LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX, CHRISTMAS SPECIAL : HAVE THEY DANCED THEIR FINAL TANGO….MAYBE? – A REVIEW.

Posted on January 8, 2017 by SCARFMAN

Sally Wainwright’s award winning BBC One drama Last Tango in Halifax, returned to our screens for a two-part Christmas special and overall it was a successful return without ever being a sensational one.

The problem with it only being two episodes was that it thus lacked the gradual momentum that you get with a longer series.  For instance, there was no thrilling, tense series finale.  Furthermore, with Gillian’s(Nicola Walker) big secret now finally being unearthed to Robbie(Dean Andrews), in the much stronger second instalment, then you have to ask yourself has this show now reached its own natural conclusion, i.e. run its course? You could argue that maybe this would be a good place to end it.  Nevertheless, I guess a more fitting ending would be when one of our two elderly love birds in Celia(Anne Reid) and Alan(Derek Jacobi), finally and sadly croaks it!

Speaking as a big fan of the show, then within a few minutes of watching this first episode I was instantly reminded as to why I like this drama so much.  The superb writing of Sally Wainwright made it feel like I had just slipped on my favourite pair of comfy slippers.  I laughed out loud when snobby Celia said in reaction to her daughter Caroline(Sarah Lancashire) moving schools(she’s a headmistress), ‘It’s a state school….oh hells bells, I don’t think it’s in a very nice area’.

Consistently throughout, the mixture of humour and more moving dialogue was spot-on.  The narrative yet again needs applauding for dealing with the subject matter of grief.  A year had passed since Caroline’s wife Kate had died in a road traffic accident but Caroline was still struggling to cope with it all.  The portrayal of grief was very realistic, empathetic and some of the scenes were extremely touching.  Sarah Lancashire like all the cast in this drama do, they need praising for their fine performances once more.

The narrative centred around three big story strands.  The most amusing one was to do with Celia joining a local am-dram group where she would be performing in a play in the coming days.  Not wanting to upset her, the much forlorn Alan reluctantly agreed to be in the play as well.

The second strand revolved around Caroline moving schools and homes, taking her family to the more downtrodden Huddersfield area.  There was said to be a ghost in their new home and so this was the link to the third big storyline that featured.

Nicola was convinced that her late husband Eddie(a wife beater who she killed) was haunting one of her farmhouse barns.  In her eyes it was his ghost that made her almost accidentally kill her new husband Robbie(Eddie’s brother), which therefore led to her revealing her big secret to him about Eddie, i.e. it wasn’t suicide, she killed him.  This revelation was huge in narrative terms because it was such a massive storyline and secret of the previous series.  With this big secret at long last being revealed, again this aroused the feeling that this might mean that it’s now the end of the road for this fine series.

Last Tango in Halifax beautifully juxtaposes the countryside versus the city, humour versus the serious, and also the clash between the middle and working classes that exists in British society today.  To think this is written by the same person who writes the much darker, grittier Happy Valley drama, is a true testament to just what a great talent and genius writer Sally Wainwright really is.

This Christmas special was not the best thing I have seen on TV, but also it was far from being the worst.  I hope we get one final series of Last Tango in Halifax.  GO ON SALLY, LET US ALL HAVE ONE LAST DANCE!! 4/5.

 

 

 

 

 

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CLOSE TO THE ENEMY : ‘IT WAS AN ACT OF LOVE’. A REVIEW.

Posted on January 6, 2017 by SCARFMAN

Set in the immediate aftermath of World War II when all the secret service agencies in Britain were in a frenzy, this period drama written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff was absolutely magnificent.  It had this charming British nostalgic quality to it coupled with more threatening undertones that were ever present throughout.  It was engrossing, intensely interesting and got better and better the more the series progressed.  Without a shadow of doubt one of the TV highlights of 2016!

The narrative was expertly multilayered and centred around two brothers who had just finished their service in the war, both of who were scarred by the atrocities that they had witnessed.  Captain Callum Ferguson(Jim Sturgess), was the elder brother to Victor(Freddie Highmore, and he sort of had this caring parental role over Victor.  Victor had mental health issues which prompted regular bouts of erratic behaviour, Callum thus was always looking out for him(both their parents had died).  Callum still worked for the army in the guise of a secret service agency called Taskforce,  He was to first try and befriend a notable German engineer called Dieter Koehler(August Diehl) who they hoped would help the British be the first nation to break the sound barrier.  They wanted the technological edge to other countries on making jet engines.

A second narrative strand concerned a character called Harold Lindsay-Jones(played superbly by Alfred Molina), befriending the two brothers.  The big twist came in episode six though when it transpired that Harold had been duplicitous with Callum.  He got Callum to steal a top secret file for him on the understanding that he would then out and expose ex-government officials, when in reality Harold wanted that file to save his own skin.  Nevertheless, Harold loved Callum and Victor like his own sons and in the last episode Harold spoke movingly of his guilt in failing Callum.  Harold said to ‘the perfume lady'(Lindsay Duncan),

‘why is it not possible to be as brave as one wants, just at the moment when one needs it most?’

In response to Harold’s guilt towards Callum and in believing he could have prevented the Second World War from happening, it ended up with a thrilling ending as he shot and killed Dieter.  The latter we found out had been found to have been guilty of war crimes.  Harold shooting Dieter prevented Callum from doing so and going to jail.  Emotionally Harold stated, ‘it was an act of love’.  It was a tremendous performance all series by well- known actor Molina.

