TV Reviews - Midsomer, Death in Paradise, Call the Midwife, The Night Manager

Tim Hiddleston in The Night Manager

“Midsomer Murders” was rather good last week, for the second week running. Lots of quirky characters, a good murder count, and at the heart of it, a story about family, about loss and suffering, and enough twists and red herrings to get the viewer going the wrong way more than once.

How anyone could refuse an appeal for a genetic match that could save a child’s life is beyond me, and I did think that the crusty husband who ran the riding stables was rather cruel to do so.

The on and off semi-romance between the sergeant and the pathologist is rather irritating me though. This week it was one-upmanship about looking after Barnaby’s dog while the family was away. It felt too contrived, and there doesn’t really appear to be any spark between the characters.

Barnaby and his wife, their child, and the dog Sykes are well done, even though the poor woman has very little to do with the plots. On the other hand, as most people who do end up dead, perhaps that’s a bonus.

“Death in Paradise” was good, but felt rather as if it was ticking the boxes, phoned in, written by numbers (choose your own cliché). Unlike last weeks, when Wendy Craig shone as the dotty aunt, there really was not any standout guest part.

The murder and the coincidence which gave the person framed an alibi seemed rather contrived, and there was not that “aha” moment which one really wants in a locked room mystery. As usual, the surroundings, the sunny weather, gorgeous scenery, make it a must for brightening cold, wet and windy evenings, even when it is not at the top of its form.

“Call the Midwife” doesn’t seem to sound a duff note at all. I am so amazed that even after so many series the characters and the stories are so realistic, and so brilliantly brought to life. The nun (Cynthia) who was brutalised by a Russian sailor who had been attacking other women, and the way the elderly nun took care of her and bathed her, was one of the most moving scenes. As was her realisation that she was the only victim who could speak to the police, as the others all had fears and secrets to hide - "It was not a test of faith, but a test of strength". With a home birth with no midwife going wrong, and the attacks on women, this was certainly another fraught episode.

But I’ve noticed it is also leavened with a touch of humour, in this case, Doctor Turner and his family attempting to take a holiday in a couple of tents, one of which collapses, one of which leaks, and the youngest daughter’s fear of squirrels – “she’s even afraid of Squirrel Nutkin, and he’s only a fictional character in a book”- was just what was needed before it became intense again.

“The Night Manager” was one I wasn’t sure of, but the standout performances from Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie made for riveting television. The locations were exotic enough from Egypt to the Alps, but it was Tom Hiddleston who drew the attention, so suave and polite, while at the same time, starting to play a very dangerous game, and all the time, this palpable sense of a hotel in the dark hours of the night when most people have retired to their beds.

We’ve moved on from George Smiley and the Cold War here, and it is disposable mobile phone sims cards which can hold secrets about covert arms dealing and terror. Making the MI6 central character a woman was also a smart move by the adapter, and one that Le Carrée has approved.

I’m certainly looking forward to it next week, and to seeing what happens next. There is the sense that the main character may be found out, and that ratchets up the suspense. The glossy cinematography is a bonus, but it is with its characters and plot that this series will succeed.

TV Times

TV Times

I’ve been look back at Christmas TV, some of which I am just catching up with.

I always enjoy “Doctor Who”, and the Christmas story was a rather fun and lighter piece, like a party, although it had a sad wistful romantic ending that was rather nice. It was not a very complex piece, easy to digest after Christmas pudding. How did it measure up to Christmas specials of previous years? If you said it was like a fine wine, then it was a good year, but not a great year. I do fear, though, that needing to know back stories is not good at Christmas, when what is needed is more of a one-off episode which viewers need to know very little of the Doctor Who background.

“Call the Midwife” was a heart-warming reminder from the rather dotty nun that Christmas is about family and relationship, and magic too. The scenes with the BBC producer wanting to film in a typical East End parish church were ripe with humour, but the service itself was full of the magic of carols with a lovely solo performance.

There was not too much amiss apart from the lost nun Sister Monica Joan played to perfection by Judy Parfitt, rambling off to visit her childhood haunts, except that just when you think it is too safe, to sweet a confection, something turns up out of the blue – in this case, the body of a dead woman, who at first we think is the nun, then realise is not. But the sisters get clothing for her to be dressed decently, and pray for her, and attend her funeral.

We never find her name, but such acts of kindness stand as a mark of how bad a society is, that it neglects its elderly, but how good people can be in responding to that. I wonder how many priests have the experience of conducting services for those unmourned, and unloved. It reminds me of a man found in Grouville in 2014, whose body lay there decomposing. He was a difficult man, and people had given up on him. Social services had not flagged his case up. He had fallen through the cracks. It’s always very sad to see. I wonder who came to mourn him?

The animated highlight was not the “Snowman and the Snow Dog”, which had done the rounds for a few Christmases, and is actually not really quite as good as the original “The Snowman”. It was “Stick Man”, a delightfully magical piece of animation, with the story of a stick creature, strange but in many ways our kin with his stick family who live in the family tree. He gets separated from his home, and the story is his quest to return through dangers and adventures.

I only caught it by accident, but I’m glad that I did. It is apparently based on a children’s story, and has been brought to life vividly, and the stick man himself seems so endearing and real."I'm stick man, can't you see", he cries, but most of his encounters are with children who see him just as an ordinary stick to play pooh sticks with, to throw for a dog, or to decorate a sand castle. Eventually, of course, he gets home to his family, who have waited, sad, but still hoping for his return.

January seems a season for detectives and murder. “Endeavour” has returned in fine form, quickly filling in the gap between the end of the last season and this with breathtaking economy. That ensured it could get on with the story, and Morse unable to resist the lure of detecting difficult crimes, comes back into the fold. The 1950s setting is well realised, although I imagine some purists will have criticisms. Oxford, of course, is timeless in its beauty.

The 1950s is also the setting for the less urban and much more rural “Father Brown”, back for a fourth series with Mark Williams now well settled in the role, and ably supported by Sorcha Cusack as his Irish housekeeper. Unlike, for example, the Father Dowling Mysteries, the producers and writers of this series, though it has adapted Chesterton’s priest for a more modern time, and belonging to one Parish, still has a spiritual heart that Chesterton would have approved of. Father Brown, unlike Father Dowling, is not just a man in a cassock who just solves crimes - he also dispenses mercy and hope.

“Midsomer Murders” is back and last weeks, about an apparent UFO, was rather good, and had several plot strands to unravel before the murderer was discovered. A tale of complex relationships, and families that were in different ways dysfunctional, it has more meat than the week before. It is really rather amazing that it is still going, and people are still dropping dead around Midsomer. 

It’s probably helped by Neil Dudgeon’s John Barnaby who brought a much needed shot in the arm to the series which had become rather stale with John Nettles rather just going through his paces and playing it by numbers. Nettles had become one of those policemen, like Jack Warner as Dixon, who somehow kept his job long after retirement age. I rather like Gwilym Lee as Sergeant Nelson. Jason Hughes’ Sergeant Jones always seemed a little too smug for me.

Winter is cold and warmer weather is on offer in “Death in Paradise”, which is topical sun, the rather beautiful fictional island of Caribbean with its French culture – reminiscent of Jersey in some ways, and Kris Marshall’s wonderfully eccentric but brilliant detective Humphrey Goodman. Unlike a crime show – such as Bergerac – this is actually a locked room puzzle show, with a variety of impossible murders carried out, clues and red herrings, and the chance for the viewer to solve it if they think it through.

I don’t – I just enjoy the experience, and the reveal which is usually a rather clever “aha!” moment. It is very relaxing on a cold winter’s evening. It has been criticised as formulaic, and it is in some sense because it is always an impossible crime with clues, a reveal involving flashbacks, and  - rather like a reality show - we are told who is not the killer first. But the stories are inventive variations on a theme, and as long as it keeps its inventiveness, and the quirky characters at its heart, it will be worth watching.

And on Radio…

The Morpeth Carol was a strange play but I rather liked its mysterious qualities.

Nine-year-old Harry lives on the edge of a housing estate in an un-named Northern town, a serious and intelligent lad with a troubled mum and dad. Late on Christmas Eve he escapes his rowing parents and ventures out into the night. and on a snow-covered precinct in between high-rises he finds what looks like a crashed sled, burning presents scattered in its wake, and mortally wounded reindeer all around.

There's also a very scary looking man, gaunt, unshaven and hooded, who skulks around the crash site, finishing off the dying animals with a shotgun. It is very different take on Santa Claus as more of a mythical and elemental figure from the distant past, cursed to takes human form at Christmas and deliver presents to selected children – we never quite find out why. It has the qualities of a dark Christmas fable, almost as if we have misunderstood and tamed the wild elemental creature with our cosy Father Christmas, and this is the true story behind all the legends, something primal and pagan.

As Radio Times put it:

“It’s a novel take on Christmas, but writer Timothy X Atack manages to make his twisted tale seem ancient too. Bleak but not cynical, amoral not immoral, these seasonal scenes revert to the pre-Christian, and jolly Saint Nick becomes a gaunt and hooded Odin-like figure. A mythological touch allows for some surprisingly poetic moments — eternally cursed, this enigmatic pseudo-Santa describes his prison as ‘the space between the night and the daylight sky’”

I’ve been enjoying a play from 2007, “Backtrack”, where a volunteer helper at a temporary centre for the homeless finds herself oddly interested in one of the down-and-outs, and for once allows herself to follow her instincts. It stars Maxine Peake as Jan, Joseph Kloska as Fiz, Mark Straker as Matt and Marcella Riordan as Molly. At its heart is relationship and joy, and a journey from the city of London to the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales.

