Books:
Child 44 (Leo Demidov #1) by Tom Rob Smith
While this book is classed as a mystery - and it is btw - I'd say it's really more of a story about life under Stalinist Russia. It's not that the mystery element doesn't exist but rather I found the world to be more interesting than the plot. The basic setup is the lead - Leo - works as an investigator for Russian state security but winds up getting massively screwed over by a co-worker for reasons having to do with how Russia was run in that era (the '50s) where the mere act of investigating a crime meant someone had to be guilty even if it turned out no crime had actually been committed since otherwise it would mean the state was fallible. Similarly anyone either accused of a crime or, during torture/confession, accused by a criminal of being a criminal was also de facto guilty all of which led to a lot of people ratting on each and making stuff up and where an investigator's primary job was to service the state rather than any concept of justice. The main thrust of the plot is that there's a serial killer loose but, in Russia, that simply can't exist because only Westerners commit crimes, and the story circles around what happens when our lead Leo is, for spoilerable reasons kind of (and perhaps this next bit is a spoiler itself though I don't really think so but just fyiing), demoted and sent into the boonies to become the lowest form of investigator which is more or less a cop and how, essentially, he inadvertently becomes Russia's first homicide investigator. That's the plot more or less and it's fine though in all honesty I thought it was kind of creaky especially towards the end. However, as noted, that's not what I enjoyed about this book. Instead, I was more interested in the constraints that were put on the investigation via the communist regime and how the era of nonstop suspicion of everyone by everyone affected Leo's marriage and ultimate choices of how to solve a crime no one, other than the people affected, wanted solved. I'm hoping this review doesn't sound meh because I actually liked the book and there are two more in the series which I'll be reading because I thought the time period and its problems were interesting and, by the end of this book, Stalin is gone and Kruschchev is in so I'm assuming the next book will be different in the same way I liked this first book, i.e. it talked about a well-researched time period but in a mystery package and in many ways, because my familiarity with Russian history is hazy/general at best, kind of the real mystery was in how certain seemingly normal actions - interviewing a suspect for example - could lead to completely unexpected outcomes due to the way the state worked in those days and that mystery, that thing where a person is trying to thread a really complex needle and where the failure to do some means death or imprisonment was for me really interesting and so, yeah, the main mystery is a'right and the book is somewhat overwritten, but I was actively interested in the world the whole time and that's plenty to keep going.
TV/Streaming:
Industry (Season 1):
While I watched this entire season and not in the background and without DNF'ing (though I definitely contemplated FF'ing but more on that in a minute) about a group of college grads vying for a spot at an investment bank in London, it's definitely bad and not fun bad but kind of a sadder bad, like bad with potential that's never realized because the writers, rather than focusing on character and drama, seem to think it's SO EDGY AND OMFG to have, to pick one of a billion similar incidents, one of the (female) characters being eaten out on the kitchen counter by her BF while taking a pic and sexting it to the guy she's having an affair with. The nonstop crazy boring sex scenes, far from being hot other than, perhaps, to a post-puberty-but-still-a-virgin teen, simply dragged everything to a screeching halt (did I mention they went on forever?) and was the source of the contemplated FF'ing. They weren’t the worst thing about this series but kind of point out the problem at the center which is that the writers, barren of ideas and with no connection to their characters as people but rather an objects to be tossed around in the service of said quote unquote edginess, used the sex scenes and drug scenes and club scenes (yawn) to fill time because absent those scenes, they would've actually had to, you know, write a series and that may have been beyond their skill set. Though not entirely perhaps? Look, when the show focused on its young grads of various genders trying to cope in a cliche but still fairly interesting world of trading desks and high pressure and big money and all in the context of being in a trial period (the setup is they’re being tested before being offered real jobs), well then there was some interest.
But the problem, as evidenced by the sex scenes, is that the writers were invested in creating circumstance not character presumably because writing a plot deriving from character is, well, hard! So they just didn't do that. Instead - and, yeah, this may be a spoiler but the show is so whatever-the-writers-feel-like-having-happening-y that in a way it isn't because it comes from nothing but just noting - you have things like this: the scrappy underprivileged-in-an-ill-defined-way lead is brought in by a hotshot boss and in one episode she screws up royally and magically (and it felt like magic not any reality btw) turns the screwup into a profit and she and her boss have a bonding moment over it all and a compliment essentially about how he believes in her because she's the type who will go to any length to solve a problem. Sounds good, right? Kind of interesting character and relationship and sets up at least some opportunity for shadiness or whatever. But no. The next episode, the boss gets mad at her for something and locks them in a glass room which I'm noting because the locking-in part becomes the source of the lead getting the boss fired but not because she wants to but rather because in one week she goes from strong and scrappy to quivery, unsure, panicked and, in a later episode, teary and, worst of all, totally passive and winds up getting the boss firedish but don't worry because the plot has her undo that later. Now that could so totally all work if the writers had a character who, I don't know, was calculating and planned a big ploy or screwed up, lost confidence, regained it and made a move or whatever. But you know what they did instead? Took the scrappy lead, made her a whimpering weepy nervous wreck, shoved some kind of #metooish moral compass on her, tossed her into a threesome for good measure, then just got rid of all that in the final few minutes of the last episode. Annoying isn't it?