A third narrative strand was the illicit love affair between Callum and his best friend’s new wife Rachel(Charlotte Riley).  Numerous times this love affair reminded of the one in The English Patient movie. starring Ralph Fiennes and Kirsten Scott-Thomas.  This is high praise indeed bearing in mind what an exceptional piece of work that is.  The difference here though that Rachel and Callum lived happily ever after, i.e they didn’t in The English Patient.  Again, it was writing of the highest order by Poliakoff.

A special mention must be given to the outstanding background music throughout the series.  For example, near the end of the final episode there was this long string section that was quite simply breathtaking to listen too.  It really helped magnify the emotive mood of the narrative.  Every episode was like a mini-film and that was due in part to the amazing music that we heard.

Overall, one of the best things to have graced our TV screens in 2016.  I hope for a second series because I absolutely loved, THIS BEAUTIFUL ACT OF LOVE!  5/5.

 

 

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THE MISSING – series 2, a review. ADDICTIVE, ENGROSSING…..AND IT WASN’T TOO COMPLICATED!

Posted on January 5, 2017 by SCARFMAN

Wednesday December 7th 2016 was a bad day all-round for me.  Firstly, I woke up and remembered that it was my fortieth birthday(I still feel only twenty), then the double whammy was realising that the outstanding BBC One abduction thriller The Missing(series 2) had finished the previous Wednesday.  I am still not over this series no longer being on.  You see, a brilliant drama gets you like this.  It was totally enthralling, it was full of suspense and it had more clever twists than you’ll ever get to see in a cracking game of Twister.

Some disagree with this I know but the final episode of series 1 of The Missing badly let the overall first series down.  It was the one where the cocky smug copper ended up marrying the former wife of Tony Hughes(James Nesbitt) and we discovered that Oliver Hughes was out somewhere in Russia. The latter especially felt like one manipulation too far by the writers Jack and Harry Williams.  Thankfully, the series finale second time around ended much more satisfactorily.  In fact, I would go so far to say that the second series of The Missing was undoubtedly one of the best UK dramas of 2016.

A criticism of series two that I both heard and read about several times, was that it was ‘too complicated’.  This made me despair every time in disbelief because a challenging watch which granted it was, does not though then automatically equate itself to being an incomprehensible one.  Granted it did require concentration and you might have got a bit lost if you tried doing a jigsaw at the same time as viewing it, but I just don’t accept that it was too complex to ruin your enjoyment of it.  After all, being challenged and kept on your toes by a TV show makes so much more of an intriguing watch, compared to being spoon fed by an unoriginal show that has a simple lame plot.

This final episode was very cleverly written because we saw all the seemingly different disconnected story strands of the series come together and get resolved.  For example, we discovered how Henry Reed(Brian Bovell) died and that it was murder that was made to look like a suicide.  We saw how Sophie Giroux(Abigail Hardingham) came to need surgery upon her sudden reappearance and why she pretended to be Alice Webster.  We also yet again discovered the relevance of that red campervan that first appeared in the very first episode when the abduction took place.  Was I alone in thinking to myself as I marvelled at the superb writing, how I wished I was capable of writing such a fantastic story?

We got the happy ending of sorts that I desperately craved for as psychopath Adam Gettrick(Derek Riddell) was chased down by retired detective extraordinaire Julien Baptiste(Tcheky Karyo) and Alice’s parents, and the captured girls were finally let free,  I had just not bargained  on Alice’s dad, Captain Sam Webster(David Morrissey), going for a right Burton in the process though.  It was brilliant writing that fooled me to think for a brief second that the funeral at the end was cancer stricken Julien’s rather than Sam Webster’s.  No offence to the very talented actor David Morrissey but OOH LA LA my friends, a world without the majestic Julien Baptiste anymore just isn’t worth thinking about, it’s too unimaginable given his greatness.

Tcheky Karyo as Julien Baptiste gave an absolutely spellbinding performance in every episode, indeed in every scene he acted.  The best scenes were the ones with him in them.  He undoubtedly deserves to win a major award or two for his sublime acting in this drama.  It would be remiss of me also not to mention the fine acting that actress Keeley Hawes gave as Alice’s mother Gemma Webster.  She was brilliant as a mother bereft with grief and in utter total turmoil as her life was seemingly collapsing all around her.  Her character also had this very likeable steely determination about her though, to get to the truth about what had happened to her daughter.

My only slight criticism of the series and of this final episode was to do with how quickly Adam Gettrick and Sophie Giroux were tracked down by Baptiste and Alice’s parents.  It went from Julien guessing they were in Vaaren, Switzerland, just by going off a photograph in Gettrick’s hallway, to then within minutes they just happened to be drinking at this same bar/cafe where Sophie had been seen just days before.  Then, solely by a bartender glancing at a photo of Sophie by chance(as he collected their glasses), Julien then got out of him that this man knew Sophie and this thus was their lead into finding out where they were all held up.  Do not get me wrong here, I love Baptiste but I found his Mystic Meg impression a bit of an unbelievable stretch.  This series of convenient narrative coincidences was no doubt due to there only being about twenty minutes left of series 2 to go at that point.

Overall, a brilliant series which was far superior than the first one.  The acting was great, the writing was superb and throughout I loved the European Cinema style feel to it all.  Job done I’d say and I just hope we get to see a third series and more of the best detective on TV right now, namely the ONE AND ONLY MR JULIEN BAPTISTE!! 5/5.

