Whites Only: Ade's Extremist Adventure Channel 4 | canal4.com
3 Body Problem Netflix
Royal Palm Apple TV+
Jordan North: The Truth About Vaping (BBC Three) | iPlayer
Where to start with the Channel 4 documentary Whites only: Ade's extremist adventure? It's one of the most tense moments you'll see all year. British Paralympic athlete Ade Adepitan is the first black person to stay (for a week) in the whites-only South African Afrikaner town. Orania. In a global climate of attacks on multiculturalism, Adepitan questions whether “racial separatism can ever be justified.”
Established in 1991 after apartheid, funded by political parties and groups around the world, Orania (population: approximately 3,000) has a long-term goal of becoming a “full-fledged Afrikaner nation-state” of the size from England. It looks like an ordinary rural town, carefully fenced off, albeit with guns, but it's Adepitan's interactions with the locals that count. It doesn't seem long before the Oranians' repeated civility turns into blind evasion and attempted gaslighting.
They talk about riots and power cuts elsewhere in South Africa (everything except racing). How anybody can apply to live in Orania (provided they are fluent in Afrikaans, follow Afrikaner traditions and the rest). Taken to see the statues of the founders of apartheid, Adepitan is told bluntly that the (only) mistake of apartheid was to subcontract manual labor to black people.
For me, the most shocking scene takes place at Orania school. A dark play is performed with Adepitan explaining the plot to the viewers: “Two man-eating monsters…they look like monkeys.” They are uncivilized and stupid…outwitted by their intelligent, light-skinned neighbors. » This sounds like trolling from Adepitan himself. Mainly sharing his thoughts on camera in private, the increasingly tense presenter ultimately becomes irritated with an Oranese who integrates Black Lives Matter into a confusing discussion about democracy that does not sufficiently serve small groups.
For Oranie, Whites only…it’s a failed public relations exercise, a bizarre and failed attempt at global legitimacy. Unfortunately, the documentary itself seems confused and unconfident, even with Adepitan's harsher final interview with the city's former mayor, who dismisses multiculturalism as “social engineering.” Oddly, the main problem lies with Adepitan's greatest strength: its dynamic positivity. Why try to understand something as heinous and obvious as “racial separatism”? Why tie yourself to soothing knots?
In all honesty, the presenter finds himself in an impossible situation. He must avoid getting kicked out of Orania (even his brief fight with BLM led to canceled interviews). Moreover, unlike Louis Theroux, who achieved a memorable feat Weird weekend Speaking of Boer separatists, Adepitan is not only a foreigner, he is also black. How daunting and frightening must this experience have been, how confronting must this experience have been? I end up wondering who could have made this documentary (David Harewood? David Olusoga?), but I'm mostly left with the stress of Adepitan coming off the screen and the stress of watching him.
Make way for Netflix for the highly anticipated futuristic thriller in eight episodes 3 Body Problemthe first new project of Game Of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss (with Alexander Woo). You have to give them: no Obtained rehash. Based on the cult sci-fi opus by Chinese author Liu Cixin, there's no dragon action and no medieval cosplay (unless you count some warm Tudor doublets in themed VR sequences historical).
Instead, you get modern-day eco-vandalism, flashbacks to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, quantum physics, and lots of earnest, cerebral woo-woo about preparing for an alien invasion in (uh) 400 years (so much for the drama). emergency). A few Obtained the staff is present: Jonathan Pryce is a cult leader on a ship; Liam Cunningham plays an enigmatic security chief; John Bradley's character is part of a group of young genius physicists.
3 Body Problem suffers from a concept-heavy and almost indigestible opening episode (you may need a few tea breaks to get through it). After that, it can be mind-blowing, with young physicists donning chrome headsets to venture into virtual reality (under huge deadly suns, human bodies become dehydrated, only to be rolled up like yoga mats. Wow! ). Notable performances include Jess Hong as one of the young physicists and Benedict Wong as a disheveled investigator who appears to have the same stylist as Jackson Lamb from Slow horses.
Would it be a success? Six episodes, sometimes 3 Body Problem seems immense, other times a little too similar to other time/dimension-bending Netflix fare (1899, Body, et al.). If this fails, it would be interesting to know how many viewers are lost halfway through watching the heavy opening.
A comedy-drama about a gatecrasher infiltrating a hyper-bitchy female elite at a Palm Beach country club in 1969? Based on the book by Juliet McDaniel Mr. and Mrs. American Piethe 10-part film by Abe Sylvia Royal Palm rang out all the way to my shrub-lined boulevard.
Kristen Wiig plays Maxine, a spunky former pageant queen from Chattanooga who is desperate to befriend the rich and obnoxious Palm Royale club, Queen Bees, led by Evelyn (Allison Janney) and Dinah (Leslie Bibb). Ricky Martin plays a suspicious bartender; comedian Carol Burnett is the wealthy aunt of Maxine's husband (first spied in a coma); and Laura Dern presents herself as an ultra-dignified and conscious hippie.
Royal Palm is perfectly watchable if you don't demand too much. There's a stunning cast and the styling is pure TV cotton candy, with everything from cat-eye glasses to brocade muumuus. However, Maxine lacks the power of a main character, while period context is mainly provided by President Nixon occasionally appearing on television.
The most disastrous, Royal Palm isn't sharp or funny enough, despite (or perhaps because of) a demented attempt to be Desperate housewives, Mad Men, Big little liesAnd The White Lotus everything at once. These days, to satirize a wealthy elite, you have to go in with your fangs first, bloodily feasting on every last bit of hypocrisy and venality. Royal Palm prefers to splash around in a bubble bath of aimless subplots.
Is vaping bad for you? What bad guys are in them? Like the British government decides to ban disposable vapes (partly to discourage use in children), the BBC Three documentary Jordan North: The Truth About Vaping tries to get to the heart (and lungs) of the problem.
Radio DJ and TV presenter North – a vaper – meets with scientists, toxicologists and officials who are seizing counterfeit vapes. It focuses on genuine e-cigarettes (annual sales: more than £1.3 billion), as well as the booming market for illegal cigarettes, which can contain formaldehyde, lead and toxic levels of nicotine. Some young people addicted to vaping have never smoked a cigarette.
North seems genuinely interested in the subject, his eyes widening anxiously as he gasps for air during an oxygen test (indeed, his lungs turn out to be quite a bit older than he is). This 30-minute documentary moves at a breakneck pace, but it works well as a short, sharp cautionary tale.
Star Ratings (out of five)
Whites only: Ade's extremist adventure Channel 4 ★★★
3 Body Problem ★★★
Royal Palm ★★★
Jordan North: the truth about Vaping ★★★
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The party
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A twisty and gripping thriller set in New Zealand. When a couple goes missing in town, an Irish detective teams up with a Maori detective to investigate.
Hunted
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The seventh series of the show in which teams of two attempt to escape capture by an elite team. Always entertaining (lots of rambling and sweating in waterproof jackets), there's a £100,000 prize pool for those who escape the hunters.
The dropout
(BBC One)
A chance to see the gripping hit drama (previously streaming on Disney+). Amanda Seyfried is elegantly deceptive as Elizabeth Holmes, the blood test fraudster.
