rangerista Reviews

State of Happiness (2018–2022)

A State of Happiness-Indeed it is.

[8/10 · 23 June 2020]

I came across this series when searching for something to watch during the lockdown. The story of the beginning of the Norwegian oil industry doesn't sound too exciting a subject, and it isn't if you're expecting loads of action in the North Sea. Yes, there's some good tension in the diving scenes, but its really more about the personalities and how the discovery of oil effects them and their town, that's the thing that draws you in,

The acting is first superb from all the cast, but I have to say that the beautiful actresses playing Anna and Toril, are in a class of their own. The production standards of this series are first class, the attention to detail is superb, the Sixties are captured just fine to this eye (the Norwegian audience will have its own take on this), none more so than the Glasgow Rangers team picture which briefly features in episode 2: that's the personal clincher for me.

I do hope there's a second series being planned, it deserves nothing less.

Robert the Bruce (2019)

Oh dear!

[27 April 2020]

What an awful film, it's just an exercise in propoganda for recreating a Scotland that's thankfully long gone. This film is just designed to promote nationalism, the espousing of which always ends badly.

Thankfully, it's so bad that most Scottish people will ignore it, as they have no wish to see a medieval revivalist fantasy recreated in the 21st Century.

Scotland's history deserves more respect than this nationalist, separatist and secessionist rubbish.

I'd score it at - 100.

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

What? No tartans? No knowledge more like!

[22 January 2019]

An earlier poster slates the film for its historical inaccuracy and then displays his/her own ignorance! There is no such place as "Holyrood Castle"- its Holyrood Palace, or alternatively, the Palace of Holyrood House. The fortified buildings on top of Castle Rock make up Edinburgh Castle, which is perhaps what this contributor is laughingly alluding to. As for the lack of tartan, God save us, that's likely to be the film's only saving grace! Whether monarch, nobles or commoners, people in Lowland Scotland did not wear tartan. And anyway, Lowland Scots considered those in the Highlands at the time to be closer to barbarians than fellow countrymen. Another contributor states entirely erroneously that Elizabeth I had authority over Scotland, revealing his/her failure to grasp the essential fact of their rivalry, based as it was on both being Queens of two entirely separate kingdoms. And don't get me started on Braveheart or Outlander!