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Showing posts with label television review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television review. Show all posts
Q 🎥 Written by Ari David Blaff. Recommended by Christopher Owens. 

Adolescence is a moving work of art but a misleading representation of the challenges facing British boys.

Alek Minassian was an awkward kid in my high school. He’d meow at students in the cafeteria and could never look a woman in the eye. “I’m afraid of girls,” he often declared unprompted in a high-pitched childish voice. Most students thought it was a weird verbal tick.

He was odder than the typical teenager at Thornlea Secondary School, a brutalist sixties creation whose forbidding architecture—rumour had it—had been designed to reduce distractions by cutting pupils off from fresh air, sunlight and other stimuli of the outside world. Windows were a luxury reserved for classes in a newly-built wing from whence you could glimpse the onyx-grey skies over Toronto.

Minassian ran away from girls down our dimly lit corridors. I thought he had a learning or developmental disability, but he seemed harmless. My friends and I never felt physically threatened by him. After we graduated, we filed his name into some remote part of our psychological archives.

But one sunny April day in 2018, he resurfaced. 

Continue @ Q.

What Adolescence Gets Wrong

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ I watched this dramatization of the play originally by J.P. Priestley over the Christmas period and was fixated by the story. 


The play was first shown in the USSR in 1945 and is considered a classic of the 20th century. It tells the tale of the well to do wealthy Birling family and their collective, though separate, treatment of a young working-class girl. The girly who worked in Birlings textile factory was called Eva Smith, who was representative of the working-class in a capitalist society, and she was a good worker and also an agitator for higher pay. 

Birlings like most employers of the time, 1912, paid slave wages and expected their employees not to rock the boat in any way shape or form. Eva Smith dared to challenge Birlings' authority, bringing the girls out on strike for a modest pay increase to make their pay in line with male workers. The girls were out on strike for a fortnight during which time Arthur Birling called Eva Smith into his office and offered her a pay increase and promotion. This she refused stating that the pay increase had to apply to all the girls and not just her. After a fortnight with no wages the girls were effectively starved back to work at the old rate with the exception of Eva Smith who Birling dismissed from his employment. None of the other girls, though sympathetic, dared say anything in support of the woman who had tried to secure a better pay deal for them.

Eva Smith, now unemployed, reinvented herself calling herself Daisy Renton and after some time living in poverty she managed to secure a position in a high-class clothing store. It was here that the daughter of Arthur Birling, Shiela, and her stuck up mother, Sybil Birling, went shopping for a dress for the daughter. She was engaged to a rival of Birling, Gerrald Croft of Crofts Textiles, the son of Lord Croft, and through this marriage of convenience the two companies were to merge and would no longer be in competition with each other. Smith now called Daisy Renton served the Birling girl who accused the young shop assistant of laughing at her. This was not the case and it was more a case of Daisy being better looking than Shiela Birling who was jealous. She demanded to see the manageress of the shop and demanded Daisy Renton be dismissed from her employment. The manageress bowed to the wealthy spoilt girl and her mother’s demand and Daisy once again found herself out of work. This was two jobs she had lost both at the hands of a Birling!

Back on the street Daisy Renton started frequenting places of ill repute, taking to prostitution as a form of income. It was here she met, unknowingly, Shiela Birling's fiancé, Gerrald Croft, who took her home and in the course of events had a short affair with the girl using her for his own ends. Of course, the Birlings knew nothing of this affair, yet, but Daisy was destitute and perhaps Croft appeared as a lifeline! She then met Eric Birling, the son of the industrialist, who again used her, this time making her pregnant. She went to the Poor Relief Board which was chaired by none other than Mrs Sybil Birling, the spoilt brat's mother, explaining she was with child. She did not recognise Daisy from the shop incident and pretended to listen to her pleas for financial help. Her application for poor relief was rejected by Mrs Birling and her semi-imbecile middle class colleagues on the Poor Relief Board. When Daisy explained she was pregnant Mrs Birling was unsympathetic, telling the destitute young woman she must find the father and make him support her and the child. Daisy had no idea the father was Mrs Birlings son, yet she did address herself to Sybil Birling as Mrs Birling which sent the industrialists stuck up wife into a rage, and Daisy left the Poor Relief Board as destitute as when she entered. This bourgeois family, the Birlings, and one who was going to marry into it, had all played a major part in what happened to Eva Smith AKA Daisy Renton next. Bereft of all hope she swallowed a bottle of disinfectant dying a most painful death and it was all due to the individual actions of the Birlings and Gerrald Croft.

