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Rain Dogs anyone watching?

152 replies

crochetmonkey74 · 04/04/2023 21:12

What do you guys think?

OP posts:
WordtoYoMumma · 08/04/2023 21:38

I've watched the first 3 or 4 but found it all a bit grim and not well written. I don't feel bothered about the characters or care about finding out what happens. Didn't really enjoy it but kept watching in the hope it got better. It hasn't yet... So far, I'm not a fan.

Southeastdweller · 08/04/2023 21:44

I've watched it all now and really enjoyed it. I didn't take any of it too seriously, didn't find any of it grim, and unlike a PP I felt there was heart in the series (depicted in the platonic love stories with Costello, Selby and Iris). I've never seen Jack Farthing or DMC in anything before and am very impressed with their performances.

mewkins · 09/04/2023 00:28

crochetmonkey74 · 06/04/2023 10:02

See the class stuff I found totally unrealistic, I grew up not even working class, more like part of an underclass (unstable social housing, benefits etc etc) and I didn't recognise the seediness etc. When I grew up, there was almost a prudishness about this sort of stuff like it shouldn't be talked about. Maybe that's my age though and it Is different now (grew up in the 80s)

I think the seediness is a world she has fallen into via the peep show etc.

I am 5 episodes in and found the first few very funny if very dark. The skip man date was rather brilliant. The stuff between her and Selby though is weird and uncomfortable.

LadyMargaretDevereux · 09/04/2023 15:48

I've watched the whole lot now and thought it was very good. Every scene is beautifully done, even though it's grim and nasty at times. Costello and Selby were so good, I wanted it to work out for them, but it was never going to. It really made me want to read Cash Carraway's book.

mewkins · 09/04/2023 17:20

www.npr.org/2023/03/26/1166114399/cash-carraway-on-her-new-hbo-series-rain-dogs

This is quite an interesting interview and goes some way to explaining how it all came about (also explains I guess the difference between the first few episodes and the rest).

Mumped · 09/04/2023 17:35

I binge watched this over the last couple of nights. I found it gripping, and I’m still thinking about it now, but I think it only partly worked.

Really good, unusual, darkly funny tackling of big themes - poverty, class, the effects of child abuse, the grim sude id make sexuality and (most brilliantly) how utterly precarious and desperate it is being a poor woman/mother.

Some of it was a bit stupid, though. A lot of the characters were weak.
Costello’s friend (Gloria?) could have been fleshed out a lot more. Felt like a very thin, novelty-factor character. Same with the old perv with the oxygen mask.
The bloke she nearly shagged (photographer/food bank guy) was completely two dimensional.

The ‘almost a published writer’ storyline was weak. It needed something meatier to carry the story.

I also don’t buy DMC as a Londoner. She always has the same Hants accent. She’s hugely likeable but she does always seem to play herself.

Mumped · 09/04/2023 17:36

That should say the grim side of male sexuality in the second para

LadyMargaretDevereux · 09/04/2023 17:44

@mewkins thanks for that link - interesting interview, definitely.

Inkanta · 09/04/2023 19:07

No. Love Daisy May but it's too bleak and extreme - missing the mark.

Inkanta · 09/04/2023 19:10

The stuff between her and Selby though is weird and uncomfortable

Yes very uncomfortable weird.

mewkins · 09/04/2023 19:26

LadyMargaretDevereux · 09/04/2023 17:44

@mewkins thanks for that link - interesting interview, definitely.

You're welcome. It sounds as though she was stuck between writing a grittier bbc drama and an hbo comedy.

dayswithaY · 09/04/2023 23:09

I thought Cash had been exposed as a middle class author pretending to be a struggling single mum from a council estate and her book Skint Estate was just fiction?

I just couldn’t believe any of the characters, camp Posh Boy and “crazy madcap” best friend. So cliched. And do Peep Shows in Soho still exist?

If you were desperate for money but also an aspiring writer working in the sex trade and a journalist turned up to offer you a job why would you be all arsey about it?

I couldn’t work any of it out.

Tribollite · 10/04/2023 11:40

I just watched it all. I enjoyed it because of the strong acting and visual look of it. I found Selby particularly compelling but I think he was channelling a lot of Withnail, and I'm fond of that film (Withnail and I). It was ultimately fluff though, as it was so unrealistic that you can't derive a social or emotional message from it.

I really did NOT enjoy - the rape jokes, constant wanking, sex work as a bit of a laugh (friends with the old pervert, being a 'battered wife' on the webcam), portrayal of the daughter seemingly mentally unscathed by her horrific upbringing.

SiouxsieSiouxStiletto · 10/04/2023 13:19

Watched one and a half episodes so far (DH decided he couldn't stay awake) but I'm definitely going to continue. It has great potential.

Jellyheadbang · 11/04/2023 16:16

So glad to come here and see a fair number of dissenters after seeing pretty much only rave reviews for this.

I had to turn off after a couple of episodes, it all felt a bit too ptsd-ish for my liking.

I grew up in a similar situation and without question, most of my experiences were terrifying, very few good bits and the funny bits were really only gallows humour.

Becoming a single mum myself years later, I've trodden a very fine line to keep us afloat and I can see why so many kids end up with horrible stepdads because it's just so hard to keep trying, fighting and surviving sometimes.

