KWIF: Wes Anderson x Roald Dahl (+3)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week (ha!) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts.

This week:
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar | The Rat Catcher | The Swan | Poison (2023, d. Wes Anderson - Netflix)
World on a Wire (aka Welt am Draht) (1973, d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Criterion) 
The Grand Tour (1991, d. David Twohy - Bluray)
Maggie Moore(s) (2023, d. John Slattery - Netflix)

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Wes Anderson is not the most prolific of creators. Looking at his filmography, he trends at about three years between films.  We just received Asteroid City earlier this year, so this quartet of short films from Anderson was entirely unexpected, and a delightful surprise.  His films are quite obviously painstakingly crafted... not that other films aren't, but Anderson's fastidiousness in art and visual design requires exacting confluence in not just art design and technical production, but also choreography.  It's not just that the positioning of sets, props, camera, lighting, performer, etc. need to be in the exact right position, it's that they need to all move with the precision of Cirque du Soliel to achieve the effect Anderson wants.  I have speculated in the past about what drives character performance Anderson's films -- the forthright and honest, dispassionate and unfiltered way of speaking -- is either the director finds human emotion an alien concept, or else understands it so well he turns a clinical eye towards it.  I'm now wondering if it's because his films are often so clockwork in their timing, that there's no room for modulation in performance.

With these four productions, Anderson has stripped down even further the performance side of things, and upped the ante on precise, controlled movement.  These four tales to be told are each a Roald Dahl short story that Anderson is not so much adapting into a play or production, but a moving storybook.

He's ostensibly created a new genre.

Think books-on-tape, but visualized.  We see the narrator, a big-name celebrity, in costume, on a set, relaying the prose story, with visual cues of all kinds - performers interacting, props being handed or taken away by costumed stagehands, set pieces (or pieces of sets) moving to reveal new set pieces, camera movements around a set, soft transitions to stop motion animation, in-camera visual trickery, pantomime -- all in service of the verbalized narrative.  

Who is narrating can shift throughout each production, the duties lobbed around like a volleyball, but there's always a logic to the shift. Anderson has these narratives relayed at a lightning clip, to the point of being somewhat dizzying. If you get distracted, even for a second, you can lose the plot.  And with all the wonderfully captivating and clever visuals, it's hard not to be distracted.  The breakneck pacing is doubly part of the whole stage-production vibe that gives each story the air of a single take, but also necessary to keep the story contained to its sub-20-minute length.  The narrators -- Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, Ralph Fiennes and Rupert Friend -- all deliver the story rapidly and precisely, super enunciated, and whether it's rote memorization or reading off cue cards it's quite impressive (methinks it's the former, as eye movement and demands of performance would make cue card reading even more of a challenge.)

The four stories are:

1) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Here the narrator switches because of a nesting doll-like tale that finds a story within a story within a story. It's ultimately the tale of a man aiming for the greatest riches he can imagine by learning the very specific discipline of seeing without seeing. It takes years for him to master it but when he does, he finds that he sees something more can be done than benefit himself, that the greatest reward in life is helping others. It's the most moralistic storybook tale of the quartet, and also the most involved production, with the most performers and elaborate set changes required. It's the greatest marvel of the four. I envy the weird kids who stumble on this absolutely curious product at a young age and watch it over and over. It is both transfixing and mind expanding.

2) The Swan. A sensitive young boy is bullied by two exceptionally nasty brutes who force him into more and more extreme situations. It is a harsh tale that exemplifies the cruelty of man towards other men and towards nature, and one's ability to, if not rise above it, then endure in spite of it. It's a melancholy tale reflecting the worst of human nature. If I take anything from this it's that we've hit a stage in children's stories in the past two or three decades where parents increasingly want to shield their children from such tales, to promise the kids a world of harmony, not harshness, and this is Anderson reminding us that it's okay... that maybe such stories teach us empathy as well as extoll the virtues of endurance and perseverance.  Anderson still loads the storytelling up with innate whimsy as a result of the production values and the preformative acts of the stagehands, but it's not even the proverbial spoonful of sugar. It's a dark tale with a small speck of glitter.

