Senna Miniseries - Episode 2 (HIGH-QUALITY)

One quiet scene lingers: Liliane asks him what he thinks about during the long straights. He pauses. “Nothing,” he says. “That’s the problem. I think about nothing except the next corner. And when I stop the car… there is nothing else.” It is a confession of addiction, not passion. The episode understands that greatness is not joyful. It is a compulsion. Senna Episode 2 is a superior piece of dramatic engineering. It avoids the “greatest hits” trap (though it thrillingly recreates Senna’s first wet victory in Portugal) and instead focuses on the machinery of destiny. Gabriel Leone fully becomes the driver in this episode—the intense, almost unnerving focus, the petulant genius, the vulnerability that he hid from the press but could not hide from his family.

Here, the showrunners execute a masterclass in visceral storytelling. Unlike the rain-soaked chaos of Monaco in Episode 1, Estoril is a sun-blasted crucible of heat and mechanical fragility. We watch Senna lead his first race for Lotus, only for the car to betray him with a fuel pressure failure on the penultimate lap. The silence in the cockpit—the absence of the engine note—is more devastating than any crash. Leone’s face, sweaty and slack with disbelief, says everything: I am fast enough. Why isn’t the machine? No episode about Senna’s rise would be complete without the slow turn of the screw that is Alain Prost. Episode 2 introduces the rivalry not as a clash of egos, but as a collision of philosophies. Prost (played with icy Gallic pragmatism by Johannes Heinrichs) is depicted as the rationalist prince of the sport—calculating, political, efficient. Senna is the emotional artist, willing to destroy tires, engines, and his own body for a single perfect lap.

Directed with a claustrophobic intensity that mirrors the cockpit of a Lotus 99T, Episode 2—titled “A Logical Destiny” (or simply continuing the narrative thrust of the 1984-1985 seasons)—succeeds precisely because it refuses to celebrate the victories. Instead, it dissects the cost. The episode opens not with a roar, but with a negotiation. Ayrton Senna (Gabriel Leone, delivering a performance that has shed the wide-eyed wonder of Episode 1 for a coiled, hungry stillness) has outgrown Toleman. He knows it. The paddock knows it. But knowing and getting are two different things. Senna Miniseries - Episode 2

If Episode 1 asked, “Who is this boy?” Episode 2 answers, “This is the man who will burn himself alive for a trophy.” It is not always easy to watch, but it is impossible to look away.

The series wisely spends its first act on the politics of Formula 1—the smoky boardrooms, the handshake deals, the nationalist pressure to drive for Williams. Leone plays Senna as a man who speaks softly but holds his ambition like a scalpel. When he signs with Lotus, the relief is fleeting. The episode immediately pivots to the brutal reality of the 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril. One quiet scene lingers: Liliane asks him what

Their first true on-track battle unfolds at the 1985 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa. The cinematography here is stunning: low-angle shots through the spray of Eau Rouge, the camera trembling with the vibration of the chassis. When Senna finally overtakes Prost, it is not a clean pass. It is a near-collision, a dare. The episode wisely cuts to Prost’s eyes in his rearview mirror—not anger, but calculation. This one is dangerous, that look says. Not just to me, but to himself. Where Episode 2 truly distinguishes itself from standard sports fare is in its domestic portrait. We spend significant time with Senna’s first wife, Liliane de Vasconcelos Souza (Alice Wegmann). The script avoids melodrama. Instead, it shows a marriage crumbling under the weight of G-forces and absence. Senna returns home not as a conquering hero, but as a ghost—already reviewing telemetry in his head, unable to unclench his hands from an imaginary steering wheel.

In the pantheon of sports documentaries and biopics, the sophomore outing is often the most treacherous corner. Episode one has the luxury of origin story charm—the go-kart tracks, the family sacrifice, the raw, unpolished talent. But Episode 2 of Netflix’s Senna faces a different challenge: it must navigate the no-man’s-land between brilliant rookie and living legend. It must show the breaking of a man even as he accelerates toward immortality. “That’s the problem

Senna is now streaming on Netflix. Episode 3 promises the arrival of the McLaren era—and the tragedy of Imola looms ever closer on the horizon.

 

Shostakovich - Piano Concerto No. 2

For Shostakovich, 1953 to about 1960 was a period of relative prosperity and security: with Stalin's death a great curtain of fear had been lifted. Shostakovich was gradually restored to favour, allowed to earn a living, and even honoured, though there was a price: co-operation (at least ostensibly) with the authorities. The peak of this thaw, in 1956 when large numbers of rehabilitated intellectuals were released, coincided with the composition of the effervescent Second Piano Concerto. 

Shostakovich was hoping that his son, Maxim, would become a pianist (typically, the lad instead became a conductor, though not of buses). Maxim gave the concerto its first performance on 10th May 1957, his 19th birthday. Shostakovich must have intended all along that this would be a birthday present for, while he remained covertly dissident (the Eleventh Symphony was just around the corner), the concerto is utterly devoid of all subterfuge, cryptic codes and hidden messages. Instead, it brims with youthful vigour, vitality, romance - and such sheer damned mischief that I reckon that it must be a character study of Maxim. 

Shostakovich wrote intensely serious music, and music of satirical, sarcastic humour (often combining the two). He also enjoyed producing affable, inoffensive light music. But here is yet another aspect, the Haydnesque, both wittily amusing and formally stimulating: 

First Movement: Allegro Tongue firmly in cheek, Shostakovich begins this sonata movement with a perky little introduction (bassoon), accompaniment for the piano playing the first subject proper, equally perky but maybe just a touch tipsy. Then, bang! - the piano and snare-drum take off like the clappers. Over chugging strings, the piano eases in the second subject, also slightly inebriate but gradually melting into a horn-warmed modulation. With a thunderous rock 'n' roll vamp the piano bulldozes into an amazingly inventive development, capped by a huge climax that sounds suspiciously like a cheeky skit on Rachmaninov. A massive unison (Shostakovich apparently skitting one of his own symphonic habits!) reprises the second subject first. Suddenly alone, the piano winds cadentially into a deliciously decorated first subject, before charging for the line with the orchestra hot on its heels. 

Second Movement: Andante Simplicity is the key, and for the opening cloud-shrouded string theme the key is minor. Like the sun breaking through, an effect as magical as it is simple, the piano enters in the major. This enchanting counter-melody, at first blossoming and warming the orchestra, itself gradually clouds over as the musing piano drifts into the shadowy first theme. The sun peeps out again, only to set in long, arpeggiated piano figurations, whose tips evolve the merest wisps of rhythm . . . 

Finale: Allegro . . .which the piano grabs and turns into a cheekily chattering tune in duple time, sparking variants as it whizzes along. A second subject interrupts, abruptly - it has no choice as its septuple time must willy-nilly play the chalk to the other's cheese. The movement is a riot, these two incompatible clowns constantly elbowing one another aside to show off ever more outrageously. In and amongst, the piano keeps returning to a rippling figuration, which I fancifully regard as a straight man vainly trying to referee. Who wins? Don't ask - just enjoy the bout!
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© Paul Serotsky
29, Carr Street, Kamo, Whangarei 0101, Northland, New Zealand

Senna Miniseries - Episode 2
 

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