As the Birlings were toasting the up-and-coming wedding boasting of the wealth this marriage would generate a police inspector, or supposedly a police inspector, paid them a visit. He had a photo of Eva Smith, Daisy Renton, and wanted to interview all the Birlings and the future son in law Gerrald Croft. After some memory jerking Arthur Birling of Birling and Co recalled he could vaguely remember Eva Smith and said he sacked her because she was a troublemaker. Simply asking for a modest pay rise which Birling could easily have afforded branded Eva a troublemaker! The inspector then showed the picture to the Birling daughter, the one responsible for getting Daisy Renton sacked from her job in the shop. Like her father she at first pretended not to recall the incident but then with a little probing she too could vaguely recall what happened but claimed to have done nothing wrong as the young shop assistant had been laughing at her which was untrue. Sheila Birling then admitted with some remorse that the girl had in fact done nothing wrong and was somewhat sorry she had been dismissed despite it being on Miss Birling's insistence. Then he showed the picture to the future son in law, Gerrald Croft, who finally admitted to the short affair he had with Daisy claiming he took pity on her as she looked depressed in the bar. Roughly translated this meant he saw a vulnerable young woman who he could have his way with. 

It was then the turn of the self-righteous Mrs Sybil Birling of the poor relief ladies who had refused this young woman any kind of assistance. As was the case with her husband, daughter, and formerly future son in law she claimed no responsibility for the painful demise of Daisy Renton. The inspector reminded the Birlings all of them that they had responsibilities as well as privilege. The wedding between the rival industrialist and the Birling daughter was now off due to his infidelity. The police inspector, who turned out not to be an inspector at all, then told the well-to-do family that there “are millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths out there” and one day they may take what the wealthy will not give. A warning of possible socialist revolution? Finally he showed the photo to Eric Birling, the son who had made Eva pregnant, who was a little worse for drink. He did at least show some remorse admitting he stole £50 from the Birling account to help the girl. This admission sent Arthur Birling into a rage as he vowed to make his son pay back the money, but not a word of sympathy for the pregnant now dead Daisy Renton. Arthur Birling was still privately trying to work out a way, in the name of profits, to salvage his daughter’s wedding to Gerrald Croft!

Every one of the Birling family and the future son in law to be, Gerrald Croft, had played their part in the terrible death of Eva Snith. Each one of them initially denied any responsibility though the son and daughter did, after some soul searching, hang their heads in a form of shame. This was in all probability down to the fact they had been exposed for the kind of people they were. Arthur Birling and his wife Sybil showed not the slightest remorse or regrets for their actions which, in the case of Arthur Birling, set the whole train of tragic events in motion! The play certainly highlighted J.B. Priestly’s socialist identity and was a success in the Soviet Union in 1945 as it highlighted, and still highlights, the contradictions of a capitalist society, the following year it was also well received in the New Theatre London.

Arthur Burling then phoned his friend the Police Commissioner, Colonel Roberts, of Brumley a fictitious industrial area of the north midlands of England to inquire if there was an Inspector Goold on the force. The answer was no such inspector existed. When the family found out that Inspector Goold did not exist they all cheered and breathed a sigh of relief without the slightest concern for the dead girl. Arthur Birling then phoned the hospital enquiring if any suicides had come in. Again the hospital was unaware of an Eva Smith or Daisy Renton, it had all been a hoax or so they thought. Just as they were patting themselves on the back congratulating themselves that Inspector Goold did not exist one of the servant girls came in to inform them of a suicide at the hospital. This occurred after Arthur Birling's telephone call to the hospital. The servant girl then informed her wealthy employers that the phone call she had taken informed her that an inspector was on his way to question them all about this suicide. The whole affair was to be replayed except this time events involving Eva Smith would be true or that was the implication!

