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Bring Me the Head of Albert Finney
Jun. 1st, 2025 11:56 amHaving finished Karaoke, I’m now watching the sequel series (shot concurrently), Cold Lazarus. It’s another four-parter, and I watched the first two episodes last night. Thoughts so far:
I kind of miss the campy set-dressing and costumes of 1990s futurism; this would pair well with Wild Palms (which I still need to watch all the way through). Lots of big screens and VR helmets, nary a hand-held device in sight— well, there are a couple of wristbands.
The premise is that Dan Feelds arranged to have himself cryogenically frozen upon his death, shortly after the events of Karaoke, and now he’s a frozen head in a lab in a dystopian world about four centuries later. An underfunded team of neurologists are trying to extract his memories, whole having earnest discussions about whether or not his mind is still conscious in there.
It’s evident that he is starting to notice, and he’s none too happy about his situation, particularly since the memories they’ve been dredging up include having been sexually abused as a child by a man who also killed his dog; and we haven’t even got to the other tragic stuff that Karaoke hinted he had in his past. Plus, we’ve already seen that his last deathbed request was “No biography,” and that he was floating towards the bright light at the end of the tunnel before he got flash-frozen.
On a more humourous/surreal note, Dan in the flashback scenes is sometimes played by a child actor (who also plays Dan’s twin brother Chris) and sometimes by Finney, and it’s kind of adorable watching the latter scamper through the woods with his dog in a happier moment before it all goes nasty.
Meanwhile one of the villains is Martina Masdon, an over-the-top Big Pharma baroness with a taste for Mae-West-esque outfits and scatological metaphors (thoughts on the latter below); the actor playing her boytoy appears to be having great fun wandering about with a dopey golden-retriever expression, wearing a leash and collar and what looks like a cling-wrap loincloth. She’s got an equally colorful rival in the form of a studio mogul who’s discovered what her scientists are up to, and thinks he can make a fortune selling Dan’s memories—the future is starved for real emotions and experiences.
Oh, there’s also a rebel group called Reality Or Nothing, who so far seem to have no middle-ground tactics between spray-painting RON on walls, and slaughtering civilians (this series needs all the trigger warnings; and also one for Ciarán Hinds doing a Russian accent).
Stylistically, this one’s really different from the previous series, and while I normally hate Owl Creek Bridge “maybe the whole thing is the protagonist’s dying dream” explanations, it’d make sense in this case—Dan mentioned in the last episode of Karaoke that he was planning an SF script about cryogenics and virtual reality, and Martina’s constant anal analogies could be inspired by all the colonoscopies, etc, he was having to endure before his diagnosis.
Anyway, we shall see in the second half.
I kind of miss the campy set-dressing and costumes of 1990s futurism; this would pair well with Wild Palms (which I still need to watch all the way through). Lots of big screens and VR helmets, nary a hand-held device in sight— well, there are a couple of wristbands.
The premise is that Dan Feelds arranged to have himself cryogenically frozen upon his death, shortly after the events of Karaoke, and now he’s a frozen head in a lab in a dystopian world about four centuries later. An underfunded team of neurologists are trying to extract his memories, whole having earnest discussions about whether or not his mind is still conscious in there.
It’s evident that he is starting to notice, and he’s none too happy about his situation, particularly since the memories they’ve been dredging up include having been sexually abused as a child by a man who also killed his dog; and we haven’t even got to the other tragic stuff that Karaoke hinted he had in his past. Plus, we’ve already seen that his last deathbed request was “No biography,” and that he was floating towards the bright light at the end of the tunnel before he got flash-frozen.
On a more humourous/surreal note, Dan in the flashback scenes is sometimes played by a child actor (who also plays Dan’s twin brother Chris) and sometimes by Finney, and it’s kind of adorable watching the latter scamper through the woods with his dog in a happier moment before it all goes nasty.
Meanwhile one of the villains is Martina Masdon, an over-the-top Big Pharma baroness with a taste for Mae-West-esque outfits and scatological metaphors (thoughts on the latter below); the actor playing her boytoy appears to be having great fun wandering about with a dopey golden-retriever expression, wearing a leash and collar and what looks like a cling-wrap loincloth. She’s got an equally colorful rival in the form of a studio mogul who’s discovered what her scientists are up to, and thinks he can make a fortune selling Dan’s memories—the future is starved for real emotions and experiences.
Oh, there’s also a rebel group called Reality Or Nothing, who so far seem to have no middle-ground tactics between spray-painting RON on walls, and slaughtering civilians (this series needs all the trigger warnings; and also one for Ciarán Hinds doing a Russian accent).
Stylistically, this one’s really different from the previous series, and while I normally hate Owl Creek Bridge “maybe the whole thing is the protagonist’s dying dream” explanations, it’d make sense in this case—Dan mentioned in the last episode of Karaoke that he was planning an SF script about cryogenics and virtual reality, and Martina’s constant anal analogies could be inspired by all the colonoscopies, etc, he was having to endure before his diagnosis.
Anyway, we shall see in the second half.
