War is a spectator sport

It’s been a little while since The Night Manager BBC series reached its conclusion here in the UK but i see it still making its way around the globe so i figured i wasn’t too late to write about it here.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into all detailed spoilers. Mostly because I’m writing this on my phone and don’t have a lot of time but if i don’t do it now i never will.

Based on the book by John Le Carre (Writer of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy among others) of the same name, it’s an absolutely gripping tale with lots of twists and turns and a general feeling of never quite knowing who to trust. The author makes a brief cameo in the series too, that was amusing.

“The Night Manager” as a title makes me giggle a little bit because, as muchnas that is where our lead character, Jonathan Pine, starts off…he isn’t one for very long.

Pine finds himself accidentally caught up in a plot to bring down a very rich and powerful criminal and weapons dealer that has been avoiding punishment for a long time.

The cast alone brought me to watch this show. Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Coleman, David Harewood, Alistair Petrie, Tom Hollander and brief appearances from Jonathan Aris and Neil Morrisey.

Quite male dominated…and i believe they changed Olivia Coleman’s character from the book so that she was a woman instead of a man. But there is the lesser known (to me anyway) face of Elizabeth Debicki playing Jed. One of the lead roles, she is extremely good.

The whole cast is absolutely fantastic and personally Hugh Laurie was the absolute stand out performance for me. So charming and British yet so subtly evil and manipulative and potentially violent. You always felt like you never knew if he was lying or not and that you didn’t want to cross him.

There’s a certain moment in the last episode where he just gives a TERRIFYING look that says “you are in SO much s**t right now”. It’s brilliant.

Lots of ‘edge of your seat’ moments so prepare to feel the tension.

Also, shallow moment, if you’re a Tom Hiddleston fan – it’s an almost constant treat for the eyes. I mean, he’s a fabulous actor of course..but yeah.

Eleven’s hour is over now…

Hello! Gosh..by sometime towards the end of January there will be a considerably less amount of stress and uni work over here…until the next lot pops up of course but…short post for now! But i couldn’t leave this out!

The Time of the Doctor!

**MANY SPOILERS LIKELY**

I think i need a rewatch mostly….

The episode confused me..quite a lot. I mean..i pretty much understood what was going on but a lot of the time i just had to go “okay i’ll just accept this is happening whether it makes sense or not” haha! I enjoyed it though, poor Matt spending the majority of his last episode covered in prosthetic or whatever it is they use.

I was sort of confused about the whole growing old thing, i mean i know the 10th Doctor got old before but..if i remember correctly that was mostly the Master’s doing? I’d need to check that, but i sort of decided it was because it was his “last” form that he was aging. That’s not an official thing that’s just a theory. (Also the whole getting it to be that Eleven is the last regeneration thing was sneaky clever..i thought there was at least Capaldi left until we had to deal with that but of course there was John Hurt and then they used Ten’s regeneration-but-putting-all-the-energy-into-his-hand thing…..which i’d never really thought about but it’s fair enough!)

Many people (myself included) were happy to see Amy again! It was sweet! I know some felt it was a bit of a…putting Clara on a back step..which i get. Though i suppose i liken it a bit to the tenth Doctor going back to visit Rose last before regenerating..i know the relationship wasn’t exactly the same but it was clearly an important one! I’ll certainly look forward to seeing more of Clara with Twelve! Should be a lot of fun!

I know there was talk about the actual regeneration being a bit fast. I do understand this…it was…quite a powerful sneeze of regeneration i thought? HAHA!

I was worried for a moment because i thought once we saw him do the whole..explodey regeneration thing (to use the technical term there of course…) i thought Clara was going to head back into the TARDIS and just be faced with Capaldi. I didn’t want that. Was very happy to see lovely young Matt again for his last moments and he got an extremely beautiful final speech, especially knowing the relevance for both the Doctor and Matt at this point (and indeed any actor who has played him). I was interested to see Twelve appearing in Eleven’s clothes but i think it worked well..especially since he removed the bowtie…powerful moment!

But going back to the regeneration i think the whole slow face transition thing is quite important personally. I feel it’s sort of needed to feel all the emotion of them leaving…so we didn’t really get that…it was rather sudden. So i found that a bit sad but it didn’t bother me enough to hold a grudge over it or anything!

I’d love to know what you guys thought! I’ve seen many mixed reactions!

P.S. i loved that things were really well wrapped up for Matt’s Doctor! We got to see pretty much all of his biggest enemies from his series, we finally got a big moment for “silence will fall when the question is asked” and we got to see what was behind his hotel door!! Very clever!! =)

The clock is striking twelve…