What this week?
Half term.
You find me pretty much as you left me last week—lying on my back and catching my breath, shielding my eyes from the sun. Where the Easter holidays provided adventure, half term has provided the pause we needed.
The final push starts tomorrow. Counting down the remaining days of the school year as a tally of packed lunches I have left to prepare marked on the kitchen chalkboard.
I’m not as well rested as I’d like to be. Take away the restrictions of routine and I find myself staying up ridiculously late—a minor rebellion that hurts no one but me. But I’ve definitely found more room. Space to breathe and think a little more freely. And after working through a feeling of stagnancy in my writing (see last week’s WTW and this week’s podcast), I’m looking forward to nurturing that freedom and translating it into ideas and creativity and new words in the coming days and weeks.
What this week?
Succession (NOW/sky atlantic).
I knew it would hit me hard. The final few episodes of this season have left me with a hangover of sorts, a heaviness each week that I took into the following day. The finale was no exception. It was both brilliant and brutal. And I carried the weight of it for a few days after. I might write about it (fear not, if I do I would heavily douse it in spoiler warnings—I know a few of you have only just embarked on your journey with the Roys). There is so much to say, to revisit and analyse and explore.
A final episode that delivers on all that has gone before is a rare and brilliant thing. The writing of Succession has been so pitch perfect throughout, that Jesse Armstrong, Lucy Prebble and gang hitting the spot should come as no surprise. But as one post-finale article that caught my attention (cough, they have all caught my attention, cough) discussed, this is certainly not universal for the endings of big ‘prestige’ TV shows. Lost and Game of Thrones were HUGE let-downs. Oh I carried feelings about the end of those shows around for a while after too, but more in the bemused and bereft sense—is that it? A mingling of loss of show and loss of faith. Having cared so much (and, let’s face it, watched so much), I want an appropriate return on my emotional investment.
One show mentioned repeatedly for its excellent ending was the The Americans (Disney+). I have started this once before, but remembered none of it when I settled back in mid-week, to fill the post-Succession cavity with six seasons of sexy spy drama (and Matthew Rhys), hopefully culminating in another promise-fulfilling finish.
Let me know your stories of famous and infamous series endings in the comments. Which have taken your breath away (in a good way)? Which have rendered you speechless (in a bad way)?
What this week?
I’ve read and discovered some excellent Substacks recently and thought I’d share a few this week as I’ve little to report myself on the reading front (other than a highly pleasurable catch-up with the chapter-a-day War and Peaceathon in the glorious garden sunshine).
This newsletter from
caught my eye as she mentioned the Karl Lagerfeld documentary I’d shared a few weeks ago (WTW#14) in relation to Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer. I was first made aware of this fascinating sounding book by my always-ahead-of-the-curve (it’s more than just the timezones) bookstagram buddy Nell, and it has been appearing everywhere ever since.Then in the comments of Pandora’s newsletter, I found my way to
and this fabulous newsletter on the same book and her relief at having hitched her teenage crush wagon to one of the ‘good ones’. Really enjoy Katie’s writing, so I’m very grateful to have stumbled upon her (evidence of the magic of Substack commenting).I think I found
mentioned in another newsletter I read, but however I got to his words I was very glad to find his brilliant piece on Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. This was one of my first reads of 2023 and writing about it turned into my first real deep-dive newsletter, so I loved revisiting it and seeing the different connections Sam had honed in on (the Beatles!).Podcast pal extraordinaire
wrote two fantastic articles about Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work. It was a delight to see these do so well for Helen—the way she applied Kleon’s thoughts to her own writing really resonated widely. And I got so much more out of them having just read the book myself—also thanks to Helen (see WTW#15)And finally, I really enjoy
’s writing and the newsletter she published this week particularly delighted me as I had shared her experience. The immersive Van Gogh exhibition in York that she writes about was one of the last adventures I had before the world ground to a halt in March 2020. It will always be a special memory. I love what she says about Van Gogh’s relationship with creativity, his understanding of beauty.So I thought I’d wrap up with this little gem of a clip. I’m not a Doctor Who fan, but definitely a fan of Matt Smith, Bill Nighy and Van Gogh. Yes, I’m a sentimental fool. No, I’m not sorry.
See you next week.
(Includes affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an excellent bookselling website supporting indie bookshops)
If you like Matthew Rhys, then can I recommend the film The Scapegoat. He is magnificent as doppelgangers John Standing, a failed teacher, and Johnny Spence, a failed businessman. It's really very compelling viewing!
Thank you so much for sharing my Substack this week, what a joy! (I'm also absolutely with you on the minor rebellion of staying up late issue - why do we behave like this?!)