haha sam kelly unsurprisingly terrific as the ghostwriter-hack in "second time around"
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 17:47 (eight months ago) link
if you'd told me that 1962 John Thaw was a 52 year old man i wouldn't have disbelieved it for a second.
― omar little, Friday, 11 August 2023 18:09 (eight months ago) link
oddly enough he really reminds me in that photo of a close friend i had at college who died young: i never knew what he looked like at 30 let along 52 :|
not a connection i ever made before, it's the curly hair framing the forehead
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 19:47 (eight months ago) link
Are there any actual "good" episodes of Morse with a solid mystery, or at least solid narrative momentum, not just thesps yelling and crying and two-minute, single-camera shots of a Jaguar parking on a gravel path for atmos?
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 11 August 2023 21:20 (eight months ago) link
That might be an unfair remeberance, I speak as someone who remembers Morse as a ten-year-old who wished ITV still showed Magnum PI instead
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 11 August 2023 21:22 (eight months ago) link
ive just reached halfway in the rewatch (season five of eight) so im hesitant to be all grand-gesture "in conclusion" yet but i'd say that the stories so far are always solid-mystery-shaped without ever quite being classic solid mysteries, and that's bcz everyone involved is seizing on the opportunity to cram in other stuff: including settings and cute shots, opera joeks, being jampacked with off-the-ball hints for rewatch nerds with a pause button, stunt performances and cameos, topical social commentary, ageless wisdom™️, and the relentless comedy stylings of the morse&lewis duo…
result is that it swerves around a great deal tonally between eps and every ep is a bit of a mess one way and another. it can certainly be diverting -- more so than poirot, say, at least for me, which i always lose interest in, tho less than geraldine mcewan in goblin-mode -- but it is as often just exasperating: its ambitious notions flubbed and its many bids for bleak relevance outmanoevred (e.g. by frost, which is in some ways its smarter twin)
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 11:12 (eight months ago) link
watched: the one with child murder, sam kelly, that fellow darth vader chokes as a fiery copper morse dislikes watching: the one with women vicars and a miracle slimming product
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:15 (eight months ago) link
wait no, it's the fellow who takes *over* from the fellow darth vader chokes (too much morse-darkside crossover is confusing )
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:23 (eight months ago) link
"bit holier than thou" "she IS holier than thou lewis!"
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:28 (eight months ago) link
exchange is funny but could just as well have happpened in the other direction
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:30 (eight months ago) link
the women vicars ep is probably the one i've enjoyed the most so far -- the clash of values (crusty trad weirdos vs the politically energetic, blended into a plot abt a dodgy think-thin cult) hovers between nicely serious and satire, and if the slimming stuff wd probably be handled a little more delicately today it still basically has its heart in the right place. also morse probably gets a first-date um sleepover w/zoe wanamaker (tho it's careful to keep the notion deniable) and a cheroot-smoking and be-cassocked maggie o'neill at one point does an effervescent cartwheel across the college lawn, which was i suspect unscripted…
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 13:02 (eight months ago) link
the pacing and tonal movement both work well -- for once it gets all its various content- and form-ducks in a row. the one misstep is maybe the title (fat chance), which is a bit lazily brutal and also IMO misleading
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 13:10 (eight months ago) link
eileen way as mrs papas in greeks bearing gifts -- none more greeek but she was born in new malden
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2OfLd9WwAAXDXP?format=jpg
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:47 (eight months ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/8HYNNeA.png
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:48 (eight months ago) link
better photo (not from morse):
https://www.regisautographs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Scan-68-e1570209156116.jpeg
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:54 (eight months ago) link
this entire thread is
choice incomprehensible posts from britisher threads
for me
― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:57 (eight months ago) link
x-postShe looks a bit like Jiddu Krishnamurti in the ‘better photo’.
― Dr Drudge (Bob Six), Sunday, 13 August 2023 17:36 (eight months ago) link
anyway for sleeve's sake this one is abt richard and judy, taped bouzouki music in crappy restaurants and reconstructed triremes, and i competely forgot to talk abt the one before, which is abt art and fakes
(and they're both good: we have entered a strong stretch)
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 18:11 (eight months ago) link
the bouzouki one has a bit of a silly ending
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 18:12 (eight months ago) link
the ep with marmalade atkins and martin clunes is annoying garbage
(and i've missed some out that i watched)
― mark s, Wednesday, 16 August 2023 19:08 (eight months ago) link
i will do a catch-up when it's less hot and i can think
― mark s, Wednesday, 16 August 2023 19:12 (eight months ago) link
alun armstrong as a "senior copper who's an idiot" role, which (a) makes no sense (the role doesn't add up) and (b) is in any case a complete waste of armstrong >:(
― mark s, Wednesday, 16 August 2023 19:33 (eight months ago) link
"are you always so churlish inspector?"
