During July and August 2012 there has been some great dramatic series fiction on Television with Blackout a three part BBC production together with three more episodes of Wallander with Kenneth Branagh. I have particularly enjoyed The Newsroom the new Arron Sorkin creation which covers contemporary events with all the impression of authenticity that covered West Wing and with echoes of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister which continues to be rerun on channels. The second series of the Bogies returns with more attention to the machinations of the Pope attempting to sustain his position and further the interests of his family than the explicit sexuality which in my judgement failed to add to the excellent performance of Jeremy Irons, while I am still trying to catch up with the latter episodes of the final season of the Sopranos, discovering in the process a rerun of Inspector Montalbano and being able to experience the first of 12 episodes which I missed. The first episode of a new series of George Gently set in Northumbria commenced on Sunday while to day there is a new series of New Tricks. I also accidentally came across a brilliant live short play performance of the meeting of spy Guy Burgess when the worked for the BBC as Parliamentary editor and Winston Churchill when he remained an isolated figure during the period when Chamberlain attempted to appease Hitler and his embryonic Nazi Empire.
In this first piece I try and remember Blackout which starred the former Dr Who Christopher Eccleston and one of my favourite female actresses, the always adorable, she will hate me for her describing her in this way, Dervia Kirwan.
The subject is a corrupt London politician who commits manslaughter on his way to become a popular Mayor of London supported by a large international corporation bidding to control the city though taking over the public sector services.
Eccleston plays Daniel Demoys the chairman of a contract allocating committee of what I presume is an individual local authority rather than the Greater London Council. It is never made clear which came first, his alcoholism or his corruption, paid by the man he goes on to kill for providing contract information and ensuring the man gains lucrative contracts for pubic sector services. Married to Dervia and with three children he consoles himself with the separated wife of a Metropolitan police Detective using a seedy Soho drinking club cum brothel.
Following a night of debauchery he encounters and kills the corrupt service provider and this triggers a great sense of guilt which leads him to intervening in an attempted assassination in which he is shot and become an overnight popular hero. Because of blackouts we the audience and Demoys himself is not sure his responsibility which he attempts to establish by retracting his movements on the fatal night.
Through a close political adviser Jerry Durrans played by Ewan Bremner had become an expert in managing elections and pushes Daniel into using his popularity to sweep into the office of Mayor, unaware that this former idealist has become one of several placed individuals by a sinister fascist corporation set on controlling greater London by winning contracts for all the essential and major public services. He initially successfully blackmails Demoys into cooperating and abandons his plans to create a utopian political situation in which the people own the services in such a way that they cannot be privatised. The position of the Mayor is undermined by the daughter of the man he killed seeking to know what her father was doing and why he was killed and by the Police Detective husband of his mistress who has suspicions about their infidelity and the involvement of Demoys in the death, helped on by a corrupt senior police officer also in the pay of the corporation.
Eventually Eccleston cleans himself up especially when the lives of his wife and children are threatened and realises that he will only be free of his guilt by confessing to his responsibility for the death and corrupt involvements leading to a long period of imprisonment. Through this atonement he rescues his marriage and relationship with his children as well as taking steps to stop the privatisation and set a new regime of good government for the capital. There is also the prospect of a new relationship between the Police detective and his former wife.
Conspiracies, politics, the police, the media and sex and corruptions has always interested me for reasons which should be implicit in my writings over the past five years and the level of acting in this work and broad subject matter outweighed the many questionable moments. However the series became very topical with the failure of the private corporation to provide the level of contracted security at the Olympic Games leading to the deployment of soldiers and arousing pubic concern and insecurity before the games commenced. This led one Tory Minister to admit he had reviewed his previous prejudices about the ability of the private sector to always perform better than the public. The success of the Olympic Games and the role played by London Mayor Boris Johnson has also highlighted the importance the London Mayor in British politics and in this in instance the future of the Tory Party in the UK and that of David Cameron in particular albeit with Scum Murdoch pulling the strings.
