Other Doctor Lives: Twenty Twelve: Series 1, Episode 6 – “Equestrian Controversy” (2011)

We’ve made it to the series 1 finale. On the whole, I’m enjoying this show, though I haven’t quite been wowed by it—the episodes range from decent to pretty entertaining. Of course, I’m looking forward to seeing Joel Fry when he shows up in some of the series 2 episodes!

The commission finds themselves in a faceoff over their plan to use Greenwich Park for the equestrian events at the Olympics. Former filmmaker and current upstart Tony Ward, head of the Greenwich Anti-Equine Society, does not want to have a bunch of horses trampling through the park, and he stages a provocative protest: namely, a huge mound of horse manure outside their office.

Our final character of the week for this season, and the last of the main cast, is Sally Owen, played by none other than Olivia Colman! (This would’ve been pre-Broadchurch.) Sally is Ian’s personal assistant, with an uncanny ability to anticipate his needs. She also has a habit of going way above and beyond for her boss. We often see Sally do this with food, appearing at meetings with a “little” snack for Ian that tests the limits of his diet.

A couple familiar faces here. Ingrid Oliver (a.k.a. Osgood from Doctor Who) has a small role as AP for a radio program, and the commission’s new nemesis is played by Tim McInnerny, who I still know best as Percy on Blackadder. He’s a hoot in the role, self-important and combative, and we get some fun details about him.

Naturally, a buttoned-up by-the-book guy like Ian isn’t very equipped to deal with Tony's crude brand of warfare. When he comes into the office on Monday morning, he confers with Sally, “So we have a giant pile of horseshit on the pavement outside,” adding, “I’m assuming that’s not by accident?” Tony vs. Ian is like a cold front meeting a tepid glass of milk, which makes for an interesting matchup.

Some fun narration today from David Tennant! Here are the highlights:

• I love this description about Tony – “After the success of Intravenous, Ward had a spell in Hollywood, where he made almost two other films in the 1980s, before returning to London to make a series of commercially less successful, but highly personal marriages.”
• Hee! – “It’s Tuesday morning, and as Ian arrives for work, there’s good news and bad news in the horse manure department.”

Sentimental Value (2025, R)

This is the most recognized international feature at the Oscars this year, up for quite a few of the big awards. A dysfunctional family drama from Norway, the movie is kind of slow-moving, but it rewards your attention. And considering I don’t watch that many Scandinavian films, it’s neat that there are a few familiar actors in this!

Nora and Agnes’s mom just died, and their dad Gustav, a famous movie director, has come back to town. He’s brought along the first script he’s written in years. He wants to shoot the movie in the home where both he and his daughters were raised, and he wants Nora, a theatre actress with intense stage fright, to star in it—in fact, Gustav says he wrote the part for her. However, working with her dad is the last thing Nora wants to do.

It’s fitting that the film opens on a childhood montage of Nora and Agnes, played over an old school essay in which she personifies their house. The house is the setting for multiple generations of trauma. That’s probably part of the reason the girls so rarely saw Gustav after their parents’ divorce, running away from painful old memories. The film Gustav wants to make in it contains a jumble of that trauma and stirs a lot of things up.

Although Nora is the older sister, she often feels like Agnes is the one with her life more on track. Agnes is married with a son and has a steady job. Meanwhile, it’s a battle for Nora to make herself walk out onstage, and her commitment issues have her reaching for the safe transience of an affair with a married man. Agnes is the one who checks in when Nora withdraws, who stops by to make sure she’s taking care of herself, and Nora is the one who thinks Agnes isn’t mad enough at Gustav for only opting into fatherhood when he feels like it.

Both girls, however, have a fraught relationship with their dad. Nora’s takes pride of place, but Agnes has her own history with Gustav, and those issues resurface when he starts talking about wanting to cast her son in a small role in the film. Complicating things further is the insertion of Rachel Kemp, the American actress Gustav brings on when Nora turns him down.

The movie is up for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and four acting awards. Renate Reinsve, who I remember from The Worst Person in the World a few years ago, is excellent as Nora, a mess of a young woman who’s trying to make sense of her life amid the whirlwind her dad has kicked off. Stellan Skarsgård, who I now know best as Luthen on Andor, delivers a fine performance as Gustav. It’s painful to watch his easy charm with strangers when his daughters feel ignored by him, and it seems like the only way he can truly express his love for them is through his work. I’m not familiar with Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, but she does a great job as Agnes. Though her role is less flashy than Reinsve’s, Ibsdotter Lilleaas offers a nice counterpoint, and when she gets her few spotlight scenes, they don’t disappoint. Joining the Scandinavian cast is Elle Fanning as Rachel. What’s impressive here is the way she portrays an actress who isn’t quite nailing her performance, knows it, but isn’t sure how to fix it. That has to be a tough needle for an actor to thread, and Fanning really captures it.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements (including discussion of suicide,) sexual content, violence (including references to wartime torture,) language, and drinking.

