Anyway, tomorrow at 9am Talking Pictures TV has Batman with the first appearance of The Joker.
I came on here however to recommend ITV's Douglas Is Cancelled, a four-part comedy series by Steven Moffat with Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan, it also has Ben Miles and Alex Kingston in it. It's very funny, great stuff so try and find it on ITVX which they were heavily trailing. It's about a middle-aged news anchor who was overheard making a sexist comment at a family wedding and it got put on Twitter/X and off it goes. Some will think he's Hugh Edwards, others have him down as Eanonm (sp) Holmes. It's so funny you don't immediately pick up that it's not quite realistic that the issue is being discussed by just three powerful and influential people really who don't seem to know anyone else in the industry.
I guess this counts, because I did watch it on TV (and I think the series is on Hulu). . . not too long ago I found a DVD set of the 1978-79 miniseries CENTENNIAL, based on James A. Michener's epic novel and covering some 200 years of Colorado history in 12 parts and over 20 hours. I'd seen it as a kid and loved it, and I decided to watch it again. This was actually the first thing I'd ever seen Timothy Dalton in; he plays an English entrepreneur (perhaps a bit shady) who becomes the CEO of an enormous cattle ranch. Early on he has some scenes with Donald Pleasence, who plays a fleabitten mountain man, and it's fun to realize it had been about ten years since Pleasence was Blofeld and ten years until Dalton would be Bond. Other (future) Bond connections are Barbara Carrera as the Arapaho "Clay Basket" and Anthony Zerbe in typically slimy mode, as an actor/con man. A footnote is Stephanie ZImbalist, Pierce Brosnan's co-star in REMINGTON STEEL, the show that kept him from being Bond in 1987. Beyond the Bond fix, it's still an entertaining show--even if the beards and accents seem a little fake now and the last few parts are stuffed with flashbacks. As they say, "They don't make 'em like that any more."
FATHER BROWN is an old-fashioned detective show that used to transmit on daytime telly but now crops up on Drama at 8pm. Mark Williams is the titular priest who solves murders and mysteries in leafy Kembleton along with his crime fighting crew of Lady Felicia and Mrs McCarthy. The show is easy on the eye and mind, alternatively silly and serious, occasionally quite deliberately funny. This week I saw two episodes that epitomise the daftness of the show. One saw an MI6 cabal holed up in a doddery old geezer's mansion and Russian sympathisers running amok. The other was a rip off from Hammer with a young bride falling victim to an Egyptian mummy's curse. Good inconsequential fun.
There's still football and tennis.
THE TURKISH DETECTIVE was good, although the young guy playing Mehmet Sulyeman, a London Met detective who takes a job with the Istanbul police, was a bit bland. The story went a bit loopy at the end, but there is an underlying narrative about Sulyeman's ex-girlfriend, a journalist injured in a suspicious car crash. Haluk Bilginer as the experienced old Turkish pro is excellent. He'd make a good shout as a Bond assistant a la Kerim Bey, Mathis, etc. The three main female characters are phenomenally good looking [can I write that these days...?]
A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER is the sort of fayre churned out on BBC3 these days, suiable for the iPad Gen. Short scenes, mostly amusing and very odd, slightly contagious, good performances but I think it will run out of steam before it ends. I dislike programs where the teenagers are so unbelievably smart. I was one once, and my memory is that most teenagers are not this well adjusted.
DOUGLAS IS CANCELLED is creepy on all sorts of levels. My main issue with the show, which is well performed by the cast, is twofold. Firstly, everyone appears to be so self-absorbed you wonder how they ever make rational decisions - well, they don't, so I suppose I just answered my own question. Secondly, while I understand the need for narrative tensions etc, the lack of a human resources representative present at any of these interviews and meetings as a television producer and his stars battle an escalating media crisis is an incredible oversight; it gives the drama a complete lack of believability.
I caught the pilot episode of You Rang M'Lord on That's TV.
It didn't catch on like the other David Croft Jimmy Perry sitcoms, such as Dad's Army, It Aint Half Hot Mum, Are You Being Served and Hi-de-Hi. It's rarely if ever reshown on the BBC. I'd assumed it bombed, but this episode was a hoot and if nothing else is a wonderful retirement home for all those actors from the aforementioned sitcom, in particular Hi-de-Hi's Ted Bovis, Spike and Polly the chalet maid, but also the posh officers from Hot, Mum and walk-on parts for the vicar and bussybody town councillor in Dad's Army.
