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Travelling Man: First Leg (1984)
First Leg
1984 was a busy year for writer Roger Marshall. There was the broadcast of the series Mitch carried over from the previous years. It was poor. ITV were embarrassed to broadcast it.
Travelling Man owed more to one of Marshall's previous show, Public Eye. In that show, Frank Marker was an ex con who carries on as a low rent private eye. Trying to make good for sins of the past.
Here Alan Lomax (Leigh Lawson) is an ex cop imprisoned for stealing some drugs money. Lomax claims he was set up.
Now he is out. His wife has divorced him and fled to Canada. His son has gone missing. His ex police colleagues do not want Lomax hanging about in London. A journalist and some underworld figures are circling around wondering is Lomas will lead them to his hidden loot.
Instead Lomax jumps on a barge, the one thing his ex wife left behind. Lomax travels on the barge and ends up in various adventures.
In the first episode, it is a middle class woman who is a drug addict. She is a former nurse who got addicted to painkillers. Now she is being fleeced by her dealer.
Lomax decides to confront the dealer in order to help her out.
Like Marker, Lomax is a toughie with a heart of gold. The main plot was lightweight. Lomax recognises the signs that the woman is a druggie. He talks to her, she rebuffs him but then confesses all a little later.
Worzel Gummidge: Worzel the Brave (1980)
Worzel the Brave
Move over Mrs Bloomsbury-Barton. There is a new military man in the mansion. Colonel Bloodstock (Thorley Walters) who is full of pomp and bluster.
Meanwhile Mr Shepherd is looking around the village for his missing Aunt Sally. She has gone walkabouts again, in fact she has managed to become the new maid for the Colonel.
Worzel Gummidge is right on her tail. He is still smarting that she went out with the strongman from the circus.
Once again Aunt Sally ghosts poor old Worzel and then gets involved in a spat with the Colonel.
Only to go with his tail between his legs to the Crowman. Worzel wants to be brave and needs a new head that is full of courage. The Crowman has one but refuses to give it to Worzel, so he steals it later in the evening.
Jon Pertwee was a hoot as the brave Germanic scarecrow. Some resemblance to the story with the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz might be entirely coincidental.
XIII: The Series: Rampage (2012)
Rampage
Roger Avary has definitely shook things up in the second series. The big reveal is XIII.2. An exact physical double of XIII but who is he working for and what is his agenda.
After a bombing outrage. XIII is committed to terrorism which has upset his new cohorts in the Veil. This was not sanctioned by them and the US government are after them.
President Carrington plans to strengthen the Patriot Act. Jones is reprimanded for not finishing him off. Then XIII is framed for a grievous killing.
Only it is not him, it was the doppelganger framing XIII.
The second series could not go with more of the same. It needed the ingredients to change somewhat. It seems one major character has gone, another one though has entered the scene. Amos does not look happy.
The Law and Mr. Jones: The Walkout (1962)
The Walkout
Abraham Lincoln Jones is acting in a divorce case. His client Mr Thompson went to a convention, got drunk and lived to regret it.
Mrs Thompson egged on by her harridan mother Mrs Dorn wants to divorce for adultery.
Mrs Dorn is making sure there is no time for self reflection between the parties. After all children are involved.
It gets worse for Jones. The other side wants the hearing to be held privately. No dirty laundry to be done in public.
Jones does not want that, he believes that Mrs Dorn will just make it worse for his client with baseless accusations.
Three old men who regularly visit the courts to sit in the public gallery do not help matters. They use the place like a public library and a form of entertainment.
Jones soon learn that these men have picked up a thing or two about the law.
A lighthearted episode that does stretch credibility. If only Jones listed to these wise sages, they even handed him some precedents.
The Upchat Connection: The Torchbearer (1978)
The Torchbearer
After John Alderton departed. The Upchat Line was retooled by writer Keith Waterhouse as The Upchat Connection.
The character of sponger and ladies man Mike Upchart has been inherited through the centuries. The John Alderton version had won it in a poker game.
Now the Robin Nedwell version won it in a raffle. The previous one wanting to suddenly wants to go abroad.
So the Nedwell version has inherited the locker at the train station. He has had a crash course on how to be Mike Upchart.
