Chain – Film 90 – The Wonder Years – tape 1018

Cast your minds back two years (almost) to when I looked at the first three episodes of Chain. I’m not sure my brief synopsis is enough to keep up, but it sets up the premise.

This is the fourth and final episode, called David Lynton. The team still don’t have the information they need to expose the awful conspiracy that I don’t quite understand. “An old lady died getting this stuff to us” yells Cassidy. Makes a change from “Many Bothans” I guess.

Hey look, it’s Kenny Ireland from Victoria Wood. I think he’s being dubbed here, but I only know him from Victoria Wood, so I can’t tell if that’s him doing the dubbing. Although other scenes sound more like he’s doing the lines live, so it’s just an odd bit of ADR.

I’m guessing he’s a businessman. He’s driven down to a posh house by the owner, where he meets the owner’s wife, played by Pamela Salem.

There’s a meeting of business types, and a model of a waterfront development.

“So that’s what you get for £325 grand” Wow. My house is worth more than that now, and it looks nothing like this.

Julia Hills plays Sonia, wife of the lead character Michael Cassidy.

Oh look, it’s Andrew Livingston – another Victoria Wood alumnus. He’s wandering around a pub describing different adverts. It’s very strange. He’s playing a character called Gummer, with a drug problem.

The Cassidys are visiting family friend Phil Benson (Michael Troughton). This really doesn’t feel like episode four of a series. At this stage we (and the protagonists) should have a clear idea what’s wrong, and what needs to happen, but at this point, he’s just attending a boring dinner party. The most dramatic revelation is that, to get their £325k mansion, they gazumped someone.

Phil is obviously shamed by Michael’s mention of the old lady who died, as now he’s talking to the businessman from the earlier scene, Charles Lynton, and he’s now wondering whether it was right to have an old lady killed.

Now we’re learning why Gummer is featured – he has a flashback to the time he saw some builders bury three bodies under some concrete on a construction site. This is something that’s in the title sequence, but hasn’t yet been explained.

There’s a long, boring sequence of Phil Benson driving around, as he’s under surveillance. Some builders are given money for something, and then they appear to be chasing poor Gummer, presumably because they know he witnessed a murder,

Do rich people actually play croquet? Is that a thing? I see it in TV all the time. Admittedly, the only time I’ve seen croquet in the wild was on the occasional visit to the original home of BBC Internet Services, at Kingswood Warren, where they had a croquet lawn outside. This game seems particularly fraught – Kenny Ireland wants to stop playing because of bad light, so his host drives his car to the edge of the lawn and turns his headlights on. I don’t understand any of what’s happening. Are they going to kill him?

Cassidy and McRae think they’ve got the evidence now, but the case is blocked by the higher-ups. “You’re not some American-style DA” Cassidy is told.

The team discover that lots of the land involved in the crooked deal was in the name of Cassidy’s friend Benson, so his £325k mansion gets raided.

“I’m telling you, Robbie, this isn’t going to be a leisure centre, it’s going to be the leisure centre.” They really are Gordon and Peter from Fry and Laurie. I wonder if this was filmed in Uttoxeter,

There’s a dramatic moment when Robbie and Mr Big return to the marina, and McRae’s team rush on board to arrest them. But it’s shot from a distance, and as soon as the action starts, a flag in the foreground obscures any action. I can’t believe this wasn’t deliberate, but for the life of me I can’t see why.

In the back of a police car, Robbie realises that he’s been set up to take the fall for Mr Big – who, despite being on the yacht when the police arrive, appears not to have been arrested. I can fathom no reason why he wasn’t.

Even the music for this is awful, a free-form jazz exploration courtesy of Courtney Pine. Exactly the kind of music I just can’t stand. I’m with Joey ‘The Lips’ Fagan from The Commitments – Jazz is musical masturbation.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 19th June 1990 – 21:30

God, there’s a book of the series.

Recording continues with a trailer for programmes on Wednesday.

Then, for the last episode in the series, a special edition of Film 90. Barry Norman is in New York – I’ve swung over that cathedral as Spider-Man.

Along the way, he previews a number of films:

• Back to the Future Part III
• Crimes and Misdemeanors
• Gremlins 2: The New Batch
• Dick Tracy

There’s a look at the shooting of The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Tom Brook looks at other films shooting in New York, including The Fisher King.

There’s a brief interview with Harvey Weinstein, talking about My Left Foot and Irish colloquialisms, where he says he still doesn’t know what ‘bollocks’ means. Does this explain his inability to keep his own in his trousers?

In the preview of Gremlins 2, Barry makes mention of Donald Trump. I mention this only for completeness, and not for any other reason.

I’ve no idea what the source novel is like, but ‘James Clavell’s Shogun The Musical’ sounds like something from a Naked Gun movie.

There’s an interesting segment about the resistance to showing adverts before movies. Apparently, at this time, it was just being introduced to American cinemas, and it wasn’t popular with audiences. I remember going to see a movie in London once, sitting next to an American tourist. After 20 minutes of adverts he leaned over to me and asked “do they always have so many adverts?” I was surprised that here was an environment where we have more advertising than in America.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 19th June 1990 – 22:20

Next, two episodes of The Wonder Years beginning with Cocoa and Sympathy. Another creepy one, when Kevin’s friend Paul develops a crush on Kevin’s mother. These children are 13 years old. This is not normal.

Next, Moving, in which Kevin thinks his father wants them to move house, but he doesn’t, and then learns that Winnie is moving house, and going to a different school, and he tries to give her a ring so she’ll stay faithful to him but she says a long distance relationship is too difficult and ALL THESE CHILDREN ARE 13 YEARS OLD. When I was 13 I spent all my time compiling a scrapbook of newspaper stories about Star Wars, which I think is a far healthier way to enter my teens.

After this, recording continues, with quite a lot of a programme called The Energy Alternative, looking at how our energy use needs to change in order to combat climate change. It’s a good thing we all took notice of these warnings at the time, and didn’t just keep burning more and more oil and gas for the next 30 years until it’s possibly too late to prevent complete ecological catastrophe. Oh, wait.

Still, never mind, here’s a picture of a cinema marquee advertising Star Trek V.

The tape ends during this programme.

Adverts:

• Lloyd’s Bank – Nigel Havers, Jan Francis
• Renault
• Tennent’s LA
• N&P
• Castella Classic – Russ Abbott
• McVitie’s Hob-nobs
• Sprite
• Holsten Export
• Chessington World of Adventures
• trail: The Cosby Show
• Milk
• Perrier
• Lochinvar
• Martini
• Back to the Future Part III in cinemas
• Raffaello
• Copperhead Cider
• Dulux
• trail: When The Men with Money Go Mad
• BOC
• VW Polo
• Comfort
• N&P
• Appletise
• Nat West