Nextflix Reviews - GLOW

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GLOW stands for Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, this program has had 2 seasons so far on Netflix and I am hooked. I binge watched both seasons pretty much as soon as they hit the network. The premise is based on a real life wrestling promotion that started out in 1986 and had a syndicated TV show for 4 seasons that was known for it's comedic skits. 

In 2012 there was a documentary about the promotion, this was seen by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, who were looking for ideas for a female-centric show at the time. They went on to create this GLOW show. This 2012 documentary is also available on Netflix and is an interesting, funny and poignant watch, well worth checking out to see the history and influence it had on this show. 

Season one of GLOW came out on Netflix in 2017, with season 2 just coming out at the end of June this year. The wrestlers from the series are based on the original characters but with different names.

Alison Brie is a keen but essentially failed actor, she just can't get a decent role despite her passion, professionalism and enthusiasm. Her best friend Debbie Eagan is a fairly successful soap opera star and seems to have it all, making Alison feel overshadowed by her. The pair fall out in spectacular fashion when Brie sleeps with Eagan's husband. 

Alison goes to an audition for GLOW, a wrestling show to be filmed for TV, it's pay rolled by enthusiastic but inexperienced rich boy Sebastian "Bash" Howard and to be directed by irascible, jaded Sam Sylvia. The team is soon put together and starts training, Alison brings her acting chops and enthusiam to the project which rubs Sam up the wrong way but this is the best job she's ever been given and is determined for it to be a success.

Things take a nose dive for Alison when her ex-friend Debbie is picked up to be the star draw of the show as all american good ol' girl Liberty Belle. This threatens her position and stirs up animosity between them, but can they forget their differences and make the show and their relationship succeed?

This disparate team of women need to become like a family to each other, living through the bumps and bruises of life whilst going through the bumps and bruises in the ring. Will the fans like the show? Will the network like the show? Will they be able to pull off the manoeuvres they've practised?

The tone of the show is a great mix of fun and serious, there is drama and proper character development but there is a lot of light hearted stuff mainly in the in-ring personnas of the wrestlers, with such names as Welfare Queen, The She-Wolf, Zoya the Destroyer, Beirut, Fortune Cookie and Brittanica. Most of them are terribly non-pc stereotypes which are so familiar to anyone who watched wrestling back in that era.

Season two is a continuation of the themes of the 1st really with new challenges being presented to them to do their best to try and overcome. I won't say what happens but it seems very likely we'll see a 3rd season sometime in the future, where I hope they'll be able to keep up the level of quality and entertainment of the previous ones.

Oh yeah I just found out today that the character Welfare Queen is played by real life wrestler Kia Stevens. Her TV show wrestling persona is a fun heel who is a sweetie out of the ring, nothing like the powerhouse, Awesome Kong she portrayed for the TNA wrestling promotion.

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Nextflix Reviews - A series of Unfortunate Events

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I vaguely recall there was a film of this a good few years back now, with Jim Carrey I think, and I know this is based on a set of 13 children's books by the author Daniel Handler using the pen name of Lemony Snicket but I haven't read them at all, so I've no idea how closely the 2 series, so far, of this TV show mirrors them. 

The story is narrated by Lemony Snicket himself he provides exposition and links the 'events' together telling from a historical stand point. Along the way he promises that the outcome and fate of our young stars is one of perpetual doom. It follows the 3 talented Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus and toddler Sunny who are orphaned due to a terrible fire that guts their family home. They are adopted at 1st by their evil distant relative Count Olaf a hammy actor and all round terrible human being who has a gang of strange followers in his theatrical entourage. He is aware of a sizable inheritance soon to come the children's way and plans to seize it for himself. The children manage to get away from him and are passed on to be fostered by a procession of quirky relatives all the while being pursued by Olaf and his cronies.

This is a world where the children are smart and capable and most of the adults are daft as brushes who can't see through the ever improbable disguises of the Count. For two seasons they've travelled around passed between friends of their parents and unlocking some secrets about their parents lives and a secret society they belonged to called The V.F.D., some agents of whom try to assist them whenever they can.

Along the way they also meet the two surviving Quagmire triplets Duncan and Isadora whose lives seem to strangely parallel their own in many aspects, they lost a sibling as well as their parents in a fire. They become allies helping each other out of terrible situations of the Count's making. 