3) The Rat Catcher. A darkly comedic tale of a nasty rat-like exterminator hired to catch rats. He engages with the narrator and a garage hand, providing his insight into his profession, but also his own disturbed self. Richard Ayoade is the narrator here and, frankly, I'm surprised it took Anderson this long to collaborate with him. They seem to be a natural fit. Ralph Fiennes plays the ratcatcher here, and it is a magnificent comedic performance.  This story exemplifies best Anderson's control over the power of suggestion, using the combination narrative and pantomime to get through the most unpleasant aspects of the story.

4) Poison. An Englishman in (presumably) occupied India awakens to finds himself in a predicament with a poisonous snake asleep on his belly. His associate summons the doctor, and both endeavour to aide the man in his situation. While each of these tales is told in a rapid clip, this one utilizes its storytelling pace like a ticking time bomb, ratcheting up the tension as Dev Patel and Ben Kingsley try to diffuse the situation, while a more and more uncomfortable-looking Benedict Cumberbatch lay motionless in bed. It's easily the most exciting of the quartet's stories, but it's climax is the most sobering and potent. We think this is a whimsical story about a most tense situation, but the poison in question is the racism already in the Englishman's blood. it's toxic and spat venomously, with no easy antedote. 

I can see these not being to everyone's delight, because the form here is so radically different than what we expect from a Wes Anderson film, or from film in general. It's a new form of storytelling that I would love to see others try their hand at, having actors narrate a short story but providing staged visual accompaniment, maybe under a structured anthology.  I don't imagine it becoming a dominant form of entertainment, but it's such a bold new way to tell stories. At the very least, I would love more of this pairing of Anderson and Dahl.  It's clear the influence the author and his storytelling, has had on the director.

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Beyond his name and his profession, until a few days ago, I knew nothing about director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  A cursory glance around the internet, he is a complicated figure at best, or the epitome of the toxic, abusive, self-destructive auteur at worst. Were he alive today, he would be cancelled.  He was a queer filmmaker but had some of his works levied as being homophobic, as well as misogynistic and sexist. Mercifully, I don't see any of that in World on a Wire.

This is my first exposure to Fassbinder, as part of Criterion's October selection of Techno Thrillers. I only just learned that the production was a two-part made-for-TVmini-series based on the Daniel F. Galouye novel "Simulacron-3", which suddenly makes much more sense to me.  I had wondered how someone like Fassbinder who was incredibly prolific (looking at his IMDB page, he had completed over 40 productions in about a 15 year career before his death) could come up with such an immaculately well-realized cyberpunk story in the early 1970s.  Of course there was a novel behind it, there had to be. And, as a production, it feels very much structured like a novel, less like TV or a movie.

Running 205 minutes, on a German TV budget, early on it seemingly feels the strain of its limitations.  The sets and wardrobe and lighting seem a bit cheap, the performers somewhat stiff, and there's just some oddness, like lack of extras or strange behaviour on screen. But moving past the 1970's German TV of it, and it starts to unveil itself... and the methodology of a craftsman comes through. There aren't special effects in this production, but through use of mirrors and windows and camera positioning or movement, Fassbinder delivers clues and cues to what's really going on. Glass is a motif throughout the production in both obvious and subtle forms. It's clear that the director is thinking both about telling the story as well as presenting it.

I had no idea cyberpunk existed as a genre prior to, like, William Gibson, but this is quite definitively a cyberpunk prototype. Our protagonist, Fred Stiller, is one of the architects of a simulated reality, where thousands of unique near-humans exist, primarily for the purpose of advancing market research for the government. Stiller's colleague mysteriously dies in an unlikely accident, after seemingly going mad, Stiller begins to question the project. When another colleague, the head of security, disappears before his very eyes, and then seems to be the only one who remembers the man, Stiller begins to question his sanity. 

It's not really a spoiler to say that Stiller learns his reality is, in fact, a simulation. It's the obvious revelation that I worried the story would spend 3 hours building towards. Instead, the clues are laid out for the audience to piece together, and for Stiller to resist the truth until he can no longer ignore it. By the mid-way point (the break between the two episodes) Stiller is aware that he is not a real person, and then it becomes about what he does with that information.

I'm blow away with this early 70's sci-fi psychological thriller and how adeptly and thoroughly it negotiates its ideas of reality, which, to me didn't seem to become part of the sci-fi conversation at large until the 90's when VR became a buzzword.  I was captivated by not just the story but the choices made in the production of the story that smartly expand on the world, and the worlds within worlds.  I was going to say I'm surprised this hasn't been remade, but Galouye's novel was also the basis for The Thirteenth Floor (1999) which I recall being a trite, subpar production. This is an utterly surprising, quality piece from a filmmaker I probably shouldn't like very much, but I'll separate the art from the artist for the time being.

