Escapist Routes #23

Ridley Road (limited series)

Ridley Road is a four-episode British series from 2021 about Jewish antifascists fighting neo-Nazis in the early 1960s. “Sold!” I said, but ultimately I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it.

We follow Vivian Epstein, a seemingly meek hairdresser who runs away from her home in Manchester in pursuit of the boy her parents don’t want her to marry. In London, she gets caught up in the anti-fascist movement, ultimately dyeing her hair blonde and going undercover to infiltrate the National Socialist Movement led by Colin Jordan, who is played by Rory Kinnear.

This casting is probably the first mistake — Kinnear is not only the biggest name in the cast, he is also by far the most charismatic performer. Agnes O’Casey is perfectly fine as Vivian, but this was her first leading role and her second film credit, and she’s overshadowed by a lot of very experienced actors, some of whom are playing their parts rather broadly.

But the real issue is the tone. This is a serious story, and is very much aware that it is all too relevant in the present day, but there’s a lot of zany music, and Salt of the Earth East End Hairdresser Business which undercuts the story.

And there’s a wildly misconceived subplot in which Vivian’s parents are desperate to get her home because they want to force her to marry the son of their landlord so the rent on the family business won’t go up. (Vivian’s cousin, who escaped Germany in the 30s, encourages her to run away, saying, “We always know when to leave.” Writing tip: if you want your audience to sympathise with the heroine’s secretly antifa parents, maybe don’t compare them to Nazi Germany?) This all feels like an artifact of an early draft which should have been excised in revisions.

(I learned, when I went hunting for an image to add to the thumbnail, that this is in fact an adaptation of a romance novel, and that subplot was added for the TV series. So I … continue to have questions. But also, trying to squeeze a meaty political drama out of what reviews say was a lightweight romance novel might be the source of other problems here.)

But the costumes are great, the performances are good, there is a respectable attempt at intersectionality, with the Jewish antifascists being rather racist towards the Black antifascists. And in the end, Vivian brings down the fash, saves her man, and they flee Britain for the peaceful, fascist-free sanctuary of checks Israel.

Alien: Earth (season 1, episodes 1 and 2)

Alien: Earth opens in familiar fashion. A Weyland-Yutani ship comes to life. Its crew wake from suspended animation. They sit around, bleary-eyed, in their underwear. They stretch, they smoke, they share a meal and some expository dialogue.

This is exactly how Alien opened in 1979, and it’s not a promising beginning if you’re hoping this series would add something new to the worldbuilding of the universe.

But it’s also a misdirect, because Alien: Earth is much more than a slavish reproduction of something that already exists. Once we’ve established that the sleeper ship crew have picked up a nice Xenomorph souvenir, we cut to Earth — specifically New Siam (you know, Thailand), a nation which is owned by an upstart new corporation called Prodigy. We go from retrofuturistic sets and beige underwear to a jungle, to rivers and beaches, and a bunch of … oh, okay, terminally ill or disabled children having their brains transplanted into android bodies. You’re not gonna believe this, but it turns out there are no ethical trillionaires.

I knew going in that the heroine of this series would be Wendy, a child’s mind in the body of an android who looks like the mid-twenties Sydney Chandler. And this was my biggest qualm — I was afraid that we were going to end up with an especially gross iteration of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope.

And for a moment, it seems like Wendy is going to be one of the more egregious manic pixie dream girls in science fiction, but Chandler’s performance steadies very quickly, and we get a scene where she and her mentors — Essie “Phryne Fisher” Davis and Timothy Olyphant, somehow playing a Walton Goggins character — discuss adolescence and debate whether it would be appropriate to speed that process up. They conclude no, and we see later that Wendy has a knowledge of sex which is appropriate for the twelve-year-old she really is.

The Alien franchise, at its best, has always been about reproduction. That is the core of the Ripley quartet, and in my opinion the prequels went off-course when they moved their focus away from reproductive anxieties towards one trillionaire’s quest for immortality. (We will not discuss the Alien v Predator films. Because I have not watched them.)

Of course, reproduction is a way of striving for immortality, and Wendy represents another form of that quest. But adolescence is the process of reaching reproductive maturity, so this series feels like it has a coherent theme at its core. There’s one shot where the Xenomorph looks horrifyingly like an erect penis, which prompted my flatmate to ask when we’re going to get a horrifying alien who looks like a Georgia O’Keefe painting.

Wendy’s name is not a coincidence — Peter Pan is a recurring motif through the two episodes, with footage from the Disney film playing, and Wendy’s fellow hybrid synths taking the names of the Lost Boys. (She herself has chosen her name; she used to be Marcy.) And Peter Pan is very much a story about adolescence, specifically female adolescence and desire. If you don’t believe me, go read it again, or watch the 2002 adaptation starring Jason Isaacs as both Captain Hook and Mr Darling. (You’re welcome.)

Oh yeah, there’s also a monster. Several monsters, actually, and I’m sorry, but if you’re squeamish about animal death, you should know that the cat doesn’t make it.

I’m actually a massive wimp who likes to think about other things when scary things happen on screen, but I like how the Xenomorph is being used at this point. We, the audience, know what she is, but the characters do not. And a Xenomorph rampaging through a spaceship which has crashed into a luxury apartment complex is just conceptually great. At one point she crashes a party where everyone is dressed as French aristocrats and literally eats the rich. We stan a woke queen. Okay, she also kills a lot of regular working people, but God forbid a woman have hobbies.

