Absalom1991 Reviews

The Untouchables (1959–1963)

A classic show that broke new ground with integrity

[10/10 · 29 July 2023]

After finishing watching the final episode today, I marvel at how consistently high the quality of all the components of this series is, and what commitment and vision the producers and team maintained.

I've seen and enjoyed every available American show in the genre and adjacent genres. For power, unity of tone, respect for the material and scale, "The Untouchables" is unmatched. The roster of players in only four seasons reads like a mid-century history of film and film-derived television acting, from representatives of the 1920s through 1959-1963 newcomers and risers. Robert Stack never varied, and carried the hard-boiled, semi-documentary, genre-focused style from the center.

Fine, focused music accompanies spectacular violence, a glaring light shown on the brutality of crime, cynicism, the possibility of redemption coming at a terrible cost, melodramatic greed and cold judgment.

The person who said the series was full of cliches apparently doesn't know what noir comprises, nor detective stories, true-crime fictionalization, or much of anything else relevant. There is an appropriate level of cliche in the many horrific scenes of inhumanity showing pleasure monsters take in acid throws, throat cuttings, immolations in flaming cars, explosions, blindings, and bullet-riddled corpses face down in a pool of foaming beer. Little in television from the 1950s and 1960s make me flinch. "The Untouchables" is unexpectedly fixed on a kind of honesty. I flinched plenty.

The show slips only slightly towards the end of the last season when more-personal story lines were the thing in the drama business. This tack in several episodes offered a route from repetition. Of course some hairstyles and makeup choices fit the date of the filming, not the period. But the core of the show remained true and trustworthy. Even Walter Winchell's narration, which earned him a fortune, is perfect, and a little creepy. So many lowlifes. So much fun.

Marple: Towards Zero (2007) Season 3, Episode 3

Not a fan, but rewatching gave me more pleasure than before.

[6/10 · 2 April 2021]

Geraldine McEwan was an actress who, in the right part, always was superb. The fact that she brought her tricks to Marple and wasn't redirected bothered me considerably at first, but on watching the episodes again I find I can just think of them as showing Emmeline Lucas Pillson playing Miss Marple. As everyone knows, Lucia was incapable of playing or pretending to be anyone but herself.

And her work is in the hands of mad revisers and tasteless tinkers with the Christie corpus.

And thus my response is that it all looks pretty, Ms. McEwan always is a sight for very sore eyes, many of actors and actresses are either fine or pretty or both, and it's all an honestly silly camp piece. You can't find better support than what Eileen Atkins and Tom Baker do to consume the scenery like Formosan subterranean termites. You could cut your finger on Saffron Burrows' jawline, and Paul Nicholls and Greg Wise have great legs.

With the posing of the bodies, red herrings played like they've been dead on the beach for four days, and that exasperating twinkle in Marple's eyes that makes you hate her as much as the detectives do at times, it's easy fun.

But read the books for Christie for pure Marple as the character changes over time from an interfering, smart gossip to the genius eventually embodied by Joan Hickson. Hickson's position, supported in theory by Christie's saying she would be her own choice for the role, concludes that a person as brilliant as Jane is would also be quiet, careful, country-refined-with-knowledge of the world, serious, and aware at all times that the microcosm is the macrocosm.

With all that, this is as representative of the shambling approach of these production as any. Its pleasures are those described, down to Mr. Wise's wet underwear scene and the cuckoos one hears with one's critical e

Three items, though.

Fourteen years ago a person wrote here of the three plot changes, saying this was a case of a story therefore being (practically) unaltered. No, there are at least five major changes, with the fourth being the suppression of the failed-suicide MacWhirter character in the story who saves Audrey at the cliff and who would eventually marry her. With his being gone, Audrey weds Royce, which denies the fact that Christie wanted symmetry and to avoid the creepiness of Royce marrying his murdered brother's fiancee. She plainly did not love the remaining Royce, who she already bypassed for two other men. Royce was meant to discover that his long obsession for Audrey was not love, which frees him to love Mary Aldin. Symmetry AND self-realization.

The fifth is the removal of Inspector Battlement (and his nephew), who appeared in five novels, to accommodate the insertion of Miss Marple. The pretext is Jane "sketching" in the vicinity of her old school friend. Ugh.

Finally, another quibble is that a poster from 2021 comments "statistically" about Miss Marple "murder" statistics exceeding normal experience by x percent (The datum shown being a typo, it is not possible to know what was intended). Both nominator and denominator appear to be wrong. As a statistician looking at a simple rate, I would first suggest that the 12 cases noted is erroneous, in that additional to the 12 novels noted there were 20 short stories, making. I also do not know what population risk for being "exposed" to murder was used. So when considering this or other surmises of Miss Marple's (over)exposure to homicide (with many stories having more than one murder, as well) over her long career, I would suggest saying that Jane lived in an England and traveled where environmental poisoning, family disorder and psychopathy were rampant and leaving it at that. Comparing her experience to Jessica Fletcher's is an insult to St. Mary Mead.

If you do not find this review helpful, I understand. Thank you.

The Miniaturist (2017)

Pretentious, unintelligent, unrealistic, unhistorical and politically driven claptrap

[1/10 · 24 September 2018]

I see the reviews here and it is like looking at a mess of bizarre confusion.

This piece is very pretty, but lacks any sense of the actual life of Holland and Amsterdam at the time shown, for all the pretensions of the writer. A culture of luxuriousness, trade and trade organizations, official probity and unofficial love of pleasure, free exchange of ideas with a rather judicious governance was experienced and enjoyed. Calvinism was strong, yes, but the religion existed within the culture. This was not Salem or Geneva.

Yes, inequity for women existed, but many powerful women thrived there and the family and social structure assisted in lifting women's positions. Yes, racism was present, but it was expressed in Holland in very different forms than with the abhorrence of American slavery (although the Dutch in New Amsterdam did have slavery).

