Eternal Law: Angels don’t pick up dog poo…

Every moment of Eternal Law that I watch makes me love it more and more. The moral questions, the subtle revealing of the characters’ depths, the bloody marvellous dialogue given to Zak and brought to life by Sam West – I’m at a loss as to why people tune into watch a show about angels being lawyers and then complain about the lack of realism in the courtroom instead of savouring all of these other wonderful things.

Of course cases don’t go to trial as quickly as they do here, but all TV crime dramas cut to the chase. In a weekly procedural, nobody wants to know about the nine months or more that it takes to get to court. The people who didn’t like that, are going to like the idea that Zak and Tom can suddenly swap to prosecution even less. But, yah boo sucks to ‘em. Eternal Law isn’t really about law, it’s about justice. And this week the pursuit of justice has a very expensive price tag.

Zak and Tom are prosecuting Gemma, who fatally stabbed her alleged stalker. Tom has serious qualms about this, which are fuelled by the noisy support that Gemma receives both inside and outside the courtroom, Jude’s influence and learning that Gemma will kill herself if she’s convicted. To make matters worse, Richard is meddling and messing with Tom’s mind. He plants a seed of thought early on that has terrible consequences – exactly his intention I’m sure.

The focus is very much on Tom this week, from his teen-like rebellion against Mrs Sheringham complete with thoughtless, hurtful comments to his misjudgement of the case in hand. I fully expect to see Ukweli Roach on my TV a lot more in future.

It is still Sam West who is the star of this show though. Zak has too many wonderful lines to regurgitate them all here, but for the record, I particularly enjoyed the quip about Tom being ‘brilliant on the day of judgement’, and his response to Mrs Sheringham’s suggestion that they should get a dog: “If it can learn to flush the loo it’s more than welcome, but please be advised that as the actual embodiment of heavenly grace on earth I will not be reduced to picking up poo in a plastic bag.”

My final highlight of this week is Mrs Sheringham stepping in to stop Jude ‘messing with the head of one of her boys’. I love Orla Brady’s combination of compassion and utter steeliness. And I won’t be sad to see the back of shallow, silly Jude…

With only two weeks to go, I can’t tell you how much I’m hoping ITV commission a second series. There is so much more I want to know and see. I want more of the fabulous flying sparks when Zak and Richard clash. I want to know more about Mrs Sheringham. I want to see Sam West show us more of Zak’s heartbreak and joy and conflicted emotions whenever Hannah is in the room.

For now, I will be content to find out if the Armageddon clock can be stopped and which of our angels has started its deadly ticking. Who is closer to falling? Feel free to speculate below! Roll on next week…

Posted by Jo the Hat

Holby City: The indecisive registrah

(Series 14, Ep.15) In the little recap segment at the beginning of the episode, we were once again shown Greg and Sahira’s kiss from a couple of weeks ago.  Nope, it’s no good. No matter how many times I watch it, it’s still not conveying passion, or a tragic love that can never be. It’s not a Jac/Joseph kind of kiss. Or a Connie/Jayne Grayson’s husband kind of kiss. They looked like a pair of reasonably attractive crash test dummies had been superglued at the lips.

And if you don’t buy the intended passion in that kiss, frankly the whole Sahira and Greg storyline is a bit of a damp squib. Tedious, then, that the episode revolved around them revolving around each other. They want to be together, but Sahira has “everything to lose,” what with the adorable son Indy, the invisible husband Rafi and… whatever. They had to go to a fundraising do, which gave Sahira the chance to wear a posh frock and gave them the chance to get drunk together and then get to the door of Sahira’s room and almost give in to temptation, until they were interrupted by a timely text from Hanssen. Presumably this means that they’ll spend the next episode with Greg trotting after her bleating, “Sahira! Sahira!” and she’ll spend the episode muttering at him that it’s got to stop and he must keep his distance. Again.

Back at Holby, Goth Dr Frieda was worried that she hadn’t completed the assessments she needs to graduate from being an F1 to an F2, so she was given a tricky patient to diagnose and Michael Spence (still wearing the grizzly beard look and frankly looking a bit foxy) promised to get the assessment to Hanssen before the deadline. Frieda’s patient was a very bad stand up comedian, but you just knew all the best punchlines would be Frieda’s. It’s her deadpan delivery. Weirdly, though, Dr Luc Hemingway had to talk her through intubating her patient. Wasn’t that the sort of thing she was doing with her eyes shut when we still thought she was a nurse?

