PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 712

Doctor Who 2 Series 2 Episode 2 - 4

 

Tooth And Claw April 26 2006 Written by Russel T Davies and directed by Euros Lyn.

 

In 1879 Scotland the Doctor and Rose meet Queen Victoria and visit the Torchwood Estate. The Queen's encounter with a werewolf causes her to start the Torchwood Institute. Nothing blows up but the werewolf comes close when it's destroyed with what everyone thought was a telescope. It's really a werewolf killer that's focus moonlight through the Koh-i-noor diamond. It's a much more massive diamond than the real thing.

 

School Reunion April 29 2005 Written by Toby Whithouse and directed by James Hawes.

 

Anthony Head plays the head of school, something about him and the school has made Mickey suspicious. Mikey calls Rose for some help. The Doctor poses as a teacher and Rose as a dinner lady. Turns out Mickey was right to be suspicious, Anthony and his staff are alien bat creatures. They're turning the children into a super computer using chips. The chips that go with fish not a kind that go in a computer. The school staff has also eaten a lot of the locals.

 

Elizabeth Sladen returns to the series playing Sarah Jane Smith and she brings K-9 with her. Next year she'll have her own series. The Sarah Jane Adventures aired until 2011 when Elizabeth passed away.

 

The Doctor and Sarah Jane reunite and deal with the trouble at the school. There's a bit of a look at the problem with dating an immortal. K-9 sacrifices himself to blow up the alien bat creatures. When Sarah Jane turns down a chance to go along with them on their next adventure Mickey decides he wants to take a ride on the Tardis.

 

The Girl In The Fireplace May 6 2005 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Euros Lyn.

 

Mickey's first adventure takes the gang to a spaceship floating in space thousands of years in the future. Some clockwork men have built time windows to 18th century France. The Doctor meets a young girl through a fireplace. He visits her through another window and she's older. Other windows are the same. Eventually it all comes to a head and the clockwork men are defeated. Nothing gets blown up but the Doctor explodes through a mirror into a 18th century ballroom.

Another good batch of episodes. Good commentaries but no other extras. That's OK it takes hours to get through the disc with just that much stuff.

Recipes For Love And Murder Series 1

Recipes For Love And Murder Series 1 Based on the novels of Sally Andrew, screenplays by Karen Jones, directed by Christiaan Olwagen and Karen Jeynes.

A South African crime show that's airing on Acorn. There's 10 episodes and it's very much a soap opera with cooking and murder. It's set in a small town with plenty of wide open spaces. The production has plenty of interesting locations, good sets and a good cast.

Maria Doyle Kennedy plays Maria, a Scottish woman who moved to the South African town of Eden some ten years before. That's her in the middle of the picture above. The woman on the left is Kylie Fisher, she plays Jessie September, the newspaper's reporter. The woman on the right is Jennifer Steyn, she plays Hattie Wilson, the Editor of the newspaper. Much of the show takes place at the paper's office.

Maria does the cooking column in the local newspaper. She starts writing the advice column. She uses food as a way to solve people's problems. The show shows who wrote the letter seeking advice and some of what happens when the advice is followed. Occasionally Maria and the writers meet in person.

A woman is murdered and her husband is suspected. The police investigate and so do Maria and Jessie. Detective Inspector Khaya Meyer, played by Tony Kgoroge, is not too happy with that. He's a widow and so is Maria. In flashbacks we see she was married to a horrible man who bossed her around and used violence as a way to establish his dominance. He died from a heart attack while she was ignoring him while cooking his tea. I'm sure no one missed the guy after he was dead. Maria and Khaya get a bit of romance going.

There's another murder after a while and that complicates things. Day to day life continues and that really stretches out the murder mystery. I was speeding things up when the show got off track or when there were long tracking shots of people driving through the countryside. A lot of the locations were miles from the town.

I mostly enjoyed it but it's not going to be something I would want to watch again. I might check out a second series, if there is one.

Nero Wolfe Season 1 1981

Nero Wolfe Season 1 1981 There were only 14 episodes in the series and then it was cancelled. Half the stories are loosely based on Rex Stout's novels, the other half are original stories. There's a definite effort to make Wolfe more human and that weakens the character in my mind.

