Oldman is superb in that. In the book Mick Herron described Jackson Lamb's appearance as being like the actor Timothy Spall gone to seed, so naturally I always pictured Spall in my mind while reading the books. Oldman has changed all that, though. I also think that the TV series has got better series by series, just like I felt that Herron's novels got better book by book until I felt they peaked with the fourth book, Spook Street. I am hopeful that the fourth series of Slow Horses on TV will live up to my great memories of reading that novel.
Tonight (Thursday)! For UK viewers, on Film 4 at 9pm, there is the odd where's-this-going Pig with Nicolas Cage. Very quirky, not quite a 'thriller' - oh, see what you make of it. I recommend it.
I started watching RED EYE on ITV. It's about a medic caught up in a political cat-and-mouse charade. I thought it quite enterprising, although I wasn't sure the legal statements were correct and the plot holes regarding security at airports were risible. I guess one just ahs to forget oversights such as this these days.
Well, the first three episodes of Civilisation were on, now they're all on iPlayer.
This Week! Premiere Saturday 27th April, 10:10pm #CharlesDance#PhyllisLogan in GOLDENEYE (1989). The life and times of the man who created James Bond, Ian Fleming.
I’ve just finished the third season of Slow Horses. What a brilliant series, so far. Gary Oldman’s imperious portrayal of the dishevelled boss of a unit of (sometimes unfairly) rejected MI5 agents is captivating. I can’t wait for season 4 later this year. Highly recommended.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I’m watching the 60’s Batman series on my streaming service here, on season 2 at the moment, it’s great fun and reminds me of when me and my mate pinned towels onto ourselves as capes re-enacting the adventures 😁
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
TPTV. 'Goldenye', the dramatised version of Ian Fleming's WW2 service was on last night. I posted a heads up in the 'random' thread as I couldn't find this. If anyone wants to see it TPTV usually repeats 'new' material within a week.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
The Byrde family move to the Ozarks in Missouri to continue their money laundering for a Mexican cartel. The acting is uniformly excellent, especially from Julia Garner as Ruth, the twists and turns are imaginative and unexpected. The suspense becomes palpable at times - highly recommended.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Just finished watching the four episodes of The Octopus Murders on Netflix.
This is a very well done documentary about re-investigating the supposed suicide but probably murder of a US journalist in the early 80s after he dug around all kinds of CIA wrongdoing, such as doing drugs to generate money to fund the Contras, that kind of stuff, though as ever it never quite starts like that, rather it builds and builds.
The way organised crime works in tandem with the US govt - I guess the whole thing was inspiration for Spectre, though what they reveal in this is more frightening than the Bond film, which hedges its bets and never goes the full conspiracy, or else Bond would be the one tasked with bumping off whistleblowers. That said, in the next one M really is up to his neck in it, isn't he.
Episode 3 touches on the Zapruda footage of the Kennedy assassination which is a total mind-f*. That said, it allows for the fact that the State deals with misinformation so you never know what is actually true or not, and whether you're being played.
Talking Pictures TV in the UK began showing Enemy At The Door, about the Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands, specifically Guernsey, yesterday evening from the very beginning. I missed it, and if you did you can catch it here on YouTube.
It stars Public Eye's Alfred Burke (@Marker ) who has whiskers to make less like Frank Marker - not sure any German officers had face fuzz but never mind - along with Simon Cadell, who went on to be in the classic sitcom Hi-de-Hi and really has some very similar mannerisms, along with our own Bernard Horsfell (Melina's short-lived dad in FYEO) .
I do like these Talking Pictures but they are a bit depressing, it was the era really, I don't mean the war but retrospectively living it. Even Maigret, on Tuesdays, has a downbeat feel to it.
if youre like me, you probably know this show because of the Blues Brothers: when Elwood parks the car, the music that plays is the Peter Gunn theme
created, produced, sometimes written and sometimes directed by Blake Edwards, years before the Pink Panther
with music by Henry Mancini, not just the title song you all know, but the whole show is about music
starring Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn, a hip variation on the hardboiled private eye, who uses a jazz club as his office, dating the club's resident singer Edie Hart, played by Lola Albright (who usually sings a song every episode). She frequently spends the night at Gunns apartment, which would be a big deal in 1959. Stevens resembles Cary Grant in build and voice, but without the comedy chops. each half hour episode he is hired to solve a murder in the unnamed seedy riverside city in which he lives, with a seemingly endless population of gangbosses and victims, most of whom are somehow related to the world of jazz. In many episodes the mystery directly involves the musicians, and we get lots of vintage 50s jazzbo beatnik dialog. Check out episode 2 for a typical music centred plot.
The club where he hangs out is named Mothers, and Mother is played by Hope Emerson, who somehow knows everything going on in the criminal undrworld. Mother is just one of Gunn's many informants. Gunn's officially employed frenemy is the always weary and cynical Lt Jacobi, played by Herschel Bernardi.
