eye

If journalism is the first draft of history, TV news is a rough, improbable sketch. As last year’s wildfires multiplied, still 0% contained, field reporters — tasked with articulating the unintelligible on camera — grieved alongside Los Angeles in real time.

“What are you supposed to say when the entire community you were born and raised in is wiped off the map, literally burning to the ground before your eyes?” Jacob Soboroff writes in “Firestorm,” out in early January ahead of the Palisades and Eaton fires’ first anniversary. “I couldn’t come up with much.”

Viewers saw that struggle Jan. 8, 2025. Soboroff, then an NBC News national correspondent, briefly broke the fourth wall while trying to describe the destruction of his former hometown, the Pacific Palisades.

“Firestorm,” the first book about the Great Los Angeles Fires of 2025, pulls readers inside Soboroff’s reporter’s notebook and the nearly two relentless weeks he spent covering the Palisades and subsequent Eaton wildfire. “Fire, it turns out, can be a remarkable time machine,” he writes, “a curious form of teleportation into the past and future all at once.”

The book argues the future long predicted arrived the morning of Jan. 7. The costliest wildfire event in American history, so far, was compounded by cascading failures and real-time disinformation, ushering in what Soboroff calls America’s New Age of Disaster: “Every aspect of my childhood flashed before my eyes, and, while I’m not sure I understood it as I stared into the camera…I saw my children’s future, too, or at least some version of it.”

In late December, Soboroff returned to the Palisades Recreation Center for the first time since it burned. Tennis balls popped from the courts down the bluff. Kids shrieked around the playground’s ersatz police cars, ambulance and fire trucks — part of a $30-million public-private rebuild backed by City Hall, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and Lakers coach JJ Redick, among others.

The sun peeks through the morning marine layer as Soboroff stops at a plaque on the sole standing structure, a New Deal-era basketball gym. His parents’ names are etched at the top; below them, family, friends, neighbors. It’s practically a family tree in metal, commemorating the one-man fundraising efforts of his father, the business developer Steve Soboroff, to repair the local play area. It was also the elder Soboroff’s entry point into civic life, the start of a career that later included 10 years as an LAPD police commissioner, a mayoral bid and a 90-day stint as L.A.’s’ fire recovery czar.

“All because my dad hit his head at this park,” Soboroff says with a smirk, recalling the incident that set off his father’s community safety efforts.

He checks the old office where he borrowed basketballs as a kid. “What’s happening? Are people still coming to the park?” he asks a Recreation and Parks employee, slipping into man-on-the-street mode.

On a drive down memory lane (Sunset Boulevard), Soboroff jokes he could close his eyes and trace the street by feel alone. Past rows of yard signs — “KAREN BASS RESIGN NOW” — and tattered American flags, grass and rose bushes push through the wreckage. Pompeii by the Pacific.

Jacob Soboroff.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

At the corner where he once ran a lemonade stand, Soboroff FaceTimed his mother on national television to show her what remained of the home he was born in. Before the fires, he had never quite turned the microphone on himself.

During the worst of it, with no one else around but the roar of the firestorm, “I had to hold it up to myself,” he says. “That was a different assignment than I’ve ever had to do.”

Soboroff is a boyish 42, with a mop of dark curls and round specs, equally comfortable in the field and at the anchor desk. J-school was never the plan. But he got a taste for scoops as an advance man to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. MTV News once seemed like the dream, but he always much preferred the loose, happy talk of public television’s Huell Howser. MSNBC took notice of his post-grad YouTube and HuffPost spots and hired him in 2015.

Ten years later, he was tiring of breaking news assignments and stashed away his “TV News cosplay gear” to ring in 2025. But when he saw the winds fanning the flames in the Palisades from NBC’s bureau at Universal Studios, he fished out a yellow Nomex fire jacket and hopped in a three-ton white Jeep with his camera crew.

The opening chapters of “Firestorm” read like a sci-fi thriller. All-caps warnings ricochet between agencies. Smoke columns appear. High-wind advisories escalate. Soboroff slingshots the reader from the Palisades fire station to the National Weather Service office, a presidential hotel room, toppled power lines in Altadena, helitankers above leveled streets and Governor Newsom’s emergency operations center.

