Mal and Phil Adams’ column on Saturday started the night bingeing of KIN - Irish gang series
Elephant in the room
Philip’s mate Kerry Packer was so convinced of his ugliness he would compare himself to Jozef Merrick, the so-called Elephant Man. Kerry survived childhood polio with a palsied cheek that few, if any, noticed, but he believed that political cartoonists did. During his darkest days in the 1980s, after he was forced to self-identify as the business codenamed “the Goanna” in the Costigan Royal Commision, cartoons of Packer loomed large on editorial pages and he’d stare bitterly at them.
We were sitting in his study when Kerry Packer made a confession. “I’ve had a phone call from Idi Amin,” he said….
A decent Irish mob drama. Kinahan Kin boasts a tight-knit ensemble cast of Irish power players. The acting is superb and grounded, but with this cast, that's to be expected. It's simply an opportunity to watch some gifted actors do what they do, very well, with a story that glides along in entertaining but unoriginal manner.
Not many bingers swallow all 8 series at one night as Jozef Patrick did,
Is there a limited number of possible stories when it comes to gangster dramas? Kin certainly acts like it. Plot-wise, it’s an entirely paint-by-numbers affair; anyone who’s seen a contemporary tale about mobsters, gangsters, or any like-minded group of relatives who like to keep criminal wrongdoing in the family, will surely see most of the major narrative turns coming long before they arrive.
From the inter-familial dynamics to the inciting incident that kicks off a serious turf struggle among warring elements of Irish drug cartels in Dublin, there’s very little here that fans of the genre won’t have seen before. So thank goodness, then, that the show packs its roster with ace character actors and potent, charismatic performers, each one giving their all to this fairly generic material. They make the shopworn clichés sing, once again proving that, with the right cast, even halfway-decent material can come alive.
A boy is killed and his family embarks on a gangland war with an international cartel; but the Kinsellas have something the cartel does not: the unbreakable bonds of blood and family.
The show kicks off with the return of a prodigal son: Michael Kinsella, Charlie Cox, has recently been paroled, following his incarceration for some unknown but apparently fairly notorious act of violence.
Spoiler alert as on Kin Season 1 Episode 8, Amanda takes over as head of the Kinsella crime family and becomes one of Dublin's most powerful -- and dangerous -- people.
But for Amanda to rise, others had to fall.
The critically acclaimed gangland drama has been confirmed for a second season which will go into production this summer
Kin star Yasmin Seky keeping job at bank after catapulting to fame on the RTE hit crime drama
As Old As Sin
On Franz Kafka's The Trial
Here’s the first surprise: the trial itself, Jozef K.’s famous trial, that most nightmarishly oppressive of Kafka’s inventions, just isn’t that bad. You saw the book’s cover, with its menacing collage of black. You glanced at the description on the back: “chilling,” “horror,” “totalitarianism.” Finally you read the opening line, redolent of Stalin and The Crucible: “Someone must have slandered Jozef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” And then: nothing.
Even K. is surprised. Although at first he feels “assaulted” by the two guards who place him under arrest, in fact, beyond asking for a bribe of his pajamas, they turn out to be reassuring. When the inspector arrives, he formally announces the arrest, but, lacking any further explanation, tells K. to go back to work. “How can I go to the bank,” K. asks, “if I’m under arrest?” Yes, he’s under arrest, the inspector explains, but that’s not to stop him from working or going about his life however he wants. “Then being under arrest isn’t so bad,” K. says. The inspector replies: “I never said it was.”
Equifax signs data agreement with ATO
The deal will provide customers with tax default data so that they can assess debt risk more accurately.