The Hi-de-Hi link may have sunk it, because that sitcom was so well-loved (though it outstayed its welcome) that viewers may have thought, this isn't as good as that at its height. Or maybe they didn't like to see Paul McShane and Jeffery Holland as rivals in this (Holland is cast against type, McShane isn't really) I don't know. Maybe that kind of sitcom was going out of fashion then.
The show is a kind of spoof of Downtown Abbey or Upstairs, Downstairs, set in the 1920s with the below stairs staff being a bit crafty and thick and outwitting their posh bosses who are not crafty but moneyed and thick.
One flaw may be is that you don't quite have a character or actor who can take it into dramatic territory - in Dad's Army you did, with both Arthur Lowe and John LeMesurier, who made it a cut above, or Simon Cadell - so excellent as a Nazi in Enemy at the Door, currently on Monday on Talking Pictures TV - as Jeffery Fairbrother in Hi-de-Hi. So You Rang, M'Lord is more in the comedy vein of It Aint Half Hot Mum, which likewise didn't quite have a serious actor or character in its cast, it's more along the lines of panto or farce.
Another possible flaw is there's no conventional eye candy. I know Hot, Mum didn't have it unless you count Gloria (!) but the presence of a Miss Brahams or sexy French waitress as in Allo! Allo! does help smooth things along - there is one fetching blonde with a waistcoat and monocle but she's supposed to be gay I think, it's not the same naughty postcard thing going on.
Tonight on Talking Pictures TV - 1977 classic Love For Lydia, which I recall my sister being into at the time, set in the 30s or 40s, winter time, haunting romance of sorts. It's on now., slow opener about a young feckless journalist falling foul of his editor. Then, after that - Framed with Timothy Dalton in imo his best ever role, as a wrong un. If you didn't buy him as Bond, you will after seeing this, but it's about 1992 so too late really. Good supporting cast too, with David Morrissey and Penelope Cruz, written by Lynda La Plante. It's on about 10.10pm.
Those repeats of repeats of PARKINSON chat shows have been interesting. This weekend's offering focussed on Kenneth Williams. Kenny & Parky got into a slight slanging match about how to enthuse the working class towards being more productive - Williams' comparison of the production line to an artist's procrastination didn't cut it with me either, so one-up to Parky. But Williams was spot on about house building, arguing that people didn't want luxury they wanted somewhere to live and it was all very well governments having grand plans for the future but if nobody has anywhere to live the future becomes blighted. Amazing to think we are still arguing the political toss over this kind of debate fifty years on. Mind, Old Kenny wasn't so enamoured with the 'new builds' of the sixties. I think he'd have preferred terraced housing. Still interesting noneltheless.
There was also a documentary he did in 1983 about his upbringing in London where he revisited the old pub his parents frequented, the school he went to, the first theatre he worked in. Apparently he was a more than competent draughtsman. Kenny's affiliation with the general public is quite charming, able to coax humour from them, chat at length about his past; he was surprisingly good with a group of stunned looking school kids, describing his roller skating escapades of his youth. To show how times have moved on, Kenneth Williams died aged 62 which just feels ridiculously young. One suspects in this more enlightened health conscious age he would have at least made it to 70.
People did die younger back then - see Leonard Rossitor, Sid James and Eric Morecambe, either that or they went on til their 90s - but isn't there a suggestion that Williams who was a seriously depressive man in his diaries, killed himself?
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,550Chief of Staff
I'd like to say I'm always tuning into Batman on Talking Pictures TV but it's a bit of a one-joke series. Funnily enough, it makes one really want to see Tim Burton's Batman, suddenly you get the throaty, adult appeal of it as it seemed at the time in the trailers - I wasn't mad about the film itself, however. Didn't Keaton reprise the role recently in something, an alternative universe Marvel outing? It's hard to keep up.
DC made a Batgirl film that cost nearly $199 million-, then instead of releasing it, shelved it for a tax writeoff. Michael Keaton's Batman was in that one, but we'll never see it. was he maybe also in the Flash film? that one actually did get released but disappeared before anybody could see it, like the fastmoving title character himself.
Detective shows, for some reason. Not my staple fayre.
