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dmorris13
Reviews
Play for Today: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1973)
Excellent adaptation
This was really enjoyable, just like the excellent and underrated novel upon which it is based. Ceilia Johnson is perfect as Mrs Palfrey, and as always, gives an understated performance. The humour is slightly less amusing than in the novel, but this is a delicate adaptation and in many ways all the better for it. It works well as a play and with mainly studio indoor scenes it feels more intimate. The story is a good one and like all the best stories it is light on plot and strong on character. The other actors all play their parts well. It shows a lady of dignity and impeccable manners dealing with the end of her days during a very different time. For that reason alone it is an important story. Excellent.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2023)
Playing to the gallery
Looking at the title and the people involved, I knew what this might be like but I gave it a go anyway. Unfortunately it was very predictable and light on substance. As others have said, the situation was implausible - nobody that age could walk that far without some training without doing themselves serious damage. There was no way of tracking his progress and the living off the land thing was a bit weak too; on the one hand he is useless and ordinary, on the other he is a bit of a survivalist? The bit about the son was tacked-on and the son looked way to young and just didn't sit right with the two leads as parents. It was all a bit paint by numbers - get a few affordable but well known names in and endless bucolic shots of the countryside and some cheap sentiment and you're onto a winner. Sadly not. However the one thing this lacked was humour. You have two excellent character actors in the leads who have both done comedy and you waste them. Life has humour among the tragedy - Mr Broadbent is excellent at comedy acting - why waste him? Look at the work he did in his episode of Jimmy McGoverns The Street; the character he played in that would have been ideal in this. He built up to the sadness with humour and it was brilliant. Harold Fry treads a well worn path but adds nothing new and in the end the climax was underwhelming so it was all an over long waste of effort. Another BFI misfire...
Wolf (2023)
Like a sub sub Luther (and that's still and injustice to Luther)..
Very poor and obvious and a waste of time. I hate stuff like this that tries so hard to be edgy and just ends up being poor. There was a lot of wasted time and over acting (which gets described as black comedy..) in truth this series doesn't know what it wants to be. It's also like a lot of these things - it spends too much time on set design and lacks substance. Why are modern dramas obsessed with putting all the characters in beautiful homes?? They always have top of the range cars (including low ranking police officers..). Perhaps they think that if it looks nice then nobody will notice how bad the whole thing is? (This is their tactic on series like Vera these days too). Empty wasted opportunity.
Van der Valk (2020)
Scenery with a detective show in brackets
Dull and predictable and frankly boring throughout. This is rock bottom and proof that ITV are only interested in filling a slot and not content. Marc Warren is wooden throughout - you can see him acting all the time and he brings no energy of intelligence to the role - he just phones it in. The others are a sad attempt at imaginative casting which doesn't work - it's all wrong. It's a show based around nice scenery - it seems today all you need is to make it look nice and that's it - don't worry about the plot or writing. It would be better to show repeats of the old show (which was okay - nothing that remarkable, though Barry Foster is a great actor with much more energy). Unwatchable.
Endeavour: Uniform (2023)
Jolly poor show....
I'm sorry but this is about the third time in the last few series where Max has got the time of death because the victims watch was smashed at the time of death. That device was old hat the day after a writer first used it and it's poor to see it used so many times in a series like this. As for Superintendent Jolly - please?! What a lot of rubbish this has turned out to be. All in all Endeavour has been at best patchy all the way through. A shame really. Yes like all modern dramas the production values are high, but even so they get a lot of the details wrong and it doesn't feel any more like the sixties or seventies than something like Heartbeat did. I like some of the characters, but some of the lines they give them and some of the plots are a bit thin. I think Jim Strange is the best character in it, Thursday was good but he doesn't have much to do in these later episodes, Bright is the same - great actor in Anton Lesser but lines are lame. Morse proper will never be topper and it's still the best if the franchise by a long margin.
Lovejoy (1986)
First Series Best
It's a shame they had to pause for five years after the first series went out. In many ways the first series is the best and I return to it a lot, but the others not so often. Series one is also closest to the feel of the books. Had they carried on straight away the series would have run 1985-1990 and I think it would have been better. When it finally returned in the nineties it was different - more polished and set for a tea time family audience, rather than a 9pm one. I don't recall the first series when it came out, (like me I suspect most people got into Lovejoy when it came back), but I'm glad I've seen it now. This is still a great series with great characters and there are some gems in the later ones, but the feel of East Anglia in the early episodes was magic. His rented farm house was better and the music and muted colours of the time are pure nostalgia. Gimbert was also used better in the early episodes. A great show though and Ian McShane shows his skills as an actor and makes the role his own. He has great support. I wish they still made shows like this, but glad it exists all the same.
Detectorists: Special (2022)
Too much of a good thing?