Yes, sodomy laws were in place, of course, and anti-homosexual campaigns existed, but it was not married, middle-class, well-placed merchants who were the top targets. The suggestion that sodomy laws were used for personal vengeance is, from my reading, rather unrealistic. A male prostitute would have been the target, rather. One supposes that the author pointed to the case of Joost Schouten, a very well-known merchant, judge, traveler and writer, who was executed after his sexual experiences with men were publicized after an entrapment. But Schouten was not married.

Here we see a strange and false version of Puritan nastiness, miserable people, hatred and demented households. The character of Johannes has no friends, no societal connections and no apparent social position, despite his wealth and big house and business connections.

The characters are unrealistic. The writing and dialogue is mawkish, declamatory and political. We hear today's views and today's attitudes on sexism, homosexuality and race yammered out (I agree with the views but they do not belong here.) with the denial of reasonableness amid the traditional showing an academic's game playing.

Her "fighting sexism and racism trumps fighting homophobia" formula is deeply offensive, because it is plain that the gay man must be sacrificed to the plot because he bears the sin of being white while being male. And somehow we are expected to shrug it off because the gay white male is shown to be a suicidal fatalist ready to die for being gay, despite his going to the lengths of getting married to hide it. Ghastly and false and crude. No one wept over him, and the characters who took over his house and potential for wealth at his death certainly showed no caring. Never mind that the black man who stabbed a white man was never prosecuted, and the unmarried woman who died after giving birth to a black baby was buried as a good Christian because of a bribe. These details show the unrealistic values and manipulations of the author. (Personally, I would have liked to see them all be happy and well, but the one person who would have gotten away with his trangressions was the one who was nailed - silly.)

The absurdity and meaninglessness of the miniaturist's role add to the sense of heartless, soulless cant being spun out so the heroine can rule the world at the end. In the end, the entire miniaturist overlay was purposeless and pointless, with no value as symbolism or mystery. It was done just because the writer thought it would hide the vacancy of the plot with some phony hoo-ha.

The players were all proficient but ill-served by the checkers-game plotting - no feeling of real relationships, even among the "women of the house," The only believable relationship is between the author and Petronella, and it feels like a sick kind of projection.

I understand the novel was popular and applauded by many. Of course it won awards, because as a mere political piece it hit all the right notes. Nothing succeeds like handing people their sense of ethical superiority to them wrapped in silks. I suspect many readers also liked the story because they do not like challenges (The "intellectualism" of the story is extremely shallow and simplistic.) and they read it as a romance novel, so desensitized we are to the difference between polemic sap and literature.

Ghastly and mean-spirited, smug and adolescent. A POS cannot be rolled in enough sugar to lose its fundamental nature.

I suppose this much is sufficient to express my responses. It may seem long but it's nothing compared to the 400 pages of claptrap and the lost hours spent watching this slop.

The Miniaturist: The Miniaturist on Masterpiece Part 1 (2017) Season 1, Episode 1

Tedious, overwrought, confused, inauthentic "drama"

[2/10 · 17 September 2018]

All that can be said positively for this sexist (misandrist) academic fantasy is that the clothes and interior sets are attractive, if too well-scrubbed. One cannot tell if any of the actors are good because the plot and dialogue are so hothouse silly and unreal. The story is heavy-handed, with ***SYMBOLISM*** larded into the tough old fowl of the narrative. Unfortunately, the lard is spoiled and the whole thing tainted.

I return to the misandry because of the novelist's (or polemicist's) attitude demands a distorted examination of the culture of the time and place that sucks all life, passion, feeling and commonplace activities from the things. Miserable women in thrall to a miserable gay man doomed to be drowned for his homosexuality - who behaves uncivilly because he is, after all, a man - with ***SYMBOLIC SUGAR*** and ***SYMBOLIC MINIATURES*** created by a ***SYMBOLIC CHARACTER*** all contrive to show an Amsterdam unrecognizable as a locus of human life. The writing is witless, uninspired and crude.

Yes, societal power was in the hands of men and women had to work within a difficult system to obtain independence and standing on their own. Yes, gay men were subjected to waves of persecution, with multiple rounds of execution taking place (not quite aligned with the time of the plot) in pogroms. Yes, these persecutions were used to settle grudges and reduce competition. But even as a treatise, rather than an intelligent and artful work of fiction, this mess is devious and wrongheaded.

This miniseries is one of the worst productions I've seen plopped into the PBS Masterpiece slot. A complete waste of funding and a betrayal of the feminist impulses one assumes the author told herself she was operating with.

What she actually was motivated by was, apparently, a university faculty that gave her gold stars and a reading public so lazy and inexperienced it will adopt anything it is told is ***IMPORTANT*** and for ***WOMEN***. I defy anyone to honestly state this perverse yarn is revelatory or enjoyable.

Father Brown: The Sins of the Father (2016) Season 4, Episode 9

Disappointing patterns in a disappointing season

[4/10 · 4 April 2018]

Other have reviewed the episode for details of plot. I would like to add my tuppence-worth to note a pattern that seems rather perverse.

Of course the conceit of a quaint all-Catholic corner of England in which the murder rate is higher than anywhere in the world and where the only competent mind to address the endemic homicide already strains the show. Part of that silliness - the filling of the churchyard in a quaint semirural setting - is common among cozies. However, the misrepresentation of simple demographics suggests a more perverse spirit at play with Rachel Flowerday and Tahsin Guner, the show developers, and their stable of writers.

The especially cruel nature of the deaths being shown, represented in this episode and numerous others in Season 4, are out of kilter. The frequent focus on murders of young men, usually shown in close detail, is nasty. In the context of the offensively cartoonish constabulary and the soothing (and neutered) main characters, the peculiarly hateful treatments suggest a lack of integrity among the team. Felicia is now sinned against by the earl and is not shown philandering, Sid just "plays" at being a low thief, Bridget is all heart under her bigotry and overreaching classism, the inspector is a fool, but let's show another young man strangled amid the outraged grief of his family, who naturally are accused of the murder.

