istara

This is a great premise - particularly the puzzle solving aspect - but it's a pretty dark thriller of a show, scarcely lightened by a few black comedy elements.

Most of the deaths/murders are tragic and certainly not played for laughs. Much of it is quite bleak - the scene with Paul Chahidi (the vicar from This Country) confessing is particularly harrowing. I was reminded of the darker moments of the Joan Hickson Marple series in terms of tone.

The best aspect is David Mitchell's character playing a sort of geek-Poirot role and solving various murders through logic puzzle techniques. Some reviewers have compared his character/performance to Mark in Peep Show but he's more like Mark's beardy bachelor uncle. Anna Maxwell Martin is also great as his sister-in-law.

To say that this is not a faithful adaptation of They Came to Baghdad would be the understatement of the century.

It has most of the characters and some of the plot. The problem is the framing of it all. You can see how the producers would struggle to fit a novel like They Came to Baghdad into under an hour.

The problem is that all the charm and fun of They Came to Baghdad is lost. There's no mystery regarding who is the hero, who is the villain - a key aspect of the book. Victoria Jones' character is very much changed. The exotic settings aren't there.

It does get better - the first scene with Anna Scheele buying tartan cloth is confusing and awful. Once we're in Baghdad things are more familiar.

I don't know if anyone will ever bring a faithful adaptation of They Came to Baghdad to the screen. It might be too difficult to adapt script-wise, it might not be commercially viable. But it's something that would be fascinating to see. Maybe GenAI will make it a possibility one day.

For now, we have this. And thankfully, we still have the wonderful book it's loosely based on.

I watched Sharp Stick as an in-flight movie so not at optimal picture quality, but it was still a reasonably enjoyable movie.

The main problem is the age and character of the main protagonist. As another reviewer commented, it seems as though she was written as a much younger character, but made older in the final script (possibly to avoid offending current paranoia/social mores?) It isn't really credible that any woman in her mid-twenties, living in LA, wouldn't have heard of basic intimate acts. Particularly with a very sassy, savvy sister.

There is a lot of intimate action in this, though in terms of nudity it's not explicit. I thought the first scenes were well done, but the central plot of adultery was somewhat brushed aside along with the husband and wife. Why she later does what she does - extreme behaviour/acts for anyone - didn't seem very realistic.

I did enjoy Scott Speedman as adult actor Vance. Luka Sabbat was also very good, although the final "happy ending" (not intended as a pun though I suppose it could be!) wasn't convincing, and was odd. I didn't feel the animated sequences really fit the tone of the rest of the movie.

But all in all it's interesting and certainly worth a view on a long haul flight.