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Reviews
American History's Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley: The American Revolution (2019)
Everything Americans already knew
Lucy talks with self-importance of a first grader who is eager to inform you that cats don't really have nine lives.
She seems to think her audience is under the impression that the militia involved in the initial engagements of what became the Revolutionary War fought the whole darn thing, muskets in one hand and plows in the other. She earnestly tells her audience it was really the Continental Army which did most of the fighting, a fact Americans have known since third or fourth grade. And since the name "Lafayette" has been used innumerably in the US for towns, village squares, libraries, schools, roads and more, why should it come as a surprise that the French provided us with aid - some might argue indispensable aid? Does that make our victory over Britain (yes - over Britain, Lucy) any less valid? It's like no one has ever had an ally during time of war.
No one really thinks much about Molly Pitcher here, except if they use the Molly Pitcher rest stop on the NJ Turnpike (if then), so it's not really a big deal to us that parts of the story are legendary - hardly a "fib."
And the fact that Prescott and Dawes didn't fit in neatly with Longfellow's anapests and iambs as he penned "Paul Revere's Ride" may be important to her, but really, to whom else?
Surprisingly, left out are some facts that Brits could have cheered (since that seems the point). For instance, the Brits didn't come to Concord and start burning it down for the heck of it, but because it was storing munitions to fight the British. Even more important, Britain felt it had a right to all that taxation without representation, since the colonists were balking about paying some of their fair share for the protection they received during the French Indian War.
By the way, as a ten-year resident of Concord, MA myself, which Lucy visited during the making of this, how did it elude her that it's pronounced not Con-cord, but precisely the same (ironically) as the word "conquered." Only the odd tourist - and someone making a documentary apparently with her nose out of joint about a war that happened 275 years ago - ever mispronounces it like that. It would be like an American making a documentary in Britain and repeatedly saying "Wuh-sess-ter" for Worcester.
Husbands (1970)
I remember people leaving the theater in droves.
I saw this movie in a theater in New Jersey right out side NYC, and although one might assume we were lacking in the vaunted sophistication of the Manhattanites, it was an area in which I saw many foreign films and classics such as movies by Ingmar Bergman - in other words, all sorts of movies were successful there.
I was in my twenties, and I remember being horrified by the selfishness and general meanness of the male characters in the story. Their anger and contempt for people around them was something I've seldom experienced in real life. Anyway, what sticks in my mind was how the audience began leaving in droves. One clump of people got up and left out which emboldened others, who like me, were suffering through this slow, mean movie. I'd never seen an audience do that. At the time, I had a sort of Mary Tyler Moore over-politeness, the kind of person who would apologize to a desk if she bumped into it. I felt I would be rude to the movie and everyone who helped to create if I too left, but finally, my friend and I could take no more, and we went headed toward the exit amid an audience that had dwindled to a few people.
Slow Horses: Failure's Contagious (2022)
Not to our taste
My husband and I had great hopes for this. We liked the opening, even though it seemed very dated, the way spy movies used to be in the 70's. Then for us it plunged downill. Part of that is personal taste - even though the plot called for a dingy setting, we simply don't enjoy spending a long time looking at filthy, gloomy surroundings and greasy-haired bosses. After the high-energy beginnning, the pace was glacial, the jokes anemic. And the "conservative" villain was so cartoonishly portrayed I almost felt embarrassed for the writers.
Law & Order: Free Speech (2022)
Original L&0 lasted 20 seasons. Betting this reboot won't last 20 episodes.
It is impossible to overstate how awful this once fine show has become.
The writing in the original respected the intelligence of the viewer, and in the vast majority of cases, the court room scenes resembled reality. But in the reboot, the judges let the prosecution spout lengthy screeds - laboriously spelling things out for the viewer - while the defense sits there passively.
The characters are wooden, unlikeable and don't mesh. How sad to see Jeffrey Donovan, so competent and enjoyable in Burn Notice, now totally out of his depth with a serious role.
And with this episode, Free Speech, the transformation of the program into a comic book is now complete. I was waiting to see POW! And ZOOM! Appear across some of the scenes, as the triumphal liberals trounced the villainous "right wing." It's a last ditch attempt, I suppose, to find some audience somewhere for this awful show. Actually, we watched the whole thing for laughs. But that gets old fast. We're done.