Mirzapur is no Paatal Lok and it doesn’t even come close to the Gangs of Wasseypur, but it is compulsively watchable because it is a wicked joy to see scumbags get their just deserts. It all begins at a wedding…

The iron-fisted Akhandanand Tripathi (Pankaj Tripathi) is a millionaire carpet exporter and the mafia don of Mirzapur. His son, Munna (Divyendu Sharma), is an unworthy, power-hungry heir who will stop at nothing to inherit his father’s legacy. An incident at a wedding procession forces him to cross paths with Ramakant Pandit (Rajesh Tailang), an upstanding lawyer, and his sons, Guddu (Ali Fazal) and Bablu (Vikrant Massey). It snowballs into a game of ambition, power and greed that threatens the fabric of this lawless city.

Ah yes… the wedding… it’s a shocker. It isn’t what happened that made it a shocker but the way it was brushed off that is scary, kind of like you just squashed a mosquito in the midst of sucking your blood and you just flicked it away without a smidgen of thought. It immediately dawned on me that in the city of Mirzapur, a gun in hand is worth two in the glove compartment. This one takes the lawless Wild West to a whole different level. Forget about the police… the men at the top are fed so much money that they give free rein to the gangsters.

You know how you wake up every morning and look at the bills you have to pay, and you wonder “only rich people don’t have problems like these”. Mirzapur will affirm in you that the rich and powerful have a different set of problems. They too worry about money like “how do I drive up the sales of homemade guns and heroin?”. They are also concerned who is encroaching into their business, who is not fearful of them and the man at the top of the food chain also has an erectile dysfunction problem, so much so that his wife, Beena (Rasika Dungal), has to search for sexual pleasure through a manservant. So yes… this is a dysfunctional family saga and I rub my hands in glee when the don will finally realise the baby is not his. 

The flow of the narrative is clunky and sometimes characters are inserted to serve a lone purpose, some for titillation, some for shocking deaths. Talking about deaths, this one borrows from Game of Thrones’ blueprint in laying out shocking deaths. The ending of S1 certainly dropped my heart to the floor. I went through a gamut of feelings and I was all in for S2. Oh… before I forget, to possibly survive a gun pointed at your head, pray you know how to recite the ABC in Hindi and definitely Urdu.

Characters are the fabric of good storytelling and here they are not drawn with satisfaction. Character motivations are never consistent and don’t adhere to real life scenarios. Munna is slapped by a lust-bucket of a politician and the don says “nobody slaps my son in public” and you know the dude is going to get a knife in his back. Then when Munna, the good-for-nothing, gets wronged grievously by Bablu and Guddu, the brothers get to work for the don and get all sorts of perks like guns and motorcycles. A few episodes later, the don even gives them the lowdown on his shady business and entrusts them with huge responsibilities. It made no sense to me.

What does make sense to me is seeing the theme of how power corrupts even the righteous flourish. The acting is all round excellent and the actors give their all, and the devilish joy they have in spouting the spot-on dialogue is evident. 

Mirzapur isn’t a top-tier series but it is an absolutely solid escapist entertainment into the world of gangsters in a far-flung lawless city in India. I dare you to not laugh at the dude who has a torchlight pushed to the back of his throat as he runs for his life, and Guddu becomes a temporary dentist. 

While watching Mirzapur, I found out that Bosch has a new season of good ole detective work. It only took us 3 binge sessions to get through this and it’s as good as ever.

There’s a workman-like ethic to Bosch in the way the investigation unfolds. It is authentically portrayed – the hard and meticulous work is evident. None of that stupid driving music to announce an action scene or a moment of epiphany. Music is used in a diegetic manner to smooth out edits and most of the time you wouldn’t be aware of it, so much so that when Bosch plays his jazz, like Art Pepper’s Patricia, you hear it like a cool experience. 

I love Michael Connelly’s books on Bosch. Connelly understands cop and drama. He knows the pain and sorrow that walk in tandem to the relentless search for justice. The toil is palpable but never cliché. In Maddie, Bosch’s daughter, you can see the dynamics in play. She is her father’s daughter, a chip of the old block. I love how they bounce off ideas with each other and their closeness. There is absolutely no doubt they would take a bullet for each other. The father-daughter angle is well-handled, none of that hue and cry crap that underscores so many other dramas. 

