![]() Like the series I’ll write about next, Tabula Rasa embroiders its already high-concept plot with hints of supernatural forces bedeviling the family and their big, spooky house. The series toggles back and forth between the hospital now and the events of the three months preceding Thomas’ vanishing. Veerle Baetens plays an amnesia victim in Tabula Rasa. So she’s the prime suspect in what is either his abduction or his murder - only, she can’t really remember much, including the man himself. It seems that Annemie was the last person seen with a man named Thomas (Jeroen Perceval), who has disappeared. Formerly living in an isolated country house with kindly husband Benoit (Stijn Van Opstal) and their young daughter Romy, at the start of the drama she’s temporarily being held in a mental hospital, where she’s interrogated by a detective. She forgets things soon after she experiences them, so she has to leave herself clues via notes or drawings in her journal. The actress plays Annemie, a singer whose career was ended by a car accident, which sent her into the limbo of short-term amnesia. Think of it as a female elaboration of Memento, and you won’t be far off. Here, the bizarre twists of the narrative sometimes defeat her. Here it’s Veerle Baetens, who was heart-wrenchingly good a few years ago in the film The Broken Circle Breakdown. The nine-episode Belgian mystery Tabula Rasa also offers a fascinating role for a strong actress. I may go back to the show someday, but it didn’t get its hooks in me the way I’d wanted. To be honest, though, despite the kind of blunt language you don’t hear on network shows, Seven Seconds began to feel like formulaic TV to me, especially given the extreme, two-dimensional villainy of the chief of the vice squad (played with zero nuance by David Lyons). The setup is fine, and the potential for the show to explore some of the fault-lines that run through racial and social divisions is promising. Also complicating things? KJ is an alcoholic mess who would get along well with Piper’s character in Collateral. Unfortunately, a band of crooked cops in the local vice squad have framed an innocent homeless man for the crime, because the real killer is a rookie member of their team. Regina King plays Latrice, a New Jersey mother whose teenage son is killed by a hit-and-run driver, and Clare Hope-Ashitey is KJ, the attorney assigned to prosecute the culprit. Created by Veena Sud, producer of the Stateside version of the Danish series The Killing, it also provides a couple of good roles for women. I also liked much of what I saw of the American series Seven Seconds. Clare-Hope Ashitey and Michael Mosley in Seven Seconds. Collateral isn’t perfect and has some uneven bits, but it never wastes your time. I’ll let you discover how they’re all connected with the central mystery. The plot entangles the MP, Mars (John Simm) Mars’s old friend Jane (Walker), a lesbian minister harboring a young Vietnamese girlfriend whose visa has expired the guilt-stricken manager of the pizza restaurant, Laurie (Squires, memorable in the Ken Loach film I, Daniel Blake) and a military sniper as tightly wound as the bun on her head (Spark). Also, he was undocumented, presumably a refugee from Syria. Karen is a bit of a boozy nightmare, and the murder investigation gets complicated when the inspectors learn that the murdered man was delivering drugs as well as pizzas to his customers. Paced like a thriller, complicated but not overwhelming, Collateral follows Kip and her partner Nathan (Nathaniel Martello-White) as they investigate the seemingly random killing of a pizza delivery man after he drops off a pie at the home of the ex-wife of a member of Parliament, Karen Mars (Piper). While she’s the lead character, the miniseries - written by the great playwright David Hare - also gives terrific roles to several other actresses: Jeany Spark, Nicola Walker, Hayley Squires and Billie Piper. In the four-episode London police procedural Collateral, the always captivating Carey Mulligan plays Scotland Yard inspector Kip Glaspie. Let me start with the favorite of the ones I’ve watched recently on Netflix. The series was added as a Netflix Original series in all regions except the United Kingdom on Mabut removed in April 2023.The explosion of original series and movies on streaming platforms is resulting in more meaty, flawed roles for women than ever before. Jan Debski as Schilpadman met bokaalbril. ![]() ![]() Gene Bervoets as Inspecteur Jacques Wolkers.The plot revolves around Mie, a young woman with amnesia who is locked up in a secure psychiatric hospital. Tabula Rasa is a nine-part 2017 Flemish-language TV series created by Veerle Baetens and Malin-Sarah Gozin and starring Veerle Baetens, Stijn Van Opstal and Jeroen Perceval.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |