Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

Fisk - Series 3  - I loved the first two series and have been waiting eagerly for its return.  Fisk is now a Partner which means she gets to bring in the nice biscuits and a fancy coffee machine,  but she still has her badly fitting brown suits and continues to be the fall guy as she spends her day fending off mendacious fools.  Fabulous scripts with great dialogue, the characters are well-meaning but also self absorbed and mildly incompetent. Both petty and banal, the comedy is always underplayed but it's dry, warm and quietly very funny. Recommended (Series, streaming on Netflix) Platonic -Series 1 - Late to the party on this one and for the first few episodes I wasn’t getting it at all. The point of this is to take the premise of When Harry Met Sally and show that a man and a woman can be ‘just friends’ and it definitely does that. Despite my misgivings, I did keep going with it (to be fair it was sometimes on in the background) and by episode 6 it grew on me a ...

The Merry Wives of Windsor is playing at Shakespeare’s Globe and we grabbed a £5 standing ticket.  This is one of Shakespeare’s sitcom plays with short, silly episodes of mucking about.  The Globe is good at this stuff, and fairly quickly had us all laughing along.  This is the one where Falstaff decides to seduce two married women to get himself some cash, but they decide to trick him back.  Lots of over the top characters squeezing every laugh and double entendre they can out of every line, it was a lot of fun.  The treatment of Falstaff (played with cheeky charm by George Fouracres) at the end was perhaps a bit much for a modern audience so although it’s made light of there was also some uncomfortable shuffling of feet around me.  And I liked the way that they brought out the unpleasantness of Mistress Ford’s husband, which stays unresolved and leaves a bit of a sour taste.  But just under 3 hours of good quality entertainment for a fiver is an abso...

A play about morality, hypocrisy and women’s place in a capitalist world, despite being well over a century old  and in Victorian dress (written in 1893 and banned from performance until 1925)  many of the arguments being made in this play could be happening today. Vivie (Bessie Carter) is a modern young woman and has just graduated from Cambridge, with plans for a professional career.  Her mother (Imelda Staunton) has been largely absent due to travel and business affairs but today she pays a visit, expecting her daughter to conform to becoming a genteel young woman and marry well. Staunton as Kitty is as impressive as you would expect.  I loved the mix of grand airs all being undercut slightly by the London twang underlying her accent.  The four men appearing in the play are a mix of entitled, arrogant, selfish, immoral, venal or just plain unpleasant.  Robert Glenister (excellent as Sir George Crofts)is the embodiment of grasping bullying capitalism, we ...

Adeel Akhtar is continuing to carve out a line in morally ambiguous roles after his performance last year in Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard  and his angsty Prime Minister in Black Doves.  This time he plays Anghad Singh who is a mid ranking shadow minister when we meet him, eyeing party leadership after a sex scandal.   He believes he represents change, as he tells and retells his story as the son of a Sikh baggage handler, gradually sharpening it at each retelling.  What he is less explicit about but becomes clear over time, is that  he went to the same elite schools as his white British colleagues, his dad made good (giving shades of Sunak) and eventually became a property magnate and a slum landlord too.  Just as he makes his move to become the leader of the party, his father dies, leaving all his estate to Anghad and none to his two sisters.  Anghad thinks he deserves the money and the position and fights for it.   With multiple themes,...

Murderbot . - this series continued to be both gripping and fun, and by the end with a suitably satisfying ending that leaves room for more.  I love the way Alexander Skarsgård plays Murderbot as seriously uptight but with swirling roboty emotions he doesn't know what to do with - that can be bleakly funny a lot of the time and sometimes it's just sweet.  I love the homages to schlocky sci-fi which is both explicit and also tucked away for us to trip over on occasions.  I have really enjoyed the character development of the hippie scientist group from Preservation Alliance who manage to be both insufferably righteous, and also lovably messed up and human, particularly the gruff and suspicious Gurathin (David Dastmalchian).  I have seen Noma Dumezweni who plays the leader Dr Ayda Mensah in smaller roles, so it's good to see her stretching her wings in a lead - she also has such a calming voice I would definitely follow her into whatever risky but ethical stance she wa...

Rosamund Pike is the absolute heart of this new play by Suzie Miller, the writer behind Prima Facie .  This play is mining related ground and can definitely be seen as a partner piece.  Although I guessed the way things were going to go, this was beautifully executed by all the cast. Jess (Pike) is a successful and compassionate judge, and she is also a good wife to Michael (Jamie Glover) who she has beaten in the race to KC and then the bench.   As in Prima Facie , Jess is confronted with a situation that she sees every day at work but this time it is personal.  A feminist force at work, Jess is not so forceful at home, also being the sexy and accomodating wife to the lazy but self absorbed Michael, and she is also trying to be a good mother to Harry who is now 18, played well by Jasper Talbot as that uniquely teenage mix of confidence and independence mixed with clutziness and neediness.  The accomodations she makes for her different roles are clearly lai...

Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman are excellent in this intense but very funny two hander.  Luka (Lowden) is looking for a sponsor to help him through his AA programme and James (Freeman) is the older man who steps into that role.  Luka is a bundle of nervous energy, bouncing legs and fidgeting, whereas James is suave and under control.   The play looks at what it means to put your trust in someone or something else, whether that’s a person. a programme or a religion and what happens when that turns out to be imperfect.  And it explores those themes very well.  But also, it’s very funny, with quick and smart lines thrown out with perfect timing for us to catch.  The laughs are so fast and frequent it’s possible to forget that there is also a drama there too. I liked the musical choices too, opening with 'I ’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)' by Johnny Cash and an addict himself of course, which set the scene for what was co...

Day 1 - A journey  An easy flight on Finnair, into an almost deserted Helsinki airport.  Probably because they had the time, everyone was questioned about their itinerary, and all of the conversation around the bag pick up was about what people had been asked about.  I have to say this is the first time my Expedia app has ever been useful.  We got the train from the airport, and arrived at this spectacular art deco station. The hotel is in a huge square just around from the station, and after settling into our rooms (another hotel without any mirrors near a desk) we went out for a basic dinner and a walk to get our bearings.  Of course I was expecting it but it's lovely to see it still light at midnight; I think sunset is officially 11pm, but basically it stays dusk all night.    We found a lovely garden esplanade which runs along to the market/harbour area in the centre of town.  It has some exhibits from the Helsinki Biennal on display, but perh...