I watched because I kept thinking that, yeah, beyond the stupid sex stuff there was something vaguely intriguing about GenZ being thrust into a decidedly Boomer (regardless of age) flavored environment i.e. sexist and racist and sexualityist without patently being any of those things and the GenZers figuring out how to navigate those waters but in their own ways since in the end there's so much money and ambition involved. Sadly, the writers were into the PUSSY OOH COOL! Anyway, yeah I was irritated. It wasn't a hate-watch but rather a deception-watch, the deception being that I thought I was going to get something interesting but unfortunately no one involved was capable of reaching that potential. Which isn't to say I won't try season 2 in the hopes that the showrunner got fired or they realized what wasn't working and changed it but I'm not hopeful and will report back regardless.
Sanditon (Seasons 1-2):
This series, based on an unfinished Jane Austen book, is firmly in the slow, broad, gentle, period Brit genre inhabited by basically anything set in 1800s England where a sassy/outspoken woman shakes things up in a provincial town. This is not an insult. In fact if you like this genre - and I imagine unless my Media Report subscribers include people age 10 or under (and even then honestly) you already know - you will be delighted with this series. If not, you'll be crazy bored. It's a costume drama with lots of rich people, poor people (though really they're more poor rich people in this series), scheming for money, for love, marriage proposals after meeting twice, balls, fairs, garden parties, regattas, star-crossed lovers, an unbelievably slow pace, obvious character and relationship arcs, and a supermarathon's worth of people ambling along cliffs, i.e. everything you either love or hate about this genre. I guess the one point of difference for this show is that (and I have no idea if this was in the unfinished book or not) they included a Black woman as a character and not in a race-blind casting way but rather in that she was an Antiguan heiress. And I guess the one point of sameness for this show as with all shows these days looking back at older cultural mores but not wanting to do so in a way that casts a bad light on any of the leads, is no one is a racist. In some ways I think the anachronistic acceptance of non-White, non-straight, non-non-sassy-females isn't so great since it's a gloss over reality which in some ways begs the question of why set a show in this era at all if you're not interested in portraying it. On the other hand, I doubt I would've sat through 14 episodes (there are two seasons of this show so far and the third coming out soon) rooting for a bunch of racist, sexualityist, and sexist leads. I note this because - and, yes, history will be pointing to Media Report as the bellwether here - I believe what will be coming up soon enough will be gender-identity-blind casting and in fact this show, in season 2, in an extremely vague way may have played into that, or at least there was a very tomboyish young girl who dressed in military outfits and had, for the day and her station, impossibly short hair, a gender-neutral nickname (Leo, though her real name was Leonora) and no one said a thing. I'm just sayin' Jane Austen with everyone calling "she" "they" is right around the corner which, btw, I'm neither pro nor con but I think modern culture poses an interesting dilemma for TV/Streaming writers because you want to be kinda true to the culture of the time as that's the fun of the show but without also alienating an audience that might find that time period to be actively gross and therefore unwatchable. Now where was I? Oh yeah, I totally dug the show. I don't care that it was slow and obvious and filled with absurd plot points - I can't even discuss the entire White town's sugar boycott in support of the Antiguan heiress' anti-slavery stance (though maybe I just did?) in the face of being presented with a 6 foot tall cake by the richest and most powerful woman in the district - I still happily binged the entire thing. It's like a dumber (and much earlier) Downton Abbey crossed with some Poldark maybe and if you, like me, can happily sink into something like that and haven't seen this one yet, well go enjoy!
Movies:
The Dig - This is a movie based on a true story about an archeological dig in England just prior to the start of WWII. There is not a ton of plot and it either loses steam or shifts gear depending on your interest level midway through. Basically, a rich, though ill, widow - Carey Mulligan - owns property with a bunch of mounds on them and hires an older country excavator - Ralph Fiennes - to see what's in them. She also has a young son and the first half is about making a big find and some stuff around class and the power dynamics in the form of a real archeologist trying to step in and take all the credit and Carey Mulligan trying to stop that and also some stuff with Ralph Fiennes falling into a father figure role with the young son. The gear shift or, for me, steam loss (I didn't DNF though I did space out) is that in some ways that's the whole story: there's a big Anglo-Saxon find and it was discovered in a backyard by amateurs. The End. The movie plays with stuff related to the impending war like there's a cousin who's enlisting and something with other people coming to the site and some romance between the cousin and one of those people (I may have been zoning out when all that was introduced) and to me it all got very hazy what the movie was about, by which I mean why was it two hours? Look I didn't hate it or anything and it was well enough acted but it was mostly about the true story facts and while there was some character in there, it wasn't really a story per se. Instead, there's some digging, some discovery, some snobbery, some death drama, a bit of romance between characters who are little more than cutouts, an implication of sweeping events to come which I guess was meant to lend this dig some gravitas, and that was about it. It was pleasant enough and, well, there that is. It feels like the kind of thing where if it's a rainy day and you had a group of people from age range 5 to 80 and were trying to find a movie that would be okay for all of them, this would do. No one's boat's gonna be rocked, but no one's gonna be offended either and, while some may end up playing on their phones for most of it, everyone could kind of get through it together. I'm sure all creatives involved will be thrilled with that review but there you go.