Sandra Harris Writes

  ALBA. (2021) BASED ON THE TURKISH DRAMA SERIES, FATMAGUL’UN SUCU NE? DIRECTED BY PABLO GUERRERO, CARLOTA MARTINEZ-PEREDA AND HUMBERTO MIRO. STARRING ELENA RIVERA, ERIC MASIP, CATERINA MENGS, ADRIANA OZORES, ALVARO RICO, POL HERMOSO, JASON FERNANDEZ, FRANKY MARTIN, CANDELA CRUZ AND ANTONIO GIL. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © ‘Our power derives from denying theirs.’ There are almost too many twists and turns in this Spanish psychological drama-thriller, and it could have done without maybe three of its thirteen fifty-minute episodes, but I still really enjoyed this. It reminded me a lot of the English drama series LIAR , which in turn was based on the Spanish drama series LIES AND DECEIT , as drug-rape is the main topic in all three Netflix shows. The thing I’ve noticed with very long, multi-episode series is that they run out of steam a wee bit before the end and as a result get twistier and turnier until some of the twists are, frankly, incomprehensible. Such is the case ...

  LIVE AID, QUEEN, FREDDIE MERCURY AND AIDS. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Do you remember where you were when LIVE AID happened? I do. I was just a kid, obsessed with pop and rock, glued to the television on which the biggest benefit concert the world had ever seen was about to kick off with British broadcaster Richard Skinner uttering the immortal words, ‘It’s twelve noon in London (also Ireland, where I was!), seven am in Philadelphia and, around the world, it’s time for LIVE AID.’ It was a gorgeous sunny Saturday in Ireland and I was super-excited about having a day of top quality pop and rock from some of the biggest stars on the planet to look forward to. The legendary concert, organised by rock musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, happened on this day thirty-seven years ago, and it was conceived of after the BBC aired some horrific news reports by Michael Buerk on the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia. The initial Band Aid project saw the song performed by Various Artists, Do They K...