 

 

 

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Ordinary Lies. Series 2, episode 1 review : YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE PARANOID HUSBAND, HIS VIGILANTE WIFE AND THE RANDY DIVORCEE?

Posted on October 24, 2016 by SCARFMAN

After a highly successful and well received first series, last week saw the return of the BBC One work-based drama Ordinary Lies.  Written and created by Danny Brocklehurst, the second series this time around is set in Wales with a new workplace and whole new cast.

Having no burning desire to write this review best signifies to you my feelings towards this first episode.  It was watchable but it was not outstanding.  It was a good standard drama but it did feel a bit like I had seen it all before somewhere.   It lacked the shock and punch of the Jason Manford first episode of the first series, the one where his character blamed his bad time keeping at work on his wife just dying(that being the BIG LIE).

This opening episode focused on the life of Joe Brierley(Con O’Neil), a perpetual joker and head of sales at a sports sales company.  After coming home early from work one day due to him falling over and banging his head via some high jinks with a co-worker, he is shocked to find that his wife Belle(Jill Halfpenny) has not gone to work and that she has also locked the front door.  This leads him to suspect she is having an affair and thus enter into a serious state paranoia about it.

Joe decides to have CCTV installed in his home in an attempt to catch his wife ‘at it’ with this other man.  Soon it becomes an obsession for him and completely takes over his life. The sales figures are down at work because his mind is elsewhere, constantly thinking about this affair that he thinks Belle is having.  She has form he thinks because months prior to this he had found some flirty texts on her phone from some hunky male doctor.

Over the course of him spying on the family home he discovers things that he wishes he had not.   Firstly, he sees his sixteen year old son smoking weed and getting overly friendly on the sofa with the neighbour’s thirteen year old girl from across the street.  Then, he discovers that indeed his wife is up to something but it is not an affair as he and us were led to believe.  This was the predictable bit of the narrative because it was all too obvious for her to be committing adultery.  Instead, it leads him to follow his wife and to discover that she is partaking in some local vigilantism against pedophiles.  The motivation from Belle coming from the backstory of their daughter once having been abused by a man who escaped going to jail.

With Joe’s obsession with CCTV and spying on his family, then undoubtedly Danny Brocklehurst wanted to look at the issues surrounding privacy and surveillance in society today.  The ethics of privacy were dealt with and an example of this was when Joe in a group therapy session stated,

”does anyone really know anyone?  Have I got a right to know everything, have I? Am I God, am I the all seeing eye or have I just found a new addiction….my family”?

I take it from this dialogue from Joe as well as the way the narrative concluded, that Brocklehurst is rather critical of the increased surveillance and Big Brother society that we currently now find ourselves in.  It is a reasonably interesting topic to examine in a drama although nothing new was added to the debate here.

Away from the Joe and Belle storyline, we saw glimpses of a very welcome forthcoming new one concerning the taboo subject mental health.  It involved randy recent divorcee Ally(Jennifer Nicholas), getting jiggy with handsome hunk Ash(Luke Bailey), up some back alley late at night.  As the episode progressed it became very apparent in their exchanges(VERBAL) that Ash had a mental health condition.  Whilst standing on a metal barrier overlooking a great drop beneath them both, Ash said to Ally,

”imagine the internal voice shouting jump, jump, jump, that’s how it feels to be me”.

In an age sadly where there is still a stigma associated with mental health illness, then the more we see of them featured in prime time fictional dramas such as this the better,i.e. greater awareness and understanding.   It is also positive that the writer has chosen Ash as the character to suffer from mental health difficulties.  Being the good looking one that all the girls fancy, then it challenges a certain stereotype that exists out there about what people with mental health conditions look like.  For instance, mental health does not discriminate upon who it effects, anybody can suffer from its debilitating impact.

Overall,  it was an OK return for Ordinary Lies, but nothing more. 3/5.

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THE GREAT QUEEN VICTORIA, BUT WAS HER LOVE FOR LORD M….A MISTAKE? ‘VICTORIA’-Series 1 review.

Posted on October 16, 2016 by SCARFMAN

As a general rule, I don’t do period dramas.  For instance, ten minutes of Downton Abbey was enough for me when I tried it once, due to having seen faster paced tortoises.  Nor has Mr Darcy ever made me go weak at the knees I’m afraid to say ladies.  Nevertheless, I was willing to try and get into Victoria when it first aired on ITV1 some eight or nine weeks ago.  ITV1 trailed it to death and I got this sense on social media that everybody else in the country was going to be watching it.

A week ago the first series came to a triumphant conclusion as we saw Queen Victoria(Jenna Coleman) give birth to her first child Victoria.  It was a fitting ending to a great series.  Nevertheless, four episodes in and I thought it had the potential to be even better than this, to be one the greatest things that I had ever seen.  As the series progressed it ran out of steam a bit and got a tad boring in places.  Once we saw Queen Victoria’s affections for Lord Melbourne(Rufus Sewell) lessen, then so did my overall interest in the drama.

At the start of the narrative we saw the young newly appointed Queen Victoria, form a strong bond with her then serving Prime Minister Lord Melbourne(aka Lord M).  Their relationship developed into this sort of forbidden love story which became intensely moving to watch.  I thought Jenna Coleman and Rufus Sewell were exceptional in the performances that they gave together.

The scene that had the most powerful impact on me was when we saw Queen Victoria pay Lord M a visit in the grounds of his Brocket Hall estate.  It was the one where she revealed to him her deep feelings of love for him.  We knew he felt the same way but he could not allow himself to say so, due to him not thinking it was morally right.  In his rejection of her and referring back to his wife that had since left him, he used this wonderful analogy with the local rooks.  For example, Lord M said to Queen Victoria, ”like a rook, I mate for life”.  This love story between them was totally engrossing, absorbing and really made for addictive viewing.