Between live shots with producer Bianca Seward and cameramen Jean Bernard Rutagarama and Alan Rice, Soboroff fields frantic calls from both loved ones and the unexpected contacts, desperate for eyes on the ground. One is from Katie Miller, a former White House aide who cut contact after the reporter published “Separated,” his 2020 book on the Trump family separation policy. Miller, wife of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, asks him to check on her in-laws’ home. “You’re the only one I can see who is there,” she writes. Soboroff confirms the house is gone. “Palisades is stronger than politics in my book,” he replies. For a moment, old divisions vanish. It doesn’t last.

Jacob Soboroff at McNally Avenue and East Mariposa Street in Altadena.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

He returns home to Frogtown, changes out of smoke-soaked clothes and grabs a few hours’ sleep before heading back out. “Yet another body blow from the pounding relentlessness of the back-to-back-to-back-to-back fires,” he writes. Fellow native Palisadian and MS Now colleague Katy Tur flies in to tour the “neighborhood of our youth incinerated.”

After the fires, Soboroff moved straight into covering the immigration enforcement raids across Los Angeles. He struggled to connect with others, though. Maybe a little depressed. The book didn’t crystallize until April, after a conversation with Jonathan White, a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, who is now running for congress.

Fire, White tells him, has become the fastest-growing threat in America and, for many communities, the most immediate. Soboroff began tracking down people he’d met during the blaze — firefighters, scientists, residents, federal officials — and churned out pages on weekends. He kept the book tightly scoped, Jan. 7–24, ending with President Trump’s visit to the Palisades with Gov. Newsom. He saved the investigative journalism and political finger-pointing for other writers.

“For me, it’s a much more personal book,” Soboroff says. “It’s about experiencing what I came to understand as the fire of the future. It’s about people as much as politics.”

Looking back — and learning from the fire — became a form of release, he said, as much for him as for the city. “What happened here is a lesson for everybody all across the country.”

Rudi, an L.A. native, is a freelance art and culture writer. She’s at work on her debut novel about a stuttering student journalist.

The second series of ITVs Red Eye aired on Thursday night and it failed to impress some viewers.

ITV viewers said the same thing as series two of Red Eye returned to screens on New Year’s Day. Jing Lusi has reprised her role as DS Hana Li for a new investigation alongside guest star Martin Compston.

Joining Jing and Martin in the new series are Lesley Sharp and Jemma Moore, who also return as Head of MI5 Madeline Delaney and journalist Jess Li.

Eighteen months after Russia is blamed for shooting down a new cargo plane over the Atlantic, DS Hana Li (Jing Lusi) is summoned to investigate the murder of an American diplomatic courier at Heathrow.

The investigation leads her to London’s US Embassy, where the new American Ambassador, Ronald Tillman, is hosting a party.

Realising the killer has infiltrated the building, Hana and US Embassy security chief Clay Brody hunt them down. Meanwhile, a Russian threat is received on board a UK Government jet.

However, just minutes into the new series, one viewer wrote, “The biggest pile of s*** I’ve ever seen.”

Another complained, “Loved Red Eye s1. Now on Red Eye s2 ep 3 & not enjoying it quite so much. Barely believable characters who can’t see/understand the bleeding obvious.”

Pointing out a blunder from the episode, one fan said, “Hmm, Ryanair at Heathrow?”

“Glad I’m not the only one who spotted that,” another viewer replied.

Someone else chimed in, “Did anyone else just spot Ryanair on #redeye at Heathrow? That’s not accurate, they don’t operate there!”

Others defended the ITV drama, with one writing, “First episode of new series wasn’t bad. Run of the mill so far.”

Another agreed, “Definitely one worth watching.” Someone else commented, “Love the addition of Martin Compston.”

In a surprising turn of events, ITV has also announced that Richard Armitage will make a surprise appearance in series two as Dr Matthew Nolan.

When speaking about his shock return to series two of Red Eye, Richard shared, “I loved the idea of Jess’ instinctual gravitation to Nolan’s door.