More recently, “A Family Affair” has been both amusing and poignant. On 22nd November 1990, following dissention in the Conservative ranks and an equivocal leadership ballot, Margaret Thatcher made the dramatic decision to offer her resignation as prime minister. 

Michael Dobbs' play follows Thatcher's last traumatic days in power, seen from the perspective of her husband, Denis, and her family. Stephen Moore as Denis is really excellent, and much of what we see is from his perspective, which is why I actually felt some sympathy for Mrs Thatcher as she finally saw her political ambitions crumble away.

Bletchley Park: Code-breaking's Forgotten Genius

Bletchley Park: Code-breaking's Forgotten Genius

The story of Gordon Welchman, and his part in both organisation, and improving the cypher breaking machinery, was told on BBBC 2 on Monday night. He has been the forgotten hero, airbrushed out of “The Imitation Game”, and his book suppressed.

He was a brilliant mathematician, easily Alan Turing’s equal, and while the mechanical cipher solving machines – the “bombes “ could take days, and the German codes changed at midnight, he introduced the “diagonal board”.

This change made the devices substantially more efficient in the attack on ciphers generated by the German Enigma machine, so that they could be solved in hours rather than days. The modified machine became knows as the Turing-Welchman Bombe.

Apart from his abilities in mathematics he became particularly known for his excellent organising skills. The Welchman proposal was for the following organization which remained basically unchanged throughout the War.

- Army/Air Force Code breaking Hut 6.
- Army/Air Force Intelligence Hut 3.
- Naval Code breaking Hut 8.
- Naval Intelligence Hut 4.

The Hut numbers became the cover for these activities. Welchman said later that this was probably his greatest contribution to the War effort.

Another important part of the work which he initiated was “Traffic analysis” where by all incoming intercepts received from the Y Stations were meticulously logged and cross indexed to build up a detailed picture of the signals from all parts of the German Forces.

Traffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. It is still in use by intelligence groups today.

His last assignment was to write an official – albeit secret – history of Hut 6, and develop plans for the successor to Bletchley Park, the intelligence gathering agency GCHQ.

Welchman had the misfortune to be living in the United States, and when he published his book “Hut 6”, in 1982, he faced the full wrath of the National Security Agency. Unlike Mrs Thatcher’s attempts to ban “Spy Catcher”, the American agency went for the jugular, threatening Welchman with imprisonment should he discuss with the media either the book or his wartime work. That meant any promotion was out of the question, and the book sank without trace, remaindered and pulped. He also lost his security clearance. So much for the "land of the free"; Welchman saw the darker side of the American State machinery.

This was a compelling story, about someone whom I had hitherto known nothing. It is always amazing the way history keeps throwing up the unexpected, and shining new light on areas where everything seemed to have been told.

On the Box: TV Reviews

“Means?” said Stephen. “That is an odd word to use. Yet it is true – skin can mean a great deal. Mine means that any man can strike me in a public place and never fear the consequences. It means that my friends do not always like to be seen with me in the street. It means that no matter how many books I read, or languages I master, I will never be anything but a curiosity – like a talking pig or a mathematical horse.” (Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell)

Sadly “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell” has come to an end. A wonderful mix of period drama and magic, taking the viewer into the ordinary world of the early 1800s, and then into the stranger world of faerie. All the parts were played by actors who were relatively unknown which I think added to its strength; there’s always some difficulty in appreciating a well known actor in a quite different role. But the characterisations were wonderful, especially the leads - Bertie Carvel and Eddie Marsan. Special mention should also go to the brooding Enzo Cilenti and the charming but deadly “gentleman”, played by Marc Warren., and Ariyon Bakare as Stephen Black, an understated performance of distress as "the nameless slave".

With Stephen Black and his story, slavery is something which was below the surface of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, where the fictions roots in history anchor it to a time when so many lives were wasted.

The vast compensation paid to slave owners, and the way in which its tentacles crept like an insidious and pervasive weed into British society was the subject of a documentary tonight - "Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners" presented by historian David Olusoga. One individual who became a slave overseer kept a detailed journal, and it is a journal of horrors, as he easily becomes assimiliated to ordering beatings and even more inventive tortures of the slaves under him.

A recent talk in Jersey about a year ago revealed how many clergy had invested into the slave business, as the return on a modest injection of capital was considerably more than other choices of investment. In these days when we are now realising that there is an importance in "ethical investment", it is salutory to see how so many clergy and some Jersey people connived in the slave trade by unethical investments.

A detailed database of slave ownership - and the compensation paid to end slavery by the British government is available at:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

Christopher Lee was the subject of a documentary on Saturday and it was interesting to see how he changed his mind about his favourite film – “The Wicker Man” – into that of “Jinnah” in which he played the founder of Pakistan, Jinnah in a biopic about the founding of that nation. I’ve never seen the film, but having heard Lee on it, and read a few reviews, I think I’d like to.

There was something of a “Lee fest” last weekend, with “The Mummy”, “The Devil Rides Out” (Lee as a hero for once), “Dracula” and “Frankenstein”. The first Dracula film was his strongest, while he had far less to work with as the creature made by Peter Cushing’s Frankenstein. In “The Mummy”, however, he was the High Priest in the historical flashbacks, but also managed to convey emotion through his body language and eyes extremely well as the titular monster. “The Devil Rides Out” sees him shine as the Duc de Richelieu in what is a pretty faithful movie rendering of the Dennis Wheatley novel.

I enjoyed the first part of Joanna Lumley’s Trans-Siberian Railway Journey, even though some of the television conventions make me long for the days of the late Keith Floyd. She gets one ticket for her journey, with great emphasis on this - “just one ticket” whereas it is obvious there is at least one other individual holding the camera and recording the sound.

Dear old Keith used to always tell the camera man to come closer and look at the food (and not the glass of wine in his hand!), and was one of the first to break the unwritten rule that the person in these programmes is always supposed to be alone. Michael Palin managed to bring his crew into part of his journey “Around the World in 80 Days”, but Joanna reverted to the rather old fashioned call for a suspension of belief by the viewer.

The stories of China were fascinating, and what struck me clearly was that despite a Communist Revolution, all these ancient palaces and statuary has been preserved as part of Chinese culture, including the massive Buddha figures – the nose of one was something like 6 feet long!

Such a contrast with Dan Cruickshank’s recent film detailing the destruction of ancient monuments by the Islamic State which really is wiping the slate clean. To preserve the ancient heritage of China shows that even in the most repressive days of Chairman Mao, there must have been some glimmer of light.

That reminds me of a recent blog post by Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt in which she says:

Every life contains brokenness, but the brokenness doesn't need to define the life. Our broken places can also be openings for something new. As the great sage Leonard Cohen teaches, "There is a crack in everything; it's how the light gets in."

TV Review: The Dark Side of Victory

TV Review: The Dark Side of Victory

In “1945: The Savage Peace”, documentary maker Peter Molloy’s narrative focused on how Germans were treated in Berlin by the Russians, and in countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia. People spoke of how they were raped, or saw others raped and beaten to death, and how even the native German population of Czechoslovakia, some of whom had actually opposed the Nazis, were all treated brutally, savagely.

The Russian army in Berlin was out of control, and in formerly occupied countries such as Poland or Czechoslovakia, what prevailed was essentially mob rule. For some reason, in Czechoslovakia, those leading this campaign of lynch-mob revenge wanted it recorded, and there were some horrific scenes of people lined up and being shot against an earth bank, and then a lorry crushing the legs of the corpses afterwards.

There was appalling violence to those ethnic Germans who had lived peacefully for centuries in neighbouring countries, and much of it was filmed; this rare archive film had not been seen before, and coupled with the unique testimony of eyewitnesses and victims, told a terrible tale.

As Gerard O’Donovan wrote in the Daily Telegraph

“Molloy’s film was most effective in highlighting the scale and savagery of the reprisals – shootings, forced death marches, the rape of two million German women and children, the public humiliation, torture and execution of countless ethnic Germans, particularly in Czechoslovakia and Poland.”

A former Jewish prisoner from a former German concentration camp in Poland became a Camp Commandant for the Germans interred there, and delighted in thinking of brutal ways to humiliate the men and women imprisoned. Here was someone brutalised as a prisoner who had in turn become a vicious sadist.

It was harrowing to watch, and shows how badly people can behave, giving into the worst instincts for retribution, and not following proper judicial process. “Anarchic, vengeful and bloody” is how one reviewer commented.

While it was true that the German army had themselves committed acts of atrocity, the absence of rule of law just meant anyone could be accused, taken, killed, regardless of the culpability.

In 2009, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer made it very clear why the rule of law should prevail, and not that of the lynch mob, however understandable the desire for swift summary retribution should be:

“If we forsake the fairness of the trial process, simply on the premise that ‘a crime was committed, so someone must be held responsible’, we lose all notion of justice and surrender to the sometimes understandable but always inappropriate yearning solely for retribution.”

