Category: not a book

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: America’s Sweethearts

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Back to the streaming services this Sunday and a documentary that I actually watched basically as soon as it came out – but which has taken a few weeks to actually get posted because of things that were slightly more pressing on a time front. But actually it’s been really interesting to watch the conversations about this series over the last few weeks as well.

America’s Sweethearts is a seven part documentary series about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. It follows them across the course of one season – with auditions to join the team, the training camp that follows and then the actual football season. It picks out a couple of the women in particular to highlight – Victoria and to a lesser degree Madeleine, veterans whose mothers were also on the squad; Caroline, newly retired and trying to adjust to the post-DCC world and her sister Anna-Kate who is auditioning for the team herself this year; Kelcey, a senior veteran on the team in her final season and Reese, a rookie candidate looking to make the team for the first time. Using those women it explores the impact of being on the team – physically and mentally, the sisterhood of the women who have been a part of it, and the squad’s place in the multi-billion dollar brand that is the Dallas Cowboys.

This is not the first series about the team – there were previously 14 seasons of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team produced by the CMT channel. Both series were authorised by the organisation itself, the people running the team are the same – DCC director Kelli Finglass, chief choreographer Judy Trammell – both former DCC themselves – and their boss Charlotte Jones Anderson, daughter of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Even some of the cheerleaders on the squad are the same – the CMT show finished with the 2021 season and some of those women were still cheering last seaons – but the actual shows are very different.

Making the Team was very much a reality tv series in many ways – each season followed a similar structure: you started with the preliminary auditions and semi finals, it moved on to finals weekend where the re-auditioning veterans join the new hopefuls, then you move to training camp where across the next episodes the girls will learn the “signature dance” complete with kickline ending in the infamous jump splits, get make overs, be fitted for their uniforms, have their publicity photos taken and watch the rookie hopefuls get cut one by one to make a team of around 36. Some years you’ll also get to see auditions for the team’s show group – who get to do extra dance performances beyond the football games – or watch the veterans trip to a holiday resort to shoot the squad’s swimsuit calendar. The main focus of the show is on the fresh rookies – some will be completely new, others might be returners who were cut in previous years – and get a few glimpses of the cheerleaders you’ve followed in recent seasons.

And as you’ve probably guessed by comparing my descriptions of the two shows, they are quite different beasts. And not just because Netflix has paid for the music rights so you can finally be told that the “Signature dance” is actually known as Thunderstruck – because that’s the song that it is danced to*. The team behind America’s Sweethearts are using the structure of the season as a way of examining the idea of the squad as a whole.

And the appeal of the series goes way beyond the viewers of the old CMT series (something which the series’s subreddit is yet to come to terms with). What do I mean by that? well Him Indoors hated MTT with a burning passion – my sister and I watched it when he was out of the room – but he said he wanted to take a look at this series and see what it was like – and ended up watching the whole thing. A colleague at work who is a sports and documentary fan but not someone I would have expected to have watched it, had already watched it when I went to recommend it to him and described it as the best documentary series he’s watched this year.

And there are a lot of different things it is possible to take from watching it – hence why it’s spawed a thousand think pieces for you to read on the subject. There’s Vanity Fair’s The Agony and Ecstasy of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Show, Vox’s The ugly process of turning beautiful women into Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, The Guardian’s Do you struggle to accept rejection? We could all learn a lot from American Cheerleaders, USA Today’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Netflix show is addictive. Here’s why, The Globe and Mail’s The secret feminism of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and BBC News’s more simple America’s Sweethearts: Life after Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. And that’s just a small selection.

I could write paragraphs more about the show – but this post is already massively long, so I’m going to wrap it up here and hope that this is enough to get you to take a look at the series, no matter what your views on cheerleaders or American sport!

Have a great Sunday everyone.

*and for long-time viewers of MTT who (like me) have never made it to a Cowboys game, this does have a pretty much complete performance of Thunderstruck for you to enjoy and see how it all the various parts fit together. And yes, Kelli does also explain her Yes, No, Maybe scoring system for auditions. You’re welcome.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Kiss Me Kate

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I’ve got another theatre trip to tell you about this Sunday – because I had a fabulous night out at the Barbican on Friday night.