“In season one, he’d been through the mill and also later learned what had happened to her with Sir George Chapman, his boss, so of course, he was going to help her, albeit under the radar. We decided that the surprise might add to the adrenaline of the ‘who’s next’ scenario.”

When asked where fans will find Dr Nolan, the actor added, “We find him at home, and like season one, forced to perform outside of the box. He was just about to open a bottle of red when the doorbell rang, and he was interrupted to deal with a near-fatal bullet wound and perform an emergency blood transfusion on his dining table, cobbling together equipment.

“He’s basically able to improvise major trauma surgery, with a bag of saline from his fridge and a leftover suturing kit from his bag. It says a lot about him!”

The synopsis for episode two of the new series, which airs tomorrow night and is available to watch on ITVX, teases, “When Fox threatens to blow up the jet if anyone leaves the US Embassy, it becomes clear that Delaney and Hana are looking for the same Russian assassin.

“Compelled to lock down the embassy but refusing to worry about his important guests, Ambassador Tillman secretly traps them inside with a killer. As a Russian laptop is located onboard the jet and leaves Delaney and Peterson to carefully determine if it’s the actual bomb, Fox kills his first unsuspecting victim from a hit list.”

Red Eye is available to watch on ITVX.

**For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new **Everything Gossip** website**

Amid stacks of cash and liquor bottles, Tony Montana and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán sit together inside a painting. One fictional and the other real, the drug lords look nonchalant.

“That’s us!” says filmmaker Raúl “RJ” Sanchez with joyful mischief when I point out the centerpiece on the main wall of their office in Downtown L.A. Sanchez’s partner in artistic crime, Pasqual Gutiérrez, tells me they got the frame nearby at Santee Alley.

Located on a street corner in the Fashion District, their space, which doubles as a man cave, reflects their creative influences, their ties to L.A. and their offbeat sense of humor. Before they moved in 2021, the place was a shoe store called Latino Fashion — the storefront sign remains.

Walk in and you’ll find the bottom half of a mannequin flaunting male genitalia (“That was our stunt penis from [the short film] ‘Shut Up and Fish,’” says Sanchez laughing). There’s also a bulky metal structure that resembles a torture device, a teal green couch (which they got for under $100), photography books and keepsakes on shelves that once displayed footwear. It’s a mini museum to their history so far. Or, as Sanchez calls it, it’s “a living brain.”

Known artistically as Cliqua, the in-demand duo has already worked with some of the music industry’s biggest names. Their resume includes directing videos for Bad Bunny (“La Difícil”), the Weeknd (“Save Your Tears”), J Balvin (“Reggaeton”) and Rosalía (“Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi”).

This year, Gutiérrez crossed over into feature filmmaking with his docufiction debut “Serious People,” a deeply personal “cringe comedy” that he co-directed with longtime friend Ben Mullinkosson. Following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the film had a theatrical release in November and is now available to stream on multiple VOD platforms.

On screen, Gutiérrez and Sanchez play versions of themselves: music video directors in an industry that takes itself too seriously. While expecting his first child with partner Christine Yuan, also a filmmaker, Gutiérrez found himself caught between his commitment to his partnership with Sanchez and his responsibility as a soon-to-be father. The Gutiérrez in “Serious People” hires a doppelganger to replace him in his professional commitments.

“There were some things coming our way where if both Raúl and I weren’t available to do it, they would go away. Clients would be uninterested if it wasn’t the Cliqua brand,” Gutiérrez says. “That was deeply frustrating and haunting for me because it was like, ‘Raúl isn’t choosing to have a baby, but I am. And this is affecting us, because he can’t do everything on his own because people aren’t letting him do it.’”

Though both Gutiérrez and Sanchez fit under the generic identity umbrella of “Mexican American,” each of them knowingly embodies a distinct “flavor of Mexican.”

“I definitely identify with Chicano a lot,” says Gutiérrez. “I am second-generation and growing up I knew about lowriders and East L.A. barrio s—.” Raised between East Los Angeles and Pomona, Gutiérrez believes his Latino identity is unique to L.A.

