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back, more or less
Jan. 15th, 2013 09:47 pmI'm feeling mostly human again. My energy came back a couple of days ago (although I did take a loooong nap today), which should mean I've basically beaten Evil Upper Respiratory Virus and Evil 2: The Bacterial Ear-Infection Spawn of the Upper Respiratory Virus. *hopes*
Besides napping, today I finished watching the BBC miniseries Privates, which is about the last cohort of young men conscripted into the National Service in 1960. Such potential for amazing stories: postwar Britain sees the first faint stirrings of the approaching cultural earthquake, the sons of the Second World War generation begin to inherit (and change) the world, the era of hot wars and colonialist defenses settles into cold-war mutual deterrence and the final loss of Britain's status as a world power.
Such wasted potential for amazing stories. None of the characters is well developed, most of them are no more than stereotypes and ciphers (the Posh Selfish Scheming Tory, the East End Kid with the Good Heart, the Wimpy Christian, the Kind Beautiful Nurse, the Officer Who's Not Manly Enough For His Wife), and the best the plot can manage is to set a tentative foot onto topics like racism and sexism that it quickly retreats from. Instead, we get a bog-standard love triangle (who decided that love triangles are so interesting they belong in every story???) and a bog-standard "scared young man learns to commit to his woman" arc, and then the wildly absurdly melodramatic Thing that happens at the end that I won't spoil you for, but it's wildly absurdly melodramatic, neither emerging naturally from the storyline nor resolving it.
I kept watching Privates hoping that it would get better. It didn't. It got worse. I also was hoping for some gay, but of course there was no gay. I'd forgotten, silly me, that there can be no gay in proper dramas (soap operas don't count) unless they're About The Gay.
About the only thing I liked about this show was the surprising presence of a number of large-bodied actors, incuding the lonely wife of Unmanly Officer. She got to be a big woman who was shown as beautiful and desirable and in no way comic relief or mockery-fodder. She rocks a red party dress, as you can see below in the best full-length cap I could get:
So that was cool. But there's much not else I can praise about Privates.
Besides napping, today I finished watching the BBC miniseries Privates, which is about the last cohort of young men conscripted into the National Service in 1960. Such potential for amazing stories: postwar Britain sees the first faint stirrings of the approaching cultural earthquake, the sons of the Second World War generation begin to inherit (and change) the world, the era of hot wars and colonialist defenses settles into cold-war mutual deterrence and the final loss of Britain's status as a world power.
Such wasted potential for amazing stories. None of the characters is well developed, most of them are no more than stereotypes and ciphers (the Posh Selfish Scheming Tory, the East End Kid with the Good Heart, the Wimpy Christian, the Kind Beautiful Nurse, the Officer Who's Not Manly Enough For His Wife), and the best the plot can manage is to set a tentative foot onto topics like racism and sexism that it quickly retreats from. Instead, we get a bog-standard love triangle (who decided that love triangles are so interesting they belong in every story???) and a bog-standard "scared young man learns to commit to his woman" arc, and then the wildly absurdly melodramatic Thing that happens at the end that I won't spoil you for, but it's wildly absurdly melodramatic, neither emerging naturally from the storyline nor resolving it.
I kept watching Privates hoping that it would get better. It didn't. It got worse. I also was hoping for some gay, but of course there was no gay. I'd forgotten, silly me, that there can be no gay in proper dramas (soap operas don't count) unless they're About The Gay.
About the only thing I liked about this show was the surprising presence of a number of large-bodied actors, incuding the lonely wife of Unmanly Officer. She got to be a big woman who was shown as beautiful and desirable and in no way comic relief or mockery-fodder. She rocks a red party dress, as you can see below in the best full-length cap I could get:
So that was cool. But there's much not else I can praise about Privates.
