Books:
The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club #2) by Richard Osman
While this second book in a series about British seniors solving crimes retains the charm and humor of the first, to me this one dragged a bit as it got caught up in a lot of not-particularly-dramatic character plotlines. Not enough to stop reading (there's a third that I'm aware of that I'll be reading it at some point), but enough to make me think that the characters really only had enough juice for one book. I'm not going into the plot of this one as there's little point - there are stolen diamonds, some bad guys, an ex-husband floating around - because, as with the first book, the plot, while fine, isn't what this book is about; rather it's about senior citizens and interacting with current culture but in a Murder She Wrote package. The problem with this second book is you begin to see the thinness of the leads. There are four, two male, two female, and the two guys are either on the periphery the whole time or are simply handed a plot role and that’s that as in they aren't really characters and in fact it feels in some areas that the author realized these characters had been off the page for way too long and he kind of invented some unrelated plot just so they'd have something to do. Also there's a certain outlandishness to the series, present in the first book for sure, but spiraling out of control in this one where the cops and MI-5 all cede total control of a massive investigation to the two female leads for no reason other than that the author - understandably - wants his leads to solve the crimes and do the investigating only, in this book, it meant huge swaths of non-reality in which the cops were in cahoots with the two elderly ladies to essentially commit crimes on their behalf (vague to avoid spoilering) and the MI-5 was more or less reduced to being their, I don't know, patsies in a way as well. In the first book, you could sort of suspend disbelief because the crime that had been committed actually involved the leads in a way plus the cops were doing their own investigation and crossing paths with and often deceived by the leads but you could go with it because there was a semblance of reality and the charming writing smoothed over the rest. Here, that semblance is gone and in fact some of the fun left with it because what was pleasureable in the first book was that the leads were manipulating and to a degree suborning (and genuinely befriending) the cops - think crime books involving the often uneasy relationship between the police and PIs where they're working on the same investigation but in very different ways and often in opposition to each other - versus in this book where, basically, it's as if the police report directly to the PIs. Additionally, because the investigation was in some ways very easy (like when the leads needed CCTV footage, they just asked the cops to go get it for them and problem solved - not good for a mystery, right?) there was an enormous amount of space devoted to talking about people and relationships. However, the author, not really looking to break up the foursome I guess nor having crafted much more than amusing cardboard cutouts, simply wrote a spluge of what read like backstory or idle thoughts rather than actual story. In other words, there was nothing happening in the present tense of anyone's personal life that was generating any drama, like this person falling in love with that one and that one reciprocating is, you know, nice but it's not dramatic and, in this book, it was a LOT of pages of just talking about internal feelings but nothing happening in the story. It was all filler, tons of it, because the main plot offered the leads no meaningful activity other than "figuring it out" which isn't the same as investigating or manipulating or being thwarted and having to come up with a new plan, etc. The author is an entertaining writer and that's literally the only thing that allowed me to get to the end because, were it not for that, this would've been a DNF for sure because there's almost nothing else here but that. If the charm is enough for you, you'll enjoy this book, but if you liked the first one, I'd say it's a definite step down so fair warning.
TV/Streaming:
My Mister:
I absolutely totally ended up loving this drama about people at bad spots in their lives who, by helping others, end up helping themselves. Just to note before you go rushing off to find this series as one does when I recommend something (clearly!): it's slow, so if slow drama isn't your thing, this won't be your thing. Slow doesn't meant plotless; in fact, the underlying plot is pretty good and keeps building; rather slow means there's a focus on people and moods and reactions and talking rather than anything super dramatic going on. I did not love this show for the first episode because I couldn't understand the tone - it seemed to vacillate between serious and goofy - and all the characters were introduced more or less at once and it was difficult to sort out what was going on. Plus the show is Korean meaning I'm certain there was underlying cultural logic to certain behavior and choices which I simply didn't get (though that’s really always present when watching shows outside of one's own culture). Like office culture in Korea, at least as represented in this show, has a hierarchical and political thing going that I absolutely understood enough to enjoy the show while also knowing I was missing subtextual character stuff. Regardless, by the end of the second episode a plot beat occurs that drives the entire series and each subsequent episode ramped up my enjoyment of the show. It was odd, actually, because I liked each one better than the last but didn't think I'd end up enjoying it so much until like episode 10 (out of 16 total).
