#joe barton

[tv-moments]

Black Doves

Season 1, “The Cost of It All”

Director: Lisa Gunning

DoP: Giulio Biccari

[rouyn]

"Oh shit."

Tom Burke as Dennis Rebrov in The Lazarus Project 2.06 (2023)

[vintagewarhol]

[cantsayidont]

Teevee shows:

BLACK DOVES (2024): Keira Knightley attempts unsuccessfully to renew her action star credentials with this violent, very uneven Netflix miniseries from Joe Barton (creator of THE LAZARUS PROJECT). Knightley stars as 40-ish deep-cover spy Helen Webb, whose two little children and dull husband Wallace (Andrew Buchan), an up-and-coming Tory MP, have no idea of her real past, her real occupation (spying on Wallace for a shadowy espionage organization), or the fact that she's been having an affair with a man called Jason (Andrew Koji of WARRIOR, wasted), who's just been murdered. Ben Whishaw (looking like he's been scraped out of a lint trap) costars as Helen's friend Sam, a sardonic gay hitman who is supposed to be watching her back while coping with problems of his own. Set at Christmastime, BLACK DOVES has a weird streak of holiday sentimentality that sits uneasily with Barton's dry black humor (which is sometimes fun) and mean-spirited ghoulishness (which is not). Worse, Barton leaves Knightley flailing in a badly underwritten part that's completely overshadowed by both Sam and the supporting cast — there's never any reason to care about either of Helen's lives, and the script seems reluctant to take her motivations (protect her children, avenge her dead boyfriend) at all seriously. Unlike THE LAZARUS PROJECT, the more interesting character threads also feel divorced from the murky plot, which is convoluted and far-fetched, but short on imagination and never very interesting. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Several, with snotty assassins Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy) the show's principal bright spots. VERDICT: Not so much "Ho Ho Ho" as "Oh ho hum," and I was dismayed by how disinterested it is in its ostensible lead. If you want "married mom is secretly a badass spy," try WHO IS ERIN CARTER, which is less gay, but more fun.

HELSTROM (2020): Muddled, dreary Hulu horror-drama based on D-list Marvel Comics characters Satana and Damian Hellstrom, Son of Satan, here known strictly as Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon). In the show, the adult siblings' now-institutionalized mother Victoria (Elizabeth Marvel) is possessed and their father is/was a demonic serial killer, so Daimon and Ana both have powers; Daimon, a college professor in Portland, has a sideline as a demon hunter and exorcist, while mean lesbian Ana is a trader in rare artifacts with a hobby of supernaturally assassinating rich assholes. A late holdover from the era before Marvel Studios TV projects became completely Mouseified, HELSTROM doesn't have the clammy deracinated theme-park blandness of the Disney+ shows, but it's still a wearisome slog. Daimon is boring, and I loathed his self-righteous noviate sidekick Gabriella (Ariana Guerra), but Ana's dead-eyed bitchiness, killer outfits, and silly haircut are kind of fun, at least in the early episodes. It might have worked better with an X-FILES/KOLCHAK-style monster-of-the-week format, but it fails to generate the atmosphere needed for a PG-13/TV-MA horror story, and the indecipherable plot bogs down in reactionary "redemptive power of family" horseshit. CONTAINS LESBIANS? The sole reason for watching, but while the show tells us that Ana is an inveterate womanizer, we never once see her kiss a girl! VERDICT: Ana Helstrom is great, but everything else is tedious and unappetizing. CWs apply for quasi-incest themes, medical torture, parental abuse, and an icky supernatural forced-pregnancy plot.

THE LINCOLN LAWYER (2022– ): Agreeable but very ordinary legal drama, based on the Michael Connelly novels, about L.A. defense attorney Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), trying to get back in the game after a stint in rehab and unexpectedly inheriting the clients of a colleague who's just been murdered. Becki Newton and Neve Campbell costar as Mickey's ex-wives, with Jazz Raycole as his client-turned driver Izzy, who chauffeurs Mickey around in a Lincoln SUV and acts as his sounding board, and occasional guest appearances by Elliott Gould. Created by David E. Kelley and Ted Humphrey, this is an utterly conventional lawyer show, with the usual contrivances and limitations (like recurring bouts of smug whorephobia), and even at his lowest moments, Mickey is much too affluent to really sell the "feisty underdog" shtick. Nonetheless, it's a well-polished formula, buoyed by Garcia-Rulfo's likeable lead performance, and it works better than the disappointing 2011 movie with Matthew McConaughey, although I wish that the show would allow more time for Mickey's smaller cases, which are more satisfying than the big case plots. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Izzy is gay, but it only comes up once or twice a season. VERDICT: Nothing special, but it goes down easily.

[red-arrowe]

The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself (aka Half Bad) was cancelled by Netflix after one season, but there is still a chance that fans could lobby for a revival.

Can It Be Revived?