Sanchez, on the other hand, is the child of immigrants from Mexico City and Jalisco. As a first-generation kid in the South Bay city of Gardena, his worldview was shaped differently.

“We’ve always had that split. You represent more what it is to be in this country for more generations, and I feel like I’m new. The culture I associate with more is Mexican but more rancho s—,” Sanchez explains. A vivid memory for Sanchez is his grandfather slaughtering a pig and driving around South Central on his pickup truck selling it. “The Chicano heritage wasn’t a thing for me, it was more the immigrant experience,” he says.

“I grew up speaking more Spanglish,” says Gutiérrez. “But Spanish was Raúl’s first language.”

Their artistic alliance is an amalgamation of what each brings to their friendship. Sanchez got Gutiérrez into Los Tigres del Norte and corridos, while Gutiérrez introduced him to Lil Rob’s “Summer Nights” and the 1993 movie “Blood In Blood Out,” which Gutiérrez considers a foundational cultural artifact in his life.

“Both of us have crossed towards the other’s side a little more,” says Sanchez. The two met through their then-girlfriends (now their wives and mothers of their respective children) almost a decade ago. At that point they each were already directing music videos.

“We really bonded over that shared experience of, ‘What’s it like trying to navigate this industry as a Latino?’” adds Sanchez.

For Gutiérrez, one of five siblings, his interest in filmmaking is linked to one of his older brothers who had a bit of a double life. “He was a gang member, but he was also a low-key cinephile,” he says. “He used to work in art house theaters, and we used to just watch weird stuff for a little kid to watch. A lot of ‘Blood In Blood Out,’ but also stuff like ‘Amélie.’”

With his father’s support, Gutiérrez attended Chapman University to study film production.

“My pops said, ‘Growing up no one ever asked me what I wanted to do. That wasn’t even an option for me,’” Gutiérrez recalls. “‘And the fact that you got accepted to this school, we’ll just find a way. We’ll take all the loans out. Go try and see how it is.’ My father empowered me to follow my dreams for sure.”

Sanchez had a less linear path into filmmaking. He graduated from UC Berkley with a degree in ancient history with the intent of going to law school. Instead, he returned to L.A. to try his hand at film, an interest that evolved from his enjoyment of video games growing up and film studies courses in college.

But how does one break into making music videos?

“In the beginning, a lot of times you’re shooting videos for your friends,” says Gutiérrez. “If you are creative in L.A., you know other creatives and one of them is a music artist or one of them is a rapper or in a rock band. And you start that way.”

“My sister was dating a rapper, so I was shooting his videos,” adds Sanchez.

Still, they both aspired to make feature films.

“Even when we were at the beginnings of Cliqua, the language we have always used to even talk about music videos has always been film-centric,” says Sanchez. “Those are the influences. We speak in movies.”

After meeting and hanging out for a while, Gutiérrez and Sanchez were eager to work together. That opportunity came with the video for J Balvin’s “Reggaeton,” which they had to sign on to do without being able to do much preparation. In the aftermath of that positive experience, they decided to create Cliqua, which originally also included music artist Milkman (MLKMN).

The name comes from the book “Varrio” by Gusmano Cesaretti, an Italian photographer who documented East L.A. culture in the 1970s, including the Klique Car Club.

The video for J Balvin kick-started their careers. They soon found themselves a niche as reggaeton became globally popular and a new crop of artists revitalized its aesthetic. But even as they eventually crossed over to other corners of the industry and landed consistent work with the Weeknd, they were aware of the limits to their creative freedom.

“Music videos are funny because they’re obviously not truly our work either; we’re at the service of another artist,” explains Sanchez. “We’re executing someone else’s vision even if the brief is generally open. It’s not truly us, but we’re in there.”

“Music videos are hard, man,” adds Gutiérrez. “The difficult thing about music videos that’s different from feature filmmaking is that it’s so fast. You get a concept, and you maybe have two days to come up with an idea and write a treatment for it. Then from there, you have a shoot date, but the shoot date can get pushed and it can get pulled depending on the artist.”