The point is that the show already has debased Chesterton's vision for the Father Brown persona. Somehow Mark Williams holds things together with an overlay of intelligent (and perhaps too enlightened) faith. He is allowed, happily, to show an acceptance of human nature. But the creepily mean-spirited nature of the inevitable killings leave a terrible aftermath. The show treats its viewers with a stealthy disdain, replacing thoughtful themes in lieu of talent and will and respect for its audience with a brutal and graphic shake. The creators and writers offend their genre and in the process demean an excellent cast and a willing, if apparently benighted, audience.

Doesn't make sense to you? That's okay. Enjoy the show. But if you feel a little slimed afterwards and don't understand why, toss a pie into the smug faces of Flowerday and Guner. If it happens to be from a pasture, all the better for returning their favor.

Father Brown: The Daughter of Autolycus (2016) Season 4, Episode 5

For once, the sloppy laziness of the script harms the fun.

[3/10 · 31 March 2018]

The premise is fun but the details are so offensively wrong that only someone ignorant of any of the underpinnings of the premises would find it entertaining.

1. There is no Catholic Diocese of Gloucester. Roman Catholic dioceses, freshly overlaid over the historical dioceses appropriated by the Church of England, did not use the same names. The diocesan authority over Gloucester is the Bishop of Clifton.

2. The suffragan bishop of Clifton would not wear a cardinal's red. He would wear purple trim, as did Flambeau in his impersonation of the Irish bishop he kidnapped.

3. The Catholic diocese of Clifton does not have a bishop's palace. The Church of England diocese of Gloucester does not have a bishop's palace resembling the building shown. A small point but, again, the lazy confusions of the Catholic and Anglican holdings is of primary consideration to those people enduring the long-fought religious battles of the UK.

4. No local inspector - doesn't "Gloucester" have its own police force? - would treat two cardinals with the disdain and rudeness the little mustached fool did.

5. No African family has held inheritable curial positions in the Vatican since the 1700s. To suggest so is an offense to the discriminatory history of the Roman church.

6. No cardinal in the past and up to the 1950s was the son of circus performers. There were sons of farmers and merchants and other lower socio-economic people, but the stigma against performers never let up to that time. Of course.

7. Treating Catholic cardinals and bishops as avaricious buffoons would seem to be a traditional form of fun, but the lowness of the treatment of the characters in the script was an affront to the actual deadliness and careful aim of such prelates.

8. Father Brown kissed the rings of the cardinals but not the ring of the diocesan bishop to whom her owes his first allegiance in terms of hierarchy among those present.

9. The Pontifical Swiss Guards would not be assigned to guard a gift sent by the pope to the queen. So silly.

10. For that matter, the pope would not bestow such an item as the episode's historically significant jeweled cross to the queen, or to anyone, for that matter. Another type of gift, and perhaps one fitting his ecumenical respect for her role as the Defender of the Faith in her country, but not this one. Absurd. It would not be his to give, whatever his "right" as pope to dispose as he would. Because Pacelli - Pope Pius XII - wouldn't do such a thing. It is unlikely any "gift" was sent for a coronation. Personal items have been given by popes to the queen when they've met. John Paul II gave her an ancient book, I believe. Among the items given to her and Philip and for her family when she met Francis was an orb made of lapis lazuli with a silver St. Edward's cross. Not the same.

11. I'll also add that the constant reference to "Lady Felicia" is gratuitously incorrect as well. As noted in this episode, she is the Countess of Montague, also using the surname Montague, and the only appropriate form of address for her as the wife of an earl is "Lady Montague." A countess, even one like Felicia, would not "grant" people the chance to call her "Lady First Name," which denotes completely different statuses. Why? Not out of hauteur but because it is not her right to do so. She does, however, have the right to tell people to call her by her name, "Felicia," which seems more friendly than the incorrect and cobbled "Lady Felicia."

12. Last, the laziest and most egregious issue with the show in terms of its treatment of religion is the near-complete absence of the Church of England. Brown's domain seems to be 100% Catholic. No fellow pastor/rector in the Church of England appears. A medieval (at its source) church portray's Brown's parish church, of an age and prospect held by NO Catholic church in the kingdom, save one or two in the Diocese of Westminster. Waving a and and making anti-Catholic history AND the presence of the Anglican faith in the countryside makes for more of a fantasy than this sometimes cold-blooded cozy mystery series, which bears no semblance of Chesteron's characters and plots, would seem to want to intend.

All the players are first rate, even if they are ill-served by their scripts and often by their direction. And Nancy Carroll is one of the most appealing and smart actresses at work now. Her absence from the show is a great loss.

Perry Mason: The Case of the Negligent Nymph (1957) Season 1, Episode 12

You Don't Need My Review, but One Thing Makes This Episode Memorable

[8/10 · 15 March 2018]

I am watching all the "Perry Mason" shows from the start and am enjoying them immensely. The semi-soft hard-boil of the TV-noir style is perfect.

The subtexts able to be read into Mason's life, combining a true-enough take of Gardner's character with the now-known details of Burr's life (Had enough hyphenated adjectival phrases?) offer interesting glimpses into show business in closeted times. Just how many gay actors and young men of a certain type could they squeeze into the episodes?

Great scripts, tight formula with enough variety and dry humor to keep things interesting, and perfect casting. The show plays lightly with all the noir bits, except of course having Mason, Street or Drak ever seriously involved with anyone personally, but never tips into camp. At least overt camp.

But as I've said, you don't need me to post all this. The main reason I'm posting this is to remark on the amazing dress the negligent nymph of the title wears in her first scene. It appears black, is very well cut, but has a bizarre strap across the bosom in which appears to be an oversize table napkin folded in half. The strap appears large and secure enough to hold a secretary's lunch in place. Any insights into this style, which I've never seen before?

Thanks!

Father Brown: The Hand of Lucia (2017) Season 5, Episode 5

What are they thinking? Terrible episode.

