Bloodbath Reviews

 

I much preferring reading reviews of TV dramas these days to watching those dramas. My loss maybe, or maybe not. Anyhow, here are two Times reviews of BBC One's latest moody drama, first from Carol Midgley:

I watched the first half of Bloodlands, possibly like you, with a sense of “been here, done this” ennui. James Nesbitt was a brooding, sad-faced detective with a tragic backstory (tick). He was put on a case that he thought was connected to another (highly sensitive) one, but was told to “just leave it. It’s in the past” (tick). That case involved his murdered wife (“She’s gone. Nothing’s gonna bring her back”) and now he was on an angry mission to solve it (tick). Pass the déjà vu tablets, I think we’re going to need them.

The second came from Camilla Long and was slightly less charitable:

What is even more embarrassing than having produced Bloodlands, the most lumpen, graceless, cheapest cop drama in living memory? The answer is: scheduling it in the same week as [ITV's] Unforgotten, one of the best and most elegant, complete with its subtle script, understated acting, and, of course, Nicola Walker. 

There is no comparison, for example, between spending an hour with James Nesbitt, grinding his awful gears as some detective in a shockingly basic, bothy-strewn, Nor’n Irish crime drama, and giving yourself over to the finely tuned Walker, who returns to Unforgotten for a fourth series and one last unsolved murder. 

It felt loved and cared for, unlike the incomparably ugly Bloodlands, which felt as if the BBC only ran it because they’d lost a drunken bet. The script, we’re told, was nurtured by Jed Mercurio, the creator of Line of Duty, which suggested a tight, fraught drama with backstabbing and bent coppers, not a vanilla cop-style product that felt as if it had been written by a 15-year-old Jed Mercurio fan, which the BBC then showed out of pity and guilt. 

I think I'd stick with reading the reviews. 

Ian Hislop; the ballerina

Did we dutifully watch Ian Hislop’s piece about Fake Noos? I did but unfortunately kept dozing off -  partly due to the previous night’s insomnia. 

I hope you’ve got access to The Times’s (£)  review by Carol Midgley because this is going to be a review of a review. Ms Midgley usually comes out with fairly perceptive analyses of programmes I’ve watched. 

While her take on “Motherland’ is spot on, in my humble opinion the Hislop review lacks a certain something. 

Yes, the example of the false-flag fake story planted merely to hook a rival’s plagiarism was entertaining and informative, as was the tale about the child sex-ring fake noos linked to Hillary Clinton and the near-fatal consequences of the hatred engendered by it - but did Hislop allude to the fall-out from the equally apposite ‘credible and true’ business? If so, I missed it due to one of my unconscious phases. 

Then Ms Midgley says:

“Hislop was variously playful, concerned, droll and exasperated in an intelligent film that treated viewers as if we have a brain, which makes a nice change. Donald Trump’s version of “fake news”, Hislop said, is “real news that he doesn’t like”. By denouncing real news as fake, he added, Trump and his supporters allow real fake news to flourish. “

Here we go. Trump. 

Hislop did indeed mention the alarming tendency we all have to believe what we want to believe regardless of ‘facts’, and I’m reliably informed that while I only was half-awake he cited ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ as an example of debunked, disproved and demonstrably fake news that still refuses to be put to sleep by those that ‘like’ it.  But he also cited that great authority on impartiality, Mark Thompson. It’s a wonder he didn’t bring in John Sweeney while he was at it.

The Times is veering further and further away from us. (me.) (eg., Caitlin Moran? She has a way with words, granted, but will she ever grow up? 

Does Carol Midgley treat readers as if we have a brain? Let’s assume she watches HIGNFY. Is the BBC  still regarded as impartial? Does The Times still pass for a right-of-centre paper? Does Carol Midgley really think Ian Hislop is a balanced and thorough adjudicator of purveyors of the truth?  A credible and true authority on Fake Noos? 

There are too many elephants silently squatting within Hislop’s world view. Maybe I should just have resigned myself to my slumbers.

Warning. Knee-jerk review.

One Day in Gaza. (Warning. Knee-jerk review.)

How can I review this programme as objectively as, say, Carol Midgley of The Times does?  