I have been watching THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE which if you had Acorn TV is a couple of years old now. Adrian Scarborough stars as Det Insp Max Arnold who works out of the Chelsea nick and investigates crime on the expensively leafy streets of Kensington and Chelsea. He has that care worn look of many police detectives, is too wrapped up in his own world to notice other's but when needed to shows a remarkable aptitude for empathy. The stories are two hours long, split into two episodes, so I had to concentrate hard to remember what happened in ep.1 when I watched ep.2 the next evening. Well, acted, usual police procedural where you kind-of spot the mistakes in procedure and it all ends up preposterous and solved. DI Arnold lives on a houseboat at Chelsea Harbour. I seem to recall the modern incarnation of Van Der Valk owns a large canal boat. Arnold also enjoys classical music, like Morse and that guy from Strangers, and has a tendancy to take his work home with him. Like Gerry Standing in New Tricks he has trouble with an ex-wife. The influences are obvious but covered up rather well. I used to work on the Fulham, Brompton and Kings Roads and the area is familiar, but they've sought out locatios you won't recognise as well as some you might. Quite good, i thought.
Making its way the other direction is the Beeb's THE MALLORCA FILES starring Elen Rhys and Julian Looman which you can catch on Amazon if you want to pay the devil. I liked this easy on the eye and mind show when S.1 & 2 aired on Saturdays; nice to see it back, even if it is in the hands of Old Groaner himself.
Hmm. I wonder if this means a revival of the BBC's THE CORONER with the lovely Claire Goose is on the cards?
The Chelsea Detective usurped FATHER BROWN out of his 8pm slot, which is a bit surprising as it is the more adult of the two shows. However tonight's goings on at Kembleford saw Mark Williams's sleuthing priest coming to the aid of an adulterous brewer's daughter who is accused of murdering her father. Nothing is what it seems. A more serious tone for this episode which has a tendancy to dawdle while the cast banters amusingly to each other. I like it when I catch it, inconsequential as it is.
NEW TRICKS - endlessly repeated - is endlessly entertaining, at least these early episodes are, before the regulars got too chummy or started bowing out of the show.
THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE - Excellent series - like @chrisno1 I know the area well and know many of the locations where they filmed - the detective’s late father owned a bookshop far different from mine as he dealt in antiquarian books, but it was a nice tie-in for me.
THE MALLORCAN FILES - Awful dialogue, poor acting. I gave up after three episodes where things were going from bad to worse.
THE CORONER - Another excellent series - would love to see it return but that seems unlikely.
FATHER BROWN - Sunday afternoon fare - a ridiculous but captivating series that never disappoints.
NEW TRICKS - Great chemistry between the original stars, the replacements were all pretty good but when Dennis Waterman left there was a void that was difficult to replace.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
thanks for that take @CoolHandBond I should really have mentioned the bookshop in The Chelsea Detective ! The naffness of The Mallorca Files is what I liked about it, afterall I saw it repeated on Saturdays after the football results, clearly not designed for serious viewing. The BBC originally aired it in that mid-afternoon slot where Shakespeare and Hathaway and Father Brown usually sit.
You say you love detective shows - do you remember David Yip as THE CHINESE DETECTIVE ? That was a great and very underrated show.
@chrisno1 No, I haven’t seen The Chinese Detective, but I do remember the title from back in the day. I’ve just seen that it’s on my streaming service so I’ve placed it on my watchlist as you recommend it. I will post my thoughts when I’ve seen a few episodes.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Did anyone catch NIGHTSLEEPER with Joe Cole, who took the Harry Palmer role in last year's The Ipcress File? It was very similar to Red Eye only on a train not an airplane. Rather good, but already a bit daft. 4 more episodes to go.
No, I didn't. I've been watching Love For Lydia reruns on Talking Pictures TV - since July it seems acc to this thread, and it's now coming up to October. Set around a quartet or so of friends in the 1920s, it is perfect melancholic Sunday evening viewing, with that 'back to school tomorrow' vibe attached to it. Can't recommend it now, it's probably nearing the end of its run, but it's hard to say because it sort of meanders really.
Will have to catch part 2 of The Project on iPlayer, it had our own pre-Bond Naomi Watts and it's about New Labour coming to power, and the dirty tricks it had to pull to get there. Matthew Macfadyon (sp) too, also in a very early role. Not sure why they have to re-run these things starting late on a school night, so the second part ends about 2am. Anyway, it has an urgent Our Friends in the North feel to it, all about moral compromise as you work through life.
@chrisno1 recommended The Chinese Detective and I’m halfway through Season 1. I was expecting it to be set in Hong Kong but it’s based in London and very good it is to. What is also intriguing is to see how London was 40 years ago, brings back many memories for me. David Yip was in AVTAK, of course.
