MAY BE, MAYBE NOT

 

Not my thing. If I were a man of few words, that would be my review of Wonderful World, a drama series from South Korea with (I am told)14 episodes. I wouldn’t know as I stopped watching this Hulu presentation after episode two with the full knowledge that, very probably, the best was yet to come. I just could not take it anymore.

But that’s me. Many of you may really like this mystery/thriller/ revenge drama. It is, after all, professionally made… as, indeed, I have found most shows emanating from South Korea to be. The acting is sound (albeit a bit over the top for my tastes… but then, please remember, I began this review with “not my thing”).

I gather from the press release that the first two episodes are the set up for what follows… maybe on some rainy South Florida day I will turn this on again and see what episodes three through fourteen have to offer. Maybe not.

Luther originated in England over a decade ago, but I somehow missed it. I must have thought the title referred to Superman’s arch enemy rather than the lead character in the intelligent police procedural that this was… and still is… all these years later.

And what a treat to see Ruth Wilson, who I remember eyeballing in 2014 for the first time as the very attractive waitress/turned mistress in Showtime’s The Affair. In this antecedent to that role, she is the equally sexy, but now also the narcissistic and villainous adversary to actor Idris Elba, the John Luther of the show’s title who is an extraordinarily bright and insightful detective for the London Police force.

The writing is smart enough, the pace is rapid enough, and Mr. Elba and Ms. Wilson deliver some of the best acting performances you will see in any episodic cop show… that is with the exception of my somewhat biased opinion about Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly as the dynamic duo featured in Cagney & Lacey.

Luther is also on Hulu, and as it aired for nine years, there are a plethora of episodes. Although no new ground is broken here, it is a grown-up, well-made, cop show that I am happy to recommend.

If you are at all like me, in that you take some comfort in being in the hands of true professionals, then scroll over to Paramount + and turn on MOBLand. Director Guy Ritchie, who has himself substantial credits in the world of motion pictures and television, has assembled an impressive cast of familiar… and very talented… British actors. Pierce Brosnan, Dame Helen Mirren, Tom Hardy, and Paddy Considine head a cast of English actors you will readily recognize if you have done any serious streaming at all from Game of Thrones to Peaky Blinders, to Downton Abbey.

There are ten episodes in season one… The Godfather it is not, but it is entertaining with good production values, terrific actors, interesting characters, and a plausible plot line with an experienced pro in Guy Ritchie directing the premiere episode.

FYI, there is an earlier use of the title Mob Land (the one reviewed here is MOBLand) and that other one, with a space between the words mob and land, is a feature film starring John Travolta. That movie is a couple of years older than this current production.

Like Luther, MOBLand takes place in the British Isles but is mostly in and around London so… just maybe… unlike Peaky Blinders… you won’t need to engage the sub-title feature on your TV screen.

One of the finest actors working today is the very versatile and beautiful Michelle Williams. I have lost track of how many Academy Award nominations she has received (I hate research, but a good guess is around a half dozen), and I know there are even more Emmy nominations as well as Golden Globe Awards. She was fabulous as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn and was nothing short of perfection as Gwen Verdon in Fosse/Verdon which is still available on Hulu. Now she is once again on Hulu with a comedy(?) series, Dying for Sex.

Ms. Williams is predictably terrific, but I am insecure about what else to say about the show. It is… I am convinced… not for everyone. More than once, I was more uncomfortable than I like to be when watching a show. This series is about a 40something year old married woman with terminal cancer who wants to break out of her sexless marriage so that she can have as much and as varied a sex life as is imaginable.

Not that many years ago, I encouraged Sharon Gless… personally my favorite actress of them all… to acquire A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska… the premise of which was an advert Ms. Juska took in the New York Review of Books which said, “Before my 67^th birthday, next March, I want to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”

Sharon took my counsel and eventually starred in London’s West End in a play based on the book. I bring this up to defend myself, in advance, that it was not the sex in Ms. Williams’ series that I found bothersome. There were plenty of comic moments, and I wanted to laugh more than I did but just could not. I like to believe it was the thing about dying of cancer at a young age.

I can tell a joke or two about my Mother’s cancer. She could be a very funny woman. But Myrtle Rosenzweig was much older than the character played by Ms. Williams and that just may be the difference.

I have gone as far as I can with this. It is on you. Suffice to reiterate, Michelle Williams is among the best at what she does, her supporting actors are all first rate, the show comes from the development mavens at FX who are among the very best at what they do, and the cancer survivor with whom I viewed the show, laughed a lot at the antics of the leading lady. Go know.

Finally, my initial enthusiasm for Étoile is waning. I want the show to be something like what I thought I saw in episode one. It is not progressing nicely, and I find myself regretting that I elected to review the series based solely on that opening night’s episode. Frankly, it seemed like a good idea at the time… and I was so confident the super-talented Palladinos would maintain the style and quality of that first chapter that I plunged forward with an outright rave for them and their work (past and present). Turns out they are human. The ballet equivalent of what happens in the game of football when the star player fumbles the ball is what has happened here. I am guessing in ballet that would be a stumble.

Whatever, Étoile, the series, is not what that first episode promised, and I am now attempting to climb back from that limb on which I placed myself with my initial review.

Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot has a song about the merry month of May. The show itself has a lot of laughs, some hope for optimism about the human condition, a smidgen of sex, and at the end everybody dies, is banished, or winds up in a nunnery. A mixed bag. Not unlike these May entries.

Barney Rosenzweig