Kenneth Branagh
has achieved something which I thought impossible. He has matched the brilliant performances of the Swedish production of the Wallander Police Detective Books written by Henning Mankel with a three of four bi annual series. The fourth will be the last comprising the White Lioness and the two part adaptation of the final book Wallander book, a Troubled Man.
The first of the third series, “An event in autumn” Wallander is setting up home with his new girl friend, after the death of his father. He has become estranged from his daughter following her marriage to which he was not invited. This marks a change from the original TV series in which the daughter comes to work as a police woman at his station.
The story begins with the audience understanding that an inebriated lorry driver on the ferry between Sweden and Poland spots what he believes is a person falling from the side of the ship in the water past the window at which he is sitting in a bar lounge. The vessel is halted and a passenger and crew count taken and no one are found to be missing.
There are then two events which become connected to this incident. First the part remains, including a hand, of a female are found washed ashore suggesting a body caught up in a ship’s propeller. Meanwhile Kurt’s (Wallander’s) dog discovers a body buried under brambles in the garden of his idyllic new home and situation. This depresses him more than his partner. The length of time the body has laid leads to an investigation of previous owners. It also leads to contact with the neighbouring farmer and when his partner is attacked while investigation movement outside, Kurt chases the individual to the premises of the father. How are these events connected?
The mystery is solved when Kurt speaks to a young woman waiting at the quayside and finds that her friend has not appeared following a ferry trip to Poland which had been taken to seek financial assistance for the child the friend was carrying. It subsequently emerges that the father of the child is the bar man from the ferry who is also the son of the neighbouring farmer. He altered the ship’s passenger list via a computer terminal in the bar. It also emerges that the son had previously killed the girl whose body is found during close to the bramble bush. Kurt had discovered that in the advertising brochure for the property there were no bramble bushes but on visiting the farm he noted some bramble bushes and spaces revealing that some of the bushes had been transplanted.
It emerges that the son had befriended a girl staying at Wallander’s new home in the past. He had killed the girl and the knowledge of what happened had led his mother to commit suicide. The father had reburied the body on learning that the new owner was the famous police inspector. Once the truth emerges the father also commits suicide. However before this Montalbano turns his attention of a scrap yard owner who lived at the home for a time and to the mystery surrounding there whereabouts of his daughter who is found to be living in the USA and who contacts Wallander to prove she is alive. This part of the investigation reveals that the man sexual abused his daughter forcing her to also act as a prostitute along with the girl discovered buried and the two Polish girls’ one of whom was murdered. The other girl is also ordered by the killer of the other two.
This depressing episode gets worse when Kurt pressurises his female assistant to break into the Scrap yard against her better judgement. She is forced to shoot the two guard dogs that attack them and the owner strikes the assistant with a spade placing her in a coma from which she does not immediately recover. His partner leaves him not so much because of the history of the property but Kurt finds it increasingly difficult to communicate and share his feelings, in part requirements of his work but also tied in with the relationship with his father and daughter, the separation from his wife and feeling correctly responsible for what happened to his female assistant.
In the Dogs of War Branagh moved towards finding salvation for his trouble soul. This time two murdered men with their faces disfigured by acid are washed ashore in a dingy. In the introduction we had seen a fishing boat approach the dingy and then cast it adrift on the sight of the bodies. The investigation leads to the arrival of a Detective from Riga in Latvia who appears to be keeping info from Wallander. He stays at the home of Kurt for a hard drinking session at which they share something of how the job they do affects their relationships and their ability to communicate. Wallander presents the detective with a book about Sweden and the man leaves before Kurt awakes the next day.
Following the stealing of the dingy that had contained the bodies the man had revealed he had been investigating a drug ring but also suggesting he was under threat and the involvement of his superiors, indicating high level corruption.
When he learns that the detective has been murdered he travels to Riga and is met by two senior offices from the local station who take him to the funeral and introduce Kurt to the widow. They appear to suspect the widow of being involved with the death of her husband because of a relationship with a journalist investigating the drug gang and the issue of corruption. The journalist is framed for the murder and is then found hanged in his cell. Kurt who had developed a relationship with the widow returns home having been told the case is now closed.
