Continuing my entanglement with the Criminal Element, I parse two very different British TV crime miniseries: Ordeal by Innocence and Bodyguard. “A country house, a dead body, a pack of suspects—sounds like Agatha Christie, no? Of course, it does. It’s said that Dame Agatha named 1958’s Ordeal by Innocence as one of her two favorite…
Criminal Element: Babylon Berlin
The Burrow goes to Weimar for my latest scrape with the Criminal Element, a review of the hit German TV series Babylon Berlin: Despite its utter failure to provide stability for the German people between the wars, the late Weimar Republic has been fabulously successful in another regard: providing the…
South Coming True: “Paid Off”
I haven’t been posting “South Tech Today” and “News from the Future” for a while because that’s now called “the front page of the newspaper.” However, this article in the Washington Post is (a) too absurd for even me to think of it while writing South, and (b) too perfect…
Criminal Element: Fauda
The Criminal Element meets Doha 12 in my latest review: Fauda is a vivid, fast-paced Israeli political thriller that features kinetic storytelling, expertly played tension, and highly authentic action sequences. It also finds time to present the human side of a conflict that’s become dehumanized over the decades. Its two…
Criminal Element: Four Seasons in Havana
My latest entanglement with the Criminal Element takes me across the Florida Strait to the land of mojitos: The Las cuatro estaciones (Four Seasons in Havana) detective novels have brought Leonardo Padura fame, a certain amount of financial and political independence, a visit by Anthony Bourdain … and now, a…
Criminal Element: Riphagen
My latest run-in with the Criminal Element has me watching a TV show about a bad, bad man: The spectrum of “bad behavior” stretches all the way from kicking puppies to genocide. How despicable can the central character of a movie or TV show be before you can’t watch it…
Hairy Raising: Cleverman
Another entanglement with the Criminal Element led me to discover Cleverman, a limited-run series on the Sundance Channel: We Homo sapiens have gotten pretty used to being the only humanoid species on Earth. So, what would happen if we somehow ran across a cousin species—perhaps a somewhat better design? What…
Your Room is Ready: The Night Manager
While running with the Criminal Element, I checked in with The Night Manager. Here’s what I found: If you’ve made your name writing about Cold War espionage, what do you do when the Cold War ends? If you’re John le Carré, you take a vacation, and then you turn your attention…
In the (Pale) Pink: The Last Panthers
In another brush with the Criminal Element, I introduce the new Sundance limited-run series The Last Panthers. They really existed, you know. The Pink Panthers. The Panthers were a confederation of Balkan thieves, many with military experience in the Bosnian and Kosovar wars of the 90s, who in 2000 started pulling…
Vive la Résistance: Colony
I’m abetting the Criminal Element again, this time with a consideration of the USA Network series Colony. Alien invasions on the big and small screens have rarely been about aliens. They’re usually metaphors for whatever the scare-of-the-year happens to be: Nazis, communism, religion, lack of religion, race, colonialism, etc. Today’s…