In case you haven’t encountered it before, Kiss Me, Kate is about a warring couple who are working together on a production of a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Fred and Lilli are divorced, and their relationship dynamic somewhat mirrors that of the characters they are playing in the musical. There’s also subplots with the show’s young ingenue, newly arrived from nightclub singing, and her boyfriend Bill who is also in the cast and has a gambling problem that has led him to sign a $10,000 IOU with Fred’s name on it – leading to the arrival of a pair of gangsters at the theatre.

Kiss Me, Kate premiered on Broadway in 1948 and has music and lyrics by Cole Porter. I saw the last London Revival, which was in 2012 at the Young Vic and starred Hannah Waddingham and Alex Bourne, and really enjoyed it so I had high hopes for this production at the Barbican which has Tony-award winning Broadway powerhouse Stephanie J Block as Lilli and Adrian Dunbar as Fred. The Barbican has a good track record of producing big productions of musicals (see Anything Goes with Sutton Foster a couple of summers ago) and this is a show that repays a big production.

And this is A Big Production – you can see the size of the set from the photo at the top, but what you might need to watch the video to see is that it rotates*, it’s also got a big orchestra to blast out those Cole Porter standards like Too Darn Hot, Always True to You in My Fashion and So In Love. It’s directed by Barlett Sher, who also directed the Lincoln Centre Production of The King and I which came to the London Palladium with Kelli O’Hara a few years ago and has been touring the UK recently, and so has plenty of experience with big, classic musicals. And he’s created a really enthralling evening at the theatre – the show within a show means that there is fourth wall breaking, interactions with the conductor and the audience and plenty of general chaos.

And the cast are all giving great performances. It’s hard to single out anyone in particular, but if you forced me, I might pick out Nigel Lindsay and Hammed Animashaun who play the gangsters, who made me laugh the whole night building to a brilliant and nearly show-stealing Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Which brings me to one thing that I had forgotten about Kiss Me, Kate, which is how equitably the songs are spread out – everyone in the main cast gets at least one brilliant song and there’s plots and sub-plots galore.

I went with my mum who absolutely loved it – and I had such a great time I’m trying to figure out if I can go again before the run ends in mid-September. It’s had excellent reviews from the actual theatre professionals too – but there are some really good deals available on tickets at the moment – I suspect because the Barbican is out of the main drag of the West End so it doesn’t get the passing trade that some of the other theatres do (this is also an issue for the Shaftesbury Theatre – which had a bit of a reputation of being cursed for shows a few years back). I got my tickets from TodayTix who I use quite a lot these days, but you can get direct from The Barbican as well. And if you’re buying last minute they do on the day rush for £30 too.

Have a great Sunday – here’s hoping for an England win tonight…

*I love a rotating set – one of my early London theatre memories is of a production of the Wind in the Willows at the National Theatre where the set not only rotated but it came up from the ground, and more recently I loved the production of Follies – again at the national – which had a rotating set – although that just had a front and a back where as this has three sides.

children's books, theatre

Not a Book: The Secret Garden

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This is a fresh version of the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic children’s story that is on at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park for the start of the summer. The core story – about newly orphaned Mary Lennox being sent to live at Misselthwaite Manor after the deaths of her parents and uncovering the many secrets that the house is hiding remains the same – but there has been some sensitive updating done which makes it work a bit better for today’s audiences as well as providing a beautiful inspiration for the stage design and music concepts.

I really, really enjoyed myself watching this – with the trees all around you and birds flying overhead as the sun went down, the setting is absolutely perfect for a play about the healing power and magic of nature. I saw the fourth preview – so there were still a few technical gremlins to sort out (mostly mic cues) but the show itself and the performances were wonderful. In fact my only real grip was that my feet got cold, but that was my own fault for wearing canvas shoes with no socks!

This would make a great show for the kids this summer – but sadly it’s only on until July 20th, which is just as the schools are breaking up in most places, then Fiddler on the Roof takes over in the theatre for the rest of the summer. You can find more details here.

Have a great Sunday

streaming

Not a Book: 99

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As if there wasn’t already enough sport on TV at the moment, what with the Euros reaching the start of the last round of group games tonight, the grass court tennis season being well underway and the build up to the Olympics, I’ve got a football documentary for you today.

99 is Amazon Prime’s documentary about the 10 days that saw Manchester United win the treble in the summer of 1999, which I refuse to believe can be 25 years ago, because I remember it, and how did I get this old?! Anyway this takes you through the process that got them to that remarkable treble as well as those key days, with interviews with all the key figures involved as well as loads of archive from the time.

