Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[jian]

I was avoiding Steal because poor Sophie Turner looks distracting levels of awful with flat pale blonde hair and the male leads are not actors I have seen give good performances (except maybe Andrew Koji), but maybe I'll look at that when I've finished Slow Horses. Well that and it's on Amazon so I sort of just pre-emptively assumed it was pretty bad (because most of their non-IP-based shows have been).

Turner really holds the show together - it’s a very strong performance, and it’s supported by the fact that she looks like a very stressed office worker who doesn’t look after herself and gets no sleep, because that’s exactly who her character is.

(On the other hand Rhys, who is a DI who gambles all night and also gets no sleep, pretty much always looks like he has regular facials and moisturises. Much like Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager, who looks perfectly groomed even when he’s been shot a couple of times and then crawled through the jungle for a few hours. Mind you, the point of his character in the second series is that he has 18/00 Cha so that works.)

(Turner clearly has dark roots in Steal so I think she’s naturally a brunette.)

I was slightly irritated by a review of Steal in Digital Spy by someone who clearly didn’t care about plot consistency and who just wanted more cool character moments. Steal has plenty of the latter but they’re all great because it puts the work in with foreshadowing and development, and if there were more of them I think they’d be less effective. I can only assume the reviewer watched this like a Netflix show, half-watching while reading their phone, which I very much recommend not doing with Steal.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But is it twee? Everything about it right down to the casting screamed "twee"? And my tolerance for twee is like, negative. A really good show that happens to be twee AF is a really bad show to me - I'm looking at you Pushing Daisies! Clearly a good show, couldn't stand it!

No, it's about marriage, trust, murder for hire, etc. It maintains a pleasant 21st century yuppified veneer, but it's pretty dark, especially the last few episodes of the season, when some of the oddities early on turn out to be seeds for later twists. And it ends very dark.

I don't find any part of it twee, although it does feel very gentrified modern NYC.

 

[payn]

Yes, Steal does this a lot. The first episode with the heist where you start thinking “that’s silly, you can’t just break into a pension fund office and transfer £4bn, there are all sorts of checks” immediately then walks you through how it works, very convincingly. They even have a Stingray for diverting mobiles (but don’t even explain what it is).

The writer then keeps this up throughout - how cold wallets with crypto work, how police use CCTV to track vehicles and their limitations, etc. - while also doing clever plotting and twists to keep you entertained and having some very clear things to say about inequality and the financial system. I’d really recommend it.

I remember thinking what’s up with their faces…oh it’s to throw off facial recognition and then it’s called out later in a scene by LE. Nice attention to details.

I was avoiding Steal because poor Sophie Turner looks distracting levels of awful with flat pale blonde hair and the male leads are not actors I have seen give good performances (except maybe Andrew Koji), but maybe I'll look at that when I've finished Slow Horses. Well that and it's on Amazon so I sort of just pre-emptively assumed it was pretty bad (because most of their non-IP-based shows have been).

I was pleasantly surprised by Steal.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think that’s her natural colour, or something close. GoT certainly wasn’t.

I looked into it - her natural hair as a grown-up is actually pretty close to mine - a quite dark blonde but hers has more red in it than mine did (the grey-en-ing has commenced < weeps >), which means it narrowly dodges being "mouse brown" (aka grey-brown aka dark blonde), so the Steal look is a ton lighter and flatter in colour.

I will say that Steal colour does scream "burned out office worker" which seems to be character-appropriate!

 

[jian]

I remember thinking what’s up with their faces…oh it’s to throw off facial recognition and then it’s called out later in a scene by LE. Nice attention to details.

I was pleasantly surprised by Steal.

Yes, it’s not explained for ages why their faces look like that (they all look as if they have acromegaly or similar) until after the heist, and almost in passing, you could easily miss it if you haven’t worked it out.

 

[Aeson]

Movies shouldn't set up for a sequel unless they know for sure there will be one. Predator: Badlands I'm looking at you. It's not the only one but it's the most recent one I've seen.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Movies shouldn't set up for a sequel unless they know for sure there will be one. Predator: Badlands I'm looking at you. It's not the only one but it's the most recent one I've seen.

The Predator movies generally end with a cliffhanger of some sort. And usually it does not lead directly into a sequel, even when there is one (AvP is an exception). If there is another Predator movie I wouldn’t expect it to be a direct continuation of Badlands.

 

[Ryujin]

Movies shouldn't set up for a sequel unless they know for sure there will be one. Predator: Badlands I'm looking at you. It's not the only one but it's the most recent one I've seen.

Sometimes the opposite happens, as well. They line up the end of a movie as if there's going to be a sequel and they really should have stopped there. "The Matrix" is that, for me.

 

[jian]

Sometimes the opposite happens, as well. They line up the end of a movie as if there's going to be a sequel and they really should have stopped there. "The Matrix" is that, for me.

I personally think Steal has a brilliant setup for a sequel, perhaps as a Person of Interest type series, but the writer didn’t go there in the ending, which is probably wise.

 

[payn]

I personally think Steal has a brilliant setup for a sequel, perhaps as a Person of Interest type series, but the writer didn’t go there in the ending, which is probably wise.

yeaaah, im so glad they didnt go there. I like the idea of a limited series more and more these days.