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Reviews
The Long Call (2021)
Is it worth getting past the first two episodes?
Firstly, the series comprises four episodes. Patience is always required to set the scene and inform the viewer about the characters in order for the denouement to be worthy of itself. The problem is that the first two episodes are too considerably long, slow and dreary. The dialogue is stilted, slow-moving and tedious. There is a crime to be solved by a gay detective who is revisiting the place of his upbringing in a closed and suffocating religious community, which he fled years before in order to find and free himself.
Does he return for absolution? His husband is much more worldly and reconciled to lower expectations when it comes to approval from family and others.
I gave The Long Call a 7/10 because, in contrast to the first two, the last two episodes progress nicely. The citing of the past of the close-knit religious brethen community continues to be revisited, but now in keeping with the tempo of the denouement.
If the first two episodes had been refined to only one, I would have easily given this series an 8/10. Fine acting and a great last two episodes.
Darby and Joan (2022)
Really terrible...
I felt sorry for Bryan Brown and Greta Saatchi for having to scrape the bottom of the barrel in accepting these roles. I wish I was a talented scriptwriter myself and could offer them something a bit more worthy of their talents.
Greta's character is searching for her lost husband. Putting the mourning aside and armed with a plucky smile, she buys a holiday van and takes to the road. Before you can say 'lost on the Queensland coast', she and Bryan Brown have a cross-country vehicle confrontation and he is forced off (the wide, grassy plain?) and turns his 4-wheel drive onto its side.
Conveniently for Greta, now she has the company she requires for the road trip and the script, and the two of them can set about trying to unravel what happened to her husband on the way to the garage to fix his car. Somehow, don't ask me how as I must have missed something here, before they get to the garage, they happen upon a pile of said husband's former hippy friends and acquaintances who are the last of the beach festival goers. A few good yarns are had around the campfire with Darby and Joan about the husband's good ole days. This pretty well-heeled and conservative bunch though, just didn't cut it as former hippy shroomers. I can't tell you anything more, because I have a pretty low tolerance for this sort of thing and this is all I could take.
I am embarassed by the people who gave this 9 and 10 out of 10, because the are probably from around my age-group (67) and therefore peers of sorts. Good for them that they can be so easily pleased with this mild and harmless drama that I couldn't watch for more than 10 minutes; a 10 minutes I might add, that I will never get back.
Patriot (2015)
Totally different take...and I like it...
Life isn't simple; the things we do and say can have repercussions in ways we little understand. Some enemies can become friends the closer we get. But the less Patriot's protagonist, John Tavner, knows about those who get in the way to tasks he is committed to, the better. 'The dynamics of flow' is not only at the heart of the piping industry, but at the heart of human endeavour. The achievement of goals is not straightforward, but contingent upon other, less apparent, wins or losses. Reality, it appears is bursting with all kinds of unknown possibilities; indifferently, it seems. Some are hilarious and some tragic. A series like 'Patriot' reflects something of this.
Deadloch (2023)
They're all wrong & will regret it....so don't worry, Eddie...
As soon as I was introduced to the the completely over the top Eddie Redcliffe, I wanted more. Deadloch is the stereotypical Australian small town in reverse. 'Eddie' is a rough-nut, hard-drinking and swearing police detective from Darwin, but Eddie is a woman. In fact, the archetypal Australian male-dominated, misogynistic town of the past has been replaced in this series by one dominated by women.
Women occupy and dominate the police force, the mayoral post and the town's founder family. The local veterinarian and the gourmet chef are also women. Lesbian relationships abound and so does the wonderful openness and craziness of the upfront dialogue with traditional 'female' concerns unabashedly taking front row importance.
Underlying the crazy pastiche of candid dialogue is a good plot which progresses, but not at the expense of leaving unacknowledged 'feelings' behind. It is sustained with a good, juicy and deepening mystery which slowly, but progressively, builds.
Don't miss is.