The story tells of the utter contempt the employing classes had for working class people and women in particular. The Birlings could not have cared a fuck for the terrible demise through swallowing disinfectant of Eva Smith – Daisy Renton – so long as their wealth and reputation were not in any way tarnished. 

I would recommend this dramatization of J. B. Priestley’s play it is well worth a view, giving the class relations early 20th century. I would argue nothing has changed except the fashions and the principle of exploitation is as present today over 100 years after the above story as it was then. It is a very moving and historically representative dramatization not to be missed.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

An Inspector Calls

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ "Life can only be understood backwards, but yet it must be lived forward." - Kierkegaard.


A hat tip to TPQs Henry Joy for reminding me of the importance of Kierkegaard’s paradox on the meaning of life.

I have often grappled with my own meagre contribution to the struggle, which thankfully did not include gaol or active service. It did, nevertheless, require me to put my life and liberty on the line, daily, for most of twenty years, for what I thought was an honourable cause: the establishment of a 32-county socialist republic.

When it became apparent to me that the Republic had been jettisoned, superseded by the imperative to make Stormont work, I decided that my race was run and quietly got on with living my life.

Leaving the movement is not an easy thing: “friendships” end overnight, life takes on a whole new meaning and structure (or lack thereof), and it was a battle. I resolved that to cocoon myself away from all things republican and politics was the best way to keep the black dog, that had savaged so many of my former comrades, at bay.

I am eternally grateful that this self-isolation was readily reciprocated by many of those who remained loyal to the “project”. The rumours, the lies and the threats all expediated the transition into a much happier and much more balanced life, one that I have been enjoying since.

It was during this period of self-imposed exile that the hullabaloo surrounding the Boston College History Project emerged. I saw the graffiti on the Falls Road, which was orchestrated by a defunct organisation and heard that Mackers was being labelled a tout, once again, by people who have subsequently been exposed as being actual British agents.

I was too busy studying, travelling the world and making up for the lost years, so the kerfuffle somewhat passed me by. And, to be honest, I didn’t really care. My education had afforded me a level of critical thinking and self-reflection that was absent in my youth. I had known Mackers from my earlier years and while we seldom agreed on political direction, for him right was right and wrong was wrong. I warmly remember the day I drove him from a Sinn Fein Office in the city to a house in Springhill. He was a happy man, having received his first payment for an article he had written for the Sunday Tribune. Right being right, Mackers, who was skint, was giving the money to a prisoner’s wife to buy a new TV.

It was through this lens that I sat down a few weeks ago with my partner and watched Say Nothing. I hadn’t read the book, and I have since read up on the Boston College saga.

I knew many of the key protagonists, and thought Brendan was magnificently portrayed by Belfast native Anthony Boyle. While a questionable amount of artistic license was used by Disney, the key messages were crystal clear.

The series evoked a considerable emotional response from me and brought me back to a time that I thought I had securely compartmentalised in lieu of forgetting someday. In equal measure, I was nauseous, embarrassed, angry and happy, but overall, the series left with me a feeling of “fuck it”.

My partner, who has no knowledge of the conflict or the subject matter, found it disconcerting that I had ever been involved with a liberation struggle that could so easily commit war crimes, such egregious human rights violations and treat its own members in such a venal way.

The “fuck it” moment (a la The Deer Hunter 1978) reached its crescendo when we watched the hapless Joe Lynskey walk to his death. It was after this episode that I stopped trying to explain, make sense of, or fathom what was unfolding on my TV screen.