At home he discovers the camera of the detective and this contains a photo copy of the file the detective kept on his investigation. Returning to Riga he and the widow join forces and they are soon under attack from the gang and their police contact. He is forced to hand over the evidence to obtain the release of the captured widow. With her help in then breaks into the police station and locates where the original file was kept hidden.
The issue is which of the two senior police officers is the guilty man? Only at the last minute does Kurt realises he has suspected the wrong man but fortunately the other is on hand and the guilty are apprehended. Kurt returns home, the relationship with the widow having developed but neither prepared to invest in something more substantial. The relationship has possessed healing aspects for both of them.
It is with the third episode Before the Frost that the extent to which the authors have created links between three selected books have is fully appreciated.
A woman disappears and is found to have been murdered. She had come across a man setting swans on fire, one of who aflame managed to fly off attracting the attention of someone who reported the incident. I remembered this incident from the original Swedish production but after this the story take a very different slant.
Kurt is visited at his isolated home in the countryside on the coast by a disturbed young woman who he knows as a friend of his daughter. She appears to want to tell him something but runs off. This leads Kurt to making contact with his daughter again. They find the friend is not at her flat and contact with her mother played by the excellent Lindsay Duncan reveals that these two have also become estranged and that girl has been away at university, but a visit there finds that she has dropped out and appears to have joined a religious cult. There are other odd deaths with the same component of someone dying as form of atonement. It emerges the missing girl’s father presumed dead returns and it here that is causing the death of individuals seeking atonement for past sins. Wallander becomes involved in a situation where the man has organised for his wife and daughter to commit suicide to atone for the fact that the with the help his wife his daughter had an abortion after being raped.
It is the girl who breaks out of the situation saving herself and her mother. The experience results in Wallander and his daughter confronting what happened between them and the daughter makes up for her father not being at the wedding letting him accompany her to the pregnancy ultra sound where he sees the picture of her child. The female assistant is also on the road to recovery and she tells Wallander he does not need to assuage his guilt by constant visiting. She has her husband and her daughter. The series therefore ends on a positive and optimistic note after the depressing gloom engendered by the first.
I must use some credit with Amazon to buy the Wallander books, or at least some of them. First however I will read the Montalbano Books after the discovery that the BBC Four has commenced a second series after the first 9 episodes were shown between February and April this year and achieved ratings averaging 700000. It would be surprising if as with Wallander the BBC did not commission English. Language versions of this excellent series in time. Some twenty or more novels and scripts have been created since 1984, some of which are yet to be translated into the English Language. The BBC series is following the Italian showings which commenced in 1994 with two episodes followed by a similar number in 2000 and 2001. Then in 2002 four episodes were made into TV episodes with two others in 2005, 2006, and the four more in 2008. There was then a gap of three years until 2008 when three more episodes were aired bringing the total to 21. Six of these were scripts without books.
Inspector Montalbano
is much more outgoing but as clever Detective as Wallander. The episode experienced on Saturday evening has a different title from the book, the seventh written and called Round the Mark and which I have ordered and will be delivered on Wednesday along with the other first 11 written between 1994 2008. The BBC title is Turning Point. This is because the episode reflect a potential major change in the life of the Detective.
In this episode Montalbano has decided to resign because of a scandal affecting a mainland force in which it is said evidence was fabricated and suspects beaten up. He is appalled by the behaviour colleagues on the mainland tarnishes all their reputations, especially after similar problem involving the police forced centred on Napoli.
As with the first BBC series the series depends on the interaction between Montalbano and his three colleagues, his deputy Mimi Augello, the former playboy now married to Beba (Beatrice di Leo) who is expecting their first child and the next in command Guisppe Fazio who they refer to as Fazio and the desk officer and general factotum Agatino Caterella who is khack handed and a figure of fun but is also a very serious and dedicated officer with hidden talents which are allowed to emerge from time to time. It is Mimi who guesses what Montalbano has decided to resign and berates him accusing him of betraying his colleagues who are also honest and dedicated.
