Russian Doll Season 2 Russian Doll’s first season started off going great guns, before failing to stick the landing. This unnecessary – in as much as nothing about the original demanded more, beyond it proving something of a hit for Netflix, not least critically – second run doesn’t have that problem, mostly because it never even clears the runway. Nadia: Well, inexplicable things happening is my entire modus operandi. If in doubt, revert to a Quantum Leap/Back to the Future time-travel premise, by way of… er, that Nicholas Lyndhurst series (Goodnight, Sweetheart). This time, Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan (Charlie Barnett) find
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It Couldn’t Happen Here (1987) “I think our film is arguably better than Spiceworld” said Neil Tennant of his and Chris Lowe’s much-maligned It Couldn’t Happen Here, a quasi-musical, quasi-surrealist journey through the English landscape via the Pet shop Boys’ “own” history as envisaged by co-writer-director Jack Bond. Of course, Spiceworld could boast the presence of the illustrious Richard E Grant, while It Couldn’t Happen Here had to settle for Gareth Hunt. Is its reputation deserved? It’s arguably not very successful at being a coherent film (even thematically), but I have to admit that I rather like it, ramshackle and studiously aloof though it is. Lowe: Where are
Twin Peaks 17: The past dictates the future 18: What is your name? So the great evil that Gordon Cole (David Lynch) has been battling to defeat all this time is Judy/Jowday/Jaio Dai (Chinese for “resolution” or “explanation”). It’s kind of a cheap shot, really. Lynch saying “This is what you get when you dare to ask me to make sense of things, or tell you who killed Laura Palmer”. Being, an episode where he offers resolution in an almost perversely perfunctory manner, followed by an episode in which he recants and invites you never to receive any again.
Twin Peaks 3.7: There’s a body all right. First things first: my suggestion that everyone’s favourite diminutive hitman, Ike “The Spike” Stadtler, had been hired by the Mitchum brothers was clearly erroneous in the extreme, although the logistics of how evil Coop had the contingency plan in place to off Lorraine and Dougie-Coop remains a little unclear right now. As is how he was banged up with the apparent foresight to have on hand ready blackmail tools to ensure the warden would get him out (and why did he wait so long about it, if he could do it
Twin Peaks 3.3: Call for help If the first two episodes tend to the weird/dark, then the second couple are more in favour of the weird/light, once we get past the Eraserhead stuff with the girl in the radiator, I mean Naido (Nae), who is replaced by Teresa Palmer doppelganger American Girl (Phoebe Augustine). The proceedings come complete with staggered editing that’s enough to give you rolling vision and detached retinas, if you’re lucky, as we continue Cooper’s extended mission to return to the real world, or something approximating it. American Girl: When you get there, you will already be here. Some
Twin Peaks 3.1 & 3.2: The stars turn and a time presents itself. Well, Lynch hasn’t lost it, that much is clear. Not his marbles, which he never had, of course, but his capacity for weirdness, hilarity, discord and the outright disturbing, all of which are brewing away potently in Season Three of Twin Peaks. What’s most striking, though, and something I’ve occasionally found a detraction from his work, is that the presence of Mark Frost ensures there’s a lucid narrative thread upon which to hang his strange fascinations. It means that, even when we go on a diversion into