“I understand immediately the views of others who might say that ‘the ends justify the means’, but down that path for a civilised society operating under the rule of law lies the abandonment of the very rule itself, and the tacit acceptance of the lynch mob. If we cannot operate our system of criminal justice, other than by using the means that we deprecate in others, we have failed in our basic duty to respect that rule of law.”

Call the Midwife: Deaf and Giving Birth

"Call the Midwife" had a very moving story about a deaf mother, who could not speak, and could only sign, mainly to her husband, who could sign back, and tell the Midwives what she was saying..

The part was played by actress Genevieve Barr, who is in fact deaf, although is able to get some sound with hearing aids. As the Telegraph reported:

“At four years old, she was fitted with her first hearing aids, so was able to match the mouth patterns she had seen to the sounds she now heard, and slowly started to speak out loud. Barr still wears hearing aids, but as she can’t hear all the details of sound she relies on lip-reading to complete the picture.”

Her story, which is set out on the Internet Movie Database, is an amazing tale of overcoming obstactles. Here is what it says:

Genevieve was known by her teachers to be doubly cheeky and passionate. She was also a dreamer. Whilst she loved acting, time and time again she was encouraged to go up for the main parts in school plays and was rejected every time. She never knew whether this was because of the speech impediment that came naturally with profound deafness or because of a lack of acting talent. This was a difficult and sensitive issue for her, and with her academic abilities she opted to go to Edinburgh University to study English and History.

Genevieve graduated Edinburgh University in 2008 with an MA(Hons) in English Literature and History, receiving the Anne Lewis History prize for outstanding results. Whilst at university, Genevieve continued to play lacrosse for Scotland.orn profoundly deaf, the doctors told her parents that she would never learn to speak or fully adapt to a hearing world.

Despite this, Genevieve attended mainstream primary school and went onto Harrogate Ladies College as a day pupil. She achieved top grades at GCSE and a full set of As at A Level. She also played sport at a high level, competing nationally and internationally in high-board diving, playing lacrosse for Scotland and rounders for England.

Whilst at University, Genevieve applied for the Teach First graduate scheme, similar to Teach America and was the first ever deaf person to get in. Teach First is a challenging graduate scheme, which provides six weeks gruelling teaching training before sending its graduates to failing or impoverished schools around the country. Genevieve went to teach English at an inner city secondary comprehensive in South London.

This was a huge challenge for her - her deafness was not a forgiving trait in the classroom, and it was a huge battle to earn the respect of pupils and teachers alike. However, she worked hard and embraced this steep learning curve and it prepared her for other battles in ways in which she could not have envisioned.

A few months into teaching, Genevieve was approached by a casting director who was auditioning deaf and hearing people to play the lead role in BBC1 drama 'The Silence'. 'The Silence' was the story of a deaf teenager who witnesses a murder, who is also adapting to hearing for the first time after a cochlea implant operation. Genevieve auditioned after school hours and finally got the part. Genevieve filmed in Dublin for four months, and 'The Silence' came out in July 2010 to rave reviews.Genevieve was nominated for a BAFTA and an International Emmy for best actress.

As the Telegraph notes, this involved learning how to sign:

“'I tried to learn it a few times, partly because I felt ashamed for not being able to communicate with deaf people who signed, and because I wanted to explore my deaf identity,’ she says. 'But there’s just so much to learn.’ Barr learnt to sign properly for the role. 'I had to come across like I was fluent and had been signing my whole life.’…. 'At the read-through Genevieve made it clear that when people were speaking to her she had to see their lips moving,”

Although she has in fact now also played hearing roles, in “Call the Midwife”, it was the part of a deaf pregnant lady – and one giving birth – that she took. It was beautifully played and signed.

Remark Training (in BSL) were involved in making sure the signing from the husband was accurate, and you can read their report here.

http://www.remarktraining.co.uk/remark-onset-of-call-the-midwife/

“Having had no prior TV experience, I assumed the couple would have met and would have had script readings or rehearsals together. It turns out that they had never set eyes on each other before. We plunged into the script reading and BSL tutorial straight away and before we knew it we were all merrily discussing child birth, deaf culture and everything in between.”

Genevieve wrote about her own experiences on her blog:

http://genevievebarr.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-experiences-in-call-midwife.html

You can read her full account there and please do – it is very moving - but here are a few snippets:

“I've never given birth and even though I'm deaf, I am not fluent in sign - my modus operandi, communication wise, is certainly verbal. There was a lot to learn and it was important to get right.”

“Once the hairdresser had said decidedly that I was not suited to ringlets, but more to quaffs (think less Judy Garland, more Audrey Hepburn), I became a 'June Denton' faced with the prospects of bringing a child into a deaf world, or a hearing world. June is torn between the baby being able to hear, but she not being able to speak to it or vice versa - the baby being born deaf and therefore living in a silent world. A cruel dilemma - accentuated by the fact that hearing aids were not readily available and cochlea implants did not exist. A deaf person could not learn to speak so easily without those resources and segregation and discrimination were rife in society.”

“It's not an easy thing being deaf, and I know that more than most people. If it is a burden, then I carry it most times without being aware of it. If it is a burden and I am aware of it, then I carry it with pride and determination, therefore not really feeling it. But June's grace in her deafness, her delight in the small victories, her realisation that love can be conveyed without sound and without sound left me with more confidence than before - that regardless of which way my children go in the world, they will be loved and know they are loved.”

Wolf Hall: TV Review

“Wolf Hall” is a very dark drama, not least because it makes no concessions to modern lighting, and uses tallow candles to light buildings as much as it would have been done. The half glimpsed silhouettes show us a world full of flickering shadows and light.

The core performance has to be Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. Very much a man of the world, he builds spiders webs by his network of spies to entrap the unwary, and is first and foremost, set to do his master’s bidding – that is, the wishes of Henry VIII.

There’s a certain motivation in him for revenge on those who brought about the fall and destruction of his former master, Cardinal Wolsey, and it is interesting that it is Anne Boleyn, not Cromwell, who seeks to put Thomas More’s name on the list of those who supported Elizabeth Barton in her prophecy against the King. Cromwell knows More is innocent of this, and contrives a way around Anne’s wishes in the matter.

Cromwell has for so long been portrayed as the schemer, the nasty piece of work, the henchman doing Henry VIII’s bidding. Having Leo McKern play Cromwell in “A Man for All Seasons”, and Donald Pleasance play him in “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” make him very much a villain, and in the case of Pleasance’s performance, almost a cardboard villain.

Rylance’s Cromwell is an altogether more subtle character, with feeling and religious sensibilities. He won’t put Thomas More on a list, because he knows that More is innocent of that crime. And yet he still frames legislation that needs an oath of loyalty to the King, which traps all those who have integrity and doubts, including More. He doesn’t like torture, and prefers his network of informers, but he’s still prepared to let More be executed, partly at his contrivance.

One of the best scenes was after Henry had fallen from his horse, and just recovered – Cromwell hitting him in the chest to get his heart beating is effective, but probably fictitious – and Cromwell discusses how things might have been with Master Treasurer Fitzwilliam. It’s the lull after the storm, a reflective two-hander that is a delight to watch, as each displays scepticism about the other’s views.

It appears that Henry did suffer some kind of brain damage as a result of the fall, when he was unconscious for nearly two hours. As Michael McMarthy notes, “the king, once sporty and generous, became cruel, vicious and paranoid”.

This slightly unhinged King was well brought out by Damian Lewis, who suddenly turns on Anne, when she calls upon the King to give up jousting for the sake of the Kingdom, and he says “Do you wish to geld me too, Madam”.

Throughout the series, the shadows are lengthening, and in the final episode we saw Cromwell acting against Anne Boleyn, on behalf of the King. He threatens violence, but doesn’t use it, but the threat itself of violence, unrecorded, and the dark cells of the Tower are enough to get enough confessions.

The King needs guilty people, and Cromwell is not fussy about the truth of the accusations. It is enough that those accused are guilty men, guilty of past crimes, although, as Cromwell states, not necessarily those crimes they are accused of. He needed to find enough guilty men to satisfy Henry.  It is also a chance for him to settle old scores against those who brought down and mocked Wolsey.

Claire Foy as Anne gives a brilliant performance, haughty and often cruel as the Queen, but suddenly aware of how vulnerable she is, and taken to the tower. Her trial, when she answers “No” to all the questions, goes well until she is forced to say “Yes” to giving money to one of her alleged suitors. She realises in an instance that answer will seal her fate.

Her speech and trembling final prayers were extremely fraught, and we saw the executioner swing the sword, and heard the thump as it severed the head, but rightly this was more effective in not showing it. We are shown the reaction of the spectators, and we should not forget that executions were very much a spectator sport. Would people watch today if there was still public hanging?

I think the culture has shifted from the 1960s when the death penalty was removed from the statute books as a mark of a civilised society, and today’s population, brought on a diet of visual atrocities from war zones, coupled with the desensitising effects of sadistic shows like “I’m a celebrity” would probably pay to watch. Our world has become crueller than it was; closer to the Tudors.

Was she guilty? What mattered to the Henry and Cromwell was that she should be found to be guilty. Executions had to be conducted by due process of law, and Cromwell showed himself adept at manipulating events within the limits of the law. And yet even there is a touch of compassion: he knows that Anne is beyond saving, but he asks her to be contrite and confess so that he can try to safeguard her daughter Elizabeth.

