iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anyway, seems that wasn’t what they were going for, and Andrew Scott just failed the Scottish accent test. Of this week’s WW2 movies, definitely go to De Gaulle, it’s far more interesting.

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Montgomery is probably the most prominent officer from that background, though I doubt he had the accent (but his father definitely did). The Duke of Wellington sounded distinctively Irish (to English people) his whole life - something you will never see acknowledged on depictions of him.

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I was thinking maybe it was a nod to the Anglo-Irish being over represented in the British military, and the Anglo-Irish accent is quite distinctive (to the Irish it sounds English, to the English it sounds Irish). It has largely died out, though I have met a handful of people who had it.

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Continuing with the WW2 theme, today I saw Pressure. Apparently it’s based on a play - and I think it would have worked better as play. I’d love to know what was up with Andrew Scott’s accent choices. He’s supposed to be Scottish (I think) and sounds about as Scottish as I do.

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Celts not existing is the schrodinger’s cat of these theories - linguists (I think) don’t accept it’s but historians do (or at least that’s where it stood the last time I checked).

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My weekend: watching a World War Two movie, drinking whiskey (a whole two drinks), and being sad. (When the miserables hit, they hit hard). It’s possible I’ve metamorphosed into a 70 year old grandad. In my defence, it’s been a stressful week. (Stressful may be some classic Irish understatement)

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

It’s been a long, long work week (yes, I know it’s only Wednesday). Watching Slow Horses takes some of the sting out of it, because however tough my week is, River Cartwright is always having a worse time.

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

LinkedIn constantly sends me Head of Comms jobs for organisations that are in the middle of some ghastly reputation crisis. It makes me wonder what the algorithm has concluded about me.

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Somewhere a US state department official is pleading with anyone who’ll listen to “please, please don’t unpick our most significant foreign policy success of the last fifty years.” Meanwhile, the entire Irish cabinet frantically discussing how to say “you’re not helping” in Trumpese.

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I thought it was thematically more interesting than original - which is a very straight story told with assurance and competence - but also suffered a bit from lack of focus. And whoever the new costume designer was, they’re not in the same class as Patricia Field.

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Usually when I’m stressed, I resort to watching my comfort episodes of the West Wing. The last month or so, only Star Trek will do. I feel like that’s not a good sign.

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Years ago, I had a conversation with a friend about how DIY dentistry is an absolute dealbreaker in a potential boyfriend. Tonight’s play proved me right - DIY dentists are psychopaths. (I gave the actors a real panto reaction when I realised just what *kind* of psychopath).

static.klipy.com

Hannibal Lecter Eating a Cherry

ALT: Hannibal Lecter Eating a Cherry

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

There are vineyards in north county Dublin. From which wine is produced. For €60 a bottle. I don’t know which of those facts is most astonishing. (I think label must say “for those who live dangerously” or something - they have to know, right?)

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Maev MacCoille @msmaev.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

There is a particular form of (not mainstream) Protestant literalism that is responsible for far more damage than anyone ever admits. There’s a weird kind of projection thing going where a lot of its failings are ascribed to the medieval church in ways that are pretty ahistoric (eg witch burnings)

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Star Trek passes, because the set up heavily implies that no one needs to do laundry, super-duper computers do it for everyone. Star Wars wobbles between Infinite Wardrobe that Takes Up No Space (Padme) and “I have precisely three outfits and they get visibly dirty” (Han, Leia, Rey). Partial pass

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Most Jane Austen adaptations pass, because they show servants, shifts, and repeated outfits. We have enough information to infer who’s doing the laundry and how often, even if we don’t see it. Most Brontë adaptations fail, because what are clean clothes to sexy brooding men (a red rag, apparently)?

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Bridgerton does NOT pass, because while it does show servants, it commits another cardinal sin - everyone dressed in silks with not a shift to be seen. Without a sin you will sweat all over your expensive (and expensively dyed) finery, and it will be ruined on the first wear. Instant failure.

