'Trapped: Series 2' – Episodes 7 & 8

This is a full review of episodes 7 and 8 of Trapped so don’t read on unless you’re up to date.
Episode seven opens with the fairytale of Gutti the goat boy, his personal tragedy and how he gets trapped in a lost future. If it’s meant to evoke any sympathy or understanding in steely Halla it falls flat. “Gutti was an idiot” she says. There’s more myths and legends butting up against the everyday in these episodes as the villagers start to feel they’re cursed.
The man competing for unluckiest villager is Vikingur, stood awaiting his fate against a very suitable blood-red backdrop locked in a room in the plant to keep him safe from the angry mob. His white shirt is splattered in blood, the backdrop is a once-white sheet covered in red spray paint. Pawel was hit in the head with a nasty-looking pointed hammer and Vikingur looks extremely guilty. Pawel the Pole was running jobs with various foreign workers at the plant. Was he a mini mob boss? If so, I bet he had plenty of enemies.
Stefan, the clean-cut pal of Vikingur, rescues Ebo from yet another mob and puts him up with Hjortor and his girlfriend Soffia. Stefan can’t help but look guilty to seasoned fans of the genre – he’s so clean-cut he must be hiding something. Ebo speaks to the police to provide some context for Vikingur’s rage at Pawel and the homophobes they worked with. Lovely Asgeir’s English is beautifully spoken in this scene; he’s so kind to this terrified man.
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'The Bridge' – Series 4, Episode 6

This is a full review of The Bridge: Series 4, Episode 5. Catch up with all the reviews here. Don’t read on unless you’re completely up-to-date on the BBC2 schedule!
This week is Tommy’s story. The guy Henrik picked out of the files and put at the top of the investigation board gets a 18 minute long pre-credit explainer. I’m not usually a fan of this way of storytelling, but we are presented with a perfect concise package – a gift to the viewer that comes packed with answers we’ve been dying to find out for weeks.
Four Years Ago
Tommy Peterson worked for the dangerous mob boss William Ramberg, and was a police informant trying desperately to keep a violent gang war from happening. Henrik and Lillian promised to intervene before the shooting started, but couldn’t get sign-off from the prosecutor’s office. All this takes place on Tommy’s son’s birthday, and his son is revealed as wheelchair-user Kevin from Henrik’s NA group. Only four years ago he had the use of his legs and was called Brian.
Tommy is a patient of Niels the psychologist who can’t help him other than by prescribing drugs. And he goes to Richard Dahlqvist to do a tell-all for a newspaper – “Six Dead in Gang War. Police Informed, Did Nothing”. Unfortunately Richard’s eye for detail is Tommy’s ultimate undoing. The way he smokes a cigarette is distinctive and described in the article. In a terrifying meeting with William it’s clear the gangsters know he’s the snitch and they’re preparing to kill him. Turns out Danish cigarettes can kill you in two very different and equally nasty ways. Tommy is clever though, and has set up an escape route but is let down by his friend Moyo. In a classic gangster movie scene it’s William in the car who comes by to sweep up poor Tommy. There’s nowhere left to run.
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'The Bridge' – Series 4, Episode 3

This is a full review of The Bridge: Series 4, Episode 3. Catch up with episode 1  and episode 2. Don’t read on unless you’re completely up-to-date on the BBC2 schedule!
Episode 3 was a classic where not very much happens. Characters willfully impede the investigation and every plot point feels like a dead end, until a frantic final three minutes which leaves you shaking your head and softly repeating the word “What?” to yourself over and over.
Our heros
“I’m not well” says Saga in typical matter-of-fact style. If only it was always so easy to acknowledge your own mental health problems and ask for help. She then lists a devastating catalogue of personal disasters. “We’ve got a bit to work with” says the unflappable therapist, surely in the running for Understatement of the Year 2018.  We hope with help Saga will turn the corner and apply her logical, analytical brain to her own situation, but Mummy is messing with her delicate mental state from beyond the grave – having her lawyer send childhood mementos to Saga’s workplace. Don’t open the box Saga! It’ll be about as much fun as Brad Pitt’s surprise gift in Seven.
The Danish sister from episode two,  christened by the internet Öliver and Dødger, were such a perfect fit for a hole we’re desperate to be filled. Like a Choir of (Young) Believers the internet sang out in one voice “They could be Henrik’s daughters!” And he gets them home a lot faster than I’d have ever imagined, but now in context of their old bedroom he would recognise them, right? He seems to be the only person not swept up in the idea that they’re his long lost children. But one night at Henrik’s Hotel turns into two as these resourceful Tracy Beakers refuse to be sent off to any dumping ground.
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'Gomorrah' – Series 1

Welcome to Italy, Naples to be exact. Only these intimidating inner-city destinations won’t be on any tourist trail. If you end up in these locations you holiday stroll has taken the worst of wrong turns. Welcome to Gomorrah.
Gomorrah is based on the non-fiction investigative book — 2006’s Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia by Roberto Saviano, a journalist who got such a close and detailed look at Naples mafia he is now living in hiding. Gomorrah is the highest-rated show to ever air on the Italian network Sky Italia, far outstripping American imports such as Game Of Thrones and House Of Cards. There’s a strong familial resemblance to The Wire, as this captivating Italian series is also an immersive look at street-level crime, gang organisation and shocking scenes of unflinching violence.
Naples is a colorful city but those colours are washed-out neon, like looking at life through a fishbowl. In similar way to Braquo this is firmly set in the grimy underbelly of the city, filled with leather jacket wearing hard men. This is the territory of the mafia; running drugs, buying crooked cops and dishing out violence to all who cross them. And we meet them at a paranoid time – there’s problems with extra cops, neighbourhood watch and journalists crawling around the blocks. Everything is changing.
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'Gunpowder' – BBC1

This hotly anticipated three-part drama series about the most explosive event in British politics stars Kit Harington, whose star is in the ascendant as he’s that Jon Snow off of Game of Thrones. Even if you’re a stick-in-the-mud hold-out refusing to ride that fantasy dragon I’m sure you could pick his curly locks out of a line-up. Not only is Kit in the starring role as chief gunpowder plotter Robert Catesby but he’s credited as co-executive producer, and he helped get this unlikely vanity project off the ground. Turns out that Kit has family ties on his mother’s side to the rebellious Catesby family of persecuted Catholics who are central to the drama and to this famous nugget of British history.
We meet the Catesby’s and co back in 1603. Queen Elizabeth I is dead and James I is in charge. Things are not improving for England’s oppressed Catholics. The well-to-do Catesby family are seventeenth century preppers because in this instance the government really is out to get them.
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'Fargo – Series 2' – On the Box

A quick post about Fargo series 2 which started last week on Channel 4. I’d watched the film, but had no great love for it – no real recollection of it other than it was strange, ghoulish and looked bloody cold. This doesn’t paint me in the best light as a film fan, but was pretty useful when the Coen brother’s work was adapted for tv. I came to series 1 with fairly fresh eyes, not worried whether super-fan Noah Hawley could possibly write something that’d live up to the film like the real fans were.
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