You may or may not have heard me raving about Acorn TV. This is where you can find all those great British shows you remember from years ago on PBS—Poldark, for example, I, Claudius, or Jeeves and Wooster—and also some new crime stories that you may have missed. Things that were produced in, say, New Zealand, such as the show I've been binge-watching for the last couple of days.
The Blue Rose is a rip-snorter. It takes place in Auckland, NZ. Unlike with some of the offerings from the UK, the dialog is perfectly easy to understand, only slightly accented; New Zealanders say "dith" for "death" and "suspict" for "suspect." I'm not going to fill you in on most of the plot because much of the pleasure comes from the dizzying twists and turns. But the basic premise is as follows: Young Jane reports to the sinister law office on Monday to work as a temp, or "timp," as they say, only to find that Rose, the woman she's replacing, was found drowned over the weekend.
Rose's associates turn up at the office, fight with each other, and express interest in the contents of her desk: her ex-husband, her biker-chick bist frind, the Indian IT guy from his grubby office in the cellar. Everyone seems guilty of something. Jane herself has an ulterior motive for taking the job. Rose, of course, was murdered. Who dunnit? Villains appear only to morph into good guys. Good guys turn bad. It's hard to know who to trust, but eventually a cadre of trustworthy friends shakes out and forms a society: The Blue Rose. Everybody gets matching tattoos. They pledge themselves to right wrongs as well as finding Rose's killer, and goodness knows there are plenty of wrongs to be righted.
It's not your average legal thriller. $4.99 a month gets you membership in Acorn TV. All their offerings are worth watching. I mean, compare that to cable. If you're into chucking the cable and relying on the computer this can be part of your strategy.
© 2015 Kate Gallison
This membership sounds very interesting - but in Manhattan we are required to pay for cable TV or we get zero reception. I am on the cheapest plan, the Spanish TV - but I get a lot of English stations - my absolute fave is Ch. 31 on Time Warner - that shows all the reruns of Blue Bloods and I am totally, completely hooked on this show. I'll do anything to watch it! It plays all day Thursdays - and by nightfall I am washed out with all the emoting and adoring of the characters... esp. Tom Selleck who is the Commish of the NYPD and my hero in this series! Swoon. Swoon!! tjstraw
ReplyDeleteYou can't get TV in Lambertville without cable or a dish, either, because we're right next to a big rocky hill that messes up the signal. The cable company and the satellite companies keep raising their rates, which I find annoying and nervy (you know how cheap I am, anyway). Right now we have a dish.
ReplyDeleteThe cool thing about sites like Acorn TV and the Metopera site is that you don't need anything but internet connectivity to access them. If you have a reasonably fast connection you can stream their shows. (Click on Acorn TV in the blog above to see how it works.) The day is coming soon when we can get weather, news, and all the entertainment we can handle over the internet, whereupon the cable company can go chase itself.