Each season takes all the principal characters to a new place and I am glad this season gives Jerry the limelight in a case that will tear him apart from the inside out. I love the Crate and Barrel’s stories. Their chasing criminals days may be over, but you can never take the police out of them. 

This season borrows from Connelly’s The Overlook and Dark Sacred Night, and it is the best season yet. If you are a fan of the novels or Bosch, the TV series, you would watch this no matter what I wrote. If you have never seen this, know that this is a shining example of great police procedural storytelling. Heck! If I am not a teacher, I want to be a detective like Bosch.

Written by Daniel Chiam

I love December weather. The sun is always hiding behind a parade of dark clouds, the temperature drops to the middle 20s and it’s the one time in a year you won’t look out of sorts in a sweater. When it is this time of the year, I like to snuggle in front of my fireplace. Of course, no true blue Singaporean has a fireplace because it would look like the dumbest thing ever. My “fireplace” is my telly and Amazon Prime’s anthology series Modern Love is the perfect “fire” as this horrid year winds down.

Just the other night we entertained some lovely guests and they chose to watch When Harry Met Sally… (1989); they made a wise choice. Remember how the movie is interspersed with candid segments of married couples sharing stories of how they met? Modern Love is kinda if someone made a short film of those lovely stories and the “someone” is John Carney, the man behind probably the best trilogy of music films – Once (2007), Begin Again (2013) & Sing Street (2016) – ever made.

Modern Love is based on the New York Times’ column that explores relationships, love and the human connection. This is love in all its combies, permutations and guises – an unlikely friendship, a lost love resurfaced, a marriage at its turning point, a date that might not have been a date, an unconventional new family. These are unique stories about the joys and tribulations of love, each inspired by a real-life personal essay from the beloved New York Times column “Modern Love.”

At a run-time of not longer than 30 minutes, none of the stories overstayed their welcome and this is economical storytelling at its best. That’s not to say they don’t hit the spot. I love that the stories are not just about romantic love. The game plan here is not about a meeting of lips or a tessellation of two bodies, but to look at different kinds of love.

It opens with a strong episode about a platonic friendship between a girl and a doorman. It ends with one of the beautiful lines ever spoken by the doorman, kinda like the tears inducer “I see you” line from The Joy Luck Club (1993).

The second episode takes a two-pronged narrative approach to tell a story about missed chances. This one made me a teary wreck. It managed to do so much in 30 minutes than most 90-minute movies.

The third episode was a surprise and a poignant look at a young woman suffering from Bipolar. A couple of months ago, I was teaching a Secondary Three class about mental illnesses and if I had seen this earlier I would have screened this for the kids. Nothing hits us better than gorgeous narratives like this. This episode is also a great reminder that to love others we must first love ourselves. A gem of an episode. 

The fourth episode is about the ebb and flow of a marriage when the kids are leaving the nest, and it’s about reconnecting. Love it.

I will leave you to discover the rest, but I will just say it closes out with a great one about old love being the same as young love, another gem. It is a nice way to end the anthology but the narrative takes a nice turn to close out all the preceding stories beautifully, a poignant icing on an eight-tiered cake.

Modern Love is a mixed bag; some stories are more memorable than others, but taken as a whole it is perfectly entertaining, presenting a complex theme in a relatable way. This is the perfect comfort food as the frightful year bids us goodbye.

Written by Daniel Chiam

We started watching this on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, the wifey said “Let’s catch an episode” and that doesn’t happen very often. We ended up watching two. On Monday night, we binged the last four episodes over dinner and finished at 1130pm. Ozark is the latest series that made us make plans to accommodate it.

The Byrdes, Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy (Laura Linney) and their teenage kids, Charlotte (Sofia Hubiltz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary family with ordinary lives. Except for the job of Marty, a Chicago financial advisor who also serves as the top money launderer for the second largest drug cartel in Mexico. When things go awry, Marty must uproot his family from the skyscrapers of Chicago and relocate to the lazy lake region of the Missouri Ozarks.

