Category: Stu’s Reviews

Genre: TV Series         

Grade: A-/B+

Notable People: Katja Riemann, Elisa Schlott, Anna Marie Muhe, Vanessa Loibl, Hans Wagner, Directed by: Elmar Fischer

Title: Our Miracle Years

Review: In a politically, morally and economically devastated country, three sisters of an industrialist Wolff family in post-war Germany reinvent themselves and set the course for their future. Potent drama that tells the often neglected story of the German experience following the war; centered around the aftereffects of the Nuremberg trials on former Nazis and the split of the country into two conflicting states. Extremely well-acted and poignant, and a powerful study of the rise of woman-power in Europe after the war. Riemann is brilliant the widow of a disgraced company director who commits suicide after being nailed as a Nazi collaborator-  really powerful role. Very authentic production and will keep you riveted around the shadows of our shared, but limited, knowledge of this time and place, though waned a bit at the end of the second (and clearly final) season. Original German production was interestingly called “Our WONDERFUL Years”.

Genre: TV Series        

Grade: A

Notable People: Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Isaac Hayes, Jim Stewart, Al Bell; Created and Directed by: Jamila Wignot

Title: Stax: Soulsville, USA

Review: n 1960s Memphis, an audacious set of interracial collaborators dared to make their own music on their own terms, forming Stax Records, one of America’s most influential creators of Black music. This amazing four-part documentary follows the arc and ultimate fizzle of Stax; its fight to represent true American Black music, made for Black people and to be different than Motown in its quest for white audience. We see the underbelly of its ultimate demise in its failure to overcome the challenge of the giant white American music hierarchy: ultimately run over by Columbia records and burnt to the ground. But along the way, this extraordinary small town record label founded by bet brother Jim Stewart and sister Estelle Axton (ergo ST-AX) became the holy ground of soul music with Sam and Dave, Otis, Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Staples, the Bar-Kays and finally, their savior, the Black Messiah- Isaac Hayes. Told by the surviving principles in blunt and no-holds bard fashion, it is a compelling story of race, extraordinary creativity and the most unusual of integrated companies in southern America. And, it hovers around the enormously prescient Booker T. and the MG’S- America’s greatest interracial band. Eye opening.

Genre: TV Series         

Grade: B

Notable People: Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings, Giancarlo Esposito, Created by: Guy Ritchie

Title: The Gentleman

Review: created by cutting edge director Guy Ritchie for Netflix, it is a spin-off of Ritchie’s 2019 film of the same name

Edward Horniman (the wonderfully deadpan James) has unexpectedly inherited a massive, regal estate and the title of Duke of Halstead at the reading of the last will and testament of his deceased father. He learns that the land has become part of a weed growing empire run by enchantress, and deadly, Susie Glass (Scodelario). He must navigate a wacked out, semi-sophisticated and bourgeois world of eclectic and dangerous characters with sordid agendas, while to keep his eccentric family, and himself, alive. Amusing, but on the dull side- though the legendary refined menace of Esposito makes it worth it when he is on camera (not enough). Seems an unlikely renewal to me.

Genre: TV Series     

Grade: B+/A-

Notable People: Lize Feryn, Wietse Tanghe, Matthieu Sys, Barbara Serafian, Wim Opbreauk, Sven Mattke, Created by: Jan Matthys

Title: In Flanders fields

Review: Ten part 2014 gritty mini-series on BBC/PBS (who are clearly the new kings of drama) telling the story of the Boesman family living under German occupation in Ghent, Belgium during the first world war. Flanders Fields is a common English name of the World War I battlefields in Belgium and France. The battle scenes can be an assault on the senses- as this “war to end all wars certainly was”. The horrors of the gas attacks are well portrayed as is the brutal lack of regard the Germans had for those they conquered. The story is told thru the lens of a successful doctor, his wife and their three adult (ish) children; all of whom become intricately involved in the war. No happy endings here- but very well done drama with no lack of surprises.  

Genre: TV Series      

Grade: A++

Notable People: Steve Carell, Domhnall Gleeson, Linda Emond, David Alan Grier, Created by: Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg

Title: Astrid

Review: I don’t give this rating lightly. In one of the more remarkable performances in recent memory, Steve Carrel transforms himself into the symbolic ghost of famed analyst and Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl (“don’t wake me up if I am having a nightmare- the reality is much worse”), to treat a serial killer patient how is holding him hostage. Intrigued? You should be. This is a 20-minute show (until the last cataclysmic episode)- that feels like you have watched it for two hours. Darkness and intensity do not come close to describe it. This show was suggested to me by my old friend, Bruce, a renowned analytic practitioner in his own right, and I’m deeply grateful to him for the experience. Both carrel and Gleeson, as the tormented serial killer who wants to get better, are riveting. Their relationship is riveting; the mother living upstairs is riveting. Pure art. A one and done unfortunately, but the ten episodes are transformative. The end music of Leonard singing “You Want it Darker” (his last recording) with an orthodox Jewish choral backing and a Cantor is beyond fitting.