Montalbano goes off for a swim in a bay near to his house to reflect on what has happened and bumps into floating body which he brings ashore and then lies close to it exhausted. An elderly couple on holiday with a borrowed gun attempt to arrest Montalbano thinking he is a murderer and when having called the station Mini and Fazio arrive the man hits Montalbano on the head with the pistol knocking him down before he can be restrained. The couple then appear on local TV making disparaging remarks about a lack of law and order in Sicily because of its reputation as the home of the Mafia. Montalbano incensed ensures that action is taken on discovering that weapon is not licensed.
Usually he presses the Coroner for the results of the autopsy but this time it is the Coroner who approaches the Inspector charging him with a lack of concern assuming the body is but one of the hundreds of immigrants washed up dead. The body was dead before being into the water for a week or more and because of the current the face cannot be identified but there are indications the limbs had been tied and then cast into the sea at point to make it look as if it was under failed migrant.
The detective is then called to the harbour after a boat with illegal immigrants has been apprehended and Salvo sees a young boy of Middle Eastern appearance perhaps eight or night running off. He approaches the boy and although they speak different languages he is able to establish confidence and reunites the boy with a woman with several other children. The woman is delighted to see the child and then appears to claim her leg is broken as she falls. Later the Inspector finds there is no record of her at the hospital and the ambulance driver confirms that on arrival she said she was OK and had walked with difficulty into the hospital casualty department. This Salvo is told was likely to have been a ploy as there are no security cameras within the hospital which meant the woman would then leave with the children whereas she would have been taken from the harbour and formally interviewed by the police/immigration authorities.
He discussed this situation by phone with his mainland woman friend Livia Burlando played by Kathrina Bohm and also as a voice by Claudia Catani, presumably when the actress left the series or was unable to be filmed. It is assumed that the gaps in this 12 year lasting series is because one or more of the actors was otherwise committed.
In this instance the concerns, shared by the woman friend, are soon realised when an immigrant boy is found dead the subject of a hit and run. He finds this is the same boy who he persuaded to return to the woman he believed was the boy’s mother, A local farmer who witnessed part of what happened at a distance and partially unsighted because of a wall suggests that the boy was deliberately run down.
Montalbano arranges for a colleague to make a mock up of the face from the body in the water, reminding of similar action in the film Gorky Park. Catarella brings the computer generated face suggesting it is that of a wanted criminal. Mimi disagrees about the similarly of likeness. His position appears confirmed when the local Police commander says that the man was buried by his widow a year before.
What the Inspector is able to uncover is a horrific example of child abduction and bringing to Italy for use as spare body parts, to be sold to be paedophiles or for slave labour. The Inspector is helped by journalist introduced to him by the Coroner who is investigating the trade and by Ingrid a female friend who arrives at the station when invited to have dinner only to find the policeman has forgotten but then sees the photo of the dead man who she identified as the man previously believed dead and who taken her for sex to rooms he was using at an otherwise deserted former Tuna Factory close to the beach where the body was found.
It is here that the Inspector and the force lay in wait when getting info of the arrival of next fishing boat filled with young male migrants. The Inspector intervenes when he sees one of the boys beaten for protesting at being given an injection/taking of a blood sample. The children are held at the centre for medical examination and grading for onward selling on the mainland. Montalbano is shot while rescuing the boy killing the gang leader in the process. The episode ends with Montalbano convalescing in a mountain top country treat used by his father and where apart from Mimi who brings him there the only other person involved is a neighbour and former friend of his father who has arranged for the place to be ready for him with bedding and food. He is still considering his future.
The first four new episodes of George Gently was screened last night on BBC1 and it one of the best if not the best of this five series drama about which I have written extensively in the past including three of his early books, disappointing only because they are set in East Anglia the home of the author with the TV series set in Northumbria.
