The first recording tonight starts with the end of Waterloo Road.
There’s a trail for Any Dream Will Do and for a documentary, Victoria’s Empire about Queen Victoria, the Empire, and it’s presented by Victoria Wood. This feels perilously close to an Alan Partridge pitch. I’m sure it was very good, though.
Then, we have the second and final part of Sea of Souls.
Ian has taken the injured Karen to a medical centre, while Douglas has spotted a loose floorboard, and found a jar, presumably used for magic rituals.
Ian and Karen talk. He tells her they can leave the house if she wants to, but she wants to stay now. “Have been ever since Ben died. It’s time for a reality check. This is our dream. And I am not throwing it away because of something that I imagined.”
Monaghan meets Carla Vega, assistant curator of religious art, to ask about the jar he found. She tells him about the light and dark spirits in the Palo religion, and that the jar he found represents the dark spirits, the Ndoke.
Monaghan calls Ian to ask about Karen and to try to speak to them, but Ian tells him he shouldn’t come round any more. The filming style is suddenly all 24.
Karen finds a painting of Dunbar and Mary.
Flashback to the painting of the portrait, and the house receives visitors – an angry mob led by the local minister, Minister Gunn. The woman at the séance whom he told her husband was dead has just learned that the ship he was on was lost at sea, and they now think this was somehow Dunbar’s doing.
There’s a lovely cut from Alicia the maid looking at the three of them, and looking at Rebecca with some suspicion, and it pans down to a desk, where there’s an electric light and a laptop screen, but with Alicia still in the background.
Ian is working on some electrics, when the power switch on the machine slowly turns on and he gets a shock. We see Alicia looking, implying she was responsible.
Monaghan returns to the house, while Ian is out, and talks to Karen. He shows her a video that was shooting the night she cut her arms. They can see a woman, hanging from the stairwell. He tells her “Robert was studying the Cypher manuscripts for the Secrets of Immortality, and when he finally cracked the code then I think he realised it was all a hoax. Then he turned to Palo.” “But why would he kill Mary?” For that. I still don’t understand.”
Karen gets a drink from the fridge, and as she closes the door, the letters on the fridge move to form the word “Gazebo.”
Flashback, and Alicia talks to Rebecca. “What you saw, Miss, in my room, it’s…” “I told Robert nothing.” “Thank you, miss. Thank you.” “I wouldn’t want you to be punished. For your beliefs.” “I’m not interested in the dark spirits, only the light.”
Monaghan and Karen find the only thing in the grounds that could be a gazebo. Monaghan dislodges a brick and discovers a notebook, hidden there. It’s Rebecca’s diary, looking remarkably unspoiled for being hidden under a brick outside for over 100 years.
Ian returns, and they try to talk to him. Monaghan shows him the Palo ritual bowl. But he wants Monaghan to leave. “You yourself said that most paranormal incidents have a perfectly rational explanation.” “Not in this case.” “Don’t you see? You could push her to the edge with this kind of talk. I’ve already lost a child. I don’t want to lose my wife as well.” “Then don’t put both your lives in danger by staying here.” “We’re not leaving. Please go back to Glasgow and just leave us alone, OK.”
Ian goes back to the housework, and finds something behind a wall that seems to make him happy, but we don’t see what it is.
Karen gives the diary to Monaghan anyway, and he reads it. It includes Dunbar being visited by two members of the Golden Dawn, who don’t like him giving seances in public. He, in turn, tells them that he’s translated the Cipher Manuscripts, and thinks they’re a hoax. They say they’re expelling the Dunbars from Golden Dawn which, given what he’s just told them, can’t worry him too much.
Mary collapses again from her consumption. Robert tells Rebecca that they need to perform am African ritual. “We must perform a ritual before the new moon. It will mean burning herbs and bones and mixing it with our own blood. Though I know I know, it sounds depraved. But in Central Africa, I saw a Palo priest. Raise a child from the dead. With my own eyes, I saw this.” “And this will save Mary?” “They will take away her consumption and Mary will live, yes.”
