Is everyone else obsessively following Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s life after prison?
After spending eight years in prison for murdering her mother, she’s been busy. It’s strangely addictive to witness.
The Act
Binge
Is everyone else obsessively following Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s life after prison? In the weeks since she’s been free, after spending eight years in prison for second-degree murder, she’s been busy being a girl: getting a fresh set of acrylic nails, joining Snapchat, showing off, and subsequently defending her husband on Instagram (“They’re jealous because you are rocking my world every night.”). It’s strangely addictive to witness. For those unfamiliar with Gypsy: in 2015, she conspired with her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to murder her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who had allegedly made Gypsy a lifelong victim of her Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Dee Dee claimed Gypsy suffered from a number of maladies, including leukaemia and muscular dystrophy, subjecting her to unnecessary and invasive surgeries, including having multiple teeth and her saliva glands removed. Their story was dramatised in the Hulu series, The Act, an eight-part drama. As far as true crime fodder is concerned, this is better acted, written, and directed than a lot of the tripe out there. Patricia Arquette — who looks like she’s stuck her finger in an electrical socket — is in fine form as needy Dee Dee.
Apple TV+
Episodes released weekly
The dual performances of Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi are reason enough to watch Apple TV+’s new London-set copper drama. Jumbo stars as June Lenker, an astute detective who is new to the gig but eager to prove herself, with Capaldi playing the patronising DCI Daniel Hegarty, a well-respected legacy cop who is a bit of a racist. The two cross paths after June is asked by her male superior to review an anonymous domestic violence callout from a Hackney phone box (“It needs a woman’s touch”), in which the frightened young woman tells the operator her boyfriend has been trying to kill her, that he killed an ex-girlfriend years prior, and that another man is currently serving a 24-year sentence for the crime. Hegarty, it transpires, was the investigating officer on the case. What follows is a classic clash between the new guard and old guard, and the scenes they share are nothing short of thrilling. The show’s biggest problem, by far, is its pacing — it’s far too languid and takes itself too seriously from the get-go. Nevertheless, it’s the kind of immediately absorbing crime show that will have you mindlessly cuing up the next episode but one that you’ll likely never think about again.
Gyeongseong Creature
Netflix
If you’re one of those people who need to have a show lined up and ready to go when you devour your dinner, don’t let it be this one. There are more bloodied corpses in the first 10 minutes of this hit Netflix K-drama than in every Tarantino film combined. Other than that, it’s good fun — a monster mash-up of historical drama and creature feature set in 1945 Gyeongseong (the old name for Seoul) during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Park Seo-joon portrays a pawnbroker, a kind of Jay Gatsby figure known in the city as “Mr Omniscient”. His life of luxury is interrupted when the Korean mistress of a Japanese general goes missing, and he is tasked with finding her before the last cherry blossom falls, or he’ll face execution. Fortunately, he meets a missing persons specialist (Han So-Hee) on the road, and without giving too much away, their investigation uncovers darker, more horrifying truths. Gyeongseong Creature is a lot to take in, and the human drama is much more compelling than the spookier stuff. Still, if entertainment is what you’re after, this show has it in spades. The sets, it’s worth mentioning, are jaw-dropping.
The Traitors (UK)
Amazon Prime
This prime cut of reality TV is like slathering a general anaesthetic on your brain. The premise is as follows: 22 contestants from across the UK, Scotland, and Wales all meet on the Jacobite steam train (aka The Hogwarts Express), where they are taken to a stately Scottish castle. In the hours after their arrival, host Claudia Winkleman (Strictly Come Dancing) secretly inducts three of them as her “traitors”. During the daytime, the entire group participates in challenges — the most boring part of the show — that build up the cash prize pot. But by night, the traitors, dressed in very Eyes Wide Shut hooded capes, decide to “off” someone. It’s basically an elaborate game of wink murder, a Frankenstein of every reality TV trope ever, but it’s gorgeously stupid, compulsively addictive entertainment. It works because the casting is spot-on and random: there’s a woman who wants to spend the show’s £120,000 prize on a bionic hand; a lisping spa therapist who feels excluded by the more obviously macho men; and a scientist who earned his PhD at 22 and needs everyone to know about it. The second series is currently airing in the UK, so who knows when we’ll get it. Still, it’s well worth going back and watching the first. Just don’t bother with the useless Australian or US versions.