#psychological horror drama miniseries

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔅𝔢𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔠𝔢𝔫𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔖𝔱𝔢𝔭𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔎𝔦𝔫𝔤'𝔰 "𝔦𝔱" (յգգօ)

#Stephen King's IT #psychological horror drama miniseries #It #it (1990) #tim curry #behind the scenes #cast #antagonist #fictional characters #horror movies #horror drama miniseries

[thesiltverses]

any clues on whats next after tsv ends ? :)

No concrete confirmation, but we did put out a Patreon post back in spring with a few draft pitches, to gauge initial interest and see what kind of genre storytelling folks were most excited to see from us.

I'll paste them below, so you can see the kinds of things we've had in mind (#2 and #3 were the most popular, but it was a fairly even spread outside of that). We've had a few more really fun ideas since then that I'll keep schtum about for now.

General feedback was that people were most enthusiastic about seeing ongoing, multi-season projects from us, which makes perfect sense and is much more sensible for us anyway in terms of sustaining a livelihood / retaining audience members along the way.

That said, TSV has been a three-year endeavour which is a big commitment, and personally I think the best horror is often self-contained, short and sweet.

So I'd really love to have the time to work on a few miniseries-type shows as well, but also need to recognise that we likely don't have the bandwidth to juggle two projects simultaneously.

With all that in mind, I think the direction we're hoping to be able to pursue is:

1+ shorter horror miniseries or one-offs with production or network partners (if they want to work with us) where we're largely on writing duties or with a lighter load.

1 longer, ongoing weird-fiction show which is all ours, baby, all ours.

Draft pitches

#1: Manes

Genre: Historical horror, cosmic horror, family drama with murderous stakes

Influences: The Terror Season 1, pretty much.

Summary: In 208 AD, the ailing Roman emperor Septimius Severus travels north across Hadrian's Wall into Caledonia, with the aim of finally uniting Britain under imperial rule.

For Severus, there's more at stake - his two sons are openly at odds over the succession, and it's openly said that civil war will follow the emperor's death.

Severus himself rose to supreme power through violence and the elimination of his rivals. Now, haunted by the possibility of revenge by the shades of the divine dead and dwelling unhappily on his legacy, the emperor hopes to share his final triumph with his sons and demonstrate a different lesson to them - that an equitable peace is a lasting possibility.

But as the Roman column makes its way north into apparently endless woods, surrounded by cronies, schemers, Britons, soothsayers, priestesses of Cybele, and more, the emperor and his family find that their enemy is nowhere to be seen - but they are being pursued by a force that is both strange and terrible.

And soon enough, the Romans realise that they have perhaps strayed not into Caledonia at all - but into a hostile realm of their own imagining...

Why make this show? We adore period horror, and there's far too little of it out there.

Severus and his family are a fascinating set of characters who we'd love to spend some time with - as ethically-compromised participants in a very Shakespearean tragedy, and as individuals whose heritage, religious beliefs and psychologies allow us to explore aspects of ancient Rome that haven't been done to death in fiction already.

#2: I'll Dance In The Deep Shadow

Genre: Weird-fiction noir, paranoid espionage fiction, cosmic horror

Influences: Cold War spy classics, Roadside Picnic

Summary: Across the water from the mainland UK, a vast walled city has come unexpectedly into existence.

The city’s walls are composed of purest shadow; its leaders have not revealed themselves to us, nor have they made demands of us.

Upon its streets, our own dead and forlorn doubles wander; grinning doppelgangers who seem to know something terrible from the future that’s to come.

We call the city Umbra.

Umbra is a bottomless well of shadow and secrets; its darkened landscapes are home to suppressed memories turned savage and monstrous.

Its citizens and its guards are twisted echoes, repetitions, and whispering relics of the world's buried past - and they will not reveal Umbra's purpose to us.

Around Umbra's great walls, representatives from the world's governments gather and plot against one another - mercenaries, guides, spies, black-market traders, scientists and killers - to infiltrate the city, map its streets, and navigate its dangers for themselves.

Why make this show? Less of an Eskew sequel than it probably sounds at first glance, this one. 

We'd love to do a paranoid, twist-filled, pessimistic John Le Carre-style spy thriller, with multiple characters who can neither trust themselves nor each other - and we feel like we've got some really interesting horror themes around memory and forgetting here to explore with this concept.

#3: Our Wars Have Ended

Genre: Dark fantasy, New Weird fantasy

Influences: The Black Company, the Bas-Lag series, Gormenghast.

Summary: It’s a strange time to be alive.

Thirty years ago, countless legions of the ancient dead rose from their graves to conquer the living lands; lands which now rest in an uneasy - but peaceful - state of occupation.

Withered corpses sit upon the thrones of the living and play silent courtier in the shadowed halls, acting out the rituals and habits of their past lives while dead men and women keep watch from the ruined towers. 

Mortal historians and linguists frantically mediate between our returned masters, trying to keep the peace - which estate belongs to whom? Who shall rule eternal? Which traditions deserve to live on?

But this is a time of wondrous change, too - new technologies, empowered by the revelations of the Dead Reclamation and the will of the Ancestors. Strange machines rumble through the hills and necronautical vessels delve into the unexplored territories of the afterlife itself.

And it has been announced that the Hollowbrow Queen will unite the nation with a powerful gesture, taking on a living consort in a marriage of the fleeting and the eternal.

