Viewing
The excellent
Pinocchio – Guillermo del Toro.***** Amazon Prime Video. Weird and wonderful. About as far from Disney as you can get. Or any other retelling for that matter. Totally memorable.
My Policeman ***** Amazon Prime Video. Brilliant acting and direction. Sad but perhaps ultimately hopeful story of a love triangle in homophobic 50s UK. Tom, Patrick and Marion waste a lot of their lives which is maybe the main message. Stellar cast. Based on the true story of EM Forster. Would watch again. (And that’s infrequent for me!)
And the very good
Secret Life of the Safari Park Ch4.**** We really got to know some of the animals.
Art of Persia **** BBC Samira Ahmed. Fascinating but not quite as good as her Pakistan series because there was less interaction with local historians etc. This wasn’t explained but could have been due to language difficulties or even political ones.
Tabby McTat **** BBC Delightful animated version of the Julia Donaldson tale
Britain’s Human Zoos ****Ch4 Novelist Nadifa Mohammed explores the shocking history of the people the British brought to UK from the empire for entertainment and forensic science. Fascinating and horrifying. I wanted a lot more information – maybe a whole series – so it loses a star. That’s down to the people who commissioned the programme, not the presenter or the material. The period covered also saw people with differences used as entertainment e,g. The Elephant Man, so it tells us something very unsettling about human nature.
Reading
The excellent
After Midnight by Blake Allwood***** Great contemporary mm version of Cinderella. Lots of action and angst and good characters in Dillon and Dominic.
Zenith by Eli Easton and RJ Scott***** A final gripping crime mystery for Gabriel and Tiber. This time it’s personal.
The Red Dragon of Oxford by Joy Lynn Fielding***** Lovely introduction to her Wings over Albion series. Reviewed for PRG in more depth.
Changes coming down and Changes going on by Kaje Harper***** Great story in two volumes about a threesome – a rancher, a hockey player and a cop. Superb characterisation including minor characters. Really gripping thriller elements.
Midwinter Marriage by KL Noone***** Only a long short story but so good I’ve saved it to reread next Christmas. Paranormal, mm, historical.
Heart of Stone by Johannes T Evans.***** Wow! Perfectly delicious story about a vampire with ADHD and an autistic secretary in late eighteenth century Birmingham. UST unresolved until the final chapter. The period detail and the gripping romance element are fabulous. I’ve always preferred werewolves but this might convert me to vampires.
Cursebreakers by Madeleine Nakamura***** Gorgeously detailed fantasy thriller which might will fail because it’s overpriced. Reviewed in more depth for PRG.
The Prince and the Ice King by Amanda Meuwissen*****Lovely and intricate mm retelling of Beauty and the Beast with addition of the myth of Kind Midas. Reviewed in more depth for PRG
The Family Man by AJ Rose***** Excellent crime novel (FBI analysts on track of serial killer) with slow burn romance between team leader and new agent. Will look for sequels. Reviewed in more depth for PRG
And the very good
Candlenight by Phil Rickman**** I think this was a re-read though I didn’t realise until I reached the final chapters. Gripping supernatural thriller with an ambiguous ending. Incredibly good writing but it ends up as horror which is not to my taste.
Culture Warlords by Talia Lavin**** Interesting investigative journalism exploring the subject but I would have liked more about the far right online in countries other than US. They were only mentioned briefly.
A Stroke of Brilliance by Nazri Noor**** KU A good sequel to A Touch of Fever. Xander and Jack are a great couple and I love Lore, the AI. Will definitely continue with the series.
Rebel Dragon by Steve Turnbull **** Good introductory volume to The Dragons of Esternes which I will be following. (I’m currently reading vol 2) Kantees, as a slave, should not be riding Sheesha, but he seems to think otherwise.
Fill the Empty Spaces by Karenna Colcroft. **** Interesting exploration of grief. Slow burn romance with paranormal elements. Well written. Reviewed in more depth for PRG
Jay's World 
I have My Policeman on my shelf, ready to read later this year, so am hopeful for it.
It’s a fascinating story – sad in some ways because of the absolute waste of time dctated by the laws and attitudes of the period. I hope you enjoy it!
I haven’t read any of the books you review – I don’t get much time for reading, and when I do I tend to read any of ‘the classics’ I can get to, science fiction and indulge in a spot of fanfic – but I have been meaning to watch ‘Art of Persia’. I obtained a copy of Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation’ after catching a couple of eps on the BBC and thinking they were fab. The BBC tried to address the supposed imbalance in the series with its ‘Civilisations’ series, which I caught first and prompted me to finally get round to watching the inspiration. Having watched several eps of KC’s ‘Cvilisation’, I think a) ‘Civilisations’ was interesting, but not a patch on ‘Civilsation’, and b) the whole notion of imbalance is a tad misconceived. KC says right at the start it’s a personal exploration of the influences on, and evolution of, Western art – it’s not a treatise on how European civilisation is the pinnacle of human achievement. It doesn’t even set out to be authoritative, it’s just one man’s take on it all. I think the wokerati much just assume it’s a defence of the ethos of Empire because it’s presented by a tweedy Oxbridge type and called ‘Civilisation’. The only quibble I would have is that KC basically defines ‘civilisation’ as those peoples who leave a built record of their presence in the landscape, but then goes on to exclude the likes of Persia which, although possibly not gifting the world with much in the way of inherited cityscape as the Romans did, did leave behind whacking great fortresses and temples all over the shop. I thinking missing out Asia and the Islamic world was a mistake, although their influences on Western art – particularly as defined by painting and sculpture – which is the point of the series – are muted. I think ‘Art of Persia’ will be a better way to fill in any gaps than ‘Civilisations’. As an aside, I also tried watching ‘The Ascent of Man’, which I found impenetrably dull and abandoned. Although, I might give it another whirl just for completion’s sake.
Re ‘Britain’s Human Zoos’ - if you haven’t already, try checking out a 1932 American film called ‘Freaks‘. It was a mainstream early-Hollywood release and even today has the power to disturb.
Fiorenza_a
For what seemed like years I, together with a group of colleagues, worked on curriculum materials funded and encouraged by the government of the time on: the Incas; Mediaeval Zimbabwe; Mohenjo-Daro; the Japanese empire and art; the Benin bronzes…. all brushed out of the curriculum subsequently. Even Egypt was made optional as a module for study. So people will grow up without the faintest idea of our own place in a world context. At least earlier generations mentioned other cultures! So don’t get me started… I was thinking of saying that programmes like Civilisation only really reached the already-educated but that was in fact good, as it caused them in turn to think about education in general. But then, as you say, it was all very Eurocentric or in our case empire-centric. I loved Art of Persia, not just for the art, which I already knew (from research into Islamic art), but for the information about the culture that produced it. I’m currently enjoying Lost Temples of Cambodia (Ch4) for the same reason. I knew, of course, about Angkor Wat, but not about the Kmer empire that built it and the other sites. I suppose we just have to be grateful to BBC and Ch4 for producing programmes that broaden our horizons and pray that they don’t succumb to current political hostility.
Oh yes – discovering some of the history of the Great Zimbabwe finally made some sense to me of what I had thought was a quite esoteric choice. Although it was fairly obvious why ‘Rhodesia’ had to go.
Fiorenza_a
It inspired one of my first books – an mm version of Snow White set in Great Zimbabwe.
Will have to look out for My Policeman on Prime – I hadn’t spotted it before now so thanks for the tip!
Enjoy! It’s sort of sad because they waste so much time but the period details are fascinating and explain the time wasting perfectly.
Absolutely. So many wasted lives back then…