needed a break. There is some churn of cast members after that. Even though the element of surprise was a big part of the fun first time round – especially in the first 2 seasons - I will definitely be happy to re-watch this at some point.

 

 

Contact

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this post may contain names or images of people who have died.

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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Contact - Documentary 2009 Australia - DVD or free on Kanopy

If you are even mildly curious about the world we live in, you have to see this at least once.

There won't be many reviews of documentaries posted on this site, despite the fact that I’m a documentary nut, so if you see a review of a documentary here I hope you trust that it’s pretty special.

This one includes genuine footage from 1964 when 20 Martu people, who had never in their lives seen white people before, finally made contact for the first time in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia.

This is the story of how and why contact was finally made, what happened since, and how the people involved felt about it all.

An engineer who helped build the roads into the Great Sandy Desert between 1947 and 1963 described it as 1 million square miles

“which hadn’t been touched by anybody since the world began”

 

That’s a direct quote from a talk he gave in 1991. He seems to have been a kindly, affable and intelligent bloke who saw Aboriginals as human, which is exactly why this is the sort of hurtful, ignorant comment he shouldn’t have made. (On the other hand, if this is the sort of comment that comes from the good guys, it should provide a clue about the sort of shit Indigenous Australians read, see, hear, find and so on all the time.)

Most of the British and Australian overlords in charge of the post WWII nukiller/space program did not really expect to find any “Natives” at all in the Percival Lakes target area by the time the Blue Streak test program was scheduled in 1964, let alone Indigenous Australians who had never before had any contact with white people.

When I first heard the Martu people at the centre of this story gave a couple of Native Welfare Patrol Officers a run for their money, I was rather chuffed. It was not until I saw this documentary that I appreciated how truly terrifying the first contact experience must have been for them.

For those who are not Australian, a quick and nasty guide to provide some context:
*Australia is just a bee’s dick smaller in size than the lower 48 States of the U.S.
*The population of Australia 12 March 2018 is 24.6 Million (Yes, about 7 and ½ % the size of the population of the U.S.).
*Even though we have one or two mountains where it snows and a few rainforests quite a distance from the mountains, Australia is actually the second driest country in the world – after Antarctica.

Most of the population is dotted around the coastline, while a great deal of the mainland/ inland would not support population stress of any sort at all.

*This story is about people in the path of a planned rocket launch from Woomera in South Australia, towards Percival Lakes in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia.

The stars at night might be big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, but they’ve never seemed anywhere near as bright in the Northern Hemisphere to me as they do “at home”. In the outback or in the bush, the stars are awesome as there are no competing lights or other infrastructure to dim them.
No wonder, then, that amongst the many firsts of Australia’s First Peoples, we can list astronomy. (Yes, folks, structures that pre-date Stonehenge. But I digress).

Plenty of opportunities in this documentary to see there can be two completely different ways of interpreting a single event. And after you’ve seen this doco, make a note of the question “What does a lack of eye contact mean in a non-Western world view?” The question is only posed between lines of dialogue in this documentary, so no one bothered to try and answer it here.
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It seems from this music video the stars are very important to the Martu People.
Lyrics of this song Ruka Ruka (Sunset) from the Wild Dingo Band's web page.

I'm getting homesick,
I want to go back,
Home is still living by itself,
For a long time I haven't been back,

There is a place I grew up in the East,
and every sunset in a different place somebody else's land,
I'm standing by myself wondering,
Sun is going down and the night came,

I'm lying down in my bed thinking about my homeland,
Punmu Parngurr Kunawaritji,
Its our home for martu people,
(Kartugarra warnmun margiljarra)
Its Our Home

Essential Movies - Freedom Writers

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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Freedom Writers – Movie 2007 USA 122 Mins 

 

Not just a story about disadvantaged people of colour, but a story of white privilege.

In 1994, in Long Beach, California, an idealistic first timer has been accepted to teach English for at-risk students at a school where racial tensions have increased since the Riots of 1992.