There's a whole new cast with Frank Conrad as Nero Wolfe and Lee Horsley as Archie Goodwin. George Voskovec plays Nero's chef Fritz Brenner, Robert Coote plays Nero's orchid man Theodore Horstmann, George Wyner plays Saul Panzer and Allan Miller plays Inspector Cramer. I liked the cast for the most part, though I thought George and Allan were a bit wrong for their characters.

There's a good guest cast including Richard Anderson, Delta Burke, John de Lancie, David Hedison, Robert Loggia, Darren McGavin, Barry Nelson, John Randolph, Russ Tamblyn and Lana Wood.

There's a nice brownstone set and a nice orchid room. There's plenty of location shooting and a few fights here and there. They keep a good level of humor going and that's appealing.

I enjoyed the series but it wasn't up to Friday night's hit The Dukes Of Hazard in the ratings. Moving it to Tuesday didn't save it. All gone. Compared to the recently seen Italian version of Nero Wolfe, this series pales, and the Italian version is really changed from the books. It carries it off with style and passion. And those nice old cars. Bellissimo!

The 1981 series doesn't fare well when compared to the 2001 A&E series either. Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin were highly entertaining as Wolfe and Goodwin. Each episode adapts a book and they don't keep everything from the original story. It still works well, the scripts are clever and the production captures the briskness of the books and the oddness of Nero Wolfe. Sadly they only produced two 10 episode series before A&E changed their format to attract the younger viewer with crappy reality TV. No matter, I don't watch A&E anymore and I haven't got anything good to say about them. I bought the DVDs of Tim and Maury's show and I can watch it anytime I want.

Nero Wolfe 1979

Nero Wolfe 1979 Based on The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout, written and directed by Frank D Gilroy. A TV movie pilot that aired on ABC television two years after it was made. It's part of a DVD set with the 14 episodes of the 1981 TV series. It's got a different cast than the TV series. Originally Orson Welles was to play Nero but he bowed out and Gilroy found Thayer David, that's him on the left, the other fellow is Tom Mason, he's playing Archie Goodwin. Sadly, Thayer died before the movie aired.

It's a good adaption of the novel. Nero is asked by a rich lady to get the FBI off her back, she sent out hundreds of copies of a book that spoke badly about Edgar and his gang. Now the FBI are following her and she's pissed off. Nero eyes the massive fee and plunges right into to setting a trap for the FBI. The Bureau throws it's weight around but they're no match for Nero.

It's well written and plotted, the cast is good and they do a great job. Anne Baxter plays the rich lady and Brooke Adams plays Archie's romantic interest. I liked Lewis Charles as Saul Panzer. David Hurst plays Fritz, Biff McGuire plays Inspector Cramer with John Randolph, Frank Campanella and John Hoyt in smaller roles.

It's quite fun and it kept my interest up right to the end. Thayer and Tom have a good bit of chemistry together. There's a good sense of humor too. Worth seeing. I'll watch it again sometime.

 

The Avengers Series 3

The Avengers Series 3 There were 26 episodes in the third series and they aired from September 28 1963 to March 21 1964. A 7 disc set from Studio Canal with a number of extras, including commentaries, making of videos, interviews, PDF scripts and other written material, still galleries and a couple of random bits and pieces. It's the last season for Honor Blackman, she leaves to play a Bond girl and Diana Rigg takes over as Steed's partner. 

It was a decent bunch of stories, some a bit better than others, some much more imaginative than others. There's some talk about the move to more fantastic stories in the next series in the commentaries and the making of videos. This series has some way out ideas, lawyers that help their clients beat a murder rap with a graveyard, scientists being replaced by doppelgangers, another story is about insider trading, a rich guy is obsessed with ancient Rome, all that in the first 10 episodes.

There were more interesting guest stars in this series. I recognized John Laurie, Geoffrey Palmer, Patrick Magee, Warren Mitchell, Leonard Rossiter, Anneke Wills, Lois Maxwell, Peter Sallis, Barry Letts, John Le Mesurier, Fenella Fielding Vivian Pickles, Roy Kinnear, Burt Kwouk and Nigel Stock. Many more I did not know.

I have the A&E DVDs and the Studio Canal DVDs are a nice improvement. The left screen caps above are from the A&E set, the Studio Canal set on the right. You can see the picture is clearer and sharper. I was happy to see that as well as the single episode that was left off the A&E set. I won't keep the A&E DVDs, they still get decent money on eBay. After I get some other shows watched I'll join Emma and Steed for Series 4. I know I'm going to enjoy that even more.

