Today’s recording starts with the end of Mock The Week.
There’s trails for A Summer of British Film and DanceX.
Then, the next episode of Hyperdrive – Artefact. I guarantee that this pod design is based on the pods from 2001. It’s lovely.
They retrieve an artefact that gives them directions to a planet and a plea to rescue them. York calls it a Hero trap but Henderson ignores him.
They bring it to the planet, and replace it, expecting to free some great ancient beings, but instead they’re captured by the supreme ruler of Queppu played by the great Geoffrey McGivern. He appeared in the last series, but that was an episode I didn’t keep. Still, it’s always delightful to see him.
He’s accompanied by his daughter Lavya, played by Montserrat Lombard.
The ship, left under the command of Vine, is surrounded by Queppu ships.
Henderson, York and Teal are forced to take part in a reality show where they’re hunted by assassins, starting with Sergeant Destruction. Henderson tries to reason with him, but York sneaks up behind him and kills him. “I was just gonna turn him, he was gonna be our gentle giant buddy, the ogre with a heart of gold.”
Vine’s plan is to watch the show. Jeffers doesn’t think this is the most proactive approach.
The show is a fairly accurate representation of typical reality shows.
The next two assassins are Tweedledoom and Tweedledie. They last even less time that Sgt Destruction.
Vine breaks into the Queppu transmission, but he mostly wants to offer suggestions on how they’re coming across on the programme.
Their final assassin is Gunface.
Henderson again tries to bond with him, and this time it works, and he also manages to stop York killing him.
With Gunface’s help they breach the perimeter wall and arrest the Supreme Ruler.
Lavya sweet-talks Henderson to get the upper hand to she and her father can escape to the Fleeing Tubes, which weren’t really built with their headgear in mind.
Media Centre Description:
Recorded from BBC TWO on Thursday 19th July 2007 21:28
The first recording today starts with the end of an episode of Vet Safari.
There’s a new trail for DanceX.
And a new trail for Heroes.
Then, part 2 of Waking the Dead – Towers of Silence. Sarosh’s suicide has been discovered, which means Boyd, Felix (Esther Hall) the forensic scientist on the team, and the shady character played by David Walliams have to get Spence out of the prison while also investigating Sarosh’s death.
Boyd gives Felix hair samples he took from Nadir Mehta’s young son who died – samples he took from the grave which was open because of Mehta’s exhumation. He wants to know if they show signs of Potassium Chromate poisoning, which possibly killed Nadir.
A policeman from Gujurat arrives, DCI Chowdray (Paul Bhattarcharjee), who identifies the unknown man found in the Arizona plane as his cousin, also a policeman.
He also tells them that the dead man, DS Sharma, was investigating a man called Mr Irani. And that Mr Irani ran a trading company called Midnight Pearl, the name Sarosh told Spence to look for. Mr Irani was one of the names the shady investigators told Boyd to look out for when they spoke to him. But Chowdray doesn’t know why Sharma was investigating Irani.
He performs a Zoroastrian ritual on the body, which leads the team into a long discussion about the burial practices of Parsis, and the theory that the body was put on a plane because tradition requires the body to perish at high altitude. Spence and Stephenson tail Chowdray to see where he goes.
Boyd contacts the woman who gave them Irani’s name. He seems to be looking for a job in her field, so I presume he’s just trying to schmooze information from her.
Spence trails Chowdray to a lock-up. When Chowdray leaves, he and Boyd break in to find a manufacturing facility to make fake prescription drugs – from the Midnight Pearl company. Boyd wonders why it hasn’t been touched in years. None of the drugs are barcoded and hologrammed, which would make them useless in the US or Europe. Perhaps the robbery at the airport was to steal that equipment. “So who would want to steal his stuff? A rival? Or the company he’s ripping off.”
Felix tells Boyd that Nadir Mehta’s son’s hair sample had traces of Potassium Dichromate, which they now presume was in the pills his mother was giving him, pills produced using a contaminated water supply.
Boyd has another meeting with the shady reputation management people, who bring along the head of security of a pharmaceutical company. They’re still very cagey about anything, but they do ask Boyd if, perhaps, the investigation at Heathrow could go away. And when Boyd has got them to show their hand, Spence comes walking over, wearing an earpiece, having heard the whole conversation.
Mrs Mehta is questioned about whether she gave the fake drugs to her husband and son. She’s horrified at the idea that she might have poisoned them, and other people in her community she thought she was helping.
Boyd talks to Chowdray, asking him why he went to find Irani. “Was Irani a Zoroastrian?” “Yes, a Zoroastrian can redeem himself through good deeds. I went to tell him that he did a good deed for my nephew. He made sure he treated the body in the way of our faith.” Boyd tells Chowdray if he’s hiding anything, he will arrest him. “I am in absolutely no doubt of that.”
Boyd questions the security man for Rexate Pharmaceuticals. He’s not very forthcoming, but Boyd makes it clear what he thinks happened. “Rexate Pharmaceutical hired Sertil to contract someone to remove a shipment of Mr Irani’s from a warehouse at Heathrow Airport, knowing that he was manufacturing fake drugs. I think you negotiated with Mr Irani to keep him out of your lucrative European and American markets. What you didn’t take into account was Mr Irani’s uncontrollability.”
They search Chowdray’s room, and examine his police ID. When they discover it’s a fake, they start suspecting that Chowdray is actually Irani. And that the picture of Irani that Sertil showed Boyd isn’t him at all, to keep him off the scent. They just wanted to know if Boyd got anywhere near Irani as a suspect.
Chowdray visits Mrs Mehta, who is still distraught at what she’s done. He tells her she needs purification.
Boyd has realised that it was Alcock who searched Chowdray’s room, and now knows he put a tracker on him. Which is useful for this bit of the plot.
Because dead bodies have to be placed high up, the signal tracks to a building in Canary Wharf. They don’t find Chowdray/Irani but they do find Mrs Mehta, dead.
They head to Heathrow, where Irani has definitely checked in. After a search, Boyd finds him sitting down. But he’s dead.
And the woman from Sertil makes meaningful eye contact from across the airport.
