The Way: The Wait

 "It affects everyone in a family, doesn't it? When one person is suffering."

Well then. Where do I even start with this materpiece?

Obviously, on the surface at least, this is all about the small boats, the obsession of those of a certain ilk who, you know, don't want to do the obvious solution of just bloody processing refugees properly. And, of course, it's a simple role reversal, that obvious satire trope that we know so well, with Owen wryly asking Anna what the Poles will make of all these Welsh people going over there, taking all their jobs.

And, of course, the episode really runs with this, with a refugee camp on the Kent coast, trying to get to the Continent. It's very well done. And yet... there's far more subtext than this.

Slowly, over the course of the episode, the character arcs resolve. Dee and Geoff reach a mutual understanding and closeness, Geoff finally realises that he has ironically done to his son what his own father did to him. Owen is no longer emotionally numb, and he and Anna are in love. He forgives Thea.

And Geoff, of course, redeems himself in the inevitable way.

Yet even this is part of a deeper subtext. Oh, there's the irony of the Welsh Catcher being himself Welsh- plilosophical, no fool, but disdaining the luxury of principles. There's the worrying idea of AI being used for "predictive policining". But, deeper than this, there's the need for new stories, not the same old tired ones that have the glitching Internet revealing that the human imagination is stuck on nostalgia, stuck in the past. Huimanity cannot keep reliving old stories. It must throw away the weight of history, of old tropes, and live in the present. 

This is inspired... and very, very Adam Curtis. And so the various Arthurian and mythical references are pointedly thrown back in the sea.Wow.

I understand this wasn't a hit. I don't care. It's genius.

The Way: The Walk

 "Am I going mad? Or is it the world?"

After a first episode, highly impressive in itself, setting up this new dystopia, now we get to explore it. The Driscolls (and Anna) are refugees in their own land after Thea, putting family before Fascism, organises an escape for her brother, and the Driscolls are on the run in what is suddenly a bleak exercise in the picaresque, complete with surrealoism and family drama.

And it's brilliant. The Driscolls have been framed by an establishment which uses its client ,media, and deepfakes, to scapegost not just Owen but all of them. And yet, with the conceit of Qwen's withdrawal from drugs, we have surreal moments like the talking teddy bear, tempting him not to go to tomorrow but to come to the safety of yesterday. Again we have Simon, the homeless, riddling savant, getting drunk in a bleakly disused holiday camp- andthe brief footage of the cheery advert is a stroke of real genius.

Equally fairytale is the Welsh Catcher, a villain from the Brothers Grimm. Fitting that the escape into England should be via Hay-On-Wye, town of bookshops. Then there's the motif of the underwater bell, a nod, like last episode with the sword in the stone, to Welsh folklore, the many lands said to have fallen beneath the water.

Yet the realism is superb too. We think, in our first world comfortds, that we will never be refugees, on the run, with nothing. Yet, as Anna says, "It happens. All the time. All over the world". There's the GCHQ helper who helps because "First they came for...".

And there will always be those who not only conform but do so with enthusiasm. The English volunteer border guards are truly chilling. The deep irony of one of them cheerfully and casually uttering racist slurs against the Welsh to a Black man he sees as English is nicely done. But sois the whole thing, the directing and cinematography remaining utterly sublime. This is superb telly..

The Way: The War

 "What is it that rises up the moment it falls?"

I was made aware of this series the other day at work, I looked it up... and not only is it scripted by James Graham, he of This House and Brexit: The Uncivil War, but it's co-directed by Michael Sheen and the one and only Adam Curtis, whose uniquely philosophica; and visually extraordinary documentaries have made a huge impression on me and my world view. Watching it immediately became imperative, and I care not that I'm juggling so much other stuff on this blog.

The first thing to note is that it's shot beautifully, cinematically, artistically, exquisitely. The acting, from a fairly unknown cast aside from Sheen, is extraordinary. The cinematography is perfect too, reflecting the dull, hopoeless world of those dependent on the ever-moribund steelworks in Port Talbot. In today's world, globalised yet beset by populist nationalism, the industrial working class lives in ignored despair.

We have two viewpoint figures. One is Own, emotionally numbed, mentally ill and seeking human connection in the most literal way possible, sex, yet without meaningful communication with the lady concerned. Connection, and yet not connection. And then we have Geoff, alienated from the militancy of his family and community because he recalls how a strike destroyed his father, the ghost of whom is played by Sheen himself.

The pllot unwinds masterfully, introducing so many characters and allowing things to get out of control as the strike unfolds and draws support from across Wales. I'm not sure the conceit quite works of the national strike ending at Offa's Dyke, and Wales being cut off from the rest of the UK and put under martial law, but at the same time this is a scenario pregnant with so many allegories in our scary modern world, from the nature of power to the right to protest to borders and migration.

Throughout there's this very Adam Curtis sense of hopelessness, that politics has long since lost its power to change things and that fight is mere expression of despair, yet perhaps worthwhile just for that.

We have,of course, some nice little moments that ouncture realism. The red monk, Geoff at the end with the sword from the Port Talbot stone... Arthurian allusion? 

This is spellbinding telly. Superb.