Two TV Series (Deep State, and The Rook)

Chances are you haven’t heard of either, I guess.  Both are series that I have been watching while on my treadmill during the lock down.

“Deep State” is a British series which is distributed on the cable premium channel EPIX.  It ran for two years, but (as you will see) I only watched the first year.  I found it a tad too violent, a bit meaningless, but well done, well acted and not uninteresting.

Max Easton was a British intelligence agent who retired from the service about ten years ago, moving to France, marrying, having two daughters and telling them nothing about his past.  All that ends when he receives a call from his old employer, telling him that they need him to return for a particular mission and, if he refuses, his family will be in danger.  Ouch.

Well, it turns out that British intelligence (working with – or more aptly working under the direction of – American intelligence) has several people stationed in Iran with orders to “eliminate” a number of Iranian scientists who are said to be involved in Iran’s nuclear program.  They are fairly successful, but then it becomes clear that they know too much and, suddenly, they become the targets.  One of these individuals is Max Easton’s son.

So the whole things gets very confusing and very gory.  All of the individuals involved, including the American and British spymasters, are horrible people, willing to murder their best friends.  And they do.  And, yes, everyone’s families become targets, and the scenes wander from Tehran to Beirut to London to Washington, and places in between.  And there are no good guys (Max is the best when he is not a vicious murderer, because he’s nice to his wife and children).  And everyone lies and deceives and you don’t know whom to believe (in fact, she shouldn’t believe anyone).

I started to watch the second season, but only watched one episode.  This was largely because it was all prequel, meaning that the clock was turned back several years when everyone I knew from the first year of Deep State were working together for the first time in Mali.  Except that some of the characters – including Max Easton – were apparently not going to be involved.

But it wasn’t quite a backstory that I needed to understand the first year.  It just seemed like it was going to be more mayhem and I knew what it was going to eventually lead to.  Seemed no reason to watch.  So, I decided to stop.

“The Rook” is distributed on Starz, another cable network.  I am gong to see the last episode (no. 8, the end of the first and only season) this afternoon.  The plans for a second season were canceled last month – I assume that the coronavirus played a role in the cancellation, because I think that the show deserves much better treatment.

Now, it’s not the kind of show that I usually like.  It is part otherworldly fantasy.

It’s another series about British intelligence.  But not MI5 or MI6 like you might think.  Rather it’s about a group of people called EVAs, people with extreme variant abilities.  Some can predict the future, some can read minds, some can wipe minds.  Many different, ultra-human abilities.  The central characters work for a secret agent called Chequy.  What they do to protect Britain is not outlined in the show – The Rook is about the EVA’s themselves, how they got there, and how they relate to each other.

Our star is Myfanwy Thomas, a young woman who, in the first episode, finds herself after an explosion on a London bridge, where everyone else is dead, but she is alive, emotionally shattered, and knowing nothing.  Knowing nothing because her memory has been wiped clean.  She does not know where she was from, where she works,  or anything else. And the theme of the series is how Myfanwy learns her past, as she tries to fit in with her present.

Before her memory was wiped clean, Myfanwy apparently knew that this might happen.  So she left all sorts of notes and instructions for herself, when she had no memory.  These hints start Myfanwy’s search for her truth and the past.

I don’t want to give away any more.  But I recommend this 8 episode series.

 

Four Quick Reviews of Books that Deserve Much More: Esther, I Want You to Know We Are Still Here, Being Heumann and Sybil, or the Two Nations

Esther by GWU Professor Erica Brown is a new book on the biblical book of Esther, and quite a book it is (they are).  Brown places Esther in context.  A book in a format typical of its time, a fictional book accurately reflecting some of the historical period in which it was set.  A book filled with characters who can be looked at in so many different ways.  The first book to reflect anti-Semitism?  Sure, you know the general story, right?  Wrong – there is so much that can be analyzed.  And of course the Book of Esther has been analyzed by so many, for so long.  And Brown looks at these very different analyses, and shows how they reflect their authors and their times.  High recommended.

Esther Foer’s I Want You to Know We Are Still Here is the story of Esther’s parents – their lives in hiding and escape during World War II, their post war life in European DP camps, their obtaining American visas, their becoming an American family, her father’s tragic suicide, her mother’s remarriage, Esther’s youth and career, and then her extraordinary efforts to find out about her parents, an effort that took her to Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, Israel – all over – and during which she discovered some amazing things.

Judy Heumann’s Being Heumann, her story of a life of disability and activism – born in New York, polio at age 2 leaving her for the rest of her life in a wheel chair with compromised use of her arms, she succeeded (with her mother’s help) in being almost mainstreamed in the New York school system when this just did not happen, attending college, moving to Washington and then Berkeley and back. Working on the disability rights language of the Rehabilitation Act of 1979 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, as a Congressional staffer, a leading activist in the field, and eventually and an Assistant Secretary of Labor, her story is remarkable.

