PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Cleaner Series 2

The Cleaner Series 2 Based on the German series Der Tatortreiniger. The UK version is mostly written by Greg Davies with occasional help. The 6 episodes aired March 24, 2023 in the UK.

Greg Davies plays the main character Wicky, each episode finds him cleaning up a bloody crime scene. One episode is set in a bar, another in an appliance shop, all with some blood to clean up. Greg get joined by a nice bunch of guest actors, among them Asim Chaudhry, Harriet Walter, Simon Callow, Zoë Wanamaker, Roisin Conaty and Mark Lewis Jones. Zita Sattar is the only regular, she plays a police officer.

I thought they were great fun and I got a few laughs out of each episode. Usually there's a touching moment or a bit of payback. I hope they make some more.

Science Fiction Sunday 735

Doctor Who Series 6 Episodes 11 - 13

 

The God Complex September 17 2011 Written by Toby Whithouse and directed by Nick Hurran.

 

The Tardis lands in a hotel which is really a construct by some aliens. A creature in the building has been feeding on people's faith. The alien spotted Amy's faith in the doctor. The Doctor will need to break that down to defeat the creature. The Doctor buys Amy and Rory a house and car as a goodbye present.

 

Closing Time September 24 2011 Written by Gareth Roberts and directed by Steve Hughes.

 

The Doctor goes to visit Craig from the Christmas Special. There's something odd interrupting the electrical grid. Turns out it was Cybermen.

 

The Wedding Of River Song October 1 2011 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Jeremy Webb.

 

The Doctor is due to die at that lake. He'll have to do something about that.

Mostly pretty good stories. There's a commentary, some featurettes and the 13 short episodes of Doctor Who Confidential. It took a while to get through.

Science Fiction Sunday 734

Doctor Who 2 Series 6 Episodes 7 - 10

 

A Good Man Goes To War June 4 2011 Written by Steven Moffatt and directed by Peter Hoar.

 

The Doctor gathers some old acquaintances and they sneak into the base where Amy Pond is being held. She's had her baby, called Melody, and the baby turns out to have some Time Lord DNA. The baby turns out to be a doppelganger but Amy and Rory have known her in two different identities. One's River Song and the other is Mels, Amy's childhood friend whom she named her baby after.

 

Let's Kill Hitler August 27 2011 Written by Steven Moffatt and directed by Richard Senior.

 

Amy and Rory call the Doctor, he meets them in the cornfield. Amy's pal Mels turns up in a stolen car. None of them know Mels is Melody Pond yet. They give Mels a ride in the Tardis to escape the police and she shoots the Tardis.

 

It takes them to Hitler's office in 1938. Instead of killing Hitler like Mels wanted they wind up saving him from a robot bent on killing him. Mels gets shot and regenerates into River Song. River poisons the Doctor and then later gives up all her regenerations to save him.

 

Night Terrors September 3 2011 Written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Richard Clark.

 

The Doctor gets a call for help from a small boy who fears everything. Turns out he's an alien who took the form of a child to make a young couple happy. They couldn't have children. The child had gotten fearful of everything and he was sure if they would keep him because of his fears. A hug from dad helps sets things right and the Tardis gang take off.

 

The Girl Who Waited September 2011 Written by Tom MacRae and directed by Nick Hurran.

 

The Tardis arrives on the planet Apalapucia where Amy gets trapped in an accelerated time stream and ages 36 years before they don't rescue her.

I thought the episodes were a mixed bag, I liked Night Terrors the best. I didn't like the complicated life of Melody Pond much. I'm less and less interested in Amy and Rory. I enjoyed Series 5 much more.

There's one commentary, a couple of prequels and a monster featurette. Nothing much exciting.

Death In Paradise Series 6 - 9

Death In Paradise Series 6 - 9 Series 6 aired in January and February of 2017, each series that followed appears in the same time period. Most of the regulars on the DVD cover continue from the last series, Danny John-Jules, Tobi Bakare, Josephine Jobert, Don Warrington and Elizabeth Bourgine.

