matthewhaddrill

Season 2 of the Dutch language Belgian series 'The Twelve' is more low-key than its predecessor. Characters like Josse De Pauw's portrayal of defence attorney Ari Spaak, Maaike Cafmeyer's accused headmistress Frie Palmers and Johan Heldenbergh's Stefaan De Munc, the troubled ex-husband, in Season 1, make for a powerful courtroom drama, and the focus on the jury gives it an extra dimension, the feel of an ensemble piece. I couldn't get as excited by the performances in 'The Cinderella Murder', the story of a daughter (Julie Bergman played by Louisa Peeter) who is accused of protecting her father (Anton Bergman; Koen De Graeve) from the murder of her stepmother (Marianne Coens; Katrien De Ruysscher). The drama gets weighed down by some of the technical details of the case. I found it difficult to judge characters and kept asking myself "And how is this evidence relevant?". The main problem may be the format, a 'reveal' at the end of each episode but crucial details withheld until the very end. I found the plot device quite frustrating.

'The Twelve' still works well as a drama. The Belgian court system, rules and procedures are fascinating. I can't imagine, for example, jurors in a British court being allowed to ask questions during the trial itself. The strength of the series is in the human perspective it provides, however. Jury members respond to events in their own lives as well to the matters of the case they are considering. Issues never seem black & white, a credit to writers Sanne Nuyens and Bert Van Dael who cleverly place the lives of the jurors adjacent to the people they pass judgement on. As Jesus once put it: "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone". Equally interesting (and worrying!) is how split the jurors are about the final verdict, so, Murad (played by Yassine Oaiche) comments to fellow juror Nico (Emilie De Roo), herself a court journalist, that the jury may not be able to convict the defendents with the evidence provided. And in one final twist, the truth about Marianne's murder comes to light ...

8 episodes is a lot to sit through to find out the most interesting part of the story, but 'The Cinderella Murder' comes good in the end. You can find both seasons of 'The Twelve' on the UK's Channel 4 streaming service 'All4', on 'Walter Presents', with I believe a third, 'The Botox Murders', currently under production.

There's a sophistication and subtlety about Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light' which may have escaped some. Sure, you've got the conventional storytelling narrative, the 3 women's lives and struggles playing out in modern-day Mumbai, but a lot of the film is shot in an imagistic minimalistic style, showing long shots of city life and tantalising the senses with rain storms, noise, dirt and bustle. Main character nurse Prabha (played by Kani Kusruti) uses words sparingly and tellingly to reveal her loss and longing, youthful Anu (Divvya Prabha), also a nurse, is vivacious but vexed by her love situation, while Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam) the hospital cook is wrapped up in her own struggles with a greedy landlord. And yet the main character is really Mumbai itself and the great sea of humanity these people's lives are swept up in. Sometimes it feels slightly voyeuristic, like part of a dream sequence. I found the whole film deeply moving and intriguing. The 'Light' of the title is I think deliberately more imagined than real. The camera often dwells in dark places and Mumbai is highlighted at night as the women sweep past in the metro on their way home with barely lit buildings in the distance. Prabha struggles to read under the light of her phone at home, lamenting her estranged husband: "you might think you know someone, but they can also become strangers; then, all that we see is darkness, no light.". These themes of light and darkness are returned to throughout 'All We Imagine As Light'.

The stories of the main characters are resolved in a brief trip they make to help Parvathy start her life again in a Konkan coastal town away from Mumbai. Prabha magically projects a conversation with her estranged husband onto a villager who she saves from drowning. The stranger admits to Prabha that he spent so much time in darkness he went blind:"In the darkness you try to imagine light but you cannot". 'All We Imagine As Light's multiple themes left me wondering. Kapadia's darkness is perhaps the bold cinematic statement that sheds light on these women's lives. There's a lot more to say about this film, and while it may have its technical flaws and leave you scratching your head somewhat, rough and ready and dreamy magic realism is basically the reason I watch. Highly recommended.

I quite like dramas that re-examine Britain's colonial past ('Jewel In The Crown' and 'Indian Summers' spring to mind as good examples) but they need to be properly researched to have any historical value. Peter Moffat's 'The Last Post' was produced in 2017, but is currently available on UKTV (or 'U') in Britain. I wanted to be able to recommend it, but I can't really.

The 6-episode miniseries is set in a British Military Police camp in Aden, in the south of Yemen, 1965, during the middle of an uprising by rebels trying to win independence from British rule. Captain Joe Martin played by Jeremy Neumark Jones arrives with his wife Honor Martin (Jessie Buckley) to take over the running of the camp from his predecessor Captain Nick Page (Joseph Kennedy). In 'The Last Post' you get a glimmer of what life was like for the BMP's stationed in Aden, but little analysis of what was actually going on at the time. It's mostly a period drama, I could even call it a 'soap' in the trivial way it's put together. There's the usual British obsession with social class which clearly runs all the way through the military. A lot of the drama focuses on the lives of the 'closed' community of ex-pats, British military and their wives and children. I suppose that's fair, but Yemeni's are portrayed mostly anonymously in the plotlines: crowds, fighters, "terrorists" even. It's all a bit clichéd and a one-sided view of events of the time. Disappointing. That said, it's well acted and has a certain 'period' charm about it. Although it looks like Yemen, it was actually shot in Cape Town and Simon's Town Bay Naval Base in South Africa.

Moffat introduces characters to whet our appetite but doesn't really develop them. Apart from the British, there's the rather idiosyncratic Yemeni rebel leader Kadir Hakim ('Starfish') (played by Aymen Hamdouchi) who seems wise and doesn't fit the usual "terrorist" stereotypes. Why not bring him into the drama? Also there's a love interest, the nanny of one of the families Yusra Saeed (Ouidad Elma) who young Lance Corporal Tony Armstrong (Tom Glynn-Carney) falls for. Both these aspects could have been spun out into rather different stories which would have humanized the Yemeni's a bit. I suppose it would have required a much deeper analysis and serious historical and social research which perhaps time and the budget of the series didn't allow for? Instead, there are loose dramatic subplots, the attack on Captain Page, the taking of the son of Major Harry Markham (played by Ben Miles) as a hostage, and a lot of time taken up with 'personal' matters, like Markham's wife Mary (Amanda Drew) giving birth to their second child, or the tribulations of unconventional Lieutenant Ed Laithwaite (Stephen Campbell Moore) and his wife Alison (Jessica Raine) who is evidently unhappy. Christmas, even, for God's sake!! It felt like the producers had hired all these fine actors so they had to make use of them. Very ponderous at times. I kept thinking to myself "What is the point of any of this?". Brits abroad in a difficult situation? No real attempt to get to grips with the period of history involved which would have made 'The Last Post' much more interesting.

The military stuff would also have been opportune for taking the series in a different direction, with the so-called 'Aden Emergency' woven into the plot 'The Last Post' would have had a lot more depth. Aden was a protectorate with a British-approved government at the time. There's little understanding of how the conflict unfolds. What was the intelligence the British had at the time? Who were the 'National Liberation Front' and what demands did they make of the British? Was all that meant for Season 2?

We'll never know. By refusing to put a single 'hat' on, part-history, part-imperialistic nostalgia trip, part-military conflict, 'The Last Post' jumps around too much and fails to establish a clear identity for itself. A great missed opportunity in my view, one that could have been put right with even a few simple tweaks. Unsurprisingly in 2018 it was cancelled for the second season. Mr Moffat, get yourself a team of writers/creators.