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I like David Twohy's films. I think his Riddick trilogy with Vin Diesel is an over-ambitious, bonkers, action/sci-fi near-masterpiece, which is a pretty hot take, I know. I really, really like The Arrival, despite the miscasting of Charlie Sheen as a tech nerd.  He wrote Waterworld (a film I mistakenly avoided for decades), The Fugitive, and Critters 2 which is an insane resume. I'm pretty sure I have seen all the films he has written or directed except G.I. Jane and this one, The Grand Tour.

Re-released this year by Unearthed Films, I picked up the blu-ray of The Grand Tour on a recent physical media hunt because it was "A David Twohy film" I had never heard of before. It stars Jeff Daniels, but the figure on the painted box art it looked at first glance like Jeff Bridges to me, further confusing me. It also intoned time travel ("He came back from the future to save his only child from the past") so that's all I needed.

Once I unwrapped the box, and saw that the case had a reversible liner with a different image, I immediately recognized it... Timescape. This film was released in theatres as Timescape. Or, at the very least, it was advertised in comic books with that second image as Timescape. But that was still the limit of my familiarity. I had no idea what I was in for.

The Grand Tour finds widowed, alcoholic, single father Jeff Daniels still grieving his lost wife while renovating their house outside of town into a bed and breakfast.  A coach bus pulls up to his door and group of tall, attractive, odd-behavioured tourists from "California" emerge, with one demanding they stay at his establishment. A fat wad of cash ensures the transaction. These strangers are a mystery, and the way they behave raises questions that only Jeff Daniels seems curious about. Since we know the premise of the film, from the box art, involves time travel, the presumption is that they're time travelers, or aliens, or both. But why are they here?

The film delicately balances its sci-fi aspects with a very human story of a flawed and hurting man looking to keep it all together in the face of extraordinary circumstances. Daniels does a pretty amazing job at keeping the character consistent between investigating what his guests are up to, fighting his attraction to one of them, trying to be a good dad, holding his father-in-law at bay, and struggling through guilt and depression. Though we didn't talk about depression much in the early 90's, it's clearly a film that is working through it, showing that there's no easy fix but sometimes you just need to prioritize others over yourself.

I liked this quite a bit. It's a surprisingly deep story within a thrifty production that has those layers that Twohy always brings to his scripts, elevating it above the usual direct-to-video or B-movie genre pictures.  Twohy is a pretty good visual storyteller, though not exactly a stylist, and I think he trusts his writing more than his visual storytelling which may be what has held him back from being a more prominent director. This is a bit of a gem.

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I really, really like Jon Hamm as a performer. If we were in the old Hollywood system of the 40's and 50's Hamm would be cranking out four or five starring vehicles a year, one of which would be a hit while the others forgotten. As Patrick Willems mentioned recently, we don't really have that superstar leading man concept anymore, where an actor drives people to the theatres.  Post Mad Men though, Hamm (or Hamm's agents) had been pushing for that superstar leading man career resulting in a number of forgettably bland pictures ill-suited for him and his charm.  Hamm has since abandoned those aspirations, either stepping into great supporting roles where there's no pressure upon him, or leading smaller productions that are more tailored to take advantage of his persona.  Confess, Fletch is the most recent, and most winning example no doubt. 

Maggie Moore(s) is the second directorial feature of Hamm's Mad Men co-star and friend John Slattery. It is a dark comedy/crime drama about a troubled sandwich shop franchisee, Jay Moore (Micah Stock), whose life spirals out of control resulting in a hitman murdering his wife, Maggie, as well as woman of the same name. Hamm plays the widower Police Chief who is trying to make sense of the chaos.

The film co-stars Tina Fey as a neighbour to the Moores who Hamm's Chief takes a romantic interest in. Fey and Hamm have had a long history of working together (notably 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt), and there's such a natural sense of comfort between them. There may not be heavy fireworks between them, but there is a sweetness to their pairing that plays well on camera.  If I'm honest, I found the relationship drama between Fey and Hamm to be far more stimulating than the shitstorm Jay Moore gets himself into and the knots Hamm and his deputy (Ted Lasso's Nick Mohammad) try to untie. They're almost two separate films tonally, the relationship dramedy and the crime comedy, and they do seem at odds with one another.  The third act culminates in gunplay and violence that is even more tonally at odds with the rest of the production.