Netflix’s Ozark is not the network’s crowned jewel of crime. I think that title belongs to the staggering Narcos. But Ozark with its muted hues, small-time criminals, big-time wannabes and conglomerate-sized drug lords comes at the heels of it. When we signed off from the series last night, the missus made an interesting observation that it bears similarities with the seminal Breaking Bad. She is right… Walter White’s journey to the Dark Side stems from a wrath against fate, and the world was gifted with one of the most outstanding anti-heroes. But Marty Byrde’s journey down the dark rabbit hole comes from a place of careful consideration and his resourcefulness at self-preservation while playing a numbers game.

Ozark is money laundering 101 and it opens with a monologue that is IMHO the gold standard of beginnings. Jason Bateman under-plays Marty with a quirky demeanour and he is most compellingly watchable when he is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. How he talks himself out of any situation and comes up with cockamamie schemes to suck unsuspecting victims in is a twisted joy to behold. Laura Linney’s Wendy is also his equal and slips into a co-conspirator role with ease and necessity. Her arc sailing from indignation to realisation borders on the satirical. This is a crime series with no good characters, zilch, every character, even the children, is all manners of perversity and vileness, but the cool thing is that you are going to start rooting for the scumbags.

The plot isn’t propulsive but the Byrdes’ wiggling out of impossible situations make for compelling viewing. There are not many weak episodes except perhaps that extended flashback one which examines the characters’ initial motivations and how they become who they are later in the game. That was the only gimmicky episode that pulled the relentless pace at that point to a standstill with not much added value. In terms of characters, I couldn’t stand Charlotte’s whiny nature and her sudden outbursts which sounded like cliches. Her arc just doesn’t feel convincing, but Jonah’s character is refreshing and he is already one step into psychopath territory. The revelation here for me is Julia Garner’s Ruth Langmore, a young criminal in-the-making with an eye out for the future, a fascinating character.

Ozark does a great job of examining the psychology, sociology and economics of crime and feels like a doorway into the nefarious world of drug cartels and money laundering. IMHO it doesn’t hit the top tier which is occupied by ground-breakers like Breaking Bad, The Wire and The Sopranos, but it deservedly resides on the shelf just below that, and that is definitely not a bad place to be in.

Time to check into the last resort and trust me… don’t drink that seemingly revivifying thirst-quenching lemonade offered by the host no matter what.

Written by Daniel Chiam

Sometimes I feel like a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, all smiley and everything nice most of the time, but I allow myself to go to the dark side when I get absorbed by characters on the screen and on the page. Cathartically and vicariously, I get to be a crazy rich Asian with beautiful women hanging by my coattails or a hardboiled detective solving a baffling crime or, my personal favourite, a wannabe crime lord with a burgeoning crime empire and lots of dead bodies in my wake. Netflix’s Ozark is my guilty pleasure of the third kind.

The second season finds Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) juggling family life and dealing with the cartel’s attorney Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer), as well as the Snells and Langmore Ruth (Julia Garner).

If Season 1 has heavy shades of Breaking Bad, Season 2 forges a slightly different path with Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) taking more of the limelight, but there is still no mistaking the hues and narrative tracks of Breaking Bad. Being compared to the seminal masterpiece of an ordinary family man evolving to become a crime lord is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would think the writers would use Season 2 to breakaway and forge a new direction.

The first half lacks invention and the sickening euphoria of discovery. By that I mean the narrative strategy is simply to pile up problems and more problems for the Byrdes to solve, because they are in the unique position to keep the fraught balance between the cartel and the Snells in place. For most of the first 5 episodes I find myself drifting in and out the laboured situations. Marty and Wendy have become reactive characters, not proactive and I found myself plotting out how all the narrative threads will play out. That’s not a good thing.

Then the second half started to lay on the surprises because endings that I had predicted reached their crescendos in mid-season. This season also sees Wendy coming into the foreground and her new found purpose in herself is compelling. If Marty’s character feels like he is regressing to a safe spot, especially after a traumatising event, Wendy muscled up to hold the fort and the family together. Her character arc was particularly revelatory and absolutely satisfying.

