Indeed, a veritable cornucopia of carryings on …
Recommended Read: Spare Room by Dreda Say Mitchell
Lisa is a young professional woman with a dark past. When she moves into the spare room of a beautiful old house in a posh part of London, she quickly finds out that the house also has its secrets, and that her odd new landlords are not what they seem. Dreda Say Mitchell’s Spare Room is a cracking, fast-paced read that cleverly drags gothic melodrama into the 21st century. This is a breathless, engrossing, urban thriller with a sharp strain of dark humour – Barbara Kendall! – and is a hell of a lot of fun.
Recommended Reads: 3 by Susi Holliday.
The Hike by Susi Holliday
Two sisters and their respective husbands set off for a bracing and exhilarating hiking trip in the Swiss Alps. What could possibly go wrong? Well, since this a Susi Holliday book, quite a lot actually! Once again, Holliday puts a group of completely unlikeable people in an extreme situation and comes up with her own spicy cocktail of domestic noir, Euro thriller and even rural horror. The pacing is quite brilliant and the characters’ back-story revelations are masterful. The Hike by Susi Holliday is completely gripping and is very highly recommended.
The Street by Susi Holliday
The Street is yet another gripping a cleverly paced crime drama from Susi Holliday. Like an episode of Black Mirror. with more twists and turns than a corkscrew. The Street is very highly recommended.
Substitute by Susi Holliday
Chrissie is a happily married graphic designer with a young daughter. She lives a pretty comfortable and unremarkable middle-class life, but when she receives a visit from a creepy, mysterious stranger, things turn completely out of the ordinary.
Substitute by Susi Holliday has all the elements of a gripping domestic noir, complete with sharp twists and turns, dark secrets, and seismic blasts from the past.
But there is also a techno- thriller aspect to the book that nudges Substitute into Black Mirror territory and gives it an extra layer of intrigue.
Substitute by Susi Holliday is a cracking read and is very, highly recommended.
In Praise Of Rachel Bailey …
One of my favourite TV bad girls is a cop. Of course, crime fiction – whether it’s in books, films or on television – is over-populated with strong-willed, impulsive, foul mouthed, chain smoking, heavy drinking, bed-hopping cops. But with Detective Constable Rachel Bailey, in the gritty British TV series Scott & Bailey, that cliché is given a kick up the jacksy because the cop in question is a woman.
Rachel Bailey – a firecracker of a performance from actress and series co-creator Suranne Jones – is a wild card, indeed. From the offset we see she’s trouble. She’s having a fling with a barrister and risks losing her job when she uses the Police National Computer to check up on him. Discovering that he’s married, and that she’s pregnant, she blackmails him into letting her live in his swanky apartment. She later commits perjury and jeopardises a murder inquiry.
When the barrister is beaten to death, Bailey doesn’t even know if she killed him, as she was blind drunk on the night of the murder. She eventually finds out that the killer was her brother- who thinks that she actually wanted him to beat up the barrister – and she lets him escape.
In a misguided attempt to stabilise her life, Bailey gets married to a boring but nice childhood sweetheart. Any stability is short lived, however, as she quickly rushes into a drunken one night stand and pretty much moves into the home of her partner DC Janet Scott, creating friction within Scott’s family. Friction which ignites when she drunkenly shags one of her colleagues in Scott’s home.
Rachel Bailey is 100% trouble and one of the strongest characters on British television.
#pubs #bydgoszcz: PRL Rocks Bydgoszcz, Poland.
In 1952. The Polish constitution introduced a new name for the Polish state, the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), which replaces the previously used Republic of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska).
Although those days are long gone, PRL style has become quite the thing over the last few years, adopted my many restaurants and bars. One such place is PRL Rocks in Bydgoszcz. The bar opened over a decade ago as PRL, more recently adding Rocks to the name. The décor is very much focused on PRL nostalgia but the beer selection is very much up to date. On my last visit, I drank the Czech beer Kozel Černý, and very good it was too!
PRL Rocks is a really friendly place with great beer, live music and good food too! Well worth checking out!
#tv: Dive Into The Mire!
Whilst many Polish crime dramas are of a very high standard , with The Mire, showrunner. director and writer Jan Holoubek has produced something special.
In The Mire ’87 (2018), a pair of small-town journalists investigate the connection between the deaths of a politician and a prostitute. In The Mire ’97 (2021) a suspicious flood in the same town drags up dark secrets from World War 2.
Both series are gripping crime dramas in themselves but the intersection of the sets of events that are separated by 10 years is particularly masterful. An added texture is also given as The Mire smartly shows the changes in Polish society and lifestyles that took place over those 10 years. Power, corruption and lies are, of course, always lurking in the shadows.
The direction, cinematography, score, and writing are all first rate, and the acting is particularly top notch. Dawid Ogrodnik is splendid in both series, as is the ever-brilliant Andrzej Seweryn. Series one looks at its events through the eyes of the journalists whilst series two focuses on the police investigation, with Magdalena Rózczka and Lukasz Simlat on typically fine form.