Benjamin Disraeli’s 1845 novel Sybil, or the Two Nations.  Both a political essay and a novel.  England in the 1830s – the small, very rich, and somewhat worthless, aristocracy, and the massive poor classes, doing all the work for much less than a living wage.  Two nations – with no contact with each other.  But what happens when the son of  nobility (albeit the second son, so not the inheritor of the wealth or title) falls in love with the daughter of a talented member of a lower class?  Learn about both groups of people reading this novel.  Learn about the Bedchamber Scandal involving the very young Queen Victoria, and about the Chartist movement and revolt of 1839.  And learn that, with all the pitfalls, true love can find its way (even though it turns out that the beautiful young woman is really of noble birth, and that her family had been cheated out of their position generations earlier.  I enjoyed the book.

My Day: “The Wanderers” – Theater J

“The Wanderers” is Anna Ziegler’s newest play.  I didn’t find it her best.

A Satmar Chasidic couple marry.  The wife chafes at her life; the husband wants to do everything according to Satmar rules.  They have two daughters and then a son.  The two daughters are removed from the family by the Satmar elders. Mysteriously, the wife – whose main crime seems to be listening to the radio and wanting a computer, does not lodge a complaint. Instead she takes her infant son and runs away to a nearby New York suburb where her childhood friend (who left the Satmar community earlier, and who married an African-American gentile, and had a daughter) lives.  The son and the friend’s daughter, now friends from childhood, marry and, for a while, the marriage succeeds.

The son is a writer.  He writes a book, has a book talk, and sees in the audience a famous actress.  They begin a correspondence (that he keeps from his wife), which turns into a flirtation.  And then there is a twist that changes everything.

It’s not a bad play – the dialogue is often clever and snappy – but it is a bit insulting to the Satmars (OK, maybe they deserve a little insulting but this all rather gratuitous), and is full of contrivances and coincidences that kept it a bit too artificial for me.  I understand it is still being rewritten and improved as it gets ready for its off-Broadway premier.  Maybe some of these loose ends will wind up a bit tighter.

My Day: No Longer “Occupied”

It took us a while to get through “Occupied”, the Norwegian TV show that ran for three seasons on Netflix.  The third season ended about a year ago, but we just finished it last night.  The first year was terrific, the second season was almost as good, and in the third season, everything got so confusing that maybe I should watch it again.  Not that I didn’t enjoy it, there were just so many things going on that it was hard (no, it was impossible), to keep them all straight.

In an alternative present, or an alternative near future, Norway elects a progressive president, Jesper Berg, who main goal is to abort climate change by ending reliance on fossil fuels. Norway, of course, with all of its North Sea off shore oil, has been a major culprit.  But they have developed a self regenerating fuel, based on the element thorium, and Berg decides to cease all oil extraction.

But Europe is not very happy, as the infrastructure is not in place to use this new fuel source.  So, with the approval of NATO (which the isolationist USA has pulled out of), Russia invades Norway and takes over their oil rigs and facilities, promising to leave if the Norwegians agree to go back into the oil extraction and refinement business.  Of course, the Russians – being Russians – never leave, as every time a date is set, something happens to convince the Russians they have to stay.

The lead characters, besides Jesper, are Hans-Martin, who becomes head of Norwegian security, and who acts as a double agent, working also with Irina Sidorova, the blond Russian ambassador to Norway. Hans-Martin’s wife, Hilde, an attorney and crusader for social justice, also figures in the series, as does Bente Norum, a Norwegian entrepreneur who owns a restaurant across the street from the Russian embassy, and her husband, a journalist who believes that Jesper Berg has become too buddy-buddy with the Russians and should act more forcefully to require them to leave. And then there’s Harald Vold, a retired Norwegian general with is a patriot with a capital P.

There are many, many twists and turns, people get killed, die natural deaths, get fired, commit crimes, get caught, get away, you name it.  But it isn’t only a question of the Russian occupation, Norway’s civilized population become polarized – those who are prospering from the Russians, those who are too afraid to raise a ruckus, those who believe that if you cooperate with the Russians they will eventually leave on their own, and those who believe you have to stand up and fight them in every way, legal and unlawful, possible.  A virtual civil war, and sometimes it is hard to figure out who is on which side.

Jesper Berg’s wife moves to France, Jesper escapes to Sweden, the U.S. ambassador gets invovled, Jesper’s chief of staff is elected president, Jesper returns, the chief of staff is assassinated, Jesper becomes president again, Bente moves to Russia to join her Russian boyfriend (who of course turns out to be married with children), and gets involved with a Russian who wants to be the kingmaker (hidden) in the next Norwegian election.  Sidorovna turns out to be gay, which puts her on her country’s bad side, and her pregnant girlfriend becomes a target.  Hilde’s civil rights clients turn out to have their own Russian involvement which takes a much greater toll than she ever imagined possible.  A lot of people are killed at the end, Jesper is no longer president, and he goes back to the original Jesper – advocating for the abolition of fossil fuels.