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If you ever see a story set in the American South where the nice plantation owner has ‘released’ all their slaves (*cough* the Beguiled *cough*) but is still wearing pristine whites…the bar has not only been missed but flung as far away as humanly possible, because thinking about is inconvenient.

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Harry Potter (eventually) passes this bar. Tolkien passes it (sometimes). George RR Martin wants to pass, but can’t make himself find laundry interesting. Terry Prachett probably would have written a book about the Discworld’s first washing machine if he’d had the time, so I’m giving him the pass.

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Deadly Hunkerbunker @joaquindead.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This may be a specific cultural inheritance, but my bar for credibility in a fantasy/period drama is simply “Who is doing the laundry?” Because it’s physically exhausting, resource intensive work, and if it just ‘happens,’ then the writer has not thought enough about the foundations of their world

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Reposted by Maev MacCoille

Pierce Brosnan was the result of a GoFundMe campaign to aggregate all of the trace amounts of Irish suavité in one person. Worked a treat, but now National resources are utterly depleted.

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Alas, before my time. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s an “into each generation a [suave] is born” type of thing. Like Buffy, but for manners and overall gentlemanliness.

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The battle in Africa was absolutely horrible to watch in the right way, if you follow me. There were a handful of dodgy cgi shots of London (particularly around broadcasting house) but I’m guessing that’s due to a limited budget.

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I’m sure Pierce can be great craic when the mood takes him. Just not musically.

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I think that’s code for “insist on taking their guitar out at parties” and having far too much trauma to consider treating their girlfriends nicely. Forgive me, I have become cynical.

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I kind of thought the writing for Churchill gave Beale more notes to play…we weren’t put inside De Gaulle’s thought processes as much, which left him a bit opaque. The walk was a bit odd, though I assume it’s an imitation of how De Gaulle actually moved.

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Flirty Smile in Black and White

See, when you’re Irish, you become immune to the powers of the accent. Scottish accents on the other hand…

static.klipy.com

ALT: Flirty Smile in Black and White

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I think we only had a time share in Sam Neill…

He was my first Hamlet, and so magical in the part, I forgot that my granny was dying (she died about a week later). On stage or on screen, I’ve never seen him put a foot wrong.

It was his ability to cut through and understand what mattered and what really didn’t that made Churchill such an essential leader, and Beale nails it. The depiction of Antony Eden, on the other hand, is risible. Unless Eden was an ingenue who needed realpolitik explained to him…seems unlikely.

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Churchill was so rich with idiosyncrasies (and drunk, don’t forget drunk), that I think it’s easy for actors depicting him to fall into shtick (or speechifying, which might be worse). But Beale gives us the calculating political mind that underpinned all Churchill’s eccentricities.

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austintassletine.bsky.social @austintassletine.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I went to see the De Gaulle: Resistance film today, which is interesting for a tonne of reasons (it acknowledges the role of colonised nations in the war!)… one of which is that I think Simon Russell Beale does the best performance of Churchill that I think I’ve ever seen.

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Reposted by Maev MacCoille

I'm inordinately please with this gag.

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No offence to Jamie, who seems quite charming when I’ve seen him interviewed, but being ridiculously good looking is not the same as suave. He’s too awkward about his own beauty to pull it off.

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Navan only makes it more inexplicable.

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We’re celts. It *always* matters. (That aside, good point, well made)

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I almost think that if you were going to do it, you’d have to approach it like EU accession - as in, a ten or fifteen year process of gradual change. There are a lot of frightened, traumatised people out there - and people tend to be irrational about change under the best of circumstances.

I had the gravediggers one in mind…more suitably unwholesome perhaps.

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If it’s the one I’m thinking of…lower-key is not how I’d describe it. But there’s a play hook right there. Yanks would love the Celtic mishticism and we could pretend billionaires are capable of reforming.

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I am more pro-reunification than I used to be - the IDA actually know how to do regional development which NI desperately needs. And maybe we could finally get a train up to Donegal (and some decent roads). But obviously it can’t be imposed on people.

To be clear - I would hope and expect the any Irish government would put in place whatever safeguards are needed - it’s just constitutional changes take so long to unpick if you get them wrong.