January and February TV shows

I didn't finish enough TV in January to justify a separate post, so everything watched in the past two months has been rolled into one. This adds up to eight shows — a variety of genres, although oddly three of them are about Indigenous people in the United States, and the combination of deprivation, intergenerational trauma, and strong sense of community that shape their experiences (and all with Zahn McClarnon in the cast), so that's been something of a theme of the viewing schedule this year so far. The shows are:

The Last King of the Cross, a dramatisation of the gang wars and organised crime that flourished in Sydney's King's Cross red light district in the 1980s, centred on John Ibrahim, a 'nightclub owner', his brother and enforcer Sam, and the various other characters who found a home in that specific seedy underbelly. Given that Ibrahim was a producer on the show, it's a pretty whitewashed version of his own history, in which he emerges essentially blameless for any of the real-world violent crimes around which the show's story unfolds, but as long as you go into the show keeping that in mind, it's got a good sense of dramatic momentum. It uses every predictable gangster drama cliché, and at first I thought I'd find it a bit of a chore, but in the end I found it compulsively watchable. Amusingly, that specific part of Sydney is just around the corner from where my mum and sister live (and where I spent my undergrad years); two of my aunts either currently or previously lived in that part of Sydney as well, so I'm very familiar with King's Cross, although its 1990s and early 2000s (to say nothing of its 2010s and 2020s) incarnations were much tamer than the picture painted in the show.

The third and final season of Reservation Dogs, the first of the aforementioned shows about the experiences of Indigenous people in the United States. This show is a strong contender for my show of the year, and definitely has a slot in my top ten shows of all time: it draws you in thinking it will be a light-hearted comedy about the wacky hijinks of a group of teenage friends, and turns out to tell a deeply affecting story about the pain and grief of a community, and the deep love and connections between the people who make up that community. The first season introduces us to the central four characters, their lives on the reservation — and the reasons both historical and personal why they are so hurt and broken. The second season shows us how those four characters heal and put themselves back together. The third season builds on hints and asides viewers have witnessed in the earlier two seasons, and introduces us in detail to almost all the secondary characters — the parents, extended families, and broader community of the four teenagers — and shows us why they are so hurt and broken. And it goes beyond that, and allows the teenage characters to start the work of healing the hurts of the people around them, and, if not repairing the world, at least repairing their community. The show is not so trite to suggest that individual empathy and kindness is enough to overcome the aftereffects of colonisation, dispossession of land and identity, and systemic racism, but it is written with exquisite compassion and generosity of spirit: everyone has a story, and simply listening to and understanding those stories goes a long way. The acting and writing is simply top notch — highly, highly recommended.

Last Stop Larrimah, a two-part documentary about a murder that took place in a remote Australian outback town — a town so small, so off the beaten track that it has only eleven inhabitants (or ten, after the murder). As you can probably imagine, the sorts of people who choose to live in such places are best described as 'characters,' to put it mildly — they are the sorts of pathologically eccentric people who do not get on well with others, move somewhere remote to be away from other people, and find themselves in a situation in which they're thrown into constant close proximity to the same cast of very difficult characters. The documentary involves lengthy interviews with almost every resident of the town, plus local police, journalists who reported on the murder, family members, etc, and it teases out the simmering tensions and soap operatic dramas seething beneath the surface of the town. I found it an engaging story, although it deliberately withholds information from the viewer in order to reveal it at the point of maximum dramatic impact, which some may find contrived and annoying.

The Diplomat — the Netflix political/spy thriller starring Keri Russell, not the British drama starring Sophie Rundle. This is, quite honestly, ludicrous trash — the newly appointed US ambassador to the UK finds herself at the centre of a crisis involving escalating tensions between NATO countries, Russia and Iran — but it's my kind of ludicrous trash, and although I found myself constantly yelling 'that would never happen!' at the TV, I also found myself unable to look away. Some of the characters are very obvious analogues for real-world individuals (the British prime minister and US president are essentially a more ruthless version of Boris Johnson and a less gaffe-prone version of Joe Biden), while others (such as the British foreign secretary, played here as a cerebral, cautious figure doing his best to rein in the BoJo character's hawkish impulses, whereas his real-world equivalent at the time would have been ... Liz Truss) are entirely fictional. If you want to spend a few hours with pretty people in lavish settings with much better dialogue than which their real-world counterparts are capable, and if you're able to switch your brain off, this is good fun.

