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Reviews
The Big Door Prize (2023)
Not Sure What It Wants to Be
What is this show intended as? One gets the sense the writers, producer and director were all seeking to make different shows. Is it a comedy? It certainly appears to be billed that way, particularly with Irishman O'Dowd in the central role as a content-with-his-lot high school teacher in a small American town living with his gorgeous African American wife and their teenage daughter. But the arrival of a spooky arcade game in the general store throws the town awry. The game supposedly tells everyone what their destiny is (after they have provided their social security number and fingerprints).
It's an interesting concept but the delivery is a mess. If it's intended as a comedy it's not funny at all. But neither are the stakes sufficiently great for it meet the definition of drama. It might have been a nice and prickly satire of acquisitive, neo-liberal, 'you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be' American individualism, but it doesn't really pick up on that either. Everything is just too cute and cliched to make you care about anyone. One is left with the impression that everyone involved was try8ing very hard, but no-one had any idea what program they were making beyond the central conceit about the truth-telling machine.
Over-hyped, try-hard American pap.
The Good Bad Mother (2023)
Uneven in Tone
There is half a good show in this very long and typically drawn-out K-drama. In short, the drama elements and core story about high-level corruption in Seoul politics and business are excellent. But the plot is stretched gossamer thin over 14 one-and-a-quarter-hour episodes so that too much time is spent on the ancillary cast of bucolic country characters established as light relief.
The very first episode crams in so much plot - about the back story of our hero Kang-Ho's mother, Young-Soon - and how a corrupt property developer, in league with a bent public prosecutor, burn down her pig farm and kill her husband to make for a road ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. After the husband's death, Kang-Ho is born on the same day as our heroine, Mi-Joo, the daughter of Gum-Ja, another villager.
The early part of the story focuses on Kang-Ho's unhappy childhood, marked by his mother's bitter determination for him to excel at school, at the expense of everything else, so he can grow up, pass his bar exams, become a public prosecutor and avenge his father's death. Kang-Ho obeys and excels to top his law school class. But in the process he appears to have grown to hate his single-minded mother and now values only ambition.
The key turning point in the plot is when Kang-Ho is seriously injured in a car accident, loses his memory and reverts to a child-like state. He returns from his glitzy Seoul apartment life to be cared by his mother on her country-bumpkin pig farm.
At this point, the plot comes to a standstill and we endure several episodes all about life in the village with a cast of oddball characters whose hammy playing-for-laughs sits oddly with the dark tone of the rest of the story. None of these people ring true and really do nothing but distract from the central theme. One villager, the wife of the mayor, inexplicably wears a face mask for the entire series. It appears to be an attempt at a joke, but it really isn't funny.
I kept waiting for the story of the corrupt politician and property developer to resume. It eventually does, of course, and the entire tone of the series changes again. The performances by the actors playing the central characters - Lee-Do Hyun as Kang-Ho, Ahn Eun-Jin as Mi-Joo and, most of all, Ra Mi-Ran as the 'good bad mother' Young-Soon - are excellent. It's just that's let down by the silliness of the village ensemble.
Perhaps, it's a Korean cultural thing. I think the writer is trying to say something about the genuine humanity of the earthy country characters in juxtaposition with the sordid, cynical and grasping city life where everything is based on power and money. The problem is the village scenes are so idealised and broadly depicted they don't appear realistic at all, whereas the central city plot about corruption is all too real. So the shifts in tone never gel.
Ultimately, there is a good story here and when it focuses on the drama, it works well. It's just such a shame it was padded out with the silly and unfunny attempts at broad humour. I couldn't help thinking this would have been an excellent four-to-six part series without all the layered-in attempts at light relief.
6ixtynin9: The Series (2023)
Thai Tarantino
This six-part Thai series is a highly styilised and super-hip crime caper reminiscent of Tarantino. Apparently a remake by the director of his original 1999 movie, '6ixtynin9: The Series' focuses on a young woman, Toom, made redundant from her insurance job during the pandemic. On arriving home to her apartment, she finds a box on her front doorstep. She's used to misdelivered items. Her apartment is number 6, but the number on the door keeps swivelling around to look like 9. That's three doors down the hallway and, unbeknown to our heroine, the home of a drug dealer and his gang. Curious, Toom brings the box inside and opens it. Of course, it's full of tends of thousands of dollars in cash. Jobless and desperate, she opts to keep the money. And it's from this point that the plot kicks off.
As with Tarantino, there is full of dark humour, with lots of gunplay, gruesome violence and racy sex scenes. As the bodies pile up in Toom's apartment (with various crime factions all trying to recover the cash), it gets more and more fanciful. And when two of the victims come back to life, thanks to a last minute reprieve from the old hip Thai angel at the gates of the after-life, the story completely dispenses with any pretence at realism. But it's all so tautly directed and moves at such a pace that the best approach is a viewer is just to enjoy it and hang on for the ride.
Highly recommended.
Nigeru wa haji daga, yaku ni tatsu (2016)
Life Affirming
In an increasingly depressing world, this life-affirming celebration of love and our common humanity (a big hit in Japan in 2016 and now on Netflix) is a recommended tonic for any jaded soul. Ostensibly a light-weight manga-inspired rom-com, the 11-part 'Full-Time Wife Escapist' is in fact a profound reflection on relationships, particularly the need to renegotiate them as our lives evolve and needs change.
