Lockwood & co. season 1

I’m not sure how to describe/review this series because I didn’t love it, but I would have watched a season 2 for sure, had they made one. Netflix cancelled it. I must ask them all, stop making cliffhanger endings unless it’s sure there will be a second season, because from now on I will ask around if a series has a finale or not, and not watch it if it doesn’t have one, it’s very annoying.

The characters/actors weren’t the best, but were also intriguing enough that I wanted to watch more.

The George character was really sacrificed, I never felt all that friendship towards him because he was barely in. They could have showed simple, quick images of how they got to know/work together in that first year together that we don’t see at the beginning. Quick images to show us how close the three of them had become, in a way, how closely they worked, anything.

Other than that, it was nice to.-)

1- Lucy Carlysle is 13 when her mother, if I can use such a word for her, sells her to an agency. Lucy has the gift of ‘listening’, very useful in this world where ‘the Problem’ is a big thing, ghosts are real and can be seen and heard, can kill or cause people to fall into a vegetative state. Apparently only minors can have the gifts to fight them, so the adults use them. Lucy’s mom gets all her wages while she trains and risks her life every day. Luckily she finds comrades in arms and also a best friend, Norrie, but their adult supervisor Jacobs is only good for drinking. When they find a ‘visitor’ much more dangerous than they were told, she’s sent back to Jacobs for help. When she runs back she finds them dying and Norrie unresponsive. Jacobs sees it all but doesn’t help, he shuts them in and goes away scared. Still, at the trial he blames it all on Lucy, so she’s fired. Of course her ‘mother’ cares nothing about the truth or what she feels and only cares about the money, insisting she’ll have to apologize and beg for her job back, so Lucy runs away to the big city, London. Unfortunately, without a parent or proper documents nobody even listens to her. Her last chance is a new agency, Lockwood and Co., and she’s hired. Both Lockwood and his friend George are teenagers like her, and there’s no adult supervisor here. One year later, Lucy and Lockwood work together to free a haunted house, but during the work the house catches on fire and they flee. Lucy got strange emotions and images from this ghost, she feels something, so when they find the woman’s corpse inside a wall, Lucy takes her ring.

2-

Lucy is brought to a hospital but sneaks out after a nurse says she tried to call her mother. Lockwood is told the insurance will not pay for the damages to the house because they didn’t follow the right procedure - well, it’s true that they didn’t have the chains - so they have to pay 60.000 pounds in two weeks. George thinks Lucy is too weird and things got worse/weirder since she’s with them. The ring, not the body, is the source of the ghost who appears in their house so now she has to tell them about it.

For some reason the inspectors are very much against the Lockwood agency. They tell Lockwood to fire her because she’s not qualified - true, and he knows it. They tell her to go home because Lockwood is a charlatan - but still better than home.

Lucy tells her story to George so now he understands her. To raise the money, Lockwood chooses to solve the ring-ghost case: she was an actress, Annabel, 40 years ago then she was murdered, and even though Lucy asked him to leave her name out of it, he named her on tv. 

She connected with the ring and felt how Annabel’s lover choked her to death. Lucy almost leaves, sure they don’t want her and don’t really value her, but Lockwood gets her to stay and promises to always tell her the truth. Someone breaks into their house to steal Annabel’s ring. Lockwood put it in the basement, but Lucy took it back so she still has it.

3-

Not only they owe 60.000 pounds, but they can’t do anything without adult supervision, so Lockwood accepts a job from rich Fairfax who need professionalism and confidentiality, to be done in secret without telling the inspectors. This ‘country house’ is huge and ‘a lot’ has happened there over the years, and those who tried to do the job before, all died. There’s great danger but together they make it, thanks to Lucy who finds a hidden door first and then the source, and thanks to the bomb Lockwood smuggled inside. It’s not a triumph though because Lockwood realized they got it wrong before, in the last episode they accused an actor working with Annabel but no, it was Fairfax who killed her, who sent his assistant to steal the ring and who now tried to have them killed by his house. Before they can go out, Fairfax is there with a rifle demanding the ring. Afraid he might shoot Lockwood, Lucy stands up and shows them all she has the ring. She tosses the ring in the air an Annabel comes out and kills Fairfax, then she vanishes when they lock the ring away. Inspectors come and even some important man, and many things are taken away. At first the three are arrested, but then they’re let go free after they sign a document, to never speak of what happened. George and Lucy are relieved that their debt has been paid and they don’t need supervision anymore, but Lockwood is upset because they can’t talk about it and they’re not named in the case, and Fairfax’s name will somehow come out clean. As boss of his agency, Lockwood promotes Lucy to 4th grade, so now she’s qualified, but then she stupidly unlocks something in the skull case and she faints. 

