Lejink

I've seen this four-part Netflix drama praised to the heavens in the media for its realism, social relevance, acting, you name it, if the hype is to be believed it's the must-watch series of the year to date. Co-written and featuring in a prominent role the highly-regarded actor Stephen Graham, it purports to be a story of our troubled times when we have so lately seen on the news horrific stories of young children killing classmates at school which has triggered a wider debate on young people's access to potentially dangerous or harmful data on-line and even as to whether mobile phones should be banned in schools.

Episode one certainly started dramatically with a dawn police raid on an ordinary house in the north of England but rather than this being to capture some adult drug baron or worse, we're shocked to instead learn that this mob-handed operation is in fact to pick up a thirteen-year-old boy Jamie, who is charged with the murder of a female classmate at his school. We then see him processed at the local police station in practically the same way as an adult would before he's locked in solitary, leaving his distraught mum, dad (Graham) and sister naturally in a state of confusion, concern and of course distress.

Episode two focuses on the police investigation at the lad's secondary school, headed up by a black detective, whose own son happens, super-coincidentally, to be a pupil at the same school. We see at first-hand the largely unruly and disrespectful behaviour of it seems almost all the pupils to any adult authority figures, including their teachers and the police. The boy pleads his innocence to his dad which, together with his everyday demeanour and appearance, lures the viewer into sympathising with his plight, until that is, we're shown, like his up to now trusting dad, a street-cam video of him clearly stabbing the victim.

Episode three is the one that has garnered the most attention and praise. We learn that the boy has been in remand for seven months and been subjected to one-to-one meetings with different child psychologists. The one we witness is his final session with a professional female. In this tempestuous interview, we see at first hand, the boy's mood swings ranging from his pleading for her to like him to aggressively shouting and swearing in her face. She delicately tries to explore his family background before bringing him round to his interaction with his classmates, schoolfriends and finally his outlook towards "women" (not girls). The interview breaks down with the boy being dragged kicking and screaming from the room and the psychologist obviously distressed at what she's just been subjected to. I found myself unconvinced by both the writing and acting of this particular episode. This stark, hyper-realistic dramatisation of an interview with a murder suspect has been done before most recently in the Netflix series on the Menendez brothers where I found it to be similarly gauche and just plain unrealistic.

Thankfully, the final episode, showing the effect of parental guilt and a husband and wife discussion of nature versus nurture, saw a return to the believable quality of the first episode.

I'm about two generations removed from the age of the main protagonist here and have had no children of my own so probably my own position here consequently lacks some empathy for the topics set out for discussion. I struggled to accept the unruly behaviour the schoolchildren exhibit as well as the language and attitudinal conduct of a 13-year-old kid, especially towards girls. Which may of course be the point that I'm missing...

As a television viewing experience, I must admit, I didn't completely enjoy it. Of course "enjoyment" probably wasn't the producers' intent but nevertheless there were many aspects of the series I didn't really savour. I was worn down by the constant in-your-face, fly-on-the-wall long-takes camerawork obviously employed to convey the unfiltered dynamic realism of events as they happen. For this to work, the situations and characteristions depicted, the dialogue employed and most of all the acting itself all have to be wholly convincing and for me none of them were on a consistent basis. After the dramatic set-up of the first episode, I found myself wincing at the unnatural behaviour and dialogue exhibited by the characters on-screen in the next two parts before it shaped up again for the moving and credible conclusion.

Yes, this pretentiously titled programme has certainly got people talking about subjects like the pressures of social media in society today, especially on impressionable young children, how parents need to correspondingly engage with their kids in this new access-all-areas world and perhaps most importantly, questioning the social responsibilities and accountability of the companies which promote these platforms which leads into how they're controlled and governed by the authorities.

This holding up a mirror to society is all well and good but in the end, as a piece of dramatic entertainment, for me it didn't connect or communicate as consistently or as strongly as it could have. To paraphrase Meatloaf, two out of four (episodes) ain't bad, but after all the hyperbole surrounding this series, I expected more.

