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gabbiemaxwell
Reviews
The Handmaid's Tale (2017)
This series is phenomenal
The acting is still brilliant and the addition of new characters/commanders is encouraging. BUT... it's already become tiring. I'm no longer excited to see what happens in season 4 anymore and it seems as if they may continue to just blast out season-after-season, which would be a travesty and an insult to season 1 & 2 which were off the charts brilliant. If they make more than 5 seasons, I presume they'll lose 75% of their viewership and for good reason. I get the internal conflict and that's still captivating to me personally. It seems that the people of Gilead have developed split personalities which highlights the trauma. People seem frustrated by that but I feel that's one of the most compelling aspects of the show. Good people are forced into doing terrible things and bad people often show remorse, only to go back to their old ways because of the world they've built. So while it may seem frustrating, who knows the affect such oppression/power would have on people. Serena is a great example of this and it really shines through in season 3. She is so torn between: "Damn, I'm a terrible person, what have I done" and "Well, shit, I can't back out now so I've just gotta continue to be a terrible person because I have no other choice". You almost start to root for her, only for her to go back to her wicked ways because she's trapped in a man's world with no real escape besides betraying her husband and Gilead, the world she was instrumental in creating in the first place. June's act has become stale. It's beyond exhausting seeing her mean-mugging the camera for 3 minutes at the end of an episode, only to follow-up with next-to-nothing in the next. The Waterford's public announcement for Nichole? I mean, she literally had a golden opportunity to scream about her story on live TV but she stood there with her head down for the entire scene. Because of the "cOnSEqUeNcEs". However, said consequences seem to escape June (and only June) in Gilead and she's typically on-board with putting everyone else at risk when it suits her but not when she could've made an actual difference - you know - on live television... I really, really hope they cap the show at five seasons and finish strong because this one is looking more and more like it's heading to a Game of Thrones esque ending.
Professor T: Mother Love (2021)
Worst episode of a bad bunch.
I have already reviewed the series as a whole. But this episode rang out as a clanger.
The acting by the au pair and her mother is shockingly bad. Unbelievable and at times just plain awful. Hardly surprising that they are two unknowns. Let's hope it stays that way.
Television deserves better than this.
If you want to watch a good series, try the original. You won't regret it.
Professor T (2021)
Utterly poor remake of a great Belgian show
I absolutely adored the Belgian show from 2015 but this has absolutely none of the charm whatsoever. None of the acting chops that the original was made so strong for.
The writing holds up in places by Malin-Sarah Gozin, but it is let down by a cast that are just dreadful in certain episodes.
Ben Miller does his best to hold up the rest of them as the affible Professor T, but the storylines are fairly lack lustre.
Some of the performers are stinkers. Notibly Lucy Anna Richardson as Young Adelaide Tempest in Episodes 2 and 6 that did very little to capture the same performance as Frances de la Tour as Adelaide.
The unfortunate casting of the au pair in Episode 4 Elise vanil and her 'mother' played by Sarah Mayhew. Dreadful casting, despite the water works there was no nuance to her performance and she was supposed to be leading the episode. It actively made me not want to watch the rest of the series. Like watching paint dry.
I'll be sticking to a rewatch of the three much better orignal season of the Belgian variant.