Positioned as a comedy by Netflix, I find it difficult to laugh when child pornography and spousal abuse are kind of instigators of the films high-jinks, and there are only a few outright chuckles found within. To its credit, the film never lost my interest, because I found Hamm held this up on his beefy shoulders pretty well, but I've seen more than a few of the muddy small-town crime-comedies over the years, and the key distinguisher of them as a subgenre is that they're all pretty forgettable. They all want to be Fargo but the only memorable one is Fargo.  The difference with Fargo is how conscious it is of its tragedy. It's a satire of human nature, how our egos tend to just dig us deeper into holes we've already dug. Maggie Moore(s)' story is trying to find humour in its horrors, and just can't escape the nature of the horrors it presents.  I think maybe if they shifted tones, did more of a Hell and High Water vibe, taking it all more seriously, it would play better...heavier, but better.

  

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Bliss

2021, Mike Cahill (Another Earth) - Amazon

When we discussed Cahill's other work that we both watched, we talked about the dramatic VS the science-fiction, in that the SciFi elements of the movie play a significant part but the real core to the movie is the drama of the events being played out. Again, here, that applies, possibly bleeding so far as to be only allegory.

Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson, Marmaduke) works a shitty mid-management job at a tech support company. Recently separated from his wife, his daughter is reaching out to ask him to come to her graduation. Meanwhile, he is ignoring calls as he doodles another world, another life, one more sublime and... more exotic than this shitty real world. It gets him fired. As he is being fired, he accidentally kills his boss. Or knocks the man unconscious. Who knows; Greg never checks but hides the man behind the curtains and heads across the street to a bar. Greg makes bad choices.

We should also make note that Greg crushed a pill under a credit card and snorted it. For his 'bad leg' or so he tells his daughter. But let's hand wave that away and focus on the SciFi. In the bar, Isabel (Salma Hayek, Joan is Awful) tries to get his attention, surprised he is "real" and then shows him what she can do to "not real" people - a simple wave of her hand sends a tray flying from the hands of a waitress. Cahill is setting us up in a Matrix style simulation, that for some reason, Isabel is running around being a homeless person inside of. And she coaxes Greg to come along, seducing him with her "magical" abilities and by being Salma Hayek. Greg seems OK with being dragged along, whether he believes the simulation bit or not.

The movie leads along as if this is a movie about an advanced simulation world, but the clues are always there that Things Are Not Quite As They Seem. And not the way you expect. Doubling down, Greg and Isabel leave for The Real World, the one from his drawings, but even if you ignore the unrealistic utopian vibes, that world seems less real than the simulation. People talk and act like they are NPCs; the dialogue and situations always seem.... off. Being a devotee of simulation fiction, I honestly was dragged along like the rest of the audience, expecting a layered reality... sorry, a layered simulation, like in Black Mirror. But reality is depressing.

The drama of this movie was not as alluring, captivating, as Another Earth and, TBH I put that entirely on Wilson and Hayek. They just weren't gripping as their characters and the sad sad lives, simulated and real, they were living were just mundane. In the end I didn't like either worlds, Real Life or Utopia. But that's life.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: 2020 Edition: Pt A

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty(¡) attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But every time I try not to write, bad things happen, very bad things. Somewhere. To someone.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my character

The Dropped

Being someone who watches far too much TV, and there being far too much TV for me to consume, I sometimes drop a show that doesn't keep my attention. Its not that I find it terrible, it just doesn't keep me there. Really really bad is rarely the reason I stop watching, in fact, often a reason I just keep on watching.

Evil, 2019, CBS

David is a Man of God, not quite a priest, not quite an exorcist, but employed by the Vatican to deal with cases of miracle, or anti-miracle (possession) for that matter. Kristen is a forensic psychologist hired by the state as an expert witness. After being drawn together during one of her cases, where the criminal acts as if possessed, she ends up working with David and his team. And together, the fight crime.