Media Centre Description: Police drama series based around ‘cold cases’. The shadowy figure of the corrupt Indian businessman grows increasingly sinister as the team discover that he was manufacturing fake pharmaceutical drugs designed to be sold at a high price to unwitting AIDS victims in Third World countries. A major international pharmaceutical company is implicated in the cover-up and they will take steps to silence the problem.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Wednesday 18th July 2007 20:58
The final recording today starts with the end of some golf.
There’s the trailer for Heroes again.
Then, there’s a new series of Hyperdrive – Green Javelins.
The HMS Camden Lock has been invited to join the renowned Space-o-batics team the Green Javelins, after one of the other ships was tragically lost. But when Teal discovers who the leader of the Green Javelins is, she asks the Commander not to take part because she had a relationship with him when she was young.
York has created a double of himself “Created from cells shared from my own body. Scabs, toenails hairs. Certain other… Emissions.” The double looks perfect, but speaks very strangely.
Space Marshal Clarke doesn’t want Henderson to mess up, as the Green Javelins display is a showcase for their attempts to sell British spaceships.
The head of the Green Javelins is Squadron Leader Jeremy Mason, played by Stephen Mangan. When he meets Teal again, he’s thrown back in love with her, but she plays it cool. As a result, he tells Henderson they can’t be in the Green Javelins. “I can’t be this close to Chloe and yet so far away”
When Teal also tells him that they can’t be in the Javelins, Henderson takes steps to reconcile the former lovers by throwing her in a shuttle and sending her off to have dinner with Jeremy. “Teal, there is a nice dress and some perfume under one of the seats. Now, I will make this up to you, I promise.”
It doesn’t start badly. He makes her the meal he was going to make all those years ago if he hadn’t left her. “Oh Goodie, Haven’t had dried baked bean on toast in 15 years.” She compliments him on his glittering career and all his awards. “These mean nothing to me. This one meant nothing to me six years running.”
They sing Agnostic Hymns together. “Run to the streets, tell everyone he might have made the trees. He may have made the sun. Oh, thank you if you’re there. If you’re not, we shan’t despair.”
They go rowing in a simulator. Mason asks Teal to leave the ship and come with him. “I can’t leave the commander. You’re asking me to break myself in two. I am a woman, not a cheese straw.”
York is disappointed with the performance of his double, and orders him to recycle himself.
The Green Javelins start their display.
Mason asks Chloe if she’s changed her mind. When she says no, he sets his ship on collision course with the Camden Lock which they only just evade.
Mason has gone rogue. “I’ve locked my crew out of the room. No one can stop me.”
He sets his ship on another collision course, and this time the Camden Lock is a sitting duck. But someone has launched a shuttle and flying straight towards Mason’s ship. It’s York’s double. “I do this for you, Eduardo Pauline York. Goodbye.” And his shuttle slams into the front engine bay of Mason’s ship. I did almost shed a tear at this. Mostly down to Kevin Eldon’s typically superb performance.
The effects are pretty good.
The Moonbase is giving me slight Space 1999 vibes.
York’s double gets a funeral, made awkward when he starts tapping from the inside of the coffin.
Media Centre Description:
Recorded from BBC TWO on Wednesday 18th July 2007 23:48
The first recording today starts with a trail for Doctors.
There’s also a trail for Panorama on Immigration: How We Lost Count. Lest you think scare stories on immigration are confined to a Tory government, they were running stories like this in 2007 too.
Slightly more positive is a season of programmes marking the 60th anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan.
Then, it’s the first episode in a series 5 of Waking the Dead – Towers of Silence. This is a repeat from 2005. I watched quite a bit of this on iPlayer a couple of years back so the opening of this episode is ringing bells. DS Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve) and Dr Grace Foley (Sue Johnston) are buying a model plane. Boyd wants to buy a remote control one, but Grace is trying to keep him on track. It’s not like Boyd to be playful – he’s usually shouting about something or other.
Never fear, the old Boyd soon manifests when a detective sergeant from another force is seconded to his team because she was involved in a possibly related case, and Boyd is horrible to her because she suddenly reminds him of his former colleague Mel, who died at the end of the last series. She’s Andy Stephenson, played by Georgia Mackenzie.
The case involves a dead body which was found on a plane in Arizona, but which must have been on the plane when it last left Heathrow on its last flight to an aircraft graveyard. Its hands had been removed, which matches a different case Andy worked on, as she was the one who discovered the body of a Heathrow baggage handler, Nadir Mehta, also with hands cut off, in a water tower in Kent. This was at about the same time as the plane had left for Arizona, so there might be link, apart from the hands.
Nadir’s brother, Sarosh, confessed to killing him, and is serving life in prison.
The team can’t get permission to interview him, so they’ve sent DI Spencer Jordan into prison undercover to share his cell and possibly get more information.
Boyd and Andy visit Heathrow, to get an idea how things are run there. Nadir’s death came shortly after an armed robbery from the customs store, where two boxes were stolen and never recovered, and nobody knows what was in the boxes. They meet “The Collector” who is the official in charge of the customs warehouse, and he doesn’t like them asking questions, so he’s probably a wrong ‘un.
Shortly afterwards, Boyd is visited by two representatives of the company Sertill, who work for “An international trading and financial consortium” and they’re very cagey about who that is or even what they might have lost in the robbery.
There’s an unexpected cameo from David Walliams who helped Boyd get Spence into the prison.
In prison, Spence asks Sarosh about his brother, saying he doesn’t think he killed him. When he asks who did, Sarosh says “Whoever you are, Druj is stronger than you.” “Who is Druj?” “Evil. Druj is evil.”
They interview Nadir’s wife, played by Nina Wadia. And they reveal that their post-mortem on his exhumed body (which she was very unhappy about) showed that Nadir was dead before Sarosh cut his throat. Which implies that Sarosh was innocent, and there were no gambling debts, which was the reason he’s given to the police. And now they’ve also found that Nadir possibly died of poisoning from Potassium Dichromate. Their young son also died, a few weeks after Nadir.
Back in prison, Sarosh talks more to Spence. “I know I need to purify myself. I thought of nothing else since I came in here. I’ve had dreams. I’ve prayed for a messenger. I’ve prayed for you. I call you a Rathestar. This means “warrior against evil”. I will tell you one thing, and that will purify the earth. Find the Midnight Pearl.”