The new variant finds himself up to pasta in a double date at two nearby restaurant. Does he have the gift of the gab of the previous version?
There was always a touch of Billy Liar about Upchart, another Waterhouse creation. Nedwell is not as smooth as Alderton. Being both manic and sweaty. Unless it was the hot studio lights.
Boy with a Flute (1964)
Boy with a Flute
The presenters tells a story about personal column adverts. Dorothy Winters saw one about a painting called Boy With a Flute. An American art collector is after it and is willing to pay good money.
Dorothy goes to see Conrad Bestow with her painting Boy With a Flute that she has had for years. Just as Conrad is about to write out his cheque, a young woman Caroline arrives claiming that she too has the genuine Boy With a Flute.
Who is telling the truth. Maybe Conrad should put the paintings in the safe. Take the ladies out for lunch while an art expert arrives to authenticate the paintings.
To Dorothy's surprise, her art expert believes she has the forgery. While she was at lunch, Conrad's assistant did a switcheroo.
Conrad and Caroline are in cahoots and are pulling a scam. It is Dorothy's wheelchair bound sister Anne Winters who notices. She has stared at the painting for years. The one Dorothy has brought home is not the same.
They go to the police but what help can they be? Superintendent Fitch is a man with a plan.
This low budget British short is effective. No flab and you sense the con is on but here, it takes place twice.
Doctor Who: The Two Doctors: Part Two (1985)
The Two Doctors: Part Two
The Second Doctor has been abducted and is planned to be turned into an Androgum. The Sontarans wants to delve into his DNA as it might contains the secrets of time travel. Something the Sontarans crave.
The Sixth Doctor comes into contact with an unconscious Jamie. He realises that if Jamie is present, his earlier incarnation must be about somewhere.
Frustratingly another episode where there is no meeting between the Second Doctor and Sixth Doctor. At least the latter meets Jamie.
Holmes has trouble getting a sure grip with the script. It is too talky although Dastari is insane. Shockeye is gastronomically mad.
Doctor in Charge: The Research Unit (1972)
The Research Unit
Professor Loftus is surprised and pleased to learn that he might be in line for a knighthood for services to medicine.
It would also be good for St Swithins to have a distinguished surgeon with a title. To bring it over the line, it is suggested that Professor Loftus needs to be involved in a medical breakthrough.
The only suitable research that the hospital was involved in is research for plastic catheters led by Dr Lawrence Bingham (Richard O'Sullivan.) Only Loftus has more confidence with Dr Waring and places him in charge of the research.
This annoys Bingham and he tries to sabotage the project. Even involving the press to be hostile towards Dr Waring.
The episode introduces Dr Bingham as the antagonist character. Only he inadvertently gets Dr Waring to succeed with the research. Even by the second episode, the humour is from the tight knit trio of Waring, Collier and Dick Stuart-Clark.
Ellis: Hanmore (2024)
Hanmore
DCI Ellis (Sharon D Clarke) is a troubleshooter. She is a roving detective sent into deal with hot potato cases.
Ellis is dispatched to the Peak District when eighteen year old Rowan Edwards is found dead. A young teenager who was with him, Maggie Bradley is still missing.
Parachuted in to take over an existing Police investigation, two cases, the death of eighteen year old Rowan Edwards, secondly the disappearance of another teenager Maggie Bradley. Ellis is supported by DS Harper.
DCI Jim Belmont heading the murder enquiry has brought in a suspect. Stephen Mason is Maggie's stepfather and is also black. Belmont believes it is only a matter of time before Maggie's body is found. Only she is later found alive.
The first episode had many familiar elements. A black female detective, some of the attitudes she faced from Belmont was reminiscence of Prime Suspect. There was a touch of Vera here and there. Many of those questioned were not always truthful.
So not much originality, a melodramatic conclusion but Clarke had presence and gave Ellis some grit.
Pulp (1972)
Pulp
The hard boiled Mike Hodges movie Get Carter was a big influence on Quentin Tarantino. The quirky follow up Pulp also starring Michael Caine had to be an influence as well.
Caine plays lurid pulp thriller writer Mickey King. Inspired by Earle Gardener, he dictates his stories on tape and has them transcribed. It means his two fingers are not used for typing but for other pleasures.