GOOD QUESTION
― mark s, Friday, 18 August 2023 15:18 (eight months ago) link
everyone enunciating very poshly this ep (largely set in a prison): everyone except lewis but INCLUDING SEAN BEAN
― mark s, Friday, 18 August 2023 16:32 (eight months ago) link
is phil davis in that one?
― oscar bravo, Friday, 18 August 2023 20:15 (eight months ago) link
yup in fact it is jampacked with well known faces
(PD also speaks posh-ish; tbf jim broadbent maintains a mild non-posh inflection alongside lewis)
― mark s, Saturday, 19 August 2023 11:35 (eight months ago) link
watching the satanism ep and morse is being even more insufferably arsey than usual telling ppl who staff a hospital for the criminally insane what their job is
ok possibly "not letting one of the criminally insane escape" is a part of their job they just effed up but
― mark s, Sunday, 27 August 2023 14:27 (eight months ago) link
can't tell if keith allen is deftly fashioning a character or thinks that's how ppl actually say "shaman" and "charlatan"
― mark s, Sunday, 27 August 2023 14:36 (eight months ago) link
as it's a bank holiday i'm subjecting myself to an endeavour X[
― mark s, Monday, 28 August 2023 19:49 (eight months ago) link
lol it's trying to be le carré
plus there's a highly unconvincing sidestory abt race and gangs and voodoo
― mark s, Monday, 28 August 2023 20:25 (eight months ago) link
back at the satanist morse story: keith allen in a bushy fake moustache sat outside a pub supping a beer and reading the london a-z like a novel
this is not a good episode
― mark s, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:27 (eight months ago) link
i never enjoyed that episode, it feels badly constructed as well as silly
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:29 (eight months ago) link
lol i hadn't even got to the wildly silly scene
― mark s, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:34 (eight months ago) link
https://www.filmtipps.at/kritiken/The_Devil_rides_out/thumbs/The_Devil_rides_out_2.jpg
― mark s, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:38 (eight months ago) link
gwladys probert
― mark s, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 18:16 (eight months ago) link
actress welshing it up to the max
― mark s, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 18:20 (eight months ago) link
show always improved when the pathologist is (a) a woman (dr hobson) who (b) doesn't take morse's ridiculous shit
(max was also good, for the same reason)
― mark s, Friday, 1 September 2023 19:03 (eight months ago) link
even so the plot-tic that morse is the only faintly adequate copper in the country remains annoying
― mark s, Friday, 1 September 2023 19:28 (eight months ago) link
lol they shd have called this show HECATOMB
― mark s, Friday, 1 September 2023 19:45 (eight months ago) link
show always improved when the pathologist is(a) a woman (dr hobson) who(b) doesn't take morse's ridiculous shit
― mark s, Friday, 1 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink
I would to re-watch more but this makes me realise the only characters that took no shit were the 'educated' sorts.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 1 September 2023 19:57 (eight months ago) link
i imagine it's different in the original books but there's not really a coherent throughline of class politics or anything else in the show: even the way long-term characters interact swerves just wildly between episodes
but yes it is almost entirely about chaos and competition within the professional layers
― mark s, Friday, 1 September 2023 20:10 (eight months ago) link
it's just funnier when he doesn't get his way
sir clixby bream
(tremendous slimy performance from richard briers)
― mark s, Saturday, 2 September 2023 17:42 (eight months ago) link
oh dear i've reached the ep that is set in victorian oxford which morse is solving while in a narcotic dream in a hospital bed
― mark s, Monday, 4 September 2023 18:03 (seven months ago) link
maybe it will not be terrible
i have bad news
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Monday, 4 September 2023 18:06 (seven months ago) link
OMG, never even knew such a ridiculous thing existed
― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Monday, 4 September 2023 18:11 (seven months ago) link
i have a very vague memory of something like this occurring in a book-detective series -- like a break from the present to dig into the past -- where it maybe worked a bit better? but i can't remember which detective so making the comparison is a bit bogus really
― mark s, Monday, 4 September 2023 19:05 (seven months ago) link
the daughter of time?
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 4 September 2023 19:56 (seven months ago) link
doesn’t work that well in that tbh.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 4 September 2023 19:57 (seven months ago) link