In the hierarchy of victimology that has been infused into dealing with the past and our conflict, surely there is no group of people who transcend the suffering inflicted needlessly as the families of the disappeared. By all contemporary definitions what happened to these poor souls was a war crime and should be viewed as such by all. The lies, the subterfuge and the horrors that were inflicted upon these families should never be forgotten. The Boston College project brought further disclosure to some of the families, and highlighted that the IRA had lied about Joe Lynskey, to his family, and to the world, for 10 whole years after the discovery of the first of the disappeared. For this alone, the project, in my view, has confirmed its worth.

But the importance of Say Nothing and ergo the Boston College project goes beyond the exposure of these human rights abuses. The series laid bare, in a horrendous way, the utter futility of the war since the early 80s and how loyal volunteers were cast aside with turpitude by those who displayed an unnerving sociopathy and craving for power. It told the story of Brendan and Dolours, it was their truth as they saw it, at that time. In many ways their truths, have more legitimacy than Before the Dawn or Playing My Part by the two Gerrys who also featured in the series. Neither Brendan nor Dolours sanitised their truth or their roles in a dirty war for a book deal, a retrospective reach around or an opportunity to become reputable.

By allowing republicans from that era to tell their truths, in a warts and all exposé both Say Nothing and the Boston College project have an authenticity and validity that many of the emerging oral history projects vis a vis peace monies will not be able to replicate.

Some of these fledgling oral history projects, controlled by the “community sector” (Absolute Power Act 2) appear to nothing more than an attempt to control the narrative and decontaminate the actions of a rapacious leadership, whose sole desire appears to be the re-writing of history.

The purpose of labelling such a hugely important historical body of work as the “tout tapes” had little to do with the truth and justice.
Schivelbusch's seminal work on the culture of defeat contends that the vanquished, more often than not, reinvent themselves, try to control the collective memory and try to build legend and myth. Say Nothing and the Boston College project effectively challenged an attempt to control the truth and prevent families from getting justice.

The vulgarity and offensiveness of the denial of IRA membership and activity at the end of each episode of Say Nothing should act as a wake-up call to all those who value the truth and strive for justice in post conflict Ireland.

It is easy to sleep on another man's wound.

⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.

Say Nothing . . . Fuck It . . . Say Everything

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ“º 40 years ago today as the H Blocks were unlocking for the day's routine, we rolled out of the cells and up to the canteen.

BBC @  Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher
Our appetite that morning was less for breakfast, and more for the television - there were none in the cells - so that we could follow the news reports from Brighton where the IRA in the early hours of the morning had literally sent shock waves through the British establishment with its audacious bombing of the Tory Party at its annual conference.

The shine of jubilation was dulled somewhat because while the operation had hit the Tories hard Margaret Thatcher, the main target, had survived. Amongst INLA and IRA prisoners Thatcher was a hate figure because of her key role in the deaths of ten republican hunger strikers. The very same wings where each of the ten had been held across the H Blocks were on October-12-1984 sympathy-free zones.

Forty years later were someone to have asked me for something of significance in relation to October-12, I would have been flummoxed. It is not a date that stands out in my mind like May-5. I guess it is human nature to remember those we lost more than those we killed.

When my wife told me that she had recorded Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher, I thought I'd watch it but there was no urgency to it. Sitting down in front of the television on Thursday evening, in the hope of finding something watchable from Scandinavian or French crime drama, she suggested tuning in to the BBC production. The choice was made.

Settling into it there was a surreal moment when a cartoonish-type character appeared on screen. My first thought Humpty Dumpty WTF. It was in fact Danny Morrison whose presence immediately prompted the comment what is he gonna lie about? I hadn't long to wait. As a young person Morrison had been struck down by a bad dose of Liarette syndrome, from which he never recovered, subsequent to which he has been lying ever since. Big black hats off to him for at least finding a novel way to dissimulate and dissemble: lying by crying. With tears as false as the love of a burn again Christian, Morrison stated that there is not a day that passes where he doesn't think of the hunger strikers. That was the point when my mood shifted from ridicule to anger. Given that he bears substantial culpability for six of their deaths, the words I most associate with Morrison and the hunger strikers are those of Jorge Luis Borges: I betrayed those who believed me their friend.