Thanks for the heads up, Chris 🍻
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Hi. Are you a fan of Leonard Cohen? The reason I ask is that I've just seen the two first episodes of the Norwegian/Canadian mini-series "So long, Marianne". It's about the relationship between Cohen and Marianne Ihlen who he wrote the titular song about. Ihlen moved to the Greek island of Hydra back in 1958 with the writer Axel Jensen and later had a passionate relationship with Cohen. So far the story is engaging and the intellectual expats (including Alan Ginsberg) are fascinating , but sometimes they take themselves far to seriously when they seem to compete in saying pompous and pretentious things. It's are to see a Norwegian TV series set in a stunning landscape that isn't Norway (Hail Hydra!). Some vaguely familiar actors like Alex Woff (Openheimer), Thea Sofie Lock Næss (The last kingdom), Peter Stormare (Fargo), Anna Torv (Fringe , The last of us) and others are in the cast and the conversations are in English and Norwegian.
I watched the opening episode of Life On Mars, a 2006 drama repeated on BBC4 and preceded by an entertaining and informative chat between star Philip Glenister and writer. I missed this the first time round though got the idea of the hype - it's good stuff, about a 'modern-day cop' who is knocked over by a car while on a case and is in a coma, on the other hand the character wakes up to find himself in Manchester 1973, a police officer in the correct Sweeney-style garb working under Gene Hunt - it's a spoof on unreconstructed attitudes in policing in the early 70s, though you get the sense the main character could jump forward 20 or so years instead and be equally appalled at what is going on in Greater Manchester Police or the Met today.
It allows the viewer to both be appalled at the lost-style sexism and brutality while also being secretly enertained by it - much like those old episodes of Alf Garnett in Til Death Us Do Part - you get to decide where the line is. That said, one old attitude we're not allowed to revisit it seems is old-school racism in the police - as with EastEnders it's conspicuous by its absence though only when you stop to think - that said, as Life On Mars is a sort of fantasy land imagined by the protagonist played by Jon Simms, it can get away with it. It avoids the whole 'but it's only a dream so who cares' problem of such dramas by having what the lead experiences in his fantasy world having some bearing on whether he pulls through in the coma, and the case he was working on before he was hit by the car.
About as much a cop fantasy land is the modern detective drama Ludwig with David Mitchell in which he has to impersonate his identical twin police officer brother who has gone missing - this entails hanging out with his work colleagues and not getting his cover blown. It's nonsense but I enjoyed it anyway - and these days unlike in Life On Mars, though there's plenty of ethnic diversity on display, it's a given that the police force he's infiltrated is corrupt. What a time to be alive!
Season 4 of SLOW HORSES has been excellent. Episode 5 (of 6) dropped yesterday and honestly, this season is in the conversation for 'best' season of the show overall.
ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING season 4 is going now too and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. So far, this season has been very strong with a pretty interesting central mystery to enjoy.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,550Chief of Staff
Like yourself, I missed - or more accurately, didn’t bother - with Life On Mars first time around…for complete frankness, I didn’t bother with the reruns a year later too, and actually decided I wasn’t going to watch it…it was a friend of mine that kept going on about it - to the point where I ‘gave in’ and watched the first episode…I loved it 🤭
Quite a lot of it was filmed where I grew up - yes, that’s the sort of depressing area I come from 😬 and Gene Hunt was killed in Horwich - it’s where the ending is filmed too.
I agree with @Napoleon Plural at being allowed to be entertained by the overt sexism and bullying in the show….and the scripts and overall fantasy of the show are really well done.
Ludwig I have yet to watch…but I will definitely be doing so…😀
@HarryCanyon - yes, can’t extol the virtues of Slow Horses enough…we are at the climax of the fourth series now and there hasn’t been one, even remotely, poor episode in the whole lot. Is it wrong to want to be more Jackson Lamb? 🤔🫣🤗🤣 I’m glad the fifth series has nearly completed filming 👏🏻 as an aside - I’ve probably mentioned this before - but Morwenna Banks writes quite a few of the episodes…she had her own tv career - the sketch show Absolutely being my fav - and she is married to David Baddiel, the lucky sod 🤭
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Anyway, tomorrow at 9am Talking Pictures TV has Batman with the first appearance of The Joker.