King is invited to Malta to ghost write the autobiography of retired actor Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney.) Only to find murder and mayhem follows him.
Gilbert wants to unveil a dark secret in his life story. Enough for his life to be in danger as well as King's.
Caine's hard boiled but comedic narration is a big plus. Pulp is tonally uneven though, the plot is confusing. Some of it comes across as flat or hammy.
It does serve as a tribute to pulpy noir movies. The final scenes has a character who looks like Humphrey Bogart.
Bionic Woman: Pilot (2007)
Pilot
With star Michelle Ryan best known for the British soap opera Eastenders. Maybe this updated remake was never going to be a long running series.
Jamie Sommers works the bar at a San Francisco nightclub. She raises her sister Bianca as their parents have died.
When Jamie is out with her boyfriend Will Anthros. They are deliberately collided into leaving Jamie with life threatening injuries. Will though works for a top secret government group. Using cybernetic replacements, Jamie is now augmented with bionic powers.
Unsure with her new found abilities, she returns to work at the bar. Only to be confronted by Sarah Corvus (Katee Sackhoff) another bionic woman.
The initial episode had a protagonist in Sarah Corvus. A shady organisation operated by Jonas Bledsoe (Miguel Ferrer) responsible for Jamie's bionic powers and who now control her.
It has some decent action scenes, is fast moving but how well this series does depends on subsequent episodes.
Get Fast (2024)
Get Fast
The Thief is back. James Clayton once again directs and stars as the thief who along with his partner stole some cash from a ruthless drug lord called Nushi.
She does not like people stealing from her. She has in her pocket goons, corrupt cops and a hitman called the Cowboy (Lou Diamond Phillips.) They also have the Thief's partner.
So the Thief has to come to the rescue in an ice cream van with a nervous young man in tow who keeps mentioning jelly babies when he is nervous.
Get Fast is a direct to streaming B movie. It has a well worn plot, good production values but many of the characters are caricatures you have seen countless times before.
Citadel: Honey Bunny: Dancing and Fighting (2024)
Dancing and Fighting
The Citadel series has launched International variations. Citadel: Honey Bunny is the Bollywood version.
In 1992 Honey (Samantha) is a wannabe actress in Bombay. She is behind on her rent and the Director will give her a better role in exchange for a favour.
Rahi Gambhir (Varun Dhawan) is a stuntman and Honey's friend. When she is made homeless, he has a proposition. Just to chat with a man for a bit while Rahi and his friends could steal some tech. It turns out that Rahi is Agent Bunny for the Citadel.
In 2000, Honey is a retired Citadel agent who runs a restaurant with her brother. She has a young daughter Nadia (the character played by Priyanka Chopra in Citadel.)
However someone is following Honey and her daughter is sent to safety, to watch a movie in the cinema.
Not as expensive or slick as Citadel the series. Honey Bunny does owe more to the parent series than Bollywood. It has some gritty fight scenes. A lot depends on future episode as the opener already had a few twists as far as Rahi is concerned.
A Man on the Inside: Tinker Tailor Older Spy (2024)
Tinker Tailor Older Spy
The episode begins with a deaged Ted Danson as he is about to get married.
It then flits to the present day. Charles (Ted Danson) is a retired college professor and a widower. He is bored and his daughter wants him to do something interesting.
So Charles answers a strange ad from private investigator Julie. She is looking for an older man to infiltrate a care home to find a thief.
Charles gets the job as he can email a picture. The others could not deal with mobile phones.
Although Charles is not so good with the on the job training such as surveillance and detailed observation and taking covert pictures.
Still he will be spending the next few weeks in the care home.
The first episode was rather like Charles. Easy going but a bit aimless. It fits well with Ted Danson's approach as you suspect Charles will find a new zeal for life at the care home.
Stage 7: Yesterday's Pawnshop (1955)
Yesterday's Pawnshop
Arnold Spears seems to preoccupied. He was a widower whose first wife drowned. Her body was never found.
He is now married to Jill but makes little time for her. She wants to move house, he only reluctantly takes her out for lunch.