It was also a testing time for Chantelle, who had her driving test. Ric Griffin has been following through on his promise to give her driving lessons, and it paid off. Is our Ric getting a tiny bit fond of the World’s Sunniest Nurse? He was staring down from the Window of Regret as she came back from her test, but maybe he was just making sure she didn’t crash into his car again.

This was the first visit to the famous Window in quite a few weeks. I’ve missed it. Will Greg use it as a vantage point from which to stare longingly at the form of the divine Sahira as she heads off for Nottingham next week? We can but hope.

Posted by PLA (more Holby City here)

Coronation Street: Becky leaves in style

The traditional ways to leave Weatherfield (apart from being murdered by Tony Gordon or John Stape) are by taxi or Weatherfield Hopper, that curious little bus that only appears when someone needs it and has a driver who is happy to wait as long as you want while you have an argument or tearful goodbye with a loved one.

I doubt whether anyone ever in the history of Coronation Street has uttered their final lines on the show while drinking champagne in the first class section of a flight to Barbados. But that’s exactly the way Becky McDonald (Katherine Kelly) left the show last night, and it was brilliant.

Since her early appearances as a chain smoking, back stabbing petty criminal in 2006, Becky has morphed into one of the most loved characters in the show. I’ve not always been a fan of her tendency to go over the top (eg the drunken hysteria of her wedding to “Stevie” and the way she used to convey passion for the poor lad by applying herself to the front of him like the alien creature sticking itself to John Hurt’s face in Alien), but she’s always been quirky, vulnerable, feisty, loveable and infuriating in equal measure. Her relationship with the Croppers, no strangers to quirkiness themselves, has formed one of the most touching and convincing “families” ever seen on a soap, and I had a huge lump in my throat when she kissed them goodbye in last night’s episode. 

Mad Dogs: Island hopping

(Series 2, Ep.1)  Even though we left Quinn in the swimming pool having just shot a policewoman, and his four mates in the car on the way to the airport not knowing if they’d get away, be arrested, be killed by gun-toting crazies wanting their drug money back or what, the first series of Mad Dogs felt complete in all its barmy, surreal magnificence.

So was it a good idea to go for a second series? Well, on the basis of the series opener, it was. Picking up literally where series one left off, there was no messing about and the body count was added to almost before the credits had finished rolling. Quinn is fished out of the swimming pool – still alive, which you wouldn’t have put money on – and the comrades-in-trauma decide to flee the island. The airport being deemed too risky, they head for a ferry to Barcelona, and then hopefully towards home. This being Mad Dogs, they get on the wrong ferry and land, instead, in Ibiza.

Any crazy ideas that Ibiza will be any more relaxing than Majorca are shortlived. The first task is a bit of money laundering, which is done via a strange old woman hauling an oxygen tank, an even stranger man on a moped and a beautiful girl who has perfect skin, fancies Baxter and seems to know way too much. Can they trust her? Can they trust each other? And what are they to make of Rick’s wife telling them that she’s recently had a phone call from Alvo? This is Alvo who had half his head shot off in series one, episode one. Alvo whom they buried right at the start of their holiday from hell.

Mad Dogs series one was suspenseful, weird, darkly funny and brilliantly acted. There was a risk that stretching the story out would dilute it or diminish its impact (I’m thinking of Lost and Heroes here) – but on the strength of this episode it looks like it was worth it.

Posted by PLA          (more Mad Dogs posts here)

Eternal Law: The angels find their feet

If you’ve stuck with Eternal Law this far, then this is the week in which your faith (or patience or inability to shift off the sofa) is rewarded.

The focus shifts firmly on to Zak and Tom’s case this week, which is nicely obscured and, naturally, much more interesting. Mack Steen (David Bradley – or Argus Filch – if you’re a Harry Potter fan) is a curmudgeonly old sod being turfed (along with all his fellow residents) out of his care home by the uncaring owner Keith Cedric (Adam Kotz). Mack poisons (but doesn’t kill) Cedric and what should be a simple guilty plea to ABH goes awry as Richard sticks his oar in and gets the charge raised to attempted murder.