Season 2 remains edgy and engrossing, and I must say I was surprised by the demise of quite a few major players. Don’t worry, I will not reveal who they are, and I must say the dispatching of most of them hits the spot for me. The narrative structures of a couple of episodes are truly inspired, especially the one that begins with a lengthy flashback on a couple (not the one you are thinking about) and the ending sent a cold chill down my spine. The acting continues to be top tier and the introduction of a new character, the cold hard bitch of a lawyer Helen Pierce, adds steel to the story and she has some of the best lines…

“Don’t f*ck with me. Don’t f*ck with my client. He’ll kill your children. He’ll gut your wife. Do you want to know what he will do to you?”

“I am a lawyer. I move words around.”

“This is the first law of power. Those who can, shit on others. Those who can’t, clean it up.”

Onwards to extreme negotiations and cockamamie schemes of S3…

Written by Daniel Chiam

In these dark times, prefacing a movie review and drawing parallel with the current state of the world is almost a cliché. But there is something about watching the Byrdes get caught between a rock and a hard place in the midst of a world hunkering down in a quarantine that makes it ever so satisfying. Seeing them get away by the skin of their teeth feels cathartically purgative. We detest them, pity them, but yet we want them to escape their dire predicament, just like we hope to see the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

This season is more of the same cockamamie schemes to launder money through the newly acquired Missouri Belle casino, but Marty and Wendy are no longer on the same page. Under the watchful eyes of the FBI, Marty wants to keep it on the down low, but Wendy has plans to make the businesses go legitimate by investing in another casino and hotel. Their marriage is rocky and they are seeing a marriage specialist. Their laundry baskets of dirty linen are long past their wash-by dates, but reconciliation is far from their agenda as they seek to undermine each other which turns out to be one of the most morbidly hilarious running gags ever.

Into the criminally dysfunctional family comes bipolar Ben, Wendy’s brother. The guy is a ticking time bomb, a wild card and a loose cannon, all rolled into one. Him falling in love with Ruth Langmore, an important partner of the Byrdes’ operation, doesn’t do the Byrdes any favours. Elsewhere, lawyer Helen Pierce features strongly in this season, right up until the last shot of the season (pun intended) and Darlene Snell has some big plans of her own.

The Byrdes have been on survival mode since the get-go, and this season finds them being pro-actively thinking of ways to safeguard their future. This comes as a refreshing turn, instead of seeing them react to the waves of imminent life-ending danger. Wendy continues to step out from under Marty’s shadow and step up to the plate. Her character arc is the best this season, culminating in a grief-stricken prolonged sequence. I thought she was grieving over the death of a loved one, but the start of the next episode suggests she may be weeping for herself. The Byrdes have always prided themselves with not crossing certain lines, but this season they crossed many lines like Macbeth killing King Duncan. There can be no sweet returns after this.

If there are weak spots, one of them is definitely Ben who is the very definition of a plot mover, but I have to say he is a fine actor. The scenes of him switching through emotions on the spectrum was impressive and definitely a calling card for future roles. Things are also sluggish at the midpoint and only hit a frenzy with the last few episodes which were also busy setting up new developments for the next season.

That said, the final scene is devilishly delicious. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, the Byrdes are right smack where they deserve to be. The noose is around their necks and this time they are all in.

Written by Daniel Chiam

Paatal Lok (means the underworld according to ancient Hindu scriptures) is awake, wide awake. There are so many movies and TV series that are content to just slumber with sluggish languor through a regurgitation of old story ideas and hand-me-down plots. The art of storytelling is frankly becoming an elusive art, but sitting through nine episodes of this Hindi series in one sitting restored my faith in the art of great storytelling. Paatal Lok doesn’t reinvent the wheel of crime thrillers. Its greatest plus is how the disparate genre elements combined into something potent, offering a subversive thrill of seeing a social microcosm explode into smithereens and a devastating tour into the underbelly of India’s society.

It begins in black, an unassuming male voice reverberates. He speaks of the society of India being divided into three realms: Swarg Lok (the upper class, the affluent), Dharti Lok (the middle class, the working people) and Paatal Lok (the lower caste, the grunts, the scum). The voice belongs to Senior Inspector Hathiram Chandhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) who is speaking to rookie cop Imran Ansari (Ishwak Singh). Hathiram’s lament that he never catches a break and gets assigned to dead-end cases is palpable. Hathiram is a washed-out with no sign of light at the end of a long tunnel. Moments later, four criminals are arrested on a bridge for an assassination attempt on prime-time journalist Neeraj Kabi (Sanjeev Mehta) and the case is handed to Hathiram. His eyes widened, his senses are heightened, his hopes are ignited because this is a career-making case, but he would be wrong, so very wrong.

