Some telly

Anyone watching that Caroline Quentin: A Passage Through India prog on ITV? Probably the worst travelogue programme ever. It seems to be the trend now to send a celeb who really does not like travelling much at all to the hottest most crowded places on the planet. Channel 5 actually did this quite well with Paul Merton in China & Paul Merton in India, and although Merton, ironically enough Quentin's former hubby, was uncomfortable most of the time he's very much a people person so he managed to overcome his environmental discomfort to produce some decent entertainment.

Quentin on the other hand looks permanently slightly ill so perhaps they should re-title the programme India: A Passage Through Caroline Quentin. She also looks constantly overheated and flustered. Her two reactions to the sights sounds and smells of the sub-continent are either blubbing or hysterical laughter, and her self-conscious presentation style is somewhat forced to say the least. She makes the jolly hockey sticks patronising of Kate Humble in Spice Trail seem a welcome relief. Yep, I'm not that keen on it!
.............................................................................................

Spoiler Alert - If any of you plan to but have yet to watch any of the new and final series of Waking The Dead, or The Killing then read no further....

We've arrived at the final series of the once wonderful Waking The Dead, and boy is this a tired old nag of a series. Once brilliant, if only for the utterly bonkers Peter Boyd, it is now a mere shadow of its former self. Four episodes and two stories into the final series sees Boyd with a new and equally ranked team member Detective Superintendent Sarah Cavendish, ex of the anti terrorist squad, who because of recent misdemeanours as yet not fully explained has found herself decamped to the dark basement that houses the Cold Case Unit. We know she's probably an alcoholic, and something happened in her previous posting that makes her baulk at entering suspected crime scenes. So far so formulaic. The other characters continue where they left off. I've always liked Dr Eve's leaps of imagination to come up with bizarre connections that Boyd dismisses with a raised eyebrow or an impatient demand for translation into English. I can see his point.

It used to be the case that the glaring plot holes were more than made up for by Boyd's various skirmishes with mental collapse, but so far, a few impatient asides apart, he has not really been the centre of attention which leads one to concentrate on the barely believable storylines. Not a good idea.

The first story featured a labyrinth plot featuring Munchausen's by proxy, missing bankers, a young boy who collects back issues of Readers Digest, and an old couple who might or might not be spooks.  Wantonly barking, and actually it wasn't too bad.

The second story however was an absolute stinker that tried to play it straight and vacuumed any sense of believability out of the viewer like a thundering great black hole. Set around a care home it was as if the the writers sat down with a list of all the most horrible nasty things you could imagine would happen to kids in care and ticked off the clichés one by one. Oh, and let's add incest with the foster mother as icing on the cake. This kind of thing is so typical of many run of the mill Brit cop shows, and waaay below what you would expect Waking The Dead to come up with. Hopefully this final series will improve or it should be renamed Bury The Dead About Twenty Feet Down And Pour Concrete On The Top.
.............................................................................................

Here in Burwood Towers we have become big fans of Scandinavian crime drama. This started with the Swedish original versions of Wallander, which were far better than the still good but predictably hammy UK version starring Kenneth Brannagh, and continues with the compelling Danish offering, The Killing.

This Saturday sees the tenth and final two hour helping of intricate understated and completely cliché free storytelling that the Scandinavians seem to do so well, set to a backdrop of dimly lit offices, and lots of wintery gloom in the outdoor scenes. The whole twenty hours of the show is focussed on solving the killing of one late teen girl, and interspersed with the machinations of Danish town hall politics. Particularly heart tugging is how the victim's parents cope with the loss of their daughter and how their relationship breaks, rebuilds, and breaks again under the unrelenting strain. One can only hope for a happy ending for these two.

Superbly well written, it is hard to imagine a UK TV exec taking the risk to do something similar as it assumes the audience have an attention span of greater than half an hour, and also assumes them to be intelligent enough to appreciate the intricacies of a very slowly evolving plot. Utterly marvellous.

The Danish crew have just finished filming a third series and the second series starts on BBC4 (probably the best UK channel in my opinion) later this year. If you missed this first series, do yourself a favour and catch the repeats if they come up, but definitely do not miss the second series.
.............................................................................................