Inspirational teacher stories are my drug. When I first saw Freedom Writers I was on a plane flying from the UK to Australia - one of the modern world’s longest, most torturous journeys - so I watched this on a loop to pass the time. I was wrecked by the time I got home.

Let’s start with the most obvious problem - non-white teachers have been helping at-risk children in similar situations for years, and nobody sees what they are doing as special. I get it – why is something only important when white people do it?

Freedom Writers is not just a movie about something being important because somebody white did it, though the marketing could make it seem that way.

Like To Sir With Love (1967) this is not just a story about the students, it is also a story about a teacher being transformed by their teaching experience.

At the very beginning of Freedom Writers, Erin bravely ignores all the people who are being condescending arseholes to her about her idealism. Some might watch this and see a “white teacher” being unrealistically devoted to her students. All I could see was a woman prepared to ignore the scorn of her peers, and prepared to make a total twat of herself in front of her students. Yes, she was clueless, but when someone is trying to do the right thing they don't necessarily deserve a kick in the head for failing. Nobody knows something til they learn it.

The turning point occurs when someone sends a racist caricature around the room, and Erin finally snaps. There follows a discussion that reveals just how wide the gap is between her own perception of her role at the school and how the world ticks, and what the students believe is happening. It was also the discussion that helped me finally understand what my own white privilege really means, not to me, but to others.

 

 

This is the bit that makes a movie like this movie necessary, and makes it necessary for this particular teacher to be a very privileged white one.

So, watching this movie through the eyes of a white person, this was a big deal. Nobody likes to be an object of scorn, we all want approval (especially from our daddy) etc etc. Through the eyes of a person of colour, yes, thanks a lot, Erin, you made a choice. We don't have the luxury of choice. Racism shouldn't happen, you don't get a medal for not being a racist etc etc.

I hear the objections and I don't dismiss them, but may I say this?

Yes, if we "colourless" people care we will make an effort to learn: People of Colour are not responsible for ‘splaining it to us all the time – but it’s stories like this one that make it possible for us to learn independently. And sadly, some of us need to hear a message over and over before it "clicks" and suddenly has real meaning.

That said, this is also a story of a teacher who would be good value regardless of colour. What makes Erin a hero to me - what made me weep watching this movie - is that Erin sees her students as people. Being visible is a basic human need. This is the scene that tore me to shreds, every single time:



She got this, that Andre was Andre, not his brother. And she understood how to share this with all her students – that it is in seeing each other and in living “respect” that we become the heroes of our own life stories.

Apart from that, the soundtrack is great.
 

The Librarians - (The Australian Series)

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.

-----------------------------
The Librarians -TV Series - Australia ABC 2007; 2009; 2010


What happens when you put a passive aggressive Catholic bigot in charge of a public library?

A pisser – brought to us by the same team who gave the world Upper Middle Bogan. Some of the humour is library related, but most of it arises out of the small mindedness of Frances O’Brien, who had 12 brothers and sisters growing up but did not think it odd.

Although episode one starts with a staff meeting / workshop that’s too realistically horrible for words, the series picks up once it moves on from meaningless ideas no one gives a toss about. Ultimately, The Librarians works because it really is character driven.

Let me re-iterate - I don’t object to people having some kind of religious faith if it makes them better people, it’s small-mindedness I find offensive.

This is not an anti-Catholic show, but if you were raised inside an Australian Irish-Catholic ghetto, you will love the insanity that drives Frances O’Brien.

M Rating Terry O’Brien’s awfully fond of having a Barclay’s Bank, but on the whole his wife is the only thing in this show that’s remotely offensive.

Bingeability – Very easy to keep watching. Always amusing; often hilarious. It just rings so true sometimes, it’s mesmerising.

Mr & Mrs Smith

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.

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

Mr & Mrs Smith - 2005 Movie USA 126 Mins - Romantic Comedy Action Film

Not the first story of a contract killer who is married, but definitely the most fun.

After 5 or 6 years together the Smiths are in a rut, so they visit a marriage counsellor.