Archbishop Cramner does not come out of this well. He finds it incredible that the accusations should be true, yet as it is the King accusing Anne, he says that it must be true because Henry would not act if there was not sufficient evidence to prove Anne unfaithful. Under Edward VI, of course, he was in his element pushing forward the Reformation agenda, but under Queen Mary, he recanted of his past.

Cramner only seems to have finally found a courage that eluded him when he realised that his recantation was not going to save him from burning, and then he retracted his confession, and thrust the hand which had signed the document into the flames. History is full of “what ifs”, and I cannot help wondering what might have happened if he had been quietly pensioned off after a very public retraction rather than sentenced to death.

Cromwell, in the end, is greeted by Henry, his master for doing his bidding. But he knows he is caught in a trap from which he cannot extricate himself, and sooner or later, the same fate which others suffered may well be his too. And he has changed, in this telling of the story, from one who sought to support the King but act, according to his lights, justly, to someone who will use any legal means to achieve his ends, whether they are, in fact, just or not. Legally, everything is done with due process, but morally, he has been in the process of selling his soul to the devil.

TV Review: Call the Midwife

“Call the Midwife” still keeps up very high standards, and some wonderful touching moments – the birth at the gypsy camp, the diabetic and her lover. This series has been perhaps more thematic than past ones, but that has worked very well producing strong drama.

I was not sure how Linda Bassett as Phyllis Crane would fit in; at first she seemed something of a stereotype – someone who was something of a fusspot, but her character, and the way it is played by Linda Bassett has made for some very powerful drama indeed.

Vaughan Sellars is the local boy who has been at Borstal, but is trying to put his life right, but she understands that. He asks her how she knows. "Do you know someone who went wrong?" “I was the wrong ‘un, Vaughan”, she replies. This strand of the story is about acceptance. The pregnant diabetic girl Paulette Roland loves him, but her mother can, initially, only see Vaughan through the eyes of prejudice. But by saving Paulette, at the cost of going back to the Courts, she comes to see that he loves her daughter as much as she does.

Sister Mary Cynthia is goodness personified, slight, seemingly timid, kind and caring, and you would have thought it was difficult to believe a story with such a sweet character, but again the story works well. We see how she cares for the gypsy about to give birth, and the gypsy’s slowly dying mother, who wants to remain in the camp until she dies. After the grandmother’s death, in traditional fashion, the Vardo, or gypsy caravan, is set alight, a wonderful sight.

The goodness of Sister Mary is in contrast to the town people, who see the gypsies as rogues and vagabonds, who imagine the young girl with child is underage and unmarried. The viewer is meant to see that is wrong, and that the Council, evicting the gypsies, is pandering to those prejudices. Unfortunately, those attitudes have not gone away, even today, and there are still as many prejudices, often ill-founded, against those who have chosen a nomadic existence on the road.

Part of the joy of “Call the Midwife” is its depiction of the 1950s Poplar, bringing back a lost time within living memory, and showing both the light and the dark.

We have moved on in some ways – homosexuals – as in a recent episode – are no longer sentenced, as Alan Turing was, to a medical treatment with side effects, supposedly for their own good. But other attitudes are still as much present today as they were then. In that respect, it becomes a period mirror, reflecting our own times back in its own stories, and showing us how we can face and overcome our own hidden prejudices.

What I’ve been watching on TV

Dr Who

I’ve found this a bit of a mixed bag.

The opening episode, “Deep Breath” with a throwaway dinosaur, was something of mishmash, and rather a wasted opportunity. It was nice to see Matt Smith, but risky, as the familiar and charming only accentuated the rather spiky Capaldi Doctor.

“Into the Dalek” was a different take, and clearly showed the roots (even with a mention) of the TV movie Fantastic Voyage; it was nevertheless rather fun. What happened to the Dalek’s protective force fields, by the way? Present in the Russell T Davies era, they seemed to have gone.

“Robot of Sherwood” was typical Mark Gatiss, pressing the comedy as far as the drama would allow, and if you enjoy that (and I did) a rather good romp. Gatiss also has an excellent ear for dialogue, and this was sparkling.

“Listen” was rather more of a sequence of sketches than anything concrete, though the unseen figure under the blanket on the bed was extremely scary, an excellent example of how to use imagination to terrify. The part of the Doctor’s early childhood (if that is what it was) seemed a bit out of sorts with the established continuity; it will be interesting to see if more is made of that.

“Time Heist” by the same author was an enjoyable run-around, a timey-wimey story, but with rather a good alien monster, and an enjoyable pace. 

“The Caretaker” was enjoyable, but slight. 

“Kill the Moon” had a wonderful lunar landscape (Lanzarote, with CGI colour changing), scary spider like monsters, but a denouement whose science just defied description. I really didn’t like the ending, which seemed rather unconvincing. The abortion subtext was also pretty obvious.

But “Mummy on the Orient Express” and “Flatline”, again two by one author, were classic Doctor Who, perfectly structured, brim full of ideas, characters, and pace and plots which actually made sense.

“In the Forest of the Night” took the bold step of telling a very different story, with a strong ecology message, but again some rather bad science surfaced – how were people using mobiles when the solar flare would have wiped out the satellites?

Grantchester
I rather like this clerical sleuth, and the two leads, James Norton and Robson Green are excellent, and it has a good supporting cast.

As I don’t like missing “New Tricks”, I record that at 9, and use ITV +1 for Grantchester, so I can have a double dose of murder.

One of the features I like especially is the sermon which ends each episode, and here are two of them. They are mini-sermons, but they draw upon the storyline of the episode and provide a neat and rather different way of concluding the story.

Sermon by Reverend Sidney Chambers
We cannot erase our pasts, however hard we try.

Instead we must carry them with us into the future. We must carry them with us and look forward with hope. We must look forward, because to look back is to waste precious time.

Someone recently said to me, "We should live as we have never lived."

And we must all of us take heed and live as we have never lived.

For we are all mortal.

We are all fragile.

And we all live under the shadow of death.

Sermon by the Curate, Leonard Finch
Kant once wrote -"By a lie, a man annihilates his dignity as a man."

Our good friend Immanuel wasn't one to mince his words. He saw things in black and white. He didn't dwell on the grey areas.

But who amongst us can honestly say that we haven't lied for good reason? Who amongst us can say we live a truly good life?

And that's not to say we shouldn't try. We should all continually try to be the best we can be.

To escape the sins of our past..... to be accepting of our little foibles... and of others.

We can't run away from who we are.

We must turn and face the truth head on.

Sometimes in life... it's better just to... get on with things.

Harry and Paul's Story of the 2s: A Review

Narrator: It's 1964. The BBC, or Auntie Beeb as she was known, is 45 years old. So far, she's given birth to one televisual child. And on April the 20th of that year, she was to find herself once again in labour.
 
Do come on, Auntie Beeb, stop making a fuss and push.
 
Ooh!
 
The child was on its way. But what was it to be called? We have one television channel. Tonight we launch a second. What on earth are we going to call it?
 
Pipes in. Pencils out.
 
I've calculated that if we do indeed have two channels, then the current channel - BBC Television - should be known as BBC One.
 
I've checked your calculations and they're correct. If the current channel equals BBC One, what does the new channel add up to?
 
X to the power of -13. This new channel shall be called BBC X To The Power Of -13.
 
You've blundered in your reduction of this fraction, you horrid little homosexual. X to the power of -13 cancelled out is two. BBC Two.
 
Can't we call it BBC Stalin?
 
Are you a communist?
 
This is the BBC - we're all communists, aren't we?
 
ALL:  Shhhh..
 
I've just caught up with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's "Story of the 2s". It is a very amusing, if somewhat barbed, takeoff of a number of BBC2 shows which are famous, such as the Forsyte Saga, Ascent of Man, I Claudius, Top Gear, Fawlty Towers, QI etc.
 
The two, and their fellow helpers, are brilliant at cheeky impersonations. These are not impersonations in the strict sense, like Mike Yarwood used to do, or Dead Ringers did more recently. Rather they are impressionistic portrayals, where enough of the style and mannerisms of people are given so that you know quite easily who they are lampooning.
 
Of course, one problem is knowing the shows. I know about "The Ascent of Man" and "I Claudius", so the lampooning of those is very much on the mark, and very funny. But if you are not familiar with the shows involved - and some of them go back some time - you will largely miss the joke, and for example, the send up of Jacob Bronowski, or the way in which Frankie Howerd from "Up Pompeii" creeps into the send up of "I Claudius", called "One Clavdius".
 
Narrator: Colour television brought with it endless possibilities for grand documentaries. And there was none more grand than Jacob Bronowski's epic series...The Pottering About of Man.
 
Bronowski (in distance on sand dune): I'm rather a long way away from you.
 
Bronowski (closer to camera): Now I am much closer.
 
Bronowski: Now you can observe with clarity the riot of beige which is my jacket, shirt and tie.
 
The names are fun parodies too - John Cleese-Shop-Sketch, Germaine Dreary, Joan Bakewell Tart, and Gerald Manley Paxman
 
So I think its full appeal will be limited to an audience of a particular age, who are familiar with and watched the shows. Obviously seemingly timeless shows like the much repeated Fawlty Towers will still resonate, and the more modern send-ups, such as Stephen Fry on QI, will appeal to a wider audience.
 