The shows are only half an hour, so this isnt like Agatha Christie where theres a dozen suspects to fill the time. Usually Gunn is offered the case, and that scene takes ten minutes. Then he visits some informants, which takes another ten minutes. then theres a bit of violence and Gunn and Jacobi solve the case. The mystery is not the thing. Its all the scenes with the jazz musicians at the club, the clients, and the informants (wait til you see the recurring owner of the town beatnik hangout who reveres the square looking Gunn and tells him all the hip insider dope, dig), lots of eccentric character bits that make up the main interest of the show. aside from the music
each episode starts with a shock novelty murder as the cold opening, then we get a quick blast of the theme for the opening Credits
but each episode is full of original music, both diagetic and non- . as noted Lola Albright almost always sing a song, the clients and suspects are often musicians, and I suspect most of them are played by professional musicians Mancini knows from the real world
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,871MI6 Agent
edited May 12
Is there anything more vacuous on TV than Gogglebox on Channel 4? It's literally just people sitting in their living rooms watching TV and giving a running commentary on it. It's always seemed pointless to me and to my mind it is the TV equivalent of watching paint dry.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,935Chief of Staff
Got to recommend the second series of The Responder…Martin Freeman with a very credible scouse accent…although there are only 5 episodes in the series…plus a great cameo from Bernard Hill….
I haven't seen all the episodes yet, but this series has already made a clear impression on me. it's aTV drama about OxyContin and the opioid crisis. We follow a group of people, a miner who gets injured, a doctor in a mining comunity, a DEA agent and the Sackler family who ran/runs Pardue Pharma who's behind OxyContin and other who are somehow affexted by the drug. The cast is impressive and includes Michael Keaton Peter Skarsgård, Rosario Dawson, Will Poulter, Kaitlin Dever, Michael Stulhbard and more. The level of greed and callousness from the Stackler family and others pushing the drug and the horrible effects it has on individuals and whole societies is convayed with great effect. I wish Hollywood would make a movie on this subject. Something like Philladelphia on AIDS, Spotlight on the abuse cases in the Catholic church and Panick in Needle Park on the heroin issues in the nearly 70's. A movie like that couldn't have the wide scope of the TV series, but focus on fewer characters. A subject like this should attract the best writers, directors and actors. Instead the movie companies spend billions on superhero movies. When it comes to the Sackler family who hasn't spent a day in prison I hope they someday get a reaction fitting their kind ....
An extra note: the creator, writer and director of Dopesick is Danny Strong. Doesn't ring a bell? It's Johanthan from Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,935Chief of Staff
Well….I’m really sad I watched all three series of this….😕
I’m sad because I have to wait until the end of the year for series 4 😩
Absolutely loved this…great characters and ‘proper’ stories…ok, the last couple of episodes of series 3 are a bit much, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment at all…highly recommended 🍸
Oh, and Gary Oldman is superb….although that will come as a shock to no one 🤣
Batman (1966) the series began on Talking Pictures TV on Sat morning at 9am - I missed that one but caught it on the repeat the following day at about 1.25pm. Fab stuff - okay, the humour is laboured now and as a kid you didn't understand why Dad would be laughing at it when it was deadly serious, the implications of what the Joker, Penguin or in this case the Riddler, coming on like General Orlov on speed, were up to - well, if Batman himself took it seriously, it must be, right?
A few pointers early on to make it clear that neither are gay, a reference to a cute teenage girl Dick Grayson noticed from the vantage of the Batmobile.
Gotham City has all the darkness of Disney's Epcot Centre.
Our own Jill St John turns up in the series debut as a gangster's moll - typecasting I guess.
How do our heroes somehow change costumes as they drop down the fire pole? Even when Superman did that it didn't really make sense.
Comments
@Napoleon Plural Thanks or letting me know about The Dropout…it will be interesting to see how close they stick to the truth 🤔
THE DROPOUT is excellent. I can't speak to the veracity of it but the acting is top notch. Amanda Seyfried won many awards for her performance.
I watched the first episode of Slow Horses - it was excellent and Gary Oldman is superb, as always. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
Oldman is superb in that. In the book Mick Herron described Jackson Lamb's appearance as being like the actor Timothy Spall gone to seed, so naturally I always pictured Spall in my mind while reading the books. Oldman has changed all that, though. I also think that the TV series has got better series by series, just like I felt that Herron's novels got better book by book until I felt they peaked with the fourth book, Spook Street. I am hopeful that the fourth series of Slow Horses on TV will live up to my great memories of reading that novel.
Thanks for the confirmation that the series is worth watching @Golrush007 I haven’t read the books so I’m coming into the story cold.