The enjoyment is in seeing Zak unpick the layers of the story to get to the truth and understand why Mr Mountjoy has sent this case his way. The resolution also feels more in tune with what Eternal Law is about than the first two episodes too. (I’m deliberately not spoiling so you can go and watch this on ITV player when you’re done here.)

I already adore Zak (Sam West is pure class, even – or perhaps especially – in an apron) and he gets some beautiful dialogue from Matthew Graham this week. I liked his response to Mack’s “You want chat? Tickety-boo. Oprah, Jeremy, Trisha. All on right now…” – “I won’t if you don’t mind, I know what hell feels like already.” I giggled at “It’s like having Ned Sherrin to stay” (after Mack heads off to point his barrage-balloon bladder at the porcelain) and if you weren’t tickled by his teasing Tom about his new friend (“Hiya!”) then I don’t know what we’re going to do with you. You have to admire his restraint (“Ow! Bloody ow!”) when punched by Mack in thanks for Zak trying to stop breaching his bail conditions.

Speaking of which, Tom is growing on me too – his concern for the “lonely” internet ladies who really want to chat, his reaction to experiencing Joe’s dementia, his superior and ecstatic dance moves, copying Mack’s tea-drinking method – all make me want to bring him home and feed him biscuits.

The small snippets of angel mythology woven around this week’s episodes make the larger mystery all the more alluring. I was tickled both by the lawn full of four-leaf clovers as a potential portent of doom and at Zak’s expression of exactly how ‘impressive’ angels are between the sheets. Less joyful was learning exactly how Mrs Sheringham lost her wings. As brutal an act as placing Hannah in Zak’s path again, I would say.

All in all, very satisfying. I’m off to cultivate my new crush on Sam West, so see you next week.

Posted by Jo the Hat

Holby City: Completely professional in the face of romantic disaster

(Series 14, Ep.14) Much of this episode centred on the efforts of Eddi McKee, the Best Nurse in the Hospital, to find a niche that was appropriate to her massive and varied talents. She loves the hurly burly and excitement of AAU, because it’s not a good day’s work till someone’s been sick on your shoes, but she can’t stand Dr Luc Hemingway. So she goes off to Keller, where you have time to do a quick sudoku between ward rounds. There’s no pesky Hemingway there, with his know-it-all attitude (don’t you just hate a know-it-all?). But of course the Best Nurse in the Hospital is entirely wasted in a ward where people are quietly recovering from bowel resections and it’s not long before she’s back in AAU, bravely leading the troops through a power cut. With all this to-ing and fro-ing, you wouldn’t think she’d get any time to do any actual nursing, but she’s the Best, so she does. And she’s got time to get all cross with Dr Luc when he makes more of his irritating assumptions about a patient. He’s even more irritating when he turns out to be right.

Registrah in Cah

Meanwhile, Irish Dr Greg spent the episode staring mournfully at Sahira Shah the Registrah as she swished past him on her way to various urgent bedside moments. Dr Greg loves Sahira, but he doesn’t think she loves him back, what with the husband and the adorable little son Indy and everything. She’s even planning to leave Holby! (We’ll help her pack!). So Greg does what anyone would do, and goes to Dull Dan for advice. DD says he should be, like him, “Completely professional in the face of romantic disaster.” If Dan can keep calm and carry on while his erstwhile fiancee is on honeymoon with the man of her dreams who isn’t him, Greg can surely cope with a little knock-back from a registrah. Only Greg can’t. He’s Irish, and they have passion and poetry running through them like the word Blackpool runs through rock. Just ask Bono. In a strangely shot scene outside Hanssen’s office, where Greg looks close one second and far away the next, he declares his love for Sahira. He knows her so well, he says, that he knows she constantly hums CBeebies theme tunes. Well, if she does I’ve never heard her. But that’s love for you.

Not a lot of Jac this week, as she had to knock Oli’s research project into shape so she was wearing a virtual Do Not Disturb sign. But she did have time to utter what will be our motto of the week: “Punctuality is next to godliness. Which is just one rung below consultant.” Got to love her.