I came on here however to recommend ITV's Douglas Is Cancelled, a four-part comedy series by Steven Moffat with Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan, it also has Ben Miles and Alex Kingston in it. It's very funny, great stuff so try and find it on ITVX which they were heavily trailing. It's about a middle-aged news anchor who was overheard making a sexist comment at a family wedding and it got put on Twitter/X and off it goes. Some will think he's Hugh Edwards, others have him down as Eanonm (sp) Holmes. It's so funny you don't immediately pick up that it's not quite realistic that the issue is being discussed by just three powerful and influential people really who don't seem to know anyone else in the industry.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I guess this counts, because I did watch it on TV (and I think the series is on Hulu). . . not too long ago I found a DVD set of the 1978-79 miniseries CENTENNIAL, based on James A. Michener's epic novel and covering some 200 years of Colorado history in 12 parts and over 20 hours. I'd seen it as a kid and loved it, and I decided to watch it again. This was actually the first thing I'd ever seen Timothy Dalton in; he plays an English entrepreneur (perhaps a bit shady) who becomes the CEO of an enormous cattle ranch. Early on he has some scenes with Donald Pleasence, who plays a fleabitten mountain man, and it's fun to realize it had been about ten years since Pleasence was Blofeld and ten years until Dalton would be Bond. Other (future) Bond connections are Barbara Carrera as the Arapaho "Clay Basket" and Anthony Zerbe in typically slimy mode, as an actor/con man. A footnote is Stephanie ZImbalist, Pierce Brosnan's co-star in REMINGTON STEEL, the show that kept him from being Bond in 1987. Beyond the Bond fix, it's still an entertaining show--even if the beards and accents seem a little fake now and the last few parts are stuffed with flashbacks. As they say, "They don't make 'em like that any more."
I haven't seen Centenial, but perhaps the closest to making them like they like that these days are Kevin Costner's planned four Horizon movies?
I've been laid up a bit this week 🤮🤮
FATHER BROWN is an old-fashioned detective show that used to transmit on daytime telly but now crops up on Drama at 8pm. Mark Williams is the titular priest who solves murders and mysteries in leafy Kembleton along with his crime fighting crew of Lady Felicia and Mrs McCarthy. The show is easy on the eye and mind, alternatively silly and serious, occasionally quite deliberately funny. This week I saw two episodes that epitomise the daftness of the show. One saw an MI6 cabal holed up in a doddery old geezer's mansion and Russian sympathisers running amok. The other was a rip off from Hammer with a young bride falling victim to an Egyptian mummy's curse. Good inconsequential fun.
There's still football and tennis.
THE TURKISH DETECTIVE was good, although the young guy playing Mehmet Sulyeman, a London Met detective who takes a job with the Istanbul police, was a bit bland. The story went a bit loopy at the end, but there is an underlying narrative about Sulyeman's ex-girlfriend, a journalist injured in a suspicious car crash. Haluk Bilginer as the experienced old Turkish pro is excellent. He'd make a good shout as a Bond assistant a la Kerim Bey, Mathis, etc. The three main female characters are phenomenally good looking [can I write that these days...?]
A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER is the sort of fayre churned out on BBC3 these days, suiable for the iPad Gen. Short scenes, mostly amusing and very odd, slightly contagious, good performances but I think it will run out of steam before it ends. I dislike programs where the teenagers are so unbelievably smart. I was one once, and my memory is that most teenagers are not this well adjusted.
DOUGLAS IS CANCELLED is creepy on all sorts of levels. My main issue with the show, which is well performed by the cast, is twofold. Firstly, everyone appears to be so self-absorbed you wonder how they ever make rational decisions - well, they don't, so I suppose I just answered my own question. Secondly, while I understand the need for narrative tensions etc, the lack of a human resources representative present at any of these interviews and meetings as a television producer and his stars battle an escalating media crisis is an incredible oversight; it gives the drama a complete lack of believability.
I caught the pilot episode of You Rang M'Lord on That's TV.
It didn't catch on like the other David Croft Jimmy Perry sitcoms, such as Dad's Army, It Aint Half Hot Mum, Are You Being Served and Hi-de-Hi. It's rarely if ever reshown on the BBC. I'd assumed it bombed, but this episode was a hoot and if nothing else is a wonderful retirement home for all those actors from the aforementioned sitcom, in particular Hi-de-Hi's Ted Bovis, Spike and Polly the chalet maid, but also the posh officers from Hot, Mum and walk-on parts for the vicar and bussybody town councillor in Dad's Army.
The Hi-de-Hi link may have sunk it, because that sitcom was so well-loved (though it outstayed its welcome) that viewers may have thought, this isn't as good as that at its height. Or maybe they didn't like to see Paul McShane and Jeffery Holland as rivals in this (Holland is cast against type, McShane isn't really) I don't know. Maybe that kind of sitcom was going out of fashion then.
The show is a kind of spoof of Downtown Abbey or Upstairs, Downstairs, set in the 1920s with the below stairs staff being a bit crafty and thick and outwitting their posh bosses who are not crafty but moneyed and thick.