This was the perfect story for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, because the chemistry between them made a fantastic movie from a mundane script.

Although I can’t personally identify with the “day to day boredom of life as a hit man” angle, some things resonate, like the horror Jane Smith feels at being trapped in the suburbs where women assume she is just dying to crank out babies. Which is to say there are lots of slick moments in this movie with guns and bullets and knives, but lots of very relatable human moments as well.

It’s just awesome fun.

Movie Classics - To Sir With Love

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.

------------------------------
To Sir With Love - Movie UK 1967 - 105 Mins


A man from Br Guiana takes a teaching job at an impoverished East End school while he looks for work as an engineer. His time with the group of social misfits changes their lives and his forever.

This was a ground-breaking movie in the “inspirational teacher” genre – addressing race and social issues of 1960s Britain and introducing Lulu's hit song to the English-speaking world.

When I first saw this on a big screen Australia was still a predominantly British outpost – while Melbourne was never “English” there are plenty of similarities between the London shown here and the world I grew up in. Bus and tram conductors wore military style uniforms, and more.
No - I don’t miss the era when my mother wore a headscarf whenever she left the house, it’s just a shock to see how radically the world has changed, both culturally and physically, in 5 short decades.

Re-visiting this movie and listening to “Sir” talk about the influence of The Beatles is a pisser; it is almost impossible to explain how iconoclastic a band of musicians who wore suits could have been at the time.

In this story, one of Sir’s fellow teachers never misses an opportunity to comment on his colour, and race is a topic that is not central to but never forgotten in this movie, which is a spot-on depiction of how post WWII White-Australia immigration Policy seemed to work:
“I’m not racist but … there will not be one second of your life that I will let you forget that I believe you are different from me, and as I am normal it follows logically that you cannot be therefore it is very big of me to accept you as my equal”.

To appreciate this film classic fully, it is worth noting that at the time this was released, the UK was bogged down (still bogged down, if we remember this began before Ghandi was a pup…) in some very divisive internal debate about immigration from its many former colonies (where British citizens were not necessarily white) and the UK parliament was debating proposals to ban racial discrimination. Enoch Powell was still campaigning for repatriation of people of colour.
Today this movie seems to feature almost apologetic pleas on screen for racial tolerance, but at the time they were possibly an economic gamble for the film’s producers. (Except Sidney Poitier, at the time, was box office magic.)

In May 1967, Australians had just voted in a referendum on altering the constitution, so the Federal Government would have power to make laws for Aboriginals (A power they gained and have since then done frack all with - so much for Sir telling us it is our duty to change the world if we can… I can hear him now, saying “You had one job to do…”).

The delinquency of the students in this story seems tame compared to US movies of the same genre regardless of when they were made; - there are no guns or gangs or drugs in the mix. This makes the voice-over in the U.S. trailer sound ridiculously melodramatic. (The same footage with the voiceover delivered in a plummy British accent sounds less ridiculous, though someone slamming a desk lid hardly matches the description of rebel.)


The turning point in the movie itself hinges only indirectly on the question of race, though it was key for E.R.Braithwaite, the engineer whose story is being told .

Generally speaking, To Sir With Love works as a tribute to any teacher who ever has been an inspiration to any pupil. Sir inspired me, because he was the first “teacher” in my life who, without reference to God or the threat of eternal hellfire, suggested life might have some meaning.

All other good or bad teacher movies I've seen since pale by comparison.

Lost Girl is One Out of the Box

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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Lost Girl - TV Series Supernatural Drama 2010 – 2015 Canada Prodigy Pictures


Fun romp through a weird sort of normal.

Bo has a rather awkward problem – seems every time she sexes someone other than herself it kills them dead. It’s no consolation they might die with a smile on their face; just horrifying.
An accidental killer, Bo has spent her life on the run.

In the pilot episode we share Bo’s discovery she is a succubus. She needs and “feeds” on sexual energy (or “Chi”) and with guidance will learn to control that without harming her sexual partners.