Harry's rendering of Ian Hislop is also extremely good, but they seem to have completely overlooked the fact that "Have I Got News for You" goes out on BBC1 and not BBC2. (Yes, I know repeats are there, but that doesn't really count, does it?)
 
But there is a sharp edge there as well in the commentary. A parody of "Call my Bluff" has the word "paedophile" given various explanations  - as the original show used to do with strange words - with Harry Enfield's  brilliantly capturing Robert Robinson (with just the right kind of patronising manner)
 
Narrator: "As the '70s wore on, rumours of a culture of sexual depravity at Television Centre began to circulate. It was decided to tackle this potential time bomb head on, on prime-time BBC Two."
 
Robert Robinson (Harry Enfield:) "Hello and welcome to a show which could quite easily be called Would I Lie To You? will soon to be known as Call My Bluff and is currently entitled Speech Impediment. And we like it that way.
 
Robert Robinson (Harry Enfield:) "And our first word is.....paedophile. Frank, what is a paedophile?
 
Frank Muir (Paul Whitehouse): Well, a pae-do-pa-hilly, a fruh, a fruh-fruh fruh-fruh.
 
Robert Robinson (Harry Enfield:) Frank thinks it's a type of chocolate bar made of nuts and fruit. Is he right, Patrick?
 
INCOHERENT POPPING. "..toes."
 
Robert Robinson (Harry Enfield:) Patrick says it's a type of instrument for scraping the dead skin off your feet. Derek?
 
"Pee-pa-pa-pe-pe, pee-pa-pa-pa, poh."
 
Robert Robinson (Harry Enfield:) "Or is it, as Derek suggests, a ceremonial dress worn by German women on Maundy Thursday? And the answer is... Well, you're all wrong. because there's no such thing as a paedophile."
 
APPLAUSE
 
 "There is no such thing as a paedophile". This hits at the lax attitude of the BBC in the past, where blind eyes were turned to children being abused. There's bite in that satire!
 
But there is good natured fun on the way, and their rendering of Stephen Fry is a delight.
 
Narrator: Stephen, of course, invented adult humour.
 
Stephen Fry (Paul Whitehouse): - Bum chums and willy biscuits. 
 
And the "Stephen Fry" explanations in the pastiche of QI almost sound as if they might have come from the show itself:
 
Fry: The interesting thing about Nazis - there's no T in it. It should actually be pronounced "nah-zee".
 
Fry: And the interesting thing about Ann Widdecombe is it's pronounced "Ann Wuddicome" in parts of Scotland and "Anne Wycombe" in parts of Wycombe.
 
For those born later, and unfamiliar with shows, a number of arrows will miss their mark. But for myself, a self-confessed TV addict, who remembers all the old shows ("Ask the Ugly Family", with Robert Robinson!), it was something of a wicked delight.

Losing her Marples

I have never wholly taken to Geraldine McEwan in the title role of Agatha Christie's Marple. It is an odd title, anyway, and suggests that there might be other writers who have dabbled with the character - Barbara Cartland's Marple would surely have had enormous fake eyelashes, and been extremely pink and fluffy.
 
I think it is not so much McEwan, who is actually rather good, but the fact that so many of the stories bear only a tenuous relationship to the original books. The BBC's Miss Marple, with Joan Hickson, was a very faithful adaptation, but the ITV versions almost violate the trade's description act, as apart from the titles, very little remains of the original book, and it is often rewritten in quite extraordinary ways.
 
Nowhere was that more apparent than in "The Sittaford Mystery", which had an excellent cast, including Timothy Dalton and Mel Smith (very good in a straight part), with Robert Hardy doing a cameo turn at the start with Winston Churchill.
 
The snowbound nature of the location remains the same, but Inspector Narracott has vanished from the scene, and Miss Marple, who doesn't even feature in the original book, turns up to solve the case. And just in case you had read the story, the killer's identity is different from the one in the novel.
 
Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable way of spending an hour or so, as long as you put the original completely out of your mind, except for the plot point of the snow, which I am not going to explain here lest the reader has not read or seen this. Spoilers!
 
Of course, there is a strong tradition of straying from the plot. The Miss Marple films with Margaret Rutherford were often original creations, in which Margaret Rutherford would give her standard performance as Margaret Rutherford, and everyone would call her Miss Marple.  There were never any books on which "Murder Ahoy" was based, and "Murder at the Gallop" and "Murder Most Foul" were actually derived from Poirot stories.
 
I remember the reading some old film reviews which said that Margaret Rutherford bore a remarkable resemblance to Agatha Christie. I always remember thinking that Agatha Christie would have hated that comparison. I liked Rutherford very much in the VIPs, but she was altogether the wrong performer for Miss Marple, especially with her tendency to use gurning to convey emotions. And small and bird-like, she was most assuredly not!
 
The Mirror Crack'd, the film starring Angela Lansbury, had a decidedly odd Miss Marple, who actually smoked, something the original novels never did. The plot did follow the book quite faithfully, despite that. It was, like the near contemporary Poirot films "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Death on the Nile" done in a very Hollywood way, with pretty well all the main suspects played by well-known Hollywood stars. It was all a very glossy kind of fun.
 
The BBC adaptations are unusual, in that they represent a good attempt to remain faithful to the original stories, and usually did not rely on star names, but jobbing (but excellent) character actors, which made it more realistic, less glossy.
 
I think that, for me, Joan Hickson will be the definitive Miss Marple.

TV Reviews: Creme de la Crime

Jonathan Creek came to an end about a week ago, and in terms of structure, and the bizarre nature of events which befall its protagonists, it is moving more towards David Renwick's other show, "One Foot in the Grave". There is a mystery element, but it is exceedingly slight, and no longer the pivot around which the whole episode revolves. This is disappointing, because the Christmas special showed the magic touch that we have come to expect. Unfortunately, these three episodes fell very flat, despite a rather neat effort to lampoon Sherlock.
 
The difference, I suppose, is that Sherlock is still built around one big story, which Holmes and Watson have to solve. It is true that it has the familiar mainstay of modern television, the story arc, but each episode can be relished more or less as stand along. And for sheer plot, it just blows Jonathan Creek away.
 
The Mentalist has returned post-Red John, and with a different team, it suddenly seems rather tired, plotting by numbers, with no sense as yet that there is any major threat lurking in the background which can surface. It will be interesting to see the episode where one of the original team is kidnapped, as the reviews suggest that the suspense is palpable. And what happened to the natty suits and clean shaven Patrick Jane - he's now definitely sporting designer stubble, looking rather like he's a bit run down, rather like the series.
 
Meanwhile, the other thriller in police drama, Line of Duty came to an end this week, in a story which divided viewers. I rather liked it; it explained the motivations of DI Lindsay Denton's actions, and filled in the gaps we didn't know. Justice was not wholly served, and the documentary style ending with photos and information about the characters added to that sense of realism. It has been a compelling roller coaster, a return to the "wait a week" cliff-hangers that many thought were consigned to the past. Most series with parts broadcast over successive nights, but this bucked the trend. I liked the unresolved threads left (for series three?), and the ambiguity which mirrored real life.
 
Real life is not what one has in Bergerac, of course, which ends a rather swiftly curtailed run on BBC2 early next week. It is the series three when Bergerac and his wife get on better, and I always thought it was a shame that this line was rejected in favour of him getting another girlfriend. Of course, the reason for the curtailment was the filming of series four onwards at Haut de La Garenne, and the BBC being sensitive to issues involving child abuse. Episodes of Top of the Pops have also not been shown where they involved Jimmy Savile. It is a wise decision. Many children were abused at Haut de La Garenne, and the Historic Abuse Inquiry is about to begin.
 
What Bergerac does so well, mass murder of millionaires and gangsters excepted, is to show a Jersey that has now been all but lost. We can see the harbour, when it was the old and charming harbour, full of character, and not the building sites and ugly buildings that tourists have to pass by nowadays. The Sealink boats remind us of when there were boats which linked up to train timetables - do they now under Condor? I doubt it, because there has been no advertising of that fact. St Brelade's Beach was full of tourists, and I remember beach combing for left over buckets and spades at the end of the holiday season, when they'd be left behind. And the old airport building, in much more innocent and less dangerous days, had a viewing platform on the flat roof close to the control tower, which even had one of those beachside telescopes.
 
Law and Order has returned, with a finely judged performance from Bradley Walsh in particular. The police team has altered, the legal team has altered, but Bradley as DS Ronnie Brooks remains resolutely at its core, giving a feel of authenticity - those glasses, that grey and rumpled mac - that a series like this needs.
 
Meanwhile, at the weekend, I caught up with a film I have never seen before - "The Day of the Jackal". It is a superbly watchable film, and it is not afraid to take its time as the Jackal, portrayed wonderfully by Edward Fox, prepares all the fine details that he will need for a successful assassination of Charles de Gaulle. On the other side, the meetings, the police thinking, and procedures, all lend it a ring of truth, giving it at times an almost documentary feel - we are eavesdroppers on behind the scenes police work. It was Frederick Forsyth's debut novel, shooting him to millionaire status, and rather like ""The Eagle has Landed", it doesn't matter that we know that the core target survives; it is the cat and mouse game between the Jackal and police which drives the story and makes it so compelling.