Next time: Mary-Claire is back! ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls will be played! But will Sahira be able to resist Greg? (not if he’s playing and/or humming ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls).

Posted by PLA (more Holby City here)

Casualty: Another nasty man

(Series 26, Ep.18) I don’t know about you, fragrant reader, but I’m getting a bit fed up with watching violence against women in Casualty. It feels like there’s hardly a week goes by without us having to watch some poor woman being terrorised by a nasty man. There was Maverick Nurse Kirsty and Nasty Warren, then poor Tina O’Brien and her mate were victims. This week we had another one, when last week‘s mystery man turned out to be (surprise, surprise) the abusive former husband of the woman whose child was in the car accident. And he wasn’t a happy man.

He was a proper nutter, as well. Luckily, dashing new doctor Tom Kent ensured he was caught out via the simple expedient of getting his fingerprints on a glass of water. I do like Tom Kent. He has a nice nose, he’s tall and he talks like he’s gripping a drinking straw between his teeth, all of which spell phwoar as far as I’m concerned. Scarlett likes Tom Kent as well. She likes him so much, she googled him, as you do. When she was caught out, she pretended she was checking the spelling of his name for admin purposes. It was pointed out that there aren’t that many variants on “Tom” and “Kent.”

Of course a nice nose and a way with fingerprints isn’t going to catch a criminal without official help. This was provided in the form of one DCI Yvonne Rippon, a copper with a sweet tooth and an eye for a handsome A&E consultant. She and Nick Jordan were flirting like nobody’s business. Unfortunately, Dr Zoe Hanna was busy with something or other and didn’t see all this flirtation, otherwise she’d have had something sarcastic to say.

In other news, Army Dr Sam’s fireman patient (Corrie fans will remember him as Gail’s former beau, Phil the Foot Fiddler) died.

Posted by PLA          (more Casualty reviews here)

Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall

Oh good grief this was a brilliant finale. Twisty as a twisty turny thing, full of shock and awe, it’s also the one in which my enjoyment of Andrew Scott’s ‘Jim’ Moriarty reached fever pitch.

One of many things that gave me great pleasure about this is how the writers (Steve Thompson for this one) are playing with the powerful celebrity persona that developed around Sherlock Holmes. It tormented Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. With the massive popular success of his character, he found he’d created a fictional monster. The public were addicted to Holmes, and to this day, people still believe Sherlock Holmes really existed. No-one was ever really interested in any of Doyle’s ‘serious’ writing, and at the time, he wrote to his mother in frustration,”I must save my mind for better things, even if it means I must bury my pocketbook with him.”

And so, sick to the back teeth of Holmes, Doyle wrote The Final Problem, in which he believed that he had finally got rid of the character that tormented him so, by killing Holmes off in a dramatic scene where he and Professor Moriarty fight to the death over the Reichenbach Falls. But as Victoria Principle found when Bobby came out of that the epically long Dallas shower, things are not always that simple. The public found Doyle’s belief in fairies less than convincing and screamed for the return of their beloved Sherlock Holmes. Doyle eventually had to bring him back to life in The Adventure of the Empty House.

Now, so much is known by the public about Doyle’s stories, the trap that scriptwriters of Sherlock can fall into is to be too clever for their own good, which I felt happened with Baskerville episode (not everyone agrees I know). But I didn’t feel that in The Reichenbach Fall. And there was so much that was scream-makingly excellent:

• The touching, bookending scenes of Watson seeing his therapist to try to deal with the death of his friend Holmes, and visiting his grave.
• The court scene with Holmes unable to stop himself being a smart arse.
• The cameo of IT Crowd’s Katharine Parkinson as plaited haired Rita Skeeter-esque investigative journalist, Kitty Riley. I particularly enjoyed her encounter with Holmes in the Gents’.
• The beautifully done interplay between Holmes and Molly Hooper in the morgue scenes.
• Moriarty. So very fine an opponent for Holmes. I loved The Thomas Crown Affair meets The Wrong Trousers fun stealing-of-the-Crown-Jewels scene, particularly Moriarty being found by the police sitting on the throne in the jewel cabinet, wearing them. I think Andrew Scott has played him beautifully, exuding evil power with frightening, manic intensity without ever appearing totally psycho. Best bits for me: the chaos causing apps on the mobile phone, the carving of IOU into the apple and the delicate sipping of tea with Holmes. So many superb performances in this series, Cumberbatch and Freeman, Gatiss as Mycroft, Rupert Graves as Lestrade. But his is up there too.
• The rooftop scene on St Barts and Holmes’ fall to his apparent death to save the lives of people he cares about. The eruption of excitement on my Twitter feed afterwards when we then see him alive lurking behind a tree in the graveyard. What happened? How did he do it? Was Molly involved, was a ‘spare’ morgue corpse switched at the last? Utterly gripping.

