Update: The Returned and other things

[lathany]

I have not been very well this weekend. I seem to be suffering from stress nightmares and consequently sleeping poorly. Also, Reeve hasn't been sleeping on the bed - although this may be because I washed the covers.

bateleur and I have taken a break from LOVEFiLM's movie offerings and instead put The Returned on the list. This is a eight-episode French series (three disks) which Wikipedia describes as "French supernatural drama television series". It is subtitled and I believe that an American version is going to come out soon. There's also a second series of the original about to launch. Our verdict was that this first season was beautiful, eerie and we had high hopes for it. However, its ending was ultimately rather disappointing. The problem was that it didn't explain anything. All the questions we had at the start remained by the end. This meant that instead of thinking that things that had happened were interesting, they came across more as though the writing team had managed this sort of exchange:

"Let's put in this really cool mysterious thing."
"OK... but why is that happening?"
"Who cares? It'll look cool. We don't need to ever explain it."

"..."

My train reading has included two new books:

• Turn Coat by Jim Butcher - part of the Dresden series which features Morgan as a fugitive. I'm a big Dresden fan and enjoyed this one. Also, it did move the Black Council plot along a bit. Although only a tiny bit.
• Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold - it's a book in the Vorkosigan Saga which centres on Ivan. I found that it was pretty readable, but I didn't like it as much as some of the others (such as Memory and Diplomatic Immunity). It had a certain amount in common with A Civil Campaign, which is also one that I'm less taken with.

I've also finished replaying Valkyria Chronicles having tried to persuade Bea to try it and ended up replaying it myself. Still very enjoyable and I found most missions much easier (partly because I now remembered them and partly because I'm making better use of some of the classes - specifically Scouts and Engineers.

Comments

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Got totally hooked on the Returned 2 years ago when it was on Channel 4, and I agree that it ended up a little bit anticlimactic. Hoping that this year's follow-up has a more complete vision of what's going on.

And American remake? Sure to be utter bobbins, as the very French atmosphere is such a core part of what worked.