That blemish on my appreciation aside, I found the documentary riveting. It was a far cry from the days when republican activists were gagged by both the London and Dublin governments. Pat Magee, the IRA volunteer who planted the bomb, was afforded a large amount of speaking time. Of more interest than the operation itself was the evolution of Magee's perspective on war and the taking of life. It seems clear that today he shares none of the jubilation that was so prevalent on the H Block wings or the pub in Cork where he sat watching news of the attack. A deep thinking man, he is philosophical rather than triumphalist. Without turning his back on the operation that propelled him to a public profile at odds with the quietude of his character, he brings nuance to an understanding of the consequences of his actions.  In Pat Magee it is easy to detect the paradox presented by Albert Camus on war that Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

While Pat Magee has come a long way in his arduous political odyssey, an even more remarkable distance covered is that made by Jo Berry, daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, the Conservative MP killed by the bomb Pat Magee placed in the Grand Hotel. While both lives were upended by the attack, it had to be much harder for Jo Berry to embrace Pat Magee than it was for him to embrace her. 

Forty years on those who looked to us as monsters then look much more human today. John Gummer who was with Thatcher at the time the IRA device detonated, would most likely have died had the attack succeeded. His contribution to the documentary was of service to recreating the mood in the Grand Hotel leading up to the bomb and the shock it produced. While he still professes a lack of comprehension as to why it happened, he was rancour free. In contrast to the fake tears of Danny Morrison, Gummer's wife Penelope shed tears that bore all the traits of authenticity as she recalled the events of the night and spoke with a large measure of understanding of what motivated the man who came very close to killing her. 

I very much doubt that the grief leading from the violence of war will ever lead to either widespread forgiveness or forgetting. To expect that it will, is to have an unjustified belief in the capacity of humans to become unhuman by jettisoning the sentiments, instincts and feelings that make them human. What Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher did achieve was to discursively reinforce placing the concept of understanding, that is so necessary to preventing war and political violence, at the centre of the narrative generated by war and violence.  

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Bombing Brighton: The Plot To Kill Thatcher

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ“º Four women have been murdered in the space of six weeks in the North, the latest being twenty-two year old Mary Ward.

BBC Spotlight
Slain in her home in Belfast's Melrose Street, Ms Ward had previously alerted the PSNI to the danger she was under as a result of domestic violence. The PSNI believes that while her body was not discovered until October-1 her life had been snuffed out approximately a week earlier. The PSNI has since referred itself to the police ombudsman for the purpose of having its response to Mary Ward's distress call examined.

It is vitally important that the PSNI, which proclaims its own hot pursuit of others (but not the homicidal misogynist Jonathan Creswell) for their alleged transgressions, should have its feet held to the fire over any shortcomings in its policies and practices when dealing with violence against women.

A recent BBC Spotlight documentary raised serious concerns about how some elements within the PSNI had failed to take seriously the very real possibility that a woman, Katie Simpson, was the victim of murder, preferring instead the self-serving narrative of her killer that she had committed suicide at her home in August 2020.  A journalist elsewhere, Tanya Fowles, who had made numerous attempts to get the PSNI to act, found the force's response to be one of indifference and hostility towards her for having the temerity to ask it to do its job.  Distilled down, it simply did not give one flying fuck about the circumstances that resulted in the death of a twenty one year old woman. If her killer said it was suicide by hanging despite his own history of violence against women including strangulation, for which he once served a prison stretch, that was good enough for the PSNI: move along, nothing to see here. 

These are the issues that Jennifer O'Leary so brilliantly brings to the fore in Katie: Coerced And Killed. This is not the first time the BBC investigator and her team have shone the Spotlight on violence and abuse inflicted on women. She was the journalist who in 2018 played a huge role in bringing the experience of Mairia Cahill into the public domain.

Katie: Coerced And Killed took almost an hour to present, so detailed and forensic was its composition. It was a story of violence, bullying, intimidation, coercive control, rape, murder, and ultimately police incompetence. 