At this point, it may seem like The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself is dead in the water, but an important milestone is coming up which may present an opportunity to revive the series. Netflix generally owns the streaming rights to a property for a minimum of two years. So unless it has an extended hold on the show, the rights should revert back to The Imaginarium by the end of 2024. If fans were to get this one trending on social media again, perhaps that could interest another venue in picking it up for a second season. This show is likely not one of the more expensive streaming productions, so it may be attractive as an affordable scripted property that already has a built-in audience.

The Roku Channel recently enjoyed some success after picking up the cancelled Spiderwick Chronicles from Disney+. And AMC’s horror-focused streaming service Shudder might also be a good landing spot for the show. I don’t know if they have the budget for a property like this, but it is worth trying or possibly targeting some of the bigger services as a budget addition to their scripted lineup. It has been less than two years since the show was cancelled, so picking up where the first season left off is still a very real possibility. And if the rights do indeed go back to The Imaginarium by the end of the year, now is a good time for fans to start building some momentum to interest another streamer in taking a flyer on the show when it is available.

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Keira Knightley in Black Doves, Joe Barton, 2024

[thelazarusproject]

Since his previous shows hadn’t made it past one series, Barton assumed The Lazarus Project was “another one-and-done, so I didn’t worry too much about how [the first series] ended. I basically wrote myself into a cul-de-sac. Then we found out we were coming back, and my first thought was: ‘Fuck. Where do we go from here?’” 

Barton compares the experience of writing the show to the scene in Wallace and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers where Gromit, atop a runaway toy train, is frantically laying down track as it careers around the house. “It’s the most structurally complex story I’ve ever tried to do,” he says, “and in the shortest amount of time. You’re just trying to get ahead enough so that people aren’t turning up on set with nothing to say.”

 For Barton, the pleasure of writing The Lazarus Project lies less in the big action set-pieces than putting characters through the emotional wringer and seeing how they cope.

[beautifulgiants]

The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself - meet the cast

[movie-titlecards]

iBoy (2017)

My rating: 5/10

Ludicrous premise, somewhat competently executed.

[tv-moments]

Black Doves

Season 1, “Go Bang Time”

Director: Lisa Gunning

DoP: Giulio Biccari

[rouyn]

Tom Burke as Dennis Rebrov in The Lazarus Project 2.03 (2023)

[kermodefan94-blog]

Black Doves. Season 1. Review.  

We are well past the point in Netflix’s existence as a platform where it was releasing quality high-budget originals with huge marketing campaigns every week beyond its pre-established hits and franchises. It’s now distinctly noticeable when the studio puts a sizeable amount of marketing and PR muscle behind a new property that wants to turn into a potential next big thing. The latest of these…

[ulrichgebert]

Haben nebenher noch schnell eine weitere kleine garstige Fernsehserie mit Spionen, Auftragskillern & Liebesgeschichte mit charismatischen Stars fastgebinged.

[moviesframes]

The Union (2024)

Directed by Julian Farino

Cinematography by Alan Stewart

[watchingalotofmovies]

Black Doves

Black Doves    [trailer]

Helen embarks on a passionate affair with a man who has no idea what her secret identity is. Caught in the crosshairs when her lover falls victim to the dangerous London underworld, her employer's call in Sam to protect her.

Gripping, tight mini-series. Especially during the first half.

Just when I was thinking that a highly professional assassin wouldn't leave his bullet casings behind at his shooting spot ...

Starting with the stop at the US embassy the story increasingly stretched credibility and turned a bit too much into a two-against-the-world confrontation.

It also felt that the episodes had more difficulties to find a good balance between the personal demons of the protagonists and the cold, ruthless world of spies, gangsters and politics. Turns out the second half had a different director than the first, which might explain the change.

I also kept wondering how Helen's husband wasn't more suspicious.

Despite those minor complaints, Knightley and Whishaw make watching the whole thing very much worthwhile. And for a change the series didn't feel unnecessarily stretched.

[cantsayidont]

There's a giant billboard for BLACK DOVES less than 300 meters from my front gate, so I see it regularly and get mad about it all over again.

My big complaint with BLACK DOVES, aside from creator Joe Barton's mean-spirited ghoulishness, is that it is profoundly disinterested in the Keira Knightley character. She's front and center on the poster, but the show has no idea what to do with her character. Nothing about Helen ever makes sense or has any meaningful dramatic weight, and Barton is obviously far more interested in Sam the Sad Gay Hitman, played by an unusually repulsive Ben Whishaw (who should count himself lucky Barton's scripts let him be funny, because his awful beard makes him look like he's attached a filthy toilet brush to his face, holy shit), and whether Sam will successfully reconnect with his ex-boyfriend, who should very definitely stay far, far away from him.

The way the show is constructed strongly suggests that Barton regarded Knightley and her character as unwelcome intrusions in the show he WANTED to make. I get that Ben Whishaw as Sam the Sad Gay Hitman is not going to carry a big-budget streaming show, but I came to see Keira Knightley, and Barton's evident resentment of her presence really made me mad. (I did like the bitchy lesbian hitwomen, but it's not their story either, and I was constantly nervous that Barton was going to kill them off because he loves to be ghoulish.)