![]() ![]() With a narrative structure that is a bit like a good jazz tune, this Jack Thorne-penned series moves onto characters beyond Elliot, circles back so you see him differently, swerves off in another direction, and keeps playing your familiarity against experimentation to create something multifaceted and complex. ![]() Watch on Britbox Hindsight 2020: The EddyĬentered on a jazz club in Paris that shares a name with the title of the series, the lives of the people involved twist around the tortured experience of former jazz pianist and current club owner Elliot (Andre Holland) as he juggles business problems, interventions by police and criminals, band issues, and, most grippingly, unexpectedly having to raise his explosive teenage daughter, played by Amandla Stenberg in a magnificent performance. While also trying to find work for his aimless daughter (Erin Kellyman), caretake his ailing mother, and deal with other problems, Pete grumbles his way through the darkness as he finds that in this case, as in others he encounters, doing the right thing can range from pain in the ass to totally dangerous, but it can provide a sweetness to life regardless. Toby Jones, who also co-writes the series, is wonderful as Pete Green, a bus driver just trying to get through things and juggle his burdens, but now embroiled in the life of Rita (Luwam Teklizgi), an illegal immigrant who he unknowingly smuggled into the country on his bus. But it can also be a way to burst out of a rut and find some value in life. Devastating.ĭoing the right thing is of course the right thing to do, but doing the right thing can often be hard. A tragedy on Shakesperean levels? I dunno. If The Bureau is about one man trying to step out of this all-encompassing existential trap, then the series finale is about the impossibility of that endeavor and how abstract fantasies like nations will disrupt and even destroy actual human-level desires and goals. But nations become almost arbitrary as the pieces encounter each other as human beings, even if they are on opposing sides, and goals become corrupted or, conversely, corrupt the interacting humans. Still centered on the spy with multiple identities played with exhausted hubris by Mathieu Kassovitz - who is surrounded by equally compelling performances - The Bureau is in part about the way political conflict between governments dehumanizes the on-the-ground players, requiring them to break with any hope of having a self in the service of defending the safety of the nation they align with. If the series has been largely about the ripple effects of one singular event at its beginning, the final series does service to the human core of its espionage plots by gradually stripping it all down to meet its end at the core of what it has always really been about. With this in place, Muhsin must traverse a devastated landscape of corruption on all sides that reveals honor in unexpected places. When one of his daughters disappears, he accepts a job with a British official, played with sneering, unhinged gusto by Bertie Carvel, as part of a scheme to restore honor to Iraq by building a new police force. Waleed Zuaiter draws you in as former Iraqi police officer Muhsin al-Khafaji, who must grapple with his previous sins both within his own mind and all around him, trying to keep his daughters safe during the American occupation and facing off against various players from Saddam Hussein’s rule who hold a grudge against him. Hindsight 2020: Baghdad Centralĭetective stories are just as much about having a compelling location and protagonist and villain as they are about the mystery itself and Baghdad Central excels in all these areas, but with the added bonus of taking the audience outside of itself and asking it to go along from a point of view that may actually be in opposition to it. If 2020 was a year that demanded a lot of people - asking them to cast aside their expectations and find beauty in the darkness, to recognize and appreciate their connections to other people, and to take responsibility for the lives of strangers by putting on a mask regardless of their political beliefs - then it was filled with series that demanded the same of their viewers with the idea that this wasn’t a time to tune out of the world but to instead embrace the complexity that dominates reality and the best fiction. It’s surely a coincidence that the makers of such things rose to the occasion, making the usual Top 10 lists outdated and demanding addendums and expansions that brought them closer to something we can pronounce as complete. If 2020 was the longest year ever then that meant there was more room for good TV series to stream than usual. Ethan Hawke and Joshua Caleb Johnson create magic in The Good Lord Bird
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