Equestrian Katie Simpson's killer was Jonathan Creswell, also from the horsey world. He took his own life at home shortly after his trial had started, initiated by a new PSNI team that picked up the baton dropped by the first eleven. For the women in his life, even the cultic crazies who flocked to his defence, this was the partner from hell, a man who immediately brings to mind the quip from the US writer H.H. Monroe: he is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Spotlight makes it crystal clear that this was a death that from the outset screamed out for investigation. Yet until a new PSNI team usurped the first lot, none was forthcoming. Hospital staff, friends, family, journalists, tutti quanti recognised the evidentiary signs. The cops failed to. 

Maydown PSNI Station in Derry was appropriately not named Mayday. It was not fit for purpose. The Alliance Party MLA, Nuala McAllister, told Spotlight: 

I am aware that there was an individual officer who did a lot of work and actually brought it forward to his superior to say: ‘This isn’t right here.’ He met a lot of resistance, not from his superior but from within the team around the district in which Katie lived and where the death actually occurred. There was a police team in the PSNI who just didn’t want to know . . .  I’ve been informed that it was DCI John Caldwell who led that team. It has been alleged to me that it was DCI John Caldwell himself who put up the most resistance and acted in the way, I have been told, that was not befitting of a senior ranking officer.

While John Caldwell disputes the accuracy of such allegations, there remains a certain irony. John Caldwell was shot and seriously injured last year in an Omagh attack by republicans wedded to the homicidal ideology of physical force. The energy and rapidity with which the PSNI hared off in pursuit of those it believed responsible for the non-fatal attack contrasts vividly with the tardy nature of its response to the Katie Simpson fatality. 

In the past week the PSNI has been the object of scrutiny in London by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal because of its perfidious pursuit of journalistic material through spying. The irony will not be lost on women that those who have been doing what the PSNI should be doing - calling time on violence against and murder of women - have to contend with the force using espionage to find out what journalists are investigating.

Jennifer O'Leary, like Tanya Fowles, has performed a huge public service in drawing attention to PSNI inattention. Harrowing as it is to view, Katie: Coerced And Killed is a most valuable contribution to the health and safety of women in circumstances where those on watch are not watching.
⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Katie: Coerced And Killed

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ“º December 1986, and a young French man is walking home from a concert.



The 22 year old's route brings him close to where a riot has broken out. If light is generated by the evening's events it is from the glow of petrol bombs being hurled by rioters, making visible in the manner of a night scope the dark menacing figures of Parisian plods.

Prior to the disturbance a protest had taken place against reforms of the university system on top of proposed legislation placing restrictions on immigration. Malik Oussekine is involved in neither. His reason for being in the vicinity was the music of Nina Simone.

A motor cycle gang of French cops is on the rampage seeking out heads to crack. Like other violent biker gangs on the scent of blood, a feeding frenzy takes grip when its path crosses with that of the young man. Malik Oussekine is beaten to death sheltering in a doorway by the uniformed thugs who attack him for no reason other than he did not look French. A witness to the violent assault described it: 

I was returning home. As I closed the door after dialling the code, I saw the distraught face of a young man. I let him pass and I wanted to close the door . . . Two policemen rushed into the hall, rushed on the guy and beat him with incredible violence. He fell, they continued beating with truncheons and kicking him in the stomach and back.

The witness was also beaten when he tried to intervene.

The victim was French but his family hailed from Algeria, a country familiar with French state violence. 25 years earlier Parisian police had murdered 250 Algerian demonstrators on the streets of the French capital. 

Malik strived to integrate as a French citizen in the society to which he belonged, a sentiment that was not reciprocated.  He aspired to become a Jesuit priest and when he was murdered he was in possession of a a pocket bible. Other 'dangerous' items he had a history of being familiar with were a basket ball and a guitar.

His death and the huge public outcry in the face of police cover up and government disinformation  sets the scene for this four part miniseries, detailing his journey from obscurity in life to national prominence in death. 