When they go to an antiques shop. A ring with the initials of his first wife's name intrigues him. How did this ring wind up in an antiques shop?
Spears is told that the shop used to be a pawn shop. He manages to follow a lead. Is the first wife still alive?
Maybe the man who pawned the ring have the answers.
It is a bittersweet story, although given how Arnold Spears behaved. You wonder if Jill will fake her death on some future date.
I noted how many people answered Spears rather personal questions. They used to give sensitive data away in the old days.
The Howerd Confessions: Episode #1.3 (1976)
Episode 3
Frankie Howerd makes reference to the bombastic music in the title sequence. As for the rest of the show, it really is a carry on with Talbot Rothwell on writing duties.
Frankie goes to hospital but no one seems to recognise him. Poor Francis is not famous enough for a private ward. He is placed with the rest of the commoners.
He needs to take his tonsils out. The Matron is not taking any nonsense from him. Frankie wants to leave until he catches glimpse of the shapely busty nurse. Allowing Frankie to Insert a Pinky and Perky joke.
Dr Smelley recognises Frankie and decides he can wisecrack better than the comedian in his ward.
With Talbot Rothwell, it does feel like Carry On Doctor lite. Madeline Smith is a knockout as the nurse.
Doctor Who: The Two Doctors: Part One (1985)
The Two Doctors: Part One
The Two Doctors should had been the highlight of Season 22. The return of Patrick Troughton as the second Doctor along with Frazer Hines as his companion Jamie.
Robert Holmes on writing duties. Jacqueline Pearce as the guest villainess and location shooting in Seville.
Unfortunately Peter Moffatt was not regarded as one of Doctor Who's best director especially in the Colin Baker era. He hardly uses Seville as a backdrop.
Holmes story has grotesque villains but very little by way of plot or a coherent story. It was too talky when it needed action. The first episode keeps both Doctors apart when the audience would want them to interact.
The second Doctor is sent by the timelords to stop a renowned scientist to do research on time travel. Meanwhile the Sontarans are hanging about wanting to get their hands on time travel.
The sixth Doctor later follows by which time the Sontarans have taken over the station. It looks like the timelords might have destroyed it instead.
The Listeners: Episode #1.1 (2024)
Episode 1
Adapted by Canadian author Jordan Tannahill from his best selling novel. Directed by American Janicza Bravo who made the finale of the first season of Poker Face. It was unusually these days, shot entirely on film stock and not video.
Claire (Rebecca Hall) is a school teacher in northern England who hears a constant humming sound. No one else hears it and it leaves her with a migraine and nose bleeds.
One day Kyle (Ollie West) an inattentive pupil at the school also talks about the same noise. It also bugs him and Kyle suggests there are others who hear this white noise.
Essentially that is the first episode. It took 45 minutes. No way is there material for a four part series.
Resident Alien: Homecoming (2024)
Homecoming
The shortened season three was a lot better than season two. The latter was always treading water searching for a main plot.
This was better but the finale was messy. Trying to set up season four and losing focus.
Harry gets an unexpected ally in Joseph Rainier. The latter realises that the Grey's plans for earth will make inhabitable for hybrids as well.
Together will Harry, Bridget and Asta. They want to stop D'arcy from blowing the Grey's spaceship up. Only for Kate turning up on the ship as well to look for her daughter.
I expected half the residents of Patience to show up at one point. Instead they decided to to do a Robocop tribute act.
It was certainly a bizarre finale with the twist not being that much of a surprise.
Moonflower Murders: Episode #1.2 (2024)
Episode 2
I was underwhelmed by the opening episode of Moonflower Murders. It was subdued and missed an element of the first series, Magpie Murders.
The second episode was more like it. There is even an appearance by Alan Conway in flashbacks.
Susan Ryeland returns to England, motivated by the money offered to her by the Treherne's. She thinks back to some years earlier when Conway could not deliver a novel. He had run out of ideas.
Until he spots the headline in the newspapers, the death of Frank Parris. Susan spots an opportunity for a storyline for his next novel. Now it is full circle.
While Susan investigates how a former employee was found guilty of Parris's murder. Atticus Pünd is also on the scene, investigating is latest case.
I think Pünd's being peripheral in the first episode hurt it. This was more like it as Horowitz finally gets to have fun.
