Matthew eats… My Life Is Murder

In times such as these, who can resist a bit of fluff? Something formulaic which doesn’t make you think to deep and allows you to forget that there is anything bad in the world, and if there is, it can be easily dealt with. It’s why crime dramas are so popular – the bad guy gets caught by the slightly smarter good guy.

My Life Is Murder suits this perfectly. An impossible murder happens. A brilliant but flawed (yet not tragically so) private eye works out who the culprit is. The pieces are slowly put together to prove they are right and at the end there is an arrest. It is a simplistic story arc but simple is what is needed right now. Oh, and the glorious Australian weather helps.

Our flawed detective is Alexa Crowe,  a former police officer who has a talent for solving riddles and baking bread but is not entirely brilliant at the people thing, unless they are a suspect she is trying to trip up. So far, so stereotypical. Which I must stress is far from a critique.

The rest of the crew are equally cut from the standard cloth of these dramas. There’s the police detective who supplies Crowe her cases, who may or may not have a crush on her. You have the young enthusiastic wannabe assistant, who is either fun or irritating depending on your tolerance of those on the younger end of the millennial age bracket. And we have a cat, who is not Crowe’s but lives with her. Because, well, cats do that.

The puzzles are all locked room type scenarios, the sort that Death in Paradise fans will be familiar with. And they are all solved by the one thing the killer forgot. The only frustration is we are only really given one suspect, a bit like Colombo. So we don’t have the satisfaction of guessing, bar the how.

The other pet peeve I have is in the third episode, where it felt like the show was reset. We had the introduction of another secondary character – a sexy cafe owner for the assistant to gush over. We also saw Crowe try and resist the assistant’s help, a change in dynamic we never saw in the first two episodes. And we got some background on Crowe’s private life. One of these changes, fine. But all three together make it look like a sequencing problem.

But then again, it’s fluff. The sub-plots are there to pad out the show to its necessary length and they have so far resisted the cheese that some other shows in this category fall prey to. So I will let it slide and let my brain chill for an hour. In the current climate, it’s a must.

Matthew eats… Picnic at Hanging Rock

A while ago, I talked about adaptations and what purpose they served. Surely people who read the book would be too frustrated with any changes, and those who hadn’t wouldn’t have the motivation to watch? Hence my general rule not to watch them unless I really wanted to.

I broke my rule with Picnic at Hanging Rock. One of my excuses is that I didn’t know the book existed, or even the previous film adaptation for that matter. The other is that there was nothing else on. To be honest, that was the more powerful one.

The plot revolves around three girls and a teacher going missing on a school trip. The school in question is a ladies finishing school run by Ms Appleyard (played by Natalie Dormer), a figure with a mysterious past that is hidden beneath a tough exterior. There are therefore two mysteries, what happened to the people who disappeared and what is Ms Appleyard hiding exactly from her past?

We get hints of the latter throughout, with the general picture being one that she is some form of con artist who helped fleece men for money. This led the viewer to unfortunately seeing a very ugly penis in the second episode, which made relieved I had not chosen to partake in supper that night.

Having said that, it is beautifully shot. Everything has that dream-like edge that heightens the sense of mystery and ties in nicely to the theme of superstition that dominates. It can leave you feeling quite woozy in places, and you need your wits about you to follow the plot at times, but there is some excellent shot framing.

Dormer is also brilliant, playing Ms Appleyard with the right amount of austereness balanced with a creeping paranoia. Her scenes are by far the strongest and you find yourself gobbling up every icy bon mot that comes out of her mouth.

The scenes with the ‘coven’ of the teenage girls go missing are also strong, particularly in the second episode onwards where the politics of the group are clearer. The sexually questionable Mike Fitzhubert is also intriguing, especially is barely hidden crush for one of his servants. These characters all slip into the dream weaving quite nicely.

Sadly, the show falls when it steps out of this into the real world – the police doing routine questioning, the everyday admin of school running. You are shaken out of the state you are put in. You also feel that it could afford to go a little deeper, that if you were really to study what was going on it could be potentially just some well-made bobbins.

It is still a good distraction though, albeit one that will no doubt be frustratingly open ended in its resolution. Try and ignore the fact it is often style over substance. Come for Dormer and the mystery, stay for the weirdness.

Matthew eats… Eurovision Song Contest 2015

Another year rumbles on, and it is now time for the annual post-mortem of The Eurovision Song Contest. This time, although I still want to ask the questions ‘did the right song win?’ and ‘did we deserve to do as badly as we did?’ I feel that this year they are so easy to answer that I may have to pad out with a general overview of the event as well, which is where we will begin.

Much has been made of Australia’s inclusion and the fact this was biggest final ever. To be fair, Australia didn’t disgrace themselves despite the temptation for them to go down the novelty act route. A strong singer, well-written song and nicely put together staging made for a strong performance, one which we could learn from (more on this later).

I do feel the execution of the show overall was quite weak, lacking the military-tight organisation of the Soviet bloc whilst also lacking the joie di vivre of the Scandinavian broadcasters. In fact, they were points during the interval and voting, and even occasionally between the songs, where things were boarding on the shambolic. Faulty satellite link-ups, wandering cameras, and hosts that struggled to left the awkward chats up from being almost funeral eulogies. Thankfully we are returning to Sweden next year, who are able to present with a nod and a wink whilst still being professional.

That leads us smoothly to the question of whether they should have own. For me, it is a strong yes. There were half a dozen or so songs that could have challenged, but each had a fatal flaw. Belgium had a strong song and charismatic performer, but I felt the staging (especially the dancers) a bit so-so. Russia had a very strong song and staging, but having a country that is a poster-child for intolerance singing about coming together as one stuck in the throat slightly. Good on countries like Lithuania for breaking rank and awarding none or low points for this. Italy was very good, but didn’t quite make the jump to ‘winner’ for reasons I can’t tell you other than gut instinct. Finally, Georgia was a favourite of mine, but too many flashing lights and a profusion of smoke in the first 30 seconds put me off. Sometimes less is more.

Sweden had none of these issues. Realising that it is the centre of European EDM it put that genre front-and-centre with imaginative and beautiful staging and a singer that knew how to sell the song. They are now officially behemoths of this competition with barely a foot wrong over the last 5 years. Again, this is a country we could learn from.

So what went wrong with us? Well, whilst I don’t think it was the best song, or staging, or performance, I still feel we deserved a few places higher on the scoreboard. Having said that, the genre was of electro-swing is slightly obscure, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find this bombed more with juries who perhaps spotted the limitations of the singers than the public. Our place in the draw didn’t help – a slot in the second half would have helped where we could have broken up the ballads could have seen a few more points come our way.

Where we go from here to me seems obvious, if difficult to achieve. We have two models to choose from based on this year’s line-up. The first is what I will dub the ‘Australian Model’. Keep the internal selection, but pick an act that is current and has some credibility. Allow them to write the song, perhaps even give them free reign over the staging as well. Obviously we won’t get Adele or Ed Sheeran, but a respectable act from The X Factor like Fleur East would work.

The other route is the ‘Swedish Model’. Sweden spends weeks of airtime and money selecting an act. The vote is split between juries and public, and new acts and established alike compete. It is now coincidence that the last time we even attempted something like this was 2009 when Andrew Lloyd Webber was involved an there seemed to be a genuine search for a star, and we eventually managed to place a very respectable 5^th. We shouldn’t be surprised that the years we where we don’t sneer at it, we do well. A culture change is need in how we treat the show, and we need it fast.