Joel Fry-days: Diggers (2023)

This is an odd little short, more about mood/notion than tangible story. It’s also the shortest one I’ve watched so far, with the credits starting right around the six-and-a-half-minute mark. So yeah, this review may very well be longer than the short itself.

Two men walk into the woods to dig a hole. In between their work, they discuss their lives.

As I said, not much in the way of a story here. Certain questions are left ambiguous, and certain surprises pop up late in the game. For the most part, though, this is just a little piece between these two characters, with the question of the hole they’re digging widening amid their gentle banter. Joel Fry and Cary Crankson (the other actor in this short) both get a story credit alongside the writer/director. Not sure if that means they were actually writing it together or if it means a fair amount of the dialogue is improvised.

But for all that there’s not a lot here, I still found myself liking it. It put me in the mind of Shakespearian grave diggers, or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Watching them dig and talk, there’s some softly pleasant humor as they misunderstand each other, and they hint a little at the philosophical of the mundane. Not I think this approaches the feat of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, obviously, but that’s the vibe I got.

Joel Fry plays Griffin. From the banter, we know more facts about him than we do about the other digger, Michaels. Griffin’s been saying for years that he’s going to quit smoking, he’s a relatively new dad, and his wife makes him put piccalilli on his sandwiches. These small details give us a bit of a snapshot of this man, while the tone and tenor of Fry’s performance gives some texture to those details. 

Griffin is dwelling heavily on how being a dad changes things for him, but he balks when Michaels asks him about fatherhood. “Well, when you say ‘fatherhood,’ it makes it sound like I’ve been doing it for ages,” he counters. “It’s only been six months.” He’s not able to engage with the question until Michaels amends it to “dadness.”

Accent Watch

London.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. I like the feel of it.

Joel Fry – Maybe. It’s not a must, but I enjoy what he does here.

Warnings

Thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: Time: Series 2, Episode 3 (2024)

*Spoilers from episode 2*

Season finale time! This was a quick one to run through. The finale gives us some harrowing moments in the lives of our three women, along with some moments of breakthrough/catharsis.

Here’s the biggest spoiler from last week. At the end of episode 2, Kelsey went into labor. However, none of the prison staff were available because they were dealing with a crisis elsewhere: Orla panicked when her phone money ran out and the call dropped in the middle of an important conversation with her son Kyle, and in her desperation to be allowed to talk to him some more, threatened her cellmate’s life. Abi, who used to be a nurse, was the one to deliver Kelsey’s baby.

That’s where we begin episode 3. Orla has just gotten out of solitary confinement and is forced to deal with the consequences of her actions. Kelsey has been moved to the mother-and-baby unit, but a visit from Adam leads to a massive fallout. As the other inmates continue to harass Abi, she finally decides to open up about the circumstances of her crime.

Everyone’s story has some really awful stuff in it today, and the three main actors handle the material with care. When Adam gets her in trouble, Kelsey is frantic, knowing that any infraction will jeopardize her custody of baby Daniel. She’s desperate to explain herself, and the officer who’s been escorting her to doctor’s appointments throughout her pregnancy is sympathetic but implacable. And while the overall direction of Abi’s story is what I expected, it’s heartbreaking to hear her tell it and watch it play out in flashbacks. Tamara Lawrance gives a really stellar performance here, offering the portrait of a mother at the end of her rope.

This episode definitely cements that the series portrays the prison staff—and the criminal justice system on the whole—as too compassionate to feel genuine. Everyone who works with the inmates is presented as “in it for the right reasons,” caring about their well-being and wanting to help them get their lives back on track. There’s a scene where Orla receives a bit of good news, and an officer actually gives her an encouraging wink! While we see numerous ways that the system is putting a wrecking ball through these women’s lives, it’s seemingly never the fault of the people working within it. Everyone has the best of intentions, and they’re oh-so-sympathetic that this is happening, but there’s nothing they can do. For a show that’s not afraid to get gritty or heartwrenching, this aspect is painted so rosily that it takes me out.

With everything that Kelsey and Abi are going through, Orla’s story feels more mild in comparison, even though she’s not having an easy time of it. Her rash, desperate actions from the last episode haven’t done anything to help her relationship with Kyle, and through her, we also get to see another way that the system lets people down upon their reentry into society.