The crux of a show like Evil is to supposed to be about exploring which is worse -- the evil that men do, or the evil that men are influenced to do, by otherworldly entities. Y'know, the oldest excuse in the book -- the Devil Made Me Do It. It would be so much easier if we could attach all the atrocities in the world to something other than the nature of mankind. Man kind. The show wants to have utterly objective Kristen fall prey to questioning, to doubt and to come to an understanding there is more than her science. It wants David, with his faith in the Evil his Foe is capable of, to be subjected to how much worse the (more than?) average person can be.

There are some very sweetly evil things about this show, such as Michael Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest) as Dr. Townsend, someone we know right away is A Devil, but who performs all his greatest evils through very earthly acts. Emerson is vile, scathingly so, slick and very serpentine. When I stopped watching, he had just seduced Kristen's mother, making the woman believe Kristen's fear of the man was a daughter thing. Kristen also has her very own Incubus, a demon that invades her dreams, but whose impact carries over into the real world. This is possibly the creepiest aspect of the show, and they really need to draw more upon this aspect and spread it around the rest of the show.

The problem I found was that the show just wasn't sure what direction it wanted to go. The tonal shifts were wrought with a lack of dedication. And I am just not sure whether the characters truly felt committed to their beliefs, which is likely intentional, but comes off as a lack of clarity in the underlining story.

Prodigal Son, 2019, Fox

Malcom is a profiler for the NYPD, a quirky, eccentric man like all profilers are. He's a mild shade of Will Graham (Red Dragon) with one distinct aspect -- he is the son of a notorious serial killer called The Surgeon (Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon; note: how the heck did they get him for mid-grade TV ?!?!). His dad has been locked up since he is a child, and Malcom refuses to interact with him, until he is faced with profiling a copy-cat serial killer.

Once the door is opened to Malcom working with his dad, the door never shuts. The Surgeon, who lives quite the luxurious lifestyle behind bars, feels a need to reconnect with his distraught family. It plays out as manipulative. Malcom is angry, confrontational and fragile. I got the idea they might try and flip the circumstances on us, with Malcom eventually ending up as the serial killer and The Surgeon assisting the police, but alas the show didn't seem that well thought out. It might be worth binging on Netflix, when it eventually ends up there, but not worth the effort of weekly DLing/watching.

Daybreak, 2019, Netflix

Post-Apocalyptic, Zombie drama comedy based on a graphic novel sounds right down my alley. It was diminished somewhat by the focus on teenagers, as in adults all went zombified and all that remains are the various cliques of kids, but I gave it a shot. It was actually better than I thought it would be, having a bit of heart, but only just a tiny bit. So, eventually it was just supplanted by the next shiny, likely more murderous thing -- I am currently on another Murder Show binge.

Josh was the New Kid in a Glendale, California school when the zombie plague hit. He was the nice kid, the Canadian kid, in love with the school dear, Sam, a British girl whom everyone loved. When we start off, Josh is holed up in  his well protected house, stocked full of survival goods, expositioning us everything we need to know, Zombieland style. We learn what we need about the zombies, about the survivors and about how all the high school cliques (jocks, goths, nerds, etc.) have become the survivor factions that control his area of Glendale. Sam is missing and Josh just needs to find her.

This is a bright and sunny apocalypse. Sure, all the adults are dead and/or flesh eating zombies, and sure the clique that once controlled how they went to high school now controls all of their world, but there is plenty of food to be found and chance to recreate themselves. There must have been plenty of prozac in the water, cuz nobody seems all that bent out of shape by the end of the world. Once the first few episodes went past the world building, introducing the gay kid (pacifist samurai), the little kid (genius pyromaniac), psycho kid(s), etc. it held little depth to keep me coming back. And it got cancelled so I doubt it will go far, as too many of these shows save too much for the later yet unknown seasons.

The I-Land, 2019, Netflix

The trailer for the show mocks the Fyre Festival debacle, but doesn't tell you much more. Luckily, Netflix does trailer-independent previews when you mouse-over, which revealed a Lost rip off with a bunch of pretty people waking up on a tropical island, not sure who they are nor how they got there. Insert instant conflict. Insert lazy channel-flicking fodder, or at least the new digital version of it, as Kent referenced. What the Hell, let's see what it's about. Its likely to have A Twist.