Quite a ride.  I did not do it justice here.  Highly recommended.

My Day: The 39 Steps

We had never seen Hitchcock’s film “The 39 Steps” when we went to see a staged version last week at Constellation Theatre at a Sunday matinee performance.  We did however watch the film on YouTube after we got home.  I wish we had sequenced it differently.

This does not mean that we didn’t enjoy the show.  We did.  But we had no idea how close the staged version came to the film.

The film dates from 1935. Alfred Hitchcock was still in Britain, not yet a Hollywood director.  This is one of his first hit films, and is a cross between a first class mystery and a first class comedy.

A man, Richard Hannay, goes to the theater and sees Mr. Memory, who knows everything.  A gun goes off.  The theater is deserted and a well dressed woman (who it turns out had fired the gun) approaches the man and asks if he can put her up for the night.  He reluctantly agrees.  She seems paranoid, but her paranoia turns out to be justified as she is stabbed to death in the middle of the night.  But not before she tells her host that she is trying to keep an enemy power from getting some important information that could endanger Britain, and that she needs to get to a particular house in Scotland.

Hannay is accused of the murder (not surprisingly) and escapes on a train heading north, where, after a series of adventures, he finds the house, but learns that Professor Jordan who lives in the house is a master spy.  Jordan shoots Hannay, who is saved by a prayer book in the pocket of a borrowed overcoat, and runs away.  He finds himself at a political rally, where he is mistaken for the candidate and has to give a speech, but is found to be an imposter and is arrested by fake policeman and, handcuffed to Pamela, the woman who had identified him.  They escape, still handcuffed, to an inn, where Pamela escapes, but hears a fake policeman in the lobby and realizes that Hannay was telling the truth.

They go to the London Palladium, where Jordan was to go to capture Mr. Memory, who knew the secret to be transferred to the enemy, and foil the plot.

Film and show – both fun.  And quite silly.

My Day: Joseph Skibell’s “Blessing on the Moon”

Chaim Skibelski lives in a shtetl somewhere in central or eastern Europe with his wife and daughters.  He’s a successful businessman and observant Jew.  All is well in this out of the way town.  And then comes the Holocaust and everything one and everything is wiped away.

That’s what I remember about the start of this clever, easy to read, imaginative and enjoyable (in a strange sort of way) novel. Chaim appears to still be alive.  So is his rabbi – who is now a raven flitting from tree to tree but able to converse.  And there are others trudging through the dark magical forest.  And then they come across a German, but not a full German, just a head.  And Chaim carries him along for a while.

And I remember a river, and a fancy, fancy hotel on the other side where a room is waiting for Chaim, and he reconnects with his wife and children, whom he thought were dead, and the place is full, and the food delicious.  He remembers his mother’s chicken soup, and that’s what he is served.  But that’s what everyone is served.  No, every one is not served Chaim’s mother’s chicken soup, they are served their own mother’s chicken soup.  Yes, this is, it must be, the “world to come”.

But then everyone disappears, each given a time for their appointment, with no hint that this means they will vanish.  Only Chaim seems to have not received an appointment, and he discovers the hotel empty, until he goes down the servants’ stairs and finds the bakery, where the jovial bakers seem to have baked all of the hotel guests into loaves of bread.

Chaim escapes again, finding himself back in his home town.  But now it is modern – automobiles, new buildings, paved streets…….but no Jews.  He goes into the forest and walks and walks, coming on a hut with two Chasids……

I will stop and here and not let you know what happens next. Except to say that it does involve the moon.

Really nice book.

My Day: “Russian Roulette” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn

So much happens in the news that every day important things are pushed out of your mind because more important things are entering.  Maybe, if you hold on to a few books being written about the daily news, you can at least keep everything right at hand.  This is a reason I read and retained Trump Revealed (the story of Trump’s early years and business career), and Fire and Fury (the story of Trump’s first year as president).  The third book that I have added to this collection is Russian Roulette, which tells “the inside story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump”.  Written before the completion of the Mueller report and all that followed, it sets a tone of a dangerous relationship between Trump and Russia, without making any assumptions about what the Mueller investigation will, or will not, show up.

The topics are what you would expect.  Putin’s rise to power.  The Obama administration’s short lived reset.  Trump’s desire to do business in Russia.  The 2013 Miss America pageant.  The pop singer and the oligarch who became Trump’s friends. The Ukraine. The Trump presidential campaign and its failure to stop the Russian business campaign. The Russian troll farm.  Paul Manifort and the interests of Paul Manifort.  Wikileaks.  Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele.  The Trump Tower meeting.

Yes, that all really happened.

