A Texas beekeeper is about to generate some national buzz.
Charlie Bee Company, a reality TV show starring New Braunfels beekeeper and bee removal specialist Charlie Agar, is set to air nationwide on PBS stations.
The eight one-hour episodes of Charlie Bee Company track Agar as he goes about his work along the Austin-San Antonio corridor.
“People are just now beginning to understand how important bees are to the ecosystem, and I’m so excited to share my love for all things bees and beekeeping,” Agar says in a news release. “We had an absolute blast making this show.”
Austin-based Iniosante Studios developed the series. The genesis of the show was a 2017 meeting between Agar and wildlife documentary filmmaker Ashley Scott Davison, executive producer at Iniosante.
“The first time we followed Charlie on one of his bee removals, I got stung more than 20 times,” Davison recalls. “I was literally pulling stingers out of my leg. I knew right there we had a show that people would be glued to.”
Davison and his crew followed Agar for more than a year. Aside from Agar’s exploits, the show includes interviews with university researchers, behind-the-scenes looks at commercial beekeeping operations, and the rescue of a bee hive during a Texas Gulf Coast hurricane.
“What we like about the show is that it’s educational and there is a message about protecting pollinators, but it’s also just downright fun and entertaining,” says David Lauderman, director of programming at KLRU.
To watch a preview of the series, visit the Vimeo website.
The opening scenes of the new drama Dreams are bracing, fictional sequences that call to mind real-life scenarios. In them, a young Mexican man named Fernando (Isaac Hernández) goes through a somewhat harrowing journey from the back of a semi truck in South Texas all the way to San Francisco. It’s a familiar immigrant story that seems to set the stage for a film with something interesting to say.
It turns out, however, that Fernando has not made the long and arduous trek for a job. Instead, it’s to be with Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain), a rich woman who helps lead a foundation dedicated to multiple things, including funding dance academies. Fernando, a talented dancer, and Jennifer have been in an off-and-on affair for years, with Jennifer wanting to keep their relationship a secret.
Although both are drawn to each other in an inexplicable, lustful way, their bond is tenuous, with each of them dissatisfied for different reasons. Fernando clearly sacrifices much more of himself than Jennifer, who wants for nothing except maybe more affection from her father, Michael (Marshall Bell), and brother, Jake (Rupert Friend).
Writer/director Michel Franco seems to try to inject tension into Fernando and Jennifer’s relationship from the start, an attempt that is only halfway successful. It’s clear from the way they greet each other - not to mention a steamy sex scene shortly thereafter - that they have known each other for a good length of time. Franco is able to get across this familiarity with an economy of scenes, and the intensity of their bond holds for a while.
But as the film progresses and both of them grow disenchanted with their arrangement, Franco starts taking the story in some odd directions. The biggest issue is that it’s never clear at what point in time the story is taking place. Fernando ends up making multiple trips back and forth across the border, with Jennifer doing the same at one point, and Franco’s use of flashbacks muddies the waters, wrong-footing the audience when he should be trying to draw them further into Fernando and Jennifer’s complications.
Revelations in the final act make the story even more confusing, as both main characters start saying and doing harsh things that seem to come out of nowhere. That would be all well and good if Franco actually committed to their changes of heart, but he keeps things wishy-washy for most of the final 15 minutes, resulting in an ending that makes little sense for either character.
Despite the story issues, both Chastain and Hernández give compelling performances. Chastain has been a little under the radar since winning an Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but she keeps this character interesting longer than it should have been. Hernández has limited credits and appears to have been cast for his dancing ability, but he goes toe-to-toe with Chastain on more than one occasion and acquits himself well.
Dreams had all of the ideas to explore a more in-depth story about the complicated immigration policies between Mexico and the U.S., or how wealthy people take advantage of those less fortunate. But Franco never finds the right footing, settling instead for a titillating and somewhat mystifying relationship story that feels half-baked.