The show is anchored squarely on Hathiram’s shoulders, while Sanjeev Mehra takes some of the weight off. But when the camera is on Hathiram, I would find my eyes glued to the screen. He is our surrogate and how Jaideep Ahlawat plays the character is refreshing. In a nice of pace, Hathiram is not the archetypal bulldozing seeker of truth. He is on unfamiliar ground as he deep dives into the criminals’ motives and tragic pasts. Seeing him blunder in the crowded streets of Delhi, chasing criminals make for an authentic everyday cop that had his best days behind him. Over the course of nine episodes, his character arc is superbly rendered – from a rambunctious cop who will stop at nothing to get himself on the road to an illustrious future, his tenacity grows from strength to strength. In the end, it isn’t about getting a promotion, it’s about finding the answer to the mystery no matter what and to prove to himself he is not a loser.

Sudip Sharma’s screenplay is unapologetically angry, confident and economical. It evinces an awareness of Hollywood storytelling conventions and demonstrates a profound knowledge of the moral decay which is eating the Indian people from the inside. Words and actions are cleverly chosen that reveal about each character’s personality. Nothing overstayed their welcome and the script succeeded in an aspect where so many have failed – it respects the audience to catch the nuances and connect the dots. As an illustration, observe the deterioration of the father and son relationship which builds from Hathiram’s own father in an extended flashback. Violence begets violence, the future is cemented in the past. It seemed everything is fated to fail but watch out for all the scenes of redemption played out through Hathiram’s son’s mien as it gradually shifts from hate to respect to love. All this done through nuanced acting without any Hollywood-styled expositional heart-to-heart talk done to heightened music cues and teary close-ups. Impressive.

Paatal Lok’s labyrinthine plot forces you to pay attention. This is not something you watch while checking your social media. The first few episodes seemed to put you on a comfortable and familiar path. Then the tonal shift is so subtle that you wouldn’t notice the story shifting into other thematic territories, like how a villain is created – is it through nature or nurture or a spiralling from a tragic event? Paatal Lok doesn’t boast a charmingly elegant killer like Hannibal Lecter, but Vishal Tyagi (Abhishek Banerjee) sent cold chills down my spine with his bloody hammer and unblinking eyes. The story shifts into thought-provoking territory with its startling meditation on polymorphous perversity in the form of dirty politics, child abuse and injustice meted out to Muslims and the transgender. The backstories of the criminals were superbly told and my heart went out to them. You will not condone what they have done, but you will understand why they turned out that way. Paatal Lok is a show about damaged people who seem imprisoned by the need to damage others, or be destroyed.

Paatal Lok nails the ending that had pathos, evoking all the feels and the shock. The story continues with a sublime sequence of falling action events that hit the height of catharsis. Emotional exhaustion enveloped me but a brilliant feeling of satisfaction engulfed me.

The response to Paatal Lok, just like to all great genre films, lies not to a presumed originality, but rather to the way the storyteller fuses all the familiar elements and breathes new life into them that makes for such a memorable experience. Paatal Lok is an outstanding mix of police procedural, political thriller, weird romance, mythical mystery and character studies. I have seen so many series this year, but only two (the other being Better Call Saul (S5)) transcend to the level of art. All the rest are just entertaining noises.

Written by Daniel Chiam

There are hundreds of movies and TV series out there vying for my attention and I have developed a mantra on choosing what to see. I will watch stuff that are recommended by at least two persons, are critically acclaimed stuff, are written and directed by proven storytellers, have an intriguing subject matter, are envelope pushers and so on. But sometimes I love to throw caution in the wind and pick something that fits the mood. It was perpetual rain in Singapore and the temperature hovered in the lower 20s. It was our version of winter and I cued up Something in the Rain (2018).