Creepshow Season 1

Creepshow Season 1 Based on the Creepshow film by Stephen King and George Romero. The first series aired on Shudder September 26 to October 31 2019. There were 6 episodes with 12 stories. Two more seasons have followed and the show has been renewed for a fourth. Only the first two series have made it to DVD.

There were a plethora of writers and directors with Producer Greg Nicotero leading the pack. Greg is an old hand at effects, he's the N in KNB. They've been around for 34 years. 

There's plenty of variety in the stories but usually they end with some sort of gory business. Some were better than others, usually there was a good laugh or two, though they weren't always intended. There's a lot of in-jokes and Easter Eggs in the scripts and sets. There's plenty of monsters and victims too. 

The DVD set  has three discs with 6 episodes on two of them, the third is filled with about 3 hours of extras. I went though the episodes in an afternoon but didn't take in much of the extras. I listened to some of the interviews. I didn't look at much of the behind the scenes footage nor listen to the cast and crew commentaries. Not sorry I bought the DVD set. I've got the 2nd season DVD set and should get to that next.

Corner Gas Animated Season 4

Corner Gas Animated Season 4 Created by Brent Butt, written by Jennifer Siddle, Meredith Hambrock, Brent Butt, Andrew Carr, Dylan Wertz, Erica Sigurdson and Kyah Green, directed by Stephen Evans, Sean Janisse and Nathan Carey. This is the last season of the show, the 13 episodes aired July through November 2021.

There's  quite a bit going on in the episodes, usually several things are happening around the town as characters interact with each other. I enjoy their silly activities and I'll miss new stories. I guess I can watch the live show and animated show all over again. That'll have to do.

The Turn Of The Screw 1974

 

The Turn Of The Screw 1974 Based on the 1898 novella by Henry James, screenplay by William F Nolan, directed by Dan Curtis. The last film in The Dan Curtis Macabre Collection. A made for TV movie that was shot in England.

Lynne Redgrave is the new governess, she finds her two new charges a handful, especially when the ghosts are about. Things get worse and it doesn't end well for anyone, especially the boy. It's not much of a place to live. I thought the movie was about average for a TV movie. I doubt I'd need to see again.

The Picture Of Dorian Gray 1973

The Picture Of Dorian Gray 1973 Based on the Oscar Wilde novel, screenplay by John Tomerlin, directed by Glenn Jordan, produced by Dan Curtis. Another selection from The Dan Curtis Macabre Collection.

A fairly decent adaptation of the novel. Shane Briant plays Dorian and Nigel Davenport plays Sir Harry Wotton. Dorian get his picture painted and his wish that the picture age while he doesn't comes true. He follows a path of evil treating people worse and worse until he's destroyed. It all takes years and years and as the painting grows hideous the man stays young and good looking.

I hadn't seen it before and I thought it was less interesting than the Dracula and Dr Jekyll films in the set. The 1945 version, The Picture Of Dorian Gray with Hurd Hatfield and George Sanders, is much more interesting and entertaining to me. I'd watch that before I watch this again.

Agatha Christie's Criminal Games Season 2

Agatha Christie's Criminal Games Season 2 A French TV production that adapts Agatha Christie novels with new characters and settings. It's the second series of Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. That's The Little Murders Of Agatha Christie for the English only crowd. The first series has it's own set of new characters and is set in northern France in the 1930s. The second series is titled Agatha Christie's Criminal Games, it's got new characters and is set in Lille France in the 1950s. The series had 27 episodes that aired between 2013 and 2020, usually 3 or 4 per year. There's supposed to be a 3rd series set in the 1970s but it seems to have been delayed.

That's Blandine Bellavoir on the left, she's the spunky reporter Alice Avril, Samuel Labarthe is in the middle, he's Commissaire Swan Laurence, the lady on the right is Élodie Frenck, she's Laurence's secretary Marlène Leroy. They're an unlikely trio, there's often friction between the characters, especially between Alice and Swan. Laurence does most of the detecting, Alice and Marlène occasionally help, and occasionally hinder, his work. He has them arrested, especially Alice, on occasion.

You can see from the list of episodes, each about 92 mins, the books that were adapted and the detectives who were replaced. The basic plots are there, they add some new character driven material and humor. There's plenty of nice scenery around Lille and the sets, props and costumes are well done. I enjoyed the episodes, I like the characters despite their annoying habits. I bought the DVDs because I know I'll want to watch them again sometime.