Escapist Routes #34

My week in television involves the news media capitulating to state and corporate interests, and also, completely separately, a miniseries about Mussolini.

Mussolini: Son of the Century, season 1

M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati is the first in a trilogy of novels following the career of Benito Mussolini. It combines narrative, sometimes in first person and present tense from the man himself, with excerpts from the historical record; the NYT review on the cover of the English translation (770 pages of very small print, I’m looking at the paperback and feeling daunted) says, “An anti-fascist history lesson disguised as a novel".

It was adapted into an eight episode miniseries in 2024, directed by Joe Wright of Atonement and Pride and Prejudice fame, and starring Luca Marinelli as the title character. It swaps historical documents for heavy stylisation: Marinelli breaks the fourth wall to rant directly at the audience, while some scenes take place against deliberately theatrical backgrounds with no relationship to realism whatsoever. Sometimes acts of violence are depicted via stop motion puppetry; other times the violence is grimly visceral. The score is pounding techno from a Chemical Brother.

It’s an absolute masterpiece, and Marinelli delivers one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen in my life, and I cannot recommend it because honestly, it is eight hours of sensory onslaught (with subtitles!) and that is a lot. I mean, I like to watch TV on the couch, with a craft project close to hand, shovelling dinner into my mouth and heroically resisting the urge to reach for my phone. After a couple of episodes, the experience of watching Mussolini goes from overwhelming to numbing, which I suspect is a brilliant metaphor for the experience of living under fascism, but what if, instead of an eight episode drama, it was a two or three-hour movie?

The Morning Show, season 4, episode 7

Welcome back to The Morning After The Morning Show, the fake breakfast news magazine show where we break down … Liz. Liz, are you there?

I’m here, Liz. I wish I wasn’t, but I’m here.

Same. And that’s coming from me.

Oh wow, it’s even lost my corporate shillsona?

Remember that time we did one semester of a journalism degree, then realised we had clinical depression and an anxiety disorder and were only studying journalism because our English teacher said it was the only way we’d get to write for a living?

How could I forget? Why did we switch to ancient history instead of a path that would have put us in the publishing industry just in time for the GFC to wipe out the Australian literary scene?

Good judgement on our part. Anyway, we had a whole lot of classes on journalistic ethics, and the lines that can’t be crossed—

Right, because when you’re in a city with one newspaper, and that’s owned by Rupert Murdoch, you’ve gotta start on the ethics early.

Exactly. And, uh, what did they say about handing your source over to law enforcement to save your own skin?

I recall that it was frowned upon. Like, it’s such a cartoonishly evil idea, and so far outside the realm of normal journalistic ethics, that it wasn’t specifically covered in our classes because it just went without saying.

Mm hmm.

Bradley Jackson is an awful person.

Yup.

I hate her. I hate this show. I’m so ready to move on with my life.

Do we have anything nice to say before we wrap up?

Yeah, finally William Jackson Harper got a good scene. It was, of course, with Nicole Beharie.

Also, and this isn’t something nice, but I just wanna get it out there — by hooking up with Bro, Alex is now an executive who is sleeping with her subordinate, and even though it’s consensual, the power dynamic is toxic, and HEY isn’t that how this series began?

Oh no.

Anyway!

Slow Horses, season 5, episode 6

Imagine being such a drongo that you’re a character in an AppleTV drama, but you’re not allowed to use Apple products.

That’s Claude Whelan. That scene? Where he’s jogging and listening to Crowded House? He doesn’t get AirPods. And when we see his phone, it’s mostly covered so we can’t see for sure that it’s an iPhone.

(It is, I’d know that bezel anywhere, but they’re not making a big deal out of it, the way AppleTV shows normally do.)

Whelan departs the series the same way he came in: being blackmailed by a subordinate he thought he could push around. Kudos to James Callis for delivering two seasons of a perfect depiction of a man who has failed upwards at every point of his life, who is completely incapable of being aware of his own inadequacies. Just brilliant stuff.

I’m almost gonna miss him, although obviously I’m delighted that Taverner is finally First Desk and will no doubt find new and exciting ways to be terrible now that she’s in charge. And I’m very optimistic that we’ll see more of Nick Mohammed’s mayor, another deeply inadequate little man.

Slough House almost look competent next to Whelan, although River nearly equals him in delusion, thinking that he might get to have a real career again. Buddy, it’s not that you’re bad at your job, it’s that no one likes you.

I enjoyed this finale so much that not once was I tempted to pick up my phone. (I really need to start leaving it in another room.) I’m a little puzzled as to how River’s grandfather was able to foresee the sting in the tail, when that seems to have been an improvisation, but you know? I’m not gonna ask difficult questions. Even the horrifying final shot of Lamb’s feet served a purpose (confirming that he was indeed the young officer tortured by the Stasi), although obviously I am repressing the details like it’s my job.

I can’t believe we have to wait a year for season 6, but ALSO AppleTV just dropped the first two episodes of a new Mick Herron adaptation, and I appreciate its consideration for my needs.