In 2023, Gutiérrez and Sanchez released their first narrative short film, “Shut Up and Fish,” about four “Edgars” (young Latino men with bowl cuts) on a boat. Their impetus was to subvert the expectations of stories involving characters from their community.

“We wanted to make it feel like an [Ingmar] Bergman film, because we’d never seen that, especially with these kids,” says Gutiérrez. One of the actors they cast in the short, Miguel Huerta, plays Gutiérrez’s chaotic doppelganger in “Serious People.”

For “Serious People,” Gutiérrez and Mullinkosson invoked arthouse references, such as the vignettes in the films of Swedish auteur Roy Andersson, or the surveillance feel of Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.” Gutiérrez makes a point of mentioning these inspirations in Q&As and interviews in hopes of igniting the curiosity of those watching “Serious People.”

“Making [that culture] accessible has always been a goal, whether that’s conscious or unconscious,” says Gutiérrez.

It was an anxiety-induced dream that first inspired Gutiérrez to write “Serious People” to satirize the entertainment industry. In the dream, Gutiérrez went on Craigslist to hire a look-alike in order to balance his personal and professional commitments. As soon as he woke up, he told his dream in detail to Yuan, who suggested he turn it into a film.

Gutiérrez brought Mullinkosson on board given his background in documentary, and because he thought co-directing it with Sanchez might make it too meta for comfort.

“This industry is so competitive and so demanding that every single director has a fear that if you say no to a single project, you’re never going to get hit up again,” says Mullinkosson on Zoom from Chengdu, China, where he lives. “At the end of the day, we’re just making movies — like, this isn’t that serious.”

Sanchez hesitated at first about the idea of being on camera, but his loyalty to Gutiérrez proved stronger than the reservations. “I actually got a kick out of seeing myself on screen,” Sanchez says. “When you see yourself projected that big, you start to understand what you feel like to other people in the world, which was a very interesting out-of-body experience.”

“Vulnerabilities are what make movies special, especially this one because Pasqual, Raúl and Christine opened their real lives to being on camera, and it’s very personal,” says Mullinkosson. “When you can be as brave as them to share your real life, something beautiful happens.”

Gutiérrez and Sanchez, who also became a father soon after our interview, are currently developing a new feature film, “Golden Boy,” which they describe as a “Stand by Me”-type of story about four Edgars. One of them thinks former boxer Oscar De La Hoya is his long-lost father. They go on a journey across California to confront De La Hoya.

“Music is where we started, but the goal has always been to do long-form, to do features,” says Gutiérrez. “And now with ‘Serious People,’ one is out there.”

Red Eye season 2 premieres on 1st January 2026, with Jing Lusi and Lesley Sharp returning alongside new lead Martin Compston for the gripping thriller

ITV is starting the year with a bang, bringing back its popular original thriller Red Eye. Creator Peter A Dowling and director Kieron Moore are teaming up again for a fresh story that once more puts DC Hana Li (Jing Lusi) and MI5 director-general Madeline Delaney (Lesley Sharp) in serious jeopardy.

The first series centred on the spine-chilling events on an extradition flight to China, where an alleged murderer was embroiled in a complicated international conspiracy.

This latest chapter builds on those global political tensions, splitting time between a besieged US Embassy in London and a rigged flight back to the English capital.

If you’re excited to tune into Red Eye season 2 on ITV1 and ITVX, read on for everything you need to know about the show’s return.

Red Eye season 2 release date

Red Eye season 2 is set to premiere on ITV1 at 9pm on Thursday, 1st January 2026 (New Year’s Day). All six episodes will also be available on ITVX from that date, allowing fans to binge-watch ahead.

Red Eye season 2 cast: New and returning

Red Eye season 2 welcomes back Jing Lusi as DC Hana Li, who spent the first series untangling a complex conspiracy on a dangerous flight to China.

Lesley Sharp is back in action as Madeline Delaney, now the director general of MI5, who finds herself in a precarious situation on an overseas flight in season 2, mirroring Hana’s ordeal from the first series.

