Category Archives: Family Conflict

Bodyguard (2018)

From IMDB:

A contemporary thriller featuring the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch of London’s Metropolitan Police Service.

From Netflix:

Sgt. David Budd is promoted to a protection detail for UK Home Secretary Julia Montague, but he quickly clashes with the hawkish politician.

From Netflix you can stream the 6 episodes of the only season available.  Each episode is an hour except the last episode which lasts 75 minutes.

In Britain this TV series was a well-deserved smash hit. Character interplay, plot, action sequences, and romance are seamlessly joined. Because certain scenes are meticulously detailed (for example the disarming of a bomb attached to a person), some viewers might at times find the film progress slow. However, for me those details just added to the unceasing tension.  At times I was literally on the edge of my seat.

Purposeful spoiler: the series has a satisfactory end.

WARNING:  British thriller TV series are not squeamish and have no qualms about killing off characters that you might think were essential to the plot.

Gina McKee (who plays Anne Sampson) was familiar to me as the actor who played Irene Forsyte in the 2002 TV series “The Forsyte Saga”.  Along with her character, Richard Madden (as David Budd) and Keeley Hawes (as Julia Montague) steal the show. But all the acting is wonderful.

As far as political thrillers go,  you cannot go wrong with this series.

 

Shetland (2016)

Formerly from Netflix:

Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez and his team face storms, corruption, cold cases and more as they investigate murders on the remote Shetland Islands.

2022 UPDATE:

Amazon Prime Brit Box now offers 7 seasons of Shetland.  According to reviews, season 7 sadly is the last. In fact, at the end Jimmy Perez quits the force because it takes too much out of him.   Like a fine wine, the series was good to the last drop.

CHANGE OF PROVIDER:

Netflix no longer (2019) offers “Shetland”. Instead Brit Box offers all 5 seasons. Season 5 was made in 2019.

Brit Box is a collection of British offerings.  Currently Brit Box costs $6.99 a month after a free trial. You can subscribe to Brit Box through many different providers. In my case, I went to my Amazon Prime and chose to subscribe to Brit Box. This means that when I choose Amazon Prime Videos, one of my squares which represents a choice is Brit Box. When I click on that Brit Box square, my screen switches to all the choices available to  Brit Box, including “Shetland”.

“Bleak” is the first word that comes to my mind when viewing the landscape of the Shetland Islands. Perhaps you might choose “beautiful in a barren sort of way”.  Because the population is small, you get the impression everyone knows everyone else.

As the episodes develop, you learn that each person has their own story to tell.  Respectable citizens are not often what they seem. Perez (played by  Douglas Henshall) struggles with helping his daughter find happiness, despite her missteps. He shares her upbringing with Duncan (played by Mark Bonnar).

For a complete rundown of all 5 seasons see Wikipedia.

We waited impatiently for each new episode.  Possibly you will feel the same.

 

The Wife (2017)

From IMDB:

A wife questions her life choices as she travels to Stockholm with her husband, where he is slated to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Glenn Close’s role as “the wife” has been mentioned in relation to an academy award. Her performance actually gave me gooseflesh. Watching the facial expressions in her beautiful face for an hour and forty minutes was sheer pleasure.

Jonathan Pryce had the dubious success of offering an excellent performance as “the husband”. You have to see the film to understand what I mean. But I will not spoil the plot for you. Jonathan Pryce was familiar to me as, of all things, High Sparrow from “Game of Thrones”.

My heart went out to Max Irons as the suffering “son”.

DO NOT MISS!

Seven Seconds (2018)

From IMDB:

Tensions run high between African American citizens and Caucasian cops in Jersey City when a teenage African American boy is critically injured by a cop.

From Netflix you can stream this 10 episode series. Each episode is about an hour except the final episode is 80 minutes.

In the very beginning we see Officer Peter Jablonski accidentally run down a black boy Brenton who was riding his bicycle through the park on a snowy day. Immediately his corrupt white police buddies convince him to hide the crime as they drag the living boy to a ditch and leave him to bleed out over 12 hours. All ten very tense episodes relate the effort by a black female Assistant DA named KJ Harper and a white policeman  Joe ‘Fish’ Rinaldi to seek justice. Along the way we spend time with each member of Brenton’s family and the police families as their lives are sadly changed by the killing.  If there is a theme here, it is “Black Lives Should Matter” even if, sadly, black lives do not matter.