Half way through Series 6 Kris Marshall leaves the island for the UK and Sally Bretton. The pair are currently appearing in Beyond Paradise. Ardal O'Hanlon takes over after being introduced in a story that was filmed in London. Josephine Jobert is DS Florence Cassell, she leaves at the end of series 8, she will return for Series 10 - 11. Series 7 is the last for Danny John-Jules. He'll appear in the Christmas Special that appears before Series 11.

Shyko Adams is the lady with the big hair on the left, she's Officer Ruby Patterson, she's the Commissioner's niece and she appears in Series 8 and 9.

Ardal plays the DI until he decides it's time to return to the UK in the middle of the 9th Series. Ralf Little, that's him in the blue tie, is the new DI replacement. The lady in the red dress Aude Legastelois-Bide, she plays DS Madeleine Dumas in Series 8 and 9.

I liked Ardal more than any of the other Detective Inspectors. He's an entertaining character and doesn't have quite so many quirks. Ralf, on the other hand, is my least fav. It's like they said, quirks are in, lets give him as many as we can work into the script.

In an old episode of Gogglebox they watched the last episode of Series 6. One of the mayoral candidates is murdered in a fairly busy polling station right under Officer Dwayne's nose. Most of the Goggleboxer's hadn't seen the series, there were comments about the story being rather simple.

I liked Giles Wood's response to his wife Mary's comment about the story being simple and comparing it to the fad of coloring in books. He said"It's a whodunnit version of coloring in books." He's an artist and she's an agony aunt, I think I understand what they're on about. Maybe that's why I don't find it too challenging, occasionally it's very easy to spot the murderer. I guess that's why I'm not going to bother buying the series on DVD, I'm not going to want to watch them much again. I've seen the first 6 Series twice and I'd probably watch the Ardal episodes again but Series 10 on aren't living up level of the previous series.

Science Fiction Sunday 733

Doctor Who 2 Series 6 Episode 4 - 6

 

The Doctor's Wife May 14 2011 Written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark.

 

The Tardis takes the Doctor, Amy and Rory out of the Universe to a little asteroid. An intelligent being called House lives there. He's been making companions out of whatever bodies come by, some of which were Time Lords.

 

House has been snacking on the Time Lords time machines and he's developed a taste for them. House is going to be sad when he finds the Doctor has the last Tardis. While on the asteroid the personality of the Tardis get extracted and put into the body of a young woman. The Doctor has to get her back into the Tardis before the body dies.

 

The Rebel Flesh May 21 2011 Written by Matthew Graham and directed by Julian Simpson. First of 2 parts.

 

The Tardis, caught in a solar storm, lands on an island on Earth in the 23rd century. There are few people there, the island is dangerous, and they're pumping an acid found on the island to the mainland.

 

In order to stay safe handling the powerful acid the company uses doppelgangers created out of a substance called The Flesh. They use a human for the template and the human sits in a machine that's used to control the doppelganger. No one cares that the doppelgangers are disposable.

 

The Doctor tells the woman in charge of the operation that there's a second solar storm coming. He tries to disconnect the solar connector but he isn't in time. The solar storm knocks out the power and turns the doppelgangers sentient. There's even a Flesh version of the Doctor.

 

The Almost People May 28 2011 Written by Matthew Graham and directed by Julian Simpson. Second of 2 parts.

 

The doppelgangers want to kill the humans and Amy is having a hard time trusting the Flesh version of the Doctor. There's some fighting and few people and doppelgangers die. Eventually the Doctor manages to get them working together to save themselves.

 

It's revealed that Amy was a doppelganger all the time, she's trapped somewhere where an evil looking lady with an eye patch is watching over her pregnant body. It's always something with these characters.

Night And The Doctor is a 5 part series of shorts written by Steve Moffat and Richard Senior. They were made for the DVD box sets, there are 4 parts on this disc, in them Amy discovers that the Doctor sneaks out at night to have more adventures and visit people. There are a couple of commentaries as well as a featurette on the doppelgangers. 