Other familiar faces include Jemma Moore (Lockwood & Co.) reprising her role as Hana’s sister Jess, a fearless journalist, and Robert Gilbert (Bergerac) returning as her boss, Superintendent Simon O’Brian. Notably missing is Richard Armitage as Dr Matthew Nolan, with Line of Duty’s Martin Compston stepping in to fill his shoes as Lusi’s male co-lead, playing US Embassy security chief Clay Brody.

In summary, here’s an overview of the Red Eye season 2 cast:

• Jing Lusi as Detective Hana Li
• Lesley Sharp as Madeline Delaney
• Martin Compston as Clay Brody
• Jemma Moore as Jess Li
• Robert Gilbert as Supt. Simon O’Brien
• Cash Holland as Ruth Banks
• Jonathan Aris as John Tennant
• Steph Lacey as Megan Campbell
• Nicholas Rowe as DSEC Alex Peterson
• Trevor White as US Ambassador Ronald Tillman
• Isaura Barbe-Brown as DCM Cece Redding
• Danusia Samal as Captain Sarah Wright
• Guy Williams as Air Marshal John Johnson

Red Eye season 2 plot: What is it about?

Red Eye season 2 once again divides its attention between another endangered flight and events unfolding on the ground, but this time around, Hana Li is grounded while Madeline Delaney is trapped thousands of feet in the air.

The synopsis reads: “Inside the US Embassy, the celebrations for a newly appointed US Ambassador to London are shattered when a call, threatening to blow a British plane out of the sky if anyone leaves, triggers an immediate embassy lockdown, trapping guests and staff inside.

“And that’s when the murders begin, landing Hana Li, as a British cop, in a political and jurisdictional nightmare. Compelled to join forces with the Head of Embassy Security, Clay Brody, played by Martin Compston, a former colleague who once screwed her over, Hana has to see her way past her distrust of him and focus on the investigation.

“Because this time it’s personal: The plane that will be blown up is a government jet, and Director General Madeline Delaney is onboard.”

Red Eye season 1 is available to stream on ITVX. Season 2 premieres on New Year’s Day 2026.

**For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new ** Everything Gossip ** website**

Most things in this world have their good points and their not-so-good points, and this is certainly true of “The Copenhagen Test,” a science-fiction spy story about a man whose brain has been hacked. Without his knowing it, everything he sees and hears is uploaded to an unknown party, in an unknown place, as if he were a living pair of smart glasses. Created by Thomas Brandon and premiering Saturday on Peacock, its conceit is dramatically clever, if, of course, impossible. What do you watch when you learn that what you’re watching is being watched?

In a preamble, we meet our hero, Andrew Hale (Simu Liu, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”), a first-generation Chinese American Green Beret, rescuing hostages in Belarus. A voice in his headset instructs him that there is enough room for one on a departing helicopter and that he must prioritize an American citizen. Instead he picks a foreign child. This, we will learn, is the less-preferred choice.

Three years later, Hale is working for the Orphanage, a shadowy American intelligence agency that spies on all the less-shadowy American intelligence agencies — watching the watchers. (So much watching!) Its proud boast is that, since its inception in the Bush I administration, it has never been compromised. (Until someone started looking through Hale’s eyes, that is.) There is a secret entrance to their giant complex, accessed by locking eyes with a statue in a library — it’s thematically appropriate, but also very “Get Smart!” That is a compliment, obviously.

The lower floor is where the analysts toil; entry to the upper floor, where the action is, is by the sort of fancy key that might have been used to open an executive washroom in 1895. (The decor is better there, too, with something of the air of an 1895 executive washroom.) Hale, who has been been listening to and translating Korean and Chinese chatter, dreams of moving upstairs, which will come with the discovery that his head is not entirely his own.

Meanwhile, he has been suffering migraines, seizures and panic attacks. Ex-fiancée Rachel (Hannah Cruz), a doctor, has been giving him pills under the table. Other characters of continuing interest include Michelle (Melissa Barrera), a bartender who will spy on Hale from the vantage point of a girlfriend, sort of; Parker (Sinclair Daniel), a newly promoted “predictive analyst” with a gift for reading people and situations; Victor (Saul Rubinek), an ex-spook who runs a high-end restaurant and has known Hale forever; Cobb (Mark O’Brien), a rivalrous colleague whose Ivy League persona has been drawn in contrast to Hale’s; and Cobb’s uncle, Schiff (Adam Godley), who also has spy knowledge. Peter Moira (Brian d’Arcy James) runs the shop, and St. George (Kathleen Chalfant) floats above Moira.

