I finished watching The prisoner of the Chateau d'If, and did finally feel something (and there were a couple of songs that I actually liked, though I'm not sure why there were any songs in it at all, as this isn't a musical and there were only a handful of random songs at wide intervals throughout). The reason why there seemed to be "an awful lot of plot to be covered in the final episode" turns out to be that it is much longer than the other two, which are about 65 minutes each while this one runs about ninety minutes...

Even so it still seems quite rushed, and I don't see the point of including such characters as Valentine de Villefort and Maximilian Morrel when the subplot involving them has been entirely removed (also an issue, as I recall, with the Robert Donat version!) I was able to follow more of what was going on in this episode thanks mainly to my familiarity with the original plot, although where departures from this took place I was quickly confused. ( Read more... )

( Soviet Musketeers music )

I watched the first episode of the BBC's new drama "This City is Ours", mainly because it *was* the first episode and I often miss the beginnings of things and then have no interest in watching the remainder. But I shan't be bothering with any further episodes, I'm afraid. ( Read more... )


The second half/series of Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires was actually very intriguing as a set-up, because since they had (like the BBC "Musketeers") abandoned canon and were apparently writing their own material using the established characters and setting, pretty much anything was up for grabs and you couldn't tell which way the story was going to come out. ( Read more... )
At least d'Artagnan has finally confessed to lying to his friends about Milady's supposed death (although Athos nobly points out that, having, as I had suspected, guessed the truth some time previously, the fault was as much his in not speaking out earlier; even though he doesn't share the background of Dumas' character, this animated version of Athos is actually one of the few who looks and feels 'right' to me)

Conclusion of the radio series "Growing Solo": one former BBC journalist spends a year living on only what he can grow on his smallholding in Somerset -- and discovers that what really grows best in Somerset is grass, which is why the county is historically known for its cheese production!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yhhz/episodes/player

"In many ways this project is a protest; a hunger strike..." https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/opinion/my-year-of-100-per-cent-self-sufficiency/

Edit: apparently he also has a small YouTube channel, and the material broadcast on Radio 4 consists of clips edited down from these longer episodes (with pictures!)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3CUjP4CBkfFiMyM3FmFjJITVsE-MlCQ

( Fic progress )

A tale of two thrillers: a lot of new series seem to be starting on TV at the moment, and due to the BBC playing around with the usual schedules thanks to Wimbledon/football I found myself watching the first episodes of two thrillers that turned out to share a surprising number of tropes in common -- "Jetty", and "A Good Girl's Guide to Murder", which I'm pretty sure I've seen on the second-hand book shelves in a pink chick-lit cover without being inspired from the blurb to read it. ( Read more... )

( Retuning ITV )

I accidentally ran across another 'Missing Hancock' episode on the radio this evening: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cp2n

I remember stumbling across one of these before; they are very well done, so much so that I really couldn't have told that it wasn't the original cast, and -- as I remembered -- a *great* deal funnier than the later TV series. Less self-indulgent (or rather Hancock-indulgent) I think, being much more of a team effort, and of course it's simply much more my type of humour, revolving around wordplay rather than cringe-making humiliations. Here I actually laughed out loud a couple of times at the clever script, and generally enjoyed myself.

Nice to know at least that I wasn't imagining that I did indeed find Hancock funny in the past...

It's looking as if[†] they are going to go through Marie Antoinette's entire life, rather than just creating a 'teen couple try to make arranged marriage work' drama... which means that this could get a good deal darker than I was expecting :-( The show was up to the stated year 1780 already at the start of this episode, and we have to be then at least a year or two later by the end of it, which is getting into 'dangerous' territory. We already had ironic hints this week about how "you too will grow old and ill, Sire"; as we know, he very notoriously won't...!( Read more... )

It's a bit damning when Michael Palin's non-fiction "Around the World in Eighty Days" challenge is proving to be closer to the spirit of the original and more watchable than the BBC's fancy new drama :-(

And the dispiriting thing is that the latter *could* have worked, even with all the revisionism and re-casting; there are moments in every episode when you can see the ghost of what might have been, despite the fact that it has practically nothing to do with the original plot. ( Read more... )

I watched the Greta Thunberg programme, on recommendation -- very disappointed. ( disappointment )

---

I've made several recipes successfully out of the pre-war recipe booklets I mentioned. These were among a big box of old books left outside by one of my neighbours for passers-by to help themselves to. I really don't need more cookery books, but felt I had room for two small ones...( Read more... )

I've been re-watching the first series of "Life on Mars", and was rather surprised by the frequent (in the last few episodes at least) references to Gene Hunt as being married. He certainly doesn't seem to be encumbered by a wife for the purposes of "Ashes to Ashes", let alone taking exception because a colleague 'made a pass at the Gov's missus'...

I also watched the musical broadcast of "Kinky Boots", which left me with the impression that the original film was probably a rather attractive Ealing Studios-type drama that I would have enjoyed watching. Unfortunately I didn't like the music at all.
Likewise the Matthew Bourne ballet version of "The Red Shoes" ended up simply inspiring me with a desire to see the Powell & Pressburger film (I may just have a videotape of it somewhere). ( Read more... )

This was so heavily trailed that I attempted to watch it last week, not realising that it was being advertised so far in advance ;-p
Thanks to the TV's appalling onscreen interface, I managed to miss half an hour of the first episode while patiently sitting and waiting for it supposedly to start, and found myself flung into the middle of a firefight between unknown foreigners in an unknown location with zero dialogue, just a lot of explosions: definitely not the most auspicious start. And while the publicity sold it as "Sean Bean plays a shell-shocked pacifist", in fact he got a couple of lines in the background as the father of one of the main characters -- luckily I wasn't watching it for Sean Bean :-p

But with all those disadvantages the story hooked me, just as the first series of "Sherlock" did under similar circumstances. By the end of the episode I'd worked out who everyone was and why, and cared what happened to them; the scene on the railway platform had every bit as much impact as the writers could have wished. I was definitely impressed.

Sharing this again because it's just such a good piece of writing -- about acting, about editing, about Blake's 7: http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/boucher-backbone-and-blake-the-legacy-of-blakes-7/