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| Ludwig |
There was much ado about nothing regarding season three of White Lotus. I enjoyed the first season and thought season two of the show was positively brilliant. But this latest iteration of the Lotus was comparatively flat. It was a slow build to nothing. I enjoyed most of the characters. I’ve always liked Carrie Coon, Parker Posey, Walton Goggins and Sam Rockwell and they were, not surprisingly, the highlights of the season. I particularly enjoyed the scenes with Rockwell. He was great with Goggins and his sexuality monologue was pure gold. But in the end the show itself petered out without providing any satisfying conclusions. Characters arcs that didn’t arc.
Meanwhile the missus and I are very much enjoying Ludwig, a new show on Britbox, the latest streaming service we’ve added to our TV arsenal. The title refers to the pseudonym of the title character, a nebbish and brilliant puzzle maker who steps in as a police detective when his twin brother disappears. He impersonates his brother in hopes of solving the mystery around his absconding and goes about using his genius to solve homicide cases. The show is set in Cambridge, which like other smaller venues of detective and cop shows has a sudden outbreak of murders. All the better for viewers. Ludwig is not your typical hero cop by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s great fun. We’ve watched four of the first six episodes of the inaugural season and enjoyed them all.
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver continues to be the best thing on television. His most recent episode on Trans Athletes is a perfect illustration of this. Oliver makes compelling fact-based arguments and manages to inject humor into even the most depressing of topics. He also brilliantly skewers the pompous, the wrong-headed and the arrogant, always using the weapons of logic and truth. Like most great comedians Oliver is clearly a very intelligent person. Humor often comes from insight and being able to view the world from different angles. In looking for what is funny in given situations the comic explores different aspects of both the mundane and the critical It would be criminally unfair to praise the show and not mention the outstanding team of writers and researches who work on it.
Over the last few years I’ve been watching various beloved sitcoms chronologically . I’ve delighted in such programs as Seinfeld, Schitt’s Creek, Community, Parks and Rec, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Frasier and currently Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It’s impossible for me to mention Brooklyn without noting that it’s star, Andy Samberg was a student of mine in days of yore. I can say that I made him what he is today. It wouldn’t be true but I can say it. When the show first aired I watched it to support Andy not expecting much but it quickly became must-watch television. Like most good sit-coms it had a terrific ensemble cast, clever writing and lots of laugh. In it’s later years the show took on social issues. In the wake of the George Floyd murder it zeroed in on abusive police officers and the failure for cops to truly protect and serve. It was mostly successful. Occasionally laughs were sacrificed in service of the message but that’s not a bad sacrifice to make. The performance of Andre Braugher as Captain Holt and his relationship with Samberg’s Jake Peralta has shone through as one of the key’s to the show’s success. Sadly, Braugher died of lung cancer two years at the age of 61.
I recently finished reading a book called, Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets by Michael Korda. (It is worth noting that this is a recent release in paperback yet the author is 91 years old. It gives us old writers inspiration.) Muse of Fire tells the stories of six British warrior poets from The Great War, four of whom died during the conflagration. The two who survived the war were Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves both of whom lived long, successful lives spent in the public eye. Sassoon, who lived until 1967, authored a three volume fictional autobiography called the Sherston Trilogy which I can heartily recommend. Graves, who died in 1985, was a prolific author most known for his memoir, Goodbye to All That (again I can offer a personal recommendation) and the historical novel, I Claudius. Two of those who didn’t survive the war remain well-known among poetry fans, Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen. It’s also interesting to note that four of the six poets were either gay or bi-sexual and two (Sassoon and Owen) were almost certainly lovers. Much and indeed all of the later war poetry depicted the horrors of war, the madness of it and the incompetence of the generals and political leaders who continued to send generations of young man to be slaughtered. Muse of Fire provides many things including mini-biographies, an overview of the war and how the poet’s muse can work in strange places. Powerful, even at times beautiful poetry can come out of war and indeed all manner of human suffering. We often make art of what we can’t otherwise comprehend. Love and war are two prime examples; what better way to make some semblance of sense out of them then by creating art. Excellent book that deserves a very wide audience.
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