The tone of the show is very dark and comic but very strange, I am probably not at the right age to get it, it kind of seems too dark for me I am surprised kids like it but then Grimm's fairy tales of old were a lot darker than we eventually watered them down to. So it seems kids can deal with darkness, discomfort and even death in their entertainment a lot more than I would've suspected!

The 1st two seasons of the show have aired on Netflix so far and have covered the tales from the 1st 9 books of the series. It's seen them visiting an outlandish set of scenarios and characters such as the world's most prestigious snake expert, a house tottering precariously on the edge of a cliff, a wood mill staffed by hypnotised workers, a frankly horrendous orphanage, the penthouse of a pair of trend obsessed millionaires, a village full of bird loving loons, a hideous hospital and a failing carnival that decides to hold a raffle to decide which one of their freaks to feed to the lions to boost trade!

At every step they are hounded by Olaf with the situation they are in seemingly getting grimmer and grimmer. They certainly are 'unfortunate' that's for sure. Season two ends with an almost literal cliffhanger which may well leave you gasping to see the 3rd and I assume final series as this is set to cover the last 4 books of the set.

For me it's not compulsive viewing really, it's something to have on but the wackiness of the characters and situations doesn't really tickle my funny bone. I suppose it must entertain on some level or I wouldn't have continued watching it. I will certainly watch the last season just to see what happens to the children, Narrator Snicket always suggests that their final fate will not be a happy one, with even the title music suggesting we 'look away' as the story is not a pretty one. I assume they'll be a happy conclusion after all their hardship but who knows what these crazy kids are into nowadays and how it will end!!

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Geek Tee Friday - The Hulk

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This Friday's geek tee is one of the Hulk taken from the Thor: Ragnarok movie from 2017. This is the 3rd of the 4 mystery shirts I got for £15 and did a bag opening in this BLOG here. Check it out.

I wasn't too impressed with this one at 1st it seems a bit muted colour wise and I am sure there are better Hulk shirts out there but hey ho it is what it is, I'm sure it will grow on me!

As a character the Hulk has been around since May 1962  when he was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He 1st appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1, a book that only ran for 6 issues before the big Green/Grey one was moved to Tales to Astonish which was later renamed as The Incredible Hulk in April 1968. It ran under a few different names up till 2013 when it was replaced by The Indestructible Hulk as part of Marvel's Marvel NOW! relaunch.

I remember that Marvel UK had a Hulk comic too that I know I read some of as a kid but I would expect that my 1st encounter with the very angry one was when Lou Ferrigno played him in the TV show of the 70's. It was pretty big in it's day this show I seem to recall, with Bill Bixby playing the role of the mild mannered scientist David (not Bruce??!!) Banner. The show ran for 5 seasons, (82 episodes) on CBS in America from 1978 - 1982 apparently. Wow, I didn't realise it was as many as that, I wonder if we got to see them all in the UK. 

It was a cool show, he was always on the move from town to town, working on cures for his Hulk problem and he'd end up befriending and helping someone with the big green one's aid and have to move on again at the end of the show. The poignant music would play out as he trudged off, (normally in the rain I seem to recall), to a new town and new adventures. 

They also made 3 films the 1st of which, The Incredible Hulk Returns features him meeting up, I am sure for the 1st time on screen, with the thunder god Thor himself. See they really are old friends from work!!

The Incredible Hulk Returns - 1988

He also met up with Daredevil in The Trial of The Incredible Hulk (1989) and in The Death of The Incredible Hulk (1990) he falls in love with an Eastern European spy (Black Widow surely!!)

I have quite a few issues of Hulk in my collection, I'd guess I must have collected him for 3/4 years but I need to go dig them out to confirm this. I know I have quite a few of the Peter David era of the big green goliath. He united his Banner/Hulk personas for a time during this period and we also learned that Bruce was abused by his father making Hulk ostensibly his childhood fury manifest. When Hulk refused to emerge during Avengers: Infinity Wars I theorized that his inner child bully Hulk was scared after the beat down that he received from Thanos. I think he might need a little lie-down on Doc Samson's sofa once again to get his head right. Also a lot of fun during David's run was when Hulk went grey again and had dominance over Banner, he became Mr Fixit for a time, a mob enforcer cracking heads to order for a crime boss. He was no where near as strong at this point, he had better intelligence and reasoning so he couldn't channel his boundless rage into strength.