Non-Existent Car Boot Sales and Other Musings

"Saturday Morning. Car Boot Sale. 9am. Biarritz Hotel."
 
This was the only car boot sale on offer in the West of the Island last Saturday, so we duly went there to discover lots of builders sign boards, and hotel shut up for the winter. It is a small annoyance, perhaps, but it is a pity when the Jersey Evening Post does not have a proper system for checking whether events shown in its "Daily Diary" actually are taking place.
 
The Weather Forecast the other day was also subject to editorial blight. This is the same kind of creeping disease that plagues the JEP from time to time. There was the very brief summary report, and for the more detailed forecast, as well as tide times, you had to go to page xx. Obviously that number gets put in very late in the day, but on this day, Homer had nodded off, and left the place marker xx only in place. So to find the said whether forecast, I had to trawl through the whole JEP until I found it.
 
Perhaps that is something that Helier Clement could address and take up with the editor when Helier has finished his bottle of calvados in his shed. Rather like Doctor Who's Tardis, that bottle seems bigger on the inside than the outside, because it never seems to run out. The secret, perhaps, is that there is a still in the shed, secretly bubbling away, fermenting the drink. As they always say, it's the still ones you have to watch out for.
 
Christmas TV this year has been rather bereft of much to watch, especially if you don't particularly like reality TV, and I'm afraid I don't. I've recorded Midsomer Murders which did look good, and Death Comes to Pemberley, which has mixed reviews. I'll probably watch them when doing the ironing next Sunday. Murder and ironing always seems like a good combination, with something of the domesticity that Agatha Christie had in her small country village murders, and it was probably Miss Marple's maid who was ironing; in our household, it is me. As someone who spends a lot of time writing or on a keyboard, it is actually rather therapeutic.
 
There may have been mayhem and a murder in St Brelade's over the last year. I went for a walk in the country park opposite the Elephant Park, and in the car park was a van in good condition, but with two flat tyres, and an insurance disc dated September 2013. As regular viewers of the endless repeats of "The Professionals" and "The Sweeney" on ITV3 will be aware, vehicles do not usually have two flat tyres on one side only, at the same time - unless they have been deliberately shot out. The third shot was the hapless victim, who was taken away and the body smuggled away to one of the more obscure Geocaching sites, never to be seen again. The evidence of the disc points to their demise sometime before September 2013, and the heavy rainfall has obliterated all signs of blood.
 
Jersey over the last year seems to have had more unexploded bombs or shells from the Second World War discovered and exploded than in the five years before. Unexploded bombs also featured in "Call the Midwife", which captured the 1950s so well, and while there was a strong current of sentimentality, there was the bittersweet rip tide of a community effected by polio, which was all too real a danger back then. The mother of a school friend, Marion Miles, had a slight limp as a result of contracting polio as a child, and we forget, with the sugar lump vaccine (surely the best way to take a vaccine) quite what a scourge it was across Britain in those days.
 
I was reading an article today written in 2010, which dated St Brelade's Church as 1200 AD, and the Fisherman's Chapel as being built about 800 AD. In fact it should be the other way around. After all, there is a charter dated 1035 AD by Robert of Normandy which confirmed the patronage of the Church to the monastery of Montivilliers, hence showing it existed by that time. A case of time in a muddle.
 
Another case of time in a muddle was Doctor Who, which in contrast to the 50th Anniversary Special, was rather a rambling disaster, an incoherent muddle. I spoke to two people today who watched it, because it's the kind of show they have watched in the past, but despite that loyalty, they hadn't the slightest clue what was going on. It was partly a case of marking time to Matt Smith's regeneration, and partly an almost completely disconnected and embarrassing story about Clara's parents and their Christmas dinner. It required large continuity references to be understood, and had a town named Christmas on an alien planet. The computer called "handles" was a nice touch, but most of the rest of it did not draw on any real sympathy for any characters under threat, unlike the scenes of children in "Day of the Doctor". Viewing figures were good, but it would be a mistake to assume they paint the full picture.
 
Mark Gatiss' "An Adventure in Space and Time", by contrast, seems to have been very well received, and was accessible even by people who did not, as a rule, watch Doctor Who - my mother being a case in point. Gatiss other Christmas offering was also very welcome. A half hour adaptation of "The Tractate Middoth", a ghost story by M.R. James, which was very faithful to the short story, and had the same good period production values of the old adaptations by the BBC. This was followed by a fine documentary about MR James, also by Gatiss, in which his enthusiasm for the "master of the English Ghost Story" shone through.
 
Gatiss also mentioned MR James reply on Ghost Stories, which was wonderfully non-committal.
 
"Do I believe in ghosts? To which I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me".

An Adventure in Space and Time: A Review

The last programme to be filmed at Television centre was Mark Gatiss' drama about the beginnings of Doctor Who. That's got a certain poignancy all of its own, and the show actually used offices rather than sets, authentically redressed in 1960s style.

The story of William Hartnell and Doctor Who was a wonderful piece of drama. Like all drama, it had to make compromises between the history and the demands of drama; there was no place found for David Whittaker, Doctor Who's first Story Editor.

In a way that was a shame, because it was Whittaker who saw the potential of the Dalek story submitted by Terry Nation over the "Masters of Luxor" by Anthony Coburn. I've read the scripts for "The Masters of Luxor", and while it is a worthy enough story, exploring the idea of intelligent machines, it hasn't got the bite of the Dalek story. If that had gone ahead instead, there would have been no Daleks, and probably Dr Who would have wrapped up after its first thirteen episodes, a worthy series, but one which did not really belong as more than a footmark in history.

That history is so contingent on happenstance. Terry Nation was writing for Tony Hancock, but they rowed, and by chance he found himself out of work, on a train to London, and remembered the request for a submission that he had been given; if that row had not taken place, again there would have been no Daleks. Whittaker saw the potential of those scripts as a "cracking adventure story" of the kind he had been looking for, and dropped the Coburn script. Anthony Coburn had written the first episode, and also the caveman episode. After "The Masters of Luxor" was dropped, he fell out with the production team, and never wrote for Doctor Who again.

Coburn's son, however, has recently demanded that the BBC stop using the TARDIS in the show, or compensate his family for its every appearance since his father's death. Quite how one claims ownership of what was, at the time, a commonplace object on London Streets is another matter. But Coburn was staff writer for the BBC, and staff writers did not usually have any rights over their inventions, even more than Raymond Cusick, the designer responsible for the Daleks could claim any ownership. It looks, in my opinion, like a cheap attempt to capitalise on the Doctor Who Anniversary celebrations.

There were some lovely incidental pieces in the drama. An aside that Mervyn Pinfield invented the teleprompter for news broadcasts, a brilliant device still used on TV to this day. A mention of Sydney Newman's other series idea - "The Avengers", even with his own words ""I don't know what it means, but it's a great title!"

And there were lovely cameo reconstructions of great scenes - Daleks gliding across Westminister Bridge, Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Web Planet, and the Tenth Planet, as well as photoshoots with the different companions on the way.

But the story was about character, and change. The period prejudice of the time was summed up when Verity Lambert, played by Jessica Raine, tells director Waris Hussein, that they were both outsiders -"the posh wog and the pushy Jewish bird". That very much encapsulated the kind of prejudice they faced.

Sydney Newman was played with gusto by Brian Cox, Jessica Raine was brilliant in conveying Verity Lambert, but the star performance has to be David Bradley as William Hartnell. It was wonderful to see how he portrayed how Hartnell mellowed in the part, and rather than gruffly barking at his grandchild, delighted in her adoration of him in the role.

But he also lost the ability to remember lines, and that, with the loss of the original team about him, came across very well, as Bradley portrayed a man who was in many ways insecure, needing reassurance from others, and feeling more isolated and tired as the first team left one by one.

Bradley conveyed the frustration of the actor, as his powers diminished, and he felt his age catching up on him, and his sorrow at having the part which had made him the adorable "Uncle Who" of millions of children taken away from him.

As someone who usually has to place unsympathetic types like Caretaker Finch, this was a triumph of his versatility as an actor. When Hartnell took on the role, as this drama showed, he was frustrated with forever being typecast in barking army sergeant roles; Doctor Who gave him a chance to show that he could play a very different kind of character.

In its way, this drama provided the same opportunity for David Bradley, as he showed just what a wonderful three dimensional character William Hartnell could be, irascible, and then apologetic, loving the fact that he had landed in a role which brought so much joy to so many children.

Teen Exorcists

"Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, 'In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.' Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?'" (Acts 19: 13-15)
 
Brynne Larson, 18, and sisters Tess and Savannah Scherkenback, aged 18 and 21, are determined to rescue London's youngsters from evil spirits, which they say they are inviting to possess them by reciting the spells in the Harry Potter books. The threesome, from Arizona, believe the spells in J.K. Rowling's best-selling fantasy series are real, and dangerous.  In fact, they see Britain as a hotbed of occult activity whose origins go back to pagan times. Savannah explains: 'It has been centuries in the making, but I believe it came to a pinnacle with the Harry Potter books.' 'The spells you are reading about are not made up,' adds Tess. 'They are real and come from witchcraft.'(Daily Mail,1)
 
I watched the documentary on BBC3, "Teen Exorcists" by Dan Murdoch, and I was amazed at statements like these. If they think that "expelliarmus" or "riddikulus" are "real spells", then why bother to listen to anything else they say? I've studied the history of witch trials, and folk beliefs about witchcraft, and I can say with some confidence that those have never been part of the spell craft at any time. Of course, it transpires that the girls have never read the books, and never would, because they think they are "satanic", so that is not exactly surprising.
 
