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Reviews
Tabula Rasa (2017)
Excellent, addictive... and long.
TABULA RASA is an excellent suspense series coming out of Flanders... Dutch-speaking Belgium.
Great acting throughout from the whole cast, especially from the little girl, who was required to do some rather shocking, macabre stunts for the show.
The show is quite addictive, and I binged it over three days in its entirety.
I will concede that runtime is a bit long-- it frankly could have been told over the period of a standard two-hour feature-- and sometimes I felt the show was relying upon some scenes added to "pad out" the series. Still, excellent acting, script and camerawork... and unending plot surprises... made it all worthwhile.
Really, what this show is, in mood and plot, is a note-perfect 1970's-style Italian Giallo.
The Royle Family (1998)
Amazing show.
I am impressed with this innovative show: a sitcom like no other. There are no setup/punchlines, no improbable, grandiose plotpoints and no laugh tracks. The humor emerges from the truth that the scriptwriters and actors bring to it. Basically, it's a slice-of-life drama not far from Anton Chekhov or William Inge, and plenty of moments in the dialogue are positively Pinter-esque. The actors are just daring you to see the humanity behind these "salt-of-the-earth" characters. They used to call SEINFELD a "comedy about nothing", where "nothing happens"... This show says "hold my beer".
I am discovering this show on Dailymotion some 8 years after the show ended in the UK. Not too many Americans are likely to "get" this show, because it is culturally grounded in working-class life of Lancashire, highly specific; and sometimes the actors' regional accents are difficult to make out for a Yank like me. I suspect even some English people will miss a line or two uttered in the show.
But I am so impressed with what the actors are doing here: It would've been so easy for them to push this show into farce, or to give it a meanspirited edge... yet they never do: With discipline they find the truth of each moment, and it's fascinating to watch.