vicious is viciously funny

I have been enjoying the heck out of Vicious, the Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi sitcom airing on public television. We are already halfway through its six episode first season.

McKellen and Jacobi are Freddie and Stuart, an elderly gay couple who have been together for 48 years. The pair bicker constantly and caustically and share a dog, Balthasar, who the audience never sees, but the pair occasionally checks on to see if he is still breathing. Freddie is an actor who has never had much success, but is constantly reminiscing about his career. Stuart is his long-suffering partner, who still hasn't told his aged mother about Freddie being more than just his "roommate." In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly McKellen pointed out the essence of the comedy, "Probably the most remarkable thing about them is not that they’re gay, but that they’ve been together for 50 years."

Freddie (Ian McKellen) and Stuart (Derek Jacobi) share a cuppa

Like all classic apartment sitcoms, Freddie and Stuart's apartment is a way-station for their friends and neighbors, most frequently in the form of Violet (Frances de la Tour), who flirts relentlessly and fruitlessly with their other regular visitor, their young upstairs neighbor Ash (Iwan Rheon). The series has an old-school feel. Jacobi's character at times calls to mind John Inman's Mr. Humphries of Are You Being Served fame. It is interesting to watch Jacobi trading barbs here on PBS on one night while the station is also running the latest season of the more dramatic Last Tango in Halifax.

In the first episode of Vicious we are introduced to the couple, who are remembering an old friend who has recently passed away. They hold a wake in his memory, but spend most of the evening trying to impress their young and handsome new neighbor Ash — and determine whether he is gay or straight. By the second episode Ash is on good enough terms with the older pair to confide his troubles with in on-again, off-again girlfriend. The couple may trade vicious barbs, but also make sacrifices for one another, Ash discovers, as he becomes impressed with Stuart, who has taken a part-time job in a shop to earn enough money to buy Freddie a new overcoat.  The most recent episode was a blast, as it gave McKellen an opportunity to teach Ash about acting — in a horrible, hammy way — as he was preparing for an audition as Cook Staff #4 on “Downton Abbey.” Jacobi also missed no chance to steal every scene he was in, with some great physical and verbal comedy.

Freddie goes over his script with Ash (Iwan Rheon)

Jacobi and McKellen are working in a typical sitcom format, but their characters' fearless attacks, whether trained on themselves or anyone who happens to be in their general vicinity, take their campy insults to another level. Frances de la Tour makes the audience cringe with her single entendres as much as poor Ash, while still making Violet likable. It is especially nice to see Iwan Rheon in a part where he can be not only funny and cute but a nice guy — quite a change from his creeptastic performance as Ramsay Bolton on Game of Thrones.

A second series has been confirmed, which is good news for viewers both here and abroad.

back to the '70s with the x-men: days of future past

I have been a casual watcher of the X-Men films through the years. I really liked the first one, which came out in 2000, directed by Bryan Singer, and starring and launching the film career of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Wolverine was the anchor for a story that helped introduce to non-comic book fans like myself a host of interesting characters: Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), Storm (Halle Berry), Rogue (Anna Paquin), etc. The idea of "mutants" who have special powers that set them apart from humans resonated - as do most outsider, misfit tales. And let's face it, a lot of what the mutants could do was pretty cool. Professor X can read minds, Magneto can control anything made of metal, Mystique can shape-shift into anyone at any time, Wolverine is seemingly invulnerable and he has those pesky adamantine steel claws.

The Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Professor X (James McAvoy), and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in front of Cerebro

The second and third films of that first set were not quite as good, although X2 (2003) featured Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, who was super-cool and fun to watch. What came as a real surprise after the rather dismal X3 (2006) was a really fun and decent reboot, X-Men: First Class, in 2011. All of the main characters were brought back in an origins story that told how Professor X (James McAvoy) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and friends came to be. So what would be better than another story based on that timeline with that cast? Well, how about mixing both together, with Jackman's ever-popular Wolverine (who in the meantime had starred in two off-shoots of his own, 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2013's The Wolverine) as an anchor?

Something that must have sounded crazy but brilliant (money-wise) on paper turned out to be crazy but fun to watch at the theater. For X-Men: Days of Future Past original X-Men director Bryan Singer came back, and it was great to see a lot of the old gang back together again, especially the recent internet-sensational bromance of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The story starts, like so many sci-fi/fantasy epics do these days, with a post-apocalyptic future. Creepy shape-shifting robots called Sentinels are flying around the world, charged with hunting down and killing off all the mutants. Professor X and a few key mutants (recognizable to comic book geeks, but unfortunately not really introduced properly to the rest of us) are holed up and trying to come up with a plan to stop this war on mutants before they all perish. It's a shame we don't really get to see who's who, because Ellen Page seems to have a fairly big job to do, being able to send Wolverine back in time, but only in the credits or online did I identify her as a mutant named Kitty Pryde. I did recognize Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), and his ice-making ability, from the earlier films.

Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage, above) learns a valuable lesson: don't mess with Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence)

But back to the plot. The assignment? Stop Mystique from killing Sentinel inventor Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) in 1973, which seems to be the jump-start event of their current perilous situation. And who better to go back in time than Logan, or as we know him, Wolverine, with his whole invulnerable situation.