The set-up: Hiramasa, a nerdy 35-year-old live-alone (and vaguely autistic) software engineer advertises for a housekeeper. Taking the job is the bubbly, creative, funny and adorable Mikuri, a 25-year-old unemployed woman with a Master's degree in psychology. Hiramasa has high standards when it comes to cleanliness, but Mikuri, wanting the work and affirmation that goes with it, meets them easily. When Mikuri's parents suddenly decide to retire and quit town, leaving her homeless, she suggests to Hiramasa a 'contract marriage'. Enjoying finally feeling valuable, she offers to cook for Hiramasa and clean his apartment as a job, while he goes out to work. It is a purely platonic, economic and pragmatic arrangement. He works long hours and has someone to mind house. She gets to feel useful and earns a wage.
Having announced their 'betrothal', the couple have to convince both their families and his co-workers that what is a contracted economic arrangement job of is really a legitimate marriage. It's out of these misunderstandings that the comedy, and, ultimately, the romance arise. Mikuri soon develops feelings for Hiramasa, but he continually pushes her away - not because he doesn't like her in return (he does) - but because he is totally inexperienced in relationships, has poor communications skills, and feels this is strictly an employer-employee arrangement. As they move on, the relationship is gradually renegotiated, including a decision to start playing as romantic partners by having a hug each Tuesday. You can guess where this leads.
Add to this central story are a number of other characters, including Mikuri's youthful-looking 49-year-old aunt Yuri, a career woman who has never married, and Hiramasa's 32-year-old office friend Kazami, a handsome bachelor and ladies' man who after swearing off intimacy is gradually drawn to the soulful depth of Yuri.
The series has important things to say about gender roles, marriage, domestic labour, office work and ageing in the context of a patriarchal (though changing) Japanese society. Most of all - using humour and fantasy - it carries the universal message thatsuccessful lifelong relationships are built on a readiness of both partners to constantly renegotiate terms. Hiramasa and Mikuri effectively, through trial and many errors, do 'marriage in reverse' - starting with the original idea of it as an economic partnership and then adding love and intimacy later. All the way, there is open communication about what each needs from the other. Mikuri is clearly the more empathetic one and does all the emotional heavy lifting in the early stages. But having been brought out of his self-imposed isolation, Hiramasa starts to understand what shared vulnerability, affection and intimacy can add to life so that when Mikuri herself loses hope, he is able to rally her back. As she eventually takes an outside job just as he is retrenched, their domestic roles reverse, in what is a challenge to the male-centric Japanese culture.
This is a beautiful program, full of sometimes funny, and often incredibly moving, insights about life and love. Bring a hanky, or three. And be sure to watch the full-length movie offshoot (filmed four years after the original series) which uses the pandemic to reflect on its impact on work and relationships and parenting within the context of strict Japanese culture and mores..
A final note: Having been charmed by the chemistry between the two central characters throughout, it was not a surprise to learn that they - musician/actor Gen Hoshino and model/actress Yui Aragaki - married in real life after the program was shot. Aragaki is almost Audrey Hepburn-like in this role, not only in her incandescent beauty and charm, but also in her comedic timing. She steals every scene she is in without seeking to over-shadow her co-stars. But for the language barrier, she would be a HUGE international star.
To top it all off each episode ends with a brilliantly choreographed routine involving all the characters dancing to a super catchy tune written by Hoshino himself. The dance routine is pure joy and is a perfect way to end a program that as a mood-lifter is hard to beat. Overall, 'The Full-Time Wife Escapist' is a 10-out-of-10 and this is coming from someone whose tastes usually don't stray in this direction.
Deadloch (2023)
A Mess
This downunder homage to Broadmeadows is a crude, over-acted mess whose attempts at humour are so broad and infantile it left this viewer cold. The makers had some success in sketch comedy. But they've over-reached on this one. The lead character is OK, but appears to be in a different program to all the cardboard cut-out OTT Ockers from 1990s central casting surrounding her. The plot itself - the body of the popular local football club coach washes up naked on the beach - is overly familiar. While that's not a death sentence in itself for programs like this, the surrounding characters need to be interesting and believable to redeem it. But most are just crudely drawn cartoons. I'm amazed this ever got past the drawing board. Perhaps the American suits at Prime were thinking 'Oh, those cute Aussies. Don't you just love their accents?' Cringeworthy.
Ted Lasso (2020)
Second Season Over-Milks the Charm
This is a charming feel-good series that, as many others have pointed out, is a balm for these times in which we live.
Pity then that the makers over-milk the charm in series two to the point that the whole thing curdles. The problem is every problematic or difficult character from the first series (the ego on legs Jamie, the grumpy misanthrope Roy, the simpering hen-picked Higgins) are all redeemed and softened and made cuddly.
The tart and unsentimental tone of the first season is tossed aside in a manufactured sugar rush which reaches its treacly worst in the Christmas episode.
Still much to like here but the makes are guilty of the cardinal sin of being too keen to please.
Killing Eve (2018)
What Am I Missing?
As others have noted, the series starts off encouragingly.But after the second episode the whole thing becomes entirely preposterous. The woman who plays assassin is really quite good and probably the best thing about the whole show. But Sandra oh and the title role never really convinces.For MI5 agents they are all incredibly Incompetent and Eve's motivations are all over the shop. I have read that the show can be taken as a dark comedy but that would require it to be funny and it is not.