Grae an exploratory spiritual journey
spidery falsetto to his lower register, channelling Prince over a slow fuzzed-out riff.
‘‘Isolation comes from
‘insula’, which means island’’. These words repeat like a mantra at the start of Insula, which opens Grae, and isolation permeates much of the record.
Many songs here stand alone, but Grae is designed as a body of work that deserves to be heard in full. Emotionally intelligent and carefully considered.
Big Woman, the debut album from Wellington duo Giantess is a refreshing, cathartic listen. It’s refreshing because although rock music has long been
‘‘dead’’, this raw, real record may reignite your love of big riffs.
A break-up album built around expansive guitars and propulsive drums, it serves as a worthy vehicle for Kiki Van Newtown’s melodies.
Formerly of Hex, Van Newtown is the beating heart of Giantess and the reason Big Woman connects so strongly.
Whether through stories of specificity (The News, Good Looking Girls), or shrouded in symbolism (Self Taught Mage), she remains devoid of pretence or posturing.
Favourite song? The Flood.
If you’re struggling to find mindfulness in the maelstrom of 2020, perhaps Wu-Tang Clan’s resident Zen master RZA can be of assistance. Guided Explorations is a series of meditations combining traditional techniques with RZA’s relatable metaphors and vivid imagery.
Set to gentle, calming beats, RZA makes an authentic spiritual guide, who wants you to find the centre of the solar system in your mind.
Let all those other planetary distractions orbit around you. You are the Sun. Just be the Sun. Surreal, and actually really good.
He’s portrayed some of Britain’s most controversial and polarising figures with a skilled eye for detail and an ear for cadence.
Brian Clough, Tony Blair, David Frost, Kenneth Williams have all had the Michael Sheen treatment, as the Welsh actor has uncannily captured their essence for dramatic purposes.
The latest public figure in the now 51-year-old’s sights is the original Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? host Chris Tarrant, in a three-part dramatisation of the long-running show’s biggest scandal.
Yes, Quiz (Thursday, 8.30pm on SoHo, then available on demand on Lightbox) is the story of the infamous 2001 incident that gripped the world.
Major Charles Ingram (Matthew Macfadyen) thought he’d become only the fourth person to win the £1 million top prize. But even as he competed, producers were concerned at his erratic behaviour, gaps in basic knowledge, and his transformation between the two recording days. Then there was the unusual amount of background noise in the studio, mainly made by one man with a persistent cough.
Based on the 2015 detailed investigation into the affair, Bad Show: The Quiz, The Cough, The Millionaire Major, by Bob Woffinden and James Plaskett, and adapted by James Graham from his own 2017 play of the same name, Quiz will surprise and delight in its even-handedness and compelling recreation of events.
Using the 2003 trial of Ingram, wife Diana (Sian Clifford) and Tecwen Whittock (Michael Jibson) as the starting point, the tale details the show’s 1998 birth (it was originally called Cash Mountain), and Diana and brother Adrian’s (Trystan Gravelle) determination to gain fame and fortune on it.
Quiz reveals how they ended up as part of a group of nearmilitant, professional pub quiz ‘‘eggheads’’, hellbent on breaking the show, using its decision to select contestants via a process (which, somewhat scandalously in its own right, was how the show was funded, potentially bankrupting many wannabe players in their quest to make the studio), rather than casting, against them.
When both Adrian and Diana only came away with modest amounts, they pushed a very reticent Charles towards the hot seat, armed with a seemingly infallible and, they thought, undetectable plan.
Director Stephen Frears (A Very English Scandal, The Queen) does a fabulous job of setting the pieces in motion and establishing character, before unleashing the central ‘‘heist’’ in its evocative and detailed glory. Naturally, that includes a quite uncanny rendition of Tarrant’s dulcet tones by Sheen.
However, while he’s the scene-stealer, he’s not the heart of the show. That honour falls to Gravelle, Clifford and Macfadyen. The first pair stunningly craft somewhat tragic, obsessive figures, and Macfadyen plays Ingram as a hapless, reluctant ‘‘frontman’’.
Fabulous drama that will not only bring back memories of simpler times and the power of event, appointment television, Quiz will also make you look at the whole farrago in, potentially, a completely different light.
Meanwhile, Sheen’s fellow Welshman and actor, Matthew Rhys, helps resurrect another beloved piece of television history in Perry Mason (tomorrow, 8.30pm, SoHo, then on Neon).
Be warned though, this isn’t your grandmother’s favourite crusading criminal defence lawyer as portrayed by Raymond
Burr over more than 250 episodes from the late-1950s.
This is an eight-part, 1932-set origin story that hews closer to Erle Stanley Gardner’s original novels, and feels more like Boardwalk Empire or Peaky Blinders.
Rhys’ world-weary Mason is living on his deceased parents’ farm, down on his luck, estranged from his 9-year-old son, and barely scraping a living together as a private detective.
That’s when his old friend E B Jonathan (John Lithgow) comes to him with a case far bigger than his usual ‘‘chasing Hollywood stars across town to ensure they’re keeping to their morality clauses’’.
Matthew and Emily Dodson have had an unspeakable act carried out against them. After their baby was kidnapped, they dutifully paid the ransom, only for him to be returned not only dead, but mutilated. E B doesn’t trust the LAPD to do its job, so he needs the services of professional ‘‘busybody’’ Mason to get to the heart of what really happened.
Series creators Ron Fitzgerald (Westworld) and Rolin Jones (Weeds) have done a breathtaking job of a creating a sense of space and place. This is a gritty, grimy Los Angeles, filled with sex and violence, neither of which are shied away from or portrayed prettily. There’s a sense of menace, but also despair in Mason’s City of Angels, and Rhys (The Americans) almost instantly makes the troubled investigator a character you want to spend time with and learn more about.
Throw in a superb supporting cast that also includes Tatiana Maslany, Juliet Rylance, Robert Patrick and Lili Taylor, and a suitably atmospheric jazzinfused soundtrack, and the result is one of the year’s best dramas.