MORE BBC more. Bring it back and bring it soon. Best telly ever.

Posted by Inkface

Eternal Law: The Difficult Second Episode

Yes, it’s Difficult Second Episode week. Viewers who have stuck with you past your the first episode will be looking to be entertained enough to stay with you to the end (in a good way, not a “Bloody hell, might as well see where this ends now I’ve wasted three weeks on it” way).

I’m enjoying the quiet quirkiness and warm heart of Eternal Law. Sam West is a joy to watch as Zak, and he’s been gifted some lovely dialogue by Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah. And yet, gentle reader, I worry for Eternal Law.

Casting around t’internet, there are people who think it’s too silly or too dull. I can’t agree with the ‘silly’ people – I’m willing to buy into angels covertly helping humans. That’s no sillier than a dead policeman conjuring up his own personal limbo for other dead coppers…

So, is it dull? That’s not the adjective I’d choose, but I can see why you  might reach for it when both EL’s cases of the week have been so predictable.

It was clear from the beginning that the only villain in this piece was Richard (Tobias Menzies doing his creepy vulpine thing). That’s not to say that there aren’t divorcing parents out there who won’t benefit from a reminder that they should be going to court for what’s best for their child, not to punish their ex. And I enjoyed the judge’s King Solomon moment as he made his final decision – though I don’t suppose Social Services appreciate being used as a stand-in for the whole ‘chop the baby in half’ solution.

I could do with a bit more of the supernatural too. I appreciate that it can’t be all wings and heavenly CGI, and I like the extra pressure on Zak not to be tempted by Hannah (one more angel leaving Heaven and Mr Mountjoy may give up on the human race completely – though why we should get the blame for the angels I’m not quite sure…), but I’m not feeling the threat of armageddon yet.

Until I start caring about anyone other than Zak, there’s no real jeopardy (or long-term interest). I’m not giving up on Eternal Law yet though. I stand by my statement that it shouldn’t be judged too fast or against Those Other Shows. For now Sam West’s luminous performance is enough to bring me back next week – but if Eternal Law wants a longer run than six episodes it will need more than one stellar actor.

Posted by Jo the Hat

Podcasts: The Slate Culture Gabfest

For a long time podcasts were a mystery to me. They were mentioned on the BBC website so were sort of mainstream, but why would you need them with Listen Again? And anyway who had time to feel even more of a fogey trying to learn the next new technology? More recently, thanks to the Guardian and the estimable US webmag Slate, it began to dawn on me what gems I was missing. You don’t even have to go and find podcasts but can arrange for them to come straight to your computer. Or even to your phone! Sometimes the modern world is so wonderful I can hardly stand it.

For all the newness of the technology though it’s also a case of plus ça change, and good podcasts can become as essential a part of one’s life as TV and radio classics. I remember watching Nationwide as a kid. Every few weeks someone would write in to say they hadn’t missed a show since 1969 and how great was that? The seventies were obviously a barren period but still, they must (I thought) have had f*** all to do if they were  tuning into Frank Bough every night.

It was a shock then to realise that I have become one of those people who never misses my favourite programme. The show concerned is Slate’s culture chat podcast, the Culture Gabfest, and I have a 100% record since the middle of 2009. Not due to some anal completism you understand and not, of course, due to having an otherwise boring life, but simply because it’s so good there’s no reason to miss it. Ever. Not unless you’re actually dead, and even then I expect Apple are currently working on a gadget for streaming audio in the afterlife. I just hope Steve Jobs is making a fuss about the quality of the celestial interface device. Maybe Hell is simply not having this pop up in your iTunes every Wednesday.