Escapist Routes #22

Chief of War, season 1, episodes 1-3

AppleTV+ is not paying me to promote their shows, but honestly they should, because I get more joy out of it than any other streaming service. And I am subscribed to a lot of streaming services.

The thing about AppleTV+ is that even their mediocre shows, like Smoke, are pretty good. Like, if I were comparing mediocre streaming cop dramas, I would rank Smoke well ahead of Untamed. I’ve heard very mixed things about what it’s like to work with Apple as a television creator, but most of their output is watchable at worst.

Having said that, we’re two episodes into Chief of War, the new drama about the unification of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and I don’t yet know how I feel about it. I have a list of pros and cons in my heart which looks roughly like this:

• Pro: a high budget historical drama focused on Indigenous people, in subtitles using their language: good

• Con: a lot of the cast are Māori, Tongan, etc, instead of Native Hawaiian and it’s mostly filmed in New Zealand — I know a lot of Pasifika people are uncomfortable with their cultures — which are related but distinct — being treated as interchangeable

• Pro: Jason Momoa is clearly passionate about this story, and is always a compelling presence on screen

• Con: Momoa also comes across as a bit of an asshole off screen

• Pro: I am always pro subtitles except when I’m very tired and can’t manage that level of processing

• Con: The dialogue is really heavy on exposition, and I think it’s in part because the need for translation makes it harder on the writers — this problem is much less notable in episode 3, and I think that’s because there’s more English dialogue

• Pro: I get Shōgun vibes

• Con: It’s not (yet?) as good as Shōgun

• Pro: a massive amount of work has been done to make this historically accurate on a visual level

• Con: except that the women are covering their chests — and I promise I’m not being skeezy, it just feels like prudeness when the men have their (allegedly CGI-enhanced) buttocks out in every scene. The naked body is not inherently sexual, y’know?
  (Further note: misc Redditors who claim to be experts say this is accurate, but offer no evidence, and with the enshittification of Google, a search for “traditional Hawaiian dress” brings up coconut bras and polyester grass skirts. Suffice to say, TBD on that, but the more reliable-looking sources suggest that most Hawaiian women prior to colonisation went bare-breasted.)
  (But also, would actresses have been comfortable taking roles with that much nudity? I noted in episode 3 that the lead actress was filmed from the shoulders up in an intimate scene. Maybe it’s simply unreasonable to declare that nudity should not be sexual, and then expect everyone to be okay with that.)

• Further con: but also we get a lot of close-ups of Momoa’s bare arse, and I’m not complaining, it’s just weird

• Pro: the battle scenes are well-executed and easy to follow

• Con: it is SO violent, I don’t know if I needed to see Temuera Morrison cutting a child’s throat

Anyway, my jury is out, but I am intrigued.

The Assassin, season 1

A few weeks ago The Guardian ran a review of this show which ran along the lines of, “This show about an assassin who is a mum is like nothing else on television!” And I was like, “Netflix literally did that at Christmas, it was called Black Doves, it was fun.”

The Assassin stars Keeley Hawes instead of Keira Knightley, so instead of a mother of young children balancing career and parenthood, we have an older woman who has a complicated relationship with her adult son. Yes, good. Sold.

The premise is solid: Hawes’s Julie and her estranged son are having a reunion in Greece — he is preparing to introduce her to his fiancée, the daughter of an Australian mining magnate — when paid assassins come for her. They go on the run, along with the Australian fiancée, her nebulously British accent, her failbrother and the local butcher, a very hot Greek man who has just witnessed the massacre of his entire village.

The Assassin has a lot of elements, and they don’t all gel. There’s a lot of heightened violence and quippy dialogue, but also an attempt at a realistic depiction of the aftermath of violence and trauma. The visual style is “budget Killing Eve”, but none of the actors have the chemistry to sell it. It’s critiquing billionaires, the mining industry and greenwashing, but not too hard.

