Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A: Series 3, Episode 3 (2017)

Despite the presence of Joel Fry, not my favorite. This one leans pretty heavily into the “everybody at the table talks a lot without actually saying anything,” although it does still have some entertaining parts.

The BBC is going full steam ahead with their Less is More initiative, looking for places to reduce/combine programming. When it’s pointed out that the BBC has six different orchestras/bands, the executives float the idea of downsizing them, with the BBC Big Swing Band under particular consideration. Siobhan and her team have been asked to look at Jack’s reworking of On Your Bike, now called Cycle Shorts, to potentially use as a trailer for BBC Me. After an upgrade, Syncopatico’s autocaptioning software is spitting out some unfortunate errors.

There are times when the drivel in the executive meetings gets into a good groove and it’s a fun skewering of corporate nonsense. Other times, it starts to feel like that scene from Extras where all the characters on Andy’s sitcom are just sitting around saying their catchphrases at each other in turn—only here, the catchphrases are things like, “Yes, no, brilliant,” “The fact is…”, and “So that’s all good then.” That’s kind of what this episode is like for me. The characters are batting words across the table, each trying to avoid having to say a fully formed, coherent thought.

As such, when they start getting press about the rumors that the BBC Big Swing Band is getting axed, at that point, nobody knows whether or not it’s actually happening. One thing that does come through loud and clear? Anna is anti- all things Lucy. There’s a nasty moment during a meeting where Lucy is trying to get Simon to clarify something, and she softens it by saying, “I mean, I might be being stupid…” Instantly, Anna snaps off one of her go-to catch phrases: “Yes, exactly.” And the whole mess with the Big Swing Band kicks off when Lucy points out that her grandparents are avid listeners, which causes Anna to not not think they’re ripe for the chopping block.

As someone who used to interpret in a public school where teachers would turn on the god-awful auto-transcriptions on YouTube videos, the captioning subplot is a lot more successful for me. An engineer touts the upgrade’s 93% success rate, but it trips up the most on proper names, a la “President Tramp” building his wall along the border of “Max Sicko.” As one exec notes, proper names are arguably “the most important 7%” of the news, so this is a major problem. By the way, back in the pilot, there was a sight gag about Syncopatico’s atrocious captioning software, so I appreciate seeing it brought up here as an actual story.

Here are my picks for David Tennant’s best narration today:

• I like this description of what Jack has turned On Your Bike into with Cycle Shorts – “In many ways, it’s a perfect example of exactly the sort of selfie-centered content that will lie at the heart of the new channel and that may well be the model for how television will work in a world where no one watches it anymore.”
• The narrator explains that a famous musician has weighed in on the Big Swing Band rumors on Twitter, “...and worse still, a lot of people with opinions have already liked that.”

Our character of the week is Michael Chung, played by Will Sharpe. He’s a young Fun Media employee who’s been brought to London from the New York office. Michael has been painted as a whiz kid when it comes to marketing—in the season premiere, BBC Me was his brainchild. Whenever we see him, he stands silently while Siobhan’s team riffs on their ideas. But when someone asks him for his input, he lets loose with a robotic-sounding monologue, leaving the other characters aghast at his brilliance.

Adding another character into the scenes at Fun has meant less Karl. Although he never has that many lines, a good amount of humor with Siobhan’s team often comes from Karl’s offbeat responses. Here, as in episode 1, the usual pitch session is truncated to build up to Michael’s clincher. Karl/Joel Fry only gets a couple good moments here. My favorite comes when Coco is contemplating how to create a theme event for the BBC Me launch centered around Cycle Shorts:

COCO: “Yeah, so like, maybe you have it somewhere you can only get to by bike.” 

KARL: “Yeah.” 

BARNEY: “Okay, like where?” 

COCO: “I dunno. Maybe more like…” 

KARL: “Yeah, France.”

And both Barney and Coco turn to him with the most dumbfounded look. I’m the number-one Karl defender out here, but I’ve never claimed that he doesn’t say some truly wild things, and that’s part of why I love him!