So the basic plot is about a guy in a quiet midlife crisis which manifests as just a lack of interest in life and, seeing something similar in a young office temp half his age, haltingly tries to do for her what he has been unable to do for himself. The office temp has her own reasons for being so numbed and deadened by life at 21 and what she does about it and where it goes form the basis for the plot. There's a lot of spoilerable office politics going on between the guy and the higher-ups, the guy and his wife, and stories extending to the guy's two brothers who are much more patently stuck and depressed in where they are in their lives. The office guy and the young temp are the main thread, but the brothers and another friend plus the office guy's wife also have their own thematic throughlines. This is why you might find it to be slow - it's people drifting through their lives who, through interactions with each other and without really knowing it's happening, wake up. The reason I ended up loving it was twofold. First, I thought the characters were really well-etched though honestly the brothers were kinda too broad for me and I think were meant to serve as a sort of comic relief though that wasn’t my reaction to them; in the end, though, they had their own arcs as well. But the two main characters were interesting and it was thoroughly satisfying to watch their bond develop and witness them, through their actions, discover their true selves. Second, the plot was actually pretty good! I mean there was a ton of office politics that spilled over in the character relationships - I'm being vague to avoid spoilering - but the kind of thing where you knew one person had an impure motive with regard to the other and you could see the conflict within them and weren't sure how they were going to deal with, like would they screw the other person over and, if not, how would they save themselves from the situation that made them need to screw over that person to begin with? If this life drama with some humor to it is up your alley - if you've seen the Danish drama The Legacy and enjoyed it you'll definitely enjoy this (and vice versa btw - go hunt that up if you end up loving this show) - this series is just really good and ends exactly the way it should. And if you're like me and start watching and are meh on the first few episodes, all I can say is stick it out because it genuinely goes somewhere interesting with all the major characters and I thought it was just a great show overall.
Movies:
Copshop - The tl;dr review on this actionish movie where an on-the-run-mob-guy deliberately gets arrested in order to hide out from his killer only the killer does the same is oof. It's so dumb! And I don't mean fun dumb. I mean boring dumb but also, well hang on first more about the plot so you can understand what I disliked about this movie. The entire thing takes place over one night in an isolated police station and we have our lead cop and a bunch of side cops but essentially the first half the film is... absolutely nothing happening. The lead cop arrests the bad guys; there's another corrupt cop who does nothing; everyone then either sits in their cells talking - and, in one case, randomly getting out for no discernible reason other than literally nothing would be happening if he didn't and then getting back in (only, btw, to magically undo his handcuffs down the road with zero explanation of how that could have happened, like not even a beat of him, I don't know, picking up a paperclip or something - just pure magic and not fun movie magic but bad movie crappy plotting magic) - or sits upstairs looking at computers and talking. So about 45 minutes in, there's some action which was at least entertaining, which is the mob really really wants to kill one of the guys so another hitman shows up, murders everyone except the corrupt and lead cops and then... lead cop - and I refuse to call this a spoiler but forewarned I guess - locks herself in the prison area where she's bleeding because she accidentally shot herself. Do you think anything satisfying is going to emerge from (a) a lead who's injured not because of the crazy bad guy but due to her own ricochet and (b) everyone being locked in together where nothing can happen? Let me put it this way: no. The best the writer(s) could do after backing themselves into this corner - which honestly how did no one notice this was a total forward-momentum killer - is to have the corrupt cop try to sledgehammer through 3 feet of concrete (are we supposed to believe that's a viable means of breaking into the prison area?) and compel the lead cop to release the bad guy(s) - I promise no spoiler since literally that’s the sole reason the writer(s) injured her and you knew it instantly - and then, moronically, trust them to go save her. I mean is this not completely dumb? The only reason I could think of why this was in the script to hardly mention like 20 minutes of the movie with the cop lying there bleeding and the two prisoners trying to convince her to give them her keys, was budget as in there was zero budget and three people in a room talking was all the production could afford. Anyway - and I guess if you don't see the ending coming at this point (well I mean other than the last shot which was so beyond stupid that I almost DNFed a minute before credits rolled but stuck it out for this sake of this review (I know, you're all very grateful)) then you should move along because spoilers - everyone gets out and the lead cop, who was, we were told, mere moments from bleeding out somehow magically, as with the handcuffs above, isn't that anymore and there's a big shootout thing with everyone, one of those where there are an impossible number of bullets flying and no one is hit. So essentially the best the writer(s) could come up with in order to get their bad guys out of prison was having their lead cop accidentally shoot herself and put herself in a position where releasing them was her only hope of survival only, the writer(s) eventually realized, they needed a big action ender and so just erased all of that and made her fine to go shoot everyone, dive between floors, roll behind desks, etc etc before an ambulance shows up and she discovers - more spoiler alert! - one of the bad guys stole a cop car to get away, and she somehow and for no reason I could understand, kicks the two EMTs out of the ambulance, leaves them stranded in the desert, turns on her radio to the same station the bad guy is listening to then, in split screen, we see them both moving steering wheels on what are clearly parked cars, and hear them sing along to the same song together. Mmm hmm, that’s the ending. Do you feel spoilered? So, yeah, this movie was both financed and released, and actually the plot of how any of that happened in some ways might be far more interesting than anything that occurred onscreen.