4-

Lucy sleeps for 14 hours or such, and at first doesn’t remember anything that happened. They’re hired to open an unknown grave and contain the ghost within: it’s all metal with chains and stuff, just like they do nowadays to protect against ghosts, only this man died like 100 year ago, a long time before the Problem started. There’s also a mirror that enchants George for a moment, but he sees the ancient writing and is excited to translate it: “the truth lies beyond”. George knows who the man is and a lot of things that I’m not sure when he figured it out, but he shows his knowledge to outshine the Fittes squad. Still, the inspector decides to have both teams on the case, because the mirror has disappeared. Lockwood and the squad leader, whatever his name, really can’t stand each other, and they make a bet so who fails to solve the case first loses the bet and can not work anymore. During the opening of the grave Lucy starts remembering stuff, and once home she goes downstairs to open the skull container, just a bit, and indeed the skull talks to her. It’s incredible, she’s freaking out and excited all at once, because there’s only one person in the world who can talk to type-3 ghosts, Marissa Fittes the legend. The fact that Lucy can do it means she’s really powerful, and both boys do not believe her. Well, at first Lockwood wanted to consider the case closed and was arguing with George who insisted on translating the inscription, so neither boy was in the best, most open state of mind, but Lucy felt bad. She questioned if he minded so much the idea of being n.2, or something like that, and he told her that if she kept questioning him or his locked room upstairs, they’d be done! I guess he feels bad about it later because he goes to her room to take care of the wound on her arm, and admits that for someone who likes the spotlight so much it’s hard to realize that his role is to give the spotlight to someone else.

He tells her “I was orphaned at the age of 6. So, all I can say is I don’t really enjoy talking about my past, and that’s what’s behind that door” and “the problem is, when you like the spotlight as much as I do, it’s quite an adjustment to realize that the real reason you might be here is to shine it on somebody else”.

5-

George is obsessed with that mirror, keeps thinking about it. Lockwood and Lucy meet Flo, a relic hunter he knows, for information. Since they found Danny’s corpse, they’re now looking for his partner. I think Danny helped Lockwood once, and then he became… a relic hunter? I think. To find his partner Jac, they leave a message on a wall as Flo suggests, but when Jack shows up at their house, it’ll be too late. Jack has been stabbed and can only say a few words before dying. Anthony and Lucy also checked the warehouse of some relic hunters to see if they have the mirror, and when he talks to a young boy a woman sort of tasers him and he wakes up on some sort of electric chair. A man wants to know who he is, who he works for and how he found them, the obvious things, but he doesn’t say much. Then Lucy is captured, basically the same way, and all of a sudden Lockwood is all ‘kill me but let her go’ and when she saves them both - because she wakes up much quicker than he did - and they’re out, she questions what was he doing, trying to get himself killed, and what is happening to him…