Three Pines Series 1

Three Pines Series 1 Created by Emilia di Girolamo, based on Fatal Grace by Louise Penny, written by Emilia di Girolamo, Jamie Crichton and Catherine Tregenna, directed by Sam Donovan, Tracey Deer and Daniel Grou. It's a Canadian and UK production that's on Amazon Prime.

Alfred Molina plays Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. He works in Montreal with Rossif Sutherland as Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as Isabelle Lacoste. They all work in Montreal but most of the murders this series are in the small town of Three Pines in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.

There are eight episodes with 2 episodes devoted to each murder. There's also an 8 episode story arc about the search for a young indigenous woman who disappeared 18 months previous.

It's a more serious show than I like as a rule. Some of the murder's have to do with indigenous people, missing young women and the treatment of indigenous children who were tortured and killed after being stolen from their families and raised in religious schools that had the goal of beating the native out of the children. There have been a lot of stories about mistreating the locals in the Canadian news over the last couple of decades.

I liked the series for the most part, a bit too much personal story from all the characters. I didn't care for the cliff hanger but I don't much as a rule. I'd watch the second series, I did like the location scenery, but it wouldn't be something I'd tune into for a second go round.

Science Fiction Sunday 732

Doctor Who 2 Series 6 Christmas Special +  1 - 3

 

A Christmas Carol December 25 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes.

 

Amy and Rory are on a space liner having some honeymoon time when it gets caught in an electrified cloud around a planet. The ship is falling to the ground, the crew is fighting a hopeless battle in landing it. Amy sends an SOS to the Doctor. He arrives on the planet to find one man, a rich monster of a man called Kazran Sardick, has the controls for the cloud. Sardick refuses to help land the ship safely because he doesn't care. The Doctor has to dig into the monster's life and change it to save his friends.

 

The Doctor changes Sardick's life be befriending him each Christmas for several years. There's a sad part to the story, a young woman has a limited number of days left in her life. A pretty good Christmas story.

 

The Impossible Astronaut April 23 2011 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes. First of two parts.

 

Someone sends Amy, Rory and River Song an invite to meet in the middle of the desert in Utah. They meet the Doctor and have a bit of a picnic by a lake. While eating the Doctor mentions he's 1100 years old. An astronaut comes out of the water and kills the Doctor. During regeneration the astronaut kills the Doctor again, the companions burn the body in a boat.

 

W Morgan Sheppard plays Canton Everett Delaware III, he arrives with a can of gasoline, helps burn the Doctor's body, and says he'll be seeing them soon but they won't recognize them. I've been a fan of Sheppard's since he played Blank Reg on Max Headroom. He died in 2019 at age 86, his career started in 1961 and continued through 2017.

 

Amy, Rory and River stop at a diner and run into a younger version of the Doctor who says he's only 900 plus years old. He takes them on a trip to meet Richard Nixon in 1969. The Tardis puts down in the Oval Office where they meet Nixon and a younger version of Canton Everett Delaware III. He's played by Mark Sheppard, H Morgan's real life son.

 

Nixon has been getting phone calls from a frightened girl. After the President discovers the Doctor in his office, Canton sees the advantage of having a smart alley. The audience sees people encounter tall alien men who have the ability to cloud human minds into forgetting them the second they turn away from the aliens. The Doctor figures out that they've been there for thousands of years and are called the Silence. Amy claims to be pregnant.

 

Day Of The Moon April 30 2011 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes. First of two parts.

 

Amy and Rory search for the Silence for three months. The Doctor has been captured by the government and held in Area 51 for that same time period. Canton is secretly working with the Doctor, he rounds up Amy and Rory and they all sneak off in the Tardis. They discover the astronaut has a little girl inside the suit. Amy gets kidnapped by the Silence.

 

The Doctor figures out what to do about The Silence, it's pretty nasty but well deserved. The story gets wrapped up and in an epilogue the little girl from the suit is shown regenerating. Who knows what that means? Not me.

 

The Curse Of The Black Spot May 7 2011 Written by Stephen Thompson and directed by Jeremy Webb.

 

The Tardis parks itself in the hold of a pirate ship in the 17th century. The ship is becalmed and under attack from an ethereal woman who makes hypnotic sounds. Anyone cut or hurt is spirited away quite willingly.

