Crazy Diamond

Horrible. I had to watch it twice and still was like "Huh?" Finally, I came here to find out what was going on. I can usually understand these by the end but this one just left m confused. Thanks to the reviewers on this site, I figured it out. On to the next one.

Crazy Diamond seemed stretched at its one hour length not helped by its pedestrian pace and a thin story. Not even Steve Buscemi could save this.

The setting is a near future where food and vegetable instantly rot, there is coastal erosion at an extreme pace and there are artificial robots who look like real life humans known as Jack and Jill.

Buscemi plays Ed, he lives with his wife Sally. Ed is dreaming of adventure in the high seas to escape his house that is on the verge of falling down to the sea. He works in a scientific laboratory and likes to listen to vinyl records.

Things change when he meets a Jill who is dressed like a femme fatale. She is selling double indemnity life assurance and wants regenerative medicine as her life force is dying. Ed is swayed by her, Sally is worried about him and Jill attracts danger.

In some ways this had a similar theme to Blade Runner, a replicant that wants to extend its life.

Came to see the reviews to try to understand what the hell I just watched. Parts of it were okay. The set was beautifully done, and the soundtrack great. But that's where it stops. I'm still trying to understand how everything ties together. Is this about consciousness? About salvaging relationships? Commercialism, production, global health, isolation/lonliness, reproduction, black market gangs, racism, sexism? I'm not quite sure because they touched briefly on all of these, but not enough to actually make sense in context. How does the puzzle fit? It felt like there wasn't a point to any of it, because there wasn't enough depth to anything. Just kinda skimmed the surface and left it hanging. There wasn't a connection between the plot points, or even chemistry between the cast. Not my favorite episode.

SPOILER: I was less impressed by this episode of Channel 4"s Philip K Dick anthology than others I've watched in the series. Set in the bleak mid-future, it pits hangdog Steve Buscemi as an ordinary average cog in the workaday scheme of things, working in a government scientific facility producing regenerative medicine, living with his childless, nervous wife in their modern house seemingly content, if not exactly happy with his lot.

In this alternative future, however, there is a shortage of natural foodstuffs, so that all things edible have a limited life span, coastal erosion is an everyday occurrence and the population is bolstered by so-called "Jack's" and "Jill's" of seemingly artificially created beings of human appearance.

Our hero is mildly rebellious however as we see him try to grow his own food and also escape the drudgery of his boring existence by retreating to his boat where he plays vinyl records. Then, into his life steps a beautiful femme-fatale, ostensibly trying to sell him life cover but in truth she wants a supply of the life-giving serums, both for commercial gain and also to save her own failing metabolism.

This story had its moments, especially a nightmarish opening and its depiction of not so sweet suburbia in the near-future but for me had too much going on, taking in as it did, a terrorist gang desperate to get its hands on the toxins, a half-pig, half-woman being who dispenses marital advice to Buscemi's wife and in the end a weird union of sorts between the Jill and the wife which leaves him effectively seduced and abandoned by the finish.

I also didn't get the use of Pink Floyd references, from the episode title, to Buscemi's character name of Syd Barrett to the background music. The acting was good though, besides Buscemi, I enjoyed seeing "Borgen's" Sidse Babette Knudson as the double-dealing temptress and Julia Davis as the seemingly timorous wife. I also liked the cinematography, filmed in wash-out grey tones as well as the set design of the house of tomorrow.

No, this story of another brick in the wall who who'd outstayed his welcome to the machine was just a little too madcap for me, sorry.

Like the show. Hate this episode. Too short, too poorly explained, symbolism that really never meshed, some kill bill deaths for some reason.