Unfortunately, Westley Piddle doesn’t have a cinema, cineplex, or multiplex…only a Muttplex. But it’s showing some great movies…
🐾🐾🐾🐾= as good as it gets on the subject. Drop everything, , sniff out, scramble to catch up and ‘watch NOWS’!
🐾🐾🐾= entertaining or informative. Worth putting on your short-watch list.
🐾🐾= Average entertainment, will pass casual viewing time but does not exceed expectations – even modest ones. Ultimately forgettable.
🐾= Seriously! There are many far better movies out there on this subject. Don’t bother unless it’s a rainy afternoon with absolutely nothing better to do.
Thanks to Covid – no respecter of cinema – we are reviewing some recent TV series that are available on pay-channels, or as DVDs online.
Industry (2020) – HBO series
🐾🐾🐾🐾
Industry follows a group of young graduates competing for a limited set of permanent positions at Pierpoint & Co, a prestigious investment bank in London. (courtesy IMDb)
My take: Sex, drugs and rock’n’finance. A short, brutish and no prisoners taken drama on the fate of pretty young things in the City of London. Having sold Porsche sports cars to the yuppy set at various trading houses across the capitol way back in the 80’s I was expecting a high-tech, code-[not coke]-snorting upgrade on the same bunch of well-dressed, arrogant muttwits I knew and fleeced back them good ole days. By the looks of it the finance industry hasn’t evolved much in the intervening thirty if the hedonistic antics of this drama’s caste holds true today. Saying that, I loved it. The heat of battle of the trading floor was more exciting than anything from Game of Thrones – and so was the sex!
Worth watching if you care anything at all about the way – and the whom – that play guardian to our stock markets and trade the fate of world economy. Viewer discretion advised. Off the shopfloor the vast amount of awkwardly bad sex is all a bit wince-inducing unnecessary.
Barbaren (2020) – Netflix series
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The famous battle of the Teutoburg Forest, in which Germanic warriors halted the northward advance of the Roman Empire in AD 9, is the focus of “The Barbarians.” (courtesy IMDb)
My take: Aimed at the same target audience as The Last Kingdom and Vikings. Unlike those two worthy titles, Barbaren is a uniquely European [mostly German] produced historical drama that spends a lot of time getting the actual history element accurate to the time period as it’s possible. What other sword and sandal saga have you ever watched that features Romans speaking real Latin? That’s right, me neither.
Exciting storyline, non-stereotypical characters, and some ferocious battle scenes. Dog dammit, wot more does yu wants!!
Tehran (2020) – Apple TV
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The story of Tamar Rabinyan, a Mossad computer hacker-agent undertaking her very first mission in the heart of a hostile and menacing city, which also happens to be the place of her birth. (courtesy IMDb)
My take: having travelled through Tehran waaay back in 1978 (as one stop on a Charlie-fueled bus trip from London to Katmandu), I was interested to see if this US-Israeli production got anything right about the beautiful city of Tehran and its people. Surprisingly, it did.
That’s because of the clever use of modern stock footage (including drone shots) of the city’s streets, skyline and modern hustle and bustle. You would also imagine the storyline to be obviously pro-Israeli: think Homeland! However, it serves up a subtle balance of protagonists from both Iran and Israel, and offers a sympathetic view of Iranians as ordinary people just wanting to protect their own homeland. Of course, I am sure the actual drama is shot elsewhere and I cannot give comment on the accuracy of spoken Farsi.
Worth watching though – and the story is cutting-edge of your seat!
USUAL MUTTWITS 
Industry is on BBC 2 here, and I didn’t take to it. The German/Roman one looks good though.
Cheers, Pete.
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