However, the problem of this love story between Queen Victoria and Lord M, was that I was that taken with it that I did not want Prince Albert(Tom Hughes) to show up like he obviously did a bit later on.  Furthermore, the narrative seemed to go from her fancying Lord M to then fancying Prince Albert.  It was all a bit too much like a soap opera for a few of the middle episodes.  I wanted to know more about Victoria’s reign in general rather than it mainly just being about her love life.  Eventually this did happen as slavery and the railways were subjects touched upon in the later episodes, but this courtship between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was focused on for far too long.

As this was a drama rather than a documentary then of course not every narrative strand   was going to be one hundred percent truthful.  Nevertheless, it was quite surprising to read a few historians on social media being highly critical of the Queen Victoria and Lord M love story storyline.  They claimed that Queen Victoria NEVER proposed to Lord M as it depicted she did.  It was also stated how she NEVER had those type of amorous feelings for him either.

At first, it did not bother me that writer Daisy Goodwin had used some creative license regarding the relationship between Queen Victoria and Lord M.   However, as the series progressed I then found myself second guessing at what was truthful and what was not.  This as a consequence started to effect my enjoyment of the narrative because this was supposed to be an accurate drama about the life of Queen Victoria.  For instance, as I watched the final episode I wondered if the incident with the character Captain Childers(Andrew Scarborough) had actually happened, i.e him approaching her horse carriage and saying that he could rescue her from her German tyrant Prince Albert?  I also wondered if those rumours ever really existed for a time about Lord Cumberland(Peter Firth) potentially being behind an assassination attempt of Queen Victoria?

Even though I wanted Prince Albert to come down with a fatal case of scarlet fever or something so Queen Victoria could waltz off into the sunset with Lord Melbourne(I’m such an old romantic at heart), actor Tom Hughes does deserves praise for his excellent performance throughout as Prince Albert.  Another new face that I had not seen in anything else before was actress Nell Hudson who played Miss Skerrett.  She appears to be a great young talent and so expect to see her in a lot more TV shows soon.

Costume and set design were probably the most impressive things about this drama.  Victoria’s outfits for example looked both visually stunning and extremely authentic of that time.  There was also this reoccurring amazing establishing shot of a Victorian looking Buckingham Palace in every episode.  I am guessing it was done computer graphically and it looked very convincing.

Overall then, it was not perfect but there was a lot more to like about this drama than not to like.  It is such a fascinating period of our nation’s history that it deserves to be celebrated as it rightly was here.  I am pleased to see that ITV1 have recommissioned Victoria for a second series because it deserved it.  Watching this has helped me get over my phobia of period dramas, WELL FOR FOR THE TIME BEING ANYWAY! 4/5.

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‘The Missing’ – THE COOLEST RETIRED DETECTIVE ON THE PLANET! Series 2, episode 1 review.

Posted on October 15, 2016 by SCARFMAN

Now and again you quite literally get bowled over by a new programme that comes on the telly.  You go to bed thinking about it, you wake up thinking about it and you cannot wait for the next episode to start.  This is what happened to me after I watched last night the first episode of the second series of the BBC One abduction thriller The Missing.  If you allow me to go all Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood on you for a second, it was A-MA-ZING!!

Beforehand, there was some slight hesitancy on my part about watching this second series.  Firstly, I feared it might fall victim to second series syndrome. i.e be nowhere near as good as the first.  Secondly, the first seven episodes of the first series were brilliant but the series finale badly let it down.  It was corny and I felt angered by being so letdown by the writers Harry and Jack Williams.

This first episode of series two though was absolutely tremendous.  It really was faultless television.  I loved the haunting quality of it throughout.  I loved the stylistic European art-house cinema feel to it.  The plot kept delivering twists upon twists, just as I had recovered from the last big revelation then along came another one to shock me yet again.  Half way through I became self-aware that I was watching something very special here.  Originality is why this programme appeals to me so much.

The narrative was challenging(but in a good way) to watch at times because it was told in three different time frames.  Firstly, we saw a girl get abducted eleven years ago, then the action kept going back and forth between 2014 and the present day.  The young girl abducted was a British girl called Alice Webster(Abigail Hardingham) and we saw her make this shocking reemergence in 2014, finally freed from her torture whilst staggering and collapsing in the German town of Eckhausen.

Soon we saw Alice reunited and visited in hospital by her dumbfounded family.  Keely Hawes and David Morrissey both gave fantastic performances as her parents, namely Gemma and Sam Webster.  The news of her reappearance then sparked the search for the other girl who was imprisoned with Alice called Sophie Giroux.  There was ONLY one man thought capable enough of solving this mystery, step forward the best former detective on TV right now, the magnificent Julien Baptiste(Tcheky Karyo)!

Julien Baptiste to me is like the polite French version of Dirty Harry, that famous no-holds-barred movie character played by Clint Eastwood.  He is charismatic, strong-willed and fights for justice to prevail.  In Julien’s case he spent a career in the police force searching for missing children and arresting pedophiles.  Tcheky Karyo is a sublime actor and so it was a brilliant bit of casting to cast him in this role.