6-

Jack Carver mentioned a bone glass, and they’re now researching it. George tells them about Bickerstaff, a respected clinician and psychiatrist. Mary Dulac went to one of his meetings and disappeared, and reappeared many years later completely mad. The skull wants Lucy to free him, and he calls Bickerstaff ‘his master’, and leads her around his house, Bickerstaff’s house, in search of his documents. George studies the papers: Bickerstaff was studying the sources, “murdering his own patients to make sources”, but simply doing that would not guarantee the bodies would become sources, so he took “parts of them whilst they were still alive” to make sure, that would indeed cause lots of trauma. Seven ghosts, the recipe for the bone glass. George also found out Dulac wrote a book and the only copy is “in the black library at Fittes”. Luckily they’ve been invited to their ball for their 50th anniversary. Kipps, the Fittes squad leader, offers her a job and asks her to the ball, and also out for a coffee, but she turns him down. At the ball, Penelope Fittes also offers her a job, but Lucy refuses. When Lockwood sees Norrie’s picture and they talk  about her, he asks “you lost her?” - “ghost locked” - “you never said” - “never asked”, and indeed he never did. She told George because he asked, but Lockwood never did. He gives her a necklace: “it belonged to someone I was very close to”. According to Penelope, she made sure Jacobs “will never be in charge of agents ever again”…

Lockwood and Lucy find the book in the library but then a man comes in. They hide, but he sees the map Lockwood used - how did he get that map anyway? maybe George made it for them…- so they have to fight a bit and escape. The guy has a gold, or golder, rapier. 

7-

Flo told them last episode of a private relic auction for tonight, os they all go, them three and Flo to help them.They sneak in and are found out by an undercover agent, like a policeman, investigating humans, who warns them to go away. She’d go, understanding the situation, but Lockwood refuses, he wants to get the mirror. They argue, she says he’s obsessed with winning. “yeah, of course I care about winning, I have to, I don’t have anyone around me to pick up the pieces if I fail” and “if there are things I haven’t told you about myself, it’s probably for your own good”. But she’s not having it. “Two hours ago, at that party, you were petrified at the thought of me leaving you. You made me believe that you, me and George could be a family. But Lockwood & co. can never be that, because at the center of it is you. And at the center of you is just a…” - “is what? A cold, dead heart of stone?” - “yeah, maybe, but who knows, though? ‘cause you don’t actually show anyone” - “nothing good comes from letting people in. Everything ends and everyone leaves. When my time comes, I don’t intend on leaving anyone behind who’s gonna lie there every night wishing I would just walk through that door one more time” - “then you never should have let me in. Or George. Because now it’s far too late”. They wear the cloak and hood like all the buyers, and witness the auction.

So… the bone glass is the mirror, it’s just one item, not two, they’re looking for.

He’s found out, she causes a diversion, and he takes the mirror. The agent dies to help them escape. Lockwood is shocked “they just killed him like that” and “what did he die for?”. Lucy: “because they’re bastards!” - “it’s because I am”.

Flo helps George realize he’s bsessed with the mirror. Lockwood and Lucy have to fight the man with the golden rapier - Lucy helps a lot - then they throw George and Flo the mirror and escape by jumping in the river from the roof.

Flo takes George to Deprac’s door - the inspector or whatever - but he can’t give the mirror away, she underestimated its power.

8-

Lockwood thinks it’s over, Lucy is very upset because now every relic hunter is after them. He apologizes. They read Mary’s book, she’s the one who killed Bickerstaff, and she explains about the mirror: it’s actually a window, she wrote, “since that glimpse, I am damned. All I want to see is more” and they finally realize that George is under its spell. George has gone to the cemetery, to Bickerstaff. 

Lucy says: “can’t stand mirrors, there’s always this stupid girl staring back at me” :lol:

Lockwood and three of Kipps team stay out to fight the bad guys while Lucy goes down to the catacombs to save George. The skull tells her he was there when the mirror was created but he was never so fool as to look into it: “the way to look is with someone else’s eyes, someone weak, someone curious, someone vulnerable”.

George trusted Joplin, believed her a scientist just like him. She does want to know, and she planned to use George whether he wanted to look in the mirror or not, but since they met Kipps - and George helped him because he’s growing up and losing his talent - she plans to have Kipps look into the mirror… until she learns about him losing his talent. George understands that she killed Carver because he sold the precious mirror instead of giving it to her. Before Lockwood can go down, the man with the golden rapier calls him insignificant like his parents and shoots him. With a gun. 