The X-Men and their movies have always had a sense of humor, so things get off to a good start by plonking the surly Wolverine in the middle of brightly-colored, toe-tapping '70s background soundtrack. I couldn't help but be instantly reminded of Austin Powers's similar journey in his Goldmember film, and wished that some of the time-bending humor was able to be sustained until the oh-so-serious  film finish. As usual, a lot of the exploding buildings and robots leave one on the cold (and bored) side, including an inexplicable and tedious CGI sequence of Michael Fassbender lifting and moving a baseball stadium. Doesn't (young) Magneto have better ways to terrorize? But there are some pretty wonderful things happening too, especially concerning a young and super-fast moving mutant (Evan Peters) enlisted by Wolverine to help break Magneto out of the Pentagon. I checked online later and learned he in named Quicksilver. All I know is his character was great and I'm sure will be back for the next one, X-Men: Apocalypse, which is due in 2016 and supposed to take place in the 1980s. Cue up the Prince, punk, and new wave soundtrack in 3, 2, 1 ...

Quicksilver (Evan Peters) steals every scene he is in, super-speed or not

Folks who lived through the '70s or love the decade will be rewarded with clever cultural reference points. The Kennedy assassination - did Magneto curve the bullet trajectory? Richard Nixon's White House. Mystique pulls off a mutant rescue-op in war-torn Saigon. Fans of the entire series will be happy to catch a glimpse of some of their favorite mutants (and villains) from earlier films. Peter Dinklage's villain was interesting - not your typical comic book mad scientist. Surely he's a bad guy for experimenting on mutants, but does he really want to wipe them all out? Or maybe rather to become one? Maybe a comic book fan could help answer that question.

Although I found it hard to connect with the dystopian future scenes, and I suspect, like most movie-goers, enjoyed the time travel to the past far more entertaining, X-Men: Days of Future Past did keep its focus primarily on the characters, the X-Men, and the appealing actors who portray them. And that's who we really all came to see, no matter what decade.

you're getting to be a hobbit ...

Peter Jackson just can't help himself, I guess.

I finally watched the first installment of The Hobbit. I didn't watch it in the movie theater when it first came out. I was under protest. I couldn't understand why a single book, especially one that was not as epic as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, would have to be divided into three films. After viewing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey I still don't. The landscape in New Zealand is gorgeous, and there are certainly a lot of overhead shots of Bilbo Baggins and his companions running to and fro across the hillsides ... Sorry, I drifted off there for a moment.

Everyone in The Hobbit is always running

Martin Freeman was fine as Bilbo, and it's always great to see Ian McKellan as Gandalf, but the movie had no real oomph. The dwarves, led by Thorin (Richard Armitage) want to get back into their homeland, from which they were ejected. The Orcs are still ugly. Ugly is bad. Why the Orcs are fighting the dwarves or just about anyone is unclear. Why are there no females of any account in Middle Earth, except for Galadriel, who seems to enjoy mind-flirting with Gandalf? Why ask why?

The only thing that might get me into the theater for the second installment is that it seems elf-centered, and I've always liked Legolas (Orlando Bloom). Plus, Benedict Cumberbatch. But seriously, Peter Jackson. Do you have any other interests besides Tolkien you'd like to share?

sir ian and derek — a match made in heaven

Two of my all-time favorite actors, Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Derek Jacobi, are starring together in a Brit-com called Vicious, about an older gay couple. It also stars Frances De la Tour. I could only find a few clips, but hope ITV will get it on hulu or BBC America soon. Jacobi with light-colored hair is sort of reminding me of Mr. Humphreys from Are You Being Served ...

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• Vicious was a learning curve, admits ITV

another little gem of a movie: jack and sarah

Jack and Sarah is the kind of pleasant surprise of a movie that happens when you have a pretty basic and familiar rom-com script, but populate it with fabulous actors. Originally released in 1995, it was written and directed by British television director Tim Sullivan (The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Coronation Street), and it is apparent that it was a labor of love:

"It took Sullivan four years to make Jack and Sarah, which germinated from an experience he had when working as a director at Granada TV. 'A friend of mine's childcare arrangements broke down and his wife was away, so he brought his six-month-old baby into work,' he says. 'Until that day he had been just an ordinary bloke, but suddenly he was the centre of attention — particularly with the women. And of course, one of the first things they did was take the child off him, as though he couldn't cope. 

Jack works out how to bathe Sarah

"It just amused me — as did the fact that he immediately seemed to become more attractive to women. If you start from the basis that all men are inherently shits — which many women believe and I do myself — when you see one with a baby, he seems more vulnerable and almost like an exception to the rule. Which he isn't." — The Independent

As the story begins Jack (Richard E. Grant) and Sarah (Imogen Stubbs) are about to have a baby. Jack is a rather self-absorbed lawyer who is thrown for a loop when Sarah tragically dies in childbirth. He goes on a bender, leaving his judgmental and disapproving mother (Judi Dench) and harried father and Sarah's mother (Eileen Atkins) to care for the baby. The grandparents team up and practice some tough love, soon leaving the baby with Jack and forcing him to step up to the plate, which he does, for the most part. But when bringing little baby Sarah (who he couldn't help but name after her mother in his grief) to work with him proves problematic, he begins to search for a nanny. Enter American Amy (Samantha Mathis), who knows nothing about childcare, but forms an immediate bond with the baby girl — and maybe her father, too. Rounding out the stellar cast are Cherie Lunghi as Jack's boss and Ian McKellen as an ersatz local wino turned butler/best friend/babysitter.

Amy (Samantha Mathis) changes Sarah's diaper as her two grandmothers (Eileen Atkins and Judi Dench) and William (Ian McKellen) supervise

Sarah and Amy

The London setting adds another dimension to the story. Jack may be a lawyer, but his flat and neighborhood are artsy — full of light and space and in an interesting area. I felt like I wasn't just watching a story but spending time with some people I like, much like the Notting Hill (where some of this film was shot). Jack and Sarah is not your typical romantic comedy, and that's very good, indeed.