This is about a romance between a 35 year-old woman, Yoon Jin-a (Son Ye-jin), and a young man, Seo Joon-hui (Jung Hae-in), 10 years her junior. I needed a change in mindset to watch this because unlike the dime in a dozen Kdramas out there, this doesn’t have a driving narrative and a twisty plot. It is based on tricky everyday situations and the complications that come abound as they deal with them. But after two episodes I found it refreshing because of its naturalness. This is a sweet depiction of how we fall in love, slowly at first and then headlong all at once. It doesn’t have the typical cheesiness and fantasy elements, everything flows like… life.

I love how it employs the use of English songs to underscore certain moments, but after 5 episodes I am getting a little tired of listening to Bruce Willis’ Save the Last Dance for Me and Carla Bruni’s Stand By Your Man. Thematically, the lyrics to the latter don’t even gel with the story. Worst still, the two songs are jack-hammered ad nauseam into my brain. It’s becoming a bedroom joke with my wifey and I as we sing the chorus. I am pretty sure by ep16 we will puke when we hear the first few musical notes of the songs. But some time in ep4 they started to use two Rachael Yamagata songs, Something in the Rain and La La La, which I love a lot. I have every Yamagata album but scanning down the tracks of every CD I realised the two songs aren’t there. Bummer. I later found out these two songs were specially written for this Kdrama.

Back to the Kdrama, I would think most people will find this boring and repetitive with numerous scenes overstaying their welcome. Like I said, you need to change your mindset in order to get this, but Son Ye-jin’s return to Kdrama after a hiatus of 5 years is a good reason to venture into the soft rain. From the time I first lay eyes on her in The Classic (2003), I have not been able to take them off her. She has the ability to communicate strength and vulnerability with just one look. If she cries, you would cry with her. If she laughs, you will laugh with her, and when she laughs, she laughs with her whole body. She is not the sort of actress that people would label drop-dead gorgeous, but everything about her danced, at least to me. Playing opposite her is a relatively newcomer Jung Hae-In and his wide-eyed wonder as he ogles at Jin-a is palpable. Which man wouldn’t look at Son Ye-jin and map out a lifetime with her in a few seconds? Their chemistry feels lived-in.

This is also a very character-driven drama and its depiction of initial love is pitch-perfect. The relationship defines their world. It changes they way they see things, as if the strength of how they felt for one another had produced a steadfast faith in how their world would operate. They see a world in each other’s eyes, a world replete with promise. It is a world to make their dreams come true. Love emboldens them, gives them the strength and courage needed to navigate the minefield of difficulties and dirty looks. This is most evident when we see Jin-a who becomes braver and confident as she tells her male bosses off for harassing her. Her character arc is realistically drawn.

The scene of what Jun-hui does as Jin-a’s mother tries to rain down blows on her broke my heart. Any inkling that love is just a feeling is thrown out the window; love must be translated into action. I said a silent prayer for them but romantic narratives go I know their love will be tested to the hilt.

I also appreciate how this Kdrama seeks to showcase firmly established taboos in Korean society that frankly need to be thrown out, like the life-partner’s family background is important, the couple’s age difference needs to be appropriate, a woman’s position in the office and the home should be one of submission and others. I love how it doesn’t preach the message and bring it home with high hats.

I love the relationship between Jun-hui’s sister Gyeong Seon (Jang So-yeon) and Jin-a. I have seen Jang in many supporting roles, but playing Jin-a’s best friend and Jun-hui’s sister gave her an opportunity to flex some acting muscle and she was excellent. Childhood friends, Jin-a and Gyeong Seon’s friendship is a rock that saw some testing. Ultimately, Gyeong Seon could see beyond the “betrayal” and see two persons in love. Their friendship is the real deal. They see each other at their lowest and ugliest, but they can still see the beauty in the other person. It is so heartwarming to see this. I wish I have a friendship like this but I don’t. I mean I do have male friends whom I can share stuff with but not to this depth. I think it is very possible between two girls. Don’t want to sound too sexist here, just making an observation.

I also enjoy seeing the father and daughter relationship. He is always supportive and patient towards Jin-a, and will wait for her to come to him. The worst is the mother and daughter relationship. I know where the mother comes from but she is so steeped in traditional thinking that she becomes suffocating.

