AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Diplomat Netflix

It's being marketed as West Wing, but it's really a modern take on Pygmalion as sweaty, sweary Kate Wylor, against her wishes, is made ambassador to Britain with a view (unkown to her) to her becoming groomed as the next American VP. Can she learn refinement and diplomacy from the posh Brits? Can she stop the Brits launching a revenge attack against Iran and starting World War 3? Things are not looking good as her grasp of optics and protocol, eg attacking her husband with a tree branch in the ambassadorial garden, is causing some concern, even if her knowledge of geoploitics is unrivalled. Good fun.

[Mick Harper]

Part Three

It fizzled out rather unsatisfactorily with the usual hooded figures confessing for no obvious reason to playing a part in the crime thereby exonerating the Essex Two. The only AE aspect is a familiar one. The legal concept of 'guilty beyond reasonable doubt" only holds true until the first conviction by a jury. After that, it switches to "guilty beyond doubt so overwhelming that even an English judge is prepared to buckle".

While this might militate against justice in individual cases, it is necessary from the wider standpoint of faith in the judicial system. We'd all be shaking in our beds if appeals were based on a 'let 'em out if they are not guilty beyond reasonable doubt' because no jury observes this fondly believed ideal. "He looks guilty, there's no doubt about that," is what they say by at least a 10-2 majority.

In these days of the internet where there are thousands of people baying for justice in individual cases, one would recommend there be an office in some nook of the Ministry of Justice in charge of all the "Let 'em out on licence or some excuse without making a song-and-dance about it" cases, of which, there is no doubt whatsoever, this is one. These passionate, well-informed and highly vocal groups are bringing the law into disrepute.

However, in this case one's righteous indignation was tempered by the obvious fact that the two that were banged up (one is out, one is still inside) would have done a great deal of violent criminality if they had been given the freedom of Essex for the last twenty-five years. Just as the three in the Land Rover (which quite extraordinarily is still roaming the roads of England quite unconcernedly) are better dead than dread. Even if they didn't deserve the death penalty.

The police, as is their wont, came out if badly though whether because of incompetence or something a bit worse was left in the air. The judiciary were their usual mix of learned futility. The press were just plain awful. I think that rounds up the usual suspects. The series though was pretty good and definitely recommended.

[Mick Harper]

The Diplomat

I have been wondering about this myself. I can no longer afford to judge Netflix offerings on their own merits because they don't take up space on my digibox which must always take precedence. But you've tipped the balance, Wiley, so on your head be it.

[Mick Harper]

Look, the deal is sacrosanct. We sit through several Countryfile items featuring somebody whittling wood and someone else looking for great crested voles and some footage of disadvantaged children petting llamas but in return we get (1) a serious piece about a rural problem and (2) Adam Henson telling us some reasonably technical stuff about farming. Just because it's a royal estate in darkest McMummersetshire does not mean the deal is off. And Charles agrees with me. "They're not coming back, Mick, that's for sure or I'm not the Prince of Wales."

[Mick Harper]

The Diplomat (Netflix)

You were dead right about this, Wiley, though I wouldn't call it fun. I'd call it exhausting. They're throwing plot lines at us as if Readers Digest had bought the rights to Midsomer Murders. Is she being pencilled in for VP or as the fall-guy for the senile Prez? Is hubby a goodie or a baddie? How could they arrange for a British aircraft carrier ['Courageous', nice touch] to be torpedoed while she was being switched from Kabul to London? Is that promotion or, as she seems to think, being sent to the back of beyond?

Above all, is the fact that she has arrived en poste without any pictures of her own to hang going to be important. The major domo-ess was very arch with her, "Yes, I'm sorry about the blank spaces, the last ambassador took his Rembrandts home with him." I only ask because having the right sheets in the spare bedroom turned out to be a crucial plot development.

As soon as I saw it was directed by Simon Cellan-Jones I knew we were in safe hands. British hands, I think, since while everyone's American they're all jobbing British actors with dialogue coaches. Mr Ambassador was Zeno, if you remember that. There appeared to be a surfeit of black people even given The Quota and what's more real black actors. Not the usual handsome, non-threatening, not very dark types, but the sort that made you think, "Blimey, I wouldn't wanna be mugged by him." Before suppressing the thought just in time.