Then, later that night, Sarosh’s blood is dripping through the mattress.
Media Centre Description: Police drama series based around cold cases. A mummified body found on a derelict aeroplane leads the team to a similar case. Spence is undercover in prison trying to find out the reasons behind these deaths from the convicted killer who is obviously innocent. The plane victim’s uncle tells the team his nephew was investigating a corrupt businessman who had been peddling fake drugs.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Tuesday 17th July 2007 21:00
Media Centre Description: Drama series about a Manchester detective who suffers a near-fatal car crash and wakes up in what seems to be 1973. The murder of a football fan results in a clash of methods as Sam and Gene go undercover in a local pub to solve the crime. As Gene looks like he’s set to drink the pub dry, Sam worries about their chances of finding the killer before Saturday’s big match. And his relationship with the young son of the murdered man brings Sam’s memories of his own father flooding back.
Recorded from BBC FOUR on Tuesday 17th July 2007 22:00
After this, there’s a trail for Absolute Zero which is a lot like the overall trail for the Science you Can’t See season, but this time with a voiceover by Jim Carter by the sounds of it. There’s also another trail for Bombay Railways.
Then, the start of The Book Quiz presented by David Baddiel.
And a rare panel show appearance from Richard Herring.
Media Centre Description: Drama series about a Manchester detective who suffers a near-fatal car crash and wakes up in what seems to be 1973. Sam’s principles call into question the ethos of his whole department as he takes on a local gangster in an attempt to stamp out police corruption. Gene believes that criminals and the police can co-exist and that the streets are safer as a result, but Sam knows that in the future police corruption will irrevocably change the relationship between the public and the police.
Recorded from BBC FOUR on Monday 16th July 2007 21:58
Then the recording stops after the start of a repeat of Blake’s 7.
The next recording starts with the end of an episode of Coronation Street. Quite a rarity for my recordings. And it had Craig Charles and Jack Duckworth in the same scene.
Then, it’s another movie, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Intolerable Cruelty. I did watch this at the time, but again, I remember little about it.
In the opening, Geoffrey Rush, who is Donovan Donaly, a TV producer, discovers his wife having an affair with a pool guy, when they don’t even have a pool. Things get a bit heated, he pulls a gun, she brains him with his “daytime television lifetime achievement award” and pokes him in the bum with the spiky end. He chases them both off with his gun, then takes photos of his poked bum with an instant camera.
George Clooney plays Miles Massey, a divorce attorney, as he discusses Mrs Donaly’s case with her, spinning everything to her benefit.
Edward Herrman plays Rex Rexroth, a Real Estate magnate with a train fixation, who’s having an affair.
His affair is caught on camera by Gus Petch, played by Cedric the Entertainer whose catchphrase (even as he’s filming) is “I’m gonna nail your ass.”
He shows the tape to Rexroth’s wife, Marylin, played by Catherine Zeta Jones. She’s not heartbroken about it. “This is going to be my passport to wealth independence.”
Miles represents Rex in the divorce, and after his initial meeting with her and her lawyer, he invites her to dinner where she tells him “I’ve invested 5 good years in my marriage to Rex and I’ve nailed his ass fair and square. Now I’m going to have it stuffed, mounted and have my lady friends come over and throw darts at it.”
Miles gets Gus to photograph Marylin’s address book, and tells his clerk Wrigley to find something to help the case. SO at the trial, he brings in “Heinz the Baron Krause von Esby” who’s a concierge at “Les Pantalons Rouge”. He tells the court that Marylin was there five years ago, and one of the things she asked for was a husband. “She specificated a man who, though clever at making money would be easily duped and controlled.” As a result of this testimony, Marylin is left with nothing after the divorce.
Marylin tells her friend Sarah that she’s going to marry again, “Nail the guy’s ass good.” To this end, she tracks down the now homeless Donovan Donaly (Geoffrey Rush).
Miles is summoned to see the senior partner in the firm, which seems to trigger a bit of an existential crisis for him.
Marylin brings her new fiancée to meet Miles. He’s an Oil magnate. She wants to be sure that nobody can impugn her motives in marrying him, so she’s come to Miles for his famously unbreakable prenuptial agreement, the Massey Prenup.
Miles goes to the wedding, not believing that Marylin really wants to go through with it, but they marry. Then, after the ceremony, her fiancée Howard makes a speech, where he eats the Prenup. Which leaves him uncovered.
Six months later, Miles is in Las Vegas to give the Keynote speech at NOMAN, the National Organization of Matrimonial Attorneys Nationwide. He’s heard that Marylin has just got divorced again, and is now hugely rich, and she’s also in town with her lawyer to celebrate. So Miles asks her to dinner. They discuss her friend Sarah, who was divorced in a famously huge settlement, but who is lonely, afraid to go out, and has a peptic ulcer.
That night, Miles is woken from a nightmare about his senior partner by a call from Marylin – her friend Sarah had just died of her peptic ulcer. “She was alone. She’d been dead for two days before her Pilates instructor found her” sobs Marylin. Miles proposes they get married “at the wee. Kirk of the Heather”. He brings along the Massey Prenup, to reassure her that he won’t profit from the marriage in any way. And they marry.
Back at the hotel, Marylin says “No, this is all wrong.” “Is it the kilt?” “Do you love me?” “More than anything.” “Can I trust you?” she asks. “Yes, you can trust me.” So she grabs the Prenup and tears it up. He says “Darling, you’re exposed.” “Sitting duck.”
Next day Miles gives his keynote, but instead of his prepared speech, he launches into a speech about how they should stop destroying love. “I intend to devote myself to pro bono work in East Los Angeles or one of those other places.”
After a slow building ovation as he leaves, he and Wrigley head to the bar to celebrate their newfound philanthropy. Wrigley recognises a soap opera playing on the TV as the one that “used to belong to Donovan Donaly.” He also recognises the lead actor – it’s Marylin’s ex husband Howard. An actor. (Incidentally, acting alongside Bruce Campbell.) “So Marilyn married a soap actor. So she’s poor.” And Miles has no Prenup.
