DISQUS

newcritics: The New Atlantis

  • Dan Leo · 2 years ago
    I live with someone who is addicted to this show, but I've never seen more than odd scraps of it. Are you fucking telling me that now I have to go to the video store and start watching this from the beginning? Don't you realize that I've been reading "The Master and Margarita" for three weeks now and am only halfway through? That meanwhile I've been stalled in Volume V of Proust for about six months now? Oh, well, it's off to the video store now...
  • Neddie Jingo · 2 years ago
    Save yourself a trip. Your time's better spent with Bulgakov. I'm not gonna claim it's the world's most brilliant television program (that was Deadwood). It's actually rather pedestrian, the episode plots largely unsurprising, and the dialog mundane.

    But the "mystery" gimmick is pretty compelling. And the Enlightenment parallels have been fun to trace -- a recent minor character was named Edmund Burke, and I sprang into attention. When the NYRB article popped with that little Francis Bacon tidbit, I was immediately hooked -- it was so clearly a source for the show.
  • Dan Leo · 2 years ago
    Type your comment here.
  • Dan Leo · 2 years ago
    Whoa! Sorry for the blank comment -- I had dyslexia of the thumb. Just wanted to say thanks for letting me off the hook, there, Ned. The ghosts of Bulgakov and Proust thank you too.

    And Deadwood rocks.