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Reviews
1923 (2022)
Fantastic reinvention of the Western genre
The scenery is stunning and I'm really enjoying the broadening of geography for this 1920s update to Yellowstone. The storylines on the ranch, on African safari and a native American "school" have been largely separate so I'm looking forward to seeing how they weave them together.
Julia's character, Alexandra, is great - really expressive. Her German accent is quite obvious to a Brit though. I'd have kept the actress but tweaked her storyline to explain the Germanic twang.
If you struggled to get into Yellowstone, I'd still give the origin series a chance. I couldn't get into Yellowstone series 1, only returned to it after enjoying 1883 and 1923 so much and now I'm hooked on that too!
The Romantics and Us (2020)
Oversells the role of the Romantics
I did enjoy the themes explored in this series but I do think they oversell the continued influence of the Romantics. For example, the first episode narrative essentially suggests the Romantics invented the right to protest, completely overlooking all of history's previous protests during feudalism - these are too often dismissed as "peasants revolts". Examples of the public protesting government policies go far back into the 16th century and further. Of course by starting in the late 18th century you loose all context of the influence of previous centuries. So I did find this a bit misleading, perhaps an attempt to grab the audiences attention. But this series is interesting in that it isn't really about the Romantics themselves but about more modern history and how the Romantics have been elevated and popularised in contemporary culture. It is a very good example of Foucault's ontology of the present - in that history is fluid and shaped by contemporary perspectives.
Leonardo (2021)
Mixed feelings about this
Interesting from the perspective that I didn't know much about Leonardo the man. So it was like reading mediocre historical fiction to learn about the history. But I couldn't help feeling that two of the main characters were slipping into their more familiar roles of Poldark and the Good Doctor which felt out of place for the series. Similarly no people of colour in the production even though cities Italy would have been quite multicultural at this time. Some of the language used was very modern, gave me vibes of The Great but I don't think the style worked for this depth of story.