[3/10 · 13 January 2018]

The show needs to stop. It has completely lost any connection to the Father Brown series of books, and has turned into a foul-minded, lurid, mean-spirited soap opera with bad direction, overstuffed sets, and characters devoid of human authenticity. This episode was about the worst. Grand guignol imagery and violence, a clot of murders beggaring sense, long talky scenes of low-end psychobabble, sound effects of vomiting - the production team seems to consist of misplaced cranks determined to savage their source.

If this "updating" is thought to be required, again, the question is why fo they bother? Cynicism? Sticking it to what they see as an outmoded religious source, represented by a daddy priest? Pressure from someone higher up?

It doesn't matter. The show, with enough budget and talent for a first-class effort, is now just another example of the usual trash.

The Man in the High Castle (2015–2019)

Yet Another Blah-Blah Meaningless Show

[3/10 · 22 May 2016]

Fine production values and smart performances mean nothing when a story follows the usual mean-nothing, everything-is-a-mystery, doom/gloom/boom, life-is-dreary nightmare script.

How many more productions have to be developed and pushed out that present nothing but puzzles with no chance of a solution? I enjoy challenging work and difficult material, but this kind of endlessly looping, ghastly and dreary misery show reflects a lack of intelligence and vision among substandard production teams. Sound familiar, LOST and UNDER THE DOME and watchers of so many others:

1. Something terrible has occurred and the world has changed.

2. Nothing works right, values are lost and violent thugs run things.

3. Something ULTIMATELY MYSTERIOUS is going on.

4. Darkness, duplicity, plot twists and endless Maguffins and blind alleys just keep crapping out of the screen.

5. Everyone suffers unendingly - the protagonists and the lead villains both. A few nasty joke villain leaven the sour mix.

6. Tantalizing glimpses of SOMETHING BETTER lead to nothing.

This is a different model than noir, tragedy, farce and situation comedy. It is mean-spirited and cynical laziness masquerading as depth and engagingly dark entertainment.

That there is a reliable audience for the genre shows a segment of the populace willing to trade authentic entertainment for a predictable mush of meaningless dismalness. Superficial sheen on a very shallow puddle.

Blandings (2013–2014)

Yes, yes - the usual complaints abound but this viewer gets desperate for non-insulting comedy

[8/10 · 12 March 2016]

and so I can enjoy even a distressed imitation of a Wodehouse work if it includes a good cast, adequate sets and settings and some recognizable associations with the original. Well, I can enjoy it if I have not read Wodehouse recently, so that the comparison is not acutely felt.

The usual complaints, spattered throughout the reviews here like the results of sneezes or holy water sprinkles, depending on your mind, are:

1. It's not a fair copy.

No, it's not. The show demonstrates the difference between burlesque and farce. I have to take the episodes on their own merits in order to enjoy rather than suffer them. Anyone who has attempted to watch any Shakespeare film ever made is familiar with the rigors required. However, the result is that I smiled at much of what I saw and heard.

2. The earl and Lady Keeble do not evidence the manner of the manor.

No, they do not. Some charm is missed in the characters lacking THAT demeanor. I would have enjoyed a more committed attempt towards the exquisite hauteur of the country nobility, the complacent superiority infused with the scent of manure. But at a time when even the actual country nobility cannot manage the pose, is it reasonable to demand it of mere actors? And Jack Farthing's Freddie does hit some good notes as a more urban variety of the posh fool.

3. Not only are the episodes not Wodehouse, they're NOT Wodehouse.

No, they are not and the others are NOT. One must accept the episodes on their own terms or one must do something else rather than watch them. Such as reading Wodehouse and not imagining other situations into which the characters might have wandered.

4. The humor (Excuse me. Humour.) is too coarse.

Yes, it is. The point here is that country life does not find anything especially funny in excrement and digestive noises. They are a part of life. I tolerated the contemporary lowness of the jokes because I live in a country where presidential candidates disparage the size of their competitors' genitals. A mere fart joke is something I can tolerate, the way I tolerate the real thing occurring in my presence.

5. It's not Wodehouse.

No, it's not. We've covered that. And, you see, that is the principal complaint and the one reviewers keep returning to, like people whose minds have been branded by trauma and the loops of PTSD keep them reliving it. I have been lucky enough not to be branded in this way, and so I have enjoyed the show for what it is - a silly, well-made, well-acted, loose and slapdash farcical turn on rural ways in a farcical British past that may for some bear a resemblance to P.G. Wodehouse works. This resemblance could cause pain for those who notice it.

When such discomfort occasionally rises in me, I try to concentrate on something else. Such as the question of whether Mr. Small intentionally avoided dental and orthodontic care throughout his life for the sake of his craft, or he just didn't get around to it. That gets me through the pangs of disappointment.

Marple: At Bertram's Hotel (2007) Season 3, Episode 1

Another Bad Job - An Especially Bad Job

[2/10 · 26 January 2016]

I can't help myself, although by now it's plain this aging show has lost its currency and few people likely are either interested in reviews or bothered by criticisms. Why, almost six years ago a clueless reviewer clucked how predictable bad reviews of this Marple set are, as if that reflected poorly on the reviewers rather than the show. But, then, she was the type of reviewer who cared nothing for accuracy, believability, plot and character development, or other apparently unnecessary features of a television production. Make it pretty, fill the time, don't complicate it with humanity don't worry that changes from the book harm rather than help matters. A lack of critical capacity does, of course, permit the enjoyment of just about anything soft and fuzzy.

Anyway, I can't help myself in writing this review because Bertram's has seemed to me to be the most challenging of the Marple stories to dramatize. And this production is such a botch it calls into question the actual motives of the creators.

The piece looks beautiful, the sets are fine, costumes - except for Jane's lunatic-asylum-tea-cosy ensembles, which are an insult to the character - are lovely.