On one side of the conquered country, an old veteran leads his mercenary company on a reluctant expedition towards the capital, in the employ of a long-dead king on a mission of revenge.

On the other, a young dead-diver and essayer into the realms of the dead is hired to investigate a peculiar mystery, and a conspiracy that may involve both the living and the returned…

Why make this show? Because Game of Thrones had no interest in the (to us) enjoyable questions of 'well, why do the ancient dead want to conquer the living, exactly? What happens once they've done it?' and we'd love to deconstruct that and play with the idea of loathsome undead aristocrats from every period of history squabbling with one another over what their conquered nation actually means.

Because we think we've built up the confidence and the skills to take a big swing at an epic adventure story and a semi-traditional fantasy - it feels like an idea that could potentially appeal to a wider audience while remaining true to our own core values of Weirdness, Horrible Things and More Weirdness.

#4: To Those Who Wait

Genre: Cosmic horror, dark comedy, mockumentary

Influences: Dead Set, Ghostwatch, Savageland, Evil Dead

Summary: Eskew Productions has gone in a surprising direction with its latest production - a new reality experiment and dating-show podcast.

Eight lovelorn singletons have been given rooms in the exclusive Gregory Hotel. Over the course of six weeks, these contestants will go on dates, carry out team challenges, and ultimately try and find themselves a life partner - all without seeing each other's faces.

The aim of the experiment? To prove that good things really do come to those who wait.

As they pore through a mixture of recorded and behind-the-scenes footage, however, it may become very apparent to listeners that something else is waiting in the Gregory.

And one by one, our contestants find themselves at risk of far more than being voted off...

Why make this show? As a great big act of play more than anything else.

We adore horror mockumentaries, but in audio-drama they tend to be faux-journalistic. 

Doing a show that instead mimics hokey reality shows to the point of being mistakable for the real thing, but turns out to be a ghost story instead...that's a lot of fun to us.

#5: In The Devil's Counties

Genre: Historical horror, cosmic horror

Influences: Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds, Seven Samurai, Between Two Fires, Dog Soldiers, Aliens…

Summary: As the Magna Carta states: “All evil customs relating to forests and warrens, foresters, warreners, sheriffs and their servants, or river-banks and their wardens, are at once to be investigated by twelve sworn knights of the county, and within forty days of their enquiry the evil customs are to be abolished completely and irrevocably.”

In early-medieval Sussex, a motley group of knights rides out to investigate tales of ungodly horror and acts of forbidden worship from deep in the English countryside - including Ralph Dagworth, 'hell's mapmaker'.

What the party of knights discovers out in the warrens and the forests of the county, however, is far stranger and more terrible than any Christian conception of hell…

Why make this show? Again, because we're itching to have a go at some period horror, and that weirdly specific Magna Carta quote is just too fun to pass up as a springboard for some 'isolated squaddies in enemy territory' storytelling. (Sadly, it does have a more grounded explanation.)

#6: Strangling Knot

Genre: Anthology horror

Influences: Junji Ito, experimental 8-bit horror, Black Mirror's Bandersnatch

Summary: 

“The rules of the game are simple. This is a place of endless forking paths and one exit. 

There’s something terrible in here with you. Get ready."

A Choose Your Own Adventure-style horror audio anthology; each episode is a distinct story with branching paths that may lead to failure (most of the time) or escape (more rarely).

Why make this show? This is likely the only show that we could reasonably produce as a side-project (and we've been chatting to a couple of other talented horror creators about it already, sssh).

We'd like to be able to play with single-narrator horror storytelling again that's relatively quick and easy to produce - but we do want to at least try and ensure it doesn't feel like we're repeating I Am In Eskew.

There's some really fun stuff happening out there already with CYOA-style audiodrama, and that seems like an opportunity that's ripe for playing about with.

[heavenboy09]

Happy Belated Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You

The New Captain America 🇺🇸 Of The MCU

He was born on September 23, 1978, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Martha (née Gordon) and Willie Mackie Sr., a carpenter who owned a roofing business, Mackie Roofing. His brother, Calvin Mackie, is a former associate professor of engineering at Tulane University who now works at the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

He is an American actor. He made his film debut starring in the semi-biographical drama film 8 Mile (2002). He was later nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor for his performance in the LGBT drama Brother to Brother (2004), and in the same year, appeared in psychological thriller The Manchurian Candidate, the Spike Lee TV film Sucker Free City, and the sports film Million Dollar Baby. He starred in Half Nelson (2006); in 2008, Mackie both appeared in the action thriller Eagle Eye and was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Hurt Locker. He portrayed Tupac Shakur in Notorious (2009) and later starred in Night Catches Us (2010), and The Adjustment Bureau and Real Steel (both 2011).

He achieved global recognition for portraying Sam Wilson / Falcon / Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and most recently starring in the Disney+ miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021); he is set to lead his own film titled Captain America: Brave New World (2024). During this period, He also starred in the period crime film Detroit (2017), The Hate U Give (2018), the horror film Synchronic (2019), and The Banker (2020).

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You The New Captain America 🇺🇸 Of The MCU From New Orleans

You Know Him, You Love Him

& Well He Was Once A Falcon 🦅& Now He's Black Captain America 🇺🇸 Right Now So you know you can't live without him

The 1 & Only

MR. ANTHONY MACKIE AKA SAM WILSON AKA CAPTAIN AMERICA 🇺🇸 OF THE MCU

HAPPY BELATED 45TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 TO YOU MR. MACKIE & HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME. #AnthonyMackie #SamWilson #TheFalcon #CaptainAmerica

#Anthony Mackie #Sam Wilson #The Falcon #Captain America #Spotify

[porcom]

It (1990)

"It is a 1990 ABC two-part psychological horror drama miniseries directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and adapted by Lawrence D. Cohen from Stephen King's 1986..."