Acting is superb. None of the actors were familiar to me. Even the villains stand out as especially heinous, especially the unscrupulous white woman who defends the police.

For me much of the tension was getting to the end to see how the trial turns out.  Enjoy the gripping ride while you predict what a realistic ending would be.

DO NOT MISS!

 

 

 

Doctor Foster (2015)

From IMDB:

A woman suspects her husband of having an affair. After following several lines of inquiry far more unravels including a streak of violence below the surface

From Netflix you can stream two seasons of this BBC soap opera. Each season consists of 5 episodes. At this point (July 2018) it is uncertain as to whether there will be a third season, even though the ending of season two cries for a continuation of the story.

Make no mistake, these 10 episodes comprise nothing better than a sex-and-revenge fueled soap opera. Nonetheless, yours truly binged frantically from episode to episode long after my wife lost interest in “pure tripe.”  But I have never been ashamed to admit that “I Love Trash!”

If you watch much British TV, then many of the actors will be familiar faces.  Most probably you may recognize Suranne Jones, who plays the lead role as Dr. Gemma Foster, as one of the team of women police detectives in “Scott & Bailey” (which I heartily recommend).

If for no other reason than to enjoy watching one of the best revenge dinners I have ever seen, put this potboiler on your list of guilty pleasures.

Keeping Faith (2017)

From Acorn TV:

Fun-loving Faith Howells is drawn into a mystery when her husband and business partner Evan (Bradley Freegard, EastEnders) disappears. He leaves for work, but never arrives. His sudden absence strikes deep into the heart of this tiny Welsh community and forces Faith to come back from extended maternity leave to defend a hopeless vagrant on shoplifting charges. As increasingly-desperate Faith searches for clues, she discovers new revelations about Evan’s private life and questions how well she really knows the man she loves. Also starring Hannah Daniel (Hinterland), Matthew Gravelle (Broadchurch), Mark Lewis Jones (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), and Aneirin Hughes (Hinterland).

From Acorn TV you can stream the 8 one-hour episodes of the only season offered.

“Mounting Frustration” best describes the progress of the series. Just when you think things could not get any worse for poor besieged Faith, they get much worse. Finally Kathy and I arrived at the eighth and last episode only to be rewarded with an ambiguous somewhat happy ending, which seems to beg for another season.

Too much time is spent in long-held motionless poses where we watch Faith suffer. Could the villainess be any nastier?  As plots go, this one is fairly complicated.

Just don’t expect justice to be served perfectly, and for all the heroes to live happily ever after.

Safe (2018)

From IMDB:

After his daughter goes missing, a widower begins uncovering the dark secrets of the people closest to him.

Originally this thriller was offered on Acorn TV.  In 2020 Netflix started streaming the  8 episodes of this real pot-boiler. All the characters live in a gated community. All have guilty secrets to hide. In fact, many if not most of the inhabitants are not very nice people.

You will recognize  Michael C. Hall  (the gay undertaker from “Six Feet Under” and also the lead character in “Dexter”).  Hall is an American born in Raleigh, North Carolina, but his British accent in this series is flawless (to my ears at least).

Some pot-boilers are done well and this is one of them, very binge-worthy. One attraction, if that is what it is, is the fact that things just worse and worse. Additionally the film is based on a book by Harlan Coben, one of my favorite leisure thriller authors.

DO NOT MISS!

The Tunnel (2013)

From IMDB:

The Tunnel is set against the backdrop of Europe in crisis. When a prominent French politician is found dead on the border between the U.K. and France, detectives Karl Roebuck (Stephen Dillane, “Game of Thrones”) and Elise Wassermann (Clémence Poésy, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II”) are sent to investigate on behalf of their respective countries. The case takes a surreal turn when a shocking discovery is made at the crime scene, forcing the French and British police into an uneasy partnership. As the serial killer uses ever more elaborate and ingenious methods to highlight the moral bankruptcy of modern society, Karl and Elise are drawn deeper into his increasingly personal agenda.

From Amazon Prime you can download the 10 episodes, each episode lasting about 45 minutes.  Both French and English are spoken.