Plot changes are completely off the mark. They do nothing to serve the lost thematic pinnings of the novel (I don't think that the people behind this junk knows that Christie worked carefully with her themes.) and merely overly complicate matters. Interesting characters are altered and new, silly ones introduced to debase the show. The core plot has been dropped and replaced, for the worse.

Historical accuracy is not a necessity but when details are so wrong they draw attention to themselves. Miss Marple understood human nature but would not have told a young woman she wished she had lived unmarried with a man when she was younger. A dog would not be fed at table from a silver tray by a waiter in the hotel dining room. Shabby. Wrong. A black American singer would not have worn hot-pink lipstick in the morning. The pinks used in 1950-51 were not neon. Those three items indicate a lack of accuracy in three different areas of life.

McEwan is wasted. Miss Marple's character would be incapable of bragging, more than once, in inept language about a friendly relationship with the Archbishop of York. The writers do not understand Jane Marple.

Annis looks great and tries very hard, lending the only brightness to the show and cheering the viewer in her scenes with Marple. The inspector, at least, is adequate and is lit well, although he looks like he belongs in "Chinatown" with Jake.

The hat man is a shameful parody of a gay man, and we are expected to excuse the parody because - well, watch the show. The chanteuse cannot sing. She looks and moves like a linebacker and is dressed shabbily in layers of ill-fitting costumes. I kept waiting for her to be revealed as a female impersonator. Of course the production team would add racist to homophobic "humor." Never mind the wrong-headed treatment of Jews.

The introduction of the pseudo-sleuth in the maid is so wrong it hurts. Her makeup is contemporary with 2004 with an overlay of greasy shine, her dialect is badly done, and her insertion is like an unnecessary potted plant parked in a space where people need to walk. She clutters and intrudes. However, the actress seems to have something of talent behind the bad direction. The Bess Sedgwick character and her story line are lost.

The canon's character is trashed and his role in the original plot ruined. It is not a spoiler to note that having a drop of water plummeting from a ceiling-painting putto's penis onto a minister's face is not funny in this context. It is mean-spirited and graceless. His place in the debasement of the story is an affront and does not excuse the urine.

And so on.

My last critical comment is that I do not expect any dramatic adaptation to maintain all parts of an original work of fiction. If don't expect to see an uncut "Hamlet," I don't require a Christie work to be treated as artistic liturgy. But, again, the motives of the producers escape me. They not only get things wrong. They behave as though they don't care but, unlike the blithe cluelessness of the other reviewer mentioned, they project a cynicism that is appalling. They seem to think that their product is not meant for people who enjoy Agatha Christie's talent. They seem to say, "If you are foolish enough to like her work, we don't want you to watch this. We made it for people who don't like Agatha Christie." It is insane.

I'll sit through the last episode of the McEwan set, being a completist. I am not looking forward to the relentlessly leering and cheerful Julia McKenzie displaying her Marple's IQ of 80 in the rest of this series, since the same producers were involved and the Christie estate remains in the control of rather savage vulgarians. I saw part of one of her episodes years ago and couldn't make it through. However, I've learned discipline from watching the preceding three years with McEwan. I apologize for going on too long and too much here, but I loved Geraldine McEwan, enjoy Christie, and hate to see time, talent and money wasted, even retrospectively. A bad production means the potential of a good was is lost forever.

But I promise not to waste anyone's time writing another review of it. If I must be self-punishing in my quest of watching and hearing every treatment of a Christie story ever made, that is my problem, not yours.

Marple: The Sittaford Mystery (2006) Season 2, Episode 4

A late-day vote against this mess

[1/10 · 24 January 2016]

I loved Geraldine McEwan. But her performance as Marple always was a near thing. She had her own idiosyncratic take on the character and her own limited set of mannerisms in portraying her. When the characterization worked the audience was granted a fun alternative view of Miss Jane Marple.

But Ms. McEwan was not served well through her tenure. Scripts were trashy mishmashes and direction was patchy. They spent the requisite money on production values, but failed in most other respects. At times they managed not to destroy the story and pacing.

Unfortunately, this is not one of those lucky hits. Another non-Marple story, with Marple shoe- horned in and a series of excellent actors wasted in a trashy, unpleasant, careening mess. For shame.

As for the reviewers who cluck like ducks about their pride in not caring about whether or not the shows are "faithful," I agree as far as that goes. But it is interesting that these are precisely the viewers who seem oblivious about whether or not what they are watching is, indeed, good. It must be nice to have so careless a grasp on aesthetics that it really doesn't matter what one watches.

But one wonders why such people just don't stare at a blank wall and imagine pretty things. Because presuming to equate all opinions is a failure of recognizing the potential of all this talent. To see it wasted is, especially now that Miss McEwan is gone, sad as well as frustrating.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012–2015)

Heavens, What a Smug Pile of Horse Pucky

[1/10 · 15 January 2016]

I am surprised at the applause this shabby, smarmy, self-congratulatory show received from reviewers here. The writing is lazy, the characters mere stock, the performances sophomoric, the too-theatrical clothes ill-fitting (except for the star's), and the plots tediously predictable and uncreative, as well as plain dumb. Claims that there is wit in the series obviously came from someone for whom the term is a stranger.

Apparently this is what is considered a "woman's show," meaning if they stuff it with enough hats and male-victimized ladies who also behave a in crudely "worldly" fashion they don't think they need to bother with actual qualities of merit. If I were a woman I would be offended at the sham. As a man I can add that I do not appreciate being slapped across the face by faux sexism every five minutes. Emasculation as a constant theme is tedious.

The smug and humorless silliness starts with the supposed sleuth, Miss Fischer - too mature for her look and behavior - with the first episode, as she manages to arrive by ship, entertain a "non-feminized" female doctor friend, head for lunch, encounter a murder there along with her clumsily portrayed dragon aunt, become involved with a poor unfortunate abortion victim in hospital (fired that morning by the murder victim and cared for by the aforementioned doctor), go to a prison to confront the murderer of her sister, and undertake the job of undertaking a soirée to take place the next night AT THE HOUSE OF THE MURDER VICTIM, changing her clothes five times in the process prior to the sun setting.