Joel Fry-days: Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 4 – “Sons of the Harpy” (2015)

*Episode premise spoilers, which includes some spoilers from earlier in the season.*

Not gonna lie—given that the episode is called “Sons of the Harpy,” I was hoping for more scenes in Meereen and more Joel Fry/Hizdahr. Alas! The Meereen storyline does get the big dramatic ending scene for the episode, though.

Ser Jorah has kidnapped Tyrion. Jaime and Bron arrive in Dorne, with Jaime aiming to bring Myrcella home without starting a war with the Dornish. Cersei, looking to rid herself of the Tyrells once and for all, thinks she’s found a useful tool in the High Sparrow and his fanatical sect. The Red Woman tries to convince Jon to help her and Stannis oust the Boltons from Winterfell—little does he know, Sansa has already been brought there by Littlefinger. The Sons of the Harpy try to take back Meereen from Daenerys’s forces.

• Even though, as I’ve said, the Tyrion-in-Essos arc isn’t my favorite storyline for him, Peter Dinklage never disappoints. He does a great job in Tyrion’s scenes with Ser Jorah, especially when he finds out what Jorah is planning to do with him.
• The interactions between Jaime and Bron are also good. I enjoy them discussing their preferences among the various “shit ways to die,” Bron not-so-subtly clocking Jaime for referring to Myrcella as his niece, and a clutch use of Jaime’s golden hand during a fight. I also like Bron knocking one of their attackers off his horse and then telling Jaime “that one should be slow enough” for him to take on lefthanded.
• Not to mention, as they’re traveling to Dorne, there’s a nice moment where they’re going past the Sapphire Isle, where Brienne is from.
• The Dorne plot also introduces the Sand Snakes, Oberyn’s badass love children. I remember hearing excitement about them going into this season, but this is another plot where it feels like the show fumbles the execution. By the way, one of the Sand Snakes is played by Jessica Henwick, who went on to play Colleen Wing on Iron Fist, another show that unfortunately knows a little something about squandered potential.
• Cersei is so focused on taking down Margaery that she sees no problem opening the door to the wolves in Sparrows’ clothing. By rearming the “faith militant,” she hands violent authority to a devout group and sets them loose on King’s Landing, which is just not a smart move for a woman who’s previously been accused of bearing bastard children through incest. Get ready for her to start sobbing, “I never thought direwolves would eat my face!”
• I always love watching Margaery’s machinations, and it’s interesting to see her frustrations with Tommen here. She has the young king wrapped around her little finger, but he’s too earnest and upstanding to be effective in the way that she needs. This leaves her in a position of reminding Tommen, at length, that he’s the goddamn king of the Seven Kingdoms, while he just kind of shrugs at her and says his hands are tied. Wait—is Tommen a tiny bit Viserys-Targaryen-from-House-of-the-Dragon-coded? Either way, Margaery’s reactions to this are great.
• Lovely scene between Stannis and Shireen—this is another episode where they bring up her greyscale, with Stannis recalling the story of how she was infected as a baby and how he refused to give her up for dead.
• Interesting that we get Rhaegar Targaryen reminiscences in two different storylines in this episode. In Winterfell, Sansa and Littlefinger talk about his abduction of her aunt Lyanna while Sansa is down in the Stark crypt. And then in Meereen, Ser Barristan tells Daenerys about some of his gentler memories of her late older brother, sharing a side of Rhaegar that Dany had never known about.
• I won’t say too much about the actual Sons of the Harpy scene here—given that it’s the Big Dramatic Ending, I’ll avoid major spoilers within this episode review. (Yes, I know the episode is ten years old. This is just the way that I do things!) I’ll just say that there’s some good fighting and dramatic tension, and although it’s another episode where a white character takes some of Grey Worm’s narrative thunder, Grey Worm is still allowed to hold his own this time.

In between the happy memories of Rhaegar and the Big Dramatic Ending, we have Hizdahr’s one scene of the episode, another private audience with Daenerys. He’s returned to his efforts from the start of the season, trying to convince Dany to concede to a certain Meereenese tradition: reopening the fighting pits. As usual, he’s coming to Dany with a request that he definitely knows she won’t like, and he does his best to sell it. He begins, “All men must die, but not all can die in glory,” going on to bring up Dany’s ancestors who conquered Westeros. When Dany makes it clear that she has no interest in Hizdahr’s valorizing of this bloody “tradition,” he changes his approach, arguing that the fighting pits are the only thing former slaves and former Masters have in common.

Meereen is a hotbed of simmering resentment right now, and as we’ve seen, things can quickly escalate into violence. Reopening the fighting pits feels like a bandaid on that issue at best—and even if such a thing could bring about lasting peace, Daenerys would still be justified in questioning whether she should bring back such a brutal practice. To Hizdahr’s credit, he at least acknowledges that this would be unlikely to solve all of the conflict in Meereen, only promising that “it’s a start.”

A good chunk of my interest in Hizdahr is that he’s so unlike the rest of the characters I’ve seen Joel Fry play so far. That keeps the performance engaging for me—he never gets more than a few minutes per episode, but I always enjoy his scenes.