Charlet Duboc, who also made a documentary on the girls, said that "The way they come across on camera is just the way they were when we turned off the camera, they never stopped the vacant smiling"
 
With their karate skills, and good looks, they came across rather like clones from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but they come from a very different background - pushy American fundamentalism. Brynne's father the Reverend Bob Larson is a failed Television Evangelist, and there is an air of marketing about how they promote themselves. As the Anorak website notes:
 
"They are committed to the beliefs and worldview expounded by Brynne's father Bob Larson, a man who has been a familiar figure in US media for years with extravagant tales of Satanic cults and of exorcising thousands of people who he says have been spiritually oppressed by demonic powers."
 
"Bob Larson, as ever, came across as a showman who pays close attention to branding; his church's slogan is "DWJD" - "Do What Jesus Did", referring to the role of Jesus as exorcist in the Bible - and he wields a distinctive ornamental cross. This cross, along with his clerical garb and dog collar, appear to be a pastiche of Roman Catholicism, but it all plays into the popular image of what an exorcist should look like. Larson's background is actually in neo-Pentecostalism" (2)
 
That description of Bob Larson struck a chord, and I remembered G.K. Chesterton's "The Vampire of the Village" where there is an actor masquerading as an Anglican parson, until he is unmasked by Father Brown:
 
"No Anglican parson could be so wrong about every Anglican problem. He was supposed to be an old Tory High Churchman; and then he boasted of being a Puritan. A man like that might personally be rather Puritanical; but he would never call it being a Puritan. He professed a horror of the stage; he didn't know that High Churchmen generally don't have that special horror, though Low Churchmen do. He talked like a Puritan about the Sabbath; and then he had a crucifix in his room. He evidently had no notion of what a very pious parson ought to be, except that he ought to be very solemn and venerable and frown upon the pleasures of the world."
 
Bob Larson is very different in his style, but there is also a feeling that this style is a fabrication. There's the Holy Water, the Cross, which is sometimes thrust out as if he was playing the part of Van Helsing in Dracula, and the Bible is used as a physical object, a talisman of power to help remove the demons. There's a lot of performance there.
 
And there is certainly money in this, as the Examiner points out:
 
"On his personal and church blog, Larson is up to the usual tactics including asking or requesting money from the masses, preaching against paganism, telling the public about the spread of Satanism, looking for support for his war on the demonic, promoting his exorcism ministry, and now there is even a demon test you can take online. Of course the online demon test does require PayPal payment, so if you do not have an account, it seems you cannot be saved. Not to mock, but it is a terrible example of website exploitation at its worst."
 
Meanwhile Thomas Peters on Catholic Vote, is even more scathing about their self-promotion - "Brynne Larson, 16, is one of many newly-qualified teenage demon slayers". He acidly comments:
 
"How you can combine the words "qualified", "teenage", and "demon slayers" in the same sentence escapes me."(3)
 
Free Thought is very scathing:
 
"Fake 'exorcist' and con man Bob Larson's current meal tickets, his teenage daughter and her two friends that he markets as the Charlie's Angels of exorcism, are hitting England on their world tour of nonsense."(4)
 
But what is left out of most of the media presentation is the degree to which these exorcisms are psychologically abusive. They manipulate vulnerable people, they plant pernicious ideas that people are demon possessed in distressed people and then proceed to "cure" them.
 
The techniques are similar to those exposed by Derren Brown in his documentary on Fake Healers, and the worse thing is that they have no idea of how damaging they can be to people.  As Duboc said:
 
"It was depressing because I just didn't see that exorcisms were going to help any of these people in the long term. It was a shame, these are lives being lived with the wool over their eyes." (6)
 
It is important to note, perhaps, in closing, that the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church both have a ministry of exorcism, but it should be only sought after proper medical and psychiatric professionals also have assessed the situation.
 
For example, Anglican priests may not perform an exorcism without permission from the Diocesan bishop. An exorcism is not usually performed unless the bishop and his team of specialists (including a psychiatrist and physician) have approved it.
 
But what it may come to is the complexity of the human mind, the way in which it can split into disassociated personalities. A good example is the book "Operators and Things", a personal experience of schizophrenia.
 
That does not mean that exorcism may not be a good way to treat it/ As Psychologist Dr Mitch Byrne from the University of Wollongong says, while he does not believe in demons, the method of exorcism has its merits.
 
"Oddly enough, I'd say yes there is a place for these people. If you are a person who is possessed of a delusional belief or a psychiatric disability, and you have a strong religious belief, and that belief can be marshalled to help you overcome your distress then why not? I wouldn't say it is the best call or should be the first call in terms of a way of dealing with psychological disturbance, but people should never underestimate the power of belief. Suicide bombers and Kamikaze pilots are evidence that the power of belief is beyond any sort of rational argument, so perhaps working within someone's belief system is the best way to help them recover from their disability or distress."(7)
 
Links
(1)   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415387/Teenage-exorcists-say-Harry-Potter-corrupted-world-head-Britain-armed-Bibles-Holy-Water-tackle-hotbed-occult-activity.html#ixzz2eyWu4ejY
(2)   http://www.anorak.co.uk/366868/strange-but-true/teen-exorcists-bob-larson-margaret-thatcher-and-hunting-satan-for-jesus-in-london.html/
(3)   http://www.catholicvote.org/worst-idea-ever-teenage-girls-trained-to-perform-exorcisms/
(4)   http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2013/09/11/larsons-three-little-con-girls-hit-england/
(5)   http://www.examiner.com/article/teenage-exorcists-phoenix-fight-demons-and-paganism
(6)   http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/15/teenage-exorcists-the-buffy-sisters-battling-to-rid-people-of-sexually-transmitted-demons-3923583/
(7)   http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-30/its-real-priest-reveals-exorcism-rituals/2777946
 

On the Box

"Call the Midwife" is back for a second series, and just as good as before. While it has a central focus in the character of Jenny, it is also very much an ensemble piece, with all the actors having some of the stories focused on them. The framing device, where the older Jenny speaks as a voiceover is also very good, as it draws the viewer in, it is the older Jenny speaking about her life directly to you, the viewer. And it is never sugar coated and sentimental; it has a gritty edge to it in its realist depiction of the 1950s.

But nor does it just present life then as grim - the young midwives go to the cinema, to dances; this is very much a complete "slice of life" with all the good and bad times shown. And although it deals with issues - a battered wife, prostitution, etc, it doesn't have the feel of being issue driven, but character driven, which is very much to its advantage. It can have you on the edge of your seat one moment, and relaxing at the humour in the next. And it doesn't feel like a period drama, which can be fatal to a suspension of belief.

"Father Brown" is buried in the middle of the day, and perhaps a good thing. It tranposes the Father Brown stories to a 1950s rural setting from the original Edwardian setting, but it is more picture-postcard Midsomer Murders territory. Mark Williams as Father Brown portrays a Father Brown very well, but he is not the Father Brown of the Chesterton stories.

This Father Brown, despite the blurb, is not a slightly crumpled, shambolic and mild-mannered Catholic priest. Instead, he pursues the criminals doggedly, and his cassock always seems neat and tidy, and mostly he preaches at the criminals, telling them to confess their sin. It's a far cry from the original stories, where he comes across as slightly absent minded, muddled, but surprises by showing that he is really sharp as a razor in knowing who the criminal is.

In the original stories, that's because of his understanding of human nature; in this series, he's just another detective looking for clues. And while the titles of the stories may be the same, they are just pegs to hang largely very different stories upon. "The Eye of Apollo" was a creditable enough story, for example, taking a swipe at New Age thinking, but it wasn't a patch on the original, where the murder is committed - but the killer is seen at the time of the murder chanting on a balcony, hands upraised, in front of a street full of pedestrians looking up at him.

That's the kind of paradox that Chesterton did so well, and if you want to find how Father Brown knew from the start that he was the murderer (and it all makes perfect sense; Chesterton plays fair and you are even told enough to see the events unfold exactly as Father Brown does), either read the short story, or watch the earlier version (on DVD).

In that earlier series (filmed in 1974), Kenneth More plays Father Brown, and he does so perfectly, just the way Father Brown is portrayed in the books. Only lightly changed, the stories by G.K. Chesterton are followed quite faithfully, and it is a very good series. This new upstart just does not compare.

The original story can be read for free at:
http://fiction.eserver.org/short/innocence/eyeofapollo.html

I like "Lewis" and in its latest series, it's still providing well thought out crime puzzles against the backdrop of Oxford. I'm not too keen on the two part format, with one part one week, and the follow up the week after.

That made sense with some series - the original Adam Dalgliesh stories starring Roy Marsden, for example, went over a period of three weeks, and was paced accordingly. That worked well, and a three hour detective drama is probably a bit overlong for one sitting. But two episodes of one hour long could quite easily be fitted as one of two hours, and the only rationale I can think is scheduling.

