TS: Lewis vs Morse

gotta hand it to em, sway was a pretty good ep, maybe it's finding its feet!

(i mean still p silly in some ways, but also quite affecting and the anachronism kept in check for a change)

(i like the one-word titles btw, that's a nice tic)

deems said this show got better and in s3 it has, which is nice

is there another drama which wd open with a close-up of a man deploying MOLE TRAPS on a well kept lawn, i think not

the mole trap man is in fact lozza's dad :|

a hathaway

ok that was the silliest story i have ever watched, mole traps or no mole traps

Do you think Fox's breakdown into whatever he is now was precipitated by expecting to replace Kevin Whateley as the main guy in the franchise and they're all like, lol no, we're gonna do heartbeat morse instead

it can't have helped that they included his character's dad as a completely inconsequential walk-on character (who doesn't even get to be a red herring)

history of Loz's life tbf

this record is ok but it's no "l'amour"

https://head-records.bandcamp.com/album/beliefs-destroyer

i know, i haven't thought of "l'amour" in about a decade either

I bet it's better than this...

https://laurencefox.bandcamp.com/album/a-grief-observed

... OMG I just listened to it!

this is the stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41KgNJ9qGDI

"next time you see my name it'll be on page one!"

things not say say on endeavour

the ep that combines a mary whitehouse-alike with a pink floyd-alike and a gay news-alike* (plus a simon dee-alike) has a moment where morse is harrumphing abt rock criticism

my usual beef: huge surges of anachronism poorly steered thru but lol his actual crit (of a mode of interviewing and writing that didn't really exist yet in 1967) is not inaccurate! though its problems go more to the difficulties of self-taight musicians getting across to non-musicians how music gets collectively put together, than to the brainlessness he prefers to think it (never change lonely grumpy high-culture dude, yr instincts are good but their expressive framework is terrible)

*it compresses the gay news prosecution of 1977 (for blasphemy) into the oz prosecution of 1970 (for obscenity)

decriminalisation only took place in 1967; gay news was in fact founded in 1972 and an equivalent would hardly have needed a mary whitehouse-alike to get it shut it down five years earlier

how much does all this matter (besides driving me the actual person watching very bonkers)?

sylvestra le touzel is p good as the whitehouse-alike lady tho -- she does the accent as a full thatcher, which is cheeky but nevertheless effective

also it gets into the toxicity of LSD *and* the vagaries of copyright law and who wrote what 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

i’ve been watching the original inspector morse series and it’s wild how much pussy this guy gets pic.twitter.com/TAZGIHqpBj

— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) September 24, 2023

phil daniels klaxon (thursday's brother)

(also thursday i guess)

chekov's minefeld lol

i have hugely come round on this daft nonsense (endeavour)

(w/its relentless commitment to tackling the most serious historical matter in the goofiest possible anachro-historical context)

the ep set in a public school is kind of a rip of le carre's a murder of quality iirc (which is lol NOT his best book) and the only bits i'm enjoying in are the (v short) exchanges where morse, a copper sneaked in as a suubstitute classics teacher, discusses authors like ovid or suetonius with his pupils. it's not convincing especially, it's just funny

it's the late 60s but here's one of (real) teachers describes a punished child as being "under heavy manners" -- a phrase that entered normie english via rockpaper-chat courtesy a prince far-i album title c. 1977 (and beyind that, according to jonathon green's dictionary of slang, from jamaican political manoeuvring… )

the scriptwriters just have a permanent tin ear for conversation of the exact period they're trying to recreate and as someone who lived through it it is just exhausting

i ended up watching most of an episode on Friday night, mainly because of this thread tickling my inclination - it was the one that ends up with Morse and Friday in Venice toting guns, it was as silly as fuck but it was the good entertainting kind of silly (which is most silly) tbf

i mean i have not given up in disgust 🤣 i am carrying on (despite the disgust)

i never ignored it because of daftness, it was more about not being tonally satisfying, but i'm coming round to the idea of it being v satisfying because of the daftness. like the other serieses

the gunplay shd probably get the fuck out tho

it's often a complete mess but it can be quite ambitious in unexpected ways (which i like) -- the anachronistic speech stuff grates bcz i am just the age to catch the worst of it somehow but i imagine bothers nearly no one else

"Paper says soviet tanks in Prague, Morse"

<Morse, sucks teeth> "Pussssy'oles"

in the years since Endeavour started that kind of anachronism has been claimed as a feature not bug cf Cheeky Blinkers and its ilk

and for better or worse they didn't adopt the "shit 80s indie background music" trope

morse shd be listening to adam and the ants the entire time (as shd we all)

time for the killer to be a thunderbirds puppet

"the pelican man!"

very good and funny scene

"i am a bagman not a yesman!"

morse somewhat shakily referencing the climax of michael clayton to explain why he shd *not* be taken off the case

endeavour s8 and it's roughly 1972 i believe: i wouldn't expect *everyone's* hair to be long -- it didn't really happen like that -- but it's funny that the one character whose locks are descending faintly collar-wards is the recently widowed chief superintendent bright :)

"it's a rum caper!" (thursday on the craft of acting, which he appears never to have encountered until now)

lol just checking out a character ("lord ormsby-gore") who features in this ep bcz it seemed like vaguely actionable (?) to include a real-named person as potentially a killer (ep not over, no spoilers!) and either way a total dipshit

and the actual real person with rouhgly this name and title at this moment (david ormsby-gore, 5th lord harlech) died in a traffic accident in the village next to the village i grew up in, almost certainly in a near-legendary traffic blackspot which the family (ours not the OGs) had to negotiate on a daily basis

(we weren't involved though, i'd already left home officer)

the younger ormsby-gores were famously all over the rolling stones -- and worse, eric clapton -- at this time (1972) and things didn't go well for them really

(harlech died in 1985, in case you want a test)

i am and have been right about endeavour and it is correct to say so

the anachronisms or incorrect details are certainly a feature and not a bug the entire thing is as daft as dr who but infinitely better because the casting and production quality and attention to (wholly incorrect) detail and the nods and flourishes are all deeply enjoyable and satisfying

i want a full season of joly for short

just discovered that Max is also the guy who voiced Gollum in the Bakshi LotR and dubbed Pigsy in the (quite annoying) UK dub of Monkey

:O

subs not dubs! (sorry max)

Was also the original Estragon (Peter Hall's 1955 production)!

the endeavour hate in this thread... itv4 are showing them sporadically and not in any real series order.

> the ep that combines a mary whitehouse-alike with a pink floyd-alike

watching it now. fake floyd title: Jennifer Sometimes. rhymes old school, with toadstool.

yesterday there were drownings in a swimming pool and the receptionist said "in 1959 no one died. in 1960 no one died" in all seriousness.

lol i saw that and it was definitely a deliberate joke

itv3 have been showing random endeavour, lewis and now morse episodes, 4 hours a day some days. i've not seen any of them before.

rave episode of Morse today, Lewis talking about chaos theory.

can't see Lewis and not think of Neville from auf wiedersehen pet though.

thats bcz the same actor plays them i think

and yet i never think 'that's the guy from the sweeney'

bonus charlotte coleman in the episode from last week, bit stabbier than usual.