That's interesting. There's a whole batch of those: Death in Paradise, Midsummer Murders, Jonathan Creek etc. with more starting up all the time. Usually people assume that because there's a superficial similarity to Agatha Christie's books, that she's pretty much the same. Considering that her writing is usually adapted and presented in a comfortable middle brow, Middle-England way* that's not surprising. But it's not the whole picture. A few years ago, I bought my mum all of the Agatha Christie books as a birthday present, and then read them myself when I visited her. There's a reason she succeeded. She's a really good writer. Also, her work is far more insightful and nuanced than the stuff churned out for most telly whodunnits. Most important, she doesn't have a casual attitude to death. In most TV stuff, the meat of the story is the 'how' and the 'who'. There's usually a nod to the deceased as a human, but only because the 'why' helps with the other components. In her writing, the moral impact of a death is (usually) front and centre.
*I do think that Hercule Poirot was nicely portrayed with all his modern-man 1920s habits in the David Suchet version, although I prefer the radio adaptations.
Yeah, that's them. I get why that stuff is made - it's switch your brain off and relax stuff, which is fine, I have my own versions of that.
I only learned fairly recently that Agatha Christie is actually a *good writer*. Which you'd never really guess from most of the TV stuff. I read a bit of her stuff and it's not for me but yeah she could certainly write good.
And I did always enjoy a Poirot when one came on.
What you're saying about the moral weight of the murder makes me think of the transition from hardboiled/film noir style crime drama to the police procedural. Which I've been learning a bit about recently.
In the 30s-50s, TV/film crime drama tended to frame crime as a social problem rather than as individual pathology. The criminals were often sympathetically drawn, you'd get a lot of time from their point of view, they were normal people pushed to extremes by circumstance rather than bad people looking for an opportunity to be bad. And the cop's, who's explicitly from the same social class as the criminals, job was kinda moral arbitration rather than straight up law enforcement.
Then the McCarthy Witch Hunts happened and anyone with even a vaguely social-construction take on crime was booted out of media production and the police procedural took over. Very much from the cop's point of view, very much crime as pathology and cop as unambiguous hero.
(The Wire gets a lot of credit for flipping that a bit but honestly I think it's mostly undeserved. The extent to which it depicted crime as a social problem is hugely overstated (as is its quality imo). It spent a *tiny* bit more time with the criminals than the norm but that seemed more in service of making them compelling villains than in humanising them, to me.)
every time I see a Deadwood mention, I go looking up quotes. Such good TV, such great characters. I could listen to Swearengen, EB Farnum, Jane, and the Doc's lines so happily. No doubt forgetting some others as well.
Yeah the movie was exactly as you describe, a sweet little epilogue really, a nice way to check in on survivors and whatnot but not essential to it at all.
I adored Jane. There's a bit where she and Charlie meet up and talk to Bill's grave and it's so fucking sweet and tragic and also funny. I think Jane and Charlie are the characters I felt the most affection for.
But EB Farnham! That fucking performance. Making that character *work* is incredible. Not evil, just *disgusting* (a "grotesque"). And yet still somehow kinda loveable through it all.
So, I've had a ponder about this. I sort of liked cowboy stuff when I was a kid, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The High Chaparral and so on. But I went off it. Even though I've enjoyed the occasional western film since then, Sergio Leone's stuff, Josey Wales, and others, when it comes to it, there's a voice that says "you don't want to watch cowboy shows". I "quite" enjoyed 1883, but not the high-profile sequel (historically) Yellowstone. The less said about the middle-sequel 1923 the better.
So I've decided to give myself a kick up the backside and stick Deadwood on Plex. See how it goes.
There's been quite a few great westerns (including modern-era westerns, if you count stuff like No Country for Old Men) released in the intervening years, along with the usual duds. Bone Tomahawk is pretty wild.
“A man with nicotine, protein, caffeine, and creatine coursing through his veins is an unstoppable force.”
> there's a voice that says "you don't want to watch cowboy shows".
Yeah, that's why it took me 20 years to watch this. I often enjoy cowboy things when I watch them, but I don't think I ever enjoy the setting itself. To enjoy that *setting* I'd want something like Little House on the Prairie, I think (I dunno, not seen it since I was like 12 but I remember enjoying the setting!)
But, and this will sound like wankery, but Deadwood isn't *really* a cowboy show. In the same way that Sopranos isn't a mafia thing as like Godfather or Goodfellas are. But more so, it's more not a cowboy show than Sopranos isn't a mafia show. It has some of the trappings like the saloon is a big deal and there's a [redacted] of [redacted] who're [redacted] and there's like literally one [redacted] but they're all used differently, and for different reasons.
It's a *little* bit a deconstruction of cowboy mythos and stuff. But it's much more just using that setting to talk about something.
If it helps, the writer initially wanted to make a show set in ancient Rome, following civic guards before Roman law was codified. But HBO wouldn't let him cos they were already making Rome. So he switched it to the old west.
Anyway, no need to convince you since you're onboard! You *shan't* regret it!
"the writer initially wanted to make a show set in ancient Rome"
If you ever feel you're missing something by not reading detective/whodunnit stuff, try the 'Falco' series by Lindsey Davis. Set in Rome during the rule of Vespasian.
It is as much a horror movie as a western, which by many contemporary accounts, the old west wasn't far from. So maybe a more accurate depiction, FWIW. Otherwise it's just a proverbial horse opera.
“A man with nicotine, protein, caffeine, and creatine coursing through his veins is an unstoppable force.”
Books sort-of-about cowboys to whatever degree that I have read and thought excellent but as yet not seen a movie or television adaptation of:
Lonesome Dove
Blood Meridian
All The Pretty Horses
Butcher's Crossing
Books etc and so on where I have also watched the thing:
True Grit, both movies are worth a look for different reasons. It's pretty standard cowpokin' though I guess, not exactly anything else to say.
Sisters Brothers as mentioned, it's pretty funny.
The Revenant: surviving bleak conditions for a long time.
Ones where it's just the movie or TV I have experienced in most cases even if there is a book:
Hateful 8: Quentin Does Cowboys and it's exactly what you'd anticipate.
Outer Range: Nice setup, waste of time execution, avoid this.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Coen Brothers Do Cowboys (again) and it's exactly what you'd anticipate. Provided a handy "First time?" meme to the Internet.
3:10 to Yuma: Cowboys and Trains, just like they used to do, so standard action really.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Can't really remember, but it is well-regarded so perhaps I will try again. I think Nick Cave has a cameo in it for some reason.
The Proposition: They have cowboys in Australia?! Nick Cave wrote this and did the soundtrack with Warren Ellis.
Tombstone: I have noticed people recently saying this was an overlooked gem and have intended to get around to watching it and finding out if they're right.
Then assorted Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner of course.
She churns them out, but they're fun. Historical detectives are really only a subset of a subset with Cadfael probably the best known. I do like Falco though. There's a brooding cynicism to him that gives the series a satisfying noir feel.
Yeah, about Yellowstone. I think you have to be able to at least sympathise a bit with the main characters. John Dutton III is just unlikeable. Packed to the gills with entitlement and casual brutality. But the main problem is he's boring. I don't give a fuck about his plans and intrigues. Probably doesn't help that I don't find Kevin Costner a very appealing character in real life.