Miles is desperate at this betrayal, so he hires a man called Weezy Joe to murder Marylin so she can’t take all his money.
But he gets a call telling him that Marylin’s ex-husband Rex as died, and since he hadn’t changed his will, ass his fortune goes to Marylin. Suddenly, it’s Marylin who’s exposed, so there’s no need to kill her. They can’t contact Weezy Joe so Miles calls Marylin and tells her to get out of the house, making up something about a gas leak. When she gets off the phone, Marylin then asks Weezy Joe, who’s being kept in place by two very well trained guard dogs, who sent him. He identifies Miles. She offers him double to kill Miles instead.
It would have worked too, if Weezy Joe hadn’t got his gun and his inhaler mixed up when Miles sprayed him with Mace.
Next day, Miles faces Marylin over their divorce. Wrigley says that Miles is willing to consider reconciliation. She says “How could I ever trust you again, I mean really trust you Miles.” He brings out the Prenup. “OK, there is nothing in the Massey prenup that says it can’t be executed after the parties wed.”
She takes the Prenup and rips it up. I love Richard Jenkins’ reaction as her lawyer, Freddie. Then Miles and Marylin kiss, as Freddie sneaks the Prenup into his briefcase and runs out, pursued by Wrigley.
He asks her where she found the actor to play Howard. She tells him it was from Donaly. She gave him an idea for a new TV show, he made her a partner. And we see the new show. America’s Funniest Divorce Videos presented by Gus Petch. “We gonna make you laugh. We gonna make you cry. But most of all, we gonna nail your ass.”
Media Centre Description: Comic drama. When a wealthy real estate developer is caught philandering by his wife, she sues for divorce fully expecting a lucrative settlement. However, her husband’s high-profile lawyer successfully protects his interests and leaves her with nothing, after which she commits herself to taking revenge on the lawyer, so beginning another classic battle between the sexes.
Recorded from ITV2 on Monday 16th July 2007 23:58
After this, the recording stops as an episode of Make Your Play which looks like a programme designed to make a huge amount of money out of premium rate phone lines, and presented by a man whose hand makes me think he’s actually AI.
Today’s recording is a movie, Zhang Yimou’s rather epic martial arts story Hero.
Jet Li plays Nameless, a master swordsman who has come to see the King of Qin, one of the future China’s seven warring kingdoms. He has killed the renowned assassin Sky and therefore, instead of having to stand 100 paces from the King, he can site 20 paces from the King while he tells his story.
Chen Dao Ming plays the King.
The subtitles says that the assassin, Sky, was “in the chess house to play chess and listen to music” although this looks like he’s playing Go. Maybe they thought viewers wouldn’t know that “Go” was the name of the game and went with an unconnected name.
Sky is played by Donnie Yen.
There’s plenty of flying martial arts in this film, as you’d hope.
Nameless has also defeated two other assassins – Broken Sword and Flying Snow – entitling him to drink with the King within ten paces.
Broken Sword studied calligraphy, which is where Nameless found him. This film’s colour coding kicks in here, with everything in red for these scenes.
The crowd scenes in this are quite impressive.
Broken Sword is played by Tony Leung
His fellow assassin and lover is Flying Snow, played by Maggie Cheung.
She and Nameless have to protect the calligraphy school from the arrows of the King’s army.
Zhang Ziyi plays Broken Sword’s assistant Moon.
Mid 2000s MPEG-2 compression sometimes struggles with this movie, especially these scenes filled with flying leaves. But it’s still very beautiful. As this fight reaches the end, and one of the combatants dies, and the colour of the leaves turns from bright yellow to deep red.
The King knows that Nameless is lying about what happened – the candles between them keep blowing towards him, indicating Nameless’s anger towards him.
So the King tells him what he believes happened when Nameless met Broken Sword and Flying Snow. In his version of events, everything’s blue.
There’s a fight on water.
Nameless rebuts the King’s story with another variation. This one is white.
During that story, Broken Sword tells the story of how he and Flying Snow had attacked the King three years ago. In green.
this really is a gorgeous film.
Broken Sword abandoned the plan to kill the King on that occasion. He begs Nameless to abandon his, and writes two words in the sand for him. “Our Land”. He believes that the King’s plan to unite all the seven kingdoms is more important than any individual lives.
The final decision is with Nameless, who decides to believe Broken Sword and spare the King.
It’s not a happy ending for Broken Sword and Flying Snow.
Neither for Nameless, who is “executed as an assassin but buried as a hero.”
“The King of Qin went on to conquer all of the six Kingdoms and unite the country. As China’s first Emperor he completed the Great Wall to protect is subjects. This was more than two thousand years ago. But even now when the Chinese speak of their country They call it Our Land” I guess this counts as a happy ending on some levels.
Media Centre Description: Sword and fist martial arts epic set in the legendary time of China’s warring states period. A warrior comes before one of the warring kings seeking to unite the country and recounts in flashback how he killed three deadly assassins. Echoing Rashoman, two more perspectives on the same event are given as the king questions the warriors account. As stylised and energised as Crouching Tiger, each sequence is themed by a dominant colour (red, green, blue) reflecting the characters’ motivations.
Recorded from Film4 on Sunday 15th July 2007 20:58
Today’s first recording starts with the end of Casualty.
There’s a trail for Would I Lie To You?
There’s also a trail for The Visit and Radio 1’s Six Week Summer.
Then, Jekyll – Episode 4 is introduced by another new (to this blog, anyway) BBC One ident.
Steven Moffat’s doing his time-hopping narrative thing again, and in this case I’m here for it. It’s seven years ago, and we get to see Claire meet Tom for the first time. They’re set up as a blind date by mutual friends Tony Gardner and Deborah Cornelius.
I’m not sure when Claire first becomes interested in Tom. It’s either when he tells her he earns £200,000 a year (after her reply to his first question “What do you do?” was “Rich men”) or when she sees that he takes his shoes off to eat. Shoes she then hides to stop him leaving in his taxi.
They hit it off, and the next we see, Claire has just had her first baby, only to be told she’s having twins. “It’s twins.” “But we had scans.” “Scans were wrong.” “There was 1 heartbeat.”
There’s small warning signs of the future Hyde, like his thumbprint not working at work’s security.
An assistant tells him she’s leaving, not working her notice, because of notes he gave her for a speech. “Is it? Sexual? If it is… sexual I can sue you for harassment.” He doesn’t remember writing them but they’re in his handwriting.
Back in the present day, Syme gets a call from Miranda Callendar. She, Min and Katherine are parked outside the institute and want to come in.
They persuade Syme in a very amusing scene as they systematically telephone every woman in the department whom Syme has slept with. “Why would I do that?” “Because you’re a bad boy and I’m a good detective.” But he only lets her in when she tells him she wants to meet Winston Churchill. “I don’t mean that dreadful MP. I mean the real one, the war leader. I want to speak to the real, actual Winston Churchill. I’m such a fan.”
A bunch of twats harass Claire on the seafront as she’s on the phone, and embarrass Tom because he’s not enough of a twat to punch any of them. When they leave, though, it looks like Hyde might be there.
The twat on the bike is the first person to meet Mr Hyde.
Claire meets Miranda and the team. They tell her that she’s married Doctor Jekyll. “Well, isn’t that just typical? I mean, that’s so like a man, isn’t it? There’s always something they’re not telling you. Sorry, Hun. Should have mentioned. I’m Dracula.”
Back in the past, Tom wakes up from mauling the bike twat. There’s an ominous message in the sand. He phones Claire from the hospital. He tells her “I feel fantastic. I don’t need my glasses. I can see perfectly – 20/20 vision – it’s like being a kid again.”
She tells him to check his wallet, thinking he’s been mugged. He finds an ear there.
He has his first glimpse of Hyde.
He finds the flat that we met him in in the first episode. Secures it, and sets up a video camera.
Back in the present, Miranda presents what she knows. She says that Tom is a clone of Henry Jekyll, produced by the company Klein and Utterson, who took ownership of Henry Jekyll’s body when he died.
But Syme tells them that they’re wrong. Tom isn’t a clone of Henry Jekyll. Miranda asks “If Henry Jekyll had no descendants, if Tom Jackman isn’t a clone, then where did he come from?” “I was hoping you were going to tell us, because we don’t have the faintest idea.”
Jackman wakes up after Hyde has visited, and watches the tape. Hyde talks to Jackman, in a rather scarier version of the scene in Blink. It gets so upsetting for Tom that he smashes the television. Then there’s a ring at the door. It’s someone delivering a new television.
Syme takes Claire to where they’ve got Tom in a metal box. It’s the cure Syme has been promising. Claire asks why now? “Tom’s dying. Every change is shredding his DNA. He won’t see 45. He may not even see the end of the month. We couldn’t wait any longer.” The cure will stabilise him into one form or another. Syme wants Hyde. “Either you take Doctor Jackman home or Mr Hyde stays here.”
There’s been a running thing about Syme apologising for the coffee. After Syme has explained the whole thing she asks for a cup. “How hot?” “Very hot.” “Thanks.” Then she tosses it in Syme’s face. “I apologise for the coffee.”
Then she says “Well then. What are you waiting for? Get my husband out of that bloody box.” And we don’t see what she sees.
So far, I’m still really enjoying this show, and it’s almost entirely down to Gina Bellman.
Media Centre Description: A desperate Claire demands to know where her children are and why her claustrophic husband, Tom, has been locked in a box.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Saturday 14th July 2007 20:58
Then the recording ends with the start of Would I Lie To You.
The next recording starts with the end of the news, where the big story was a security alert at 14 Tesco stores. “No one was hurt.” There’s also weather.
There’s a trail for a very rainy looking Open Golf tournament.
There’s a reminder of the Lottery numbers.
And a trail for Heroes.
Then, we have a film. It’s Man on Fire. Directed by Tony Scott, and it’s the most Tony Scott film ever, full of manic changes in exposure and focus, plus plenty of graduated filters on the sky. It’s not easy on the eyes a lot of the time. It’s a lot.
Denzel Washington plays John Creasy, a man with some kind of dark past, struggling with drink, who comes to Mexico.
His friend Paul makes a good living as a bodyguard for rich people, because there’s an epidemic of kidnapping in Mexico City, and he offers to set Creasy up with a rich family.
Marc Anthony plays Samuel Ramos, who’s somewhat rich, but can’t afford an expensive bodyguard.
Mickey Rourke is his lawyer who tells him he needs a bodyguard so he can renew his kidnap insurance, and so his daughter can go back to school.
Radha Mitchell plays Lisa Ramos, Samuel’s wife, who’s American.
And Dakota Fanning plays Pita, their daughter, whom Creasy will have to protect on her way to and from school. She tries to make friends with Creasy, but he wants to stay uninvolved.
Creasy keeps an eye on suspicious cars following them on the drive to school. Pita notices him trying to make a note of a number, and makes her own note in her diary.
Inevitably, Creasy’s stoic demeanour softens. He helps her train for her swimming competition.
Thanks to his help, Pita wins her race.
She has to go to a piano teacher, and as he’s waiting, he notices a couple of police cars stop in the street, which he finds suspicious. There’s kidnappers there, and he tries to shoot them, also shooting the policemen, who seem to be involved, but he gets show several times, and can’t stop them taking Pita.
In hospital, Creasy is paraded in front of the press for killing two police officers.
A reporter, Marianna Garcia Guerrero (Rachel Ticotin), asks the police chief why the cops, who were supposed to be off duty, were in uniform and in a patrol car. Miguel Manzano (Giancarlo Giannini) who we learn is part of the Mexican equivalent of the FBI suggests the cops were corrupt. (Incidentally, this film has a lot of Spanish language scenes. I started watching it on Disney Plus, and although I had English subtitles on, none of the Spanish scenes had any subtitles. I thought it was an interesting artistic choice, hoping that the visuals would tell the story enough. And they did to some extent. But about halfway through I checked back with my recording, to find that all the Spanish scenes are fully subtitled on this print. The Disney Plus print is obviously a pre-subtitled print, so it doesn’t have the very dynamic subtitles burned into the picture, but they’ve forgotten to include the subtitles for the Spanish language in the actual subtitles. Making large portions of the film almost incomprehensible. Well done.)