I wonder if Hulk has featured in more Marvel movies than any other character. Does anyone have the figures at all? Maybe he is the character that has fronted the most movies. He has the 3 TV tie-in ones that I already mentioned and then he has had 2 others, Hulk (2003) with Eric Bana as Bruce Banner and The Incredible Hulk (2008) with Edward Norton in that role. He's also been in 3 Avengers movies, (I think) with Mark Ruffalo as Banner, and of course Thor Ragnarok where he has a tumultuous & fun battle with the titular hero. 

Fights between The Hulk and Thor have been plentiful over the years with many a debate being had between fans over who would win in such a battle. Hulk (in some versions), has brute strength that seemingly has no limits, increasing as his anger does, but Thor is a god, a skilled warrior with the might of Mjolnir and the power of thunder. I tried to find out when they 1st battled in the comics, the earliest encounter I could find was Journey Into Mystery #112 from January 1965. 

I am sure we will see him next in Infinity Wars Part 2 but I wonder if there are any plans to have him star in his own movies again at some point. I certainly hope so as I for one will NEVER tire of the Superhero genre, I don't remember a time when I haven't loved them and I can't picture there being one in the future either. Keep 'em coming I say.

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To Boldly Watch - Part 3

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So next up on my odyssey of Star Trek, my Star Trek trek so to speak is Star Trek: Enterprise. I thought I'd try and watch the shows in chronological order of when they are set so I am sure although this is one of the more recent shows (2001 - 2005) it's set in the earliest time, the 22nd century, 2151 (100 years before Kirk), when humanity are only just venturing out as Starfleet into the universe to boldly go and all that jazz.

I have never seen a single one of the adventures of Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and his crew upon the Enterprise but seeing people's posts about it I had the vague idea that the general consensus was not too positive towards it. It must have done fairly well though as it had 4 seasons with 98 episodes. As I write this paragraph I am still on season one and I like it. The premise is interesting, the earliest space explorations of humanity, their 1st trips to discover new life and planets. We've already  had contact with other alien species, the Vulcans assisted us with perfecting our space technology, although there is some animosity towards them with feeling that they held mankind back. Initially placed on a temporary basis the Vulcan T'Pol eventually becomes fulltime and some of this mistrust is directed towards her. The ship doctor too is an alien, Dr. Phlox is a Denobulan, a jovial little character who is possibly my favourite of the series. The captain has a ship's dog too Porthos!! The 1st mission starts prematurely in the end when a Klingon, Klaang is wounded and they have to take him home. We also find a new enemy race, the Suliban (I think they're new, I don't remember them from anything else?), who are doing the bidding of a future intelligence in a Temporal Cold War. Later in an episode where Captain Archer and Mayweather are captured and held in a Tandaran internment camp with a number of Suliban we find that it is only some of them that are enemies, the Cabal. This episode is a parallel of the human history events when Japanese American citizens in the US were detained during WWII. Something that happened to The Original Series actor George Takei (Mr Sulu) and his family. I wonder if it was written or directed by him perhaps.

1st contact of Vulcans on Earth: Carbon Creek

As an early (chronologically) mission some of the tech is not so good, their top warp speed is not so fast, photon torpedoes haven't been discovered yet and the translaters have a few hiccups, Comm officer  Ensign Hoshi Sato has her work cut out for her. The teleporter tech is new and they start off wary of it, favouring instead small shuttle craft for flying to planet's surfaces. They also launched early so some of their systems were not fully set up just yet. When they start to encounter new planets and civilisations we find that no official contact protocols have been devised yet. This leaves it very much up to Archer to make up on the fly with advise from T'Pol. 

There are some great episodes, fun ones like when male engineer Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker gets unexplainably pregnant, and when T'Pol tells the tale of her ancestors 1st unintended visit to Earth. There are tense ones too like when Archer gets a virus that prevents him making new memories creating a whole different timeline and when they are held at gun point by Andorians at a Vulcan temple as they believe it's a spy base. Horror icon Jeffrey Combs plays Andorian Commander Shran a reoccurring character extremely well, it's funny to see him with blue skin and antennae.

