You know, in some ways, I’m quite disappointing. Because the fact the Netflix’s new Series of Unfortunate Events adaptation is nigh-on perfect, I don’t get to write a gloomy review a la Lemony Snicket’s classic series.
About a year and a half ago, I wrote an article about body image-my relationship with my body, feminism, and the value we place on the way we look. I was really proud of that article, and the responses I got from so many people-many of whom confirmed that they had or did feel the same way I did- made me realize that body image issues plague pretty much everyone, even though they often manifest themselves in completely different ways.
And, eighteen months later, my attitude towards my body has changed hugely. I’d be an idiot to say that all my issues surrounding the way I look were done with- I don’t think they ever really will be, honestly. But things have improved in leaps and bounds since then, and I think that’s worth talking about.
Yes, I’m back-considering last week’s review constituted me reviewing a third of the entire series, I figured that I might as well swing back into action and take a look at the rest of this season of Sherlock, too. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at this week’s outing, The Lying Detective.
Sorry for the delay on this week’s review; I’ve been busy pretending I’m actually going to fulfill my new year’s resolutions and also putting a wash on. So, we’re back for another week of Vikings- except this time, it’s sans Ragnar. How did the show fare in it’s first episode without it’s main character?
Happy new year! Sherlock was terrible.
Sherlock, as I have articulated a couple of times before, is not my favourite show on TV. In fact, I’d go as far to wager that it’s one of the shittest, most overrated shows of the last ten years. Well, in the last few seasons, at least- what started out as a slick adaptation of the classic Sherlock Holmes stories turned into a teeth-grindingly smug exercise of Martin Freeman yelling “we’re not gay!”. Last year’s Christmas special, The Abominable Bride, was one of the most strikingly misguided episodes of a high-profile, critically acclaimed TV show I’d ever seen- so, in my masochistic mind palace, I found myself looking forward to what unmissably bad delights Sherlock would cook up for us this time around with season four premier The Six Thatchers.
Well, that’s it- the end of what has been the worst year in living memory if you only ask millenials. But amongst the terrifying politics, celebrity deaths, and Game of Thrones somehow having a turnabout of a season and pretty much redeeming itself, pop culture offered a welcome distraction. Some of it good- most of it bad, if we’re honest. So, without further ado, let’s see out this godforsaken year by drinking rum, petting cats, and discussing the best-and worst-pop culture had to offer in the last twelve months.
Well, they did it.
I wrote at the start of this half of season four that the show really needed, in order to keep the momentum going, to kill off Ragnar Lothbrok. This entire season has been building to it- longer than that, actually, as his nihilistic outlook has been an increasingly important part of his character since the death of Athelstan. But this week, in All His Angels, Vikings finally bit the bullet and killed off their leading man.
Major character deaths have been a theme for this season of television, but no show has done it with more style or substance than Vikings. This episode, written by Michael Hirst and directed by Ciaran Donnelly, is a real masterwork in both restraint and spectacle. The direction, on odd interplays between light and dark-such as having only Ragnar’s hands lit in one of the first shots of the episode- is award-worthy in it’s beauty, but this is fifty minutes of truly sumptuous writing more than anything else.
Michael Hirst, who created the series and writes all the episodes, has an ironclad grip on the mythos and history of Vikings, an unusual feat in a time when most shows rely on a plethora of writers to come up with a full season’s story. You can peel back this tale as far as you like-right back to the first episode- and all signs point to Ragnar’s final moment in Aelle’s snakepit (thanks, by the way, to Vikings for ruining my snake-fearing boyfriend’s birthday, as we snuggled up to watch this episode and finished up with him practically smashing the screen to dust in Ragnar’s final moments as the camera lingered on the particularly enormous slitherers). Hirst has proven himself, in unfolding the story of Ragnar Lothbrok and particularly in this final episode, to be one of the most patient and detail-orientated storytellers working on TV today, and I, for one, am glad to have him.
This is, as it should be, an episode dominated by Travis Fimmel- whose career I sincerely hope hasn’t died along with Ragnar. He’s exhausted but still defiant, admitting that he has long since stopped believing in the Gods, but still bellowing his excitement at entering Valhalla at the English people who turned up to watch his execution because it’d piss them off. He insists to a vision of the Seer that he has defied the Gods by choosing his own death; whether or not he has if left ambiguous, but till his last moments, Ragnar is idiosyncratically himself, the myth, the man, the legend- the arsehole. He peers up out of the snakepit to see Ecbert disguised as a monk, an stand-in for Athelstan (an Athelstand-in?), he smiles, and he dies. It’s a brilliant, brutal death, and a sad farewell to one of the most compelling characters in this golden age of television- if an overdue one.
But as one story ends, another begins- Ivar speaks with his father before he is sent back to England, and Ragnar makes him promise to avenge his death on Ecbert. Ivar agrees, but when he returns, it seems like he’s got more dead parents to avenge than he knows what to do with. I’d been trying to figure out what the show was planning to do with Ubbe, Sigurd, and Ivar, and forcing them into this uneasy alliance to take down Lagertha and Ecbert seems like a way to get fraternal sparks flying.
Honestly, it’s hard to look forward after an episode like this. I’m impressed and glad that Ragnar has finally bitten the dust and opened the show up to whole new stories and characters, but I’m sad to see him go, and the little flashbacks in this episodes only served to remind us what an amazing story his has been. I’ll be raising a horn of ale to Ragnar- and Travis Fimmel- tonight. As well as trying to figure out who that one-eyed raven bloke floating towards Kattegat is meant to be…
This year is already being written into the history books as one where we lost more greats than we can count; David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Victoria Wood, amongst many, many others who meant a great deal to a huge number of people. And, of course, there is a sadness that comes with the passing of anyone, especially people who came to hold this sacred place of respect and admiration and joy in the minds of so many of us. But when the news came through an hour or so ago that Carrie Fisher had passed away at sixty, for the first time this year, I felt it; I remembered that feeling, the one that comes when you lose someone who you’ve never met but has meant an almost absurd amount to you over the course of your life.
An episode of Doctor Who in which no-one mentioned Clara: truly, it’s a Christmas miracle.
Nah, but seriously though: happy holidays one and all, and I hope you spent Christmas in the traditional haze of drunken, overfull perma-lounging. And, of course, with Christmas comes the Doctor Who Christmas special.
Well, that was…an episode.
It’s an impressive show that can relegate a major character death to the back burner of a mid-season episode, but Vikings did just that- even as Slaugy brought it at the hands of Lagertha in what was, for my money, Alyssa Sutherland’s best scene in her run on the show, Vikings returned instead to the major conflict that has always been the driving force behind the show: religion.
The Cutprice Guignol 