It's back...

Forbrydelsen II is being shown on BBC Four and I was so excited I donned my favourite woolly jumper, dimmed all the lights in the house and my boyfriend and I were both deliberately monosyllabic and surly with each other.

That is how much I love this show.

Strange behaviour you might think, especially for a cop show, especially for a Danish cop show, but then if you watched the first series, you'll know that Forbrydelsen is a lot more than that. It's intelligent; insanely well written and unabashedly dark and it doesn't strive for closure.  In short I love it.  The first series which I watched when BBC 4 repeated it in nightly chunks over the summer and it had me and the boyfriend hooked completely.

New series though, how could they top the last one?  To be honest I'm not sure that they can but the first episode was good.  Lund is now a customs officer, and Brix invites her to look at a case. Which she doesn't want to do, but then slowly slowly, she calls by and looks at the case.

We were a bit too tired to watch the second episode so I discuss things in detail but I'm left wondering what's going to happen next, will I get over the loss of characters who were central in making the first series so good. Troels Hartman, Meyer and Theis and Pernelle…  I missed them all especially Troels.

But Forbrydelsen is back. Tak.

 

Hateful Heart

The fourth in the Vampire Gene series by Sam Stone.  What I have enjoyed about the series is the mix of historic fiction with the contemporary and the supernatural element along with the time travelling elements and magick. It sounds like a mixed bag but the ideas really work for me and I have found each of the novels a really good read.

Hateful Heart picks up a short time after the events of Demon Dance with some news and a new arrival at Rhuddlan Castle. This initial incident triggers a series of events and adventures through time with appearances from the Templars and possibly the Illuminati and a really interesting take on a biblical story.

I like the way that throughout the series Sam Stone mixes religion, mythology, magicks and, science to create a universe that is complex and requires a bit of brain power to keep things straight.  The pace is fast and a lot of incidents occur, coloured with some very vivid descriptions which don't shy away from violence when necessary.

I will say I'd worked out some of the plot points well before the reveals but all that did was make me feel smug that I'd worked it out.

A really enjoyable ride and I've heard from Sam herself that she'll be starting work on the fifth novel in the series Silent Sand in January.

Mad Men Season 3 so far..

After inhaling season one and two of this glorious series a few things  have got in the way of my watching season three, but last night there was a conflux of events, I wasn't needed at rehearsal and I had a pile of ironing to do so I broke out series three of mad men on blu ray no less.

The opening sequence of the first episode with Don in the kitchen watching his memories unfold around him was just totally exquisite and it set the bar pretty high for the rest of the episode.

As with previous seasons of Mad Men stuff happens but it happens at a glacial pace, nuance is everything.

In the first four episodes there were several stand out moments for me.

1. Pete and Trudy dancing.

2. Joan Holloway playing an accordion and singing.

3. Joan giving Peggy advice on advertising for a roomie.

4. The moment where Betty let's a complete stranger feel her bump

5. Gene letting Sally drive, plus the whole Sally/Gene grandpa/granddaughter relationship.

I can't wait to see what happens next in this series it is so beguiling.

First World Problems

Me and my chap, have a fairly busy week with rehearsals and because of that we record a lot of television on the Sky+ (other DVRs are available) so much so we've lost some of the things we've not got around to watching. This weekend a concerted effort was made to do some catching up. So we caught up on Dexter season 5 with a few gaps in but they were early enough in the season for it not to matter.

I've also finished the 3rd season of Nurse Jackie which is an incredible watch and so funny, I've really enjoyed seeing where she's ending up. I also really love the peripheral characters like Thor, Mrs Akolitus and Zoey

In addition I finished off watching Spartacus Gods of the Arena which was really good.

That leaves Six feet under - we are 15 weeks behind schedule that is shown on sky atlantic so I think that's out next focus. 

The DVR box now has 25% free and we're going to try and keep up a bit more.

Currently recording: The Ringer, the walking dead, misfits, treme and the big bang theory. Only connect and Merlin. 

We're operating a strict watch then delete procedure.

Also we've received the wire season 2 disc one and the Closer season 1 disc two from Love film… we've got a lot to be getting on with.

We finished watching the first season of the Wire last weekend.  Its something I really enjoyed, it's such a deep show and like Battlestar Galactica before it for the first time we need to only watch two episodes in a sitting else we break our brain.  The plotting is so rich and intricate that it makes it difficult to cope with too much of it in one go.

More about me

I thought I'd give you a little catch up. This year has been a big year for me to take on new things, I went on a personal development course in the spring which put into a motion a desire within me to do something creative and see where it got me.  Well in true fashion I signed up for an Open University course called Start Writing Fiction

I'm now in my second week of block one and I am loving it.  The course is posing me a number of challenges to write in ways I haven't thought of before and giving me an insight into what established authors do.

It's early days and I've worked through the first block and I'm waiting to publish some of the thoughts on the block website so my fellow tutor group members can read what I've put and see if they like what I've done or not.

I'm looking forward to writing the assignments, which must mean I'm a bit of a sick puppy.

I'll let you know how I'm getting on.

In other news I've been laughing myself to death over this video.  Sheer genius.