Category: TV Review

Diana Vaccarelli Sees GALAVANT

galavantkingdickby Diana Vaccarelli

“Once Upon a Time, there was a knight named Galavant who loved the beautiful maiden Madalena….”

With these simple words, the ABC mini series musical GALAVANT opens, sweeping us into – well, I was going to say “Into the Woods,” but instead I’m ging with “into a kingdom of musical delight.” The show follows Galavant in his quest for revenge against the evil King Richard, who stole Madalena from him.

This show has it all singing, dancing, humor, betrayal, and, most importantly, love. The show’s creator-writer Dan Fogelman and composers Alan Menken and Christopher Lennertz have given us a series that reminds me of the great old Monty Python and Mel Brooks films. read article

Robert Herold Sees THE FALL

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You’ll Fall for The Fall (I Did!)
By Robert Herold

I admit it, I’m in love with the BBC series The Fall; it does give me pause, however, to realize that so much of the show concerns dysfunctional love. The show succeeds on numerous levels: The writing is particularly smart, the acting first-rate, and the setting, Belfast, Northern Ireland, lends another textural layer to this gritty drama. The show concerns serial killer Paul Spector, played by Jamie Dornan (who also stars in Fifty Shades of Gray), and the efforts to stop him by the Belfast police, headed by Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson (a role written for Gillian Anderson). The show is currently available in the U.S. on Netflix. Incidentally, it’s odd that both this, Happy Valley, and other BBC shows are being billed in America as “Netflix original series.”

The show’s creator, writer of all the episodes, and director of season two, Allan Cubitt, does a number of interesting things with this series. To begin with, he reveals the perpetrator within the first few minutes of the first episode; nevertheless, the show manages to be very suspenseful. The tension comes, in part, from not only making the victims seem like real people, but also making the perpetrator seem real. The former serves to increase the poignancy of the tragedy faced by the victims and their families (something often lacking in crime dramas and whodunnits). The latter shows the incredible banality of evil and the thin line between it and normalcy. How far are we from such dysfunction? Where will he/we go next?

Another facet of this show is that Cubitt does an amazing job exploring the psychopathology of Spector (a great name!), and often does the same for many of the other characters as well. He regularly mirrors behaviors between Spector and Gibson, e.g., alternating shots of the two of them exercising, the fact that they both keep journals, the compartmentalizing of their lives, and the willingness of both to use people to further their aims. read article

Robin Reed Sees American Horror Story: Freak Show

Not Horror, Not That Freaky
by Robin Reed

Don’t read this if you don’t want to know details of “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” which recently ended its run.freakshow-a-creepy-poster-collection

I am usually right there and ready to be scared when any horror film, book, or TV show comes out. When the word horror is in the title, you know I have to check it out. So when “American Horror Story” started a few years ago, I watched it. For a while. I liked it at first, but then it just got dumb. It was set in the current day (as of several years ago) so the internet existed. How hard is it to enter the address of a house you are looking at into a search engine and find out that it is internationally famous as “The Murder House” and a tour passes by every day with people who want to see it? There were some shivers and cool stuff near the beginning, but I lost all interest after a few episodes.

So I skipped the next two seasons. The only reason I decided to watch “American Horror Story: Freak Show” is that I find the circus/carnie culture interesting, and I have been treated like a freak often enough to feel some kinship to the people in such shows. read article

Did GIRLS reveal the truth about college writing courses?

Um…probably. But should we really be surprised at what they’re like?

hannahwritesby Molly Hannon

In episode two of the new season of Girls, Hannah, played by Lena Dunham, attends a workshop in which classmates applaud a story by second-year African American student DeAugust. They love its spare language and how it addresses gender issues in an “almost offensive, but not offensive” way.

“I would cut off my arm to just read three more pages. I just have to know what happens,” one student gushes. read article

Cara Winter: The Anglo Files 11: HAPPY VALLEY

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by Cara Winter

“I’m Catherine, by the way.  I’m forty-seven, I’m divorced, I live with my sister who’s a recovering heroin addict.  I have two grown-up children; one dead, and one who doesn’t speak to me.”

So begins Happy Valley, a BBC drama created by the fiercely talented Sally Wainwright (Season One available on Netflix). read article