![]() ![]() We meet Xorin, a 17-year-old returning to live with his mother, Kelly, having been moved to Wales after being exploited by a drugs gang. Bafta-winning Paddy Wivell’s three-part docuseries Kids (Channel 4) – an absorbing look at young people in the care of Coventry children’s services and their families – manages it. There’s a real skill to exploring troubled, deprived worlds and ensuring your subjects emerge recognisably human and not caricatures to be demonised and gawped at. By the end of the two hours, I still wasn’t sure I’d wholly seen Erdoğan (as a man, he remains elusive – a shadow guttering on a wall), but this is a compelling examination of power and the ruthless resolve to hold on to it. Even Erdoğan’s insistence that he is fighting against foreign interference and the “deep state” is the classic “us and them” rhetoric often used by authoritarian/strongman leaders.Īs forecast, will Erdoğan now finally be unseated? Some of those interviewed here weren’t entirely counting him out. The quashing of not only military coups but also political opponents and peaceful protest. ![]() The stifling of dissent (there’s still almost no independent media in Turkey). Narrated by David Morrissey, the series goes on to scrutinise Erdoğan’s vice-like grip on power. ‘Elusive’: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, 2019. Imprisoned (for publicly reciting dissident poetry), he still managed to rise to power, his pro-western stance further burnishing his international respectability. Born into an impoverished religious family, he established himself as the voice of ordinary Islamists pitted against the secular elite rulers and the ruthless military. In the run-up to today’s Turkish elections, Gabriel Range’s two-part BBC Two documentary Turkey: Empire of Erdogan probed the mindset of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader who has retained power for two decades.īeginning with scenes of rubble and devastation after February’s earthquake, it draws on an extensive range of commentators, journalists and Turkish politicos to document Erdoğan’s dominance. There’s a real skill to exploring troubled, deprived worlds and ensuring your subjects emerge recognisably human Kirke, as a beleaguered Manhattan alpha, is excellent so too is John Cameron Mitchell (co-creator/star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch), playing against type as a flinty power-suit. If you can forgive that, there’s some nifty dialogue and performances to enjoy. In fact, too many of the counterculture scenes come across like an attempt to redo Less Than Zero with lethargic hipsters. It doesn’t help that Nicky Chaos (Max Milner), one of the rebel rockers Sam is obsessed with in flashback, is a cringeworthy Iggy clone (why are fictional musicians so difficult to write?). It all becomes a mite stodged up – a veritable bottleneck of competing narratives. The anti-establishment fires and explosions echo the Bonfire of the Vanities theme of uptown/downtown NYC worlds colliding. ![]() There’s a focus on everything from race (a prominent black character, played nicely by Xavier Clyde, is mistaken for a waiter at a party) to the imploding lives of the super-rich (Jemima Kirke and Ashley Zukerman play a fragmenting couple). With a track from the Walkmen here, a namecheck for the Libertines there, and Jesse Peretz ( Girls) co-directing, the sense is of a counterculture thriller (sex, drugs, addiction) for the Meet Me in the Bathroom generation. ![]() Hallberg’s novel, which garnered a $2m advance and thumped in at 944 pages, is set in the 1970s, but this series is repositioned in the early 00s. Who wants Sam silenced? And how is she connected to a series of fires around the city? City on Fire opens with Sam being shot in Central Park on the Fourth of July. While the scenes function as High Fidelity-esque, indie-kid schmaltz (“From now on, Charles, you’re going to be my project”), they’re technically flashbacks. Charlie comes across Sam in a record shop when he’s in New York to see a therapist (his father died on 9/11). Charismatic cool chick Sam bewitches Charlie (Wyatt Oleff), who himself is reminiscent of AF’s naive William. ![]()
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