Hayley Atwell's Boobs.

There is absolutely no way I can tell this story without sounding like a pervert. However I've been waiting to tell it for ages so here goes;

Back in 2010 Tony and Ridley Scott co-produced a mini-series entitled "The Pillars of the Earth" along with Canadian and German (EU) money. So amazing was this mini-series which poured so much money into Hungary that it became an instant classic with all those summit people who spend far too much time on aeroplanes. So much so that it was clearly referenced in at least one agreement between the IMF (pre-Lagarde) and the EU at one of those many summits about the Eurozone crisis and was recentlely re-referenced in the run-up to the COP18/CMP8. The pillars of the title represented the multi-polar foundations on which western society is built. For example Matthew Macfadyen's monk represented religon, Ian McShane's Cardinal represented politics and the several Kings and Queens represented Monarchy. Hayley Atwell's character represented love/lust as represented by her two suitors Jack and Alfred.  In order to explore this juxtaposition between love and lust the series required many scenes in which either Jack or Alfred would spy on Atwell's character as she swum naked in a lake, took a bath, changed clothes etc. In a series that featured a lot of violence and a lot of nudity (you really must watch it) you would have expected Atwell's breasts and or genitals be to shown on camera. If that had happened you would probably not have noticed. However every time the occasion arose the scene was edited in such a way as to draw more attention to the edit then to the story. As this carried on throughout the eight episodes this became more and more of an issue leading to lots of speculation about things like how much of a 'difficult' actress Atwell must be to appear in a series in which sex, violence and nudity play such a big part but refuse to appear naked on camera. Then in the final episode Atwell's character featured in a full on sex scene with I think Jack and all was revealed so to speak. After so much suspense I - along with probably most male viewers - went; "I'm definitely going to look!" Then the sharp edit re-appeared and cut straight to the aftermath of a 12 year old girl being raped. This perfectly drew that long discussed comparison between straight male sexuality and paedophilia and remains as one of the greatest "F'ck you's!" I've seen from a filmmaker to his audience in years.

Tonight I've mainly been watching a two part (very) mini-series from the BBC entitled "Restless." It actually features a mother in 1970's Britain telling her adult daughter about her experiences in the second world war through a series of flashbacks. However as I'm quite drunk for the sake of simplicity I will simply focus on the 1940's period. Here Atwell plays the mother as she is recruited to spy for Britain during the second world war. After being recruited to work for some unnamed spy agency that plants made-up stories in the news media across the world Atwell's character proceeds to sleep with her boss, be sent to sseduce a White House aide in order to blackmail him by arranging for the pair of them to be photographed in bed before finally being asked to strip naked by a Mexican police officer with Nazi sympathies. As a result you would have expected Hayley Atwell's boobs to feature heavily and having seen them I can assure they always do although sadly on this occasion only constrained by a good cloth. Therefore I thought a good narrative for this adaptation would be the actual actress Hayley Atwell's journey through Hollywood after "The Pillars of the Earth" came out. Sadly the BBC weren't allowed into Hollywood so were forced to shoot the majority of the show in South Africa. As result they just sort of panicked and chucked everything at it from that film Romala Garai did about the second world war that heavily influenced the first season of "The Hour," "Any Human Heart," "Homeland," "The Sweeney (film)," "Layer Cake" the UK rapper "Plan B." To be honest I sort of wandered off when Atwell's character was sitting the 'London' pub with Lilly Allen's little brother Alfie talking about them all getting rolled up.

So in summary if an online game called "Good TV Bingo" suddenly appears I definitely want a cut of the takings.

01:45 on 29/12/12.