Looking back at this distance, it’s clear that no matter whether you support Man U or not (and I’m definitely in the not camp) this was a remarkable achievement – and they did it with a large number of players that had come through the club’s academy set-up. Clubs have done the same thing since – but they’ve done it after large injections of money from various sources and without the home-grown talent.

If you’ve seen the Beckham documentary series, this (unsurprisingly) has a lot of the same talking heads (and some of the same producers too) but obviously the focus is very different. But if you enjoy one, you’ll probably enjoy the other, from sporting point of view anyway.

Have a great Sunday!

audio, not a book

Not a Book: Deeper Well

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A rare music recommendation this week, but I’d missed this one until my little sister flagged it to me and now I’ve been listening to it over and over

Kacey Musgraves is one of those artists that I first saw on Jools Holland, bought the album and then have been streaming intermittently ever since. So I’ve been listening on and off since the Same Trailer, Different Park era – before she won the Grammy for Golden Hour and she is fairly regularly producing country music of the sort that I like. Little Sis described this as dreamy country and I think that’s pretty fair. The opening of the first track is strongly influenced Mamas and the Papas and that’s an area that I am always happy to be in. It makes me thinks of summer evening in the countryside, where the light is golden and you’ve got a glass of wine. Just right up my street.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Sister Act – the Musical

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I braved the theatre during half term week and lived to tell the tale! I wish I could say I was being strategic with my show pick and picked one where I thought there would be less children, but I would be lying – I went to Sister Act because it’s a short summer run and there’s a cast change coming at the end of this coming week, and the fact that there was a front row ticket in the lottery on the day was an added bonus!

This is the musical version of the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg movie about a lounge singer who sees her casino boss boyfriend have someone murdered and is hidden in a convent for her own safety until she can give evidence at his trial. The first thing to note is that there are a fair few changes between the movie and the musical – the most obvious being that it has an all new set of songs written by Alan Menken, the composer who wrote the music for a string of Disney movies in the early 1990s, like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Do not go expecting to hear any of the Motown hits from the movie – or Hail Holy Queen etc. it’s also set in the late 1970s rather than the early 90s, Doloris’s boyfriend owns a club that he won’t let her sing at – rather than a casino where she does sing at – and it’s set in Philadelphia rather than Reno and Adam Francisco.

I thought the changes really worked – if you can’t have the music from the movie – which I assume would have been near impossible on a licensing front for the Motown front, especially given that there were a few jukebox musicals using some of the artists music at around the same time – then make some changes to make it its own thing. It was obviously going to need more music than the movie had – and more characters were going to need to sing, so it worked really well.

I didn’t see this when it was in the West End originally – I didn’t have the budget for theatre going at the time and I was also working a job where I started at 4 am so late nights were not my friend – but this has got a cracking cast at the moment, so I feel like I might have picked the right time. Beverley Knight is playing Doloris and Ruth Jones is playing Mother Superior – later on this summer Alexandra Burke takes over as Doloris and Lee Mead joins as Detective Eddie Souther. It’s also got Lemar – who I always thought deserved a bigger music career than he got – playing Doloris’ boyfriend.

Basically this is a big, fun, colourful night in the theatre – in fact in a theatre where I spent a lot of time as a teenager, but that’s a story for another day.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

streaming, tv

Not a Book: Abbott Elementary

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After being pleasantly surprised by the range of viewing options on the flights to and from Manila, I was hopeful about my options for the (much shorter) flights to and from Lagos. Sadly we were with a different airline and the options were… much less good. However there was a ray of sunlight – and that was that Abbott Elementary was on there so I was finally able to watch the first series of a show I’ve been hearing about for a while. And now you get to hear about it. Obviously this comes with the proviso that I’ve only seen the first season and it’s now made it to the end of season three (and is renewed for a fourth) but hey, I liked it and I’m writing about it.

This is a mockumentary about the teachers at an under-funded and predominantly black school in Philadelphia. It’s created and written by one of its stars – Quinta Brunson, who plays optimistic second grade teacher Janine Teagues. There are six other main characters in the show – including Eva, a new and unqualified school principal; Gregory, one of the candidates she beat to the job who is now working as a substitute teacher; Barbara, a no nonsense kindergarten teacher with decades of experience – played by the absolute legend that is Sheryl Lee Ralph aka the original Deena in Dreamgirls on Broadway and Lauryn Hill’s mum in Sister Act 2!