My Day: “The Knout and the Russians”

I don’t really know who Germain de Lagny was, except that he was French, that he spent time in czarist Russia, and that he wrote a book, which was published (in French and in an English translation) in 1854.

The czar was Nicholas I.  He is widely known today as a reactionary despot who failed in virtually every aspect of his reign.  This is not the way de Lagny described Nicholas.  He finds him a remarkable monarch – handsome, brave, successful.  Yes, a tyrant in that he kept his country under his tight control (ever since the failed Decembrist revolt the he crushed as soon as he took the leadership of the state), but one whose actions (tough as they sometimes were) was always in the interest in the country and his people.

Well, Okay, maybe he had to say this, right?  Maybe he had business interests in the country, or family, or maybe he just wanted to make sure his book was published. I don’t know.  What I do know is that his chapter on the character and rule of Nicholas, which is the final chapter in the book, is totally at odds with everything else he wrote in the book.

The book in general shows a land barely civilized.  No middle class, only slaves/serfs and a class of hereditary nobles.  The serfs were landless and without the benefit of legal redress, subject to the whims of their owners, who could punish them (even if the punishment led to death, or exile to Siberia, or whatever) arbitrarily, split up families, and sell them.  The nobility was by and large impoverished, but protective of their caste.  The Jews were singled out for special limitations, all were subject to draft for 25 years in the military, where promotions were impossible, and when released, there was no assistance for job training, housing, etc., creating a large impoverished class of former soldiers.

The clergy was totally subservient to the czar, the police were out of control.  There was no Russian culture, as the nobility spoke French and adopted European customs (food, dress and furnishing).

While capital punishment was illegal, torture was legal and torture (the knaut – leather straps used while the subject is stretched on a rack) and the gauntlet (where you could receive up to 6,000 strokes) often led to death. No one seemed to care.

My Day: “Welcome Home”

It’s a recent film (2018), starring Emily Ratajkowski (world’s hardest name to spell – surprised she kept it for her career) and Aaron Paul.  I saw it on TV today while on the treadmill.  I should have hated it (it’s pretty corny and obvious), but didn’t.  Well, it is largely obvious; there’s a twist at the end which I found startling and amusing – I won’t tell you here.

Carrie and Bryan find the perfect vineyard hideaway in Italy, a country mansion far from anywhere, for a week to try to regain the confidence of their relationship and to end Bryan’s impotence, the result of his discovering that Carrie, when very drunk after a fight, had been unfaithful.

The idyll is ruined when they are befriended by a man who claims to live in the only nearby house, but who, it turns out, is lying, either is or is connected to the owner of the house, and has cameras in every room so he can watch the goings on of the guests.  All this leads to conflict and tension and eventually to two murders (not of Bryan and Cassie, but by them), and then to the ending twist.

Pretty scenery, pretty people, pretty lame plot, interesting twist.

My Day: Trumbo

Things feel very fragile in the U.S. today.  So fragile, and we are so pampered, that we feel they are uniquely fragile.  But they probably aren’t.  Just 60 years or so ago, for example, this country was riven by the Red Scare, and the right wingers in Congress (and those who were not right wingers but were cowed to silence) looked for Communists (some of whom they found) under every rock, and felt that anyone who was ever affiliated with the Communist Party or who palled around with Communists was a unique danger to America and the American way of life.

Enter Dalton Trumbo, a successful writer and screenwriter, and an avowed Communist.  What did that mean?  Did he ever engage in party activities?  I think not, but am not sure.  But, like Bernie S., he believed that the rich controlled the country, and controlled it on the backs of the poor, and that this required a radical remedy.  Of course, he did this, while himself leading the high life on his horse farm, and enjoying the success of his writing.

But he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and, to put it mildly, he was a tad too sarcastic in refusing to answer their questions, leading to an indictment for contempt of Congress, a conviction and a jail sentence.

Dalton Trumbo was one of the blacklisted Hollywood 10, but the blacklist destroyed many more careers and families than ten.  When he got out of prison, he realized that no one would hire him…..at least no one would hire him under his own name.  So he began to write under fake names, with everyone in the know pledged to keep quiet.  Under fake names, he won two academy awards (weird, if you think about it, giving Oscars to people who no one knew, and who in fact did not exist) for Roman Holiday and The Brave One.

Eventually, he was approached by two very important people in the industry:  Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglass.  Kirk Douglass approached him because he had been given a very unsatisfactory script to be used for what became Spartacus, and he wanted Trumbo (under a pseudonym) to rewrite it completely.  Preminger came to him because he had been given a book, Leon Uris’ Exodus, and had hired Paul Newman for the lead, but had no script.

Preminger was neither shy nor retiring, and decided that he wanted Trumbo to have credit for the screenplay.  Douglass decided that if it could be done for Exodus, it could be done for Spartacus.

The blacklist was no more.