Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Two series ... one actor

Though he connects the two, he's not the focus.


This promo above is from the last series of Bergerac with Thérèse Liotard.  To my mind, mid-30s is peak-woman but that's by the by.  Leaving the actors out of it for now and dropping into the story arc, Bergerac, who'd been pretty shoddy towards Susan [Louise Jamieson], such that she'd been killed off, meets this country gal from France [doesn't seem country to me] ... and they were in for the long haul it seemed.

Staying with the theme of 'mixed marriages', for that's what they are ... well, let me digress and look at a conversation I had with one of my ladies in Russia after she'd returned from America. She'd hitched up with a young American, presumably for the green card and I had no opinion on it ... we weren't going anywhere ourselves ... but we did get to talk and dance the night away ... her English was excellent ... about the whole thing with Russian girls and the west.  I'm sure even the food came into it.

Point is that that moment you see at the table above here, where chemistry is clearly the order of the day, is well and fine ... and then what?  This Jersey copper ploughing the fields in France, disliked by her father, distrusted by the village, his French language less than rudimentary, Britain seen as something of an old enemy in certain places ... well, what chance did it actually have?  What skill set did he have to whisk her away somewhere else altogether?

She wrote him a letter which he received back in Jersey, ending it.  Tough love.


Onto the more distasteful series about the most dangerous place in Britain for murders ... the girl in the photo is Emily Mortimer, daughter of John Mortimer and wearer of slut-suits at gala fests ... pity.

What's my beef about the series and in particular about the March 1997 pilot episode The Killings at Badger's Drift?  Where does one start?

Billed, quite correctly, as a lavish production with a fine cast and at the same time ... deeply disturbing ... it was. 

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FROM HERE ON, TILL THE END, OK?

It wasn't the treatment of taboo subjects ... I've done that myself and shall do it again in Dark Logic, differently this time ... lots of dead bodies and a few writhing ones too ... no, it's not THAT they are covered, it's HOW they are covered ... as in intelligently, using the power of suggestion ... versus starkly gratuitous, a la Daily Mail or Star.

It's a good time to look back, post-covid politics, as we see something unleashed, post-2019, which only loony pundits such as us foresaw, hollow vindication indeed.  Similarly, that was the year Blair began his assault on Britain, followed across the pond by 911, followed by 7/7 and the all out assault by the gratuitous and unsavoury in 'entertainment'.  It was where sex was no longer waves on the shore or vague shots in the dark but full on, close up, where love was out the window and raw physical was all there was now.  In 2005 came the sodomite kiss in Dr. Who, a children's show.

The characters were quite unsavoury in this, each into him or herself. The only true love allowed to be shown was incest.

Gratuitously.  

I wonder what John Mortimer thought of his daughter at that time.  He died in 2009.  Thing is, I could almost buy the incest as part of the plot ... you know, parents killed when bro and sis were kids, thrown together, no boundaries ... there it was.  And as a device ... they felt they had to kill to keep the guilty secret ... worse and worse crimes ... yep, ok.  Might even use the idea in Dark Logic.

But did the producers, writers, director, stop there?  Not a bit of it.  Christopher Ecclestone left Dr. Who after season one ... why?  Because he disagreed with the direction, with the brass who were insisting the filth went in, front and square.  Someone above was leaning on them.  Remember CE is a northerner, lotsa planets have a north.

Who were the heroes in Badger's Drift?  It was as if the producer and director wanted the vileness to one another cranked up to max, all set to fab cinematography and a fine score, with good actors and actresses.  And the types were offputting, to the extent that I felt there were no sympathetic characters at all ... maybe the mother they mocked for not being able to cook. Maybe the annoying daughter.

My objection is primarily aesthetic, not unlike with the 2012 Olympics ceremonies.  Who was that creep director by the way?  Hope you're not having breakfast because I'm going to be scatalogical for a mo.  This episode was like taking ordure and dressing it up in fine regalia ... no one does pomp and elegance like the Beeb or similar.

This was an exercise, not in reflecting changed public taste ... but in further debasing it in a popular series.  See, coming back to Ms Mortimer, it was not the vileness with bro per se, it was her thoroughly nasty character ... agreeing to a May and December, the silly sod that he was ... with her guardian.  Not some old man from the village but the guardian of the very one whose wife [now murdered] and he had brought up ... sort of an extension of incest in a way.  

Cynically, with every intention of bumping him off within a year.

In the past few days, not just I have used the words satanic, daemonic.  Voila in this episode as well.  Blair's Brave New World in film.  How many of you voted for Blair in '97?  I most certainly did not.

And it continued that way.  A few episodes later, while trashing anyone religious as a bigoted maniac, one of my fave actresses, Lesley Vickerage, was also turned into a nasty piece of work, thoroughly rotten, as vile as a BLM harpy.  As an actress, she did it well.  But who were these people ordering this bile in the first place?  I doubt very many were thinking that at the time.

Below - doing dirt on marriage:


3 comments:

  1. Emily Mortimer, IMO played a great role as D.I. Frampton in the 2009 film Harry Brown. One of my favourite films. The song played at the end of the film was by Chase & Status and featured on their album No More Idols. It was sung by the villain in the movie, Ben Drew (a.k.a Plan B) and simply titled End Credits.

    If you are a fan of the true to real life British made films as opposed to Hollywood fantasies, Harry brown is well worth a watch, though it does contain foul language and heavy violence. But then, so does real life.

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  2. Re Antic and Prof Murphy (#11). That 'Prof' is paid AuD$445,000 a year, plus perks. Were I the Dictator of Oz I would have him up against the wall with four good men and an extraordinary woman (perhaps the one in your previous post) to quote #Rule 303 at him. What a waste of oxygen and taxpayer Ozbucks.

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