One flaw may be is that you don't quite have a character or actor who can take it into dramatic territory - in Dad's Army you did, with both Arthur Lowe and John LeMesurier, who made it a cut above, or Simon Cadell - so excellent as a Nazi in Enemy at the Door, currently on Monday on Talking Pictures TV - as Jeffery Fairbrother in Hi-de-Hi. So You Rang, M'Lord is more in the comedy vein of It Aint Half Hot Mum, which likewise didn't quite have a serious actor or character in its cast, it's more along the lines of panto or farce.
Another possible flaw is there's no conventional eye candy. I know Hot, Mum didn't have it unless you count Gloria (!) but the presence of a Miss Brahams or sexy French waitress as in Allo! Allo! does help smooth things along - there is one fetching blonde with a waistcoat and monocle but she's supposed to be gay I think, it's not the same naughty postcard thing going on.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Tonight on Talking Pictures TV - 1977 classic Love For Lydia, which I recall my sister being into at the time, set in the 30s or 40s, winter time, haunting romance of sorts. It's on now., slow opener about a young feckless journalist falling foul of his editor. Then, after that - Framed with Timothy Dalton in imo his best ever role, as a wrong un. If you didn't buy him as Bond, you will after seeing this, but it's about 1992 so too late really. Good supporting cast too, with David Morrissey and Penelope Cruz, written by Lynda La Plante. It's on about 10.10pm.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Those repeats of repeats of PARKINSON chat shows have been interesting. This weekend's offering focussed on Kenneth Williams. Kenny & Parky got into a slight slanging match about how to enthuse the working class towards being more productive - Williams' comparison of the production line to an artist's procrastination didn't cut it with me either, so one-up to Parky. But Williams was spot on about house building, arguing that people didn't want luxury they wanted somewhere to live and it was all very well governments having grand plans for the future but if nobody has anywhere to live the future becomes blighted. Amazing to think we are still arguing the political toss over this kind of debate fifty years on. Mind, Old Kenny wasn't so enamoured with the 'new builds' of the sixties. I think he'd have preferred terraced housing. Still interesting noneltheless.
There was also a documentary he did in 1983 about his upbringing in London where he revisited the old pub his parents frequented, the school he went to, the first theatre he worked in. Apparently he was a more than competent draughtsman. Kenny's affiliation with the general public is quite charming, able to coax humour from them, chat at length about his past; he was surprisingly good with a group of stunned looking school kids, describing his roller skating escapades of his youth. To show how times have moved on, Kenneth Williams died aged 62 which just feels ridiculously young. One suspects in this more enlightened health conscious age he would have at least made it to 70.
People did die younger back then - see Leonard Rossitor, Sid James and Eric Morecambe, either that or they went on til their 90s - but isn't there a suggestion that Williams who was a seriously depressive man in his diaries, killed himself?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That has certainly been suggested…plus he was in constant turmoil about his homosexuality…and his piles 👀
Thought he was an amazing raconteur, and brilliant in Round the Horne 😄
And in Just a Minute with Nimmo, Jones and Freud
He was…but the less said about Freud, the better 🤐
Slow Horses season 4 👏🏻
Hopefully this will be added to my streaming service soon 🤞the first three seasons were superb 🍻
Only seen the first episode so far…but it certainly drags you into the story from the off…
I held off watching the first three seasons for a while…then watched them all over the course of a month…I’d say Jackson Lamb is my new hero 🤣
Gary Oldman has said they’ve also filmed season 5 👏🏻
I'd like to say I'm always tuning into Batman on Talking Pictures TV but it's a bit of a one-joke series. Funnily enough, it makes one really want to see Tim Burton's Batman, suddenly you get the throaty, adult appeal of it as it seemed at the time in the trailers - I wasn't mad about the film itself, however. Didn't Keaton reprise the role recently in something, an alternative universe Marvel outing? It's hard to keep up.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
youre still getting your DC and Marvels mixed up!
DC made a Batgirl film that cost nearly $199 million-, then instead of releasing it, shelved it for a tax writeoff. Michael Keaton's Batman was in that one, but we'll never see it. was he maybe also in the Flash film? that one actually did get released but disappeared before anybody could see it, like the fastmoving title character himself.
The first episode of season 4 has landed 👏 but I will wait until they’re all on there before I watch.
Detective shows, for some reason. Not my staple fayre.
