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Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Ctrl + Halt + Reset: Charles Assisi on the power of the pause
I've been trying something out lately that has given me an unreasonable amount of joy. You can do it without the death stare: Giancarlo Esposito is Gus Fring, the gentlemanly drug lord in Breaking Bad (2008-13) and the spinoff, Better Call Saul (2015-22). It isn't a gadget or an app, and it certainly isn't one of those 'morning routine' fads involving lemon water at sunrise or the belief that life can be hacked in five easy steps. It's The Pause. Credit for this goes to Karan Thapar. I've admired the journalist, TV presenter (and HT columnist) for years, for his sharp mind, sharper questions and rare ability to make people squirm without raising his voice. But the thing I've stolen from him isn't his interviewing style. It is the way he uses silences. He asks a question. Gets an answer. And then… nothing. No 'Right, right.' No 'Yes, but…'. Not even a sympathetic nod to smooth over the gap. Just stillness. Before long, the other person starts talking again. They fill the space. Often, they reveal far more than they intended to. Some time ago I decided that I ought to learn this skill. For someone who has spent decades making a living with words, asking, writing and responding, this isn't easy. My instinct is to jump in, keep the conversation flowing and rescue everyone from the discomfort of dead air. But slowing down? That's where the gold is. In my personal life, the pause has been humbling. I have realised that I am not nearly as good a listener as I thought I was. I nod. I make the right noises. I repeat the last three words (in that old journalistic trick). But wait a beat and something else happens. The person really does keep going. They say the thing after the thing. The unplanned sentence. The half-formed thought. Often, that's where the truth lives. The pause makes for a different kind of listening too. One isn't just hearing what has been said. One is making space for what hasn't yet been said to find its way out. In my professional life, waiting a beat has been entertaining too. People can't stand silences. As they rush to fill them, they tell me why their competitor really got the deal, or commit to deadlines they swore they couldn't manage. Sources, on the record, have finally said the thing they were dancing around. Once you see it work, you can't help using it everywhere. The pause also reveals how much of our talk is just a space-filler. We mistake constant motion for progress. Yet, sometimes, the most productive thing one can do, or say, is nothing at all. The pause slows the world down. As one waits, one notices the flicker in someone's eyes before they speak. The shift in their tone. The little sigh before they continue. These are details we miss when we're busy planning our own next statement instead. The pause has also made me oddly comfortable with not-knowing. I am typically someone who needs to have an answer ready, to prove that I'm quick, sharp and in control. But there is a quiet confidence to holding one's ground in silence and taking one's time to choose a response. Of course, it can be overdone. Hold the pause too long and the moment tips into awkwardness. Use it manipulatively and people can tell. The point isn't to game the conversation. It is to be genuinely present, listen, and give the other person room to think out loud. Waiting, in comfortable silence, I find that my daughters are more willing to tell me about their day, and that dinner with friends feels more leisurely. The pause has even helped mid-argument. It's incredible how the temperature drops when one stops trying to win the next point and instead lets the other person be heard. Sometimes they realise they were in the wrong. And sometimes they surprise you with a perspective you hadn't considered. We live in an age of constant commentary: on TV, in social media posts, at meetings. We have brought the endless scroll into our conversations. The pause is a powerful refusal to play the game on someone else's clock. Think of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Some of the most powerful moments aren't the notes themselves; they're the silences between them. Those deliberate rests make the music swell with more force when it returns. The pause works something like this. Deployed with genuine intent, it doesn't break the flow. It shapes it, lets meaning settle, and allows the words we do use to matter more. It works because the silence isn't really empty. It is full of potential. It is where the unsaid waits, to find a way out. (Charles Assisi is co-founder of Founding Fuel. He can be reached on assisi@
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in TV: The Residence; Last One Laughing; Severance
The Residence (Netflix) Last One Laughing (Amazon Prime) Severance (Apple TV+) A terrible thing has happened in the White House. This isn't real life, thank God. This is a delicious, funny fantasy. Netflix's new murder-mystery comedy-drama, The Residence, begins with the president hosting a state dinner with 'Australians', a word drawn out by his entourage in a sour mixture of scorn and amusement. The big boss doesn't appear until 44 minutes in. He's unimportant. The real action is happening upstairs. We briefly meet Giancarlo Esposito, his hair longer and greyer than when we knew him as the chicken-selling, meth-producing Breaking Bad villain Gus Fring. As the White House's head usher, AB Wynter, his poker-straight stance is officious rather than chilling for a change – and then something happens before the opening credits. We get to the crime scene in a dizzying way, cameras speeding us across the White House lawn, through doorways, hallways, stairwells, endless ornate rooms; the mood of this show at times is Wes Anderson on acid. Inspired by a book by American journalist Kate Andersen Brower (which the Today Show called 'Downton Abbey for the White House staff'), The Residence is the latest series by US mega-production company Shondaland, which previously brought us Grey's Anatomy, How to Get Away With Murder and Bridgerton. Here, Emmy-winning Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black; Mrs America) plays birdwatching, tweedily tailored super-detective Cordelia Cupp, a long overdue 21st-century successor to David Suchet's quirky Poirot. Binoculars around her neck, she's trying to solve a murder in a White House containing 157 suspects, and doing so in a blunt, eagle-eyed way. 