The Casual Vacancy TV Miniseries

I finished reading JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy earlier this year after avoiding it for a while but then Christmas happened and I got book vouchers as a gift and the book was on sale at the local bookstore. Christmas made me do it! I enjoyed the book though, it was lots of fun to read. Nothing like Harry Potter, of course. JK Rowling is allowed to write other things, you know ;). It was more like Game of Thrones lite with more normal seeming crazy people (they are all batshit certified).

The Casual Vacancy is the story of a small English town largely populated by petty adults and petty school children, all of them preoccupied or affected by petty small town politics in some way. Everyone in this story is downright crazy on some level. JK Rowling knows how to tell a good story, she's not popular for no good reason.

Anyhoo, I see that The Casual Vacancy made it onto TV in the form of a miniseries as a joint production by HBO and the BBC. The series consists of three 60-minute episodes and was aired from 15 February to 01 March this year. The series is directed by Jonny Campbell, who has directed a few episodes of Spooks, Doctor Who and the film, Alien Autopsy. The screenplay is by Sarah Phelps who writes for the soap opera, EastEnders.

Some of the names that comprise the cast are Rory Kinnear as Barry Fairbrother, Emily Bevan as Mary Fairbrother. Michael Gambon who played Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies plays the rather sinister Howard Mollison in the series. Julia McKenzie plays his equally conniving wife, Shirley Mollison. Keeley Hawes plays Samantha Mollison. Lolita Chakrabarti portrays Parminder Jawanda and Silas Carson her husband, Vikram Jawanda.

From the two trailers I saw the show looks like it could be fun and I will be getting my mittens on it soon.

Winter is Coming!

Winter is coming . . . Well, here in South Africa winter is actually coming but no one cares about that because the winter that really matters brings with it fear. To quote Old Nan: “Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.” That is winter, Game of Thrones style, my sweet summer child and we cannot wait.

There be dragons!

It seem that pirates with even more cunning than Salladhor Saan could not wait either and leaked the first four episodes of Season 5. Game of Thrones is already the most pirated show in the world and it looks like this is not about to change. This is a really harsh blow for HBO though as the pirates are now a whole four weeks ahead of everyone and it's likely that the interwebs will be overrun with spoilers in the next few weeks. If you are not a pirate and want to avoid spoilers I would suggest that you avoid going online in any way and just lock yourself in a dark room for the next few weeks. Another blow to HBO is that they timed the release of their standalone streaming service, HBO Go with the release of the new season. This meant that those without cable TV could watch the show at the same time as everyone else but now the pirates are way ahead. 

Season 5 is being aired simultaneously here in South Africa as it is in the US and kicks off tonight at 21:00 on HBO, which translates to 03:00 tomorrow morning here. Catch it on DStv's M-Net Edge, channel 102. If you are not a crazy fan person (seriously, you aren't?) you can catch the episodes on Thursday nights at 21:00 on M-Net Edge as well, starting off from 16 April.

Daenerys Targaryen, everyone's favourite Khaleesi

I feel rather bad for HBO with the whole piracy thing and I hope they have a clever response that won't leave viewers who aren't pirates out in the cold.

Anyhoo, another year and another season of our favourite show. Enjoy, everybody. Also, it seems Jon Snow still knows nothing even when he's invited to a dinner party.

Brace yourselves, winter is here!

Finally! Game of Thrones Season 3 is here and we're all losing our minds. I am in any case.

Sex, political intrigue, swordplay, boobs, dragons, direwolves, white walkers, the Others and all that good stuff. Who can have enough of that?

I'm especially looking forward to Daenerys Targaryen and Arya Stark's adventures. Arya always meets the coolest people! Syrio Forel and Jaqen H'ghar were amazing.

This is the rare occasion that I'm glad to not have read a series of books before the on-screen adaptation. HBO always delivers the goods it would seem and this gladdens our fantasy loving hearts.

Ladies. Gentle Sirs. Winter is here. Grab a glass of wine to warm your belly and enjoy.