The first series has 13 episode and follows the trials and tribulations of one school year. It didn’t take me long to get really invested in all the characters and the school – but it’s really funny – although at times it’s a little bit too cringe for me, but that’s not too unusual with comedies. It’s also very easy to watch episode after episode back to back without getting fed up or finding a formula – I was actually annoyed when I ran out of time to watch more on the flight out, and made a point of finishing the series off on the way home before I went to sleep on the night flight home! The second series has 22 episodes (stupid American TV season lengths) which is a bit more of a commitment, but next time I get an offer for Disney+ I’ll be checking it out. I was going to say checking it out to see if they keep the quality going – but given that the second season won three Golden Globes, including Best Actress for Quinta Brunson, I think it did!

As I mentioned above, if oyu’re not on an airplane, Abbott Elementary is on Disney+ in the UK and on ABC and whereever ABC content gets streamed in the US. If you liked Parks and Recreation and haven’t checked this out yet, you really should.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

streaming

Not a Book: Deadloch

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Back to a streaming show this week – but not a new one. In fact Deadloch came out on Amazon Prime last summer and I don’t quite know how I missed it until recently. But these things happen, and I have rectified that mistake now!

Deadloch is a black comedy crime series, centred on the fictional town of Deadloch on Tasmania. As the series starts, the body of a local man is found in the beach, shaking the idyllic town just as the town’s Winter Festival is due to begin. Local police officer Dulcie wants to lead the investigation, but she’s forced to work with Eddie, a detective from Darwin who is not happy that she’s been sent to Deadloch. Dulcie used to be a detective on the mainland before demoting herself and moving to Deadloch at her wife’s request and it is safe to say that her style and Eddie’s are radically different. They are helped in their work by Abby, who is enthusiastic but lacks confidence, and Sven who usually gets given the least important stuff to do. As the bodies start to mount up, can they work out who is killing the men of Deachloch?

The working title for this was apparently Funny Broadchurch if that helps you figure out what the vibe of this is. And there are plenty of jokes – although perhaps unexpectedly it gets really quite dark (and less funny) towards the end of the series. I don’t watch shows like Broadchurch because they’re too grim for me and the last part of this was in fact too grim for me! But I did really enjoy watching the rest of it, and I know my tolerance level is low for grim so others may be fine with it. I have no idea how you would do a second series of this, but I would definitely watch it.

Have a great Sunday!

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Opening Night

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A somewhat perplexing theatre trip this week. Opening Night got 1* and 4* reviews when it opened, and it seems like the audiences have paid more attention to the ones than the fours, as its closing early at the end of this coming week, instead of running though til the end of July.

This is a musical adaptation of a John Casavetes film, with music by Rufus Wainwright, starring Sheridan Smith and directed by Ivo Van Hove. Now I love to go and see a flop – I saw the X factor musical twice, and the spice girls musical to name a few – and I do actually really like Rufus Wainwright’s music, so of course I rocked up to see this before it finished to see what I thought.

And the answer, five days on, is that I still don’t know! It’s not so bad it’s funny. It’s not a misunderstood masterpiece. But it is incredibly confused, and (sadly) the music is ultimately pretty forgettable. I’m not even sure what I can say about the performances – everyone is giving it their all, but I’m still not sure what they were meant to be working towards! But I got a good discount on my seat, and I’m glad that I can say I saw it. And sometimes that’s all you’re after!

Have a great Sunday!

film, not a book

Not a Book: On the Basis of Sex

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A slightly random film review today, because this is not new, and there was no particular reason why we watched it the other week, except that it was there.

This is a biopic about the early career of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the US Supreme Court Justice who died in the latter stages of President Trump’s term. If all you know about her is that she was a judge, this will fill you in on how she got to that position, and how tough things were for women who wanted to be lawyers in the mid-twentieth century. In fact there are portions of this that will probably make you really angry – they definitely did me anyway.

It has its flaws – it’s quite old fashioned in style, I don’t think Armie Hammer is great, and it probably should have done more about her later achievements than a couple of credit cards at the end, but as a primer to go and watch a documentary or read a biography, it’s pretty good.