The amount of predatory and dangerous men who find their way to vulnerable single mums is horrendous, this show made it all so jolly.

I maybe didn't give it a fair watch but I found it gratuitous and seedy, try hard, grim and too many tropes.

Creepy Norman bates nightie guy, Adrian Edmondson posh eccentric artist, inappropriate but theres genuine love between them, rich handsome psychopath, poor common mum, who just happens to have a trump card big reveal : 'tart with a heart' also has an eye for art and an English masters.
she flips the stereotype into another stereotype, shocking them into remembering to never judge a book by its cover.

it almost felt like that line was thrown in because of the writer's middle class sensibility: if she was just a poor struggling single mum, how would we warm to her?
giving her posh friends and a uni background makes her safe and relatable.

The sex work is work felt so forced, an educated single mum down on her luck is obviously going to do sex work and make it seem so ordinary and normal.

The prog felt like caitlin moran did a shitload of coke and rewrote raised by wolves whilst off her nut with her posh friends, adding in more and more WHACKY characters and ticking off a list of CRAZY scenes borrowed from other people's stories of what they think life is like on the breadline.

I didn't like aibu either, I felt I was in the minority, not sure why I disliked these series.
I loved fleabag, i may destroy you, motherland, and a few other similar shows in this raw women, no holds barred genre but this misses the mark for me.

Mangomingo · 11/04/2023 16:24

I can’t take Cash Carraway seriously at all. Too much Instagram drama over the years, it seems odd to me she should pop up now writing telly. Her and Clemmie Hooper had some enormous beef didn’t they?

Southeastdweller · 11/04/2023 16:35

Posts on Tattle Life make for interesting reading about Cash.

Jellyheadbang · 11/04/2023 16:43

Ooh exciting ref cash calloway, will chase the goss!
i don't know anything about her, Presumably it's a made up name? Sounds like something from a jilly Cooper novel.

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crochetmonkey74 · 11/04/2023 17:26

Jellyheadbang · 11/04/2023 16:16

So glad to come here and see a fair number of dissenters after seeing pretty much only rave reviews for this.

I had to turn off after a couple of episodes, it all felt a bit too ptsd-ish for my liking.

I grew up in a similar situation and without question, most of my experiences were terrifying, very few good bits and the funny bits were really only gallows humour.

Becoming a single mum myself years later, I've trodden a very fine line to keep us afloat and I can see why so many kids end up with horrible stepdads because it's just so hard to keep trying, fighting and surviving sometimes.

The amount of predatory and dangerous men who find their way to vulnerable single mums is horrendous, this show made it all so jolly.

I maybe didn't give it a fair watch but I found it gratuitous and seedy, try hard, grim and too many tropes.

Creepy Norman bates nightie guy, Adrian Edmondson posh eccentric artist, inappropriate but theres genuine love between them, rich handsome psychopath, poor common mum, who just happens to have a trump card big reveal : 'tart with a heart' also has an eye for art and an English masters.
she flips the stereotype into another stereotype, shocking them into remembering to never judge a book by its cover.

it almost felt like that line was thrown in because of the writer's middle class sensibility: if she was just a poor struggling single mum, how would we warm to her?
giving her posh friends and a uni background makes her safe and relatable.

The sex work is work felt so forced, an educated single mum down on her luck is obviously going to do sex work and make it seem so ordinary and normal.

The prog felt like caitlin moran did a shitload of coke and rewrote raised by wolves whilst off her nut with her posh friends, adding in more and more WHACKY characters and ticking off a list of CRAZY scenes borrowed from other people's stories of what they think life is like on the breadline.

I didn't like aibu either, I felt I was in the minority, not sure why I disliked these series.
I loved fleabag, i may destroy you, motherland, and a few other similar shows in this raw women, no holds barred genre but this misses the mark for me.

You could be me! This is exactly how I feel about it.

OP posts:
Jellyheadbang · 11/04/2023 18:22

crochetmonkey74 · 11/04/2023 17:26

You could be me! This is exactly how I feel about it.

Show quote history

Funny, I'm not particularly prudish either, but it felt a bit of a full on assault.
I'd not heard of it or the writer, and switched it on hoping for a bit of late night fluff and silliness and felt uncomfortable.
I found a lot of it disturbing. It reminded me of the sixties as well for some reason. Not that I was there, but some of the stories seemed way more dated than the time it was set in.

Crumpetdisappointment · 11/04/2023 18:37

what did her mother do to her?
do we know?

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crochetmonkey74 · 11/04/2023 19:14

I agree about the 60s thing. It sort of trivialised things that are so deeply traumatic.
Interesting about the author. I KNEW it wasn't a real working class person

OP posts:
Crumpetdisappointment · 11/04/2023 19:30

8 episodes,
up to episode 7
can't bear it any longer

Almahart · 11/04/2023 19:40

I think like AIBU it just didn't feel authentic. I also agree with PP who said that DMC is just always herself, and so ultimately she's quite likeable but not very interesting

ProfYaffle · 11/04/2023 19:45

Does anyone know where the real life location for Sunset Park was? That location in particular felt 'off' to me, almost cartoonishly run down. It reminds me of the estate I grew up on in some respects but like it had been abandoned for decades.