I started on your recommendation, Wiley, but I'm taking full responsibility for my actions now. On to Episode Two and don't spare the horses (only me and Wiley will understand that joke).

[Grant]

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan

Went to see this at the cinema itself because I like a bit of swashbuckling and ladies in bodices. It’s a French movie with subtitles, which I always enjoy because it makes me feel sophisticated. And Eva Green filled her bodice very successfully.

But what I most enjoyed was that everyone in it was white. There were no black extras or black people in unlikely positions. I suppose blind casting hasn’t reached Paris yet but it’s only a matter of time.

[Mick Harper]

I'm more worried about the French nicking our classics and then ruining them. I suppose playing it in white-face is acceptable for seventeenth century courtly derring-do. This was before Haiti had been set up, much less designated as a French département, so there would have been very few people-of-colour in Louis XIII's equivalent of our SO14, the Royalty Protection Group. And where were they in 1789?

[Mick Harper]

Netflix has alerted me (as it does most mornings and afternoons) to some forthcoming attractions. There’s Cleopatra with a very beautiful and very black actress staring out at us whereas the real Cleopatra was so-so and white. The Nurse which appears to be another case of Bayesian statistics putting a health care worker in gaol for a goodly portion of the rest of her life. And United – the Munich air disaster that took out the Busby Babes, not the British TV film of the same name about Brian Clough's time at Leeds. This last is worth noting because the word ‘Munich’ now represents three different things to three different media audiences

1. A best-selling novel about the conference that ushered in the Second World War
2. The Spielberg film about Black September’s assault on the 1972 Olympics and
3. What (I would think by now only) Manchester United fans think of when they hear the word Munich.

[Mick Harper]

Have the norms of television journalism been upended while I have been asleep? Catching up with Newsnight this morning, I find Kirsty Walk referring to 'Joe' who is going to update us on the Sudan situation at the Newsnight wall. "Haven't heard of him," I thought, "but if he's on first names terms with Kirsty, he must be OK." Whereupon out springs a youngish looking chap in shirtsleeves and sneakers! "Is it Dress-Down Tuesday at the BBC?" I wondered, gazing at this startling apparition. No caption appeared to tell us his full name or what his status was.

Any road, as he didn't say because he had perfect BBC diction, 'Joe' gave us an excellent and much needed overview of Sudan's strategic situation after which Ms Wark said with ever more opacity, "Thank you, Joe." And referred to 'Joe' a bit later. Who was he? An MI6 spook? Our man-in-Sudan straight off the plane wearing whatever he could throw on? Newsnight being a bit chaotic in a fast-moving situation? Kirsty's latest toyboy? I just don't know. I'm going back to sleep now and when I wake up I want my old Newsnight back.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

Choosing between you and Netflix? I know which side my bread's buttered.

[Hatty]

You are on top form, Wiley. 'Most of what is known about Cleopatra' was written by Plutarch, some 200 years after her death according to historians, but no manuscripts of Plutarch's writings predate the fourteenth century, coinciding with the beginning of the Renaissance.

[Mick Harper]

Ah now, when it comes to choosing between Hatty and Netflix, I really know which side my bread is buttered.

[Mick Harper]

I was in the middle of penning letters to the heads of the terrestrial channels (I use purple ink to ensure immediate attention) complaining that the only programmes I watch nowadays are Channel 4 News and Newsnight, when I realised that I don't pay the licence fee and I don't watch the adverts so, looked at in one way, they don't owe me a thing. I sent them anyway because I wasn't looking at it in that way.

[Mick Harper]

Europe's Forgotten Borders (PBS America)

Here's a new one on me. In the late forties, Czech security set up fake border fences and recruited fake guides to bring unwary Czech families to them. Once over 'the border' they would be met by bogus American soldiers in fake US guard posts who would debrief them on their 'escapes'. Who helped them? Did they know anyone else who wanted out? Maybe the 'Americans' could help them too. The parents went to the gulag, the children into care.

Worked three hundred times. The mind more than boggles.