When Bo feeds, we see Chi rays pass through her mouth, and when she is really juiced up her eyes change colour.

A succubus is just one of many different types of Fae – not quite human creatures who secretly live among humans – creatures as apparently normal as Fairies or Valkyries, but sometimes weird, ugly critters.

Major Characters; Bo (the succubus and "Lost Girl"); Kenzi is a human and becomes Bo’s BFF (without benefits); Dyson is a detective who is actually a shape-shifter of the wolf variety, and love interest of Bo; Lauren is a human doctor who is fascinated by all things Fae, and becomes another love interest of Bo; Hale is a detective, a Siren and a sidekick of Dyson; and Trick is a very special Fae of the genus “Publican”.



Trick, Hale, Dyson, Bo, Kenzi & Lauren

Trick owns The Dal, the pub where the main characters hang out. He’s not the traditional bartender who listens while people cry into their drinks, but the resident expert on the complex and ancient history of Faedom. Like many other Fae, Trick is hundreds of years old. This means lots of episodes can take us to interesting times and places.

Given the show begins with a character who feeds on sexual energy (what an excuse for being a root rat!) it’s no surprise there is a lot in this show that revolves around sex. There is a lot of joking about sex and a lot of doing of sex.

The show does not take itself too seriously at all, the mythology that provides story ideas is loosely based on “real myths”. The humour is not all about sex – some of it is clever humour about life, and a lot of the other humour is of the really “dumb” variety I also like.

The greatest part of Lost Girl’s appeal, for me, is that it is character driven and I particularly enjoy its regular delivery of high camp shenanigans, not just from the main cast but from supporting characters like The Morrigan or Vex.

 

Lost Girl also often asks important questions about life that most great drama usually asks.
Sexual preference is fluid and accepted without challenge – characters just relate or not according to their own whatever.

Our own real-world construct of race is a non-issue on Lost Girl, though culture and clan loyalties – the tendency of people to form alliances or seek power – are at the heart of many of its storylines.

In Season 1 the storylines are always amusing but not always gripping. The first few episodes after the pilot, for example, teach us about Bo and Fae and are entertaining, but are largely self-contained and pose no great questions nor do they stir any great emotional response. Towards the end of Season 1, however, things improve when we realise the Fae world is a whole universe that is going to turn our own world upside down.

For 5 seasons the writers take us anywhere and anywhen, and the twists and turns will be for keeps while a huge battle between good and evil plays out in the background. It’s truly a fantastic ride.

Nails on a Blackboard: In episode 02x19 one character supposedly shows women have always been valued equally with men amongst fae – the way the story unfolds smacks of too much protest but this is the only patently silly idea employed in Lost Girl storylines, and it doesn’t really ruin the episode, it’s just lazy thinking.

MA 15+ Rating There are not a lot of rude words in Lost Girl, though it is not shy about discussing or laughing at sex or at horror/violence. Lost Girl laughs a lot at sex, so prudes would definitely be offended.

The violence is minimal. Some of the weird creatures are ugly critters, which leads occasionally to stories that verge on " horror" - but nothing is as base as what we see humans do to each other on the 6 o’clock news –   gross stuff in Lost Girl is so OTT it is laughable. There have been times in my life when gross stuff could be triggering, but the horror in Lost Girl is so ridiculous it’s just safely “weird”. For example, one morning Bo is confronted by a zombie assassin when she goes into the kitchen for breakfast. The way she deals with the problem is hilarious but she has to leave quickly. Kenzi comes downstairs a few minutes later - “Would I leave a dead body on the floor if her boyfriend was coming over?”.

With other shows that have a 15+ rating there is usually some point where I have to cover my eyes or look away, but I can’t recall one moment in Lost Girl where I had to do so, no matter how gross things got.

Bingeability Once I got halfway through Season 1 and the writing was more consistently top-notch, I became addicted. This is definitely a desert island set. Some episodes are stand-alone classics that warrant a re-run from time to time just cos they are so darned funny even though I know them by heart now.