UKH

Forced to find diversions after 8 days stuck inside with flu, I happened upon this miniseries and it was a brilliant watch, but not for the fainthearted. 

Stunningly filmed in beautiful landscapes, excellent soundtrack but sometimes hard to hear dialogue. Suspend belief? yes - but the array of bizarre and grotesque characters, plus the charisma of the main actors bring off this intertwined story to perfection.

Stick with it if you find it hard to follow at first, it becomes even better and clearer. I found myself researching cast, story line, issues and history - yes I know I have too much time to kill, but it is so good to see well-made television, as usually I am in despair.

I am on episode 4. Brilliant so far.

I found the first episode beautiful to watch, but a bit slow. But I watched the rest over 2 evenings and it really came together; glad I stuck with it. Absolutely stunning scenery too.

You've managed to avoid telling us what channel it's on. 

BBC 2, although we've skipped some way ahead by watching on iPlayer. 

It's marvellous, and as has been remarked above, the scenery is stunning. 

cheers Harry. I'll take a look.

The little snippet of Mazzy Stars "into dust" towards the end of episode 2 fitted in with the scenery really well, I thought.

youtube.com/watch?v=SiO_7LhPZFM&

Thanks for that link, so beautiful.

An enjoyable series.

It also had a satisfactory ending unlike two others I've liked but ended at a seemingly unplanned point in the story: The Old Man, and Tokyo Vice.

Well filmed, had a good feel about it, and was a welcome novel take on wild west life, but I got increasingly irritated by the complexity of the plot and its telling. It certainly requires you to stay alert, and perhaps I just like simpler and more accessible narratives, but it lost me somewhere in the middle and by the end I was watching more for the sake of finishing than to find out what happens.

Yes, very good stuff. But perhaps one less episode would have done it?

Yes I felt like that as well but overall I thought it was excellent.  Another one to watch out for is "Old Henry".  Set at the turn of the 20th century involving a well known western character. Once the premise of the film is accepted it is very authentic.

I looked it up the other week when we watched it, filmed in Spain apparently! But then weren't all the classic Spaghetti Westerns filmed in Spain and not Italy? 

Some parts of Spain may actually be classified as desert (or as near as damnit). With climate change even more so, perhaps.

I believe that many of the spaghetti westerns were filmed in the area above El Chorro.  El Chorro itself was used for some of the shots in the film  Von Ryans Express.

Has anyone noticed the similarities to the 'Dollar' films. The opening credits are a giveaway as is some of the photography.

I just looked it up and apparently the Sergio Leone films were made a bit further east in the Tabernas Desert near Almeria. I agree about El Chorro and Von Ryan. When I went to El Torcal it reminded me of another film location, possibly one of those Ray Harryhausen stop motion things (Clash of the Titans?).

Tokyo Vice was excellent and there's a second season in the works.

Agree, very good. However I was trying to make the point of an unsatisfactory ending to the series......everything was just as undecided as between individual episodes. Also with many series no decision is made about a follow up until S1 is completed which could be quite annoying if we never discover what happens.

I’m pretty sure they were filmed near Almeria in between the sea and Sierra Nevada. This nearly 4000m range may well have an effect on the rainfall. It does look for all the world like US desert states. Also there’s still the small town constructed for filming spaghetti westerns with a western visitor centre, which kind of gives a clue.

The Dollar Westerns (and original Djangos) and many others became known as Spagetti Westerns because the studios, staff and much of the money were from Italy but the exteriors were shot in the Tabernas Desert and other parts of Almeria in Spain. On a trip to visit friends down there pre-Covid we spent time exploring and visiting many of the locations, some of which are absolutely unchanged. Reputedly something like 170 Western movies were made in that area. There are at least two 'towns' built as film sets which are now visitor attractions and the one we visited, Fort Bravo (owned by an ex actor and stuntman), was actually a lot of fun (better than expected) and they do recreation gunfights, offer rides in horse-drawn buggies etc, you can also just wander around seeing how the buildings were constructed as film sets. There is even a small town, Los Albaricoques, which became Agua Caliente in the second Dollars movie, where many of the streets have been renamed in tribute, so you can walk down Calle Clint Eastwood or Avenida Sergio Leone or Calle Lee Van Cleef. 

Fantastic last episode, I thought. Altogether stellar.