Showing posts with label China Mieville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China Mieville. Show all posts

Thursday, March 29, 2018

TV News: Kiss Me First & The City & The City



A six-part adaptation of Lottie Moggach's Kiss Me First begins on Channel 4 on Easter Monday/2 April at 10pm:
Kiss Me First moves between the real and virtual animated worlds. When Leila (Tallulah Haddon) stumbles across Red Pill, a secret paradise, hidden on the edges of her favourite game, she meets Tess (Simona Brown). Tess is everything that Leila is not: hedonistic, impulsive and insatiable. So when Tess turns up in Leila's real life uninvited, Leila's world is forever changed. But then a member of the group mysteriously disappears and Leila begins to suspect that maybe the hidden sanctuary isn't the digital Eden its creator Adrian claims it to be. Now, Leila's real journey begins.


On Friday 6 April at 9pm, BBC2 begins a four-part adaptation of China Mieville's The City & The City, which stars David Morrissey.

From the BBC website:
The body of a dead girl is found at Bulkya Docks, on the border between Beszel and Ul Qoma - two cities with a division like no other. Resident of the crumbling city of Beszel and inspector of the extreme crime squad, Tyador Borlu takes on the case, assisted by officer Lizbyet Corwi. The girl's body was seen dumped on the wasteland by a yellow van, and Detective Naustin presumes the girl must have been a hooker. Cases like this are run of the mill for Borlu, but he notices strange similarities to an old case.

The body was found in an area with lots of cross-hatching with Ul Qoma. Commissar Gadlem thinks this is a case for Breach - the secret police who ruthlessly patrol all cross-border crime. Gadlem thinks maybe someone else should take it on, and that maybe it is too personal for Borlu - but Borlu insists he can handle it.

As Unificationists protest that Ul Qoma and Beszel should become one city, Borlu receives a call from someone who says she was friends with the dead girl and identifies her as an American student called Mahalia Geary. Mahalia lived in Ul Qoma but wound up dead in Beszel. Borlu starts to worry as the friend admits she is not phoning from Beszel, she is illegally calling from Ul Qoma. Mr and Mrs Geary fly in from America to see their daughter's body, and Borlu and Corwi are put on baby-sitting duty. Gadlem knows that Borlu made an illicit phone call, and the case is being taken to the Oversight Committee - he wants to invoke Breach.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

New Reviews: Hannah, Mieville, Nadelson, Noort, Russell, Thompson

There are two competitions running in September. One is for 2 children's adventure-thriller books by Andy Briggs and is open to the UK, and the other is for A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio which is open world-wide. Details on how to enter can be found on the competition page.

Here are this week's reviews:
Michelle Peckham reviews the paperback release of The Other Half Lives by Sophie Hannah;

Laura Root reviews The City and The City by China Mieville which is an intriguing mix of detection and science fiction;

Terry Halligan is impressed with Londongrad by Reggie Nadelson the latest in the Artie Cohen series;

Maxine Clarke reviews Back to the Coast by Saskia Noort (and her review will make you rush out and buy the book);

Craig Sisterson reviews the first in a new series by Craig Russell: Lennox, set in 1950s Glasgow;

and Geoff Jones reviews The Captain's Table by Brian Thompson the second of the Bella Wallis series, which is set in Victorian England.
Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.