Jeffrey Combs as Commander Shran

Season 3 we discover a new enemy, the Xindi, the whole season is taken up with preventing them from wiping out Earth. Beings from another dimension convince the Xindi that humanity are their enemy and are destined to destroy them if they don't pre-emptively destroy us first. Enterprise has to enter The Expanse a dangerous, uncharted area of space to try and stop them from building a massive weapon capable of destroying our planet.

4 of the 6 Xindi races at their Council

Season 4 seems to consist of lots of 2-parters with stuff like alien Nazis, cowboy planets, Vulcan political intrigues and Romulan warmongering amongst the subjects portrayed. With the program coming to an end we see talk about the United Federation of Planets being born. Archer and his crew have done much to heal rifts between the Vulcans, Andorians and the Tellarites over the series and have helped to create conditions where a United Nations of planets is possible. In the final episode, told in a very unique manner we see Johnathan Archer working on his speech for the inauguration of this body but is side-tracked by an urgent plea from Commander Shran.

The series has a fair few nods at historical stuff and hints at future canon events. In one storyline for example Brent Spiner, (Data from Next Generation), stars as a criminal, Dr Soong, responsible for creating banned genetically enhanced augments. At the conclusion he determines that perhaps synthetic androids would be a better avenue for his talents. Hence he is bound to model their look on himself and thus he creates Data!

I have to say my favourite moment from the entire series has to be when Dr Phlox is stuck in quarantine with a pon farr'd T'Pol which is comedy gold! Where's the porn parody? (Joking!)

I read up on some of the dislike that this series had at the time of it's 1st airing, some called it the death of Star Trek!! I've got to say that's all a bit harsh if you ask me, but you know what it's like when people obsess over shows, they can never be satisfied and will complain about any little thing. One thing I can agree on though is that the theme tune sucks, give me a woman harmonising over a theremin anyday! (Although I've just done some research and found that the original theme actually has no theremin in it after all so that's my world view rocked!!)

Nextflix Reviews - The Expanse

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This is a show my brother recommended to me a while back, I was a bit slow to watch it so he kept reminding me over and over so it's safe to say he must have enjoyed it. I started with a couple of episodes and wasn't really captivated at 1st but my bro told me to persevere so I did and it does get more enthralling as it goes on. It starts slow but really picks up momentum until it draws you in and gets you rooting for the characters.

OK so obviously it's Science-fiction, it's very story heavy, there are a lot of characters spread over 3 planetary groups and various different factions. It's quite a feat to get your head around all the motivations and intrigues that are going down to be honest and I was a bit confused for a couple of parts. Especially when I started on season 2 it was so long since I saw the 1st season that it took me a couple of episodes to get back up to speed with it.

The main 3 factions/planets we have are the Earth, Mars and then there are the asteroid belt dwelling miners known colloquially as 'belters'. Earth and Mars are at loggerheads with each other and simmering ill will between them means they are almost ready to go to war. The hardy and wild 'belters' dislike both planets for how they have treated them in the past and there is a rebellious terrorist faction amongst them. There is a lot of diplomacy and intrigue going on behind the scenes on Earth where we follow the work of United Nations executive Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), as she tries to prevent war between the planets. Then we have a police detective Josephus Miller (Thomas Jane), looking for a missing woman and we also follow the crew of the Rocinante. 

A conspiracy is uncovered that threatens the fragile peace, a bio-weapon has been created and is tested in catastrophic fashion. Shrouded in mystery accusations begin to fly as paranoia grips the political factions, each suspecting the other of preparing for war. The crew of the Rocinante seek to wipe out the proto-molecule and also discover it's origins but there are more factions who want it for themselves, to use it for their own ends despite the potential dangers.

I have just finished watching the 2nd season of this show and it's pretty good but whilst I do enjoy it there are a few negative points to it at least to my mind anyway. Those negative points are not really caused by the show but by myself really. I am too much of a multitasker and get distracted from what's going on in the show whilst playing on my laptop at the same time. There are so many characters with different motivations that I find it a bit hard to keep up at times. This is a show that requires concentration to pick up all the layers and memory too to remember the names and which characters belong to which faction. This is a show that would benefit from multiple viewing I think so you can catch things you missed the 1st time around.