As parties unknown look through Hale’s eyes, the Orphanage is watching Hale with the usual access to the world’s security cameras. (That bit of movie spycraft always strikes me as far-fetched; however, a conversation in the privacy of my kitchen will somehow translate into ads on my social feeds, so, who knows?) “The Copenhagen Test” isn’t selling a surveillance state metaphor, in any case; this is just one of those “Who Can You Trust?” stories, one that keeps flipping characters to keep the show going, somewhat past the point of profitability.

Like most eight-hour dramas, it’s too long — “Slow Horses,” the best of this breed, sticks to six — and over the course of the show, things grow muddied with MacGuffins and subplots. While it’s easy enough to enjoy what’s happening in the moment, it can be easy to lose the plot and harder to tell just who’s on what side, or even how many sides there are. (It doesn’t help that nearly everyone is ready to kill Hale.) I can’t go into details without crossing the dreaded spoiler line, but even accepting the impossible tech, much of “The Copenhagen Test” makes little practical sense, including the eponymous test. (Why “Copenhagen?” Det ved jeg ikke. Danish for “I don’t know.”) I spent so much time untwisting knots and keeping threads straight that, though I continued to root in a detached way for Hale, I ceased to care entirely about the fate of the Orphanage and the supposedly free world.

The show is well cast. While the characters on paper are pretty much types, each actor projects the essence of the part, adding enough extra personality to suggest a real person. (And they’re all nice to look at.) When not keeling over from pain, or engaged in a shootout or hand-to-hand combat, Liu is an even-keeled, quiet sort of protagonist — rather in the Keanu Reeves vein — and as a Chinese Canadian actor, still a novelty among American television action heroes. He does have a kind of chemistry with Barrera, who has screen chemistry all on her own, though it’s somewhat limited by the demands of the plot.

The ending, including a diminished-chord twist, is pretty pat, if happier than one might imagine given the ruckus that’s gone before. Neat bows are tied — though at least one has been left loose in hopes, according to my own predictive analysis, of a second season. And though releasing a series in the last week of the year doesn’t exactly betoken confidence, I can predict with some confidence that there might be one.

While both Cardiff and Ospreys won, the off-the-politics are never far away with rumours of a link-up in the future between the two teams. However unpopular that scenario is.

Ospreys owners, Y11 Sport & Media, have been linked with taking over Welsh Rugby Union-owned Cardiff, with the move creating dismay among both sets of supporters on social media.

The Welsh Rugby Union are looking for a way to cut the number of men’s professional side from four to three. Ospreys owners buying Cardiff might provide a neat solution for them.

Discussions are expected to continue between the WRU and other interested parties about the Cardiff takeover.

In April, the WRU stepped in after Cardiff temporarily went into administration.

The Blue and Blacks might be owned by the WRU but that does not stop the club providing a platform for criticism of Welsh rugby’s governing body in the match programme, external for the Ulster game.

The CF10 Rugby Trust, an independent Cardiff supporters group, produced an article welcoming back Leigh Halfpenny but also reflecting on what they perceive as recent WRU failures.

An extract read: “He [Halfpenny] was part of a Cardiff side that had been allowed to develop over time with steady, reliable funding, and youngsters coming into that environment felt the benefit.

“The past 10 years in Welsh rugby have sadly offered a less ideal stage for young talents.

“So often our professional teams have been unable to know what their budgets are until too late in the day to recruit properly. So often, jobs on and off the field have been put under threat.”

The programme article continued: “Over these past 17 years, Welsh pro rugby has lost its way. We have been badly let down by the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU).

“By creating a situation of chronic instability, the game’s leaders have let down every young player dreaming of professional rugby and following in Halfpenny’s footsteps. Welsh rugby continues to go through a period of chronic uncertainty.”