The family have to arrange a ransom drop. There’s a lot of people in the house, including their lawyer, Mickey Rourke, and a policeman, Fuentes, who drives with Ramos to drop $10m in the trunk of a car.
But another group of men ambush the people who come to pick up the money, killing them. One of the dead men is the nephew of the kidnapper. As a result, Pita is almost certainly dead.
Creasy is taken by Manzano to a vet’s to protect him because he’s sure the police will just kill him. Paul tells him about the botched/sabotaged ransom drop, and Pita’s death.
As he’s recovering, Creasy meets Mariana, the reporter who was asking questions about the crooked cops. She offers her help.
He returns to the Ramos house, and finds Pita’s diary, where she noted down part of the car number plate of the car that was following them.
He begins to extract information from the people he tracks down, very violently.
This leads him to a rave club where some victims are taken. He gets a debit card they use to pick up their money during a deal. And he learns that the ransom money was stolen by the cop, Fuentes. “He’s a lieutenant for the Anti-Kidnapping Division.” Of course he is.
He interrogates a woman there who doesn’t know how to get to the man running the kidnappings, but she does say “I can give you the girl.” My hope sparked for a moment, but this is another girl, a new kidnap victim. Creasy takes her out of the club, starting a gas fire on his way out and getting the crowd to leave – he has to fire his gun a lot before they even start leaving. And when the club explodes into flames, the crowd is still acting like it’s just a normal part of the rave. He calls Mariana to ask if she knows who the young girl is, and asks her to trace who’s been putting money on the debit card.
To capture the crooked cop Fuentes, he packs some serious hardware.
He’s stuffed explosive up the man’s bum, and gives him a time limit for their questions. He gives up a useful piece of information. The bags full of ransom money they stole were three-quarters stuffed just with paper. Instead of $10m there was $2.5m. “At the Ramos house, before the exchange, who put the bags in the car?” “Jordan Kalfus.” Ramos’s lawyer. I knew Mickey Rourke would be a bad guy.
Looks like someone got to Kalfus before him. Someone else who knew about the money switch?
There’s a scene I love, in Kalfus’ office. Creasy notices the fax machine is out of paper. So he puts more paper in and it prints out some pages – transactions from a bank in the Cayman Islands, mostly from Kalfus, but some from Samuel Ramos, Pita’s father.
Creasy visits the family and asks where the money went. Ramos admits he stole most of the ransom money, put up to it by Kalfus, who he’s now killed. “Jordan told me she’d sit in a room… and watch cartoons all day… and she’d eat ice cream and we’d have her back in two days. He lied to me!” Creasy leaves him with a gun and a single bullet.
Manzano and Mariana have traced where the money from the ATM was going, and they know more of the people involved. They even have a picture of the man everyone calls “The Voice”. Manzano says they have to publish his picture to flush him out, but Mariana is warned off publishing.
But she’s braver than that.
Creasy goes to the house of the woman who handles the money. He manages to get shot by the brother of the Voice, although he’s still walking around after this like it’s a paper cut.
He contacts The Voice, and tells him he’s going to take his family apart piece by piece. The Voice offers money, Creasy doesn’t want his money. “All right, I will give you a life for a life.” “Whose life? What are you talking about? Whose life, Daniel?” “I want you. And in exchange, I will get my life back.” “What life? Whose life?” “The girl’s. Pita’s.” “Pita’s dead.” “I’m a businessman. A girl dead is worth nothing. She’s alive.”
They arrange an exchange – The Voice’s brother – and Creasy – for Pita. Pita’s mother is also there, keeping an eye on the brother whole Creasy goes to pick up Pita. “If anything goes wrong, you put it to his head. You pull the trigger, all right? You understand? You don’t let him loose until she’s with you. You got it? And you don’t wait for me, okay?”
Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn that after the tense walk over a bridge where I was expecting Creasy to get gunned down at every step, when he and Pita are finally reunited, I was sobbing. It’s always about the hugs.
Yep, still crying.
Creasy goes to the kidnappers, and gets in their car. The gaping chest wound finally takes its toll.
And Manzano sees to it that The Voice doesn’t get away with it.
Media Centre Description: Gripping revenge thriller in which a CIA assassin turned bodyguard teams up with a crusading journalist to take on a Mexican kidnapping ring which targets young girls with the connivance of a brutal and corrupt police force.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Saturday 14th July 2007 22:43
The recording cuts off just before the end titles finish. I’m glad it wasn’t any earlier.
Now the curious thing about this film is that I’m pretty certain I’ve seen this movie before (probably when I recorded it) but I have literally no memories of any of it. But my wife definitely remembers watching it with me. I’d put it down to creeping senility, but I’m also the person who (about 30 years ago) was halfway through the new Jonathan Carroll book I’d just bought before I realised it wasn’t a brand new book, it’s the one I’d bought and read six months earlier. Halfway through.
I guess the wise words of Homer Simpson were true all along. “Every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain.”
The first recording today starts with the weather.
There’s a trail for DanceX and for Last Man Standing.
Then, some comedy, with Lenny Henry: So Much Things to Say which was recorded live at the Hackney Empire.
It’s a stand-up show, but with a lot of character pieces. Lenny switches between several characters throughout the show, and I found the ending surprisingly moving.
Here’s a longer version of the same show – this recording is an hour long.
Media Centre Description: A one man show juxtaposing Tony Blair’s reaction to the Iraq war with the reactions of an Anglo-Caribbean family living in Willesden. Mr Lister the shopkeeper has a withering line in self-deprecation. Rachel, his wife, reminisces about losing her virginity. Their son Daniel is a soldier, at war in Iraq. Wolfman is Lister’s old friend, stuck in an old people’s home and hating every minute of it. Lenny Henry’s trademark humour links the show and moves it to its extraordinary conclusion.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Friday 13th July 2007 22:33
Media Centre Description: The crew of the Enterprise unwittingly land on a planet of horrors when they go in search of a scientific mission scheduled for evacuation. A race of merciless aliens use Kirk and his colleagues as guinea pigs in their agonising experiments into the human aptitude for self-sacrifice. The real victim, though, is an empath, a woman with the ability to absorb other people’s pain.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Saturday 14th July 2007 01:33
After this, there’s another trail for Radio 1’s Six Weeks of Summer, and for tomorrow’s Jekyll.
