'Thirteen' Episode 1 Review

I heard about 'Thirteen' a while ago but I forgot about it so it was a nice surprise to be reminded about it especially with a trailer I have never seen before and the fact that I could watch it today. The concept is used a lot but it's hugely relevant. The strongest draw I had to 'Thirteen' is Jodie Comer who plays the main character, Ivy. I've been excited about Jodie Comer since knowing her from E4's 'My Mad Fat Diary' which is one of my favourite recent series from the UK of all time and she's incredible in it. So, I trust that every show she does is as real and raw as that show is, and I was right. She was a secondary character but now her talent brings her to the forefront and it really shows.

Everything about her is authentically English which sounds weird because characters are universal but something about her is so representative of english mannerisms. It's not easy to explain. BBC Three/E4 and many more are extremely good at finding those people and she's one of the best. Onto 'Thirteen' it's about a girl who disappeared when she was thirteen and all that transpires once she's escaped but mystery and darkness immediately surrounds her as she returns to a world which we're consistently reminded she doesn't belong to. This suggestion is put forward, in fact, I almost started to believe that it was just highlighting skepticism especially within the two detectives which are on her case.

But we don't know. We never know. Her story is very straight and unconfused, and British eeriness surrounds everything. Ivy, bright-eyed and hollowed compels the story is hard-hitting and believable, despite what is we are going to end up believing about her. Something is really classic about the way that episodes move, and the steady pace with clues hiding everywhere to add to the tension and the rising unrest about everything.

The role of the family and the persistence of the mother that it is Ivy and refusing DnA evidence is very real. It's happened in real cases. I just wish that it was someone other than the mother who believed beyond reason. Her sister, maybe but it makes sense that the sister would be the opposite, and she is. (It actually reminds me of an episode of 'Elementary' I recently watched about a girl who pretended to be a found missing girl. Check it out 'Miss Taken' episode seven of season four. Yes, the pun is amazing.)

Breaking into the house that Ivy was 'kept' in, the emptiness is chilling but only because the show makes it that way and I'm starting to suspect Ivy might have lived there alone. You go back nd forth on Ivy's story a lot. Suspiscion is giving to you outright by the show but Ivy's photos looking so perfectly her and everything checking out so well makes it hard so as a viewer, in my experience, I kept changing my mind. It's a nightmare, but it's thrilling. Ivy definitely has purpose in who she lets in and doesn't, but then it just feels like she just radiates to the people that are most unchanged and that makes sense.

'Thirteen's is definitely interesting for its location. We're used to seeing how cases like these go down in places like America and like the show says "There's never been an escaped kidnapee before." and they mean in the UK which, there has, but it's interesting for them to point that out; that it's less common here which is dark and scary. It's remote from America but the same in nature. There are a lot of beautiful moments in the show which involve Ivy. Small conversations like the conversation of being given fish to eat sometimes and the facts she knew about it regarding pregnancy and also including the assumptions that the detective displayed about whether or not Ivy had been made pregnant. "He gave me fish until I didn't need it."

It was tender, just like Ivy being given a pink cardigan and she asks "Like a present?" which makes your heart vibrate with soreness. The show gives extra dimension such as in the male detective and caring about Ivy's case a lot suggesting he is interested in her. What the show does well is put what has changed on trial and how it quickly overwhelms Ivy and she runs to find a place of solitude in a small garden in the middle of town where she went with her childhood sweetheart Tim who follows her there and knows where to go. If Ivy isn't Ivy then there is some next-level intelligence how she works in this knowledge. The cinematography of Ivy sat with Tim is beautiful here.

There are so many ways this show can go. Ivy could have been brainwashed to believe she is that person, she could have been kidnapped by someone closer (someone like the mum or dad, for example which explains the blind acceptance but I hope it isn't that predictable), She could be Ivy, then started to believe she isn't and then pretend to be Ivy when she really is which alright, I acknowledge that could be a bit far but interesting none the less if I nailed it! Lies coming to a head and Ivy coming to find out that the world built around his is artificial is extremely emotional and a great perspective for 'Thirteen' to take.

I predict that the teacher they are trying to prescute for taking Ivy is taking the blame for a reason because kidnapping being linked to a school is far too easy for a storyline. The mother's connection to the headmaster (which seems like an affair right now) is worthy to remember, I think. In the 'next time' look ahead to the next episode we learn that another young girl is missing so the second episode might uproot everything I'm thinking and change it all. Humour - if any- comes through slightly and I laughed a lot when Ivy tells her mother "It's ok mum, I'm twenty-six" because of the strangeness of the situation that she has to say it.

The accents are slightly 'Broadchurch' and the feel of it also reminds me of it too which is not a bad inspiration and is it just me but does Tim look like he just stepped out of 'The Returned'/'Les Revenants'?
To summarise it's really exciting BBC Three have their first original series to be purely broadcast online. 'Thirteen' comes at a good time due to the recent success of 'Room' and the spotlight and human interest in kidnapping stories right now. (It's weird to say that things like these come into 'media fashion.' It's not nice to think about, but true and for good as long as it stays in people's attention and memory.) I have felt like BBC Three on Iplayer won't get the attention that it thinks it will but with series like these, I hope it will. With the news 'Thirteen' might be making it onto BBC Two slightly undermines that but it's a great credit to the quality of the show. The hashtag #FindTheGirl and the interactive experience is cool too.

You can watch 'Episode one of Thirteen' on BBC Iplayer now.

11.22.63 seems to be the best choice Hulu has made

I have been waiting since it was announced that '11.22.63' was going to be adapted. I adore everything Stephen King and it's one of his novels I haven't gotten around to reading yet and I wanted to wait to experience it through its new television form. I watched the trailer more than three times.