Ce téléfilm vieillit très très mal... Tout est mauvais, les dialogues, les acteurs, le clown... Tout tout tout est mauvais!

Quelques moments mémorables du film...

👎 Bof!

#bof #it #stephen king #Youtube

[tvrundownusa]

tvrundown USA 2023.09.22

Friday, September 22nd:

(exclusive): Compro Likes (hulu, Brazilian comedy, all 5 eps), Song of the Bandits (netflix, Korean frontier drama, all 9 eps)

(movies): "Accused" (TUBI, thriller, ~90mins), "The Black Book" (netflix, African justice action, 2hrs+), "Spy Kids: Armageddon" (netflix, family action-adventure, ~95mins), "How to Deal With a Heartbreak" (netflix, Peruvian dramedy, ~100mins), "No One Will Save You" (hulu, psychological horror alien sci-fi thriller), "Cassandro" (amazon, the "Liberace of Lucha Libre" Saúl Armendáriz biopic, ~105mins), "The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster" (Shudder|AllBlk, teen fantasy horror, ~90mins)

(streaming weekly): The Continental (Peacock, John Wick prequel miniseries, part 1), Still Up (apple+, British rom-com series premiere, first 3 eps), The Changeling (apple+), The Wheel of Time (amazon), Harlan Coben's "Shelter" (amazon, season 1 finale), Dreaming Whilst Black (Para+, next 2 eps, limited series finale), Love Is Blind (netflix, season 5 opener, first 4 eps)

(original made-for-TV movies): "Don't Sell My Baby" (LIFE, 2hrs+), "Murder in G Major" (HMM, a "Haunted Harmony" mystery, 2hrs)

(also new): Power (Book IV): Force (Starz), Secret Celebrity Renovation (CBS), "Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court" (SHO, docu-series, part 1 of 4), iHeartRadio Music Festival (hulu, livestream, night 1 of 2)

#JohnWick #Cassandro #iHeartRadio #AngryBlackGirl #television

[ricisidro]

#LiseysStory on @AppleTV #AppleTvPlus (2021), is a #psychological #horror #drama miniseries based on the 2006 #novel of the same name by #StephenKing.

It reveals the author's complex feelings towards #life and #death as well as what happens to everyone else when someone dies.

#memories #supernatural #fantasy #horrifying #romantic #perseverance #hope

#LiseysStory #apple tv plus #Stephen King #horror #romantic #perseverance #hope #life #death #supernatural #fantasy #Instagram

[dailynewsreporter]

Florence Pugh is a British actress. She began her acting career in theater, and made her film debut in the mystery The Falling (2014). She gained recognition for her role as Katherine in the historical drama Lady Macbeth (2016). Pugh has since starred in a variety of films, including the biographical drama Midsommar (2019), the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Black Widow (2021), and the psychological horror film The Little Things (2021). She has also appeared in the miniseries The Little Drummer Girl (2018).

#FlorencePugh Actress LadyMacbeth Midsommar BlackWidow TheLittleThings TheLittleDrummerGirl

[64bitgamer]

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔗𝔦𝔪 ℭ𝔲𝔯𝔯𝔶 𝔡𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞 𝔪𝔞𝔨𝔢𝔲𝔭 𝔰𝔢𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔟𝔢𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔠𝔢𝔫𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 ℑ𝔱 (յգգօ)

#Tim Curry #It (1990) #behind the scenes #makeup session #makeup #pennywise #photography #photo #90's #90s #Stephen King's IT #Psychological horror #psychological horror drama miniseries

[screenandcinema]

Coming To Your Screen - July 2022

Here is a list of new shows coming to television or streaming services this month:

The Terminal List - Chris Pratt stars in this action thriller about a Navy Seal after he returns home. The first episode was directed by Antoine Fuqua and the series also features Taylor Kitsch, Constance Wu, and Riley Keough. (Coming to Amazon Prime on July 1st)

Black Bird - Taron Egerton stars in this crime mini-series based on the novel In With the Devil and developed by Dennis Lehane. Paul Walter Hauser, Greg Kinnear, and Ray Liotta also star. (Coming to AppleTV+ on July 8th)

Resident Evil - Based on the video game series (and seemingly unrelated to the film series - and its reboot), comes this new action horror series. (Coming to Netflix on July 14th)

Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight - The newest series about Po the Panda is The Dragon Knight. This is the third Kung Fu Panda series and only the first to feature Jack Black as the voice of the titular panda. (Coming to Netflix on July 14th)

The Resort - Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper are a couple on vacation who get wrapped into a decades-old murder mystery in this upcoming series that looks like a mix of White Lotus and The Afterparty. (Coming to Peacock on July 28th)

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin - Original Sin marks the fourth series in the Pretty Little Liars franchise. None of the previous two spin-offs lasted more than 10 episodes, so good luck to Original Sin, it is doubtful you will match the original series’ 160-episode run, but a second season would be a big win. (Coming to HBO Max on July 28th)

Keep Breathing - Melissa Barrera stars in this survival series about a woman whose plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. (Coming to Netflix on July 28th)

Paper Girls - Based on a comic book series from Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chaing comes this new science fiction drama about newspaper delivery girls caught in a war for space and time. (Coming to Amazon Prime on July 29th)

Surface - Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars in this upcoming psychological thriller miniseries from Veronica West, who previously developed the High Fidelity series on Hulu.  (Coming to AppleTV+ on July 29th)

Amber Brown - This upcoming family comedy is based on a book series of the same name. (Coming to AppleTV+ on July 29th)

-MB-

[falllpoutboy]

i want zendaya in: a romantic fantasy film, period drama NOT centered around race, a gothic horror film, a hbo or netflix miniseries, a psychological thriller film, a musical so she can put her background in choreography to use and a black comedy in that order!