Then the next episode of Star Trek starts.
The next recording overlaps, starting with the end of the previous episode and the trails.
Then, another Star Trek – Elaan of Troyius. This one is also on a tape, but I looked at that very early in the blog, so it just lists which episodes are there.
The Enterprise is hosting diplomats again. They wonder why everything is Top Secret, and McCoy talks about the women of one of the planets. “Now, the women, they’re supposed to be something very special. They’re supposed to have A kind of subtle, mystical power That drives men wild.” This is literally the only way in which women are expected to interact in Star Trek.
The Ambassador of the Troyians is called Petri. He’s not a dish.
The Elasians come on board, first three butch guards, then their most revered leader, the Dohlman of Elas. She’s very bossy, as are they all. And the Troyians want her to marry their leader so the two planets will stop fighting each other.
To complicate matters, a Klingon ship is following them.
The Troyian ambassador tries to teach Elaan some diplomacy, but she stabs him. This doesn’t help the quest for peace. “I should have known better than to talk to her unarmed.”
Kirk has to take over her “instruction”. She’s not happy about it. “I will not go to Troyius, I will not be made into a Troyian, and I will not be humiliated, and I will not be given to a green pig as a bribe to stop a war!” I can’t help being on her side.
The Elasians do seem to be sabotaging the ship.
All of a sudden, after Kirk literally threatens to spank her, she starts crying and asks how she can make people like her. We’ve previously been told that Elasian women’s tears cause men to fall hopelessly in love with them
So inevitably, does Kirk. “Captain, That ancient earth custom called spanking– What is it?” “It’s, um… It’s, uh… We’ll talk about it later.”
Elaan’s head bodyguard Kryton is caught transmitting to the Klingon ship, but before Kirk can question him, he kills himself with a phaser.
The Klingon ship is following them, and their engines and weapons have been sabotaged. Spock detects some strange energy readings coming from Elaan’s necklace. She says they are common stones, of no real value. But Kirk and Spock both recognise them as dilithium crystals, which can be used to repair the engines.
There’s a battle with the Klingons.
The danger having passed, they reach Troyius. Elaan says goodbye to Kirk, leaving him with her dagger. “I have learned that on Troyius, they do not wear such things. Remember me.” “I have no choice.” “Nor have I. I have only responsibilities… And obligations.”
McCoy thinks he has an antidote, but Spock tells him it’s not needed. “The antidote to a woman of Elas, doctor, is a starship. The Enterprise infected the Captain long before the Dohlman did.”
Media Centre Description: A rebellious warrior princess causes mayhem on the Enterprise, but her real power lies in her tears. With Captain Kirk helplessly in love with her, and a Klingon warship in their path, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy seek desperate remedies.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Saturday 14th July 2007 02:23
This recording starts with a bot of Channel 5 news.
Then, another episode of House – Fetal Position. Emma Sloan, a pregnant photographer, realises she’s having a stroke during a photoshoot. This is quite disturbing.
In hospital she gets the all clear from another doctor, but House examines her and sees warning signs – not least, a catheter bag full of blood.
The team are looking at an X-Ray screen, but it’s a photo of House. I’m wondering where they got the print from a picture that the photographer just took. “It looks almost like… He’s caring.”
Emma’s kidneys are shutting down, but none of the causes of kidney failure are present. House has to tell her that he thinks it’s the fetus that’s causing it.
House and Cuddy discuss the case, but also discuss Cameron and Chase having sex in the janitor’s closet. And there’s a line that almost perfectly pinpoints this episode in time. “Do you have one of those camera phones? ‘Cause I got a MySpace account.”
Here’s something I’ve never understood. The American hospital tradition of keeping all the newborn babies in one big room. In the UK, babies are kept with the mother, which seems like a much better idea if only that new mothers can practice looking after them under more controlled circumstances. The big baby cage thing just seems weird.
House is preparing for a holiday at high altitude.
Emma has been taking more pictures. I’m just going to assume that she has regular visitors from her studio who take her films/files and bring back the prints. Or maybe she has a small photo printer in her bag. In 2002 when I had gallbladder surgery, and was in hospital for a few days unexpectedly, my wife brought in my laptop, so I could play a bit of Medal of Honor when I was bored, so I sympathise.
Emma’s baby is sick, which is causing her organs to shut down. At first they thought they had a cause, but fixing that hasn’t helped. House tells her that they have to terminate the pregnancy. The baby is at 21 weeks. That’s very close to the gestation our first son was at when he was born prematurely. Survival is theoretically possible, but chances are low. She doesn’t want to consider an abortion. He tries to insist. “I’m scheduling a D and C.” “I won’t consent. So I guess you have two days to figure it out.”
Cuddy joins in the diagnostic procedure to try to find some way to save Emma’s life that doesn’t involve an abortion.
Running out of options, Cuddy wants to increase the corticosteroids they’re giving her to help the baby’s lungs develop, but the team protest that it could kill the mother. “Anybody gonna stop her?” “Stopping the madness is her job.” “Somebody’s gotta be Cuddy’s Cuddy.” It falls to Wilson, as she’s dealing with the effects of her treatment. “It’s time to terminate.” “That’s not what she wants.” “Look at her. She didn’t want to be an incubator for a dead baby, but that’s what you’ve done.”
The last option left is to do surgery on the fetus to determine what’s wrong with its lungs. Emma goes into v-fib and needs to be shocked. House wants to terminate to save her life, Cuddy keeps shocking the heart and restarts it. The surgery on the fetus is successful, and both mother and baby recover.
Media Centre Description: US medical drama about a maverick, anti-social New Jersey doctor. Cuddy becomes personally involved in the case of a pregnant woman whose unborn baby may be causing her organs to fail; and Cameron and Chase’s relationship becomes public knowledge.
Recorded from Five on Thursday 12th July 2007 21:00
After this, the recording stops after a couple of minutes of Shark.
Today’s recording is another episode of Masters of Horror – Homecoming. See if you can guess which famous film director made this one, just from a single credit.