It could be that there were too many cooks behind the scenes — The Assassin was a collaboration between Australian streamer Stan (which rivals the ABC as our most reliable source of quality local scripted media), German network ZDF, and the British production team behind Fleabag and The Tourist. There’s a tonal inconsistency that never quite comes together for me.

But all this aside, it’s only six episodes long, and it was an enjoyable way to spend three nights. I was going to end this review by saying I’d watch Keeley Hawes in anything, but since her husband has just signed on to play Voldemort in the new Harry Potter audiobooks, I have to stop and make sure she’s not a TERF before I make any commitments I might regret.

Foundation, season 3, episode 5

First of all, I’m not saying that AppleTV has heavily invested in CGI butt-enhancement technology, but that bit? Where Pritchard is in prison? Is there a version of “Baby Got Back” for the female gaze? I wasn’t completely sure of what his character really added to the season, save some useful exposition, but I have a new theory.

Anyway. Moving on.

This episode starts out with a fun little Gaal-and-Brother-Dawn road trip, which culminates in blackmail, murder, the revelation that Gaal was playing Dawn all along, and the tragic end of their friendship. I am heartbroken, because I was deeply invested in Gaal and the Cleons becoming buddies, but that’s how it goes when you were mentored by Hari Seldon and Demerzel, respectively. Anyway, I support women’s wrongs.

Fortunately the episode ends with Demerzel and Gaal meeting, which is another thing for which I have yearned. It’s a bit of a “Dany meets Jon Snow” situation, but without any Starbucks cups in the background. Threads are coming together, and maybe this time they’ll stay that way for more than an episode.

MEANWHILE, we learn a little more about our newlywed space influencers, particularly Bayta, who reveals herself to be a sympathetic social climber who got as far up the ladder as her new husband and realised she loved him. It’s depressing yet predictable how the Foundation, which was conceived as an intellectually elite but otherwise egalitarian refuge from the Cleonic dynasty, is now as stratified as the Empire. I suspect the Second Foundation has had a hand in this change, and I’ve gotta say, I do not think that overseeing the mass development or deconstruction of empires is a healthy way to run a society. (The Cleons might agree with me!)

One thing which intrigues me about Bayta is that she is styled in a way reminiscent of a flapper, and certainly she and Toran have a Lost Generation vibe. But there was no equivalent to World War 1 to drive them to nihilistic pleasure seeking, they’re just too rich and idle for anything else. Coming in an era where the elites have apparently turned to fascism out of boredom, that feels apt.

Smoke, episode 8

I fear that Smoke is not going to stick the landing. Worse, I fear that in this, the penultimate episode, the show strapped on its jetskis and took a flying leap over a shark.

Yes, the whole “Michelle and Gudsen investigate Gudsen’s arson spree while pretending that he doesn’t know that she knows he’s an arsonist” thing was fun. Well-executed, even. We had a lot of scenes that were just dialogue, and I was on the edge of my seat.

But then. Michelle’s gross ex/boss makes a pass at her, having mistaken her offer of friendship for more. His advance turns physical and she punches him in the throat, crushing his airway. He begs silently for a tracheotomy while she’s frozen in panic, watching him die.

Then she decides the most logical course of events is to cover her tracks by burning his house down. Using a cigarette with a filter, even though Gudsen has just reminded her that filtered cigarettes retain DNA. Girl. Girrrrllllllll.

It doesn’t help that the whole “woman throat-punches a man, crushes his windpipe and has to perform an emergency tracheotomy” thing was a plot point in Ballard just a couple of weeks ago. (Ballard uses a tampon applicator, which is just another reason why that is a superior show.) Apparently punching people in the throat is dangerous.

But so is letting your heroine make an objectively stupid decision in order to artificially ramp up tension ahead of a finale. And this doesn’t feel like a reasoned “all cops are, at heart, criminals/all arson investigators are, at heart, arsonists” type of story. It feels manipulative and lazy, and — worst of all — unintentionally funny.