#her best chances of an oscar is the first two! #and another emmy or golden globe with that miniseries #do NOT let her back on the euphoria set @ god!!!!!!!!!! #examples of all would include: the shape of water ; emma or little women ; crimson peak ; the queens gambit; shutter island ; chicago ; #and ready or not

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You

The Redheaded 🦰🇬🇧 Ginger English Actor Of The Gryffindor House 🦁🏠 Of Hogwarts & Best Friend To The Legendary Wizard himself Mr. Harry Potter 🤓⚡ 🧙‍♂️🪄✨

Born On August 24th, 1988

Hailing All The Way From Harlow, Essex

He was born on 24 August 1988 in Harlow, Essex, to Nigel Grint, a dealer in racing memorabilia, and Joanne Grint (née Parsons). He is the eldest of five siblings. He has said that his earliest goal in life was to become an ice cream man. He grew up in Watton-at-Stone, Hertfordshire, and was educated at Richard Hale School, in Hertford.

He is an English actor. Grint rose to fame for his role as Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter film series, for which he was cast at age eleven, having previously acted only in school plays and his local theatre group. Since then, he has continued his work on film, television, and theatre.

Beginning in 2002, he began to work outside of the Harry Potter franchise, with a co-leading role in Thunderpants. He starred in the dramedy Driving Lessons (2006) and the drama Cherrybomb (2009) and co-starred in the comedy Wild Target (2010). After the Harry Potter series concluded, he appeared in the films Into the White (2012), Charlie Countryman (2013), CBGB (2013), and Moonwalkers (2015). He made his stage debut in 2013 in Mojo at the Harold Pinter Theatre. He executive-produced and starred in the television series Snatch, based on the film of the same name. He has also starred in the black comedy series Sick Note, the mystery thriller miniseries The ABC Murders, and the psychological horror series Servant.

Please Wish This Iconic Ginger English 🇬🇧 Actor🦰Of Gryffindor🦁 That Everyone Knows & Loves, A Very Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

You Know Him

You Love Him

& You Can't Help But Enjoy His Sense Of British Wit & Humor since 2001

THE 1 & ONLY

MR. RUPERT ALEXANDER LLYOD GRINT AKA MR. RONALD WEASLEY 🦰🪄 OF GRYFFINDOR HOUSE 🦁🏠 FROM THE HARRY POTTER MOVIE SERIES 🤓⚡🧙‍♂️🪄✨

HAPPY 35TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 TO YOU MR. GRINT & HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME #RupertGrint #RonaldWeasley #HarryPotter

#Rupert Grint #Ronald Weasley #Harry Potter #Spotify

[gallifreyanflower]

You mentioned in a post today that you’re a writer—what genres do you like? Long form or short form? What are you working on now?

Hey! omg my first ask, i'm happy.

anyway, yes, I am a writer (not a professional one, of course). I like all genres, but I prefer to write psychological horror, romance and drama. I also love reading and write whump, angst and fluffy.

Short or long form? I don't know how to choose, really. I love reading and writing both.

I'm currently working on a book called Mélomanie (inspired by the movie Amadeus and the BBC miniseries Casanova), which is about an old, embittered musician named Antonin Normandy, who lives alone in a big, dark house. After some events, a young woman named Valentine Weber accepts to work as a maid for him because she needs the job and he needs a maid, and after a while they become good and unexpected friends. From there, Antonin begins to tell the story of his life to his new friend.

I just love this book.

Thanks for the ask and feel free to send me more whenever you want! <3

#my first ask yeep #ask #thank you <3

[arcticdementor]

An unlikely thing happened to me on my two weeks’ off. I watched an HBO Max miniseries that mocked some aspects of wokeness.

Mike White’s “The White Lotus” is a tragicomic exposé of our current moneyed elites and the psychological dysfunction they labor so mightily under. There’s a blithe, unthinking finance jock, with a worked-out bod, an uneasy new wife, and a shitload of money, who can muster misery at the slightest ruffle in perfection. There’s the beta male, married to the mega-rich corporate CEO wife, worried about the condition his balls. There’s the super-uptight gay manager, hanging on to sobriety, as he performs for his clients; the mega-wealthy, overweight lost soul, played by Jennifer Coolidge, whose life is a pampered abyss of emotional desolation; and an aspiring young journalist who reconciles herself to money and indolence over a mindless career of clickbait snark.

…

And the most repellent characters are two elite-college sophomores, Olivia and Paula, packed to the gills with the fathomlessly entitled smugness that is beginning to typify the first generation re-programmed by critical theory fanatics. You watch as they casually abuse and denigrate their brother — a young man consumed by living online; you see how they mock anyone who doesn’t meet their exacting standards of youth or beauty; you watch them betray and lie to each other; you see them condescend to someone still struggling to pay back student loans (see the clip above); and you witness the co-ed of color, Paula, act out her antiracist principles, with disastrous real world results for a Hawaiian she thinks she is saving from oppression. She leaves her wreckage behind, gliding away, with impunity, to another semester of battling racism.

At one point, in a memorable scene, as the white daughter expounds about the evil of white straight men, her mother points out that she is actually talking about her brother, sitting at the same table. An individual person. Right next to her. Someone she might even love, if such a thing were within her capacity. Someone who cannot be reduced to a demonized version of his unchosen race and heterosexuality. And the only character one can bond with, and root for, is indeed this young white American male, awkward but genuine, whose story ends with a new bond with his dad, an escape from online addiction, and a newly revitalized human life.

“The White Lotus” is not an anti-woke jeremiad. It’s much subtler than that. Even the sophomores seem more naïve and callow than actively sexist and racist. The miniseries doesn’t look away from the staggering social inequality we now live in; and gives us a classic white, straight, male, rich narcissist in the finance jock. But it’s humane. It sees the unique drama of the individual and how that can never be reduced to categories or classes or identities.

And this step toward humaneness is what interests me. Because if we can’t intellectually engage people on how critical theory is palpably wrong in its view of the world, we can sure show how brutal and callous it is — and must definitionally be — toward individual human beings in the pursuit of utopia. “The White Lotus” is thereby a liberal work of complexity and art.

…

Applebaum’s Atlantic piece is a good sign from a magazine that hired and quickly purged a writer for wrong think, and once held a town meeting auto-da-fé to decide which writers they would permanently anathematize as moral lepers.

Similarly, it was quite a shock to read in The New Yorker a fair and empathetic profile of an academic geneticist, Kathryn Paige Harden, who acknowledges a role for genetics in social outcomes. It helps that Harden is, like Freddie DeBoer, on the left; and the piece is strewn with insinuations that other writers on genetics, like Charles Murray, deny that the environment plays a part in outcomes as well (when it is clear to anyone who can read that this is grotesquely untrue). But if the readers of The New Yorker need to be fed distortions about some on the right in order for them to consider the unavoidable emergence of “polygenic scores” for humans, with their vast political and ethical implications, then that’s a step forward.

…

And then, in the better-late-than-never category, The Economist, the bible for the corporate elite, has just come out unapologetically against the Successor Ideology, and in favor of liberalism. This matters, it seems to me, because among the most zealous of the new Puritans are the boards and HR departments of major corporations, which are dedicated right now to enforcing the largest intentional program of systemic race and sex discrimination in living memory. Money quote: “Progressives replace the liberal emphasis on tolerance and choice with a focus on compulsion and power. Classical liberals conceded that your freedom to swing your fist stops where my nose begins. Today’s progressives argue that your freedom to express your opinions stops where my feelings begin.”

The Economist also pinpoints the core tenets of CRT in language easy to understand: “a belief that any disparities between racial groups are evidence of structural racism; that the norms of free speech, individualism and universalism which pretend to be progressive are really camouflage for this discrimination; and that injustice will persist until systems of language and privilege are dismantled.” These “systems of language and privilege” are — surprise! — freedom of speech and economic liberty. If major corporations begin to understand that, they may reconsider their adoption of a half-baked racialized Marxism as good management. Maybe that might persuade Google not to mandate indoctrination in ideas such as the notion being silent on questions of race is “covert white supremacy,” a few notches below lynching.

…

And then there’s a purely anecdotal reflection, to be taken for no more than that: all summer, I’ve been struck by how many people, mostly complete strangers, have come up to me and told me some horror story of an unjust firing, a workplace they’re afraid to speak in, a colleague who has used antiracism for purely vindictive or careerist purposes, or a hiring policy so crudely racist it beggars belief. The toll is mounting. And the anger is growing. The fury at CRT in high schools continues to roil school board meetings across the country. Some Americans are not taking this new illiberalism on the chin.

This isn’t much, I know. Read Peter Boghossian’s resignation letter from Portland State University to see how deep the rot has gotten. But it’s something. It’s a sign that there is now some distance from the moral panic of mid-2020 and the start of reflection upon the most zealous aspects of this new illiberalism.

#andrew sullivan #substack #the white lotus

[trustmeimlumi]

Netflix secret codes: How to access hidden films and TV shows on the streaming service

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[aion-rsa]

The Best French TV Shows on Netflix

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When acclaimed supernatural series Les Revenants/The Returned aired on Canal+ in 2012, it emerged into a fairly barren landscape for French-language scripted TV drama. The story of a remote mountain town whose dead are mysteriously revived, its stylish, cinematic look and philosophical, grown-up approach to genre television had little precedent. While the French ‘polar’ or detective series had long been a television staple, France had almost no tradition of sci-fi, horror and fantasy TV shows – or at least, none taken seriously by its understandably cinephile-and-proud cultural gatekeepers.

In the last five years, coinciding with the global growth of scripted TV drama, that’s all changed. Crime thrillers still wear the crown, but alongside them, France and Belgium are producing and exporting more continuing television dramas and miniseries than ever. From Black Mirror-ish future-set Osmosis and consciousness-swapping Transfers, to cool Parisian teen Vampires and creepy horror Marianne, scripted French-language genre television is exploding. It’s early days and the market has been testing its breadth, which explains the profusion of shows below that haven’t lasted beyond a single series. When it works though, as in excellent comedy-drama Call My Agent, it really works, in France and around the world.