Episode Three revealed this somewhat expected twist, but not before pitting all these pretty, amnesiac people against each other. Yep, almost instantly they reacted to each other like it was an episode of the other popular island TV show, Survivor, which I assume is intentional but just ended up being batshit. It was supposed to be subtly hinting at he underlying people sans memories, but it came off as these people people being stupid and antagonistic. For example, in Episode Two, one of the characters discovers what looks like an abandoned hotel or apartment complex -- instant shelter and likely some mouldy supplies. Instead, one alpha character yells about having just finished building a beach side camp for them, so they never go to the buildings.

Episode Three's twist, that they are all inside a chemically induced virtual reality, that they are all convicts participating (against their will) in an experiment, to prove that without the life baggage, they can be Good People (bzzzzzt), proves to be even more inane. After the reveal and the stupidity around it, I was out. Maybe some rainy, channel flicking day will bring me back.

V Wars, 2019, Netflix

After a couple of successes, Netflix must just be looking for the next graphic novel adaptation they can fund or just snatch up. As highlighted above, many are likely to be terrible. But the comic landscape is vast and genre-plenty, so there is lots to try out. We may be post-vampire, but there are still a couple of years to milk it before all the vamp fans fade out.

Dr. Luther Swann (Ian Somerhalder, The Vampire Diaries) is an epidemiologist who is asked to fly north quickly, to find out why some of his counterparts at an Arctic research site have gone silent. Sounds odd, but its entirely a plot of convenience. They need to get Swann to the site of where everything begins; the show doesn't care about the logic of that. So Swann, and his best buddy the pilot, fly off to find the base abandoned, signs of violence and a weird, black ash/mold/motes floating in the air. Be worried? Weirded out? Yes. Protect yourself? Bzzzzzt. But eventually they clue in and admit what they have exposed themselves to.

Back in civilization, they are quarantined. Pilot Buddy shows signs of suffering from some unknown disease, while Swann is just fine. They are released, as nothing shows up to have caused their discomfort.

And then the killing begins. Way Up North, the site dug into old ice and uncovered frozen prions. Both men are infected, but Swann is immune. Meanwhile Pilot Buddy turns into a vampire, which is slowly revealed over the first few episodes. The best friends become enemies when Swann won't help cover up his buddy's blood hungry murders. Things get worse when Swann transmits it to his wife, after some recovery sex, and has to kill her to protect his son. Thus the vampire plague is released.

I stopped watching before I knew the exact path this show was to take, but I assumed it was going to spread as quick as a cold virus, eventually separating the new vampire species from the cattle. Thus, the Wars of V Wars. It was so very very Canadian, and not in the fun, self-aware state of so many shows I watch. It was overly serious, not well thought out, conspiracy trope filled and definitely C-grade. Not being of any higher quality, The Strain, the Guillermo del Toro penned (with a co-writer) series from a few years ago at least had a more compelling plot. This did not. Again, it might end up being a rainy day or flu day (Corona? Vampire?) binge watch.

The Feed, 2019, Amazon

This is the only British show in the mix, and the only truly scifi show. It is set the Near Future when the Google/Facebook/Twitter analog technology The Feed is everything. This is your Black Mirror level creepy technology that is implanted in your brain at birth giving you constant, instant access to the social media tool, communication and even being able to augment reality by replacing what you see with what they/you want to see. Sounds scary/grand until a conspiracy begins to grow, one the points to someone being to control the Feed and anyone connected to it.

The show centres around the Hatfield family (I really hope the McCoys show up) who invented the tech and are the Bezos/Gates analog family. They are at the point where the technology is starting to become more than just social media, where it is beginning to play a part in world politics, so of course it has its protestors. Something seedy is going on, and Daddy Hatfield (David Thewlis, Kingdom of Heaven) seems to know what, and its affecting his family, but he won't let them in on what he really knows. But Tom, the son who really didn't want to have anything to do with the family, gets directly wrapped up in it when his wife shows signs of being manipulated through The Feed.

The problem with shows like this, whether American or British, is that they like to dribble out the actual story while piling on the fictional technology. But, being TV, they only have so much budget so they can really only show you so much, which ends up with us being stuck with lots of lots of filler scenes. Unless you get a stellar cast, great directing or at the very least, a very atmospheric style it gets boring real quick. This one was definitely Black Mirror-lite and I tired of it.

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And that was just the shows I dropped throughout 2019. Imagine what I can get bored with as this year proceeds !