Two weeks in August / SPOILERS SPOILERS …

[the80sweregreat]

Watching at tv pace , it doesn’t end for ages , but as it’s all on I player obviously some may have watched it all.
I admit that I’ve been at a loose end and needed something to watch this week.
What do others think ? I did enjoy it. It was a strange drama and I can’t tell if it was satire or a black comedy or just the holiday from hell! Or all three.
The policeman made me laugh ( how lovely was he) and a few quips. Some really good acting too.
I feel guilty for binging it.

My quick answer would be "who knows"! It is interesting the way several of us have understood one thing but not got something else. This is my take anyway.

Yes, to Pan. There was a running theme about the goat, the wine flowing. I think many writers in English have picked up on some of the themes of this think Et in Arcadia ego, Brideshead Revisited. Where you have themes of enjoying life, in excess, but portents of doom, and death. The goat in the road was a bad omen from the beginning.

I have been disappointed that the writer played with the recurring life/death themes but not in a 'purist' way regarding the Greek references. I would be interested to know why you have chosen Athena? I think the Flick character is more like the Pythia (at the Oracle of Delphi) with what she ingests before she intones Know Thyself. The temple is to the Moirai - who control life - but there is an older temple to Gaia (the mother of all life). For instance, Zoe is Greek for life, her daughter is Eve (also, life), etc......

I am up to ep 3 and only just realised Nat and ? Colin (Will) aren’t in a weird open relationship. Early on they seemed a couple and although they made a comment about a single friend twin I didn’t believe that anyone their age with a job would choose to go away and share a bedroom with someone of the opposite sex. I would rather stay at home or choose somewhere cheaper. None of them seem real especially Jess.

Jacob not Colin. It’s a name that doesn’t suit him either way.

Something I also didn’t understand is when Solomon and Dan were talking on their own and one of them made a comment about Dan’s accident being Zoe’s fault? Did any of you get this?

Just because you can’t imagine choosing to do that doesn’t mean no one else would.

I’ve been on hols with single opposite-sex friends who’ve shared a room. If your friendship accommodates that, then it’s a good way to get a holiday on a budget.

I didn’t hear Dan tell Solomon that the accident was Zoe’s fault, can you recall which episode this was mentioned? Did he mean that she sort of drove him to it because they were miserable together and he couldn’t see a way forwards, that type of thing? She did say to him she was annoyed he even thought about it because it would have left her with the children on her own.

I found the first half of this series better than the last. Disliked them all, apart from Zoe. Everyone conveniently forgot her husband was kissing her friend, which started her unravelling. Dan was awful. The fish scene in episode one was so annoying. Didn’t like freeloading Will and his friends either. Actually feel irritated just writing this 😂, although I did enjoy it overall.

I kept thinking that Jacob was Will as he plays a Will in W1A and that suits him.
(Then they brought a Will character in it to confuse me even more ! Lol)

Loved the fight in the pool - i was really rooting for her 🤣.

Exactly! And she’d been living with his depression/suicide attempts. No wonder she lost it when he kissed someone else!

The actress who played Jess was brilliant at making me hate her too. She was fantastically annoying.

Will’s friends were so annoying. Free loaders.
Maybe Nat will get them back to help with the renovations on that house, but maybe not as they probably wouldn’t do much thinking about it though !
I did wonder where the bedding came from and how they could stay there without a toilet and so on. That bit seemed air brushed away at one point, the house wasn’t really livable she said to the previous owner.

Yup

The kiss was the catalyst for so much of it wasn’t it, yet Zoe then made a play for Solomon and went off with Jon too , so I can see why people find it hard to sympathize with any of them really. I hope she can find a way to be on her own now, maybe going off in the boat with the two children was a hint , but I can’t see them making another series so may never know

I loved the fight and then everyone conveniently forgot about it afterwards or acted like it was a completely normal thing to happen.

Me too!

TBF she didn't do those things until she'd said she wanted a divorce.
I'm much more sympathetic to her than to Dan.

The fight was bizarre. They sort of shrugged it off! lol
Zoe did say it was over before she strayed, but most people would keep their powder dry on holiday I think. It just gave Dan more ammo to fire at her even if he started it..
Although I know that’s people make poor decisions and she had enough of it all. It wasn’t all good and bad behavior by them , made it interesting.

Did Will and friends ever take their pants off in ep 4 and why does Will senior wear a vest? Loving the Classical mythology references

Such clever writing.
Not sure if it's been said but Jacob must have been inspired by and modelled on Jacob in "Jacob's Room" (Virginia Woolfe).

From Wikipedia (my comments in italics)
Motifs of emptiness and absence haunt the novel and establish its elegiac feel. (Definitely got this feeling about Jacob, he was almost ephemeral, even glowing white giving him an otherworldly air)
The story is told mainly through the perspectives of the women in Jacob's life, including the repressed upper-middle-class Clara Durrant (Nat ) and the uninhibited young art student Florinda, (Will) with whom he has an affair.bHis time in London forms a large part of the story, though towards the end of the novel he travels to Italy and then Greece.

Zoe’s γνωθι σε αυτόν ( know thyself) quote at the temple. Did that get translated or explained at any point or was it just left hanging? It seemed to me that this was a key line - Zoe’s arriving at self-understanding- but it didn’t seem to get explained, unless I missed this.
I really enjoyed this series- I wasn’t convinced at the start but it really grew on me. None of the characters or relationships was quite what they seemed- very clever writing.

After Fliss did the ritual, Zoe did come across her younger self and had a kind of level of self understanding didn’t she. That’s how I saw it.
Considering that Solomon told her hit Jon on purpose and what Jess told her about him and their relationship issues, I’d like to think she will leave him alone once they get back home though. He was off to do his film anyway.

I thought this too. Definitely echoes of both.

I meant Flick , not Fliss. The one played by Dolly wells.

I really empathised with Zoe being the person who was always being "good" and doing the right thing but losing herself in the process. It's like it all exploded as she'd been holding it in for so long. I'm not excusing the way she behaved, but I felt it was understandable, as she'd been screaming inside for so long.

I still can’t believe that Zoe would want anything to do with Solomon after he said he hit Jon on purpose. I know he made it awkward for them by turning up at the house , but he lost his job and it was because of his actions that he couldn’t work.
I guess he assumed he was after his daughter and wanted some revenge, but it was harsh to do that without any real evidence he was after her.