In the present day we saw Julien travel to dangerous Iraq in attempt to find a man called Daniel Reed(Daniel Ezra), the person who it looks like at this stage is responsible for the kidnappings of the two girls.  It also appears like his recently dead father has something to do with it as well.  Julien at the end then left us with the biggest of bombshells.  He voiced his belief to his driver that the girl believed to have been Alice Webster, might NOT have been the real Alice Webster after all. I think my mouth stayed wide open in shock for about thirty seconds after this revelation.  WHAT A CORKER OF A TWIST, WHAT AN ENDING!!

Before this Julien had dropped another huge bombshell on us when he revealed he only had weeks left to live after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.  I am praying(even as an atheist) that this was a lie by him in order to get driven to his desired destination with only a minimal delay.  If he does die at the end of this series though then a third series of The Missing has well and truly gone for a burton, so my hunch is that this is a red herring.

The narrative was so impressively multilayered with different connecting strands that watching how it all unfolds over the coming weeks should be a real treat. Yes, it was a challenging watch at times but I do not buy the notion by some that perhaps it is too complex for its own good. We just need a much better ending to this series than we got in the first one.

A brilliant first episode with the promise of so much more brilliance still to come! 5/5.

 

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AN ASHAMED, INTROSPECTIVE AND HOODWINKED LOUIS! ‘Louis Theroux – Savile’. A review.

Posted on October 7, 2016 by SCARFMAN

This was a BBC Two documentary by Louis Theroux with a difference.  Never before have we seen him revisit one of his earlier programmes.  First aired fifteen years ago, he looked back at the documentary he did with the now late Jimmy Savile, entitled ‘When Louis Met Jimmy’.  Jimmy Savile was of course this huge radio and television star back in the 70s and 80s, also famous for doing lots of charitable fundraising.  It is three years ago since his vast number of sexual offences were finally uncovered.  In this programme Louis wanted to try and understand how he had got away with his crimes for so long.

As well as looking back at the old documentary footage, Louis now sought to gain a further insight into Savile by talking to some of his former victims and people that knew him.  Louis sympathetically prodded them like only he could, i.e. brilliantly respectful but never shirking away from asking a difficult question or two when needed.  Nevertheless, Louis  appeared vulnerable like we have never seen him before because he too had been duped by Savile.  This was a moving, disturbing and totally engrossing watch throughout.

Detailing how Savile was this vile man due to his disgusting criminal behaviour was shocking, but at the same time it added nothing new to the topic.  I also found myself already knowing most of what victim Kat Ward said to Louis because I had already seen her in a previous ITV1 documentary about Savile.  The other people featured were new to me however.  Their interviews and shocking accounts underpinned the whole structure of this documentary.

One disgusting anecdote about Savile that I had never heard of before came from a lady called Susan in Leeds.  Susan detailed how in the early 70s she had been a student studying to be an optician.  Savile had requested that ”her with the big knockers and short skirt”, delivered his glasses to his terraced house.  As Susan went to put the spectacles on his head,  she recalled how he groped her breasts and dropped his trousers to reveal his ”wrinkly pink willy”.  Only recently we were told has Susan now realised that this was indeed a sexual assault by Savile.

A more shocking and sicking account came from victim Cherie Wheatcroft. In1973, she had been an inpatient at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital due to giving birth as a teenager.  She told us how Savile had come through a window of her hospital  ward.  He then sexually assaulted her and repeatedly mocked her with his tongue, e.g. “you’ve been a naughty girl”.

The most moving and disturbing bit evidence came near the end from a lady called Sam.  She revealed how Savile had sexually abused her when she was aged just eleven and whilst she was attending church. Her job was to pass the collection plate around and it whilst she was getting it and putting it back in a room did the abuse then take place.  It was really heartrending stuff to listen too.  An example of this was when she distressingly stated, “I never said don’t because I knew he could”.

Sam’s interview also needs further applauding because she made a broader significant point about sexual abuse, the abuse she had suffered from the age of two from her Granddad.  She commented how people have trouble understanding how she can still have fond memories of her late Granddad. In a highly emotional state, she told us how this was her way of coping with what had happened because, “you can’t have a whole childhood of horrible stuff, so I take the good bits out cos it’s easier to do that”.  Louis was at his supportive best here.  He conveyed immense empathy to Sam and stated to her how people who do evil things are still capable of doing good things, but this did not mean that they were good people.

In light now of all the damning evidence that has come out against Savile, it was truly astonishing to listen to a few people try and defend him.  Janet Cope was his former PA and had worked extremely closely with him for almost thirty years.  Janet stated to Louis, “Jim is now lying in an unmarked grave on a hill in Yorkshire and he’s not recognised anymore as the good, good person that he was”.  She added that she did not believe the allegations made against him.  Louis once again here displayed his marvelous courteous style, asking Janet if she was able to be objective about Jimmy due to having known him for so long?

Another defender of Savile’s was a lady called Sylvia Nicol, she had once worked at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital as a medical secretary.  Sylvia explained how she had done many fundraising events with him and ”only saw the good in him”.  She remembered him rather fondly as she stated that there would not have been that new spinal centre if it had not been for Jimmy Savile.

Hearing these two ladies defend Savile made for uncomfortable viewing but the documentary needs praising for this.  It was important to show that there are people out there who think like this.

A striking feature of this documentary was how Louis for the first time, was quizzed and critiqued by the people who he interviewed.  He asked for their feedback on the first programme he had done with Jimmy Savile fifteen years ago.  For example, Kat Ward said how she thought he had been “hoodwinked” by Saville.  Cherie Wheatcroft thought Louis had been ”gullible” and that Jimmy had been ”manipulative”.