It is an insult to the genre. It fails as a spoof, a comedy of manners, a detective show, a sex romp, a period piece, a social commentary or a camp send-up. The gratuitous nods to "women getting their own" are deplorably shabby. The main character is inexorably reduced to appearing as a condescending b*tch.

It aims at the lowest notions of what women, not to mention viewers in general, want. In the process it treats the viewer as a drooling stooge to be titillated by inauthentic and clumsy burlesque. That it does so while pretending to invoke serious matters of drug addiction, murder, and the kidnap and drugged abortion of an abused young woman shows that this show is at heart cynically mean-spirited. I suggest that people approving the enterprise fit the description appearing in the second sentence of this paragraph. Shame on the team cranking this thing out.

Partners in Crime (2015)

Agreed - A BAD series

[2/10 · 19 December 2015]

I thought people must be viewing the show through too-high expectations, given the harsh comments, but by the end of the first overly-long, ponderous, sappy, unimaginative, wandering episode. End this shameful and inept mess and spare good actors the torment. And spare good audiences at the same time.

It was as if the production team was doing a high-school film project. Poorly constructed scenes, silly dialogue, some of the silliest music I've heard in years - one could have used it for silent- film backgrounds, it was so simplistic - and an understanding of character that suggests the writing team and director was autistic.

Again, end the show. Perhaps it's done after the first year and I haven't seen it. If so, good.

Poirot: Death on the Nile (2004) Season 9, Episode 3

Others have written enough about this episode, but .

[1/10 · 18 November 2015]

The change in production team and "vision" for the Poirot series achieved its most sterile and calculating ebb with "Death on the Nile."

Once again, they worked very hard to create a little movie for people who never read Christie, wouldn't read Christie, wouldn't want to read Christie, and who lacked the stamina, education and taste to read Christie (who wrote, remember, for a very broad readership at the time - such is the ongoing trend from literacy now).

What does that mean? Vapid performances, inept posing, contemporary mean-girl characters masquerading in costume, invocations of sex with lady-candles set to ignite the bedroom, drugs and dumbed-down scripts so that the venality of the actresses can match the vacancy of the target audience.

On the Nile, I would have been satisfied to have seen Michele Buck, Delia Fine, Leila Kirkpatrick and Margaret Mitchell, Fiona McGuire and Kate Stannard - notice a trend? - served feet-first to the crocodiles. This production team took an ample budget and the talents of Suchet and de la Tour and spritzed stinky cologne at us as we tried to get by them, just as cosmetic sales staff do at department stores.

Pfui.

Inspector George Gently: The Lost Child (2012) Season 5, Episode 3

The Show Is in a Rut, but Let's Not Cry About It.

[4/10 · 25 August 2015]

One of the reviews here is so full of sap you could sop it with a pancake. The point of this television police drama set in the Swinging Sixties hardly is to require the viewers to lacerate themselves over conventional notions of family life, the complexities of life, nor a demand to cry because babies are involved, as the reviewer seems to think it is.

The Gently show, typically, had long settled into a simplistic police show formula with a mod veneer and a good actor (Martin Shaw) wasted by mediocre plot lines painfully aimed at contemporary issues before this episode aired. The settings, set decoration and costumes make up most of the pleasure of watching the show, additional to interesting guest performances in most episodes. The worst part of the show is an inevitable and tedious recap with heavy-handed moralistic overtones. The producers and writers simply don't trust the audience to get that life is hard, people are confused, crime is messy, and so on. Throw in race relations, homophobia, child abuse, and whatever else seems like dramatic bait and you get the same kind of complacent viewer who must chatter about treating it all like a mum' version of an after-school special.

If I weep, I weep at the waste of talent and potential. As well as the multi-year quandary they all obviously have dealt with concerning what the heck to do with Gently's hair. The Bacchus character, unfortunately, is beyond all help - that was simply an initial casting error.

Inspector George Gently: Gently in the Night (2009) Season 2, Episode 2

People's Motives in Viewing/A Good Series

[8/10 · 19 August 2015]

The George Gently series (in the American sense) has been a pleasant surprise. The scripts are smart and usually avoid pomposity. The 1960s setting is managed in a fun, usually subdued way that lets things look like reality for the times rather than a "look at all this retro kitsch!" camp trip. Cinematography is excellent, sets and costumes are great and show a generous budget, editing is clean, direction is well-paced. The characters are believable enough, and the actors are very good. It offers a pleasant mix of police-show subgenres.

The only downside is a tendency at the end of each episode for an overlong and tedious summing up, with moralisms, explanations, and overacting that drags things down for 5-10 minutes. By then the plot has resolved so I usually divert myself with something else until they're finished. This episode was characteristic of the positive qualities of the show - and the small- scale negative tendencies.

Other reviews here seem confused, but people watch for their own reasons and are welcome to their priorities, of course. But.

Someone who saw Gently as a meanie and was disappointed that he seemed like too much of a good guy in this episode wasn't paying close attention in earlier episodes. Gently is not Morse. (For that matter, neither was Morse, when you get down to it.) Gently is, if anything, a bit too smoothly superior about his high moral code and his down-to-earth persona.

And the person who cannot abide television shows unless they align with her own moral code not only will inevitably miss the deeper meanings of popular art, but will likely get things wrong. Taking this episode and praising it for calling aborted fetuses babies and complaining that a show about a Playboy-bunny-type establishment shows scanty costumes perhaps needs to go back to "Highway to Heaven" and "Touched by an Angel" in order to better fulfill her preferences. The point is that the show does have an ethical basis, expressed in a historical context where sexism and other benighted attitudes prevailed.

However, as a gay person I can't help wondering if the reviewer approved Bacchus' homophobia or Gently's tolerance in the last episode.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

A Perfect Film

[10/10 · 15 August 2015]

I won't belabor it. Others have traced the plot.