Midgley is clearly ready willing and able to take “One day in Gaza” at face value. It’s easy for her. She views it as - literally - “one day” in Gaza. Representing the average viewer, she sees this documentary as a straightforward 24-hour slice of life and death. That’s it. Free from unnecessary baggage (context, history, and tribal affiliation) she has it taped. 

Hampered by the disadvantage of partiality, I’m finding it harder to see it her way. The film was tipped as ‘two-sided”. The previews promised “film from both sides” and it did indeed show some footage filmed by the IDF.  But were the two sides the Palestinian side and the Israeli side?

No. Not really. However, the ‘two’ sides we did see were revelatory in their own way.  On the one hand, there were ordinary Palestinians, the ’peaceful protesters’ and heroic, self-sacrificing freedom fighters. On the other hand, and “for the first time” we were given a glimpse of what lay behind the project, including Hamas’s  Yahya “We will  Tear Out Their Hearts” Sinwar.

So, here’s the revelation. The Great March of Return wasn’t merely a spontaneous uprising as it’s often portrayed by the western media; an irrepressible boiling-over by the unbearably oppressed and suppressed. 

For Carol Midgley ”Its strength was in talking to both sides and drawing out the miserable complexities.” Yes, that would have been a strength, had they genuinely talked to both sides. But they did not. In fact, the bulk of the film represents a sympathetic portrait of Palestinian victims - the wounded, the bereaved, the impassioned and the deluded. A nod towards balance takes the form of a brief clip or two of IDF spokespersons being questioned by a disembodied and obviously hostile British voice. 

“One Palestinian man said that the Israel Defence Forces used the march, on the day the new US embassy opened in Jerusalem, as an excuse to open fire.”

But surely the underlying premise of this documentary was “The Embassy” - that moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem (which the Palestinians “want” for their capital) was enough of a provocation to validate the whole Great March.  The film’s crass and clumsy juxtaposition of the wealthy, self-satisfied Trump entourage, filmed from a distance, next to the beleaguered Palestinian people who had been cruelly deprived of their Right of Return was surely intended to convey a powerful filmic message.

“A man whose brother died said: “If you shoot at someone’s head you intend to kill not scare or deter.” (Apparently 90 per cent of those hit were shot in the legs.)”

A young freedom fighter was filmed at length speaking with passion and fire. Eventually, the camera panned out to show ….Da-da! …..the lower part of one of his legs was missing. Poignant, maybe. Original? Not so much. More of a cliche. An overused filmic device. Aren’t I mean? Well, maybe, but people with more extensive injuries have been known to run marathons. Hamas! Get that man a prosthetic!

The voice-over was particularly emotive. The accent. The diction. I looked it up just to make sure he wasn’t from the PSC. (Not sure, but don’t think so)

I saw it as yet another ‘dead baby’ style shocker. A profusion of gore and guts. The IDF was depicted as disingenuous and inhumane. They ‘claimed’ stuff. They made feeble excuses, you know the drill.

Let’s look at it another way for a moment. What kind of film would these filmmakers have made if the Great March of Return had been ‘successful’? Say the IDF suddenly decided to prioritise its international image, and to wait till a few hearts had actually been torn out before applying resistance? 

What if the Israeli government decided to cave in to international pressure and open the borders completely? Say they granted the right of return to the millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants and Israel became another Muslim majority country. What kind of film would it be then? 

What if that nice lady’s kitchen had been invaded by a mob of knife-wielding “Palestinian youths with anger burning in their hearts?” Would they film blood splattered all over her nice wooden worktop with as much relish?

I hope I don’t ever find out.

Update:
When is a Jew not a Jew?
Oh yes, I forgot to mention - as David Collier says, throughout the film the translation of what could distinctly be heard as “Yehud” appeared in the subtitles as “Israeli.”
Why would they do that?

Nursery days

You’ll probably think I’m bonkers or paranoid, but what the hell. They could actually be out to get you. Or get at you.

