Telewitterings – Justified S1

I’m getting in a little late on this one, maybe, but Kelly and I have been watching the first year of Justified on Netflix Canada. Later seasons aren’t available yet, we’re all of one episode from the end, and I’m hooked and hoping they get S2 soon. It’s a nice feeling.

The big attraction–and don’t they know it!–is Timothy Olyphant, who plays ill-tempered U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Raylan was definitely an outsider within his family of origin, and dealt with it in the time-honored fashion of getting a job that took him far, far away from home. But a penchant for fatally shooting criminals has gotten him sent back to Lexington, Kentucky. Now he’s coping with the dad he left in the rear-view, his ex-wife, a woman who’s been nursing a crush on him since high school and an old friend who enjoys long walks in the forest, church, robbing banks, setting off bombs and homicide.

Here’s the trailer:

Justified was created by Graham Yost, the guy behind one of my favorite cop shows in the whole world, the multi-faceted and complex Boomtown. While its storytelling is more linear–which may be why it didn’t get cancelled just coming out of the gate–its characters are just as nuanced and humanly unpredictable. It’s a violent show, but not horrifyingly so. Olyphant is brilliant, as is his foil Walter Goggins. The supporting cast is engaging, and the season’s arc is tightly wound and doesn’t seem to be taking anything approaching an easy way out.

Hey, what’s your favorite cop show?

Telewitterings – Luther

Kelly and I blasted through the first season of Luther last week, courtesy Netflix Canada, and I loved it. Luther himself is not my favorite detective ever. He’s even more emo than Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander (and that’s saying something!) and his approach to crimesolving appears to be a) be very intuitive; b) have a personal crisis; c) see if there’s any way to contrive a fatal accident for the killer. I’m not saying he’s dumb–he’s not–but the point of him is less that he’s a brilliant detective and more that he has appallingly bad boundaries.

He doesn’t get into his murderers’ heads so much as just fall into their thought patterns and flail about trying not to drown.

The standout thing in Luther is his relationship with a character named Alice Morgan, who is herself a murder suspect. Alice is played by the gorgeous and genuinely enigmatic Ruth Wilson (she was Jane Eyre to Toby Stephen’s smouldering rawr of a Rochester) and wow, she is so interesting. The two of them form a bond that makes the Clarice Starling-Hannibal Lecter connection pale to the point where they might be no more than Facebook friends.

Here’s Wilson in a trailer for another thing I must see:

I cannot wait to see what the Luther writers do with Series two. Though I may have to, given the limits of CanuckFlix licensing agreements.

What are all of you watching now that Game of Thrones and Mad Men have packed up their toys and fucked off?

Spoiler-free Smashing Telewitterings

I am enjoying Smash a lot. I don’t know how true to life it all is, but the picture they present of a behind-the-scenes view of the development of a Broadway musical is very compelling. As is Angelica Huston, of course. Each week there’s been one new musical number for the proposed show, and some of them have been outstanding.

I like musicals, especially when they’re a little old-school.

Another element I find intriguing is that there are two actresses vying for the starring role in the fictional play the show’s about. One’s meant to be very seasoned but to somehow lack spark or star quality; the other’s meant to be inexperienced but incandescently talented. It’s an amazing thing for both actors to have to pull off, week by week–they each have to suck a little, sometimes, but in completely different ways. And, at the same time, they both have to be credible contenders for the big role.

Finally, Smash has a storyline that’s at once off-putting and completely intriguing because it’s got a one hundred and eighty degree reversal of traditional gender roles: a career-driven woman with a house-husband. The two of them are pacing through a classic storyline and she’s behaving in a very precise, classic-guy way… except with more crying.

Glee was back this week and the gap since the last (entirely horrifying) episode was long enough that I managed to take a look. The fallout from the big Cataclysmic Thingie wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, but having said that I must also say that the “Big Brother” episode was pretty much a stinker from start to finish, except for every single moment when Artie was singing. Kevin McHale currently lives in my dictionary for “Can Do No Wrong.”

Buffy rewatch – Bewitched by BeXander

I am back from Norwescon and it went very well. I didn’t take any pictures, but hope to post some things about the convention later in the week. But not tomorrow, when a certain big announcement will be taking up all my time. (Insert unmysterious music here.)

In the meantime, my latest Buffy rewatch is up on Tor.com: it’s Valentine’s Day in Sunnydale, and that means bad things for Xandelia.