Nell TV

I find British genre-TV is often dismal stuff, that’s pathetic at best, but RENEGADE NELL is good fun. Its confident scenario offers a quirky blend of superhero-mystery and comedy-adventure, where a failed soldier gets dangerous pixie powers to avenge a murder, commit Robin Hood robbery, and fight against landowners’ corruption. A scheming Earl (Adrian Lester) conjures up a version of devilish ‘Herne the Hunter’, for a spectacular mythic action sequence, while the heroine’s own family struggle to survive pursuit by mercenary types. 

Despite a climactic Jacobite plot to oust Queen Anne (Jodhi May), jokey anachronisms are all part of this drama’s witty appeal, so forget about historical or cultural accuracy, also happily opposed by top news-maker Lady Moggerhanger (a splendid Joely Richardson). Louisa Harland carries the show as the feminist vigilante, but it’s rather a shame that the creators supply a supporting cast with campy characters (especially a boringly pantomime highwayman), on both sides of the law, too. I think this could have been even better, as home-grown fantasy, with only Nell as a source of amusement. 

Nick Cave's theme song -

Watching the detectives 4

After Southern Comfort, The Right Stuff, Remo Williams, and Tremors, Fred Ward was the blokeyest of bloke actors. His various bids for Hollywood actioner stardom didn't really work out (as they did for Bruce Willis), but he made some very cult-worthy attempts. Martin Campbell’s neglected classic, CAST A DEADLY SPELL (1991), sees Fred portray H.P. Lovecraft as a private eye in a post-noir fantasy L.A. Tough, savvy ex-cop Phil Lovecraft firmly rejects all magic, but the city witches teach dancing, a blonde heiress hunts a unicorn, there’s blood rain at sunset, and the Dunwich club singer is played by Julianne Moore. Lovecraft is hired by a wealthy widower (David Warner) to find a rare book. His sleuthing search for the Necronomicon finds slapstick zombies everywhere. Giving ‘runes’ conjures up a monster from a cooking pot. Our heroic shamus is attacked by a stony gargoyle but saved by the femme fatale. Clancy Brown plays a slickly nasty gangster intending human sacrifice: “Any idea how hard it is to find a virgin in Hollywood?” Great slimy Old Ones return with a genre-breaking burst of midnight earthquakes. An enjoyable TV-movie that's great to see again, CADS creates a solidly witty blend of Chinatown and Ghostbusters that pre-dates popular Buffy spin-off Angel, and might have influenced The Dresden Files (2007). The Spanish DVD has English sound.

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TRUE DETECTIVE series 4 has a few great weird-crime scenes, but it remains a disappointment, overall. What was all the fuss about? OK, so NIGHT COUNTRY marks Jodie Foster’s TV-star debut, but very late to a subgenre party, after the likes of Holly Hunter (who made her Saving Grace cop-show 15+ years ago). Owing a substantial debt for its eerie atmosphere to weird-SF masterpiece, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), the main problem with TD 4, as a crime drama, is that far too much basic TV soap-opera is thinly disguised as standard character-study (see Hilary Swank’s Alaska Daily, about a NYC journalist in Anchorage, for a rather better example). Perhaps, the final crushing blow to NIGHT COUNTRY, as a mystery horror-show entertainment, is that it never quite manages to match, or avoid comparisons with, David Slade’s vampire thriller 30 Days Of Night (2007), which made witty use of its menacing darkness scenario. Good to see Christopher Eccleston has finally escaped from any lingering side-effects from his Doctor Who stint, but, honestly, Fiona Shaw, as loonily eccentric Rose, so easily out-shines everybody here, that she’s the scariest - and the funniest - part of this series. 

Too much of a soap-opera for my taste, MARE OF EASTTOWN stars Kate Winslet for six episodes about a detective-sergeant in Pennsylvania, tackling a local serial-killer case. There are hopelessly broken homes, grimly dysfunctional families, and it’s all, so often (intentionally!) bleakly melodramatic, with sit-com TV humour, it’s a wonder that nobody dies laughing. Whodunit plotting usually feels like crudely unsavoury back-drop material, that is intrusive, yet lacking much authentic cop-show appeal, beyond some blithely stupid behaviours by cruel kids, and various parents - who, of course, should know better. Churchy folks have no answers for the community's failures that are predictable, not simply unfortunate, like any neighbourhood tragedy. “Doing something great is over-rated” sounds like a TV signature line but, despite narrative possibilities for redemption through accepting personal challenges, the hard truth is that most do-gooders don’t get a second chance to do the right thing. Potential love-interests for nominal-heroine Mare (nicknamed: ‘Lady Hawk’), are teacher Richard (Guy Pearce), and sympathetic but doomed detective Colin (Evan Peters, Quicksilver in X-Men prequels). Mare’s grouchy mother Helen (Jean Smart), sometimes making an effective comic-relief granny, is good fun. Super-freckly Lori (Julianne Nicholson) is routinely excellent, deserving her Emmy more than Winslet did. Sadly, a climactic shoot-out for the kidnappings does not 'finalise' the chaotic crime traumas here. Obviously, this extended tangle of revelations about unplanned parenting and unsolvable family problems will end in tears. The closing twist is unconvincing, but... “After a while, you learn to live with the unacceptable.” 

