What's To Watch? - Feb 10 - Points of View

 

      Pressed for time by a combination of health and career issues this week. As a result, much of my attempted relaxing time has gone int reading, and into revisiting familiar shows and movies, but not so much with the intent of discussing them. Instead, I'll start with a recent bit of fun as I've been part of the U.S. audience finally getting an opportunity to catch up on some fun U.K. audiences have been familiar with for a while.
     The header image is just a lift from What We Do In the Shadows, which is my sole nod to this weekend's Superbowl. I hope all of those who enjoy such things have a great time with it this Sunday, as as someone out in the Philly suburbs it'll likely make for much more upbeat surroundings for the next week or two if the birds manage to come out on top. I've seldom been lured in by the halftime performers (no chance of that this year), and I can readily find the top, new commercials by themselves.

     Prior to this past weekend, the only reason I was at all familiar with Diane Morgan's face and voice was that she played a supporting role in Ricky Gervais' series After Life.
     Audiences in the U.K., however, have frequently seen her for the past decade playing the part of Philomena Cunk, initially as part of a show that did a satirical look at the week's news, Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe. Cunk is poorly-informed, very much the embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect, mistaking her own extremely limited and often mis-connected knowledge for the sum total of human knowledge on any given subject. Malapropisms, mispronunciations, and mistaken conclusions, the character plows on, speaking as things occur to her, always with the confidence that she's the one in command of whatever facts there are to know, with everything else a comfortable unknown to all.
     Aside from just tracing her weird, childlike mental paths, this frequently makes for wonderful

moments as she interviews actual academic experts, frequently leaving them momentarily agape as they try to politely react to the latest bit of nonsense. She plays off their reactions, in-character, in the best tradition of improv, doubling down in a more entertaining way.
     The Cunk character quickly became a break-out success from the Wipe, leading to various limited series and one-shots: Cunk on Shakespeare, Cunk and Other Humans, and Cunk on Britain, each of which I'll eventually want to track down. (A great deal of it's on YouTube, and I'm looking forward to getting to that this weekend.)
     The recent change for us is the U.S. is the recent arrival of the five-part Cunk on Earth, to Netflix. Here's the brief trailer:     

     Wonderful stuff.

     What looks to be, ultimately, a charming little mockumentary from last year that's made its way to Amazon Prime, was just pointed out to me. It focuses on a lonely, quirky, failed-but-persistent inventor in rural Wales who ends up building a companion largely from a washing machine. The film's director, Jim Archer, and the two stars of the film, David Earl (who also wrote the screenplay) & Chris Hayward worked this up to feature length, from something they'd done a short film on back in 2017. It's Brian and Charles (2022 PG 1h 31m)

     I mainly know David Earl from his role as Kev on Gervais's series Derek, who was a homeless, unemployed, alcoholic, so I'll be interested to see how he did in this role.

     Coming to Paramount + next Thursday, the 16th, is the start of the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

     While especially the second season had included characters from earlier Trek shows, this final season appears to be going all-in on that, which seems appropriate as this is all intended to be the very final outing for Jean-Luc Picard, as a mysterious enemy appears to be targeting Picard's Enterprise command crew from over twenty years ago.
     There's a vocal "fan" component out there which continues to hate watch all of these new Trek series so they can disparage them. Hopefully you don't find yourself sharing a couch with one of them.
     Is it perfect television? No, of course not. But it comes across as earnest and sincere, and I've been enjoying it so far. Seeing them get back together for a final adventure together is enough of a draw for me.
     One per week, this 10-episode, third and final season will be running through April 20th.

     As mentioned up top, I'm still being squeezed by the work week, made a bit more difficult to manage due to health and medication issues, so this is all I got together so far. As ever, I reserve the right to make some updates and additions throughout Friday, if time, energy, and content come to me. A great deal comes to mind during the week, and I leave myself reminder notes in various spots... but not always where they're handy when I'm finally putting this together.
     Let's reach the weekend intact, enjoy it, and try to make it through next week in better condition. That's the hope. - Mike