SImply, this film perfectly fulfills its premises and accomplishes brilliantly what has seemed, over the years, to have become impossible: a loving send-up of the vampire/horror genre with invention, wit, and intelligence with genuine, creative novelty.

Performances are lovely and as an ensemble piece the actors seamlessly present a fictive world and community that are both drearily contemporary and timeless. I would go out of my way to see any of the three lead actors in other roles. They are wonderful.

The screenplay is hilariously clever. Cinematography and editing keep to the mock-documentary premise while aping horror conventions and at times providing genuinely creepy touches. Set design is smartly tawdry and special effects judiciously convey a professional gloss while remaining aligned to the low-end, indy feel of the work.

Every element of the film is in place. In its own way, "What We Do in the Shadows" a comedic masterpiece.

Endeavour: Home (2013) Season 1, Episode 4

Superior!

[9/10 · 11 August 2015]

"Endeavor," through every episode of the first season, presents a smart, sensitive, thoughtful, beautifully filmed and well-written series. It is a huge improvement on "Lewis," and in some ways is better than the original "Morse." This episode is equal to the previous ones. Great performances, good editing, good pace.

"Lewis" has been held back by the limitations of the character the wonderful Whately plays, the too-one-note Fox, and shabby writing. It has been pretentious. "Morse" had the matchless Thaw, and with Whately and other good supporting actors it managed to seem intelligent, if in a heavy- handed way.

Noir forgives unbelievability. In fact, it requires it. A realistic, don't-call-it-cozy, near- contemporary treatments of crime in academia yielding to American influences demands believability - and a firm brake on formula. "Academia is Byzantium" and "Scholarship is Corruption" are heavy-handedly repetitive themes.

But "Endeavor" does not stretch for significance and achieves it in the process. Shaun Evans manages to create his own character and presents him as a troubled young man with a reserved but expressive demeanor. He remains inscrutable enough to convey depth but maintains a fuller humanity than Thaw could as a finished (in more ways than one) character.

The plots pull back from the Sturm und Drang of both "Morse" and "Lewis," showing a more realistic world. And the setting of the show in the 1960s permits a design that lends detachment and style. (Sometimes the 1960s effects are over-played - not EVERY young woman wore an impeccable bob and sported perfect mod colors and tailoring mid-decade. Call it the "Mad Men" influence, via Thames Valley. But that's not really a complaint since the look is gorgeous.)

The message of "Morse" was that life is cruel and people are miserable but art can help if you drink enough booze (and good colleagues make life bearable).

The message of "Lewis" is that life is cruel and intelligence comes at a price, but love can make it worth the harm (and good colleagues make life bearable).

The message of "Endeavor," however, at least through the first set, is that life is life. One has a chance for both peace and damage, and it's better to take both with open eyes (and good colleagues make life bearable - Roger Allam's Thursday is a marvel).

Evans just has to avoid appearing like Dr. Who on an undercover mission in the near-swinging Earth of 1966.

Well, maybe he doesn't have to avoid it, at that.

Inspector Lewis: Generation of Vipers (2012) Season 6, Episode 2

Absurd Earlier Reviewer Displays Ignorance or Worse

[7/10 · 18 July 2015]

My views on the INSPECTOR LEWIS have settled into the "its pretensions are unequal to its delivery," "great cast often wasted" and "American-style formulaic and somewhat tired semi- cozy show" sort of response. It is usually a harmless experience, unless bard writing and smug cynicism start to bother the viewer.

However, the review of the rather crazed person who saw a fascist frame of mind in 2012 was disturbing, and even though an apt comment already has been posted by a reviewer, one more reaction may be worth recording. It is one thing for many viewers of this show to be satisfied at the pretty surface without noticing the many missed opportunities involved. It is quite another matter for someone to misread and misunderstand the plot, the theme, and the entire point of the episode, and to pompously prattle about it as if the person were protecting the free world.

Misuse of technology IS a problem that increasingly affects us all. The episode is an improvement over other episodes because it intelligently addresses it, refusing a black-and- white take and presenting a nuanced and complex assessment, while almost avoiding its usual lazy character-and-weepy-music approach to pressing its conclusions.

As for the lunacy of the other review, even the nonplussed need not accuse the person of misuse of technology in spouting it. Misuse of human intelligence is another matter.

Inspector Lewis: Dark Matter (2010) Season 4, Episode 2

The Series Has Settled into Its Patterns by This Episode. Alas.

[6/10 · 4 July 2015]

(Be warned: SERIOUS SPOILERS FOR THIS AND PREVIOUS EPISODE)

By the second episode of the fourth year of the show, memories of Morse have faded enough to allow Lewis to be seen more clearly as itself. It is a careful, pretty vehicle for excellent talents wasted for lack of better writing, a trade of intelligence for coziness (good for longevity), and the natural exhaustion of story ideas, leading to baroque overreaching (and the shark being jumped regularly). Edges are worn or file off - don't disturb audiences with anything too challenging or bothersome.

However, the high technical quality of the production (again, it's very pretty) and the integrity of the regular actors (the wonderful Whately, Fox and Holman) lessen the probably inadvertent insults. What seemed to be cynicism in the directing, writing and producing now looks simply like incapacity - the B team taking over after their betters moved on. One doesn't want to hold it against them. They can't do any better.

This episode was typically complex, overreaching and a little desperate.

Of COURSE we have the pre-eminent British composer involved. After all, in the last episode we had a lecherous pederast marquess, an adulteress marchioness playing with her husband's nephew, a murdering butler, a Jesuit ensconced like Rapunzel in a tower, child-abuse victims, a police sergeant who happened to grow up on the estate rediscovering love with the daughter of the lord just before her engagement party, and even more in the last episode. In the real world it would have been international news and one for the history books, but here it was treated as just another week in old Oxfordshire.

