Jake Gyllenhaal! Poor guy. Perfectly good actor, very cute, forever now known as Taylor Swift’s douche ex, immortalised in We Are Never Getting Back Together. He’s fighting back, though. Literally, in a re-make of RoadHouse (Amazon Prime), which I thought was absolutely brilliant. And when I say brilliant, I mean it’s an absurd action movie, but I have a very high tolerance for that sort of thing (I love e.g. Transformers and The Rock).
And now he is in Presumed Innocent, which is no.1 on the Apple TV charts, which Jake must be gratified about. It can’t be easy to be ridiculed by three million Swifties. A day.
This is another re-make - no comment - of a 1990 Harrison Ford film, where a big time lawyer is accused of murdering his colleague, with whom he was having an affair. I never saw the original so don’t know what happens, don’t tell me!! There are lots of flashbacks to Jake Gyllenhaal’s character (he plays the same, Harrison Ford lead man), having extremely steamy sex with his girlfriend and he is not shy about getting his knob out. I mean, you don’t see his knob but you really get the impression that it’s there.
Anyway, everyone turns in a terrific performance and there are also lots of very dreamy rich-American-person interiors. The only bummer is that episodes appear only once a week, on a Wednesday.
Slightly less gorgeous, but no less hunky is Richard Rankin in Rebus, now on iPlayer. ANOTHER REMAKE!! Based, of course, on the books by Ian Rankin - no relation to the actor. This is a great and very gripping series and I recommend it, additionally so because I’ve met Ian Rankin and he’s just the most delightful, kind and lovely man in the world. And he’s a Jilly Cooper fan! Cups runneth over.
On to Shogun, available on Disney +. Altogether now - IT’S A REMAKE. The original telly series was in 1980, starring Richard Chamberlain as John Blackthorne, the pirate washed up in “the Japans”, and landed right in the middle of a mortal power struggle. The 2024 Blackthorne is played by Cosmo Jarvis, who - like Gyllenhaal - understands the brief completely and is almost constantly naked. I hesitated to start watching this, as I thought that I would struggle to maintain concentration on a show about Japan in the 1600s. But actually it’s tremendously gripping, very funny at times and has an exciting love story at its heart.
I commend these to you now.
How about you? Have you watched anything recently that you enjoyed that we might otherwise miss? Please leave a comment in the handy box below!
I am normally unmoved by hunks, but I cannot bloody wait for Gladiator 2
Can I just quickly issue an apology for the several typos and errors in this piece - and thank you to everyone for just politely ignoring them. All have now been corrected. Sometimes being your own sub-editor just doesn't work.