I've loved this programme like a lot of people from the first time I discovered it. However, I'm beginning to think Mr Crook should start thinking like his old mentor and stop while it's still on a high. This special was okay; not up to the standards of the early days. I don't think this works as well over a longer format. One of the charms of the series episodes was that they seemed to be over just as you were getting into them. They were nuggets to be savoured. Series three was a close run thing, but all in all I think he pulled it off. However returning seems a step too far this time. It's like going back to an old lover: while you are there again it's still pleasant, but you know deep down you probably should have let it be.....The odd thing is I still want more!
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
Superb in all respects
The main thing I wrestle with often is whether this or Smileys People is the better if the two. They are both superb in their own right, and perhaps the conclusion is that they are equally good and probably in the top 2-3 tv films ever made. Period.
I watch these once a year and always enjoy them - they never get tired and there is always so much going on.
The later film with Gary Oldman is very poor by comparison, it's really just a cheap copy. However, what that film version proved to me was that this could only be done justice in a multi-part tv series. You need the time to let the complex and layered story play out. A lot of people found the aforementioned film dull and slow; interestingly the tv series is a lot longer and paced accordingly, but remains riveting throughout.
The actors are all superb and each lends depth to the characters in a way that makes the story even more compelling because it becomes so believable.
An absorbing masterpiece.
Ridley (2022)
Ted Hastings does New Tricks...without the feem tune..
What more can be said? It's all been done before...they are clearly lining this up to take over from that ageing hulk that is Vera....even the titles use the same font (did that save much money...??) it's woke and going through the motions. I don't blame Adrian Dunbar for getting his pension straight but this is dull and duller.... Add in a smattering of ex soap people and some rugged countryside and you can see the producers ticking the boxes as they go along...why can't they come up with something new and original? Because they do this crap by numbers. It's not the fault of the actors - it's just a shame the producers and writers can't do better. I guess this slot has just become the lazy Sunday night slot for grannies who don't want to be challenged (or so they think)...
George Gently: Gently Evil (2010)
Average - later episodes get better
Am I imagining things or does Gently copy lines from the 1995 film Heat in this episode? The is also a line from Get Carter in an early pub scene?? Perhaps the writer is a fan, but knowing that film so well I found it distracting. The hitler joke at the start is very funny though - the delivery and set up is perfect (though many will find any jokes about Hitler distasteful - yawn)....
Sherwood (2022)
Seen it all done better before
This is better than some recent dramas, but a lot of it isn't very credible. The archer isn't really needed, it just provides a link to the title. It's a drama based around the silly ideology that everyone from the past is corrupt and bad. I just don't believe all this would be raked up so painfully from so long ago. It feels like it is trying to be a hard hitting 80s drama, but it's not on the same level as stuff made back then. The BBC seem to think if they fill the cast with big names that it will win all the awards - and it probably will, but it's not that great. There was no humour - it portrays northerners a permanently miserable and sour people obsessed with the past, still the beeb loves a social stereotype.....Mark Addy was good in a small part.
Line of Duty (2012)
No Between The Lines
Probably because of the target audience, but I remain surprised at how many critics overlook that this has all been done before in the excellent 90s series Between the Lines. This series is heavily plot-led, whereas Between the Lines was much more character driven. Plot led stories lose their appeal on repeat viewings as such is the case here. The police procedure detail is poor, but probably intentionally so to some extent. This is playing to the gallery TV - it relies on twists. If you aren't a fan of TV drama and you just want to be kept entertained it's so so. But if you know what you are talking about then you might well find the 90s series much better. Adrian Dunbar is as good as he can be, but even his lines and quirks get repetitive after a while. I don't much feel anything for the other two and often it has the tacked-on dramatic depth of a Grange Hill episode. It can be a bit childish and the characters are thin. The team can triumph in the end thing can get a bit trite. We never know much about anyone beyond what clothes they like and what car they have. I also get a bit tired when they are on surveillance and nobody sees them when they are parked right in front of them! They are all police and trained to spot such things. Lennie James was a good character and well played in the first series, but he was a bit of a cliche. Where Luther knew it was fantasy and ran with it, this seems to believe it's own serious tone and then it is a bit laughable. It's never a 10 on 10, but 4/10 is about right. It's very sensationalist and full of its own hype. Between the Lines is at the very least far superior writing and acting and the Police side far more realistic (yet still dark).
Inspector Morse: Second Time Around (1991)
The Best
As previous reviewers have already said, this probably is the best of Morse. The writing, characterisation and acting are all aligned and it works to superb effect. The interplay between Morse and Dawson is some of the best tv acting I've yet seen, you genuinely believe the past they talk of was real, you can imagine them as colleagues years before. The acting deepens the characters meaning you feel the sadness at the denouement. You know Dawson, his faults, the reasons he took a different path, and despite not necessarily agreeing with him, you still feel sorry for him. The background theme of the rights and wrongs of capital punishment also give an insight into both characters and their motivations. Lewis is used to great effect between the two, trying to keep up but never fully aware of the subtle relationship underneath. Thaw has never been better - his eyes and his acting are a model of restraint. This is tv of the very highest order. Superb.