Season 3 has aired already but isn't up on Netflix yet, and the show was cancelled by Syfy but with an immediate & popular campaign to save it that followed it's been picked up for a 4th and possible even beyond that series by Amazon. So that probably means that future seasons may not be aired on Netflix but Amazon Prime instead! We'll have to wait and see.

The series is based on the Hugo Award winning The Expanse books by James S.A Corey. There are currently seven main novels and 5 shorter works in the series with more already planned so the source material for the TV show to still draw on is seemingly plentiful. The show has received much praise from fans and critics alike so it could well run for quite some time yet.

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Nextflix Reviews - Re:Mind

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This has the look to it of a Jigsaw type of horror, it has a chilling and intriguing premise although I have to say it fell a little flat for me and the potential was not realised. Eleven Japanese school girls wake up with red hoods over their heads fixed by foot manacles around a dinner table. They have no idea how they got there and no clue as to why they have been abducted and shackled. Over the course of 13 episodes they try and piece together what happened and who they offended to wind up in such a scary predicament.

The whole room is decked out with objects that are meant to trigger memories in the girls to prompt them to realise why they have been imprisoned. Every so often, normally after a confession of a memory to do with their missing school friend Miho, the clocks all chime the lights darken and a girl disappears.

As I said the story idea is good but I found the execution to be clunky and confusing and the subtitles didn't really help much with that I think. It has lots of young Japanese ladies shouting at each other and crying It was pretty unmemorable and didn't really have any horrors elements as such just a bit of mystery that I got bored of pretty quickly. It's also pretty unmemorable, I was anxious to get it over with as it was pretty uninspiring and I can't for the life of me even remember what happened in the end!! 

Apparently the main girl characters are members of the Japanese idol girl group Keyakizaka46, I have no idea what that even means... is that a pop band?

Nextflix Reviews - American Horror Story

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This is another cool show that's well worth watching on Netflix. It has six seasons ready and waiting for your viewing pleasure. Each season is an ongoing story arc with a different horror tale to tell. In order the seasons are Murder House, Asylum, Coven, Freak Show, Hotel & Roanoke. It is unique show as far as I am aware as there is a regular ensemble cast over most of the seasons who play different roles from season to season. Only two of the cast have appeared in every season Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson, the latter was a medium in series 1, a gay writer consigned to an asylum in 2, the headmistress of a school for witches in 3, conjoined twins in 4, the ghost of a dead junkie in 5 and an actress starring in a documentary re-enactment show in 6. Series 7: Cult, which I am sure I heard is based on the US elections, has been released although it's not on Netflix yet. If it's anything like the 6 series I have seen so far it should prove to be most interesting and entertaining. Series 8 & 9 have also been confirmed and will be set in the future apparently!! 

Other reoccurring cast members include excellent turns from Angela Bassett, Jessica Lange and Kathie Bates who act their socks off as various larger than life characters. The plots are all twisting and turning and full of memorable and crazy characters. I will give a quick synopsis of each season but so much goes on in each of them that you need to see it for yourself really. 

Murder House is your basic , (although it's far from basic really), haunted house story. A family moves into a house with a bloody past and have to suffer due to it's history both from the living and the spirits of the murderers and the victims that presided there.

Asylum, set in the 60's, is the story of a writer who goes into a run-down insane house for a story and ends up stuck there and sees all the deprivation and depravity that occurs within it's walls. It features subplots of mad doctors, possession and alien abduction of all things!! There is even a random big song and dance number that is truly surreal.

Coven tells of a school of witches that has existed in New Orleans  since escaping there after fleeing from the Salem Witch trials and has a long and chequered history. The current small crop of students are a disparate lot with petty differences all looking to graduate. Their supreme witch returns suddenly to upset the status quo and to facilitate her own personal agenda.

Freak Show is set in the 50's and tells of a struggling travelling group of freaks and their trials and tribulations. There is murder afoot as well with 3 separate outside forces set on targeting people from the show and in the surrounding town. Foremost of these forces is a killer clown named Twisty.

The Hotel of the 5th season is inhabited with vampires and serial killers and their victims and ghosts of serial killers and their victims and a transgender bartender! Lady Gaga won awards playing as The Countess a vampires who lives in the penthouse.

