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Jan 18

Too good to be true? Four new series for me to follow!

Posted on Monday, January 18, 2016 in TV series

When the series I was following on Swedish tv (not the streaming ones I watch online) stopped just before Christmas, I was convinced it would be a long time before there was anything else I could watch (again, on Swedish tv, fortunately we do still have the streaming series, though most of them will be American and not the British and European ones that we would so much like to see as well).

However, I was wrong. On an ordinary week I now have four different series to watch, and that’s not counting the Sherlock Christmas special that is coming up this month. At least that was lucky.

First of all, there’s a German series, called Deutschland 83, which seems very interesting. It’s about an East German soldier who is forced to relocate to West Germany and work as a spy. It’s set in the 1980’s which is one of my favorite decades so much of the music will be great and it’s sort of ‘historic’ now, so that too, adds to my interest in the series.

Then there’s Shetland, season 3. I had forgotten how short the seasons were, so I was a little surprised to find that we were already on season 3, but clearly it’s correct. I love the scenery and I also really like the episodes, because they’re just old-fashioned ‘real’ cop series. These days you get all that ‘whydunnit’ instead of ‘whodunnit’ and I really prefer the latter. That’s also why I love the historic cop series, because they focus on ordinary plots, instead of all that new stuff.

Finally, tonight there were two new series for me to follow. I’m amazed.

The first one is a Norwegian historic series about a group of resistance fighters who attack the heavy water plant at Rjukan in Nazi-occupied Norway. It’s a very interesting historic series that I’m really looking forward to following. Of course, that attack on Rjukan is very famous in Nordic history so I knew about it before, but I’d forgotten many of the details and we’re also getting a lot of the background, which is great.

Then right after the Norwegian series, Swedish tv has decided to air London Spy. I never thought we’d get to see that this soon after it was released in the UK. It’s a very interesting series too, especially for a slash fan like me, since it’s about two gay guys, well, actually, there’s an older gay man as well.

As someone who’s also into angst, I found this first episode very interesting though a bit surprising. My impression of men, regardless of sexual preference, is that they’re usually not that emotionally fragile and self-desctructive and rarely prone to self harm. But since this series is apparently written by a gay man, I guess he should know. Clearly I was wrong, just as I was wrong about Bob and Rose (about a gay man who falls in love with a straight woman). I also didn’t think that men were quite as likely to just talk, talk, talk instead of getting down to some – erm – action right away. I hope I haven’t spoiled this first episode for anyone intending to watch the series who hasn’t done so already.

Sep 14

12 Interesting Facts about Dictionaries

Posted on Monday, September 14, 2015 in Links

French dictionaryThis post comprises a dozen of the choicest and most fascinating facts about dictionaries down the ages.

Read more here.

Jun 8

27 Interesting Facts about Words

Posted on Monday, June 8, 2015 in Links

Fun facts about words and the English language

The stuff of literature is, of course, words. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge observed, ‘Prose = words in their best order; – poetry = the best words in the best order.’

Read more here.

Nov 29

The Twelve Best Facts from a Year of Interesting Literature | Interesting Literature

Posted on Friday, November 29, 2013 in Links

Read more here.

Mar 22

Three interesting characters

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2012 in Fandom

I recently read a blog post on WordPress.com, where a guy was listing the three most interesting characters in tv shows. His choices surprised me a little, and I thought about which ones I find interesting (‘most’ interesting is hard to define).

Here is a list of three favorites from tv shows running today as far as I know.

From Downton Abbey: Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, played by Dame Maggie Smith.

She’s such a cool old lady, seemingly harsh, but it appears that she does have a heart somewhere, even though it’s hard to tell at first. I just love the way she can something mean in a really funny way.

From Dr Who and Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman. Don’t you just love the way he walks in his uniform jacket? He’s hot, funny and there’s also a bit of angst in his background.

After mentioning Jack Harkness, I just can’t pass over the Doctor himself. “My” Doctor is Nine, but I like Ten and Eleven too and I think I would have liked Five too, but that was way before my time. Speaking of the Doctor, I also have to mention some of his companions, Donna Noble, Wilfred Mott, Donna’s grandfather, Amy Pond and her husband Rory, even though they’re all by now ‘former” companions.

Then finally, a guy you won’t have heard of, but that I really like, Simon Freund from Anno 1790 (1790 AD), the Swedish historic cop series that showed up so unexpectedly when I’d more or less given up on tv. Freund works as a teacher for a Chief of Police in Stockholm in 1790. He falls in love with his employer’s wife and goes off to war, to die, but meets a medic, Johan Gustav Dåådh (‘Deede’) who saves his life and brings him back to his employers where Dåådh too finds work as a police surgeon. Freund is so sweet. When he notices his friend loves the same woman, it doesn’t ruin their friendship. Instead he tries to find Dåådh another girlfriend, but Dåådh arrives home too late for the ‘dinner for two’ his friend has plannned and finds Freund passed out drunk on the couch with the attractive young widow he found, leaning on his arm. Freund has had bad luck in love and has turned to religion and drink for comfort. He’s a Pietist. He carries around a pocket flask that Dåådh is constantly borrowing from him to disinfect wounds or anesthesize live patients (most of his ‘patients’ are murder victims).

So these are the three most interesting characters from currently running tv shows that I could think of. Which ones do you find most interesting?

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