Spot the naughty boy

This sounds like a trivial matter. It  concerns Carol Midgley of The Times. (£) I don’t know anything about Ms. Midgley so I looked at her Twitter feed, as you do these days, and to be honest I found it a bit vacuous. No obvious signs of anything untoward. She likes animals and so on. 

So. Did anyone else watch “The Secret Life of Four Year Olds? It was on Channel 4 the other day. 

Here’s what Carol Midgley had to say:

“The Secret Life of Four year Olds involved setting up cameras in a nursery classroom and sitting back and watching as the complex politics between ten children played out while adults weren’t there.
 As you might expect with reception-age kids there was much that was charming, adorable and funny and which showcased what colossal egos the young have. But there was also stuff that had you chewing your fists in sorrow. 
Such as when one lovely little girl trailed after another girl repeatedly pleading ‘Will you be my friend?” to no avail. After a few hours she gave up, defeated, like a lion cub excluded from the pack, possibly learning the cruel life lesson that children can smell neediness like a bad fish.
Other bits too must have made uncomfortable viewing for the families, such as the sweet-looking little boy whose parents admitted they were soft on him because they worked a lot. He was what one might call a “handful”, taking other kids’ things and  being the only child who dived straight into the chocolate cake planted there by adults “for later” to see who would gorge on it, You could imagine him growing up to be a banker.
It was an interesting programme that showed us how early personalities are forged and how children are like little sponges, soaking up everything they hear. “Stop ringing me Richard” said one child playing mums and dads “I don’t love you any more... you are not the dad” Bit awkward for “Richard” whoever he is. Like I said, maybe some things are best left off the camera.”

Well, I watched it too, and I have to say I came away with a different impression. 

Incidentally, where did she originally say “maybe some things are best left off the camera”? I couldn’t see it anywhere, and If she didn’t say it beforehand, there’s no “like I said” about it. 

The little girl wasn’t particularly playing mums and dads. She was just pretend-phoning. She never said “I don’t love you any more.” She simply said  “Stop ringing me Richard” then “You’re not the dad.  See you, goodbye.” 

Carol made some of that up. She must have been thinking of something else. A soap opera or something.

The lovely little girl who was initially needy and rejected (aren’t we all?) got her revenge by  befriending another child, and together they, in turn, excluded the former rejector. So, more a case of even-stevens than any old sad lion cub business.

Infant Big Brother wasn’t much different from any other reality programme, i.e. heavily edited footage selected for maximum cuteness instead of the titillation we love to hate in the adult version. We had the squabbling, albeit more honest than grown-up’s squabbles; we had the scientists for “psychological analysis” like in other reality shows.  We had a smattering of background via clips of parents, according to the conventional reality programme pattern. 

The business of the cake. Why would ‘adults’ experiment with a chocolate cake, supposedly “for later”? That’s a exploitative. It’s something they might do as a controlled experiment for the benefit of some behavioral psychology students. Not just something that would be done in a nursery. Watching a set-up ‘experiment’ made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t even made clear that this cake was “for later’ till the adult came along and told them so, when the deed was already done. 

Which brings me to the naughty boy. It was weird that the analyst kept apologising for this child’s impulsive, nay, reckless behaviour. He kept saying it was a sign of intelligence. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. 

The fact that this boy was at least a head taller than the other children, and as solid as he was tall didn’t help. Whatever he wanted, he could get, on the well trodden principle that might is right. He didn’t have to actually hit anyone, just loom over them. When he snatched the bit of chocolate, again that didn’t look to me like a sign of intelligence, but on the other hand, why did the (supposed) “nursery” play a trick like that on those children. Exploitative and unnecessary. He had a soft side too, the ‘sorry’ card with the bunny.

Here’s the crux.  It’s what you’ve been wading through all this for. (If you have been)

The big boy with the mean streak was called Chaim. His dad was called Moshe. Carol Midgley must have known this, if she really did watch the programme, even though she obviously wasn’t as attentive as she ought to have been.  (It was her job)  After telling us that the cake was “left there to see who would gorge on it” (her word, not mine) she said “You could imagine him growing up to be a banker.”

Now do you see what I was getting at?  She might as well have added “and he probably won’t be so keen on the mansion tax either.” 

Eat your heart out, Tim  Willcox.