streaming drama blues

With a bunch of series having reached their end, my household has spent a significant amount of time this week watching one specific Netflix series. And we have no regrets! But first, lemme do the roundup…

Murderbot, season 1, episode 5

So far the series has combined several characters in adapting the novel — to the considerable detriment of Pin-Lee, in my opinion, who is a much more forceful and competent character in the book and I am once again pointing out that it’s the women of colour and neurodivergent man who are diminished from their book versions.

This week sees the introduction of the first new-for-the-adaptation character, a Deltfall survivor named Leebeebee.

I kind of hate her.

In fairness, we’re meant to hate her. She’s disrupting the PresAux vibe, she’s even less of a competent professional than the PresAux team, and she’s sexually harassing our friend Murderbot. And Anna Konkle does it all while giving a performance which, though perfectly good, is best described as Temu Hannah Einbinder.

But I also resent what she says about the choices being made in this adaptation. From the very first episode, the TV series has both ramped up the sexuality and the prurience, from showing us repeatedly that Murderbot has no genitals to the deeply uncomfortable throuple situation, and now the Leebeebee business.

One of the things I love about SecUnit is how thoroughly sex-repelled it is. It’s very much at that extreme end of the ace spectrum. I was … pre-emptively weary about the inevitability of fandom shipping it with someone, because fandom loves taking asexual characters and putting them in sexual situations; I didn’t expect the show itself to do it.

I’m gonna quote from Alex Brown’s excellent review, from their perspective as someone who is both ace and genderqueer:

I’ve seen theories that Leebeebee is a plant, an agent of the third party responsible for the sabotage and murder, and I think the evidence is really strong. (Her sexual monologue, for example, diverts everyone’s attention from wondering what she was doing and how she survived.) But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The advantage of short episodes is that, if I have a visceral reaction to a character and take against them, they’re not in my life for too long.

The downside of short episodes is that, if I have a visceral reaction to a character and love them, they’re not in my life for nearly long enough. See, eg, Dr Mensah, for whom I would die.

Murderbot feels the same way, and I enjoy that he and Gurathin are competing to be the Best Beloved Son while Mensah politely pretends she doesn’t notice, but does talk about her actual children.

Before the series began, I said that if I didn’t like it, I was going to pretend it was an in-universe adaptation of Murderbot’s story that made a lot of questionable choices. As it happens, I do like Murderbot, but I do appreciate that the voiceover does feel like Murderbot is sitting with ART, giving a monologue about everything the series does wrong.

Poker Face, season 2, episode 7

Thank you, Poker Face, this is more like it.

The best Poker Face episodes are the ones that feel like the people involved are sharing their special interests, and this episode loves action movies as much as it hates motion smoothing. And between the presence of Sam Richardson, the heist, the accurate depiction of retail hell, and the extremely plot-relevant dialogue about the Mission: Impossible franchise, this felt like it was targeting me specifically.

(I have not seen Heat, but multiple times lately, I’ve found myself thinking, “Do I need to sit down and watch Heat?” Let me know!)

This is almost the perfect Poker Face episode, and the sort of thing I’ve been wanting all through season 2. We learn new things about Charlie through seeing her in a completely new context; we have a cast of regular people who feel fully formed as characters; it’s funny and it’s tragic at the same time.

As far as I’m concerned, this episode has just one flaw: the repeated insistence that Mission: Impossible III is a good film. It has the best villain, true, and begins building Ethan Hunt’s team, but I cannot sign off on a movie which fridges Keri Russell in the opening sequence. (Is this symbolic of JJ Abrams’ evolution from TV Guy Who Writes Great Shows About Women to Movie Guy Whose Treatment Of Female Characters Is Unremarkable At Best? Answers on a postcard.)

Also the colour grading is shite; visually it’s the most badly aged film in the franchise, and I say that as a person who has seen M:I2 … a normal amount of times. Three or four. Shut up, it’s actually my favourite Mission: Impossible movie, and is absolutely the best Australian movie written by Americans and directed by a Hong Konger.

