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Reviews
Billions (2016)
Great casting except for one
Malkovich was awful as Grigor Andalov. What an atrocious amateur attempt at a Russian accent. I mean script wipers don't help by placing words on the mouth of non native speakers that don't ring true to start with. But his exaggerated idea of the accent was so overrated that it grated on my nerves every time he appeared. Like London (where the same thing happens) there are so many native Russian actors in New York/Hollywood that you can only imagine someone did an agent a favour.
Apart from that it was pretty much excellent. Damian Lewis totally believable as a New Yorker. Billions was notable for its consistently good story lines, acting, casting and script. Spyros was a source of great entertainment too!
London Kills: Family Affairs (2019)
Poor casting and script make episode lack authenticity
The actor who plays Gabriel is not Portuguese. He's Colombian. His accent is totally wrong. The script is not believable as the vocabulary a Portuguese person would use. How hard is it to find a Portuguese actor in London?! Not at all hard. So for me this episode was not authentic.
This is a constant bugbear of mine. Anyone who speaks another language to any decent standard, or has travelled the world at all, will face this kind of lack of authenticity in British TV before long. Especially the dialogue. I mean we might expect this in the US, but the UK is so cosmopolitan that casting should be top tip.
Very disappointing altogether.
Burn Notice: Long Way Back (2009)
The Irish accent comedy Episode
I enjoy Burn Notice and I've finally found a place to watch it in the UK. This episode is up to par with the twists and turns and action that we expect. But there seems to be a fascination in the US with making connections with the Brits then employing actors who aren't native to the accent, in this case the Irish accent. I say accent, but really it's accents. And they are all and the place! Fi and her brother curiously have accents from different sides of the Irish border, which is seriously improbable. It's what we call a 'Dick van Dyke moment' after his awful English accent in Mary Poppins! Michael does a brave attempt at a Dublin accent, but he'd never fool anyone in Ireland with that! There are Plenty of Irish born actors in the US so I guess we're sacrificed to the ambition of casting agents.