Louis throughout displayed an inner turmoil of guilt which was another first for one of his shows.  He told every interviewee how he struggled with the fact that he had failed to undercover the truth about Savile. He told Sam, ”and then I feel ashamed, knowing what we know now”.  Another admission was when he told Kat, ”after he died I really had to erm, take a step back and examine my own conscience a little bit, to think about well what did I miss and what more could I have done”.  It was interesting to see Louis contemplate his past experiences with Savile so much, because it gave him a vulnerability on camera that we have never seen like this before.

At the start of the programme Louis said that he wanted to try and understand how Savile had got away with his crimes.  This was achieved because the same things kept coming up in the interviews. Savile’s charity work, his celebrity status and him being very well connected with the most powerful in society were all possible explanations given.  Louis spoke of Savile having this aura of ”invulnerability” about him.  My only slight criticism here is that Louis should have criticised the BBC more for the role they played in all of this, i.e. the damning findings in the Dame Janet Smith report.

This documentary was an uncomfortable watch, but at the same time it was also a brilliant watch.  Louis Theroux and his documentaries remain one of the best things on TV! 4/5.

 

 

 

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NOWHERE TO HIDE! ‘National Treasure’- episode one review!

Posted on September 25, 2016 by SCARFMAN

A tremendous first instalment of a four part drama series starring Robbie Coltrane as much loved comedian Paul Finchley, who is accused of rape dating back to the 90s.  It was a narrative about the cult of celebrity, fame and unquestionably Operation Yewtree.   The latter being a police investigation that looked into sexual abuse allegations, predominately the abuse of children by British media celebrities.  The most infamous example here of such an abuser is the late Jimmy Savile.

Coltrane gave an absolute acting masterclass in this role as Paul, what with both his comedy persona dismantled and his human dignity crumbling.  First, we saw him at an awards ceremony being loved and admired by his peers.  He was the classic comedy performer wracked with tonnes self-doubt though.  He worried to his wife Marie, played by the always brilliant Julie Walters, that he had made a fool of himself on stage rather than being funny.

We saw his comedy persona in full force as he obliged and delivered his well-known comedy catchphrase to a taxi driver who pestered him incessantly to do it.  This was all in stark contrast to when he later refused an identical request some time afterwards, his world now in utter turmoil following his arrest.  Coltrane was superb in his role as a man whose world had just been turned upside down because the sexual allegations made against him.  He was disorientated, desperate and his life now stripped bare with nowhere to hide.

Along with Robbie Coltrane and Julie Walters, I thought Paul’s solicitor Jerome Sharpe played by Babou Ceesay, was great in his role.  He was amusingly direct and very upfront with Paul.  It did make me laugh when one minute we saw him go on a swearing rant about the media and police, then the next greet Paul’s wife Marie, politely as a choirboy.

It was very well written and well acted but it was its distinctive style that made it standout for me as a fantastic production.  Stylistically speaking, this one of strongest television dramas that I ever have seen.  The striking sound and mise-en-scene elements(camera, lighting, staging etc), made it remind me at times of an art house film.

In terms of this distinctive style, there were deliberate repetitive close-up shots of inside the front door when it was knocked on from the outside.  Accompanied with menacing music, the camera edged slowly towards the door warily.  This put us in the shoes of Paul and how he was feeling.  It gave connotations of claustrophobia, victimisation and trepidation at who was on the other side of the door.

Throughout there were also numerous close-up shots of Paul Finchley’s face, particularly when he was being interviewed by the police.  These shots served to magnify the point that here was man stripped of all his former dignity.  He had nowhere to hide, his jolly comedy mask had now been replaced by one of extreme vulnerability.

There were several attempts to convey the sense of disorientation that Paul was experiencing following the allegations made against him.  For example, in the police interview room sunlight glaring through the windows was sharp and blinding.   Sound was pivotal here too.  There was this impressive scene where we saw Paul walking down a street but around him was this great cacophony of echoey street noise.  We heard birds singing loudly and a motorbike at full throttle whizzing past. Again, all done to magnify this uncertain new world that Paul now found himself in.

The most striking visual image of the entire first episode was when the ending credits were rolling.  Here we saw a horrified looking Robbie Coltrane as Paul, half naked from the waist up having a shower.  The significant thing here though was that the water traveled upwards rather than downwards upon him.  This gave me connotations that rather than having a shower to wash away his sins, the water traveling upwards signified that his sins were now being revisited.  It was another clever stylistic tool that heightened the impact of the piece.

Overall, an excellent drama that makes episode two an absolute must-see.  Paul Finchley has NOWHERE TO HIDE,  which thus makes this such an intriguing watch! 4/5.

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‘One of Us’ – series review : A HAUNTING CRIME DRAMA THAT HAD MORE TWISTS THAN CHUBBY CHECKER!

Posted on September 21, 2016 by SCARFMAN

An intriguing crime drama by brothers Jack and Harry Williams(The Missing) that kept me interested throughout.  The finest aspect of it was the dark and haunting tone that pervaded every scene.  It was this ever-present haunting quality that gave the show an air of originality, bearing mind this is a much overcrowded TV genre.  It had a distinctive feel to it as well as having many impressive plot twists and turns.  It was not faultless television but at the same time definitely a programme worthy of critical praise!

