Sandra Harris Writes

  MISSING YOU ALREADY, STRICTLY! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © STRICTLY COME DANCING held its twentieth final the other night, and peel my tangerines if it wasn’t a total glamour-fest! My kids and I have been watching it for about twelve or thirteen years now and it’s been the highlight of our winter televisual viewing season ever since. This year they celebrated their twentieth anniversary and this added an extra element of nostalgia and excitement to the whole thing. Back in the days of X FACTOR, when the two shows would clash on rival stations, we’d have to make do with watching STRICTLY during the breaks of Simon Cowell’s massive brainchild (that’s kind of an odd image, isn’t it?) , but, with the demise of X FACTOR, it’s been STRICTLY all the way ever since on a Saturday night. It's a dancing talent competition show with ‘celebrities’ as the contestants, as opposed to the ‘ordinary’ folks utilised in regular talent shows. I put ‘celebrities’ in inverted commas because, sometimes,...

  WHEN THEY SEE US. (2019) A NETFLIX TRUE CRIME DRAMA SERIES WRITTEN, CREATED AND DIRECTED BY AVA DUVERNAY. STARRING FELICITY HUFFMAN, VERA FARMIGA, FAMKE JANNSEN AND JOHN LEGUIZAMO. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © This is a superb four-part true crime/drama mini-series, but it’s the most harrowing thing I’ve ever seen on Netflix, and all the more harrowing for its all being true, and the fact that the stuff that happens to the young boys in it all actually happened. And, if it’s harrowing to watch, how much worse must it be to have actually lived through all this horrible stuff. Let me tell you the story. On the night of April 19 th , 1989 (can you remember where you were and what you were doing in April of that year, just to put the timeframe into context?), a young white woman, an investment banker called Patricia Meili, went for a run late in the evening in New York’s famous Central Park. Somewhere along the way, she was accosted, raped, beaten severely and left for dead in ...