Echo, that rarity — a Disney Marvel show that I actually enjoyed — the second of the aforementioned shows about Indigenous communities. Like most superhero shows and films, it's the origin story of the titular character (who in addition to being Indigenous is also Deaf and communicates exclusively in sign language) — we see her childhood, the series of deaths that leave her a vulnerable orphan, her early adulthood in New York working as hired muscle for crime boss Wilson Fisk, and her return to her home town and extended family, seeking answers. This is not an easy homecoming — the grief and ruptures of Echo's childhood are an open wound, and her problems in New York follow at her heels — but the show's conclusion is ultimately hopeful and life-affirming, with ties rebound, offering a vision of superpowers that are made stronger when they are shared communally.

Matthias and I have been undertaking a rewatch of Foyle's War (a cosy British crime drama set in Hastings during the Second World War) for many months now, and we finally finished all episodes a couple of weeks ago. This is a show I first started watching as a teenager in Australia; I introduced Matthias to it at some point, by which stage WWII was over and the title character (a police chief superintendant during the war) had been recruited to the security services in London during the early years of the Cold War, and we decided that it was high time to watch the whole thing from the beginning. This is, in many ways, extremely undemanding TV — each episode is self contained, with its mystery solved, and justice done — but its pleasure lies in the central characters (all flawlessly acted), and its relentless emphasis on its core theme. This theme — hammered home with gentle, stiletto sharp politeness by Michael Kitchen as Foyle in every episode — is the tension inherent in the wartime setting, in which authority figures are constantly demanding that Foyle turn a blind eye to more everyday crimes of greed, corruption and murder, and Foyle's insistence that his country's war against fascism makes adherence to the law, and justice done to those who break it even more important. There's always some senior military or political figure asking Foyle just to let things go 'because there's a war on,' and every time he refuses. The setting of Britain during the Second World War (the wartime series range from 1940 to the end of war in Europe) is richly mined, with both the broader military and political backdrop (Italy's entry into the war, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Polish political exiles in Britain, the treatment of Jewish refugees, the presence of US troops on British soil, D Day, etc) and the smaller scale experiences of the British civilian population during the Blitz forming the scaffolding on which the individual mysteries of each episode hangs. I personally feel the later seasons set during the Cold War are weaker, since they necessitate a more murky morality at odds with the conscience and clarity of the earlier seasons, although the historical setting and newly introduced characters are still a lot of fun. Like so many long-running British crime series, it's also a great exercise in 'spot the famous British actor in a bit part,' — the first episode includes James McAvoy and Rosamund Pike, for example, although my absolute highlight in this regard was Laurence Fox playing (decades before he revealed himself as such) a contemptible posh fascist.

Domino Day, pretty much your quintessential low budget BBC 3 fantasy YA miniseries. The title character has magical powers which must be sustained by draining the life force of human beings; she achieves this by going on dates with the worst men she can find on dating apps. Eventually, her behaviour draws the attention of the council of witch elders in Manchester, who seek to both destroy her and steal her power, and, with the help of a newfound group of allies in the form of a local sympathetic witch coven, Domino battles enemies both personal and supernatural. The show ends with hints at another season, but we'll see if this gets renewed.

Dark Winds, the final of the three shows with an Indigenous focus, and again of extremely high quality. The first of its three seasons is a noirish crime drama (with some supernatural elements) set in 1970s New Mexico, with two interconnected crimes — a bank heist via helicopter, and the murder of an Indigenous woman and her grandfather. The show has an incredible sense of place and community, the writing and acting is superb, and I am very much looking forward to watching the following two seasons.

All in all, a very high standard of TV these past two months.