I have been watching THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE which if you had Acorn TV is a couple of years old now. Adrian Scarborough stars as Det Insp Max Arnold who works out of the Chelsea nick and investigates crime on the expensively leafy streets of Kensington and Chelsea. He has that care worn look of many police detectives, is too wrapped up in his own world to notice other's but when needed to shows a remarkable aptitude for empathy. The stories are two hours long, split into two episodes, so I had to concentrate hard to remember what happened in ep.1 when I watched ep.2 the next evening. Well, acted, usual police procedural where you kind-of spot the mistakes in procedure and it all ends up preposterous and solved. DI Arnold lives on a houseboat at Chelsea Harbour. I seem to recall the modern incarnation of Van Der Valk owns a large canal boat. Arnold also enjoys classical music, like Morse and that guy from Strangers, and has a tendancy to take his work home with him. Like Gerry Standing in New Tricks he has trouble with an ex-wife. The influences are obvious but covered up rather well. I used to work on the Fulham, Brompton and Kings Roads and the area is familiar, but they've sought out locatios you won't recognise as well as some you might. Quite good, i thought.
Making its way the other direction is the Beeb's THE MALLORCA FILES starring Elen Rhys and Julian Looman which you can catch on Amazon if you want to pay the devil. I liked this easy on the eye and mind show when S.1 & 2 aired on Saturdays; nice to see it back, even if it is in the hands of Old Groaner himself.
Hmm. I wonder if this means a revival of the BBC's THE CORONER with the lovely Claire Goose is on the cards?
The Chelsea Detective usurped FATHER BROWN out of his 8pm slot, which is a bit surprising as it is the more adult of the two shows. However tonight's goings on at Kembleford saw Mark Williams's sleuthing priest coming to the aid of an adulterous brewer's daughter who is accused of murdering her father. Nothing is what it seems. A more serious tone for this episode which has a tendancy to dawdle while the cast banters amusingly to each other. I like it when I catch it, inconsequential as it is.
NEW TRICKS - endlessly repeated - is endlessly entertaining, at least these early episodes are, before the regulars got too chummy or started bowing out of the show.
I love detective shows and my take on these is…
THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE - Excellent series - like @chrisno1 I know the area well and know many of the locations where they filmed - the detective’s late father owned a bookshop far different from mine as he dealt in antiquarian books, but it was a nice tie-in for me.
THE MALLORCAN FILES - Awful dialogue, poor acting. I gave up after three episodes where things were going from bad to worse.
THE CORONER - Another excellent series - would love to see it return but that seems unlikely.
FATHER BROWN - Sunday afternoon fare - a ridiculous but captivating series that never disappoints.
NEW TRICKS - Great chemistry between the original stars, the replacements were all pretty good but when Dennis Waterman left there was a void that was difficult to replace.
thanks for that take @CoolHandBond I should really have mentioned the bookshop in The Chelsea Detective ! The naffness of The Mallorca Files is what I liked about it, afterall I saw it repeated on Saturdays after the football results, clearly not designed for serious viewing. The BBC originally aired it in that mid-afternoon slot where Shakespeare and Hathaway and Father Brown usually sit.
You say you love detective shows - do you remember David Yip as THE CHINESE DETECTIVE ? That was a great and very underrated show.
@chrisno1 No, I haven’t seen The Chinese Detective, but I do remember the title from back in the day. I’ve just seen that it’s on my streaming service so I’ve placed it on my watchlist as you recommend it. I will post my thoughts when I’ve seen a few episodes.
Did anyone catch NIGHTSLEEPER with Joe Cole, who took the Harry Palmer role in last year's The Ipcress File? It was very similar to Red Eye only on a train not an airplane. Rather good, but already a bit daft. 4 more episodes to go.
No, I didn't. I've been watching Love For Lydia reruns on Talking Pictures TV - since July it seems acc to this thread, and it's now coming up to October. Set around a quartet or so of friends in the 1920s, it is perfect melancholic Sunday evening viewing, with that 'back to school tomorrow' vibe attached to it. Can't recommend it now, it's probably nearing the end of its run, but it's hard to say because it sort of meanders really.
Will have to catch part 2 of The Project on iPlayer, it had our own pre-Bond Naomi Watts and it's about New Labour coming to power, and the dirty tricks it had to pull to get there. Matthew Macfadyon (sp) too, also in a very early role. Not sure why they have to re-run these things starting late on a school night, so the second part ends about 2am. Anyway, it has an urgent Our Friends in the North feel to it, all about moral compromise as you work through life.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@chrisno1 recommended The Chinese Detective and I’m halfway through Season 1. I was expecting it to be set in Hong Kong but it’s based in London and very good it is to. What is also intriguing is to see how London was 40 years ago, brings back many memories for me. David Yip was in AVTAK, of course.
Thanks for the heads up, Chris 🍻
No problem @CoolHandBond I look forward to a fuller report 🍸🍸🍸
So long Marianne
Hi. Are you a fan of Leonard Cohen? The reason I ask is that I've just seen the two first episodes of the Norwegian/Canadian mini-series "So long, Marianne". It's about the relationship between Cohen and Marianne Ihlen who he wrote the titular song about. Ihlen moved to the Greek island of Hydra back in 1958 with the writer Axel Jensen and later had a passionate relationship with Cohen. So far the story is engaging and the intellectual expats (including Alan Ginsberg) are fascinating , but sometimes they take themselves far to seriously when they seem to compete in saying pompous and pretentious things. It's are to see a Norwegian TV series set in a stunning landscape that isn't Norway (Hail Hydra!). Some vaguely familiar actors like Alex Woff (Openheimer), Thea Sofie Lock Næss (The last kingdom), Peter Stormare (Fargo), Anna Torv (Fringe , The last of us) and others are in the cast and the conversations are in English and Norwegian.
https://www.dn.no/video/m/dKJerb9K/nrk-so-long-marianne-hdutext?play=1
I watched the opening episode of Life On Mars, a 2006 drama repeated on BBC4 and preceded by an entertaining and informative chat between star Philip Glenister and writer. I missed this the first time round though got the idea of the hype - it's good stuff, about a 'modern-day cop' who is knocked over by a car while on a case and is in a coma, on the other hand the character wakes up to find himself in Manchester 1973, a police officer in the correct Sweeney-style garb working under Gene Hunt - it's a spoof on unreconstructed attitudes in policing in the early 70s, though you get the sense the main character could jump forward 20 or so years instead and be equally appalled at what is going on in Greater Manchester Police or the Met today.
It allows the viewer to both be appalled at the lost-style sexism and brutality while also being secretly enertained by it - much like those old episodes of Alf Garnett in Til Death Us Do Part - you get to decide where the line is. That said, one old attitude we're not allowed to revisit it seems is old-school racism in the police - as with EastEnders it's conspicuous by its absence though only when you stop to think - that said, as Life On Mars is a sort of fantasy land imagined by the protagonist played by Jon Simms, it can get away with it. It avoids the whole 'but it's only a dream so who cares' problem of such dramas by having what the lead experiences in his fantasy world having some bearing on whether he pulls through in the coma, and the case he was working on before he was hit by the car.
About as much a cop fantasy land is the modern detective drama Ludwig with David Mitchell in which he has to impersonate his identical twin police officer brother who has gone missing - this entails hanging out with his work colleagues and not getting his cover blown. It's nonsense but I enjoyed it anyway - and these days unlike in Life On Mars, though there's plenty of ethnic diversity on display, it's a given that the police force he's infiltrated is corrupt. What a time to be alive!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Season 4 of SLOW HORSES has been excellent. Episode 5 (of 6) dropped yesterday and honestly, this season is in the conversation for 'best' season of the show overall.
ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING season 4 is going now too and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. So far, this season has been very strong with a pretty interesting central mystery to enjoy.
Like yourself, I missed - or more accurately, didn’t bother - with Life On Mars first time around…for complete frankness, I didn’t bother with the reruns a year later too, and actually decided I wasn’t going to watch it…it was a friend of mine that kept going on about it - to the point where I ‘gave in’ and watched the first episode…I loved it 🤭
Quite a lot of it was filmed where I grew up - yes, that’s the sort of depressing area I come from 😬 and Gene Hunt was killed in Horwich - it’s where the ending is filmed too.
I agree with @Napoleon Plural at being allowed to be entertained by the overt sexism and bullying in the show….and the scripts and overall fantasy of the show are really well done.
Ludwig I have yet to watch…but I will definitely be doing so…😀
@HarryCanyon - yes, can’t extol the virtues of Slow Horses enough…we are at the climax of the fourth series now and there hasn’t been one, even remotely, poor episode in the whole lot. Is it wrong to want to be more Jackson Lamb? 🤔🫣🤗🤣 I’m glad the fifth series has nearly completed filming 👏🏻 as an aside - I’ve probably mentioned this before - but Morwenna Banks writes quite a few of the episodes…she had her own tv career - the sketch show Absolutely being my fav - and she is married to David Baddiel, the lucky sod 🤭
Only Murders in the Building is Steve Martin and Martin Short isnt it? whats it like?
obviously I'm going to have to watch it one day just because of the cast