Department Q, season 1

First of all, don’t get excited, Department Q is not a series about a squad of queer people FIGHTING CRIME. It’s a cold case unit, and the Q stands for Quite Traumatised Actually, which is the baseline state of every member of this motley crew.

For starters, we have Carl Morck (Matthew Goode, who has finally outgrown “handsome” and become properly craggy), who is recovering from being shot through the neck on the job.

Morck wants to be a lone wolf, but is quickly joined — very much against his will — by Akram Salim, who came to Scotland as a refugee from Syria. He is suspiciously cagey about what, specifically, he did in Syria, but he seems to be an experienced investigator and falls naturally into the Good Cop role despite technically not being a cop.

I mean, mostly he’s the Good Cop. Other times, it’s more like, “Well, it’s not technically police brutality…”

Then there’s Rose, a young officer who covers the OCD-ADHD spectrum, but who also had a breakdown after a high speed chase killed a civilian. She’s smart, ambitious, strongly disapproves of police brutality, and has amazing hair. I love her.

Finally, they are joined by James, Carl’s former partner, who was left paraplegic in the same shooting — indeed, it was the same bullet — that nearly took out Carl.

They’re a messy lot, overseen by an intensely reluctant Moira (Kate Dickie) who is the perfect combination of extremely political/a little ruthless/basically a decent person but willing to compromise and a bit too eager to take credit for other people’s successes. Moira doesn’t seem traumatised, except by the ongoing stress of having to keep Carl in line, but she does suffer from arachnophobia.

The season’s cold case involves the disappearance of an advocate (that’s Scottish for “barrister”) four years earlier. We learn quite quickly that Merritt is alive, held captive in a pressurised chamber for reasons even she doesn’t fully understand. I was braced for sexual violence, but the story is much more interesting than that — which is probably part of the reason I’ve enjoyed the series so much.

The other reason this feels like more than Just Another Netflix Show, or Just Another Sad Cop Drama, is that it’s dense with plots and characters, and feels very lived in. Merritt’s story encompasses her childhood, her relationship with her disabled brother and the circumstances under which he became disabled, plus the case she was prosecuting shortly before her abduction. We also follow the investigation into the shooting of Morck and James, and Morck’s relationship with his stepson; Akram’s struggle to be recognised as a police officer in his new country; James’s paternal relationship with Rose and his entry into life as a disabled person.

It’s a lot. The series is based on novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen; apparently the original plan was to set this adaptation in Boston, and I have … questions. About how that would have worked.

I have the first book reserved at the library, and I’m very eager to watch the Danish films adapting the novels; the first one is titled The Keeper of Lost Causes in English. It’s all a pile of cop drama cliches, but well-executed and with an underlying series of mysteries interesting enough to hold my attention.

And also — credit to the hair and make-up department. Every single person in this series has amazing hair. Even Morck, whose basic style is “dragged through a hedge backwards”. Even minor background figures, like a junior cop assisting an investigation, becomes a Character because thought and care has been put into their styling. There aren’t the usual glaring signs of corner cutting that you get with Netflix dramas these days, and I appreciate that — although frankly, the writing is good enough that I do think the show could have been equally enjoyable on a smaller budget.

Australian of the Week

Shout out to Geraldine Viswanathan, who appears in Poker Face as Charlie’s longsuffering, rom-com obsessed co-worker. She’s from the small New South Wales city of Newcastle, and mostly works in the US. Honestly her American accent is not amazing, her vowels are absolutely Australian, but it’s always nice to see one of us.

But the actual Australian of the Week is these bags of Darrell Lea chocolate that turned up in the background of Poker Face’s climactic scenes. I didn’t even realise we were exporting that stuff, although obviously America needs all the decent chocolate it can get. (Sorry, guys, but have you ever tasted a Hershey bar? Yikes.)