Lucy begs Joplin to use her, to let her look in the mirror ad not George. But then, when Joplin uncovers the mirror, Lucy turns her head and puts the skull in front of the mirror. Joplin looks into the mirror, vanishes and when the mirror breaks, the seven ghosts go away, finally free. But Bickerstaff’s ghost is now free of his chains, somehow, but Lockwood comes to help and saves theem. For some reason, Lockwood doesn’t tell inspector Barnes who shot him. Anyway, the case is closed, bad guys arrested. Kipps and Lockwood make peace.

The man with the golden rapier was of course working for Penelope - we did see him with her before - Lucy keeps sending voice tapes to Norrie, she’s glad she was wrong in thinking George hated her, and also glad that even though “Lockwood almost died1000 times, but I think he’s decided he’s better off alive, which is really good”. Lockwood tells them “the golden blade” shot him and that “he mentioned my parents, said their deaths were insignificant, like mine would be” and he also wants to show them  both the locked room… but of course it ends here, we would know if there was a season 2 but Netflix cancelled it, who knows why. 

Pamela Joplin is Louise Brealey (Sherlock’s Molly Hooper)

Inside man - miniseries 2022

I’m afraid  it can’t be a totally positive review. It’s well made, thrilling and everything, but all based on a premise that is so so wrong it is hard to accept, both Harry and Ben act in such a wrong way… I mean, I don’t know if maybe this is normal behavior for an English kid, but I am so very sure that Harry acted in such a wrong wrong way, it is hard to just accept it. After that, everything that happens is a consequence, because he didn’t know how to turn back to the right way. The chilling thing is that Harry thinks, and is sure of this, that he tried to do the right thing all along, that he did it to protect people… and look at how he helped Edgar, he caused him so much distress that he hanged himself! People out there, if someone is troubled, this is not the right way to help! How much troubled? Edgar knows it’s wrong, but he can’t stop looking at ped+pornography, and Harry telling him to stop is no more helpful than when his mother tells him the same thing, has anyone ever stopped taking drugs simply because someone told them to stop it, just like that, on their own, a simple decision and voilà, they stopped?

Harry tried to protect Edgar in the worst possible way, by covering for him. I could understand it for a moment, for as long as they thought it was just simple porn in that usb key, but once they learned what was really in there, then no, covering is no more acceptable. 

More comments to follow. 

There are only four episodes, but three would have been better, there were scenes to fill the time.

1-

It’s a psychological drama where a vicar who at first tries to do the right thing, or what seems right to him but is actually not, ends up in a terrible situation he can’t get out of. He’s a British vicar liked by everyone, he has a wife, Mary, and a teenage son, Ben, that he loves. He pays good money for Janice to give Ben Maths lessons. Well, Ben says 70£ but I don’t really know how long she stays, it’s a lot for just  an hour but maybe it’s not or maybe she usually stays longer… still seems a lot though.

One Sunday Edgar runs to Harry begging him to hide a usb key because there’s porn inside it and his mother is coming, and she will check everywhere. Reluctantly, Harry takes it and leaves. Edgar is a very troubled young man and his fanatic mom doesn’t help, it rather reminds me of Carrie’s mother, although to be honest this one does have a reason. She still goes at it the wrong way.

Harry drives Janice home from the train station, and empties his pockets as soon as he enters. When Janice  says she needs to give Ben some files but there is no connection, he grabs the usb that Harry left in the coin tray and gives it to her. She plugs it in before Harry has time to stop it. This is the only bit I didn’t really understand so far: Ben barely looks at them: Janice’s shocked face and Harry’s embarrassed one and lies saying that it’s his key, it’s just porn, dad didn’t know, apparently totally oblivious to what is going on. Now I wonder, is it really normal for Ben to think that Harry carries porn in his pockets? No jokes, and the question is not if Harry ever watches it or not, the question is: is it common for a teenage boy to see his teacher’s surprised face and quickly jump to the obvious conclusion that his father keeps porn in that drive? It wasn’t just a joke, at the end of the show he’s still sure that’s what it was. This was a very weird scene for me, maybe he thought it was the only thing that could shock so much his unmarried teacher? Or the only thing that could worry/embarrass his father so much? Well, he’s a teenager boy, point there, but I don’t like how it was played, it doesn’t sound normal when listening to it the first time. It may make sense now thinking about it and all, but when watching it I didn’t like it. 