And The Mire — Millennium, set 10 years later, is heading to a Netflix near you very soon. Have a gander at the trailer, if you fancy.
#films: 5 Overlooked Polish Films
Edi (2002) was directed by Piotr Trzaskalski with a screenplay by Wojciech Lepianka and Piotr Trzaskalski.
The star of Edi, Henyrk Golebiewski, is a man with a face so lived in squatters wouldn’t stay there. A former child star, whose life went off the rails when he became an adult, he went AWOL and was eventually tracked down by Trzaskalski — the director — to play the eponymous Edi who, along with his friend Jureczek, walks the streets of Lodz — a decaying industrial city- collecting scrap. Edi is a smart man, however, with a fridge full of books which he devours. Like Golebiewski he has had his share of hard knocks but Edi still believes that ‘It can be Christmas every day if you want it to be.’
A pair of local gangster brothers — who have recently beaten one of Edi’s scrap collector friends to death — ask Edi to help their beloved sister — Princess — pass here exams. Princess is secretly in love with Gypsy, one of the gangsters’ henchman, though. Something her over–protective brothers would not approve of, and so, she gets Edi drunk after one of their lessons, and secretly sneaks off to see Gypsy.
Months later, when Princess discovers that she is pregnant by Gypsy, she accuses Edi of raping her. The brothers’ punishment is most certainly cruel and inhuman and, while recovering, Edi ends up taking care of the girl’s child.
Edi is a tough but sometimes beautiful film, with a strong cast that is anchored by Golebiewski’s brilliantly heartfelt performance.
Operation Hyacinth (Hiacynt) is a 2021 crime fiction film directed by Piotr Domalewski and written by Marcin Ciaston. Set in Poland in the late ’80s, Operation Hyacinth is a stripped-down, taut and gripping police procedural that tells the story of a murder investigation that digs up some dark, well — buried secrets. Power, corruption and lies abound.
The Land (2021) is either an anthology of short, sharp films or a collection of bitter vignettes, or maybe even both! Four directors and writers have put together a veritable cornucopia of tales.
The stories are often very violent, sometimes grotesque and gory, occasionally touching and tender, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. And regularly all of the above! The Land certainly isn’t for everyone but I liked its little tales of misanthropy a lot and it certainly goes out with a bang!
Not to be confused with the recent Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, Bartosz Kruhlik‘s 2019 film is a brutal but gripping Polish drama which is short, sharp and completely engrossing. The acting throughout is first class but the standout performance is from Marcin Zarzeczny who is stunning as the drunkard whose wife leaves him in the hope of a better life. Power, corruption and lies — those staples of Polish crime drama — abound, but SUPERNOVA is really a film about the tragedies that can happen in everday life. SUPERNOVA is certainly not for the faint of heart but it is ultimately a rewarding and moving film.
Fisheye is gripping and emotional, full of sharp twists and turns, and with a phenomenal central performance from Julia Kijowska.
“Fisheye” directed by Michal Szczesniak
Running time: 97 minutes
Production: Poland 2020
‘A young biotechnologist, who has just made a ground-breaking discovery of a method to cure cancer, is kidnapped right outside her doorstep. In order to free herself, she has to unravel a mystery from her childhood.’
Recommended Read
The Killer’s Christmas List by Chris Frost
Detective Inspector Tom Stonem is transferred from Manchester to the Northeast of England and quickly finds himself embroiled in the hunt for a serial killer. The Killer’s Christmas list is a smart and involving crime thriller with a great sense of time and place and realistic, well-drawn characters. The dialogue is down to earth, and the pace really is spot on, full of sharp twists and turns. A massively enjoyable slice of Brit Grit.
Recommended TV Series.
Culprits (2023) is the story of an oddball bunch of criminals who are trying to get on with their new lives in the wake of a heist gone wrong. The mixture of high-octane thriller and naturalistic crime drama is a delicate balance at the best of times but Culprits manages to pull this off due to a number of factors, most notably a brilliant central performance from Nathan Stewart-Jarret whose Joe Petrus is an immensely likeable character. Even a decidedly arch turn from Eddie Izzard doesn’t upset the bad apple cart.
The fact that Candy (2022) is based on a true story made me think that it was going to be a grim and grinding true crime affair but far from it. This is a beautifully shot series enhanced by a wonderful, haunting score by Ariel Marx, which recalls Bernard Hermann’s work with Alfred Hitchcock. The title sequence, reminiscent of Saul Bass, also adds a touch of class to the film and performances are very good indeed, especially from Jessica Biel (as Candy) and the ever brilliant Melanie Lynskey.
Oh, and while I’ve got your partially divided attention, you can pick up some of my MERCH here, if you’re that way included. There’s loads of new stuff available via Next Chapter Publishing.
© Paul D. Brazill.