Alicia comes to see Rebecca, and warn her. “He asked me for the secrets of my religion and I told him all I knew. now he wants to use them to do evil. He lied to me and he is lying to you.”
Back in the present day, Karen gets another message. Ian refuses to believe it.
Dunbar goes to Alicia, where she is doing another ritual, and just straight-up murders her.
Monaghan, who had fallen asleep in his car reading the diary, gets a call from Karen. She shows him another bowl she found under floorboards. “a ritual for the bonding of two souls”.
As they discuss this, we see Dunbar preparing for the ritual, and Karen and Monaghan slowly realise that perhaps the ritual wasn’t to extend life, but to transfer a soul. “You think Mary could have had her soul transferred? And the only place that it could go would be into the healthy body…” “Of Rebecca.”
The deed is done, so Dunbar murders Mary – except it’s now Rebecca’s soul in Mary’s body.
Back in the present, Ian’s back, and not happy to see Monaghan, who tries to tell him what they think happened. “I think Robert Dunbar was attempting a Palo ritual here, a soul transference. Crimes have been committed here and these spirits are trying to tell us about it.” Ian says “I have no interest in soul transference, power rituals or lunar cycles.” Monaghan is slightly thrown by this. “Lunar cycles?” But Ian threatens to call the police on him.
Ian tells Karen he’s going to put the house on the market tomorrow. They argue. Then he says “You know, when Ben died, I thought it would bring us closer together.” Wait, what? I admit I have a personal reaction to this, but bereavement, especially loss of a child, is a very common cause of the breakdown of marriages. It was one of my biggest fears. So this line threw me.
Karen phones Monaghan and tells him they’ve compromised. “We’ll finish the renovations, cut our losses, and find another property. I don’t think you should stay another night in that house. Ian’s booking us into B&B. That’s good.” Then he asks “Who chose the house in the first place.” “Ian found it on the internet.” “Well, that’s right. You said you’d come into some money.” “Yeah. Ian was working for an elderly businessman valuing his collection of rare books. They got close and when he died, he left us everything.” “What was his name?” “Miller. Harold Miller.”
Ian gets back to his car to find someone has taken the Palo ritual bowl from the back. Then he checks the letters he got from the house, with one in particular from a Harold Miller wanting to purchase the house, something the Rev Ron Donachie had mentioned to Monaghan when he saw him in the last episode.
Monaghan visits Miller’s grandson. He’s understandably upset at his grandfather left all his money to Ian, although he does admit that his family had lost touch with his grandfather years ago.
“And all we’re left with is his junk. You know his library.” Monaghan looks through the books, and finds a book about Golden Dawn, about Palo Mayombe religion, and even newspaper cuttings about Robert Dunbar. And he finds one about a woman found hanged at Glenmore – Rebecca Muir.
He also finds a picture of the young Harold Miller with a priest. “He was stationed in Scotland in the Second World War. He came back a changed man, by all accounts.” The priest is Minister Gunn, who was the same priest who brought the angry mob to Glenmore after the séance, although much older. And Monaghan remembers the dates of the ministers at the parish – Thomas Gunn stopped being priest in 1946. Monaghan asks him how his grandfather died. “He broke his neck in a fall. On the stairs. His mind had deteriorated quite suddenly. He claimed he was no longer Howard Miller, that he was just trapped inside his body.”
Monaghan meets Annie Rubenstein at the British Library. They discuss his findings. He wonders why Miller was interested in Dunbar. “He was born 25 years later.”
“Robert Dunbar was arrested on the 14th of September 1897 when a local doctor proved that Mary did not die in her sleep. It’s reported that only two visitors came to Robert Dunbar’s cell, the first one was Rebecca Muir. It says here Rebecca Muir brought a food parcel. And what if that contained all the ingredients necessary for a Palo ritual?” We see Dunbar and Rebecca/Mary. He says “There’s only so many times I can ask this of the Ndoke. You know that.” She tells him “I’m pregnant.”
