Author of High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby has said he believes reading novels ought not to be hard work any more than watching television is.  Certainly he has made good on this view with his latest novel, Funny Girl (2015), but has also, for good measure, set his narrative in the world of television: BBC television.  Not the BBC now, but the BBC of the Sixties (the beginning year is 1964), with the novel not so much about comely, ambitious Barbara Parker, the “funny girl” of the title, as about her and her cohorts as they mount a weekly sitcom.

To me the book is a page-turner, as Hornby wanted it to be, although like your typical TV show it doesn’t seem to be saying much.  In this it differs from High Fidelity.  All the same, I enjoyed the people and the dialogue in Funny Girl, despite the funny girl’s not being a fully realized character.  It’s a kick to see Barbara, a.k.a. Sophie, dissociating herself from the celebrity she physically resembles: Sabrina, a British pinup and actress born in 1936 and known for her splendid curves.

The ugly past of 27-year-old Cora (Brittany Snow) consists of helping set a church on fire and badly hurting a female employee therein.  Either part or the whole of her sentence is doing community service at a Christian dial-a-prayer site, and Cora, though remorseful, cynically and sourly hates the place.  Then she starts accepting it, as she knows she must.

Maggie Kiley’s Dial a Prayer (2015) is a spiritual, even Christian, picture, a would-be Gimme Shelter, and it isn’t very good.  If there is one thing the authorities would not have Cora do for her community service, it’s trying to help tormented people by praying for and counseling them.  Moreover, the dial-a-prayer ministry is not quite believable with its cheerleader enthusiasm and after-hours volleyball games in which one young employee wears a bikini.

The film can be amusing and affecting, and it’s fine that Cora receives her epiphanies, but the situation with the nice, placid near-boyfriend she meets is hard to swallow.  Dial a Prayer needs a far better script.  In the realm of cinematic triumphs, it doesn’t have a prayer.

The last episode of the FX series, The Americans (Season 2), was melancholy.  An important question the season raised was, what kind of burden do undercover “crusaders” place on their unsuspecting children?  Also, the last episode was very artfully made, ending with a whimper not a bang.  The acting on the show is utterly expert.

Stan, you’re the man.

What will become of Nina?

I must see Season 3 ASAP.

Not a very rich or meaty tale, William Wyler’s The Westerner (1940) is nevertheless well-directed and beguilingly seriocomic.  It moves slowly enough that we really take in the personalities of saddle tramp Cole (Gary Cooper) and the unjust “Judge” Roy Bean (Walter Brennan) as another cattlemen-vs.-sodbusters strand emerges.  In Bean the film offers the idea of once a baddie, always a baddie:  the phony judge warms to Cole and idolizes the theatre actress Lily Langtry, but he’s a brute.

The Westerner is technically strong, with cinematography by Gregg Toland, and so I wish I could see it on the big screen.

Cooper captivates.

Cover of The Westerner

The “Americans” in the TV series, The Americans, are in reality Soviet spies masquerading as an American husband (Matthew Rhys) and wife (Keri Russell), who keep their identities—and subversive activities—a secret even from their two U.S.-born children.  They go by the names Philip and Elizabeth, and the time is the early Eighties.  I have been watching Season 2 of the show on DVD.  I haven’t seen any of the current episodes.

However far-fetched the plot details might be, this is a sophisticated, pleasurable program.  Whatever inept moves the FBI makes, the KGB looks even more inept.  And Philip and Elizabeth, true believers in the Commie cause, will resort to out-and-out murder, albeit not without Philip feeling guilty.

Sex ‘n’ violence exist in The Americans, and the former has increased during the second season to the point where it’s nearly exploitive. I say “nearly.”

Two more episodes to go (I think).