Be prepared for a somewhat grim story in which the psychopathic “Truth Terrorist” enacts a series of wrenching murders. For example, the story starts when the French and British detectives meet inside the channel tunnel at the exact half point which is the dividing line between Britain and France. Lying on that midpoint are two body halves (each from a different person) joined to look like one person. This should give you an idea of how grisly the plot becomes.

If you can put that gore behind you, you might enjoy the personal crux of the story: Elise, the French half of the team, suffers from an extreme case of Asperger’s Syndrome. She just does not understand human emotions, or as we might put it, she is just plain clueless. However both she and the British detective Karl are equally obsessively dedicated and very smart detectives.  Between them the interaction is entertaining.

And yes, there is quite a bit of sex, meaningless and otherwise.

If you can stand the harsh crimes, the suspenseful story is a good watch.

Absentia (2018)

From Amazon Prime:

Centers on an FBI agent who disappears without a trace while hunting a serial killer.

From IMDB:

After being declared dead in absentia, an FBI agent must reclaim her family, identity and innocence when she finds herself the prime suspect in a string of murders.

From Amazon Prime you can stream the 10 episodes of this one season Amazon Prime Original series. Each episode lasts about 45 minutes.

With so many categories involved, it is hard to pin down a short characterization: suspense, police detectives, FBI, serial killers, mad scientist, kidnapping, innocent suspect trying to find the truth.

Emily Byrne, who is played by Stana Katic (Kate Becket of “Castle” fame), is central to the story. Emily, an FBI agent, has been missing for 6 years. Her supposed killer, Conrad Harlow, is released from jail when she mysteriously reappears suffering from amnesia. Meanwhile her husband, FBI agent Nick Durand, has remarried Alice Durand. Nick and Alice are raising Flynn, Nick’s son by Emily. Needless to say, Nick will remain conflicted about a choice between Emily and Alice for all ten episodes.

Emily’s energies are devoted for all ten episodes in finding out what ever happened to her. She has nightmare flashbacks to being placed in a sealed glass tank that regularly fills with water to almost drown her. Unfortunately Harlow is murdered and Emily is blamed. More murders ensue for which Emily is again blamed. For the rest of the story Emily is on the run from the Boston Police Department and the FBI in a desperate attempt to learn the truth and clear her name. Emily’s father and brother become involved. Nick teams up with a BPD detective to do the investigation.

Before you devote yourself to 10 episodes, there are some warnings:

  • At least the first time you see that torture tank you will almost certainly cringe. That tank is a persistent fixture in the story.
  • Emily is an unbelievable superwoman: she leaps over walls, she runs for long distances, seeming she hardly ever eats or sleeps, she always invents incredibly clever solutions for each crisis. In other words, just suspend disbelief.
  • Similarly there are just too many suddenly convenient discoveries, clues, escapes, etc. Again just suspend disbelief. But it did help to have a happy (if somewhat lame) ending.

Having warned you, nevertheless I breathlessly binge-watched all ten episodes.

Inspector and the Sea (2007)

From MHz Choice:

Based on the international best-selling mystery novels by Mari Jungstedt, the blockbuster German crime series The Inspector and the Sea is set on the idyllic Swedish island of Gotland. Walter Sittler stars as Robert Anders, a laid-back German police inspector who has moved to the island to be with his Swedish wife, Line, and their two children.

From MHz Choice you can stream 2 seasons of this German production that takes place in Sweden.  Each season offers 6 episodes each of which lasts 1.5 hours.

Each episode is self-contained although the family theme continues throughout both seasons. In fact all the stories center around the Anders family and their social group such as friends, relatives, and their children’s school society.  Throughout Robert Anders and his wife Line and their children have their problems, the worst of which is that Robert is so busy with his detective work that he somewhat neglects his family. In my experience this “neglectful detective” theme is present  in the majority of such TV series.

After watching a few episodes, Kathy and I find that the Swedish society, at least as it is portrayed in this series, is somewhat ugly: high school children are as entitled and cruel as their unfaithful parents.

Despite the defects of the portrayed Swedish society, the plots, characters, and acting (for the most part) are excellent and make watching such long episodes well worth the effort.