This dramatization shows the arduous battle the family of Malik undertook in their struggle for truth and justice. Sarah, Malik's sister, is conflicted not about the truth of what happened to her brother but about telling her mother the truth - that her youngest son was dead. Sarah deflected as a delaying tactic before the inevitable moment of reckoning.

Those familiar with the North's violent political conflict will immediately grasp the wider truth dilemma, having witnessed various one-eyed tribes' refusal to see what their own tribe has inflicted on another tribe. In the North's supposed reconciliation the one staple ingredient of reciprocity is recrimination, all sides happily lying to and about one another.

In an age when there is much talk about the problems of multiculturalism, a supposed reluctance to racially and socially integrate undermining social cohesion and giving rise to ghettoization, Oussekine depicts a scenario where racist state forces were determined to keep people as outsiders, forcing them into the safety of numbers in communities which felt compelled to operate as billiard balls perpetually designed to clash with other billiard balls on the societal table rather than as cobwebs, the strands of which blend and mix. The targets of police violence were then accused of being reluctant to integrate. Victim blaming.

The recent French elections, which saw first the advance of the far right and then its forced retreat, were a useful backdrop to Oussekine, inviting the question of how much France has really changed. While a wonderful concept, Laïcité should never have become a cop cudgel used to batter Muslim women wearing the burkini at beaches. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, aye right.

The recent racism on stilts prancing around the former Crown Paints site in Coolock would welcome the type of policing offered by Jean Schmitt and Christophe Garcia, the thugs responsible for the killing of Malik, but who received only a suspended sentence for their crimes.

I got up from the settee having finished viewing the series with many thoughts in mind, the overriding one being from the pen of David Mamet:

When Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Oussekine

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ“ºThe founder of Mormonism
was a crook, Joseph Smith.


Convicted in 1826 of being “a disorderly person and an impostor” after he had pleaded guilty to swindling people, he went on to manufacture a further scam, hiding it in plain sight. He informed listeners that he had been visited on three separate occasions by an angel called Moroni - maybe he was taking the piss out of the morons he was talking to, inventing a name suitable to their ilk. Smith simply announced that “I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad” and the daft disciples fell over themselves to fall into it. 

Smith won over devotees who opted to study the new faith with eyes wide shut. Mormonism is a salutary lesson in how easily the gullible and the credulous can be taken in if some nonsense is either whispered to them or said to come from a magic book. In the words of Christopher Hitchens, Mormonism raises questions 'concerning what happens when a plain racket turns into a serious religion before our eyes'.

Cults are not just religious. It was said that Workers Revolutionary Party leader Gerry Healey used to screw the wives of university professors and then their daughters, telling them that it was crucial that they satisfy his sexual needs . . . but only for the good of the party. Tom Hartley must sure be glad Gerry Adams never asked to ride him.

When Joseph Smith tired of the wife, and wanted to shag around, he made up a yarn about having received a divine message from 'Heavenly Father' which threatened death and eternal damnation to those unfortunate wives who would not acquiesce in the philandering. After Smith was shot dead in jail, where he belonged, he was succeeded as President of the Church by another randy reverend, Brigham Young, who went on to acquire fifty six wives and sire fifty seven children. Thus, polygamy, the great Mormon orgy, was born. 

Adapted from Jon Krakauer's non-fiction book of the same name, Under The Banner Of Heaven is a seven part unnerving crime drama. It will probably be even more suspenseful to those who had not previously read the book or were familiar with the Lafferty family, of which two siblings were murderous cutthroats, Dan and Ron.  Dan was simply a paedophile who wanted a religious excuse to rape his underage stepdaughters.

The drama opens up with a visit to a house in East Rockwell by Detective Jeb Pyre, a devout member of the Church of Latter Day Saints. As attending officer, he conducted a survey of a murder scene seemingly plucked from the bowels of hell. A twenty four year old mother, Brenda Wright Lafferty, and her baby daughter, Erica, both had their throats slashed. A heavily bloodstained man approaches the house and is ordered at gunpoint to get on the ground. A suspect in their grip, the investigation proper has begun. 'Brother' Jeb Pyre and his partner, Paiute native American Bill Taba, made up the posse now on the trail of the killers.

