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Eskimo Day (BBC, 1996)
"Are you going to call out 'good luck'?"
"Are you?"
"I was just debating."
"People might hear."
#eskimo day#jack rosenthal#single play#bbc#piers haggard#1996#maureen lipman#david ross#benedict sandiford#tom wilkinson#anna carteret#laura howard#alec guinness#james fleet#kathryn pogson#grant warnock#laurie ventry#kathy kiera clarke#susannah wise#lila kaye#pippa hinchley#a characteristically heartfelt piece from Rosenthal. as he did throughout his careerâ he draws on his own lifeâ specifically a recent trip#to Cambridge with wife Lipman and son Adam; spinning the feelings of parental loss at the prospect of a child leaving home into a work for#tv presumably bringing some catharsis. like all Jack's work this is by turns devilishly funny and achingly poignant. a great cast bring it#all togetherâ with special mentions for Guinness (in his final screen role before retirement) as an aged parent fussed over by his son in a#clever contrast to the other child and parent relationships on displayâ as well as Lipman (who gets a tour de force moment at the emotional#apex of the play) and Wilkinson in an unrecognisably unpleasant form as the domineering and bullying father of another potential student#(an unusually broadly written part for Rosenthalâ who often looked for the best in every one of his charactersâ but who makes Wilkinson#here a detestable bore and an abusive spouse). recently shown on bbc4 and so possibly available on iplayerâ it's worth finding#and was successful enough on first broadcast to warrant a sequel play the following yearâ Cold Enough for Snow
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Brond: Part Two (1.2, Channel 4, 1987)
"Somebody's lashed his thumbs with a piece of string. Same type of string, by the look of it. Probably cut from the same length. Find another piece of it, tying something else, and the forensic people would be happy. Didn't even have the strength to struggle out from under the bags. He bled on that while he lay there - not much, but by then he didn't have much to lose. Given his all for Queen and country, or whatever it was he thought he was dying for. It's a nice question. Who killed him: the one who shot him, or the one who brought him out here?"
"Where are you taking me? I want to go to the police."
"Whatever made you think you had a choice?"
#Brond#classic tv#channel 4#1987#Frederic Lindsay#Michael Caton Jones#Stratford Johns#John Hannah#Louise Beattie#james cosmo#Jeffrey Chiswick#Christopher Ellison#ian mcelhinney#Niall O'brien#Bernadette shortt#Billy riddoch#Laurie ventry#This uniquely unsettling series continues to confound. Once more SPOILERS INCOMING but if you read the tags on my last post you'd know that#This series is purportedly about armed Scots nationalist forces (at least so the blurb says). At the end of part 2 (of 3) that still isn't#Exactly obvious. I can see that we're getting thereâ more so than in part 1â but Lindsay seems to have made the fascinating decision to#Obscure the basic plot and the politics of the story with this heavy dose of... Idk. Magical realism? Or.. Dark fantasy? Or deniable#Supernaturalness... I'm not sure there's a term for it. But the heavy focus here is that there is Somethingâ some force of evilâ which baby#John Hannah has got himself mixed up with. This second part almost starts to lose the plot a little (there are quite a lot of seemingly#Unrelated threads that I'm sure will be resolved but at this point it's making my head spin). And I don't mean to suggest this is at all#Non political by moving the focus; the police force as represented here are at best criminally incompetentâ at worse wholesale corrupt and#Implicated in every manner of human rights abuses. This is a whole melting pot of ideas and themes and weirdness and angerâ all of which#Have made me fascinated to track down Lindsay's novel ASAP so I can see if it is even a little bit more straightforward.. But there's still#An episode to go (and for all my perplexed ramblingâ I really am enjoying this)
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Brond: Part One (1.1, Channel 4, 1987)
"Satan sets out to torment and God, being good, is obliged to encounter him. God has no choice, no matter how weary He is of the game. Satan must be defeated - but never is quite. So we owe red roses and sunsets to Satan's joy in being mastered."
#Brond#classic tv#channel 4#Frederic Lindsay#Michael Caton Jones#john hannah#Stratford Johns#james cosmo#ian mcelhinney#Russell hunter#Louise beattie#Andrew Barr#Alec heggie#Billy mcelhaney#Anne myatt#Sandy Neilson#Niall O'brien#Bernadette shortt#Laurie ventry#C4 was but a babe in arms when it commissioned this adaptation of Frederic Lindsay's novel from the writer himself. I'd never heard of him#Nor of thisâ but was tempted to invest because 1. It was cheap and 2. Ever since Simply Media folded (rip forever in my heart) I've been#Very conscious that all their output is essentially now 'out of print' and stuff like this may never see another commercial release (a#Genuinely tragic thought). It sounded interesting enough tooâ plus the mix of old professionals like Johns and new acting icons like Hannah#Rubbing shoulders sounded irresistible. SPOILERS INCOMING: the dvd blurb talks about Scots nationalist plots and thriller tropes but for#Once I wish I could have come into this absolutely blind (but then would I have bought?) because Lindsay does an incredible thing. This#First (of 3) part never once hints at the nationalism or thriller plot that will presumably come. He devotes an entire third of his drama#To essentially setting (a somewhat misleading I suspect) tone. This is closer to dark fantasy or some kind of magical realismâ where Johns'#Brond (who it is STRONGLY implied may actually be satan incarnate) is a dreamlikeâ semi unreal figure who may be manifesting as part of#Hannah's sickly subconscious. If this does end up being a straight thriller then this is a truly exceptional and uniquely disturbing opener#If it actually is an urban horror good vs evil thingâ then the blurb writers were badly misinformed; but I don't mind all that much..
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