 

The Doctor figures out that the pirate's ship is in a weak spot between dimensions. The pirate ship shares the space with an abandoned spaceship in the other dimension. The ethereal woman is a hologram who's been able to move the injured to the spaceship's sickbay. The pirates, wanted men on Earth, take control of the spaceship and set off to the stars.

I enjoyed all 4 episodes. I liked the scenes set in Utah, they actually took the cast there. There's the usual extras and other short bits plus a commentary. Nothing overly special.

Ordeal By Innocents 2018

Ordeal By Innocence 2018 Based on the 1958 novel Ordeal By Innocence by Agatha Christie, screenplay by Sarah Phelps, directed by Sandra Goldbacher. Broadcast in three parts on BBC One April 1 - 15 2018.

It's a fairly complex murder in the manor story that features a couple of the worst parents in the UK. They live in that big old mansion in Scotland. Bill Nighy plays the father and Anna Chancellor is the mother. As the story plays out it's revealed how utterly horrible these posh people are. Mom gets murdered and the son Jack is blamed. He's sent to prison. Eighteen months pass.

A physicist with issues comes to visit the family home, he has an alibi for Jack but it's too late, Jack got beaten to death in prison. Poor Jack didn't even get to stand trial. The family tries to drive the physicist away but he doesn't let it rest and things go bad quickly. Much of the story is told in flashbacks. We see how damaged they are. At the end we see some payback but it's too little to late.

A nicely made production about a horrible lot of people. It's different from the book but not necessarily improved. Agatha's fans complain a good bit abut Sarah Phelps BBC adaptions. I can see why though it doesn't bother me. It's mostly three hours of yelling and I could see watching other adaptations again before this one.

The novel has been adapted several times. There was a 1985 film with Donald Sutherland. I have a DVD to watch and hope to get to it someday. I did see the two TV adaptations, the first was the 2007 episode of Agatha Christie's Marple with Geraldine McEwan. I want to watch those Miss Marple programs again sometime. Secondly it was adapted in 2009 for the French series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. I enjoyed that series a lot. It's the first series, the one set in the 30s. The second and third series are set in the 50s. They are even better than the first series and some of my favorite Christie adaptations.

Crazyhead Series 1

Crazyhead Series 1 Created and written by Howard Overman, directed by Al Mackay and Declan O'Dwyer. The 6 episode series aired October 2016. The show was not renewed for any more series.

That's Susan Wokoma and Cara Theobold, they live in a world where demons are living disguised as humans. Most people can't see the demons through their magical disguises but those ladies have the ability. The demons find out they can see demons and come after them. The gals have a couple of friends who don't fare too well being in the middle of a demon hunting story. It's rather Buffy the Vampire Slayer like but with demons and more jokes. Based on the last episode's end scene that seems the way the show was heading. Tony Curran plays the leader of the local demons. He's got a plan to open a portal to hell and release the demons to take over the world. The series ark has the gals try to survive the demons attacks and battle Tony to the death. I enjoyed it well enough but I'm not sure if I'd ever get back to it again.

London Irish S1

London Irish S1 Written by Lisa McGee and directed by Tom Marshall.

Four Belfast expats live in London. That's them, left to right it's Packy, Bronagh and Niamh on the couch and Conor leaning on the table. Bronagh and Conor are brother and sister, the other two are their best friends. They drink a lot and have little adventures while trying to along with the locals. 

The first episode concerns a pub quiz and a man who had his hand shot off in a robbery. The second starts with the aftermath of a wedding and ends with Packy at a wake trying to hit on the grieving girlfriend of a man he hated. Episode 3 has Niamh make Wizard of Oz costumes for the group. In episode 4 Conor goes out for some fish and chips, he returns 7 days later with Mexican woman in tow. In episode 5 the four of them wake in a strange apartment the day after St Patrick's Day. The last episode has Bronagh's parent visit them in London.

They are the sort of people I like watching on TV, I wouldn't want them in my house. Too much chaos. It did make me laugh though. Too bad there aren't any more series. You can see them on YouTube in the link above.