The emotional core of the series is Wendy’s desire to be reunited with her older brother, a military medic who believes his sister is dead. To my surprise, they met up and he learned the truth partway through episode 2, so now what are we gonna do for the rest of the season? Well, probably try to stop the Xenomorph. I distinctly remember a lack of rampaging acid-blood monsters on Earth in Aliens, so I can guess how this is going to end, but I’m eager to see how we get there.

Foundation, season 3, episode 6

“Did Brother Dawn just … die?”

“You know, it was really unclear.”

I saw a Tumblr post during the week which predicted that Dawn was a dead Cleon walking, and by the end of the series, Brother Day would be the last survivor of his line.

“That is so smart,” I thought, “I need to mention this in the newsletter!”

I did not realise that Dawn was, in fact, already dead. RIP little Cleon, I will miss your handsome face and improbable fake beard disguise.

But we don’t have time to mourn, we have to get to the main event: Demerzel and Gaal having a conversation. Which involves a little light torture, and just as I was about to tell my flatmate I was shipping it, she said, “I think this means they’re dating now.”

Gaal is in full Hari Seldon mode, manipulating events and not stopping to feel bad for Dawn. (“You did keep back ups, right?” she says to Demerzel.) I’m deeply into all of this.

Some less interesting business is happening on New Terminus, where Team Newlyweds and their various hangers-on are briefly imprisoned with Pritchard, then persuade the New Terminus mayor of their value through the power of interpretive dance modern electronica, then meet up with Hari Seldon in the Vault, and then the Mule turns up and attacks the Foundation.

Okay, that’s a lot of plot, and it’s not fair to call it less interesting, because it’s all good, but Gaal and Demerzel aren’t there, so what do I care?

MEANWHILE, back on Trantor, Lee Pace has gone a-courting, hoping to persuade his mind-wiped girlfriend to come back to him. He even brought a copy of her memories, which is even more thoughtful than the candy he picked up—I mean, I wondered how he thought this was going to go.

Unfortunately, she’s not excited to have beardy Lee Pace at her door, and also? She’s totally gay. Extremely a lesbian. And married. So here’s Cleon, who has literally killed people to get to this point, alone and—though he doesn’t know it yet—without his back-up brother.

Absolutely nothing bad is going to happen after this. I’m sure of it.

Smoke, season 1, episode 9

Oof, you guys. OOF.

After last week’s shark-jumping, I was sort of dreading this finale. And I was right to do so.

It’s mostly okay. Michelle has successfully framed Gudsen for arson, although there’s always the risk that someone will re-examine the evidence, or Gudsen will hire a really good lawyer. There’s a tension here that I appreciate.

Then Michelle goes after Gudsen—sort of. They drive together to a forest fire, one started by embers blown from the one Michelle lit. Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl.

Now, maybe this is because I’m Australian, but causing a large fire is one of those crimes I cannot easily forgive. Michelle has totally lost me by this point, so when she finally makes a move against Gudsen, I’m like, “Yeah, you both suck, when will this be over so I can go to bed?”

There’s a fight, some unpleasant sexualised business with Michelle putting her gun in Gudsen’s mouth, blah, blah, fishcakes.

Off to the interrogation scene, which is probably great, but like I said, I don’t care anymore. And finally Gudsen starts to break down—not in terms of confessing his crimes, but in understanding who he really is.

You see, there’s a twist. Gudsen doesn’t really look like the improbably hot Taran Edgerton. He looks like Taran Edgerton in a fat suit. With bad teeth. See, he’s not just evil! He’s ugly!

Now, there’s probably something worthwhile in here about men who build hypermasculine personae, and authors who think they are their super hot self-insert characters. But by this point I was so over it, and frankly the make-up was so bad, that I laughed. Because it was funny. HE’S UGLY, YOU GUYS.

That’s a disappointing end to a series that started off on an interesting note, but here’s the really important news: Jurnee Smollett spends the entire episode wearing a tank top. And yes, her boobs are magnificent.

Chief of War, season 1, episode 4

We! Are! Cooking!

Over in the Philippines, Ka’iana has managed to buy weapons with the assistance of Cool Hawaiian Traveler Lady Vai, who basically paddled her canoe to parts unknown because she wanted to see the world. She is only mildly impressed by Ka’iana’s princely status, and her grasp of European culture and willingness to use it for her own ends brings them into conflict. Vai is basically my favourite character. I love her.

But it’s not all chill hangs and political debates for Ka’iana, because his buddy Tony, who is Black, has been sold into slavery by gross white Americans, and also he is learning how the Spanish colonists treat the native Filipinos. Strongly recommend you take notes on this part, dude.

Tony’s situation is resolved through careful thought and diplomacy WAIT NO it’s resolved through violence, and Ka’iana frees a bunch of Filipino women from sexual servitude along the way. Some Spanish soldiers are set on fire. It’s fun!

Back in Hawai’i, King Kahekili is still plotting his takeover of the Hawaiian islands. Someone on Reddit said that Temuera Morrison is speaking Hawaiian with a New Zealand accent, and I cannot unhear it.

More importantly, as foretold by (checks) the Wikipedia page on Hawaiian history, Kamehameha has been named the new king of his region, and the late king’s actual son, Keoua, is not happy about it. In fact, he punches himself in the face until a back tooth comes loose, which has the air of ritual, but it takes an actor of Cliff Curtis’s calibre to pull it off without seeing ridiculous even for a moment.

Everything moves super efficiently, and I like the way some members of Kamehameha’s circle have taken to using English—learned from local castaway and actual historical figure John Young—for confidential conversations. My only criticism is the subplot about Ka’iana’s wife beginning to move on after the “death” of her husband, because Jason Momoa is coming HOME, baby, and I do not need love triangle nonsense in my historical drama, thank you.