Y tu Luna también: Pan y circo: Season 1, Episode 4 – “The Future is Now: Climate Change” (2020)

This is a good episode. It’s evident from some of Diego Luna’s interviews and original work that the environment is an important issue for him. The episode brings together a nice varied group of folks to discuss it, along with a meal that raises this sort of consciousness too.

The dinner party is held outside for this episode, in an area rich in chinampas—islands built atop freshwater using the same soil from the nutrient-rich waterbed. In lieu of the usual interspersed clips of Luna in the kitchen with the chef, we see him accompany her through the chinampas harvesting her fresh ingredients. She also talks to Luna about the importance of responsibly sourcing ingredients for her restaurant.

Here are some highlights from the dinner discussion:

• One guest is a former astronaut – He tells the group about watching the sunrise from orbit and seeing the Earth’s atmosphere, saying, “And it scared me because it looked so thin, so delicate. That’s the moment I became an environmentalist.”
• An environmental scientist came armed with both biology and political savvy – She says, “It’s hard for governments to make radical structural decisions. People are working within a relatively short span of time, and so no one wants to make a long-term decision. And the environment is not a short-term issue. You can take action in the short term, but you need to have a long-term vision.”
• A Green Party politician, meanwhile, has her own take on the government’s inaction – “We’re not clear on what we appreciate, treasure, value, and we’re teaching this generation after generation. This is why we see the same patterns repeated in positions of power. We’re good at complaining but bad at taking action. If you don’t like something, then you have to change it.”
• An indigenous leader from Peru regales the table with the story of how her people fought back against a company trying to exploit their land.
• A singer and activist sums up the state of affairs between Earth and humanity – “This beautiful, generous garden, we wasted it by being assholes.”
• There’s another musician/activist in the group as well – She emphasizes hope in the power of change, saying, “Right now, we still can. And it’s up to us.”

Like I said, this is an issue that’s dear to Luna, and that’s reflected in the episode. His opening voiceover is both unflinching and urgent, stating, “The mathematics of disaster are brutally clear. If we fail to change, the world will be lethally wounded.” And during the dinner, he opens up about some of his own self-examination and his desire to do more to preserve the environment. He admits, “Two of the things I love most in life are traveling and eating,” and he looks at how his habits regarding both contribute to climate change.

For all the seriousness, though, he brings some lightness to the episode too. When the chef is describing one of the dishes and mentions the fresh aramanth leaves she harvested with Luna, he says, “It’s my only contribution to the dish. In fact, I didn’t even pick them myself. I just carried the basket.” That made me smile! 

Joel Fry-days: The End We Start From (2023, R)

*Premise spoilers, including one vague spoiler about Joel Fry’s presence in the film*

One morning near the start of Joel Fry-days, I watched the trailers for all his movies to get a feel for them. The End We Start From was definitely one of the ones that piqued my interest the most, even as the trailer left me speculating that there wouldn’t actually be much of Joel Fry in it. A beautiful, brutal, very human film.

An expectant mother gives birth on the day her world turns upside down. London is being hit with torrential flooding, and as soon as she’s discharged from the hospital, the woman, her husband, and their new baby have to get out of the city. They search for safety and shelter across a swiftly changing landscape where people are growing angry and afraid, clinging to what they have.

(Side note: the main character is credited on IMDb simply as the Woman, while all the other characters are credited with a single initial.)

It’s technically a disaster movie, maybe even an apocalypse movie, but it doesn’t exactly feel like that. Instead, it feels like a moving character drama in which one woman struggles to hold onto herself as she fights to keep herself and her baby alive. It’s a climate change film that focuses mainly on the human toll—not just lives lost in the disaster itself, but lives lost, altered, and upended in the aftermath. With people fleeing London in droves, the towns and villages on higher ground are closing their entry roads. There are too many people with too few resources, and there are so many with nowhere to go.