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ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING is a comedy TV show with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, doing a New York crime podcast... where Sting is the first suspect. It's a highly amusing parody of amateur sleuths, who are neighbours, investigating a (suspicious?) death of an odd resident in their block. There’s brisk character development, so very little soap-opera present. Happily, it's more than just a sit-com, and almost a compelling satire on post-fame celeb-culture (for two older guys), one from 1990s' TV, the other from theatre, while Gomez is a great young foil for the American comedy stars. The most notable episodes are Boy From 6B, where actors have no audible dialogue or they're using sign-language because the podcast sponsor’s son is deaf, so it’s nearly a ‘silent-movie’ story. Fan Fiction has the podcast ‘stars’ meeting their crazily avid followers. Best guest-star is undoubtedly Tina Fey as Cinda, the celeb maven of the podcasting scene. Of course, there’s a twist-ending. Two further seasons are available now, and a fourth is in the works.

 

A pun on ‘manhunt’, Joe Penhall’s MINDHUNTER begins when the rule “psychology is for backroom boys” is rudely challenged by ambitious agent Ford, an idealist with empathy in conflict with old-school, late 1970s' policing (Ford shows Dog Day Afternoon to FBI trainees). When Ford meets crusty veteran Bill Tench, the agency's road-school boss, their chalk ‘n’ cheese duo are quickly established. Ford interviews serial killer Ed Kemper who spurs the team’s behavioural science research. “How can we get ahead of crazy..?” Cue: Talking Heads’ song Psycho Killer, roll credits. David Fincher directs the first two episodes with a perfect pacing not maintained later with good guy/ nerdy cop routines. Third episode’s intro for Dr Wendy Carr (Anna Torv, Fringe) prompts development of this BSU project, so there’s steady progress on questioning convicts about their motives. Cue: Boomtown Rats’ I Don't Like Mondays. Complications emerge from criminal lies about Federal corruption, while they brag of their own extremely violent fantasy lives. Contrast this with investigating busybody concerns, focusing on how mildly inappropriate activities may become escalating compulsions, while big differences between serial and spree killers are hot-button profiling labels. Fincher directs season one’s finale, exploring how the abyss is for stares, and the void for screams.

Watching the detectives

Can a British comedy icon play serious crime-drama? Rowan Atkinson’s MAIGRET is four TV movies, complete with a French cop’s stern demeanour and signature pipe. Police on trail of a serial killer in Paris have to persuade female officers to volunteer as bait, to catch a painter-turned-psycho whose obsessive mother (Fiona Shaw) and his domineering wife always protect their pampered man-child at any cost. 

Second story Dead Man better showcases Parisian 1950s settings, complete with WW2-damaged buildings filmed on Hungarian locations for vicious murders. No jokes about bad Czechs, please. 

Night At The Crossroads begins with the shooting of a Belgian jeweller. A mysterious one-eyed Dane is the suspect, and his nervous ‘sister’ is haunted by family disgrace. Missing diamonds, an illegal boxing club, a car chase down country lanes, add layers to puzzler about underworld temptations leading to gangster mayhem. Engagingly insightful questions posed by Maigret reveal corruption by a police colleague. 

Creepy menace at strip-club kicks off the final film where a blonde, who reported a plot against a ‘Countess’, is found strangled at home. There’s a brief sit-com sketch about a cat but Atkinson does not seem to mind. Chief Inspector Maigret’s gifts of ‘reading’ people are supported by empathy for crime victims, and willingness to protect innocents. The depth of this humanity, and official duty of caring, often proves decisive in cracking the most tangled of cases. So, not surprisingly, the spectres of neither TV farce Mr Bean or spy-fi movie-parodies of Johnny English make even a fleeting appearance here at all. 

Atkinson’s characterisation of the sleuth is always seriously sympathetic and far too kind for any keen sense of humour. Jokes usually require cynicism and certain levels of cruelty to provoke laughter. Comedy would be a sharp curse on this measured investigation of weakness and failure. Farce is always mean, but hard truth is never funny after people die from abuse or lies. That’s the appeal of this possibly unique version of Maigret.

From a police chief in Montmartre, to American gumshoe Sam enjoying a quiet 1960s lifestyle in rural France, Clive Owen’s MONSIEUR SPADE tackles a violent case involving slaughtered nuns, an unlucky teen heiress, and links to Algerian espionage. Hammett with a twist, here’s six episodes with pickled noir dialogue where an  emphysema-suffering tough-guy drives a Citroen and wears glasses, but swims nude, to amuse his neighbours, whether they’re British spooks or not. 

Local jazz-club owner Marguerite (Louise Bourgoin, heroine of Luc Besson’s The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adèle Blanc-Sec) lurks on periphery of plot that swerves around crypto-gifted chosen-boy Mahdi, wanted by everybody from the Vatican to CIA. This show might be for cynics only, because optimism looks deadly, especially when guns wait on both sides of a door. Is the “15 going on 50” troublesome girl really Spade’s daughter? Secrets of prejudice and revenge creep from past confusions to present dilemmas. 

There's a hatred of cemeteries because such land is a waste of garden spaces. Can moral debts ever be paid? Effective as character-study, and intriguing period spy-fi. Clearly, this is not a crazy sci-fi like the comic-book TV of Pennyworth, but its escalating situation tilts closer towards fatal tragedy for an idyllic town where (almost?) nobody can be trusted. Except, perhaps, Alfre Woodard - arriving in a Mercedes from across a bridge (a hostage-exchange scene, of course), to explode all the murky goings-on here, just like a classic whodunit finale.

Next week on WATCHING THE DETECTIVES
Only Murders In The Building - TV comedy with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, doing a New York crime podcast... where Sting is the first suspect.