Karl Puschmann: Legends and Big Mistakes

Legends  

As drugs flood the streets of '90s Britain, a team of civil servants is thrust undercover to topple the gangs behind it. Inspired by an untold true story (Netflix). 

  

Big Mistakes  

Blackmailed into working for gangsters, two deeply incapable siblings become the most disorganized duo in organized crime (Netflix)  

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks AB screen.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Time Time Carl Pushman is here with his screen time
picks for this weekend shows to watch from the comfort
of your couch. Good morning, Carl, Jack. Hello, and we
have two new shows streaming on Netflix this week, So
let's begin with Legends.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yes, this is a gripping crime thriller set in nineteen
nineties England as the country battled a heroin epidemic, and
that show's title is a little bit of a play
on words here. The legend refers to a false identity
that you'd create that law enforcement agents create themselves before
going under cover. So it's that kind of legend. But
rather than following the typical highly trained police unit, Legends

(00:51):
instead tells the true story of a small team of
custom agents infiltrating two violent drug gangs that were bringing
that stuff into the country. What makes it so compelling
is that these were not pros. They were just everyday
people selected from customs agents like you see the airport
bag checking or dog sniffing or investigating male suspicious mail packages.

(01:12):
They were just everyday folks. So that just gives the
six part series an utterly compelling tension that makes her
intense viewing because every scene they're terrified, they're untrained. It
just makes all the stakes and interactions with these violent
drug gangs feel incredibly high. It starts off with the
recruitment process in episode one, and that is just a

(01:32):
fantastic fun and sort of shows you what you're what
you're in for. It's very similar to how heist movies
put the teams together, and you know, I always love
that kind of thing, you know, montages and cuts and yeah,
it's just it's just one day.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
They have like the tech guy and they have the
lock peck air brains and the.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Brawn and the yeah yeah right, So it has that.
But then from there it's down to business and the
agents get split into two teams here, one attempting to
infiltrate a Liverpool gang and one team trying to infiltrate
London's insular Turkish gang. Now he's best known for comedy,
but here Steve Coogan takes a dramatic turn. He plays Don,
the former undercover agent who's sort of responsible for this

(02:08):
team of unskilled customs agents trying to do this incredibly
skilled work and he expertly walks the line of displaying
bureaucratic authority while also somehow still bringing comedic relief to
these scenes. He is just great and compelling, and the
ensemble cast around him just doesn't let him down at all.
It might sound basphemous, but I'm going to invoke the

(02:29):
spirit of The Wire here, one of the greatest TV
shows of all times. I know, I know, but bear
with me. Legends fulls that same trick of showing you
both sides of the law, So you spend a lot
of time embedded with both the gangs. You see their workings,
you get to know the people, their networks and sort
of why they're doing what they're doing. Now, it's not
the next Wire. I'm not going to get totally carried
away here, but more than once it did remind me

(02:49):
of that classic TV show.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Now, it just came out on Thursday and I've already
watched the whole thing. It's brilliant. It doesn't reinvent the
crime thriller Wheel, but it does present one of the
best realizations of the Wheel this year. Highly, hugely recommended.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Fantastic, great, I'm really excited by that. It's always a
good sign when it's only been out forty eight hours
or so and you've watched the whole thing. We love
to hear that. So that's really good.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
It is so good.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, cool, Okay, So that's Legends. That's on Netflix. Next up.
Also on Legends, I've seen this one. Big Mistakes.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, I was a bit slow to the party on
This came out a few weeks ago, and yeah, I'm
into it. Man. It's sticking with the crime theme, but
much different this time. It's a crime comedy and this
was created and stars Dan Levy, who co credit Shit's
Creek with his father Eugene Levy. But this is a
very different vibe. That was quite warm and friendly, and
this is very dark and cynical. It follows two siblings

(03:43):
who's steal a necklace from a two dollar shop as
a gift for their dying grandmother. They put on her
and the next day she's buried in it. But the
problem is that the shop was a front for the
mob who were hiding a seventy five thousand dollars necklace
in plain sight and now they want it back. So
that's the first mistake that was made, and then from
there it kicks off a series of escalating events as
the pair get blackmailed and more indebted to the mob

(04:05):
as it goes along. Now, the show's humor won't be
for everyone. It leans heavily into anxiety and awkwardness, and
it's got a chaotic, very bickering kind of energy to
the show. But it's if you do like that kind
of thing. It is very fun as the pair siblings
just to have a complete lack of survival skills, which

(04:25):
makes the interactions hilarious but also quite stressful to watch.
It is a crime comedy, and they really lean into
the shooting of it is it's shot like a proper
like Legends, a proper dark, gritty crime thriller. So you
have these very intense scenes, but then they'll just start
bickering between themselves with absolutely absurd lies about each other

(04:46):
to try and weazel out of situations. It's it's very
very funny and has sort of a jarring vibe vibe
to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it has that tension
and drama of a gritty crime thriller, but it is
also very funny. So yeah, it's chaotic, energetic, absurd, but
also very awkward and it could be a bit too
stressful to watch with all bickering and shouting.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Again, I feel like you just have to get into
that kind of Dan Levy style humor. Like my wife
finds it so funny. She loves it's great. I mean
I find it really funny too, you know the whole
Like David, you know that it is. I mean, it
is very funny and an absurd is you know, absurd

(05:27):
is you know, hits the nail on the head as well.
It's interesting to know how Dan Levy does these things
with siblings. You know that there's a lot of his
sibling relationship and you know the relationship with his parents
as well. But he really plays on the kind of adult,
you know, young adult sibling relationships in an interesting way.
And I find it very very funny indeed.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
So no, that's great. Yeah, and here it's greatly realized
in the way that there'll be normal adults and then
as soon as they come into contact with each other,
they revert exactly childhood selves.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
I think that's it. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, you've nailed it. Okay,
So that's Big Mistakes. That's on Netflix. Carl's first pick
for us this week. Legends is also.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
On for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen
live to News Talks at B from nine am Saturday,
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