Culture Notes: Sunday Breakfast with Dee Reddy

I am a Netflix virgin. Or rather, I was until last Monday before I took the plunge and dived into a pool which has become very well populated of late.

Like sex when I was a teenager, everybody is talking about Netflix. At first, my friends were a little scared of it, not quite sure what it held in store. How do you do it? How does it work? And, just like my adolescence, I made sure my friends experimented with it first before I got involved at a safer and later stage. Mine really is the rock ‘n roll lifestyle.

The first thing I watched was a few episodes of Breaking Bad. It is almost impossible to sit through a dinner party without having watched it. If you do, you will find yourself relegated to the bottom end of the table, feeding scraps to the dog and longing for the evening to come to a swift end. 

Because Breaking Bad nearly killed me I followed it with an episode of Fawlty Towers. What I didn’t realise was that Netflix uses a complex algorithm, based on what you have watched, to create customised suggestions for your future viewing pleasure. It is now recommending I watch a documentary about cocaine and I’m Alan Partridge. I can understand their reasoning: hit him hard with some seriously debased concoction of the criminal underworld and ease his suffering with some classic British comedy for the inevitable comedown.

Television

Downton Abbey is back on our screens tonight for its fourth outing. Our appetite for period schmaltz has clearly not deflated quite yet as the show is currently the most internationally viewed program in the world.

Maggie Smith is returning as the Dowager Countess with the acid wit. Surely her character is now roughly 136 years of age, no? Still, she has the ability to add spark to the most mundane of scenes.

It is the roaring twenties and the Downton estate is facing new challenges. The trailer for the new season opens with the Dowager Countess feeding advice to the mourning Lady Mary: “You have a straightforward choice...you must choose either death or life”. No doubt Mary will wander the corridors of Downton like a moody teenager for the first episode and then shack up with Irish provo-turned pseudo aristocrat and fellow widower, Tom Branson, before the season is out. That’s my bet anyway.

Of particular interest is the arrival of Lady Grantham’s brother, played by Paul Giamatti. Giamatti is one of the most understated and exquisite actors working in Hollywood today, having put in sterling performances in the likes of Sideways and the Ides of March.

Gary Carr will play the first black visitor to Downton, as American jazz singer, Jack Ross.

Downstairs, Jonathan Howard will be playing the hot new gardener, Sam Thawley, setting the petticoats above stairs all aflutter.

Movies

The Toronto International Film Festival, or “TIFF” as it is know by industry insiders, came to a close during the week. This festival, second only to Cannes, is known as a hotspot for early Oscar buzz. The big winner this year, scooping up the People’s Choice Award, was 12 Years a Slave. From all accounts, Brit Steve McQueen, director of Hunger and Shame, has delivered another tour de force. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and our own Kerryman, Michael Fassbender, the film also has a stellar supporting cast including Brad Pitt and Love/Hate’s Ruth Negga.

The movie follows the travails of a black man from the Union North being sold into slavery in the Confederate South during the run up to the American Civil War. There have been so many films on this subject of late, from Lincoln to Tarantino’s Django Unchained that the Civil War is almost a genre in itself.

Its release date in Ireland has been pushed forward to October.

Diana, the biopic of Princess Diana’s life, was released on Friday across the country to a widespread panning from critics. Donald Clarke, writing in the Irish Times, describes it as “stupefyingly dull”, while admitting that it is not quite silly enough to become a cult classic of ridiculousness. The Independent in London gave the film one star; saying it is a “flat biopic, failing to conjure interest, let alone controversy”.

Still, if you’re interested in dresses and the paparazzi, I’m sure you will get your money’s worth.

Ends