w/e 2022-10-16

The track that jumped out at me most in this week’s listening is Idaho by artist Jacki Apple, who I’d never heard of, and passed away earlier this year.

§ We watched Conversations with Friends (BBC iPlayer) this week and I really liked it at first. It was a series of awkward silences and conversations, and I love awkwardness in dramas. Maybe because it somehow makes me feel better about awkward silences and conversations in real life, to see even more awkward fictional ones?

Anyway, that was good, as were some of Frances’s (Alison Oliver) smiles – she grinned at messages on her phone as if she couldn’t not smile with joy at them, which feels like a step further than acting normal levels of convincing happiness.

But after the half-way point things started to sag. I cared less and less about Frances and her inability to talk to people, and about her annoying ex/best-friend, and about her slightly creepy, slightly posh, very wide-shouldered lover. And then, just as it felt like we were reaching the crisis point that had been put off for a few episodes, everything suddenly resolved. Quite unsatisfying.

§ That appears to be all of the vaguely interesting activities of the week.