It all starts with an ordinary man. Not the main character, but another called Harry. In the first few minutes of the episode he reads his memories "It was 1960 and I lived in Holdon, Kentucky. I loved zynut bars and my sister loved Big Roost bars. My little brother Toga loved everything. I don't loved Halloween anymore...the blood smelled like pennies." For a split second you think that the whole story is going to rest on what this man, Harry has gone through as a child but it unzips into a classroom where we meet meet Jake: clearly grading people's experiences as an ex-writer and divorcee who praises Harry as he sits down and exposes 11.22.63's main theme: the past and its part in being unchanged.

Through Jake, we meet Al. A friendly diner-owning guy, a little overly-interested in Jake's burger-choices and divorce at first glance, and the next falling out of the back room and leading Jake to his head, cancer-striken and looking sorlorn and world-bearing at the fridge where a heart is stuck is stuck to it. The emotion and history between these two characters is interesting and the way Al breaks them apart and brings Jake into the knowledge of please stepping into his adult Narnia behind green diner doors is fast, and Jake finds himself in 1960.

Jake takes it pretty well at first until Al informs him of his research and just how long he steps out into the sixties for. The Kennedy assassination. Well-loved by television shows and anything narrative-like in general. Jake questions Al's thinking and incredulously asks for proof on how saving Kennedy could have prevented events such as the Vietnam war. Al, in a truly pointless way, asks Jake to go back and carve on a tree and come back to show the lasting effect which I think he already established by sending Jake out there for the first time but from that point, Jake is encased in Al's plans and in a scarily-timed death of Al the next day, Jake has no choice but to respect Al's wishes. He insulted his career enough times.

I like the discourse on the fate of everything resting on Kennedy's death that the world fixates on. It's an interesting subject and it's clever that in order to change anything permanently, you can't come back otherwise it will be erased. The show is really impressive without being too overly-edited - the sixties aren't completely sensationalised but we see the way it is through the eyes of Jake as he embarks on life there. Jake leaves the life of a world where his friend and older student Harry graduates but won't be given a chance and possibly to escape from the world of out of date burgers which is a dialogue I loved a lot.

"You spent all of your time gambling?"

"That, ad there was a butcher I really liked on main street."

"I've been eating hamburgers from 1960?!"

A short time with Al and Jake together left a lot of humour which is carried on with Jake. We seen him drop his modern Iphone in a suit shop to be discreet, we see him cruise around in a new car with Al's rulebook which he probably pay less and less attention to as time goes on. Hope shifts and Stephen King-style tension appears when Jake underestimating how easily Al lived, steps into a bar to bet against residents on a boxing match 35 to 1. The local guy who Jake enters the bet with is 'Lil Eddie who doesn't take it well. Perhaps, slightly, in a cartoon-y way rather than credible for someone who wins just once but I suppose that can only be a bet that it's obvious is from someone with inside knowledge. Lil Eddie tracks down Jake's hotel where Jake impossibly escapes and leaves an iphone playing a bird who dances to 'I don't care' we previously saw in a scene at school of student paying more attention to which is a funny reference and a homage to the idea of Jake starting to embrace the idea that not doing work is not always what life is about.

Another plot turner is the sinister guy who appears every so often and tells Jake "You shouldn't be here!" I'm not sure what it has to do with him. Jake could simply be having a holiday. He appears quite a lot almost as much as the world tries to destroy Jake when he gets close to learning something. It almost seems like the man follows Jake more than he ever followed Al which is interesting, or maybe Al didn't disclose the stalking detail because Jake didn't need any more reasons not to sit in the sixties for a couple of years. We gets lots of nice, enjoyable moments of seeing Jake (his actor James Franco continuing to put his James Dean lookalike resume to use) get away with things and taking a tour throughout sixties America, eating corn on the cob, and with a song to do with being a road-runner croons on the radio.

The entertainment and the feel-good feeling of everything is evened out with the tasks that loom over Jake and scenes of when he checks into a bright yellow boarding house makes me begin to theorise that it will ultimately be Jake that kills Kennedy, accidentally or by intention through what he discovers. I don't know what about a yellow place told me that but it probably had something to do with movie moments voice-overs of Al's advice we hadn't heard yet. Another theory I have is that 'Lil Eddie who the storyline has moved on from, I think might also be from the future in some capacity and might be an answer to why he was intimidated by the competition posed by Jake but he would also know the results. It would be interesting if he hadn't thought about checking and is unable to return because he can't remember where he entered the timeline.

A car smashes into a telephone box Jake tries to use, chandeliers try to fall on him, where he lives burns and he loses all of the information Al gave him. The theme that springs out to me is that no matter how close you get to something, there are some things you can't hear and History protects them. Jake enters a Kennedy party with the wrong name and gets questioned. It's amusing how he gets himself out of it professing he is a number one fan, but it doesn't completely explain why they hit him to question him and let him go so fast.

I'm really positive about this show and I really can't wait to watch more of it. The same scene in the beginning gets slightly repetitive but you will get used to it and it doesn't last long. The final scene is of Jake sitting outside Harry's childhood house and watching as the dad, who murdered everyone but Harry picks up the children to take them to get ice cream. We know Jake is going to attempt to stop it. My prediction is that he will unintentionally fall into a relationship with Harry's mother and will protect them that way and he will then struggle with balancing that prerogative with the Kennedy case.

Some people might feel that 11.22.63 is just another example of a show which focuses on someone going back in time and becoming attached to it but I don't think that's a bad thing as long as it's done well and in my opinion, it is. I'll finish with my favourite line of the 80 minute episode. "You could tell it was an important night because History pushed back."

11.22.63 Episode One is available now on Hulu
What are your thoughts so far?