Get Some In!: Exam Results (1977)
Exam Results
This could be an end of the era for the Get Some In boys. They get their exam results for their medical training.
Lilley and Richardson pass and get promoted. Leckie and Jakey fail. While Marsh is failed for cheating and worst is yet to come. He loses his stripes. March is not the same rank as the other boys.
The lads would like to stay together. Jakey, Lilley and Richardson get a posting to Malta. Leckie though gets a base in Germany.
Unfortunately Marsh is also going to Malta, so they want him to swap with Leckie. His new bride Corporal Wendy plays mind games with Marsh. Telling him how awful the base in Germany is.
Marsh now thinks that the base must be wonderful and changes his mind.
This should has been the end of the show. Marsh gets one up on the boys as they try to bribe him to go to the German base. He makes the most of it.
In the end there is some blue screen footage of the boys in Malta. While Marsh ends up somewhere really frosty.
Get Some In did get another series but Robert Lindsay had departed for good.
The Lloyd Bridges Show: The Epidemic (1963)
The Epidemic
Will Rose is a photojournalist who along with his wife Anna arrive at a small village in Yugoslavia.
The local village head Milovan (John Marley) gives them a warm welcome. He mistakes them for newlyweds.
Milovan arranges for a dance show to be put on for them after dinner. The female dancer collapses.
The next morning, Milovan wants Will and Anna to leave the village. Will does not want to, he is visiting to cover a local festival.
Instead as he suspected the villagers are suffering from a disease. The kind that could be easily remedied with clean water and some access to medication.
It gives Will an idea, can other similar villages be saved around the world.
This is another US propaganda episode, which the series regularly did such as the work of the peace corps.
The Law and Mr. Jones: Reunion (1962)
Reunion
Richard Walker (John Larch) is an old friend of Abraham Lincoln Jones. He has not seen him for over 20 years.
Walker's mother comes to see Jones. Her son has been convicted of murder and has been given the death penalty. Walker had murdered his ex wife's lover who she planned to marry.
Jones rushes to see what happened. Walker's lawyer told him to plead guilty and he would get a jail sentence. The judge he got had never handed out the death penalty.
When Jones goes to see the ex wife, he gets a different picture of Walker. He hated her wife's lover because he was Puerto Rican. He did not want his wife's new husband to be raising his kid.
The topic raised by this episode are relevant in 2024 than it was in 1962. Maybe this was the show the producers and Whitmore really wanted.
Doctors: One Day Like This (2024)
One day like this
What an appropriate song to end on. One Day Like This as the BBC give Doctors the elbow.
Although it has done well to last 24 years on the daytime slot. I am sure some medical ailments must have been tackled several times. Then there was those far out episodes with zombies and time travellers.
Doctors was a good breeding ground for young actors trying to get a foot in the ladder. It was also useful for veteran actors as well. To remind audiences they were still around.
More importantly it was a training ground for new writers and others in production roles.
The final episode is the rest of the Mill staff tackling the big bad. Dr Graham Elton has become a partner but has showed his nasty selfish side. This includes his discriminatory face.
As for Ruhma Carter, she is taken by someone to an abandoned building to deliver his girlfriend's baby. Only to find she needs to keep her wits about her and her mobile phone to connect. As well as dealing with a distressed woman about to give birth.
Wanted: Dead or Alive: Til Death Do Us Part (1958)
Til Death Do Us Part
Stacy Torrance is staying at a hotel and finds a wanted poster pushed through her hotel door. It states she is wanted for murder with a reward of $300.
The poster was pushed through the door by a man who looked like a riverboat captain. He quickly left town after placing the wanted poster.
A panicked Stacy finds Josh Randall. She tells him her abusive ex husband is responsible for the poster and she has been accused of murdering him.
Stacy also admits that both of the ran a riverboat casino and were cheating the gamblers.
All Josh has to do is find the husband alive and it will confirm Stacy's story. A reluctant Josh chases down the stagecoach that had earlier left town.
The ending was strange and uncalled for. After all the crooked husband was found so he was framing his former wife. I can only figure that the censorship laws could not ley Stacy get away with her admitted lawbreaking.