Catching up
Feb. 3rd, 2020 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiSomehow - probably a combination of travel disasters and the General Election - several TV series got recorded on the PVR over the summer and autumn but I am only slowly getting round to watching them. I watched His Dark Materials as it was broadcast, though. Although it started in much the same vein as the film of many years ago, I couldn't quite recall where the new adaptation went beyond; though it certainly did go beyond, and I don't recall any other worlds actually featuring in the film. Lyra's Oxford was familiar yet different, with spires in particular replaced by squat domes. On reflection it seems children's classic stories are often set in the recent past; the steampunk of Lyra's world gave it a similar feel.
At the last minute I discovered the TV adaptation of The Name of the Rose, and recorded it. I found I preferred John Turturro's William of Baskerville to Sean Connery's; but the resident monks are all so weird and dysfunctional. The misogyny is creepy, but presumably has some authenticity to its time and place; it also felt that there was a lot of additional material, beyond what I remember of the book. It strikes me that I was similarly unsettled by the blatant anti-Semitism exhibited by some of Eco's characters in one of his last books, The Prague Cemetery.
More recently I have been catching up on Monkman and Seagull's Genius Guide to Britain - some fantastic bite-sized bits of a polymathic journey around the UK narrated by Simon Callow. Light-hearted but educational, too.
The current season of Doctor Who is also turning out to be rather good.
At the last minute I discovered the TV adaptation of The Name of the Rose, and recorded it. I found I preferred John Turturro's William of Baskerville to Sean Connery's; but the resident monks are all so weird and dysfunctional. The misogyny is creepy, but presumably has some authenticity to its time and place; it also felt that there was a lot of additional material, beyond what I remember of the book. It strikes me that I was similarly unsettled by the blatant anti-Semitism exhibited by some of Eco's characters in one of his last books, The Prague Cemetery.
More recently I have been catching up on Monkman and Seagull's Genius Guide to Britain - some fantastic bite-sized bits of a polymathic journey around the UK narrated by Simon Callow. Light-hearted but educational, too.
The current season of Doctor Who is also turning out to be rather good.