Month: January 2023

A Spy Among Friends, Episode 6: No Man’s Land

The East German authorities built the Berlin Wall to stop people from escaping to West Germany.  Most of the 155 km wall was made up of 3.6m high concrete panels while the rest was barbed wire. A heavily guarded no man’s land (the title of the episode!) known as the “death strip” ran along the Eastern side of the Wall. More than 7,000 East German soldiers manned the watchtowers and the bunkers. It was the best-lit area in Berlin thanks to the lamp posts every 30 meters. In addition, there were alarms, ditches, barbed wire, guard dogs and weapons that automatically fired shots at the escapers.

A Spy Among Friends finale opens at one of the seven crossing points between East Berlin and West Berlin. As I try to understand who is in the car approaching the checkpoint to get into East Berlin…

Continue reading “A Spy Among Friends, Episode 6: No Man’s Land”

Homeland meets Billions: “Somebody That I Used to Know”

Damianista’s note: This fan fiction was originally written and published in  2017.

A lot of time has passed since the Brody era of Homeland graced our screens. October 2011, to be exact, was when the series first started. Every now and then we still run into folks on Twitter discovering those first few seasons for the first time. Homeland does have this “eternal” thing going for it, themes that transcend time and space, maybe. Which is crazy seeing as how it’s so driven by the news and politics of the day. Maybe even for current events, the idea of we’ve been here before and we’ll be here again still applies? Whatever the case, the show begs revisiting and will be written in whatever books they keep about these things as one of the best shows in television history. I still watch despite the fact there’s no Brody, mostly because I loved Carrie a good bit more than I loved Brody. I know that doesn’t apply to a lot of the readers (or writers!) of this blog. Alas, here we are.

Carrie’s back in DC in Homeland Season 7, so little to no chance of her meeting up with Bobby. But that’s exactly what I couldn’t help but imagine during the year she spent in NYC. What better time than now to revisit a wee bit of fantasy where Carrie meets Bobby Axelrod at a coffee shop in Manhattan.

Continue reading “Homeland meets Billions: “Somebody That I Used to Know””

Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Hamlet on Broadway *UPDATED*

Damian was recently the guest on actor Jonathan Cake’s Stage Door Jonny podcast where the two actors had a long, lovely and intellectual conversation about theatre and life. As Damian shared several interesting anectodes from his acting career, one highlight was from when he made his Broadway debut in Hamlet in 1995.

So why not travel back to that time  and chase a 24 year old Englishman in New York? 😀

Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Hamlet on Broadway *UPDATED*”

From Shakespeare to Bronte: Lourdes’ Dream Role(s) for Damian Lewis

Hi everyone! Damianista here. The screenwriter and casting director we have today is Lourdes, a lawyer and  a writer, all the way from Peru! I was so lucky to visit Lourdes’ beautiful country a couple of years ago and I would recommend everyone to travel there. As I leave the word to Lourdes, huge thanks go to her for sharing her dream role(s) for Damian with us.

Continue reading “From Shakespeare to Bronte: Lourdes’ Dream Role(s) for Damian Lewis”

A Spy Among Friends, Episode 5: Snow

A Spy Among Friends is the kind of show where one should pay attention to every detail. For me, this extends to episode  titles. Snow.  It is a polysemous word. The first thing that comes to mind when snow is concerned is, of course, the small white pieces of ice that sometimes fall from the sky when it is cold. However,  as a verb, snow also means to deceive or trick someone with persuasive talk. And it is exactly what spies do, isn’t it?  So it snows in Moscow in this episode while the spies keep snowing each other 🙂

Continue reading “A Spy Among Friends, Episode 5: Snow”