Filmed in the city of Edinburgh and the wonderfully picturesque Scottish Borders, it focused on two close families(the Douglas and the Elliot’s) who lived in the small Scottish Highland village of Braeston.  The story began with the wedding of Adam Elliot(Jeremy Neumark Jones) to Grace Douglas(Kate Bracken).  Soon afterwards they were murdered and it appeared to look like by an unknown drug addict, who then made his hasty way over to the Douglas and Elliot’s family residences.

At times perhaps this opening episode was a tad too chaotic and overly dramatic.  Nevertheless,  in the main it was gripping stuff that made me want to watch more.  It ended with the suspected murderer(now known as petty criminal Lee Walsh, played by Owen Whitelaw), crashing his car just as he had just reached Braeston and then later being murdered by an unknown member of one of the families.

There were three main storylines throughout the four episodes. Firstly, there was who killed Lee Walsh? Alongside this was the ultimate question of why were Adam and Grace killed and by whom? Both of these storylines conjured up some great red herrings for us along the way before we eventually found out what had really happened.  The last main narrative strand was that of bent copper Juliet(Laura Fraser), supplying drugs to a local dealer in order to earn extra money to help her pay for her daughter’s potentially life saving operation out in America.

What was impressive about the writing of this crime-drama was how amidst the main storylines, there were other smaller ones going on at the same time that eventually all linked back to the climax of main ones at the end.  For example, Peter Elliot(Adam’s Dad played Adrian Edmonson) leaving the family home all those years ago made more sense by the end.  Moira Doulgas(Julie Graham) having an affair with their farmhand Alistair(Gary Lewis), had massive amounts of significance to the climax of the piece . Creepy Jamie’s(Cristian Ortega) crush on Clare(Joanna Vanderham) had massive ramifications and so did Bill Douglas(John Lynch)having tests for Parkinson’s disease.  Every narrative strand had a purpose in a cleverly written plot full of twists.

The only slight negative thing I have to say about the narrative is that I did not buy the conclusion of the storyline concerning bent copper Juliet.  Yes, it was great that she waltzed off into the sunset(America) with her ill daughter to hopefully save her life, but I found it a bit hard to believe.  It was too unrealistic to ask us to believe that she got away with her crime. Furthermore, did her drug dealer associate Jay(Chris Fulton) actually blab to the police about her or not because I’m still not sure about this even now???

Linked to the last point,  the only cast member and character that I had an issue with was Juliet’s junior detective colleague Andrew, played by Steve Evets.  I say junior but in actual fact he was a lot older than her and the character was a bored cop just going through the motions.  In the scene where Juliet had that happy ending Andrew said to her,

“when I started in this job I had so much fire in me you know? I thought putting away bad people changed things but over time my way of thinking, it goes you know”?

I thought in this final scene especially Steve badly overacted it.  I also thought his dialogue was too cliched, here and throughout most of the drama.  This intentionally cynical copper increasingly became an irritant for me.  Fine, I got the cynical copper bit but he seemed to be to policing to what Gordon Ramsay is to The Non Swearing Society, i.e completely useless! It seemed too much of a stretch for me to ever imagine that this character was once supposedly a hardworking diligent policeman.  I definitely would have cast somebody else in the role.

The rest of cast were great though.  Two exceptional performances came from Joanna Vanderham who played Clare, as well as Laura Fraser who played Juliet. I loved the scenes that Clare had with her elderly ill patient Meredith(Anne Kidd).  There was a real touching quality to their exchanges.  Laura showed us all just what a fine all-round actress she is in this role, i.e playing a flawed detective in Juliet.

Back to the programme retaining a haunting feeling throughout, I thought the mise-en-scene, theme music and background music in it were all tremendous.  The stunning sweeping helicopter shots of the Scottish countryside in the last episode especially gave the show an epic quality.

An impressive crime-drama that had a haunting originality about it that made it stand out within this overly saturated TV genre . It ticked a lot of boxes and also thankfully had a much better ending than the first series of The Missing did! 4/5!

 

 

 

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I am a DIABETIC DETECTIVE, gunning for my FLUCTUATING BLOOD SUGARS!

Posted on September 16, 2016 by SCARFMAN

  A blog about the FRUSTRATION, EXASPERATION and UTTER ANNOYANCE that my type one diabetes causes me due to my fluctuating blood sugars!

I have had a surreal last couple of weeks with my diabetes.  My fluctuating blood sugars of late have been DRIVING ME AROUND THE BEND, so I prepared myself for a good telling off when I recently went to see my local diabetic nurse.  However, I came out of the clinic well and truly stunned!  Not only did she reveal that I had lost almost two stone in weight, but also that my average blood sugar reading had gone down to a great 7.4……..BINGO, BINGO, BINGO!  The diabetic nurse was that overjoyed with me that at one point I thought she was going to high-five me and then do the Michael Jackson moonwalk(not really)!!

I walked home feeling like a cross between Brad Pitt and a randy male peacock doing that funny courtship dance that they do, i.e like a hottie because of the weight loss. I was also  gobsmacked that my blood sugars were so good, the best they have been in years in fact.  Gobsmacked, because lately I seemed to have been at the end tether with regards to having erratic blood sugars.  It had got to the stage where I had come close to tears on several occasions due to my readings being all over the place for seemingly no apparent reason.

I had come close to tears because I am diabetic that cares about my condition.  I want to live as long a life as possible so therefore I need my diabetes to be well controlled.  I have come across diabetics though through the years that didn’t seem to care that much.  For instance, I once knew this diabetic guy that drank like a fish which was absolute madness.  Another memory I have is when I once met this nice girl on a night out who was a fellow type one diabetic, however due to her doing drugs when she was younger she already had two cataract operations.  I am not like this you see, I care but at the same time caring does not then automatically mean that you will have brilliant blood sugar control.