Political thrillers, comedies, psychological drama, rom-com… there’s never been such scripted variety on French television, and thanks to streaming services, it’s never been so accessible around the world. Here’s a guide to what’s currently available on Netflix.

SCI-FI & FANTASY

Osmosis (2019)

In near future Paris, a dating app matches singles with their soulmates by mining their brain data, but decoding true love comes at a price.

‘If science could guarantee true love, would you say yes?’ asks this atmospheric Parisian-set sci-fi series. If your answer is ‘oui’, then this thoughtful examination of relationships, technology, fate and free may give you pause.

Eight-episode series Osmosis was created by Audrey Fouché, a writer on hit French supernatural series Les Revenants / The Returned. It’s about 12 participants in an experimental scientific study designed to match people with their perfect partner using an AI named Martin (pronounced Mart-an in French, therefore much less funny). It attracted excellent reviews on release, including many favourable comparisons to Black Mirror, though Netflix frustratingly said ‘non’ to a second season.

Into the Night (2020)

When a mysterious cosmic disaster strikes Earth, survivors on an overnight flight from Brussels race to find refuge and escape the sun’s rays.

Inspired in part by Polish sci-fi novel The Old Axolotl (what is there not to enjoy about that combination of words?) written by Jacek Dukaj, Into the Night is Netflix’s first Belgian original series. The sci-fi thriller was created by Jason George, a producer on Narcos and The Blacklist, and its first season consists of six 40-minute episodes.

It’s the story of a planeful of passengers mid-flight when an environmental catastrophe causes the sun’s rays to start destroying all organic life. If the plane can outrun the sunrise by flying through different time zones, they might survive to fight its disastrous effects. A lot of them will, in fact, because a second season was ordered by Netflix in July 2020. Don’t go looking for depth necessarily with this one, it’s a twisty action sci-fi designed for bingeing and not for the ‘but would that really happen?’ brigade.

Transfers / Transferts (2017)

After a boating accident, woodworker and family man, Florian, wakes up in the body of an officer who leads a task force against illegal body transfers.

This six-episode sci-fi imagines a world where the technology has developed to transplant human consciousness from one body to another. Due to moral objections from the Church, the process is ruled illegal but continues underground, leading to the creation of a police task force which specialises in capturing unlawful ‘Transfers’. When a carpenter dies in an accident and awakens in the body of the man leading that task force, he’s thrown into the middle of a tense conspiracy.

This pacey thriller blending crime drama and sci-fi won a couple of awards on release, including a plaudit for the performance of Belgian lead Arieh Worthalter. Its co-creator Claude Scasso is part of the team on France’s hugely successful detective show Cain. Sadly despite all that, there’s no sniff of a second season.

Mortel (2019)

Determined to find his missing brother, high school troublemaker Sofiane ropes timid classmate Victor into a pact with a mysterious figure.

A rare excursion for France into the kind of teen supernatural TV more commonly found on America’s The CW, Mortel (a pun on French slang for cool, or whatever word means ‘cool’ these days – slammin’?) is the story of two high schoolers gifted with magical abilities. Teen Sofiane seeks an ancient power to help find his missing brother, and receives it courtesy of a Voodoo god. The catch is that this new-found power may only be used in conjunction with his oddball classmate, Victor.

Sofiane and Victor are thus thrown together by their magical pact, and the six-episode show sees the pair navigate teen life and supernatural danger at the same time. It was created by Frédéric Garcia, who made his name as a teen drama writer on Skam France. There won’t be a second season, and in all honesty, that’s not an enormous shame but genre fans looking for a change of scenery should get a kick from it.  

Marianne (2019)

Emma, a famous and successful French horror writer, is forced to return to her hometown after the woman who haunted her dreams fifteen years ago begins to re-appear. The work she writes is apparently a work of fiction, but how much is fact?

This eight-episode series about a successful writer who, having bled her teenage nightmares for book material, now faces its real-life return was warmly received by horror fans on its arrival in 2019. The eight-episode first season (sadly, it wasn’t renewed for a second) is packed with classic scares which, though familiar, were handled extremely well. The French setting added a new element for UK and US viewers more used to seeing such hauntings play out in English.

Created by Quoc Dang Tran and Samuel Bodin, the undeniably scary Marianne stars Call Me By Your Name’s Victoire Du Bois as hit novelist Emma Larsimon, but it’s undeniably the face of Mireille Herbstmeyer as Madame Daugeron you’ll be seeing in your own nightmares.

Vampires (2020)

A Parisian teenager who is half human, half vampire grapples with her emerging powers, and family turmoil as she is pursued by a secret vampire community.

The vampire mythos gets another go-around in this six-part coming-of-age drama about a Parisian teenager torn between two identities. Doina (Oulaya Amamra) is half-vampire, half-human. Her vamp mother has kept her on drugs to suppress her vampiric urges, but curiosity and teen rebellion lead Doina to explore her supernatural heritage.

The result is a stylish, blood-soaked, neo-noir teen show filled with sex and gore against the backdrop of the French capital. Yes, you’ve seen most of it all before, but as metaphors for adolescence go, vampirism’s one of the richest. The music-video aesthetic and developing mythology – who are The Community, the mysterious vampiric cult who want Doina to join them? What happened to her human father? – combined with the family drama make this very watchable, if not a total must-see.