Anyway, I could clearly see that it was something else, Janice looked really shocked. She wants Ben out of the room and then she speaks to Harry and reveals that there’s children in the videos, that’s horrible abuse. Of course she thinks ben is involved, he just said so himself, so Harry tries desperately to convince her that he’s not. Harry tries to tell her the usb key is not Ben’s, a guy gave it to him in the Church, but he won’t reveal Edgar’s name because he once tried to kill himself, and Harry wants to protect him - and what a good job he did of that, huh? Edgar needed real help, while all that time he was left alone to deal with it all by himself and he obviously wasn’t strong enough, had Harry gone to the police things would have changed for Edgar too, maybe he could have received the hep he desperately needed. And those children too deserved more than a: let’s just ignore there’s this stuff here and not think about it.

She wants to go away, Harry won’t let her until he can persuade her of the truth. She gets scared of him blocking her way, he insists, keeps her there because he’s sure that she’ll go straight to the police accusing Ben. Somehow, for some reason, he opens the door leading to the basement and she falls down the stairs. He closes the door. (Did he open it on purpose, did he make her fall? I’m not sure, I thought she fell but am not sure).

He tells Ben to go to his party, that Janice went away, and when Mary comes back home he tells her everything. Harry hopes to record Edgar’s voice admitting that the usb key is his so he’ll finally convince Janice and let her go. Edgar is so troubled, he can’t admit it, not to the vicar, not to God or even to himself out loud, so Harry does the only thing he can think of: he tells Edgar to put it all in his computer (Harry’s) so he’ll take the blame. His wife is vehemently against this but he insists it’s the only thing he can do. He even downloads and prints more of that horror to make the lie more believable, but it’s all useless. When people tell him that Edgar hanged himself and named him in his last note, he hopes he confessed and that this will convince Janice that Ben’s got nothing to do with it, but no, Edgar couldn’t say it; Edgar only wanted it to stop and didn’t want the vicar to take the blame for him so he wrote not to believe the vicar because he’s protecting “someone else”. Making things even worse, but he couldn’t know.

Harry and Mary talk about it but he sees no way out to protect Ben, so he puts an old heater in the basement “to keep her warm”, but actually because it’s sort of broken and the carbon monoxide will kill her. He locks the door even if she’s handcuffed and puts tape all around the door and on the lock, not knowing that Ben is in there. Since his parents had been acting weird and he himself saw Janice’s bag in the house, he decided to look around - they never locked the basement door before - and found Janice all bloody and handcuffed. Actually nobody really hurt her physically, she did it to herself so that Harry would know it wouldn’t be easy because now her blood in everywhere and their house is known as her last appointment. She even hurt her head to make Harry believe that Mary hit her. Now Harry has locked Mary out of the house to protect her…he’s not even answering her calls. He sent her to get rid of Janice’s bag,  computer and jacket, and finding her keys Mary decided to bring them to Janice’s house.