The suspect, Allen Lafferty, is the husband  of the murdered woman and father of the slain child. He protests his innocence and urges the cops to look for biblical type characters with beards. Seems all too easy to blame the old crazies, and Taba tells the man in his custody as much. 

During his interrogation Allen Lafferty claims to have left the LDS Church and is now a fundamentalist. The LDS Church denies the existence of any such thing as fundies. Like the Catholic Church in Ireland up until recent decades, but no longer, the hierarchy in the Church of the Latter Day Saints felt it could bully its way into having people accept that the reputation of the institution was more important to protect than any concept of justice. Heavenly Father would sort it all out in the eternal kingdom, just leave decisions about earthly matters in the hands of the Church elders. As far as the bishops and prophets in the Church were concerned, the police and courts could take a hike.

A frightening story about religious charlatans described as people who heard their own wishes and desires, then called them god to bully others into giving them what they wanted. Brenda Wright Lafferty was an independent woman and the men who wanted many wives resented her giving moral support to their original wives. Independent women might as well have been the devil incarnate in East Rockwell. Not vastly different from other areas of Christianity where men take the attitude of your body - my choice.

One mild irritant for the viewer familiar with Lodge 49 is that once they have met Dud as Dan Lafferty they will continue to see Dud throughout this series no matter how different the role of Dan is from Dud back in the Lodge. 

Mormonism, the religion of magic underwear.

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Mormon Murder

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ“º We ended up watching the last three episodes in one sitting, it was so good.

Last time that happened was when we watched The Bureau, a French espionage drama.


Presumed Innocent is carried throughout its eight episodes by five main characters who individually and as a combination serve up a powerful performance which creates an addiction almost as potent as Rusty Sabich's obsession with his fellow prosecutor Carolyn Polhemus: our binge viewing on the home straight explained. When Polhemus is found gagged and bludgeoned to death Sabic, played by  Gyllenhaal, takes the call at home, his facial expression darkening before excusing himself and making his way to the crime scene where a cop sitting outside suggests to him that it is better not to go in. 

He proceeds despite the advice and examines the scene, being contaminated in the process. The trajectory his life now takes is set. As the murdered woman's lover, he quickly falls under suspicion. As chief deputy prosecutor for Chicago the media interest is intense.

Politics in the Prosecutor's office are turbulent. Raymond Horgan played by Bill Camp has just lost the election for the city's attorney general to Nico Della Guardia. Nothing short of undiluted brilliance comes out of the efforts O-T Fagbenle put into the character but Horgan remains the most likeable of them all. Della Guardia appoints Tommy Molte to lead the investigation into the murder. A loner with a lonely life, a cat for company, and televised baseball for pleasure, he doesn't like Sabich. The collision course is well mapped out. Peter Sarsgaard is flawless in the role of Sabich's nemesis. 

The drama is reminiscent of The Undoing featuring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, which too served up hi-octane crime drama and ultimately changed my ungenerous perception of Grant. 

Ruth Negga plays Rusty Sabich's long suffering wife. As he seems to go off the rails, as the trial pressure mounts, the question torments the viewer: Why are you still there Barbara?

My wife watches these dramas with such a close eye that I never lose the thread of the plot. She can explain instantly what is happening. Luckily she is much too focussed to give a running commentary at the same time, and only responds when I have one of those WTF is happening moments. 

Some great series can be ruined by a damp squib conclusion such as Line of Duty. Not here - in this one the viewer gets a loud bang for their buck.

A riveting legal thriller based on the book which led to the film of the same name, Presumed Innocent makes the unlikeable gradually become likeable, because of their flaws and eccentricities not despite them, while proffering to the viewer a salutary lesson: presume nothing about innocence.  

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Presumed Innocent

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