Great Northern Soul
is about race bigotry fuelled by the infamous Enoch Powell Rivers of Blood Speech of April 1968. While the character of Gently is played by the likeable Martin Shaw (Judge Deed) also as Lewis Collins News Avengers, Inspector Dalgliesh - PD James and The Chief, Rhodes and Cranford whereas his Sergeant is a weasel young man full of prejudices about everyone and everything.
The scene is set in a 1960’s all nighter to records held at a local hall where 45 play records are also traded, and unlicensed, the only drink on sale is orangeade. The popular club is used by some of the then few black/mixed race young people in the North East which until as late as the eighties racism was rampant at all levels within the regional society and where tribalism still remains a significant feature. The introduction suggests that two men brothers, one who acts as the DJ and another who rents the building for the event, fancy one of two girls, one of whom has West Indian parents with the father settling in the UK after serving in the airforce in World War II. The father is played Ambrose Kenny is played by Eastender Eamonn Walker.
When the girl is found with her head battered in an area known for “working girls” to take their clients Gently’s sidekick assumes she was a Black Prostitute which he leaks to a local press contact to the horror of Gently who was a supporter of the assassinated Marin Luther King. Suspicion causing the death of the girl falls on five men and one woman.
The man who organises these weekly events runs a fish and chip van by day and is the son of a notorious hard man loan shark and white supremacist. This son has a history of GBH. However the most likely candidate is the DJ younger brother who was having an affair with the girl and although the elder brother implied he had sex with the girl, this was talk. The girl was one of those selling drugs at the event to earn money to go to America with her friend wanting to make a career for herself as a singer. Other suspects are the girl’s father and her brother as well as an former variety artist who runs an guest house with a notice saying No Dogs and Whites only and who lives around the corner from the family and who is proved to have sent a note to her father saying the death was good riddance and they all should leave. Gently threatens to close her down once the race relations Act comes into operation.
It with great difficulty the truth is uncovered in part when the Sergeant goes uncover to the all nighter and befriends the best friend of the killed girl as well as the DJ son of the racist criminal. He forms an emotional attachment with the young woman which alters his prejudices. It emerges that the dead girl was pregnant and that on the night of her death the young brother DJ had been told to end the relationship by his father and had become incensed when seeing the girl with the older brother who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with her as well. He had in fact given her £20 from his father to arrange an abortion. The girl had resisted his advances to take her home.
She was also upset on seeing her boyfriend make a successful pass at her best friend and she had set off alone to walk home in the middle of the night. The girl’s father turned out to be different from the story he had presented of himself claiming to have been a pilot with medals when he had remained in a desk job having been refused permission to switch to an active service role. Later he explains he had adopted the role to try and counter the aggro the children were getting at school because of the colour of their skin. The brother is turning to the militant black movement as a reaction to the passivity of his father and the reaction of the white community.
In fact the daughter was not murdered as such but died as a result of a hit and run accident by a drunk driver who was taking a prostitute to the area she used. She came forward after reading that Gently had reminded that the dead girl was someone’s daughter whatever in reality were her true circumstances. Before this is communicated the fascist father of the brothers organises an attack on a vigil being held for the girl and in the ensuing mêlée the older brother is stabbed to death. It emerges that the death was caused by the younger brother. This occurs after the girl’s father tried to confess to this crime after seeing that the knife belonged to his son. The Rivers of Blood speech fuels the feelings in the local community finding support in the police. The guest house owner puts back her sign saying Whites only and the henchmen of the Fascist and now grieving father wreck the home of the West Indian background family. The father gets his war time weapon to kill the Fascist racist but is persuaded by his son and Gently to hand it over. This first of four episodes was made sometime ago, before the Olympic Games when one long distance runner Mohammed Farah and one 30 year old female Boxer Nicola Adams changed the position of migrant and non white citizens in the UK, hopefully for the better and for all time. This proved to be an excellent and potentially significant programme.
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