The writers also try to put in a #MeToo sub-plot that not only did not gain any traction, it failed to have any meaningful resolution. That is the one sore spot for me other than the repetitive use of songs.

The path of true love seldom runs straight. This one exemplifies that without all the typical Korean and Hollywood sugarcoating. Its greatest asset is that the characters behave and talk like real people; a paean to the prosaic. If Something in the Rain teaches anything, it is that life will always throw you curve balls, and if you are lucky enough to find someone to go through the arduous journey with, hold on for as long as you can. Learn also to let go when it comes to the end of the line. And like curve balls, sometimes you will meet again, life is funny that way.

Written by Daniel Chiam

Mike Flanagan’s storytelling ability has grown by leaps and bounds. Oculus (2013), Hush (2016) and Gerald’s Game (2017) show he is adept in chamber horror settings that are characterised by psychological terror emanating from a small cast. The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and Doctor Sleep (2019) are clear demonstrations he is perfectly splendid with a tapestry of characters. It is how he weaves compelling stories through his many larger-than-life characters that is a class act. He is fast becoming a master storyteller who can breathe new life into well-worn classical tales. With The Haunting of Bly Manor, Flanagan not only uses Henry James’s 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw as the main storyline, he also weaves other Henry James’s classical gothic ghost stories into one cauldron of unsettling feels. But I have to say it took me a while to warm up to this and at the end of episode 3 I nearly wanted to throw my hands up in sheer exasperation and give up.

If The Haunting of Hill House maintains a deft balance between the horror and the drama, The Haunting of Bly Manor tips the balance over the drama elements and totally forgot about the scares. The initial sluggish pace also does it no favours. The casting of Victoria Pedretti in the role of governess feels off and it made me miss the iridescent Deborah Kerr in the same role in Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), which in my humble opinion, does a much better job in adapting Henry James’s horror exemplar (which I am currently reading). The Haunting of Bly Manor is affectingly steeped in loss, resignation and regret, the ghosts of memory plaguing the characters for eternity, and the slow-release of revelations somewhat pull it together, while satisfying and even poignant, lacks the emotional thunder reminiscent of The Haunting of Hill House.

Danielle “Dani” Clayton (Victoria Pedretti) applies for the job of a live-in au pair to two orphans, the niece and nephew of Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas), Flora (Amelie Smith) and Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth). The mansion is run like clockwork by Hannah Grose (T’Nia Miller), with the help of the cook, Owen (Rahul Kohli) and the groundskeeper, JMie (Amelia Eve). Before long, the emotionally fragile Dani starts to suspect there is something very, very with her precocious charges and notices a mysterious man lurking at the windows. The man is Peter Quint (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), Henry Wingrave’s former valet, who had mysteriously disappeared after embezzling from his employer. Quint had romanced the former governess, Rebecca Jessel (Tahirah Sharif), who had drowned in the lake (more like of a large pond) on the grounds. Dani gradually begins to realize that there is something seriously wrong at Bly Manor.

Yes, there’s something wrong with Bly Manor, but I wouldn’t say it’s serious. Once I came to terms that this isn’t going to replicate the heights of Hill House, I began to see it for what it is – a doomed love story. But even as a love story it carried only a single grace note across 9 episodes. You don’t need approximately 500 minutes to tell a one-note love story. And it’s becoming a tired cliché for characters in overly serious horror dramas not to realise they’re dead or dying. The moment I saw a particular character’s vacant gaze and never eating anything, I already surmised the character’s deathly outcome which happened some time ago. But I have to confess the episode that finally laid out her demise for her own knowledge was excellent. The present tense in that episode is always shifting and uncertain, and inevitably haunted by the past.

Bly Manor doesn’t serve up compellingly binge-worthy episodes (some episodes felt too bloated for my taste); I find it easier to catch a couple of episodes a night unlike Hill House. It may lack inventive scares, but it has great character development. Forget about malevolent shadows, creaking doors and long hallways; the faster you forget Hill House’s long shadow, the easier it will be for you to appreciate this for what it is. For me, this is just too much of This is Us and too little of The Shining. I wished I could say it’s “perfectly splendid”, but I can live with just splendid.

Written by Daniel Chiam