SLOW HORSES is fantastic. All three seasons released so far have been massively entertaining.
Oh, where do I see that?
Tonight (Thursday)! For UK viewers, on Film 4 at 9pm, there is the odd where's-this-going Pig with Nicolas Cage. Very quirky, not quite a 'thriller' - oh, see what you make of it. I recommend it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
In the US, it's on Apple TV.
Top Gun: Maverick has its UK premiere on Saturday, I think it's Channel 4 or Film4 but check.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I started watching RED EYE on ITV. It's about a medic caught up in a political cat-and-mouse charade. I thought it quite enterprising, although I wasn't sure the legal statements were correct and the plot holes regarding security at airports were risible. I guess one just ahs to forget oversights such as this these days.
Also CIVILISATION is being repeated on BBC4.
Well, the first three episodes of Civilisation were on, now they're all on iPlayer.
This Week! Premiere Saturday 27th April, 10:10pm #CharlesDance #PhyllisLogan in GOLDENEYE (1989). The life and times of the man who created James Bond, Ian Fleming.
From TPTV Twitter account.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I’ve just finished the third season of Slow Horses. What a brilliant series, so far. Gary Oldman’s imperious portrayal of the dishevelled boss of a unit of (sometimes unfairly) rejected MI5 agents is captivating. I can’t wait for season 4 later this year. Highly recommended.
Society is getting splintered, I suppose this is on Apple or Disney but I won't sign up, it's different influences.
On a brighter note, the 1960s show Batman is being re-run on Talking Pictures TV from 1 June.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I’m watching the 60’s Batman series on my streaming service here, on season 2 at the moment, it’s great fun and reminds me of when me and my mate pinned towels onto ourselves as capes re-enacting the adventures 😁
Will Talking Pictures show Batman from start to finish? Their much vaunted Thunderbirds repeats petered out after 12 eps.
Adam West Batman would make for a good episode-by-episode review thread, hint hint
first episode features Jill St John as the Riddler's moll, so that ones even on topic
TPTV. 'Goldenye', the dramatised version of Ian Fleming's WW2 service was on last night. I posted a heads up in the 'random' thread as I couldn't find this. If anyone wants to see it TPTV usually repeats 'new' material within a week.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
@caractacus potts there is an awful lot of Batman...
Idris Elba hosts the documentary Gold:
Talking Pictures TV is showing a Christopher Lee-hosted documentary on horror films tonight, it's on about 9pm I think.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Ozark (4 Seasons - 2017-2022)
The Byrde family move to the Ozarks in Missouri to continue their money laundering for a Mexican cartel. The acting is uniformly excellent, especially from Julia Garner as Ruth, the twists and turns are imaginative and unexpected. The suspense becomes palpable at times - highly recommended.
Just finished watching the four episodes of The Octopus Murders on Netflix.
This is a very well done documentary about re-investigating the supposed suicide but probably murder of a US journalist in the early 80s after he dug around all kinds of CIA wrongdoing, such as doing drugs to generate money to fund the Contras, that kind of stuff, though as ever it never quite starts like that, rather it builds and builds.
The way organised crime works in tandem with the US govt - I guess the whole thing was inspiration for Spectre, though what they reveal in this is more frightening than the Bond film, which hedges its bets and never goes the full conspiracy, or else Bond would be the one tasked with bumping off whistleblowers. That said, in the next one M really is up to his neck in it, isn't he.
Episode 3 touches on the Zapruda footage of the Kennedy assassination which is a total mind-f*. That said, it allows for the fact that the State deals with misinformation so you never know what is actually true or not, and whether you're being played.
Anyway, here's a review in the Times...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Talking Pictures TV in the UK began showing Enemy At The Door, about the Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands, specifically Guernsey, yesterday evening from the very beginning. I missed it, and if you did you can catch it here on YouTube.
It stars Public Eye's Alfred Burke (@Marker ) who has whiskers to make less like Frank Marker - not sure any German officers had face fuzz but never mind - along with Simon Cadell, who went on to be in the classic sitcom Hi-de-Hi and really has some very similar mannerisms, along with our own Bernard Horsfell (Melina's short-lived dad in FYEO) .