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks' third go-round at a Dan Brown novel pits Hanks' Professor Langdon, wouldn't you know it, at the centre of another world-threatening plot, this time originated by a crackpot billionaire who in order to save the planet from overpopulation, concocts a deadly plague virus which will kill half of all inhabitants on earth.

Being a misguided megalomaniac, of course he has to do so in a highly contrived and stagey manner, which naturally opens up a window of opportunity for Langdon to save the day, but of course it will require him to follow the usual round of cryptic clues which direct him to Rome, Florence, Venice snd Istanbul as well as making some dangerous liaisons along the way, all the time putting himself in harm's way, risking his life in the process.

Joining him on the chase is Felicity Jones as the hospital doctor treating him after he wakes up with a sore head and limited memories of what's been happening to him lately. Together they follow the Dante-inspired trail all the way to Istanbul where occur the requisite double-crosses, dramatic countdown to destruction and an underwater fight in the blood-red waters of a historic sunken cavern.

Like its two predecessors, the narrative is fast-moving and exciting as the bold professor comes to the world's rescue once again. Even though I suspect that director Howard called "Run!" rather more often than "Action!" to start scenes, it's undoubtedly a fast-moving, if ultimately completely ridiculous, unbelievable and empty thriller.

Hanks turned 60 while making the film but nevertheless plays his star part with his accustomed geniality and enthusiasm. I was also pleased to aee "Borgen's" P. M. Sidse Babette Knudsen in a prominent part as an old lover of Langdon's who teams up with him to get the job done. Directed with familiarity and efficiency by Howard, aided by another heavyweight soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, it plays exactly as you'd expect it to, especially if you've seen the two earlier entries in the franchise.

Taken all together then, the three adaptations of Brown's books don't begin to engage the viewer like the Jason Bourne or revived James Bond features, but as mindless, thrill-packed actioners, they serve an amusing entertainment purpose for the less discerning movie watchers amongst us.

Within the last couple of years I've listened to two separate podcasts documenting the tragic fate of the young starlet Dorothy Stratten, the first an episode from 20th Century Hollywood historian Karina Longworth's excellent "You Must Remember This" "Dead Blondes" series and the other embedded in the first series of Dan Mankiewicz's "The Plot Thickens" based on the life and times of New Hollywood director Peter Bogdanovich, who's path of course intersected with Miss Stratton's.

The victim of an infamous murder-suicide by her then estranged husband Paul Snider, Miss Stratton, played here by Mariel Hemingway, was just getting started in movies after achieving initial success as a star "playmate" (awful word) in magazine magnate Hugh Hefner's mass-circulation magazine Playboy. Presented in a most unfavourable light as a low-life, self-centred wannabe, it's clear that Snider wants to be Hefner himself but clearly lacks Hef's heft to ever get there.

It's the classic "A Star is Born" scenario with Snider's self-esteem falling ever lower as his young wife's star rises ever higher, the only difference being that Snider was never anything but a low-life hustler in the first place. Dorothy suffers Snider's ever-increasing paranoiac jealousy as long as she can before she finally decides to separate from him at about the time she started an affair with the renamed Bogdanovich character, played by Roger Rees. Sadly, this only serves to push Snider to the edge with the awful outcome we already know from history.

This was director Bob Fosse's last completed movie in his lifetime. He was certainly au-fait with this world of hustle and sleaze, where making connections is vital to getting a foot on the ladder. Fosse mixes up his narrative to include real-time dramatisations of the actual events, lots of stills photography and reminiscences by participants in the events played by actors.

I sense that Fosse goes easy on big-name players like Hefner and Bogdanovich (whose legal protests at least got his name and appearance changed for the movie) given that both of their motives to Dorothy are questionable gjven her youth and innocence, even as I accept she was of age. The undoubted villain howrver is Snider, electrifyingly played by Roberts in his flashy, trashy clothes and porn-star looks who blindsides Dorothy's suspicious mother right at the start even as he draws the teenage daughter into his dangerous orbit.

A movie very much of its time, Fosse vividly captures the era, even if so much of its objectification of women seems distasteful to us today. At its heart is a terrible tale of the corruption of youth and the destruction of innocence, with as so often, a woman suffering the consequences of a man's insecurities.

If only she'd listened to her mother...