Jodie Whittaker’s performance is still excellent. Her best moments here are all a bit spoilery, so I won’t go into too many details. But there’s a strong scene where she’s telling a story about her mother, one that acknowledges the complicated nature of love with a really flawed person. I also really like a scene where she gets upsetting news from one of the officers. As we’ve seen from her before, it’s an instance where Orla can’t fully believe that this is really happening to her. However, by this time, she’s learned not to come in hot making demands. At first, she honestly thinks the officer is joking, and Whittaker does a great job of showing how this news slowly sinks in for Orla.

Final thoughts:

Accent Watch

Northern.

Recommend?

In General – I think so. Be aware of the heavy subject matter and the way the story pulls its punches in its depiction of the prison staff, but overall, I thought this was pretty well done.

Jodie Whittaker – I would. Whittaker’s a talented actress who’s played a lot of thankless roles in her career, so I appreciate seeing her in projects that remind you how good she is.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements (including post-partum depression,) violence (including discussion about the murder of an infant,) language, sexual references, and drinking/smoking/drug use.

Other Doctor Lives: Time: Series 2, Episode 2 (2024)

*Episode premise spoilers, including a few major spoilers from episode 1*

There was already quite a bit of drama in episode 1, and things heat up even more here. I’m curious to see how everything’s going to resolve.

First, let me go over the big spoilers from episode 1. On intake, Kelsey learns that she’s pregnant. At first, she continues to use drugs, but having her first ultrasound makes her decide she wants to get clean. While we still don’t know the exact circumstances (though there have definitely been hints,) the true nature of Abi’s crime is revealed: the person she killed was her own baby. She becomes the pariah of their wing, regularly targeted for threats and harassment. The episode ends with Orla’s release, where she tells Kelsey and Abi, “I hope I never see you again.”

All right, onto episode 2! This wouldn’t be a story about three women in prison if one of them gets out in the first episode, so of course Orla winds up back inside. During her initial sentence, her kids were placed in foster care, and in her desperation to secure a new flat so she can get them back, she steals from the till at her new job. Kelsey wants to marry her baby daddy Adam, not wanting to be “a slag of a single mum,” but she’s warned that marrying a drug dealer could jeopardize her position in the mother-and-baby unit, meaning her baby could be sent into foster care shortly after birth. After getting her face slashed by another inmate, Abi navigates choosing between revenge and forgiveness.

Kelsey is the youngest person we see in this wing of the prison, and most everyone there mothers her to some extent. It’s nice to see her lap up affection and well-meaning, although she can still make shortsighted and self-destructive choices. After touring the mother-and-baby unit, she announces, “I’m moving in there, soon as I can,” and the warden needs to remind her that placement isn’t guaranteed. When Marie-Louise, the chaplain, tries to dissuade her from marrying Adam, Kelsey lashes out, viewing it as the staff conspiring against her.

Across both these episodes, it’s affecting to see Abi’s isolation after her secret is revealed. The other women in the wing routinely ice her out, many of them call her “Baby Killer” to her face, and she locks the door to her cell at night because she’s afraid of getting attacked in her sleep. When Kelsey returns from her second ultrasound, the rest of the women celebrate with a dance party while Abi sits alone in her cell, playing dominos with herself. The exclusion is palpable, but it’s even further complicated because the party is specifically related to Kelsey’s pregnancy. That’s why it’s neat to see a few tentative steps toward connection here. Ever since she arrived, Marie-Louise has been urging Abi to open up—in this episode, Abi takes her up on her offer, but in a way Marie-Louis definitely wasn’t expecting. It leads to a really strong scene of a group talk session.

Then we’ve got Orla. As with the first episode, she’s really struggling and her circumstances are sympathetic, but she also continues to be A Problem. A second go-round in prison shows that she didn’t learn much the first time. She still thinks she can demand exceptions to the rules, without so much as a “please,” and she’s pretty awful to Abi. Even though her crime this time has escalated from “fiddling the leccy” to stealing from her boss, Orla still acts like she’s here by mistake and doesn’t really belong in prison. She cops attitude, she loses her temper, and she makes wildly poor decisions out of desperation.

Because, regardless of her own shitty behavior, Orla’s life is falling apart. Her mom is sick, her kids have been split up, and her oldest son Kyle is pulling away from her. She argues that everything she’s done is to try and provide for her kids, but Kyle thinks she’s just being stupid and selfish. Jodie Whittaker does a really nice job of letting Orla be self-centered, make things worse for herself, and struggle to cope with the most painful experience of her life. She’s not black-and-white, and I appreciate that.