'I once stayed up for 43 hours looking for a buff-coloured nightjar,' she intones. She shall not be moved. The script, by creator Paul William Davies (For the People; Scandal), is crisp, biting and often hilarious, if at times slightly overblown, as when security detail Colin repeats his interest in Kylie Minogue, the dinner's star turn. She plays herself in a great cameo. 'I've sung Can't Get You Out of My Head seven times,' she complains. 'Seven fucking times.' More memorable minor characters make this show zing: a sweary female chef; a calligrapher 'having issues'; the male president's first gentleman (I told you this was fantasy). Other stars from TV's past pop up, including Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl) as the president's dressing gown-wearing dropout brother, and Julian McMahon (Home and Away; Nip/Tuck), who plays the Australian president (fun fact: in real life, McMahon's father, William, actually was Australia's president). A jaunty soundtrack by the brilliant Mark Mothersbaugh, once of post-punk band Devo, feels like a character in its own right, and I whipped through two episodes in a flash. It's so nice to have some delight from DC for a change. Less laughter is required for Amazon Prime's new comedy series. I write that with my tongue in my cheek, as Last One Laughing gets 10 comedians together in a brightly coloured, Big Brother-type set, then challenges them to keep a straight face for six hours. Adapted from a Japanese format that's been successful elsewhere (including Ireland, in a 2024 series hosted by Graham Norton), the British version has quite the A-list ensemble, including Daisy May Cooper, Joe Lycett, Sara Pascoe, Richard Ayoade and Bob Mortimer, a man whose sweet face twitches an inch and I'm hysterical. Watched over by hosts Jimmy Carr and Roisin Conaty on many TVs ('Think of this, Roisin, as our audition for Gogglebox,' Carr hams), the first episode feels sluggish. The comics walk away from each another, stand around stony-faced, pull their jaws into grimaces. 'Not hearing laughter when you're a comedian, it's like being a shit comedian,' says Carr. That mood balloons. When Cooper mimes a rollercoaster ride on stage, without laughter, it's like watching a weird experiment or an outtake from David Lynch's Eraserhead. Joe Wilkinson's RNLI speech works better in episode two, as do the cheeky interventions of Lou Sanders, giving the show much-needed tension and momentum. Towards the end is a sketch that had me (and one of the contestants, whose laugh the hosts bizarrely missed) in stitches. I won't spoil the surprise, but it involves Mortimer, a hula hoop, a tea towel, a handbag and an egg. A slow start, then, but warming up. That description also fits the second season of Severance. Its final episode aired on Friday, after a discombobulating though still mesmerising 10 episodes. If you have yet to brave Severance, in short, it's centred on four characters who have consented, for different emotional or practical reasons, to undergo a procedure whereby their brain has been severed, to separate their normal (outie) life from their working (innie) one. The innies each do a baffling job for Lumon Industries, a company straight out of a dystopian novel, based in a headquarters full of exquisite, intensely eerie mid-century design. Flung out of Lumon's strip-lit inner sanctum to the characters' wider, wilder worlds, this second season has lacked the narrative drive of its predecessor, in which Mark S (Adam Scott) slowly realised that something was dreadfully wrong. Its main purpose seems to have been providing more fodder for nightmarish, Twin Peaks-style memes destined for unpacking on Reddit threads: that haunting black corridor; the appearance of the first Lumon factory; the Mammalians Nurturable breeding ground, run by 'goat lady' Lorne (played to chilling perfection by Gwendoline Christie). (Spoilers ahead!) Some intriguing storylines have been annoyingly sidelined, such as the influence of Mark's brother-in-law's self-help book on the Lumon employers and employees. The wonderful connection between Irving (John Turturro) and Burt (Christopher Walken) was also dispatched far too quickly. Nevertheless, the finale remained an enjoyable head-rush, full of bloody action, as well as a great speech from Helly R (Britt Lower) in the middle of a surreal sequence featuring – very Severance, this – a marching band. The diverging motivations of Mark's innie and outie, and a neat twist after he found Gemma/Ms Casey (Dichen Lachman), were satisfying touches too, although the ending felt mildly disappointing. Perhaps it's because I wonder how on earth Severance season three will work. Sometimes even delicious fantasy needs a little more grounding in reality. Star ratings (out of five) The Residence ★★★★Last One Laughing ★★★Severance ★★★★ Protection (ITV) Siobhan Finneran (Happy Valley; Rita, Sue and Bob Too) is as wonderfully no-nonsense as ever in this solid if grim witness protection drama. Thames Water: Inside The Crisis (BBC Two) A weirdly compelling two-part plunge into one of the UK's most famously failing companies. I loved chief operating officer Esther and wastewater and bioresources director Tessa, two feisty women fully prepared to accept the shit their company was (literally) in. I didn't love how dividends and shareholders were barely mentioned. Other Voices: Dingle, Ireland (BBC Four) In a tiny church, fabulous sets from CMAT, Bashy and Jacob Alon, among others, at this gorgeous international music festival, which also has an outpost in Cardigan, west Wales.