Roanoke is the filming of a re-enactment of a haunting event for a TV programme called My Roanoke Nightmare. The cast filming the re-enactment are plagued by their own horrors similar to those that affected the people they're portraying. With cannibal locals, Celtic witch goddesses and ghostly residents of the historic Roanoke settlement hounding them they'll be lucky if they get out alive.

As horror goes it's not really overly gory or horrific I don't find, it's kind of teen level horror I'd say PG-13 or something but maybe I am numb to it after 40 odd years of watching horror movies. it's been a while since I watched it now but I'm pretty sure there's a fair bit of nudity so probably don't go showing it to your kids.

Most series run for 12/13 episodes and sometimes the stories do have a sense of being a little dragged out with extra elements seemingly thrown in to prolong the story but I don't mind that really as the over the top craziness is great fun as far as I'm concerned. 

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Nextflix Reviews - Z Nation

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Is it possible to get too much zombie stuff? Obviously there is some rubbish stuff out there but this show is not amongst that category by a long shot. This is a very cool show with lots of action and humour with a cast of believable characters. I discovered it when the 1st season popped up and binge watched it straight away and have done the same as each subsequent series has been released. 

The zombie plague has pretty much taken over the entire world with only pockets of human survivors struggling to survive in the hostile environment. The show starts by showing us a medical unit's attempts to create a vaccine using prisoners as test subjects. One of their guinea pigs Murphy is tied to a gurney and injected with the most recent experimental batch of the anti-zombie vaccine but the room is overrun and he is attacked and bitten multiple times by the undead. Instead of dying or being fully consumed he awakes as a strange human/zombie hybrid with telepathic powers over the undead. In season one a team of survivors gather and take up the mission to get Murphy across country to another facility where they can develop a vaccine from his blood. They discover that Murphy's bite turns people into hybrids who are not attacked by zombies but can be influenced by murphy's mind over zombies power.

The team varies as events claim some of their lives or allegiances change but the main players who have survived the longest so far are ex-soldier Roberta Warren, the team leader, a driven and capable woman who is the team's brains; Doc, an aging hippy with a heart of gold and a taste for weed who applies his medic skills and drug knowledge as best he can; 10K a youth with a knack for sniping who takes his name from his proposed Z kill target and Addy a nice girl turned spiked baseball bat swinging Amazon bad-ass by the necessity of life post-Z apocalypse. They are aided from outside the group by Citizen Z who is the lone operative at a government listening/viewing post in the Arctic Circle, he directs them as best as he can using satellite technology but in a world full of chaos he can't always get the message across.

The story of their travels is influenced by the zombies that are always in their way and the living communities that they encounter along the road. Each season seems to culminate with an end to one phase of the mission and the beginning of another as events seem to always conspire against them. 

Although they fight alongside each other for survival there is often conflict within the group too. The dynamic in the team changes fairly often with Murphy himself being the main catalyst for trouble within the group. This friction increases when he is able to father a daughter by a human, who also has zombie controlling powers of her own amongst other abilities. He's a criminal after all and he has his own ideas about the world's future with himself as the ruler of his own zombie/hybrid community. His bite offers survivors safety from zombies which is very tempting for them and Murphy is fed up with being the subject of human experiments and thinks his kind are the future.

The tone of the show is serious in the main but there is a lot of humour in it too, like a slightly less serious and angst ridden The Walking dead. It's got drama in all the right places but is able to induce more than the odd laugh through crazy situations and quirky encounters.

Netflix has 3 seasons available to view right now although 4 have been released so far and a 5th is in the works too. Hopefully we won't have too long to wait as it was left on rather a meaty cliffhanger. 

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Nextflix Reviews - Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

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This one may seem a bit out there for my normal viewing tastes but I really enjoyed this period detective series. I got watching it as my girlfriend loves all her detective dramas and did her normal trick of putting this on at bedtime and promptly falling asleep, leaving me to watch it on my own. I eventually watched all 3 seasons of it, (not all in that 1 night obviously!!) 

The programme is based on the series of books, by prolific author Kerry Greenwood, which began in 1989 with "Cocaine Blues" and runs to 20 in number so far with the latest "Murder and Mendelssohn" released in 2013. Greenwood has also written science fiction, children's books and plays.



Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) is a spirited thoroughly modern 1920's  woman who has recently arrived  back in Melbourne, Australia. She engages herself as a sleuth solving all manner of crimes and mysteries. Independently wealthy, although she hasn't always been so, she seems to do it more for the love of solving mysteries and to help people out than for any financial need. In the show she has a great cast of interesting characters around her. She is a bit of a thorn in the side of police detective 'Jack' Robinson (Nathan Page) and his constable Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) as she keeps wheedling her way into his investigations but her skills prove to be very useful and their relationship burgeons over the course of their investigations. Constable Collins falls for Phryne's secretary, the sweet and innocent, good Catholic girl, Dot (Ashleigh Cummings). Recently employed by Phryne, Dot grows from a timid girl to a much more modern and adventurous lady as the show progresses and we see how her relationship with Hugh grows and the ups and downs it goes through challenged by the fact that he is a Protestant and also his ideas of a woman's role differing from her new Phryne influenced ones. Also in Phryne's employ are Mr Butler the butler and Bert and Cec a pair of cabbies who she employs to do all manner of investigative footwork for her. Other recurring characters include Miriam Margolyes as her Aunt Prudence, her friend Dr Mac (Tammy Macintosh) and her ward Jane (Ruby Rees).

As well as solving a wealth of crimes as the series progresses we get to learn more of Phryne's colourful and sometimes tragic history. Some events of her past catch up with her as the series progresses, we learn of her time in the ambulance service during WWI and her time as an artist's model, muse & lover in Paris after the war. Also there's a long story arch much taken up with the escaped criminal Murdoch Foyle (Nicholas Bell) who abducted and killed Phryne's younger sister Janey when she was just a child. He brings some real tension to the story during his time in it, being a thoroughly horrid and capable villain. In later episodes Phryne's father turns up, he's a bit of a cad and they have a strained relationship, he brings his dangerous drama into the mix having unresolved issues from his past that could prove fatal.

I really enjoyed this show, the interplay and progression of relationships between the cast is great, it's a very good ensemble of characters and actors who you end up caring for and wanting to do well. The look at history is interesting too with a lot of social elements picked up and examined during the course of the show.

There is no new series planned it seems but thankfully a full-length movie is in the works having been successfully financed and apparently is planned to begin filming in October. It's called Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears and is slated to be directed by Tony Tilse who is a veteran Australian director who did Murder in the Outback and several episodes of Farscape, Wolf Creek & Ash Vs Evil Dead. Also there is talk of a prequel series based on Miss Fisher which will not be based on any of the books but will be imaginings of the character from a part of her life not previously dealt with.

Check out Phryne's website for more information on her adventures.

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Also starring Essie Davis

     

Nextflix Reviews - The Mist

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Here's a show based on the 1980 short story by Stephen King that was made into a pretty good but bleak movie in 2007. The premise is much the same, a small town, Bridgeville, Maine is going about it's normal day to day mostly idyllic business when it is plunged into turmoil when a thick fog suddenly rolls in. In most cases fog is merely an inconvenience but not this one though, for one it doesn't float off or dissipate like good fog normally does and secondly it harbours all manner of monsters and madness. Oops sorry it's not fog it's mist.... is there a difference? I'm gonna have to Google that, is it that one comes off of the sea? Whatever the difference they are both scary and mysterious making the world seem an ethereal otherworldly place. I know James Herbert did The Fog book in 1975 and John Carpenter The Fog movie in 1980, (remade in 2005), all of which were pretty interesting too.

As well as monsters the mist seems to dredge memories and fears from the townspeople's minds and kills them in nasty ways. The remaining folk hide out in various locations and we see what happens in a small town when societal conventions break down and civilisation takes a back seat to the fight for survival. All those harboured animosities and petty grudges come to the fore and new rivalries emerge as differences of opinion on how to manage the situation arise. Characters that seemed all sweetness and light become cold & ruthless and I liked the unpredictability of the plot and the character development arcs were pretty interesting. I was a bit surprised by the climatic ending which turned my expectation on it's head rather. The plot was left open with the possibility for a 2nd series but it was unfortunately cancelled after the 1st 10 part season. I think it's worth a watch, I enjoyed it personally, it's not necessarily compulsive viewing but it filled a few hours entertainingly enough.

Whilst reading up on the original story I read that it was a heavy influence on some video games like the blockbusters Half-Life and Silent Hill and the lesser known Mindscape and Vorago.

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