Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen
Netflix
DTF St Louis
Sky Atlantic, Monday, 9pm
Cheap European Homes
RTÉ1, Sunday, 6.30pm
Russia’s Revenant
RTÉ2, Sunday, 7pm
Well. Last week I spotted a few headlines referring to a new TV show that was too terrifying to endure and “could send you hysterical”.
For a day or two I wondered what could possibly be that frightening. Then I noticed that BBC was devoting most of Saturday night to a celebration of musical theatre, and I assumed that must be it.
I’m not easily scared by TV shows, but I did sleep with the light on for the whole weekend, just in case. That seemed to help: only twice did I wake up screaming “the jazz hands got me!” and once I dreamed Jason Manford had broken in and was singing Let It Go as he shimmied ever nearer up the stairs.
And it turned out I was wrong anyway. Those headlines were for Netflix’s new horror series Something Very Bad is Going To Happen, an eight-part series allegedly about the fear of getting married, especially to the wrong person, or even to the right person who has a crazy family.
It stars Camila Morrone as Rachel, who, a few days before their wedding, travels with her fiancé Nicky (Adam DiMarco) to stay with his family in their huge snowy retreat. It’s all very awkward, and not just in the way that they go to bed as soon as they arrive instead of actually speaking to anyone: every member of Nicky’s family seems weird, perhaps even menacing. And what’s all this about the Sorry Man who haunts the woods nearby?
You might well ask: the Sorry Man should perhaps be pronounced “sorry, man” as a way for the producers – the Duffer Brothers, fresh from Stranger Things – to apologise for wasting our time. The Sorry Man, you see, is just one of many unresolved things thrown at the screen to mystify us about what’s really going on.
There are so many things serving no other function in the plot that, when you think about it, it starts to feel utterly shoddy: as if the makers have borrowed some things from other thrillers without understanding why they worked. For instance: the baby in the car, the old chap driving the van, the foxes, the dogs, the “thing” she must do, the bedroom chest…you think they might have some relevance to the plot, but they’re actually just mentioned to distract us and then left unexplained.
It’s not all bad. Morrone has an expressive face, and her pending in-laws include parents played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ted Levine, which at least promises to bring some gravity.
And for a while, it’s hard to tell where the plot is going, which gives it a kind of unsettled mood.
Soon, though, you realise it’s not really going anywhere, just slowly spinning wheels to make eight dull episodes out of what should have been a film; there’s even a whole tiresome episode about a wedding dress which turns out to be mostly just another red herringwaste of time.
As for the characters, they range from the kooky to the cartoonish. Gus Birney seems to have taken the look of her ditzy, intensely annoying Portia from the Ghost Of Christmas Present in Scrooged, then decided to recite her lines with rising intonation and unmoving lips.
It’s as tedious a simulacrum of an actual thriller as we’ll see this year, and I can only imagine that what people are describing as “dread” is really just the feeling of being surrounded by rude strangers, rather than anything otherwise ominous. And really, would it kill someone to just switch on a light?
DTF St Louis
If the title DTF St Louis intrigues you, well, I’m afraid this is far too respectable a publication to explain it too bluntly; but let’s say the DTF stands for something an Irish person might shout when they find the dog up on the sofa again.
This is being sold as a comedy, but I believe that’s doing it no favours: it’s certainly oddball, and sometimes funny, but it’s more drama than comedy, with Jason Bateman and David Harbour playing middle-aged friends Clark and Floyd. They have very different lives and desires, and Clark is even having a fling with Floyd’s wife (Linda Cardellini). Then, while they explore the local world of online swinging, their whole world is disorientated by a murder.
For half an hour this was quite annoying to watch – partly from some forced whimsy, but partly, I believe, because that inaccurate “comedy” tag causes us to misread it. But it soon becomes genuinely messy and unpredictable.
The investigation, led by the increasingly puzzled Detective Homer (a wonderful Richard Jenkins), continues to dig up personal details both intimate and idiosyncratic, and the dialogue explores the natures of middle age, and friendship, and marriage. It’s beautifully acted too, and while it might be a bit too odd for a very wide audience, it’s been one of the year’s pleasant surprises so far.
Cheap European Homes
I know, I know: we’re all fed up with RTÉ property shows, and those “place in the sun” shows often just feel a bit out of the question.
Still, Cheap European Homes, which mixes those two things, manages to be reasonably watchable in RTÉ’s post-tea, pre-depression Sunday night slot. Mostly that’s down to presenter Maggie Molloy, who is neither slick like many another RTÉ presenter, nor wafty like many another property show presenter: she just feels like a pleasant real person who understands what life is like and what people might like or dislike about a place.
Mind you, the job here might help with her cheery disposition anyway.
The first two episodes here saw her helping some Irish people find new homes in agreeable spots in Spain and Portugal: colourful little cottages, wide rivers, access to EU health facilities, all the good stuff you would want.
It’s far from a perfect show, of course. Molloy’s natural ease only shows up her constantly performing co-host, comedian Kevin McGahern, and really, RTÉ, can we ever have a scene of any kind without some slightly-too-loud music chiming away over it? Still, it’s a rare property show that’s neither pompous nor detached from reality, so hard hats off to it.
Russia’s Revenant
RTÉ also like to import a lot of relatively cheap wildlife documentaries, but Sunday’s film, Russia’s Revenant: The Return Of The Siberian Tiger was more involving than most, mainly following one young male tiger through the snowy forests of Russia’s Far East as he seeks a territory of his own.
It’s not a soaring, glossy kind of film, but it does have some excellent footage; and it’s not a simple biography either, focusing on the reintroduction of major species into areas close to human settlements and all the problems that brings.
And it asks questions about the future, asking if we will ever have space and an environment healthy enough for us all to occupy. Those are questions we haven’t answered yet, and might never be able to do so positively, but for now at least this is (mostly) a hopeful story.