The German (devised by Zonder/Gil/Weiss-Berkowitz; currently on Magenta, further platforms later in 2025/2026)
Uri is what they used to call a yekkepotz in Israel, one of the huge number of German Jews coming into British Mandatory Palestine fleeing the Nazis - or of the small number of death camp survivors after 1945. In 1970 he’s exactly that yekke, an engineer in his kibbutz keeping his overshirt on while working in the heat, married to Anna, another survivor. Both have been marked to the bone by events only 25 years ago. Both cannot open up about them, each for their own reasons, not even to their friends or their grown kids. That’s when Mossad sees an in to a Nazi group and uses Uri as their man to get at Mengele…
This series is not what it says on the tin. The iterations, twists and turns, deceptions and lies are so numerous, so brutal and unforgiving you’re bound to roll with the punches until you absolutely don’t know whom to trust or root for. It’s only eight episodes and teases a second season. I binged it in two days.
Star Trek: Enterprise season one (Paramount+)
At the time I was somewhat disappointed with this series. Going back in time didn’t look like a promising option, the set design looked drab and cheap and the Temporal Cold War left me unimpressed. It didn’t look as interesting as Voyager, nor was it as intriguing as Deep Space Nine.
After watching the first season I find much of my initial reaction justified. Twenty-six episodes take a lot of effort and budget, sadly often to the disadvantage of the whole run. Then again, having Vulcans as a mildly adversarial force and Humans only just trying to find their footing without the Federation is often quite amusing, with a lot of the typical Trek technology still in drawing board stage or missing entirely.
Trek is often at its best when concentrating on its characters. This still holds true here - although I’m not sure Enterprise’s have all been devised with the necessary thought. Malcolm seems a bizarrely functional officer for his depiction as being entirely unapproachable even by his own family. Why this should be is largely left in the dark and unconvincing. Though he and Trip Tucker feature in most episodes their connection only really shines when they face likely death by suffocation on a shuttle.
By and far the most interesting characters are T’Pol and Phlox - though it’s at least questionable why T’Pol was given a softpørn uniform (same with SevenofNine in ST:Voyager). It’s not like the others are entirely off, they just feel a lot flatter (fnarr) and generally not as promising.
I’ve watched the first two episodes and I like it. The production values are first class. The sense of dread is there. The mind transfer stuff with the sick kids is unsettling and fits in with the general themes of the franchise in my opinion. There’s a sadness about the synthetics that’s fascinating. I feel it’s better to just die as the person you actually are than inhabit another body. I’m going to keep watching.
I don’t think anyone can really be surprised by the cancellation, even if it had already been announced as being renewed a while back. Two series currently running from the same IP, with the one in question replacing Michael C. Hall with an unknown actor and rounding out the supporting cast with a who’s who of actors who were popular twenty years ago. It was never a recipe for success, especially when going against another version of the same series that actually features Michael C. Hall.
Truthfully, the other series should have been canceled as well. Or, rather, it should have never been greenlit. The story has been concluded twice now already.
Albeit suspicious of Mrs Jim’s current favouring of charity shops, which suggests saving money to go wildly over budget elsewhere, another gem plucked from the underwashed fingernails of the sort that serve in them:
The Sandbaggers (1978-1980)
Only about halfway through, but very jolly excellent. Most engagingly written. Of its day, no doubt, but a good day, nonetheless. A day shared with Moonraker I suppose, and they have their differences as contemporaries in depicting British power. Companion pieces, oddly.
Strongly recommended if you haven’t come across it.
The Sandbaggers was Greg Rucka’s main inspiration for his Queen & Country comic/novel series, with much of the Minder and general series setup directly dating back to Sandbagger lore: three people making up the special operations section, a director of ops, ops room, a deputy director, C and so on. Queen & Country is practically the fourth season of Sandbaggers (and might as well have been christened Twenty Years After hadn’t Dumas used that one before).
For all those not yet familiar with The Sandbaggers, it’s currently on YouTube (impossible to say for how long).
And the Queen and Country novels are highly recommended to members of this group who have an affinity for well done prose espionage fiction. They’re really, really good! So are the comics, but I lean toward straightforward prose much more so than comics or graphic novels.
Episode 3 Is Your Journey Really Necessary extremely bleak and cynical, making THE THIRD MAN look like a Disney animation. This is so unsavoury it could pass as a documentary (and illustrates why we oftentimes neither want to know how sausages nor government machinations are composed). Great depiction of the genre that undercuts the conventions at almost every turn.
Also worth noting how economic the production is, a handful of sets and street/park scenes is the basic stock, enhanced by frugal location shots as needed per episode. Action is used sparingly, often just offscreen, but to good effect and never without dramatic reason. It’s a contemporary of TSWLM, MR and FYEO as well as The Professionals, yet in spite of its shared general themes it’s a very different kettle of fish. But every bit as engaging and entertaining as its more overt genre cousins.
Yes, quite. Both depressed and impressed by that one. Mr Marsden’s character is at once bluntly basic but massively complex. Fascinating.
Hadn’t realised there was such mystery about the writer’s “death”. Also fascinating.
The writing is exceptional. I would say fascinating but that would be overly repetitive and unexceptional as a result.
I daren’t tell Mrs Jim it’s on YouTube and she didn’t need to spend any money at all. Her response would fascinate clinical psychology but would scare me to death.
I really enjoyed it until the reveal. Who the killer is was fine, if obvious, I didn’t like THREE TIMES they said how great America is. It came from nowhere and felt like it was governed. It was painful in what was a good series.