“The second request was for the Minister Gunn to visit. He loathed that man. We know from Rebecca’s Diaries that Gunn was actively hounding Dunbar out of this parish. And then this.” Monaghan believes that Dunbar transferred his soul into Gunn’s body, and Gunn’s into his.
Something stopped Gunn returning immediately to Glenmore House, so Mary, believing the soul transfer had failed, hanged herself. “Minister Gunn befriended Harold Miller in the 1940s, just as Harold Miller then befriended Ian O’Rourke 60 years later.” “You’re suggesting Dunbar mastered transmigration, and his soul has been hitching a lift from one body to the other since 1897.”
Monaghan calls Karen and tries to explain what he knows. “Now has Ian changed in any way since Miller’s death?” “I don’t know. He desperately wanted to leave London for Scotland but I refused. Ben had to start at preschool. After Ben died I couldn’t bear to live there.” “Ben drowned after Ian had inherited Miller’s money?”
Monaghan tries to get Karen to leave, but Ian takes her phone. “You promised me you wouldn’t speak to him.” She doesn’t know what to believe. Then she sees Alicia, who nods at her, then vanishes.
Karen asks Ian the only question. “Where did you go that day when Ben drowned? I was asleep. Where were you?” “I went for a walk, you know that.” “You’ve never really shown any grief. You said all the right things, I’ll give you that. It’s never really affected you has it?” “What are you talking about?” “Did you kill our son? Did you?” Ian pauses. “Your son. Not mine. I want my own children.”
Karen tries to leave. She finds the ritual circle prepared in the drawing room. “I promise you won’t be hurt” he tells her. She runs out, and he pursues her in typical horror film fashion. As she cowers, he tells her “Don’t you get it, Karen? Ben’s waiting for you. He misses you. Ben needs his mum. You’ll be together again.”
Monaghan arrives at the house after a long journey from London. He demands to see Karen, and tells her she has to leave now. “We’re fine. There’s nothing for you to worry about.” Ian says “I think he thinks I’ve swapped you for someone else.” “That’s wishful thinking. He’d bring Alice back if he could, wouldn’t you?” Monaghan says “I’m too late. Am I not?” But as he’s leaving, Karen/Mary coughs.
Monaghan leaves, looking defeated. He can’t prove anything. But as he looks back at the house, he catches a glimpse of Alicia in a window looking at him, and realises that the Dunbars might not have such a happy time, and as he walks off he’s almost skipping. This is a cold ending.
I really enjoyed this. Perhaps there was a little too much exposition, but the gradual revelations of what’s really happening were great fun. And the truth about Ian puts his odd comment about Ben’s Death bringing them together in a very different context. That’s very clever writing.
Media Centre Description: Drama series about a fictional parapsychology unit at a university and the team’s endeavours to explain the seemingly inexplicable. Professor Monaghan arrives at a remote Scottish country house to investigate some paintings which are linked to a Victorian spiritualist group. Karen, the newly-bereaved owner of the mansion, becomes convinced that a malevolent presence is emerging there. She tells Monaghan of her visions and he starts to uncover sinister evidence in the history of the house.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Thursday 19th April 2007 21:00
BBC Genome: BBC ONE Thursday 19th April 2007 21:00
After this, there’s a new trail for Ruddy Hell! It’s Harry and Paul.
There’s also a trail for Question Time.
Then the recording stops after a couple of minutes of the 10 O’Clock News, which leads with the video of the Virginia Tech mass killer.
The next recording today is Midnight Run. I have already talked about this on one of my tapes, so I won’t go over it again. The only thing I’d point out is that this broadcast has all the swearing intact, which in this film is quite important. It’s still a joy.
Media Centre Description: Action comedy in which a gruff cop turned bounty hunter captures a fugitive accountant accused of fraud and sets off from New York for Los Angeles to collect his prize. But he is unaware that both the Mafia and the FBI are also on the accountant’s trail and hot on their heels.
Recorded from ITV4 on Friday 20th April 2007 00:38
I’d edited this recording, so there’s no adverts.
VHiStory 