But none of that matters now. The stakes are low, the target audience has arranged its cushions, and as the hazy amber light settles its glow on our beloved characters, it is finally the coziness and comfort that matters. Complaining misses the point.

Right?

At least in this episode we had a break from the tedious homophobia to which we've been treated in the series, and an slight easing-up on the contempt for intellectual culture. That counts for something.

Inspector Lewis (2006–2015)

Enough Sap for a Pancake Buffet

[2/10 · 27 June 2015]

I won't go on too long with my comments. Well, too long, perhaps, anyway. I already noted my big concerns about this series already. I'm going through the "Morse" and "Lewis" series in sequence, and here I am - mixing past and present tenses. I know it's all old news and that I'm writing this in an obscure corner of IMDb.

Several of the reviewers here have it right. "Lewis" is weak compared to "Morse" in numerous ways. Times change, producers change, visions change.

However, why do the changes of time, production and vision inevitably seem to move in the direction of laziness, cheap thrills, superficial glitter and decay of respect for characters as representatives of real humanity and human issues as they are actually lived?

This episode was silly. The writing was cynically formulaic, although one wonders if the writer has the kidney to be consciously cynical.

Apparently the intended audience became that impatient bunch who can't be bothered with anything requiring thought, but require the equivalent of an adolescent's screen saver (not that in 2015 any adolescent knows what that is). The images run, inexorably:

Honeyed Stone of Oxford

Unicorn

Lovely Young Face

Arrogant Old Oxfordian

Posh Gathering

Honeyed Stone of Oxford

Horrific Murder

Arrogant Old Oxfordian

Lovely Young Face

A Chase/A Rush/A Threat/A CLIMAX

Honeyed Stone of Oxford

All interspersed with shots of Old Increasingly Wise Lewis/Younger Tortured Hathaway.

"Inspector Lewis" is entropic television. It is an colorful, oily puddle made successful because of its positioning to reflect something better - and real.

The worst of it is that the actors and their characters are wasted and caught in the drift. The regulars are marvelous performers.

Inspector Lewis: Life Born of Fire (2008) Season 2, Episode 3

Some disappointments among some enjoyment

[24 June 2015]

YES, THERE ARE SEVERAL SPOILERS HERE THAT TELL THE PLOT.

Others have reviewed aspects of this episode and I realize it is now (in 2015) seven-years old. However, I have been watching the "Inspector Morse" and "Inspector Lewis" series in chronological order, and on reaching this one ("Life Born of Fire") I decided to offer a few comments. If I use the present tense at times, it is because the show still is in production and I expect the trends I note to have continued.

"Inspector Morse" usually maintained a fair intelligence and seldom succumbed to overly showy or trite effects or dodgy characterizations. It wasn't perfect, but plotting had integrity relative to reasonable thematic arcs. Of course the episodes aligned fairly well with Mr. Dexter's novels. When Morse's character died and the series ended, it seemed timely - a degree of frustration had settled in as possibilities seemed to have been exhausted. And the lead and supporting actors maintained an authenticity that lent a remarkable seriousness to the entertainment. Morse was believably exasperating and sympathetic without insulting sentimentality.

"Inspector Lewis" has not gone completely wrong. It is entertaining but often lacks the bracing smarts of the Morse stories. The actors are quite good, and the Lewis character's promotion to lead works well with the Hathaway character as its foil.

But.

It pretends to an intelligence that the Morse series had built into it. "Inspector Lewis" seems to have been updated to meet what is assumed to be more contemporary tastes. Unfortunately this means simplistic and pretentious themes dressed in cheap finery, Grand Guignol deaths, implausible plots with unrealistic character connections, silly editing games, and repetitious travelogue shots of exquisite Oxford that show the same places over and over. Where "Inspector Morse" cleverly and casually placed the Headington Shark in the background without comment, "Inspector Lewis" relies on the Bridge of Sighs - repeatedly.

I understand all this. There has been a kind of Americanization of the series, and as an American I can say that it remains better than most network shows of its genre. It is not as good as it should be, which is usual. But it is not as good as it pretends to be, which undermines one's trust in the talent and discretion of writers and directors.

This episode paraded these flaws as a badge of honor. It managed to insult both gay people AND religionists. This viewer wondered if anyone associated with creating the episode had actually met a gay person, a transgendered person, a seminarian or priest of the last century, or a committed Catholic or Christian. Must every gay person in the show be a self-loathing mess, a murderer, a manipulative and spiteful academic, or a lavender stereotype? Must every woman find Lewis sexually attractive, for that matter?

Gay people do not undergo sex reassignments in order to snatch their guilty-to-be-gay lovers back. Sex reassignment surgeons - even in Brazil - do not haphazardly undertake their work without responsible vetting. However homophobic the Church remains, gay Catholic organizations in 2008 did not promote the type of bizarre, ritualistic reprogramming initiatives shown. They did not do so in 1978, for that matter.

Both the self-immolation of the gay suicide victim for political purposes and the subsequent elaborate serial killings belong in a teen slasher film more than they do in a show pretending to address bias, guilt and character revelation. Also, the manner in which Hathaway's sexual identity was treated was itself ultimately insulting. Never mind that his offenses in withholding information, and Lewis' own withholding of that fact, should have seen them both seriously reprimanded, at least.

Making Hathaway's character more-or-less directly responsible for the initiating suicide and indirectly responsible for all the grisly murders and suicide that followed was the last flaming straw on the tortured camel's back in this "Life Born of Fire." Morse was troubled. Hathaway is made to seem ready for institutionalization, and rightly so. Then he shrugs it all off with a smile.

Is it that the writers are bad? That the intellectual capacity of the audience is doubted? That intrinsic production standards have suffered while extrinsic standards - grounded in technology and superfice - have taken the forefront? That the wrong people have been in charge? Or is it that chick-flick and teen-horror modes are what belong in a crime show set in Oxford? The deaths in this episode would qualify as world news.

Whately and Fox deserve better. So does the audience, whether it knows it or not.