On the trail of hate-crime in the latest slice of Nordic Noir
and a teenage daughter with autism. But this eight-part story about a group of right-wing Christian fundamentalists unrolling a sinister (and murderous) hate campaign against homosexuals in picturesque Stockholm never quite hits full speed. Then again, the pace never drops enough to make you want to stop watching.
A second series, based on the second book in the five-novel sequence, has already been commissioned so expect that to be washing up on our shores fairly shortly.
Anne Holt is worth investigating, though. She trained as a lawyer, then worked for Norway’s state broadcaster as a journalist and news anchor before moving to the Oslo police force. She eventually wound up as Norway’s minister for justice, albeit briefly, by which time she had a parallel career as a crime novelist.
And she lives in Oslo with her female partner and their daughter, a fact that gives the hate crime theme of this first series added heft – it too features a gay couple with a child. Dogwoof, £9.99 VETERAN film-maker and now acclaimed documentarist Werner Herzog turns his quizzical, eccentric and iconoclastic eye on the world of the internet in this fascinating film sub-titled Reveries Of A Connected World. He begins his journey in 1969, with the first word sent over what would become the internet: it was supposed to be “login” but the computer crashed on the “g” so “lo” is what we have, appropriately enough. He finishes on Mars, which SpaceX founder Elon Musk hopes to help colonise and where he says it would be relatively easy to set up an internet connection.
Whimsical old dog that he is, Herzog presents his film in a series of chapters, complete with a Roman numeral numbering system. It’s typical of a man whose biography claims he was 11 before he encountered cinema and didn’t make a phone call until he was 17. But it also allows him to delve sequentially into a series of wide-ranging subjects such as the ills of social media, cyber-security, politics, robotics, gaming and, not unconnected, addiction.
As much as he revels in his interviewees’ knowledge, opinions and insights Herzog also delights in wrong-footing them. Citing the famous saying ascribed to Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz’s – “Sometimes war dreams of itself” – he asks if the same is true of the internet.
Some interviewees gamely try to answer by taking about artificial intelligence; one just looks bamboozled and says nothing. But it’s emblematic of an approach to the subject that draws in everything from pure maths to philosophy by way of science, morality and – when one grinning young techno-geek says a robot will be able to out play the Messis, Ronaldos and Neymars of 2050 – the football world cup.
A tale as cautionary as it is celebratory, Lo And Behold should be required viewing for all digital natives. Eureka! Video, £24.99 THE CULT status claims made for Tom Holland’s 1985 comedyhorror don’t hold quite water, holy or otherwise, but there’s much about it to like, not least Roddy McDowall’s overblown performance as hammy TV vampire hunter Peter Vincent.
In a plot that could have gone much further into postmodernist territory than it does, a down-onhis-luck Vincent is hired by high schoogirl Amy (Amanda Bearse) to play along with an idea her boyfriend Charley (William Ragsdale) has become fixated upon: that his new next door neighbour Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon, ex-husband of Susan) is a vampire. The trouble is, Charley is right and soon Vincent, Amy and Charley’s annoying sidekick Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) are up to their necks in spooky mists and bad 1980s pop music.
In Nightmare Movies, his indispensable book on the horror genre, critic Kim Newman describes Fright Night as basically a John Hughes film with vampires added. He’s right. The 1980s special effects tread a careful line between good, gory and goofy, and you can see in this film and others like it from the same period (such as Richard Wenk’s Vamp, from 1986) the source of an idea that would see wider expression in shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer: that the undead walk among us in modern dress and, when combined with telegenic high school students, make an excellent subject for film-makers.