I don't often watch tv films these days - there's usually something better on, or I've already seen them. Tonight, there were two - on different channels, at about the same time. So I started with South, which turned out to be an Irish film. Joe Rooney - the only one I recognised - plays a lone father who dies, whereupon his teenage son heads on a road trip to find his mother, at the other side of the country. She apparently abandoned them years ago.
Jeez, I was stunned to see what a high rating this has - me, I turned over at the first ad break! I just found it SO predictable. He's as naive as can be, surprised at the general unfriendliness of folk. Swiftly gets mugged, and all his money and bus ticket stolen. And his shoes. All they leave him is the battered guitar that his late father gave him as a present. Heads to the adjacent Garda station, where they at least find him a replacement pair of boots. So he hitchhikes from then on, meeting the predictably odd range of folks. From the trailer, I believe he ends up performing with that guitar.
Too predictable, and a bit too uneventful - you know he's going to turn out ok - so I turned over to the second film, which had just started. Deadly Daycare - as you might guess from the title - isn't going to win any awards, but at least it's interesting! A young divorcee, who's just moved to the area, needs to find daycare for her toddler. However, she gets more than she bargained for, when (small spoiler) one of the teachers turns out to be the woman that she and her husband were involved in a crash with (pre-divorce), whose own daughter was killed and husband paralysed in that same crash! Her daughter is now the same age as this other woman's daughter, when she died - and lo, she decides that this is a sign from God, and this child is meant to be hers. They even look similar.
Ok, first - how come this woman (the divorcee) only realised after some time that she'd have to go back to work? They'd just bought a massive house, FFS - unless you're sufficiently minted to buy it for cash, that's gonna come with a massive mortgage, and few single-income people can afford one of those. Indeed, I believe it's very hard to get a mortgage of any kind on a single income. But somehow, it comes as a big surprise to her to learn that her (lawyer) ex-husband can't afford to pay it all on his own. Even though they're now divorced, and he must be renting (I missed the start, I don't know).
Second - this accident: one fatality, the driver paralysed, and the other driver was on his mobile, and on the wrong side of the road. And the cops said it wasn't his fault?! Gee, I guess they were trying to make him more sympathetic, but this is completely unbelievable. Nobody is that good a lawyer.
The baddie in this - the daycare teacher who wants to kidnap the child - is cartoonishly wicked, and I'm not sure about the rationale behind her being rough with the little girl. BUT. Having said all that, it is watchable, and the plot is scary enough. So I enjoyed it.
As for tomorrow - it's nearly a month now since St. Patrick's Day. And what with the pandemic raging harder than ever, of course it was all online this year - at least they had more time to prepare than last year! And they did us proud, with a week's worth of festivities - most available on the festival website, and for free. I hadn't had time to see everything I wanted to, but luckily, it's mostly still there to watch. And with no Meetups that I can see tomorrow, that I'd fancy and can manage, I guess that's what I'll be doing..
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