The Luminaries – strange and grimy magic realist book-adapted TV drama, set in the nineteenth century New Zealand gold rush, which must have dispelled many viewers' desire to visit the country originally kindled by Lord of the Rings. But despite the sordid Wild West atmosphere, I had to watch it to the end, even if only to find out what happened to the two nice people we met at the beginning.
Unavowed – one of the best adventure games I’ve ever played, and a deserving winner of multiple 2018 Adventure Gamer awards (best story, best writing, best gameplay by readers' vote, and best adventure game). You start on a rooftop in a thunderstorm, being exorcised. As you recover your memory (here you have a choice of being male or female, and a cop, an actor or a bartender), your rescuers introduce themselves as members of The Unavowed, guardians against supernatural danger, and explain that in the last year the demon possessing you has been creating havoc. With them, across a series of missions, you set out to track its activity, and to work out what it wants and how to stop it. The extraordinary thing about the writing is that the missions adjust according to who you are, which of your companions you take with you, and which order you tackle the missions - despite a major plot twist about two thirds of the way through. Great characters, great narrative, great game.
Mrs America – US TV drama series, with Cate Blanchett giving a very rounded portrayal of anti-feminist campaigner Phyllis Shlafly, who could so easily have been a caricature. Vivid portrayals also of leading American feminists of the 1970s (Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug), though I can't say any of them came across as truly likeable (except perhaps Steinem). Compelling viewing though, with vivid period detail.
Live from London – series of livestreamed concerts organised and hosted by the top-drawer chamber choir Voces8, featuring other great vocal groups (i Fagiolini, The Swingles, The Gesualdo Six, The Sixteen, Stile Antico, Chanticleer) as well as the Academy of Ancient Music and the English Chamber Orchestra. Lovely to have something to look forward to at 7:00 pm on a Saturday evening; the sense of watching a live event definitely adds something, more than compensating for the occasional technical problems. Absolutely worth the subscription price, and these are concerts we'd never have travelled to London to see. If the business model works, we could be seeing a lot more of this in the future.
Once Upon a Time in Iraq – jaw-droppingly powerful TV documentary series following the course of the second Iraq war and its aftermath, through interviews with ordinary people rather than political and military leaders. See also review and interview with the director and one of the interviewees.
History of Ideas – podcast series by David Runciman, as part of the London Review of Books Talking Politics podcasts. What a good lecturer he is, wearing his great learning very lightly and delivering a great introduction (or more than an introduction) to some key political writers, such as Hobbes, Wollstonecraft, de Toqueville, Marx, Ghandi, Weber, Arendt, Hayek and Fukuyama, to list only those I'd heard of before. If we're going to have stand-up monologic lectures, this is what they should be like.
Sr Lucy Bryson, Journey into Interfaith Dialogue 1939-2011 – autobiographical article, circulated after her death in August. Having known Sister Lucy of the Turvey Benedictines for many years as a teacher (Lectio Divina, Enneagram), I was aware of her commitment to interfaith work (joint Catholic-Buddhism workshops, an exchange visit to Iran) but it wasn’t until I read this and its companion article that I realised that she grew up in a narrowly Catholic environment pre-Vatican II. What a journey that must have been - and what a testimony to how a great and compassionate soul can grow.
The Encounter – stunning one-man show by Simon McBurney (of Complicité), about a photographer from National Geographic who in 1969 became lost in the Amazon rain forest of Brazil. Ingenious use of sound, delivered through headphones even for the theatre audience, and a cunning opening to soften us up with aural tricks to prime us for the exercise of the imagination.
Mata Hari – ballet from Dutch National Ballet, beautifully choreographed by Ted Brandsen. A noble corrective to the popular stereotype of the sexy spy, this shows Margaretha (her real name) escaping an unhappy marriage to a violent and alcoholic army officer in the Dutch East Indies to reinvent herself as an exotic dancer in Paris, a dance innovator like Isadora Duncan.
Last Night of the Proms – very interesting to hear the familiar tunes played by a reduced and distanced orchestra, making the musical lines clearer and sharper. A pity the BBC bottled out of dropping the words of the imperialist anthems; it’s going to happen sometime, and this would have been a great opportunity.
Secret Files: Tunguska – a replay for me of a 2006 adventure game, not because it’s a special favourite but because I bought the series in a discount and thought I should start agin from the first episode. It’s certainly ingenious, with massive inventories allowing for outrageously tricky puzzles, but there are definitely problems with the translation from the German (dialogue is crabbed and long-winded, and humour repeatedly misfires) and with the lead voice actor. (How come a Russian girl raised in Berlin sounds like a squeaky American?)
Miss Marple – as played by Joan Hickson, accept no imitations. A welcome re-showing on the Drama channel. How we were spoilt in the 1980s: definitive portrayals of not only Miss Marple but Hercule Poirot (David Suchet) and Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett).
The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama – his usually classy cultural-historical TV essays, though this time explicitly making connections between the thinking of the Romantics (Blake, Shelley, Piranesi, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Burns, Chopin) and our own time, hence the title.
The Secret Life of Writing – truly excellent BBC TV documentary series, genuinely telling you important things you didn’t know or putting them in a new way. Maybe it’s rose-tinted spectacles, but I seem to remember more TV being like this.
Lilly Looking Through – beautiful and charming adventure game, with an ingenious core mechanic: the goggles which Lilly finds early on enable her to both see and be in the past, allowing for some ingenious puzzle solutions. For example, a wall in the present may not be there in the past, and a seed planted in the past may create a tree in the present. Fun to play too, with an environment which rewards experimentation, but it’s just too short, ending just as the story seems to be getting going. I'm hoping for a sequel.
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