Black Spot / Zone Blanche (2017)

A police chief and an eccentric new prosecutor investigate a string of grisly crimes and eerie phenomena in an isolated town at the edge of a forest.

A creepy town, a haunted forest and beaucoup de killings are the ingredients of this Belgian supernatural series. It’s the story of a local police chief in a fictional town surrounded by a vast forest filled with creepy secrets that makes the local murder stats six times the national average, attracting the attention of an out-of-town investigator.

Black Spot was created by Mathieu Missoffe, a writer on crime drama Spiral and the French portions of Netflix original Criminal. It’s extremely bingeable, and while the Twin Peaks comparisons are overstating the matter, its combination of folk horror and dark humour makes it memorable. There are currently two eight-episode seasons (the original title Zone Blanche translates more closely to Dead Zone, but we’re not the ones making the decisions around here). As yet, there’s no word on a third season, but neither has it officially been cancelled.

Twice Upon a Time / Il était une seconde fois (2019)

While still reeling from a breakup, Vincent receives a cube with extraordinary powers and seizes a change to reconnect with his ex – in the past.

This mournful sci-fi romance about a man who receives an object in the post that enables him to travel back in time to nine months earlier, when he attempts to resurrect a failed relationship with his ex (Skins and The White Queen‘s Freya Mavor) wasn’t exactly warmly received by fans of either genre. With only four half-hour episodes though, it does have brevity in its favour, as well as its own violin-laden, intense atmosphere. If you’re a fan of meditative science-fiction that poses moral questions and doesn’t provide all (or indeed some) of the answers, Twice Upon a Time could be for you. Make sure you watch it with subtitles though, because the US dubbed accents are a bridge too far.

CRIME THRILLER

The Forest / La Forêt (2017)

When a teen girl disappears from a village near the Ardennes Forest, local police and a concerned teacher begin to uncover a web of unsettling secrets.

Comparisons to Zone Blanche (see above) abound for The Forest, but this is a much more straightforward Broadchurch-style crime thriller. Set in the Ardennes in a small town where everybody knows everybody and they’re all hiding sordid secrets (you know the drill by now), it’s about the search for a missing teenage girl and years of strange disappearances and goings-on in the titular forest.

Reviews were generally good, with plenty of praise for the scenery and soundtrack, but the key thing about this one-series thriller is that the ending offers definitive answers to the many questions posed in the series. A bit clichéd, perhaps, but crime mystery fans should find plenty to enjoy in the twists and turns.

The Chalet / Le Chalet (2017)

Friends gathered at a remote chalet in the French Alps for a summer getaway are caught in a deadly trap as a dark secret from the past comes to light.

The backdrop of Chamonix in the French Alps is what makes this serviceable thriller worth a look. Its somewhat predictable ‘nasty things happen in a remote chalet’ story plays out against a stunning mountain setting, over two timelines. The six hour-long episodes are split between 2017, when a group of friends visits the titular chalet, and 1997, when a family moved there for a fresh start. Neither goes… well.

By no means a must-watch, it’s nevertheless a compact, eventful series for Francophile TV fans, from the makers of crime thriller Les Dames and popular long-running French detective series Julie Lescaut.

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The Mantis / La Mante (2017)

A serial killer, nicknamed ‘La Mante’ decides to collaborate with the police when a string of murders that copycat her style suddenly appear.

Try to ignore the fact that the main character is called Damien Carrot and this six-part crime thriller will feel all the more gruesome. It’s already very, very gruesome and merits its many comparisons to The Sinner and Luther’s heightened world of psychopathic murderers and nasty death scenes. Apparently Stephen King’s a fan.

It’s a kind of Silence of the Lambs set-up about an incarcerated serial killer helping a cop to solve a series of copycat murders in Paris, with the twist that said cop is said serial killer’s son (!). Without giving anything away, the controversial ending definitely merits a wider discussion about the responsibilities of TV drama, which you’ll find elsewhere online, so be prepared for crassness. The trailer above is French-language only.

The Frozen Dead / Glacé (2017)

A grisly find atop a mountain in the French Pyrenees leads investigator Martin Servas into a twisted dance with a serial killer in this icy thriller.

Did we say the last one was Silence of the Lambs-y? This one is very much that aussi. In The Frozen Dead, a serial killer plays a sick game with the cops investigating some gruesome murders in the French Pyrenees. There’s also some wrongdoing involving a horse that doesn’t involve it ending up in a pot-au-feu.

This suspense thriller consists of six 50-minute episodes, which makes it a choice weekend binge, from creators with credits including Spiral and French political series Spin / Les Hommes de l’Ombre.

Unit 42 / Unité 42 (2017)

A widowed cop tapped to lead a special cybercrimes unit teams up with a former hacker to hunt down tech-savvy criminals who are terrorizing Belgium

For fans of The Tunnel and The Bridge, this is a Belgian odd-couple crime thriller about Sam – a resolutely analogue detective in his 50s – and Billie – a troubled hacker in her 20s. They team up in a newly created Brussels digital policing unit to track down a network of cyber terrorists responsible for a series of killings.

If that sounds generic and familiar, it is, but the chemistry of the two leads Patrick Ridremont and Constance Gay sells the premise. This police procedural has two 10-part series so far, comprising 50-minute episodes but only the first is currently available to stream on Netflix.

The Break / La Trêve (2016)

A police detective mourning a painful loss moves back to his peaceful hometown, only to be drawn into a murder case that dredges up dark secrets.

