Quarter 1 Reviews- 018 Mystery- Old

018 Mystery – Old

Venus in Copper is an adaptation by Mary Cutler of Lindsey Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco mysteries, set in ancient Rome.  With 6 x 30 minute episodes, the adaptation structure allows us to go into a lot of detail about ancient Rome.  The music is minimal but effective, and like most modern mysteries set in ancient Rome, the slang is modern while remaining historically accurate (I think), with characters exclaiming, “Jupiter!” or “sacred Juno” when the modern equivalent would be “Jesus!” or “goodness gracious” or something like that.  Anyway, it was well-plotted, well-acted, and Falco a loveable rogue.  Anton Lesser gets to demonstrate a fair amount of range here, with many sotto voce asides. The redundancy/first person narration does make him feel slightly like a noir gumshoe, but they don’t overuse this tonally, even if the plot has to do with real estate schemes, insurance fraud, and femme fatales.  Falco, recently bailed out of jail by his mother, is looking for a new place to live.  His girlfriend, posh senator’s daughter Helena (Ann Madeley), has had a miscarriage, and their future is uncertain.  He wants her to come live with him; she’s unsure.  He meets dodgy estate agent Cossus (Laurence Sanders), who gets him a crumbling, nearly empty tenement.  He’s been hired by Pollia (Julia Hills), one of three freed slaves who now share a household, to protect Hortensius Novus (Jez Thomas) from being murdered for his money, they think, by complex, seductive, quick-witted Severina Zoitica (Bella Merlin).  As Falco investigates, he finds out that three of Severina’s previous three husbands have died.  No one has been able to pin any of the deaths on her, but they all look suspicious—and she has experience with poison.  When she tries to seduce Falco, in true femme fatale style, it’s never clear whether it’s a scam or she has real feelings for him.  It’s the involvement of high-level crook Appius Priscillus that nearly gets Falco killed.  There are some nice minor characters, such as a mesmerizing snake-dancer (Chipo Chung) and Tyche the astrologer.  There’s an amusing sub-plot with Falco being gifted an enormous turbot for services to the Emperor, and Titus Caesar (Jonathan Keeble) coming by personally to the dinner party, where he flirts with Helena.  Falco’s not ‘avin’ it!  It was directed by Peter Leslie Wild and originally broadcast in 2006.

Quarter 3 Reviews- 018 Mystery - Old

018 Mystery – Old 

I wasn’t so sure about Kate Brannigan- Clean Break at first, though by the end I had gotten into it.  Kate Brannigan, it seemed to me, was very much like Candy Matson, if she had been British and had transferred to the end of the twentieth century instead of its midpoint.  Kate Brannigan is a Manchester-based private investigator, whose weird counterpart is her lover Richard Barclay (John Lloyd Fillingham), who seemed to be a banker?  In any case, Brannigan starts the story as the security system she installed for a man with an old English country estate has not withstood the predations of a gang who are stealing priceless pieces of art from such houses up and down the country.  When she talks to the insurance man, Michal Ragoon, she discovers that his office has been advising country estate owners to replace their real artwork with fakes—at least three of the fakes have been stolen.  Brannigan goes to her journalist friend for help as well as Dennis, a thief who now is a Thai boxing trainer.  When she gets the CC TV, Brannigan realizes that Dennis has actually been the one doing the cat burglary.  In exchange for keeping him out of the line of fire, he arranges for her, in disguise, to give a “priceless” piece of heirloom Anglo-Saxon jewelry to the buyer, whom she promptly follows. Machinations ensue.  I liked Brannigan; a fun, capable character, second only to Kathleen Turner’s VI Warshawski.  Originally from 1998, Clean Break was written by Val McDermid and produced by Melanie Harris.  It also starred Noreen Kershaw, Joseph Jones, Geoff Hinsliff, Rob Pickavance, Martin Reeve, and Kathryn Hunt.

Quarter 1 Reviews- 018 Mystery- Old

018 Mystery – Old

At times, I did despair of Hanging Judge from 1953; at an hour and a half, it was WAY, WAY too long (a consequence of its era, no doubt, but also probably due to writer Raymond Massey’s self-indulgence and a desire to give star Boris Karloff a really good part).  I reckon you could have done it in half an hour, 45 minutes tops, these days, and made a really tight thriller.  Nevertheless, Karloff does get a chance to really test those acting chops, playing a cavern-voiced, sinister, yet highly urbane and eloquent High Court judge who is known for convicting innocent men and sending them to the gallows.  This earns him enemies.  A supremely slimy individual, Sir Francis Brittain leads a double life in the remote countryside as Frederick Bainbridge, where he has illicit relations (how taboo for radio in 1953!) with a guileless West Country servant called Mary Reddish (Gabrielle Blunt).  One day, he gets accosted at his club by John Teal (John T. St Barry), who arranges to meet him in Norfolk.  There, Teal reveals he is Brittain’s illegitimate son and has brought letters Brittain wrote to his mother, first of all urging an abortion, then washing his hands of the whole affair.  However, Teal is at least as horrid as his father, as he engineers his own death by Brittain’s hands, making it look like a premeditated murder.  Immunity can protect Brittain only for so long, and eventually he is put on trial, his enemies baying for his blood.  As a vehicle for Karloff, it’s great stuff; as a narrative, it’s pretty tortured yet effective.  Nevertheless, it’s populated by boring stuffed shirts, lawyers and policemen the lot of them, despite the best efforts of the actors.  What a stifling place Britain must have been in 1953.  No wonder the Goons were trying to drive themselves sane.  It was produced by Cleland Finn and also starred Hugh Manning, Duncan McIntyre, Howieson Culff, Robert Webber, Richard Williams, Norman Claridge, and Richard Hutton.