"Death in Paradise" is in its second series, and it's on top form. It plays fair with the viewer. All the clues are there, and it is question of whether you can make than imaginative leap and bring them all together. At one point in each episode, Ben Miller as DI Richard Poole always does this, and it is remarkable how all the little bits and pieces mesh together like a jigsaw so that we can see the whole picture.

Ben Miller gives a wonderful performance as this somewhat stiff Englishman (always in a suit on duty), a fish out of water who just doesn't want to fit in, but who also has a dry sense of humour. His working relationship with his second in command, Sara Martins playing Camille Bordey is also excellent, and both actors have very good lines which they bounce off each other. It's definitely a good series, not played out - just on its second season - and refreshingly different from the ones based in England.

A Few TV Reviews

Just a note before these reviews. I've just heard that my friend Alane Wallace has died, aged 62, and I will be posting a fuller posting on our friendship in the next few days.

John Le Mesurier: It's All Been Rather Lovely

I watched a brilliant tribute programme to John le Mesurier, Sergeant Wilson on Dad's Army. A few clips too of his BAFTA award winning play Traitor, which sadly has never been released on DVD. I loved his comment - "All they put on the statue is the name of the actor, and the name of show for which he won the award. My BAFTA says on it - John Le Mesurier, Traitor".

A wonderfully underrated actor with a wry sense of humour -e.g. in his own Obit in the Times, "Conked Out". Apparently the Times at first refused to print that, then thankfully relented.

Climbed Every Mountain - The Story Behind The Sound of Music.

In this programme, Sue Perkins explored the background to The Sound of Music. There was apparently also a German version, much truer to the history. Father Franz Wasne, their musical director (who escaped with them) was airbrushed out of the Rogers and Hammerstein version.

The family sang much more religious music as well as folk music, which itself was really nothing like the musical, enjoyable though that is. And Georg (the Captain) was far less of a martinet; in fact it was Maria who was the authoritative one, sometimes being very autocratic, and remaining fervently religious (she later went on a missionary expedition), and also wanted some of her daughters to enter a convent. After her death, the money from their American tours, which had been ploughed into the family business (an Austrian experience in the USA) became subject of family squabbles.

The source of Maria's history is largely her own autobiography. The convent records are scanty, although it seems she may never have been a nun, and the town archives are missing all records relating to her. It was also interesting learning about the Von Trapp's later life in America, to which they reached first by train to Italy, not by escaping over mountains to Switzerland!

There's another Sound of Music myth on the internet. Julie Andrews never sung this, glorious through it is, for her 69th birthday:

Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cadillac's and cataracts, and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the pipes leak,
When the bones creak,
When the knees go bad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions,
No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,
Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Back pains, confused brains, and no need for sinnin',
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',
And we won't mention our short, shrunken frames,
When we remember our favorite things.

When the joints ache,
When the hips break,
When the eyes grow dim,
Then I remember the great life

Thunderbirds are Go

"Thunderbirds are Go", but alas, Gerry Anderson is dead. It is strange that British children growing up in the 1960s and 1970s should be captivated by puppet shows, but these were not ordinary shows. For one thing, Anderson mixed superb model work with his puppetry, or used human hands for close ups. And he had great stories.

The early show - Supercar shows the origins in juvenilia. And the next show, Fireball XL5 is ponderously slow at times; there is a space walk sequence which seems to take forever, and it is in black and white. But by the time of Thunderbirds (1964-1966), the faster pace, and better story telling began to show well. The characters were more roundly drawn, especially Lady Penelope and her lubrigidous butler, Parker, and her sleek pink Rolls-Royce. "Yes M'Lady". The Hood was a memorable recurring villain. Brains supplied comedy and science. But the key fun factor was the model work. Tracy Island, with its ramps and secrets, including a rocket pad under a swimming pool (shades of James Bond's crater in You Only Live Twice), and the Thunderbirds themselves, characters in their own right. Nippy Thunderbird One. The rather overweight Thunderbird Two. The lofty Thunderbird Three. The Tiny Baby Thunderbird 4. And the Spinning Top, Thunderbird 5, which always seemed a bit of a cheat, because it didn't move anywhere like the others.

My poor mother had to take us to see Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) where Thunderbirds, and the Zero-X Craft faced hostile Martian rock snakes. I remember enjoying it, but when it was on TV a year or so ago, it seemed horribly slow; the movie length did not suit the puppets, where the intimacy of the small screen allowed them to shine. Thankfully, she was spared taking us to the second film which bombed at the box office, and we never heard about in Jersey.

Stingray, another Anderson production, also had a rich mythology. The devil fish, the evil Titan, the beautiful but mute Marina, and Troy Tempest, Phones, and the chap who was in a mobile wheelchair of futuristic design.

And all this time, I was getting a weekly copy of Century 21, which presented "fake" futuristic news stories, along with comic strips from the shows; the drawings of these were realistic, not based on the proportions or motions of the puppets, and thus were in fact much more dynamic. Art work by Ron Pembleton, Frank Bellamy and others still stands up well today, and while the scripts could be a little far fetched, they were always fast paced fun. The last page had a different show - Terry Nation's Daleks, in their own comic strip, largely, it is believed written by the first script editor David Whitaker rather than Nation himself. These were excellent stories as well, often with a cliffhanger at the end of each week. For a boy growing up in the 1960s, this comic was fantastic, and it had no football stories, which was another plus as far as I was concerned. This was the scientific revolution, Harold Wilson's white heat of technology, in a comic.

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967) had more realistic puppets, and the strange craft in which the good Captain sat facing backwards, and viewing his forwards direction via a view screen. I wonder if it is really that easy to drive in such circumstances. It had good stories, a good villain with Captain Black, and the Mysterons who could - via two moving circles of light (all we ever saw of them) bring back to life copies of people who had been killed, complete with copies of their clothes, and even machinery that had been destroyed. It was never really explained how this was done, but the memorable theme tune made this enjoyable, although less so to me than Thunderbirds. I was probably just growing older.

The later shows, such as Joe 90, I did not take to. The plots seemed to have become very weak, and the boy protagonist himself seemed like the kind of boy I would most definitely not like to be. This I think is commonplace - contrary to what writers might expect, most boys would prefer to identify not so much with other boys of their age on TV, but heroic figures like Mike Mercury of Supercar, the Thunderbirds team (or even Brains), Troy Tempest, Captain Scarlett. I remember my friends going to see a James Bond film, and noticing how everyone swaggered in a very Sean Connery manner, smooth, suave, self-assured, as we left the cinema.

Doppelgänger (1969) also known as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, was a change of direction for Anderson, and was a one off which used model work but live actors. Many of those would take on roles in the show UFO, the 1970s show which began by displaying a caption showing 1990, and was supposed to reflect 1990s fashion. All the flares, and the girls with purple wigs and glittering cat suits seems rather dated, as does the smoking on the moon base,  but it still remains a fast paced show, with a car whose electric doors just opened upwards to let you out. Viewers never saw the problems getting that to happen on cue, and how often they got stuck. But it had some good characters, and very quirky plots, as well as the wonderful spinning UFOs of the title.

Alongside or just after this came "The Protectors" - 52 episodes from 1972 to 1973, It starred Robert Vaughn (of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. fame) as Harry Rule, Nyree Dawn Porter (The Forsyte Saga) as the Contessa Caroline di Contini, and Tony Anholt (Space: 1999, Howard's Way) as Paul Buchet. It was 25 minutes long, during which they had all kinds of adventures, none of which seemed to make any sense, possibly because the short duration for a whole show didn't leave much room for plot.

The last TV show I watched was "Space 1999" (1975 to 1977), which seemed to still have the flared jumpsuits, now seeming less likely than before, and leads (Martin Landau, Barbara Bain) who - while excellent in other shows - seemed in this to have all the charisma of a dull wet day in November. They were supposed to be the love interest! Barry Morse provided a little bit of decent characterisation as the scientist, but sensibly jumped ship after the first season. Then in came Catherine Schell and Tony Anholt, and jackets which seemed less dull, in an effort to provide some audience identification.  The moon was sent spiraling out of orbit by a massive nuclear explosion (from a fuel dump on the moon), and somehow managed to speed up enough to reach other planets, although always slowing down when it reached them, to a speed where it meandered past, and the Australian Eagle pilot could take the Eagle landing craft over to have a look. The science really didn't seem remotely convincing.  That was the last Anderson show I watched.

It's curious to know what will survive of Anderson's legacy. How will today's youngsters take to the puppet shows, which despite the model work, are a very strange medium to tell adventure stories? Will they still enjoy the dated looking fashion of UFO, and the excessive smoking which seems to be going on all the time? Will they enjoy Space 1999, with its lack of good characterisation and often vapid unscientific plots? It certainly doesn't match up to Star Trek, even in its 1960s original series, for character. It would be interesting to see some children watch the Thunderbirds shows aged 5, 11, and 15, and see what they said. For me, they were part of my childhood, but not a part that I think I can easily return to, unlike a few of the other shows of that era, which still stand up well today. Of them all, UFO is probably my favourite, as much for the future than never was, but would have been tremendous fun if it had happened. Instead, the 1970s went to the 1980s, and the age of Thatcher, a sea change in fashion, and cultural icons.