27/39
Fairytale of New YorkWritten by Jem Finer, Shane MacGowanStarring The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl
Scenario
Helen embarks on a passionate affair with a man who has no idea what her secret identity is. Caught in the crosshairs when her lover falls victim to London’s dangerous underworld, Helen’s employer calls on Sam to protect her… Bingo, the owner of the guitar shop where Sam gets his guns, is played by Rat Scabies of The Damned.. Featured on The Graham Norton Show: Cher/Keira Knightley/Michael Fassbender/Josh Brolin/Jalen Ngonda (2024).
The trio were working together, but alone, seeking to uncover a grand conspiracy
This six-part Netflix spy thriller promised a lot, but ultimately fell short of its potential. With an A-list cast including Keira Knightley as a kick-ass, gun-toting ninja action heroine, as well as Ben Whishaw as her former mentor and now colleague, expectations were high. Both are agents of the ultra-secret mercenary espionage organization called Black Doves, whose controller is Sarah Lancashire, doing her best to be Judi Dench’s “M”; impersonating in a hideous platinum blonde wig. It certainly starts with a bang as we see three young men murdered in central London.
Caught up in the political conflict over the ambassador’s death, she was also having a passionate affair with one of the three men killed in The Beginning
There’s a separate plot component that involves the off-screen death of the Chinese ambassador to the UK, whose party-central daughter has also inconveniently disappeared, threatening all sorts of international political conflict. It’s no surprise to see these two developments converge later on, with both stories overlapping with Knightley and Whishaw’s exploits, not least because she, in addition to being married to the government’s defence minister, himself. Various other characters are brought into the kaleidoscopic narrative as Knightley and Whishaw are drawn deeper and deeper into an increasingly imperceptible plot, while a body count piles up around them and around them of mountainous proportions, sometimes at their hands, while Whishaw still has time to rekindle an old love story. Directed clearly, with believable performances, by its most commanding cast, it somehow falls short of its early promise, floundering in an overwrought plot that relied too much on coincidence, shoot-em-up violence, and strange, off-kilter characters.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” is one of the biggest TV and streaming premieres this month
By the time it all came together in the end, I felt it was somewhere between James Bond-esque fantasy and Le Carre-esque realism, with the escapism unfortunately winning out in the end. When I first started watching it, I felt inclined, almost for the first time, to watch all the remaining episodes, it seemed so good, but around episode 4, I’m afraid the cracks were showing, which no amount of sharp dialogue and quick jokes could make up for (and there were some good ones there). It picked up again for a tense and interesting finale, even if it relied heavily on exposition and didn’t seem to know when to stop. However, it eventually did and even did it with a “Die Hard” type Christmas tie-in, but ultimately it all felt a bit too artificial, complicated, and confusing to really work for me.