I do like these Talking Pictures but they are a bit depressing, it was the era really, I don't mean the war but retrospectively living it. Even Maigret, on Tuesdays, has a downbeat feel to it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
here's some good TV thats on the internet, specifically archive.org has all three seasons of Peter Gunn
season 1 1958-1959
season 2 1959-1960
season 3 1960-1961
if youre like me, you probably know this show because of the Blues Brothers: when Elwood parks the car, the music that plays is the Peter Gunn theme
created, produced, sometimes written and sometimes directed by Blake Edwards, years before the Pink Panther
with music by Henry Mancini, not just the title song you all know, but the whole show is about music
starring Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn, a hip variation on the hardboiled private eye, who uses a jazz club as his office, dating the club's resident singer Edie Hart, played by Lola Albright (who usually sings a song every episode). She frequently spends the night at Gunns apartment, which would be a big deal in 1959. Stevens resembles Cary Grant in build and voice, but without the comedy chops. each half hour episode he is hired to solve a murder in the unnamed seedy riverside city in which he lives, with a seemingly endless population of gangbosses and victims, most of whom are somehow related to the world of jazz. In many episodes the mystery directly involves the musicians, and we get lots of vintage 50s jazzbo beatnik dialog. Check out episode 2 for a typical music centred plot.
The club where he hangs out is named Mothers, and Mother is played by Hope Emerson, who somehow knows everything going on in the criminal undrworld. Mother is just one of Gunn's many informants. Gunn's officially employed frenemy is the always weary and cynical Lt Jacobi, played by Herschel Bernardi.
The shows are only half an hour, so this isnt like Agatha Christie where theres a dozen suspects to fill the time. Usually Gunn is offered the case, and that scene takes ten minutes. Then he visits some informants, which takes another ten minutes. then theres a bit of violence and Gunn and Jacobi solve the case. The mystery is not the thing. Its all the scenes with the jazz musicians at the club, the clients, and the informants (wait til you see the recurring owner of the town beatnik hangout who reveres the square looking Gunn and tells him all the hip insider dope, dig), lots of eccentric character bits that make up the main interest of the show. aside from the music
each episode starts with a shock novelty murder as the cold opening, then we get a quick blast of the theme for the opening Credits
then at the end the theme plays out in full
but each episode is full of original music, both diagetic and non- . as noted Lola Albright almost always sing a song, the clients and suspects are often musicians, and I suspect most of them are played by professional musicians Mancini knows from the real world
The Night Manager: Season 2
This is good news. First series was just fantastic, so at least they'll be one thing to look forward to seeing in 2025.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-night-manager-season-2
Is there anything more vacuous on TV than Gogglebox on Channel 4? It's literally just people sitting in their living rooms watching TV and giving a running commentary on it. It's always seemed pointless to me and to my mind it is the TV equivalent of watching paint dry.
Got to recommend the second series of The Responder…Martin Freeman with a very credible scouse accent…although there are only 5 episodes in the series…plus a great cameo from Bernard Hill….
Dopesick
I haven't seen all the episodes yet, but this series has already made a clear impression on me. it's aTV drama about OxyContin and the opioid crisis. We follow a group of people, a miner who gets injured, a doctor in a mining comunity, a DEA agent and the Sackler family who ran/runs Pardue Pharma who's behind OxyContin and other who are somehow affexted by the drug. The cast is impressive and includes Michael Keaton Peter Skarsgård, Rosario Dawson, Will Poulter, Kaitlin Dever, Michael Stulhbard and more. The level of greed and callousness from the Stackler family and others pushing the drug and the horrible effects it has on individuals and whole societies is convayed with great effect. I wish Hollywood would make a movie on this subject. Something like Philladelphia on AIDS, Spotlight on the abuse cases in the Catholic church and Panick in Needle Park on the heroin issues in the nearly 70's. A movie like that couldn't have the wide scope of the TV series, but focus on fewer characters. A subject like this should attract the best writers, directors and actors. Instead the movie companies spend billions on superhero movies. When it comes to the Sackler family who hasn't spent a day in prison I hope they someday get a reaction fitting their kind ....
An extra note: the creator, writer and director of Dopesick is Danny Strong. Doesn't ring a bell? It's Johanthan from Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
Well….I’m really sad I watched all three series of this….😕
I’m sad because I have to wait until the end of the year for series 4 😩
Absolutely loved this…great characters and ‘proper’ stories…ok, the last couple of episodes of series 3 are a bit much, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment at all…highly recommended 🍸
Oh, and Gary Oldman is superb….although that will come as a shock to no one 🤣
Batman (1966) the series began on Talking Pictures TV on Sat morning at 9am - I missed that one but caught it on the repeat the following day at about 1.25pm. Fab stuff - okay, the humour is laboured now and as a kid you didn't understand why Dad would be laughing at it when it was deadly serious, the implications of what the Joker, Penguin or in this case the Riddler, coming on like General Orlov on speed, were up to - well, if Batman himself took it seriously, it must be, right?
A few pointers early on to make it clear that neither are gay, a reference to a cute teenage girl Dick Grayson noticed from the vantage of the Batmobile.
Gotham City has all the darkness of Disney's Epcot Centre.
Our own Jill St John turns up in the series debut as a gangster's moll - typecasting I guess.
How do our heroes somehow change costumes as they drop down the fire pole? Even when Superman did that it didn't really make sense.
Roger Moore 1927-2017