Series to distract us from the Trump misery

It seems that, like it or not, and for most of us that’s ‘not’, we’re going to be talking about Donald ‘Loser’ Trump for a while yet. So there’s really no hurry for me to put up yet another post about him. In fact, I can instead indulge myself in a distraction from his contorted doings and, if I can recommend a distraction or two to you by doing so, well that’s win-win, isn’t it?

So here we go. Four series we’ve watched in recent months and enjoyed. And, apart from great direction, fine writing and outstanding performances, they all have one other thing in common: they end well.

There’s been so much talk about The Queen’s Gambit, on Netflix, that you’ve probably already seen it. In which case, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and you can just move along to my next recommendation.

Anya Taylor Joy in The Queen's Gambit
Is she a white pawn, the sacrificial piece in a Queen's Gambit?
Or the white Queen that makes the sacrifice?

It’s the tale of an eight-year old orphan discovering she’s a chess prodigy, which tracks her career in the game and her struggle with addiction.

Among the many excellent twists and turns is the character of Alma Wheatley, ably played by Marielle Heller. I don’t want to post spoilers, so I won’t say what her role is, only that it fits perfectly into the kind of character who turns out like a fairy tale wicked stepmother in an ordinary soap. This being no ordinary soap, however, that doesn’t happen, and the character develops in a subtle, far more interesting way.

Anya Taylor-Joy is outstanding as the central character, Beth Harmon, coping with bereavement, addiction and the pressure of competition chess. And there’s a wonderful high-intensity character played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, apparently a favourite of director Scott Frank, but more of that shortly.

I was so impressed by the series that I read the Walter Tevis novel immediately afterwards. It’s a good read and the series sticks closely to it. I liked the way Scott Frank uses clever devices to communicate what Tevis puts into Harmon’s internal monologue. Particularly effective was the image of a board on the ceiling, with the pieces hanging down from it, to represent Harmon’s ability to visualise whole chess games in her mind. 

The series has a particularly powerful ending. I have to admit that, unusually, it’s better than the book’s, though close to it. With that ending, there’s no need for a further season. There seems to be no plan to make one, and certainly there isn’t a second book. 

That’s apparently a hallmark of Scott Frank’s work: to make mini-series that finish, like novels, and don’t drag on forever, like soaps. It’s true of Godless too, an earlier series of his I watched because I liked The Queen’s Gambit so much.

Two women not to mess with:
Merrit Wever and Michelle Dockery in Godless

It’s a Western, set in New Mexico in the 1880s. Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels) is the leader of a (strangely massive) gang of bloodthirsty criminals that has been betrayed by Roy Goode (Jack O'Connell), an orphan Griffin took under his wing but who is now on the run from him. Goode turns up in a town where the vast majority of the male population was killed in a mine explosion, leaving almost only women behind.

Like The Queen’s Gambit, Godless (also on Netflix) is full of excellent characters. Jeff Daniels is wonderful in a villain’s role with which I hardly associate him. Scott Frank used Thomas Brodie-Sangster in this series too, as a sheriff’s deputy who makes up by being likeable for what he lacks in intelligence. Frank also had Merritt Wever in a wonderful performance as one of the most outspoken women in the town, although I particularly enjoyed seeing her because I remembered her as the gentle, Godfearing but highly effective cop in Unbelievable. 

In the same way, Michelle Dockery, who I think of as the Earl’s eldest daughter from Downton Abbey, has moved back a few decades in Godless, as well as down a number of social classes and across the Atlantic in geography and accent, to emerge as a tough, straight-shooting, indomitable and yet vulnerable rancher widow. She’s living with her Native American mother-in-law and biracial son, and  she takes in Ray Goode (not without shooting him first), precipitating the action of the story.

As tends to be the case with Westerns these days, there’s plenty that’s comedic in this one: the genre is no longer allowed to take itself too seriously, and quite rightly too. It also has a great ending, beyond which there’s no obvious way it could go to a second season, which it hasn’t.

Succession is an extraordinary series (on HBO), in which every character is deplorable, and there’s no one the viewer can possibly want to identify with. Of course, if that was all we could say for it, no one would watch the series, but the writing is excellent, so we’re made to think well of each character in turn, for a few episodes, and to wonder whether they and none of the others, should ultimately take over their family’s media empire, once the ghastly patriarch (brilliantly played by Bian Cox) finally dies or stands down. 

A family not to mess with in Succession
Sitting: Sarah Snook, Matthew MacFadyen, Alan Ruck,
Nicholas Braun, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong
All listening to Brian Cox

The series, created by Jesse Armstrong, comes to a highly satisfying ending, as season 2 closes. I’m trying to avoid spoilers, so I’ll just say, look out for the suggestion of a half smile. As it happens, that isn’t the end, since a season 3 is apparently in the pipeline, held up only by Covid. But it could have ended there and been perfectly satisfying.

Finally there’s Big Little Lies (also on HBO). It’s part whodunnit (with a difference), part high school drama (with a difference) and part poor little rich girl tale set in a privileged community of beachside California.

Five more women not to mess with in Big Little Lies
Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, Reece Witherspoon,
Zoë Kravitz and Shailene Woodley

Five more women not to mess with in Big Little Lies
Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, Nicole Kidman,
Reece Witherspoon and Zoë Kravitz 

As a poor little rich girl drama, it’s not that out of the ordinary, though excellent performances by a great cast led by Nicole Kidman and Reece Witherspoon, give it quite an edge over most examples of this kind.

The difference from a high school drama is that it’s set in a primary school and the issues are more bullying and ostracism than teenage sex and the aspirations of a baseball/basketball/American football team. The child-child, child-parent and parent-parent tensions are skilfully handled.

The difference from a standard whodunnit is that we discover early on in the first episode that there’s been a murder, and it doesn’t take long to find out who did it. What’s hidden (though guessable, eventually) is who it was done to. It’s more a whowasitdunto than a whodunnit.

There was a change of director between seasons 1 and 2, with Jean-Marc Vallée replaced by Andrea Arnold. I understand many critics find the change was for the worse, but I enjoyed season 2 more than season 1. By now, we know who did it and who it was done to; now it’s just a question of who, if anyone, is going to pay the price. Meryl Streep joins the cast, which inevitably adds further to the quality, and also ratchets up the tension, and again there’s a highly satisfactory ending.

But, once more, though the series could stop there, it seems that a third season may be made. Not that I think it needs one.

In any case, if you’re looking for a distraction from the deplorable Trump saga, any of these four will offer a great escape tunnel.