HERE WE ARE NOW - ENTERTAIN US

OK, I know that I've written about this before, see: 

HA HA YOU'RE DEAD

... and:

CALL ME AN OLD FUDDY DUDDY BUT ...

... but trivialising murder just isn't funny to me.

I have been watching, and am not sure if I'll continue to the finish, the Netflix series BLACK DOVES.

"Black Doves is a British spy thriller television series created by Joe Barton. The series, starring Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire, is developed by Sister and Noisy Bear for Netflix. Ahead of its premiere on 5 December 2024, it was renewed for a second series."

There's some pretty good acting in this, especially from Ben Wishaw and the production is slick and accomplished but ... as often is the case nowadays the plot is a bit silly and the narrative has huge gaps in it. I guess this doesn't worry younger viewers who are unlikely to have read classic literature or watched high quality TV drama series and films and who are addicted to social media 'sound bites'. Often there is an unwillingness to show realism when it comes to violence and murder. Whether this has a connection to the silly fantasy films and plethora of vampire, zombie and super-hero entertainment over the last couple of decades - I don't know. It is becoming the norm though for murder to be shown as funny. In Black Doves the protagonists are flippant when it comes to killing people and there are a couple of 'Killing Eve'-type female assassins who make bad jokes when shooting, strangling or stabbing people. To me, this just isn't good enough.

I just finished watching The Day of The Jackal series on TVOne with Eddie Redmayne

"The Day of the Jackal is a British television series, based on the Frederick Forsyth novel of the same name. It stars Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. It is written and created by Ronan Bennett, produced by Christopher Hall and directed by Brian Kirk, Anthony Philipson, Paul Wilmshurst and Anu Menon. The first season began airing in November 2024. That same month, it was renewed for a second season. The Day of the Jackal received positive reviews from critics and received two Golden Globe Awardnominations, Best Television Series - Drama and Best Actor for Redmayne."

 This is classy stuff with outstanding acting from Redmayne (although Lashana Lynch doesn't add anything at all). The plot is a bit stretched and has no connection with the original story by Frederick Forsyth and the subsequent film but it is crisply directed and filmed in stunning locations. In some ways it reminded me of the good films and TV series based on the John Le Carre novels. In this series the protagonist is a contract killer, an assassin with no conscience and he murders a lot of people. In no way does he or any of the other characters think that this is fun and the killings are not trivialised. They are brutal and evil. The series is all the better for this.

We are living in fast-changing times and I fear that basic human values are slipping and are being replaced by expediency and entertainment.

As a counterpoint I also just finished watching a National Geographic documentary on Disney. It was

9/11: One Day in America and was done very well in a far superior way than many of the trite American documentaries that are churned out. The interviews and commentary were poignantly and sensitively  handled with the result that a strong sense of humanity came from the senseless violence and 3000 lives lost. Does it take real catastrophes to make us think? Sadly I think it does.