The Terror and Unforgotten. Two of my current faves.
For me, it’s been a hard few months for reading. I normally manage to get through at least one novel a month but lately, I’ve been feeling a bit bleh about fiction. I know. It’s awful isn’t it? I need to give myself a good talking to.
On the other hand, I’ve been watching some decent telly. Here are two shows that have been keeping me entertained in the last couple of weeks.
The Terror
Based on the true story of a failed Royal Navy expedition to find the Northwest passage in the late 1840s. It’s an unflinching tale of the disintegration of a highly ordered regime into survivalist chaos when their ships become trapped in the frozen Arctic ice and they become prey to a mysterious bear like creature. As the crew is gradually picked off, either by the creature, the severe conditions or contaminated food they become overtaken by fear and suspicion and control begins to slip.
It’s a fantastically gory, gripping Gothic horror. I can recommend it. I can also recommend you have a pillow handy to hide behind when the need arises. Especially if blood, flesh and rudimentary Victorian surgery is not your thing.
Unforgotten: Series 4
A headless, handless corpse is discovered in a scrapped fridge. Initial investigations suggest that it’s the body of a man who disappeared in 1989. It’s up to DCI Cassie Stewart, DI Sunny Khan and the rest of the Cold Case team to track down the killer. The only problem is the main suspects were police recruits at the time and two of them are still serving officers. Cassie and Sunny need to unpick the bones of this case very carefully indeed.
What I love about Unforgotten is the way the characters are so well drawn and believable. There’s not one cliché among them. Yes, they have their problems but they’re real problems that any of us could see ourselves having to deal with at different points in our lives. The suspects are equally fully developed characters. So much so that you really don’t want them to be guilty because you’re already invested in them. Maddeningly, ITV have gone old-school with this and are only releasing one episode a week. I’m a binge watcher. I must have them all now!
That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll write about more great TV soon. Not Bloodlands though. That was first-class bonkers TV, if you ask me.
What about you? Have you seen anything good lately? Or even anything daft? Let me know.