In this sense, one thing I really like about this movie is how it opens on these characters who don’t realize how much their world is about to change. There’s a lot of talk about people who left London too late, those who either couldn’t get out or had nowhere left to turn when they did leave. In the hospital, the Woman is confused to learn that they can’t go home, and her husband R simply tells her, “The whole street’s gone.” It’s a slow realization that this isn’t merely rain, then that it’s not a matter of simply driving north to R’s parents’ house, then that this isn’t just a question of finding somewhere to wait out the floodwaters for the short term. 

The film is directed by Mahalio Belo, who did Requiem (and who cast Joel Fry in the Persuasion adaptation that was taken from us too soon!!) She doesn’t shy away from the bleakness of the story while still capturing beauty and connection. This is a movie that is just so full of human moments, whether it’s the Woman sharing a laugh with another new mother she meets in a shelter, sharing a meal and a dance with a fellow traveler, or breaking down in tears while she’s playing peekaboo with baby Zeb. “Where am I, Zeb?” she asks, trying to maintain her singsongy mommy voice even as she cries. “I don’t know.” Amid all the devastation, we’re shown points of light, both in the Woman’s present and in the sunlit flashes of her memories.

Even though they’re very different films, I found myself reminded a little of Wander Darkly. Both are very grounded depictions of a woman’s extraordinary journey (physical and/or emotional,) both present the central relationship with such a soft intimacy, and both are very exquisitely shot. I can imagine that this one will stick with me for quite a while, much like Wander Darkly has.

Jodie Comer is just excellent as the Woman. Her performance is so real and human, by turns naive, heartbreaking, and hopeful, surprisingly funny in moments and quietly courageous in others. The movie features plenty of other fine British actors, including Nina Sosanya and Mark Strong as R’s parents, Katherine Waterston as the Woman’s new friend in the shelter, and Benedict Cumberbatch as a man whose path briefly crosses with hers.

Joel Fry plays R. In the trailer, the only shots of him seemed to be flashbacks, so while it was clear that he was playing Comer’s lover/spouse, I had my suspicions that he was either 1) dead, and the movie was about her having to move forward on her own or 2) separated from her, and the movie was about her attempt to find her way back to him. One of those is sort of right (for the sake of spoilers, I won’t say which one,) but he’s actually in more of the movie than I expected. While Fry’s role eventually switches over to mainly flashback appearances, the Woman and R are together for about the first 40 minutes of the film. I still would’ve liked more, obviously, but I 100% get why this becomes a story of the Woman trying to keep herself and Zeb safe on her own. And since I’d prepared myself for not much of Fry at all, I consider the amount of screentime we do get from him to be kind of a bonus!

This is such a lovely performance. Sticking with the theme of “characters who don’t realize they’re in the opening of a disaster/apocalypse movie,” R basks in the wonder of being a new father and tells the Woman how amazing she is. When the nurse advises her to try to pee and she’s able to, R beams down at the baby and cries, “She did it!” in a sweet, admiring tone. He’s reassuring as they flee the city and mildly bickers with his dad over whether or not they should have seen this coming. At night, he cuddles with the Woman in his childhood bedroom, and during the day, he makes cute faces while he plays with Zeb.

But as the characters start to realize the enormity of what they’re dealing with, R is hit hard. Although I won’t spoil the details, they’re forced to recalibrate their plan right on the heels of an incredibly traumatic experience for him. Fry does a beautiful job with these scenes: the Woman asking if he wants to talk about it and R admitting he can’t, R sitting in the tub hugging his knees to his chest, R choking back tears as he insists that he can be the one to undertake something risky that directly echoes with the source of his trauma. It’s deeply affecting to watch him go from a kind, gentle rock to a terrified, beaten-down man who thinks he’s failing his family—still kind and gentle, but so battered. Just fantastic work here.

Accent Watch

Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – Yes. It can be a bit slow at times, in that indie-drama way, but I thought this film was wonderfully done.

Joel Fry – Yes! Even if I was left wanting a lot more of R, Fry turns in such a strong performance here.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, violence, language, drinking/smoking, and brief sexual content.