A few weeks ago I woke up one morning and my blood sugar reading was 18.6.  All I can remember about this is the immense feeling of anger that I felt, as well as very loudly shouting out some obscenity due to my utter frustration.  I was so angry because I had been trying reallly hard to get my blood sugars better controlled.  I had not eaten anything that I shouldn’t have just before bed. Neither had I woken up in night and nibbled on a emergency hypo biscuit or two that I always have placed next to me next to my bed.  My blood sugar was what it should have been just before going to bed so everything was in place for a good reading in the morning.  Something had gone wrong though, so step forward ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE! 

‘ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE'(which is me by the way just in case I momentarily lost some of you there), this is how suffering from type one diabetes has made me now feel.  For about a good thirty minutes I stood there wracking my brains as to why I had woken up with such a high blood sugar reading.  I felt like Inspector Morse going over the evidence that I had before me, AGAIN AND AGAIN, what was I missing??? GOT IT, finally after forty-five minutes I remembered that the day before I had taken an extra half tablet of the NSAID meloxicam.  It’s like playing a real life medical game of Cluedo. For example, IT WAS MR PINK(me), IN THE KITCHEN, WITH THE CANDLESTICK……I MEAN HALF AN EXTRA MELOXICAM TABLET argh, argh, argh.  MEDICATION AND DIABETES, good God it winds me up!

The only part of being a diabetic that truly FRUSTRATES, EXASPERATES and ANNOYS me, is when I take non-diabetic medication and then my blood sugars go all over the place.  Each medication that I have taken since having type one diabetes has had its own unique impact on my blood sugars.  Some make it go up and some make it go down and you’re sort of expected to be psychic, knowing what the effects are going to be before taking them.  This obviously is impossible so it leads to erratic blood sugars.  I have even had a medication still impacting on my blood sugars seven days after I stopped taking it!!

Apart from my type one diabetes, I suffer with chronic pelvic pain together with a lower back problem.  For these two things I currently take the painkiller tramadol and the anti-inflammatory drug meloxicam.  My blood sugars will be stable if I take the same daily amount of these around the same time of the day seven days a week. However, if I ever deviate from this and say increase the dose of either one of them because I’m very sore one day, my blood sugars will then behave differently than they normally do.  It is this regular occurrence of unpredictable blood sugars that has started to wear me down.  There seems to be too many variables out there that have an impact on my blood sugars,  some days it feels like my diabetes has got the better of me.

It is only through having an erratic blood sugar experience via taking a new medication and learning from it, do I then know what the impact of this new drug will be on my diabetes the next time I take it, i.e ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE at work again.  For example, my blood sugars remain OK when I take no more than 100mgs of tramadol but anymore than this and they go berserk.   Each separate medication I take alters my blood sugars in a different way, none have the exact same reaction on me.   It is this constant watching and waiting to see how my blood sugars respond to new meds that has finally started to mentally exhaust me at the moment.

Of course it is not just medication that makes me act like a Diabetic Detective.  Strenuous exercise is a tricky thing because this makes my blood sugars plummet.  Therefore, this means that I have to dramatically decrease my insulin levels and usually eat a chocolate bar for a blood sugar boost.  Anger and anxiety causes an adrenalin rush so this makes my blood sugars go up.  Medication, exercise, warmer weather, excitement, worry and EVEN HAVING A LIE IN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, these are all things that impact on my diabetes and can make it a pain to live with at times.

Dieting and trying to lose weight can really be hard for anybody but if you are a diabetic then this can make it even harder.  The first thing I did was to eat less bread, but this then had massive ramifications on my diabetes because bread is a medium to slow acting carbohydrate. i.e makes your blood sugar go up steadily.

It is such a balancing act when you are a type one diabetic and you want to try and diet.  For instance, you want to eat less and so therefore have to have less insulin in order to avoid a hypo(hypoglycemic low blood sugar attack) and all that thus comes with it, i.e feeling awfully drained and having to eat a lot or something sugary, both of which are bad for the waistline.  There is a danger though that you might reduce the insulin by too much and so this makes your blood sugars go too high.  It has felt like I have been playing a constant game of ‘suck it and see’ for the last six months with regards to my blood sugars whilst trying to diet. i.e trying to decide what is the right amount of insulin to have due to eating less and eating healthier.

My frustration at having fluctuating blood sugars whilst dieting got that severe that at one stage I seriously considered scrapping the whole idea of ever trying to lose any weight.  It felt like I was being pulled in two different directions. Yes, I was losing the weight but at the high cost of my blood sugars being higher than I would have liked.   Nevertheless, through once again me being a methodological Diabetic Detective, in time I did manage to sort out dieting with reasonably good blood sugar control .  Dieting and diabetes though, OH WHAT A BELLYACHE IT HAS BEEN!

There you have it then, that is my take on me now feeling like a DIABETIC DETECTIVE.  I am chuffed to bits that my diabetes is so well controlled at the moment but at the same time this does not accurately reflect the true nature of my daily STRESSFUL, type one diabetes life.  I’d much rather be say a DIABETIC MOVIE STAR than ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE but pretending to be Tom Hanks rather than Inspector Morse, ain’t ever going to crack the big case of me and MY FLUCTUATING BLOOD SUGARS!!!

Posted in DIABETES, FOOD, HEALTH, mens health, MENTAL HEALTH, NHS, TRUE STORIES, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment