So it was this weekend. On Friday evening, we returned home from another stressful working week and, over the usual bunged together "can't really be bothered" Friday evening meal, accompanied by the much-needed cracking open of a bottle of wine, we found ourselves in the usual position of wondering quite what to watch.
Happily, there was the final episode of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" lurking on the DVR to accompany our munchies whilst we made our minds up, and that was followed by the latest "NCIS" lurking on the "Demand 5" area of the Blu-Ray online thingy. After that, my Beloved watched "Bull" from the same place as I pottered about with my mind full of other things.
Saturday dawned a little soggily, and, not least because I'm feeling a tad sombre at the moment, I decided not to go out on a morning walk, but instead to continue my recent epic trawl through all eighty-six episodes of "Danger Man" by watching the last of the black and white episodes "Not So Jolly Roger" before making the morning household cup of tea.
This was a rather enjoyable episode as it featured a lot of location filming on the Red Sands Sea Forts which were also used as a location for the missing "Doctor Who" story "Fury From The Deep" and, despite it being set in one of those "not quite the real world" media locations - in this instance a fictional pirate radio station rather than the unreal film or TV sets of the average "Columbo" instalment, they actually pulled that off rather well with some at least vaguely "poptastic" tunes being played.
The script did seem to suffer from the same suspicions of something new and interesting that shows like "Callan" had of "intellectuals" at "universities" in the mid-sixties, but, all-in-all, it was pretty well done.
After breakfast, "Danger Man" suddenly burst into full colour for the final two episodes, "Koroshi" and "Shinda Shima", made before Patrick McGoohan's sudden resignation to go off and make "The Prisoner" both of which had a Tokyo setting (presumably due to the then-current popularity of "You Only Live Twice" in cinemas) and they were perfectly passable, once you got used to the colour. At least they did score reasonably well - though not perfectly - on the using ACTUAL Asian actors to play Asian characters front, and when Burt Kwouk and Christopher Benjamin show up, you know that you're in safe hands. Later on, these two episodes would serve as filler episodes in the schedules when production on "The Prisoner" fell behind and, in the grand tradition of other two-part episodes of 1960s spy series, they'd even be spliced together for a movie release.
After this epic journey that has featured in so many of my recent early mornings was over, I was at rather a loss, so I decided to snap open one of the shows I still had in its cellophane wrapper, and watched the first available episode - episode two - of "Public Eye" - "Nobody wants to kill Santa Claus" which is neither a Christmas episode, nor does it feature Alfred Marks playing Frank Marker all that much, but does have a telling use of the word "Bastard" to ensure it's later time slot.
After that I decided to crack open another box set and give the Don Henderson vehicle "Strangers" a go. I'd been meaning to rewatch "Strangers" for years, but for several reasons I kept putting off buying it, despite Bulman being one of the great TV characters to emerge from 1970s crime drama. Somehow, watching the first mini-series of "The XYY Man" had rather put me off the series slightly, perhaps because I struggled to get beyond the 1970s casual racism and sexism on display, but an early appearance of Malcolm Tierney reassured me, as well as several other "future" coppers playing assorted villains.
Anyway, I shouldn't have worried. "Strangers" is far more quirky than the series that spawned it, although twenty minutes into the episode, interestingly set in "The Paradise Club" Henderson fans, I was joined downstairs for lunch, so we hit "pause" whilst my Beloved watched her latest Demand 5 discovery "Agent Carter" which is slickly done, has a well realised post-war setting, and somehow falls into several of the traps that modern adventure series tend to; All of the plots, sub-plots, and "Who can you trust?" that, in the end, tends to over-complicate everything into one great big knotty ball of shouting, explosions, and over-the-top action sequences that make any drama resemble the literary structure of a video game.
I got an hour to myself later on in the day, and returned to a third box set, the Complete "Dad's Army" of which I'd only watched episode one, and watched two more from the first series. Despite being in black and white that first series of "Dad's Army" already seems confident and fully formed by the end of its six episode run, which I concluded in the wee small hours of Monday morning. Because the word seemed more acceptable in ordinary language back then, we even get two "bastards" in the comedy dialogue, and it is interesting (and rather disturbing to this fifty-four-year old) to note that Fraser and Godfrey give their ages as 58 and 59. Also, Jimmy Perry himself makes an appearance as Charlie Cheeseman (a name to note) in the last of the series, alongside Barbara Windsor, as a pair of vaudeville acts.
Late afternoon was spent finishing off the last three episodes of the second and final series of Granada TV's "Lady Killers" which has proved to be a surprisingly entertaining series, despite the grim nature of the subject matter. So many great actors from the early 1980s turn up that there really are too many to list, but the great dramatic scenes they play still make for some pretty astonishing - if occasionally harrowing - viewing. Elaine Paige gives a chillingly unrepentant performance as Kate Webster in series one, whereas John Fraser is surprisingly sympathetic and pathetic as Crippen in series two.
It's perhaps strange that series two has recurring regulars in the courtroom, but as several were based at least in part upon notes made by the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, perhaps it is understandable. Certainly, by taking the viewer inside the condemned cell to discover the minds behind the murderers, we are exposed to some of the more chilling and unpleasant realities of Judicial Murder, and maybe such a series might be useful today in convincing those so quick to judge, the "hang 'em and flog 'em" brigade that such killings done in our name might not be quite as good an idea as some might suggest.
It's perhaps strange that series two has recurring regulars in the courtroom, but as several were based at least in part upon notes made by the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, perhaps it is understandable. Certainly, by taking the viewer inside the condemned cell to discover the minds behind the murderers, we are exposed to some of the more chilling and unpleasant realities of Judicial Murder, and maybe such a series might be useful today in convincing those so quick to judge, the "hang 'em and flog 'em" brigade that such killings done in our name might not be quite as good an idea as some might suggest.
The evening was spent with a film I'd recorded in February which sounded interesting but was ultimately all rather odd. This was "Footsteps in the Fog" which was a 1950s Edwardian Noir starring Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons and which, to my surprise, also featured one William Hartnell in one of his rare appearances in full gaudy colour. To be honest, I think I'd set the machine because I thought it was a completely different film, but it passed the time, even though I began to believe it was a project Hitchcock had passed on, and noticed several places which might have benefitted very much from a Hitchcockian flourish or two.
Sunday morning brought with it the rest of that "Strangers" episode, "The Paradise Set", which took a very unexpected surreal and literary turn in its tale of dirty dealings, failed jewel robberies, and private drinking clubs run by down-at-heel northern comedians. It was a bit unreconstructed in its attitudes at times, but the bizarre reconstruction of the film "Bonnie and Clyde" played out in an upstairs room by a cast including the future Inspector Japp from "Poirot" Philip Jackson more than made up for it.After that, I sampled a little more black and white "Dad's Army" and, after being out for the day, the evening was rounded off with "The Persistent Assassin" from the first run of "Sergeant Cork" which included another future copper, Garfield Morgan, playing a doomed young Prince.
Martin A W Holmes, July 2018
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