Now, Tucci’s role: he’s Grieff, on death row in America because he strangled his wife and hid her head. He’s a reknown criminologist with great mental abilities that from time to time solves cases, if they meet his requirements. He tells Beth, British journalist who knows Janice, that it’s about “moral values”, to do something good without publicity. Beth wants to write about him, wants to see him in action, and tries to entice him with the story of her dear friend Janice who disappeared.. but she doesn’t really know that Janice really disappeared, she only received a weird picture very much out of focus, the last thing before Harry ‘accidentally’ broke her phone, but then she agreed to never speak about it to witness his next case, and he keeps his word. It’s the case of a girl wanting to know what happened to her father who disappeared five years before , not knowing that her mother killed him, even though she loved him, we don’t know why. Still, Grieff works on janice's case too. He has lots of people on the outside working for him, so he has a woman, who commits burglary for a living, take Beth to Janice’s house. Therefore, Beth is there when Mary enters the house with the key and without a sound reason for being there. What’s more, Ben calls her. Ben already tried calling his father, asking for the truth, but of course Harry lied. Ben has realized that things changed after he gave Janice that usb key, he knows that much at least, so he tries his mother and she tells him about the children, so Ben understands what happened. When Ben lets out that he’s with Janice, Mary loses it, she repeatedly calls Harry who doesn’t answer then she runs out followed by Beth. Mary can only  think of hurrying home to save Ben and wants Beth to leave her alone so she walks without looking and gets run over, killed, lots of blood on the street.  We don’t see how but Beth hurries to her house. Grieff also tried another way: he sent people to Harry’s house, only for some reason he didn’t say the real reason. He had lots of people doing what he asked,   and yet for this he decided to put on an elaborate scheme: he says that if they stop his execution he’ll reveal where he hid his wife’s head, he tells her father where it is, who apparently is something like a mafia boss, who sends some men. We are almost at the end.

Ben is losing his mind because of the poisoning, and he hits Janice with a hammer. Harry comes down to see if she’s dead and finds a delirious Ben. Harry starts saying again that he’ll take the blame for him, and Ben runs out only to stop and get sick. Beth runs to the house and it’ll take the investigative journalist a while to find the open door… she get downstairs in time to stop Harry who is about to kill Janice for good - in his mind, to protect Ben, for sure. Harry turns against her too, but here and now is when three men arrive expecting to dig out a woman’s head, while instead they save another woman’s life. Well, two now, with Beth.

Harry is, of course, arrested. Janice is still alive so he didn’t actually kill anybody, but still, it does not look good for him. 

During the credits, Janice comes to talk to Grieff. It’s been two weeks - since his execution is only a week away now - and she’ all better. She ays she wants his help with her husband's murder, who is alive but doesn’t deserve to be. 

When did that happen? She got married and regretted it in only two weeks? Or she was already but lied to everybody saying she wasn’t? Who knows, but if they’ll make a season two this is what it’ll have to be about. 

Now, first of all I want to say that if it may be true that under the ‘right’ circumstances everybody can kill, I do not agree with Harry’s actions at all, and I mean from the start. It did not help Edgar to hide everything and cover for him. He was troubled and fragile, yes, so much that if you really wanted to help him you should have provided medical support, experts, mental help, he could not do it alone, it was too big, it was tearing him apart, and it was even cruel to just tell him to stop, as if it was that easy. People must stop thinking that mental problems will go away if you just stop thinking about it! 

Also, the good vicar was not enough shocked at what Janice saw in those videos. She was right in being shocked, he should have been too, he should have gone to the police with her and explain everything and explain Edgar’s mental problems. Experts could have proven Edgar’s computer was used to download those videos and could have maybe followed those links to shut down those sites of horrors. Harry used them instead to download more!

It’s not really clear to me what did Janice have in mind. Well, the first injuries were a good idea, actually, it was a clear message: if I die, they’ll find lots of evidence here! But all the rest, hurting her head to make Harry believe Mary hurt her, give Harry her password so he could send an email to her sister to postpone their online meeting… what was her goal? And where did it lead?

Anyway, final words: the morale is that he may, perhaps, have had good intentions, but he went about it in a very wrong way; he ignored something awful but distant to him to try and help one boy that he knew personally; in spite of his words that he wanted to help Edgar, he never really tried, he only burdened him more.

He kept saying he wanted to protect his wife and son, and ended up in prison, with a dead wife and a seriously troubled son who’ll require serious therapy. 

Anyway, mabe this is jsut my weird mind, lots of people can probably relate or understand his actions. I don’t, like panic. I don’t understand how people could trumple on each other to death, even walk over children’s bodies in the name of panic… and I don’t really want to, I refuse to. 

I’m an Adhd woman and have to live with that.

By Steven Moffat. 

It has David Tennant as Harry, Stanley Tucci as Grieff, Dolly Wells as Janice, Lindsey Marshal as Mary and Louis Oliver as Ben.