Four TV Series Worth Checking Out – Dropout, Landscapers, Vigil, Slow Horses

There is a belief among media watchers today that TV shows are matching, and in many cases surpassing, the best that mainstream cinema can offer. The following TV series back this argument.

If the events in the compelling eight-part series The Dropout had not actually occurred in real life, this TV series would have been dismissed as too farfetched and improbable. Afterall, how can a 19 year old university dropout suddenly come up with a device that using just a few drops of someone’s blood can perform multiple blood tests identifying a range of symptoms within that person? More amazing that that, how can the device be passed by the USA Food and Drug Administration Federal Agency, be accepted and used by the largest pharmacy chain in the USA (Walgreens), prestigious clinics such as the Cleveland Clinic, and have on its board of directors, such luminaries as ex Secretary of States Henry Kissinger and George Shultz? Yet this is exactly what Elizabeth Holmes achieved.  With the help of her partner Sunny Balwani she created a Steve Jobs like image for herself as the young tech entrepreneur, even sporting job’s signature black turtleneck. She was on the cover of every magazine, praised by ex-President Clinton and future President Biden. Her company Theranos was valued at 9 billion dollars. She was the golden girl of US Business until she was exposed as a fraud by a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes is simply magnificent. She has totally embodied the persona and characterization of Holmes; her self-belief, her singlemindedness, and her ability to charm and convince people. The British actor Naveen Andrews also gives a magnetic performance as Sunny Balwani, who was the real brains behind the deception part of the scheme. We see how Holmes and Balwani first meet at a university Mandarin program in China. Though Holmes’s idea for the blood testing device was rejected by her professor at Stanford, her deep urge to become a female Steve Jobs spurred her on. Balwani, who fell in love with her, had vast experience in running a tech company and attracting venture capital and was instrumental in attracting investors for Holmes’s company.

Good acting support is provided by William H. Macy as Holmes’s neighbour and business rival, Sam Waterson as George Shultz and Stephan Fry as Theranos’s chief chemist. Interestingly, the series was being made as the Holmes and Balwani trial was under way (they are due to be sentenced later this year). One can imagine the show’s writers ready at the keyboard to make last minute changes based on the verdicts handed out.

The four-part series Landscapers is also based on a true criminal case. In 2014 the couple Susan and Christopher Edwards were convicted of murdering Susan’s parents, burying their bodies, and using their identities to commit fraud. The couple maintain their innocence to this day. What distinguishes Landscapers from other crime series is its form. Show’s creator and co-write, Ed Sinclair and director /co-writer Will Sharpe have made a post-modern series, using magic realism, mixing reality and fantasy, making the police detectives cartoon-like characters and often pulling pack or moving the camera to reveal the set and the studio.

Christopher (David Thewlis) and specially Susan (Olivia Coleman) were film buffs and spent most of the money they had on film memorabilia. Susan was specially fond of Gary Cooper and the movie High Noon which has inspired the filmmakers to create scenes of the couple fantasizing as Cooper and Grace Kelly in High Noon.

To escape from the attention of the administrators of the UK pension of Susan’s parents, which the couple were drawing, they relocate to France. Despite Christopher’s love of French films, and particularly Gerard Depardieu (to whom he wrote fan letters), his poor French prevented him to land any jobs and lack of money prompted the couple to return to UK.

Christopher and Susan created a fantasy world for themselves in which they had a happy existence until the realities of the real world such as cost of living, loans, bills and other unpleasant truths caught up with them. Olivia Coleman and David Thewlis with their superb acting make us empathize and feel pity for these two individuals.

In Vigil, Surrane (Doctor Foster) Jones is DCI Amy Silva, sent onboard a Trident nuclear submarine to investigate a mysterious death of a crew member (Martin Compston of Line of Duty) and also the disappearance of a Scottish fishing trawler in the vicinity of the submarine. The submarine is being closely shadowed by Russian submarines who, very topically considering current events, are the chief nasty guys and suspected to have an agent onboard the British submarine to cause sabotage.

Amy is also recovering from a traumatic event in which the car that her husband was driving her and their daughter skidded off the road into a lake and she just managed to rescue their daughter. That experience has made her both feeling guilty about not being able to save her husband and claustrophobic, the latter obviously causing much discomfort to her onboard the submarine and a script device to ratchet up the tension.

Another important character is Amy’s colleague in the police force, Kirsten (Rose Leslie). She is trying to find information onshore to assist Amy with her investigation. In order to justify Kirsten’s unwavering support for Amy and her constant worry about her life being in danger, the writers have developed a lesbian relationship between the two. This for me didn’t ring true. We see Amy constantly thinking about her husband with whom she was deeply in love with and suddenly overnight she gets into an intimate relationship with Kirsten. That aside this six-part series is exciting and well worth a look.

I’ve only seen the first three parts of the 12-part series Slow Horses, but it promises to be one of the most talked about TV shows of 2022. It is based on a series of books by Mick Herron and it has elements of both the Smiley books by John Le Carré and the Jason Bourne books of Robert Ludlum. Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb. He runs Slough House, a shabby place MI5 has built for those agents who either didn’t make the cut or created a major mishap. Lamb is like one of those eccentric Le Carré characters, he is alcoholic, puts his feet on his desk showing off his old socks with holes in them, gives out loud and smelly farts in presence of others and is rude and abrasive towards his staff. One of the reject agents assigned to Slough House is River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and in the opening episode we see why he was sent there.

The anti-terrorist branch in MI5 is run by Diana Taverner (Kirstin Scott Thomas) who has a history with Jackson Lamb. They both get involved in an incident where a group of UK nationalist ultra-right wingers have kidnapped a British university student of Pakistani origin and have shown him on social media declaring that they will behead him online in 24 hours as revenge for British subjects beheaded by ISIS. We then have a race against time to find and rescue the student. But there is more than meets the eye and other factors behind the kidnapping slowly come into light.

In addition to Gary Oldman and Kirstin Scott Thomas, another heavyweight actor, Jonathan Pryce also makes an appearance as River Cartwright’s grandfather and a former MI5 senior operator. Waiting anxiously for the other episodes!

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