McKellen, Jacobi and De la Tour are – obviously – the kind of actors you can let yourself sink into a deep, captivated trance watching, which makes it all the crueller that they're nestled next to the wooden bit-parts of CITV rejects and script clangers so loud that other, well-observed pith ("Don't touch the cheese, it's only for show") slips entirely under the radar.
So it's no surprise that I am captivated when watching a real chef in action.
Played with wry humor by Donna Lynne Champlin, Austen is both a puppet mistress and a captivated onlooker, watching with joy or dismay as her characters confirm or subvert their creator's expectations.
When Samuel Pepys came across a captivated crowd watching the street performance of an anarchic little puppet called Punchinello and his beleaguered wife Joan, the diarist chronicled the event in his diary, dated 9 May 1662.
From our particular vantage point standing severely stage right, peering through the side opening of the tent we did not get the full-frontal explosion of moving lights and color that captivated everyone watching.
Over the next hour, as a captivated city watched continuous television reports and the Hudson turned from gold to silver in the gathering winter twilight, all of the passengers, including at least one baby, and both pilots and all three flight attendants, were transferred to the rescue boats — a feat that unfolded as the white-and-blue jetliner continued to drift south.
But remembering passages of Vollmand can be as captivating as watching the original work.
As in "Méliès," the meandering, understated emergence of cinematic fact and fiction is captivating to watch.
All this has made the road to Russia 2018 so captivating to watch, and the table is extremely tight.
The daily work of government bureaucracy may not be as captivating to watch as Shiba Inu puppies or giant pandas sleeping.