Nicknamed the Belgian Broadchurch (we really need to find new ways to describe crime TV), this whodunit earned high praise across both seasons for its darkly comic and twisted story of dark small town secrets. Filmed in The Ardennes, the two 10-episode seasons weave together numerous family drama subplots and lay bare sick secrets about the residents of Heiderfeld, Belgium.

The premise sees a police detective moves with his teenage daughter from Brussels back to his home town, where the body of a young football player has been pulled from the river. Against a backdrop of local corruption surrounding the construction of a dam, was it suicide or murder?

DRAMA

Inhuman Resources / Dérapages (2020)

Alain Delambre, unemployed and 57, is lured by an attractive job opening. But things get ugly when he realises he’s a pawn in a cruel corporate game.

Eric Cantona (yes, him) stars in this six-episode action-packed thriller satirising corporate greed. It’s based on a 2010 novel by Pierre Lemaitre titled Cadres Noirs, which itself was inspired by a true story about a company that staged a fake hostage situation as part of a round of high-level job interviews.

It’s a slick, gritty morality drama about a down-on-his-luck man (Cantona) forced into an extreme role when he’s tasked with simulating a hostage attack for a slimy boss seeking to decimate his workforce. Reviews have been very positive, with particular praise for Cantona in the lead role.

Mythomaniac / Mytho (2019)

Burned out and taken for granted, a working mother suspects her partner is cheating, so to win back his attentions, she feigns a medical diagnosis.

Directed by Fabrice Gobert, who headed up Les Revenants / The Returned and written by Anne Berest, this domestic drama-comedy is about Elvira, a disenchanted mother of three ignored by her family, cheated on by her husband and kicked around by suburban life. When she lies about a cancer diagnosis, things start to change for the better at home, but the lie brings its own complications. It won the audience award and best actress for lead Marina Hands (Black Spot, Taboo) at Series Mania, winning praise for her delicate, compassionate performance.

This is a solid family drama with a strong lead performance. It’s already been renewed for a second season, which was, pre-Covid-19, due to arrive in France in late 2020. See the French-language trailer above.

COMEDY & ROM-COM

Family Business (2019)

After learning France is about to legalize pot, a down-on-his-luck entrepreneur and his family race to turn their butcher shop into a marijuana cafe.

Starring, among others, French legend Liliane Rovère (also seen in Call My Agent, see below), this is part stoner comedy, part dysfunctional family sitcom. It’s about a struggling son (creator Jonathan Cohen) who comes up with the bright idea to pivot his Parisian Jewish family butcher shop into a cannabis cafe, and the trouble that lands them in on both sides of the law.

It’s lightweight with a bit of edge, and if you take a shine to its larger-than-life characters fear not, it was renewed for a second season very quickly after its initial release. The new episodes are scheduled to arrive in September 2020.

The Hook-up Plan / Plan Coeur (2018)

Elsa, on the verge of turning thirty and stuck in an uninspiring job, finds herself still hung up on her ex-boyfriend two years after their breakup. Her friends, hoping to help her break out of her rut and find some confidence, decide to hire a male escort to take her on a few dates.

This rom-com is the second French-language Netflix original after Gerard Depardieu-starring Marseille, and given the choice between the two, this is the one to watch. Three friends, Elsa, Emilie and Charlotte navigate relationships and imminent motherhood in contemporary Paris over two series.

It’s a light, pacey modern dating comedy filled with bright shots of Paris and city life. The English-targeted trailer riffed on its similarity to Love Actually, if you want to use that as a barometer for whether you’d enjoy it. (Though if it’s French comedy-drama you’re after though, run, don’t walk to Call My Agent, see below).

A Very Secret Service / Au Service de la France (2015)

1960: the French intelligence service hires the 23-year-old Andre Merlaux. Handsome, well-raised, intelligent but impressionable, Merlaux has much to learn to serve and defend the interests of France.

This light-weight Archer-ish satire goes back to the 1960s to a time when France’s position in the world stage was changing due to ongoing bloody colonial battles for independence, and French society was changing thanks to the rise of feminism and the civil rights movement. Set in a French intelligence training service, it follows a hapless new recruit’s attempts to follow orders and do his compatriots proud. There are two 12-episode seasons of this comedy drama, which was received warmly back in 2015 and pokes fun at the old ways and the new through the eyes of a fish out of water.

Call My Agent / Dix Pour Cent (2015)

At a top Paris talent firm, agents scramble to keep their star clients happy – and their business afloat – after an unexpected crisis.

Unless you are in fact watching it (in which case, carry on), this is surely The Best French TV Series You’re Not Watching. Set in a Parisian talent agency struggling to survive after the loss of its patron, it’s a workplace comedy-drama with heart and satirical bite. The forthcoming season four will sadly be its last, but at least it’s going to end on its own terms.

Dix Pour Cent (10 Per Cent in English, in reference to the agent’s cut of a star’s pay packet) is a funny, fast, whip-smart satire of, and love letter to the French film industry, filled with characters to love. Created by Fanny Herrero, it has a terrific comedy ensemble cast (including Camille Cottin, who played Fleabag in the French-language remake) but the real joy for fans of French cinema are the guest stars. So many legends pop up, from Juliette Binoche to Monica Bellucci, Jean Dujardin, Isabelle Huppert and Beatrice Dalle… all playing exaggerated versions of themselves. N’hesitez plus, vas-y!

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