Yes, this was directed by Joe Dante. It’s written by Sam Hamm, who was the original writer on Tim Burton’s Batman, and who also wrote a screenplay of Watchmen for Terry Gilliam to direct. Definitely one of those people that seemed to miss out on a stellar career.
A couple are driving when they see a man on crutches walking on the road. The woman’s reaction is rather severe. “It’s one of them” and pulls the steering wheel to crash into the man. But when they leave the car she’s wearing a “Four More Years” badge and the car’s license plate is “BSH BABE” so I’m guessing they’re republicans, and their behaviour shouldn’t be a surprise. A truck approaches their crashed car, and they think it might be help, but a lot of very slow, shambling people emerge. She grabs a shotgun from the boot and starts shooting. “We are definitely not giving up to a bunch of crippled, stinking, maggot infested, brain-dead, zombie dissidents.”
Her companion blames himself for whatever is happening. “I’m sorry, Jane, I never should have opened my mouth.” And yet it’s her he shoots dead.
Flashback to four weeks earlier. What is this, a Steven Moffat script? The couple first met on a Larry King-type news show. She’s Jane Cleaver (Thea Gill) who has written a book called “Subversion: How the Radical Left Took Over Cable News” which I’m presuming is in the fiction section, even in 2004. He’s David Murch a political consultant and former presidential speechwriter. They hear from Janet Hofstadter, a mother of a dead soldier who was removed from an event for asking the President why her son had to die. He’s asked what he thinks, and he says that he lost a brother in Vietnam, then he has an odd moment. “Believe me, if I had one wish…” he says, then trails off and pauses before saying “I would wish for your son to come back because I know he would tell us all how important this struggle is… This is an important struggle for all, for the safety and security of all Americans and and how proud he is to have served his country.”
They hit it off, but their “romantic” evening of bondage is interrupted by a phone call which he says is from POTUS.
But it’s from Kurt Rand (Robert Picardo) who’s working for the President. The President heard what he said on the show, and wants him to tell people that the President said it to him, and he just repeated it. Indeed, later that evening they watch the president repeat it in a speech.
But they should be careful what they wish for, as soldiers start coming back to life.
Murch visits his brother’s grave with his mother, and he’s attacked by two zombie soliders.
There’s a distinct lack of sympathy for the returning soldiers. Rand says “If we could keep the same dead GIs out on the battlefield forever that’s like the answer to a prayer.” Murch asks “Why do you think they came back? What do you suppose they want?” “Couldn’t be the disability benefits.”
They soon find out what they want. They want to vote.
But then, after he votes, he drops dead (again). And the polling worker gives him an I Voted sticker.
Jane Cleaver is asked what she thinks about an undead soldier voting. “These men are heroes who died fighting for their country. Who’s going to tell him he doesn’t have the right to vote?” This comment gets an off-camera high five from Rand and Murch.
But when one of the undead confronts a politician and says “We want to vote. We’ll vote for anyone who ends this evil war” they’re a lot less enthusiastic. An evangelical who was saying just a day or so ago that this was proof that God was blessing the United States is now saying “It’s as if the bowels of hell had opened and disgorged these demons in our midst, these satanic spawn devils that walk among us. The end is near. It is at hand, and we must beg God’s forgiveness for our sins and immorality that has brought this plague upon this once great land.”
They now have a crisis, as none of the returning soldiers support the war, and it’s damaging their poll numbers. They want a PR coup so they find the son of Janet Hofstadter, the mother from the TV Show, and try to get him to sign a statement they’ve drafted. They even pressure her to tell him he ought to sign it. This proves to be a mistake, when instead of signing the paper, he smashes Rand’s head into a table until he’s dead.
Murch is further embarrassed when a “liberal website” produces proof that his brother didn’t die in Vietnam like he thought. He was discharged, but was never the same.
But the truth of his brother’s death is worse than that. He had a loaded gun, looking like he was going to kill himself, when little brother comes in and asks him to help his mother bring in the groceries. Then little David gets the key to the drawer he put the gun in, and when the older brother returns he points the gun at him. “Halt, Friend or Foe?” When his brother doesn’t give the right answer he pulls the trigger.
At the funeral, little David tells his mother “I’m going to wish for Philip to come back and to be OK. And he’ll tell you we were just playing a game.”
This revelation makes David want to do the right thing, so he persuades the President to let all the undead veterans vote. But on election day, his colleagues think it’s gone too far. “What should I do? Let the other side steal the election?” “Steal it? Jesus, Cathy, they won it.” “No they haven’t. Not yet. Because we count the votes. We do what’s best for America.” Good God, does everything have to still be echoing today?
So they falsify the votes, and their guy wins. But that night, as David and Jane are leaving the headquarters, rather drunker, there’s a loud noise, and all the dead veterans start rising from the grave, from every other war. There’s some knowing references on the gravestones. Jacques Tourneur directed I Walked with a Zombie.
George A Romero, of course, directed Night of the Living Dead.
We then return to the time of the opening scene. David kills Jane (which in context makes so much more sense) but can’t kill himself as he’s run out of bullets. The soldiers confront him. “You’re the one that called us back. That’s right. You said we’d have a voice. But you betrayed us.” “That’s right. I got it coming. So go on. I’m not afraid. Do what you’re going to do.” “Help us.” “Help you?” “Join us. We’re looking for a few good men.”
Then a familiar voice calls to him. It’s his brother Philip. “Hi squirt. Friend or foe?” “Philip?” “Long time no see. You did your best, little brother. I’d be proud to fight beside you.” And he snaps his neck.
“The government continues in exile. But Washington, DC is ours. We are here to stay all across this country, an army of fighters 1,000,000 strong who laid down our lives to defend the land we love. But know this truth. Our lives were precious, and if you ever again send our brothers and sisters to give their lives for a needless, pointless lie, then we guarantee that you will see the true face of war, the face of hell.”
Now this was far and away the best one in this series so far. It’s smart, amusing, deeply satirical, and felt like it actually had something to say. All that and the requisite gore and sex.
Media Centre Description: A series of one-hour horror films directed by the masters of the genre. Joe Dante, director of ‘Gremlins’ and ‘The Howling’, presents this mix of horror and satire in which the living dead are discovered to have tampered with the presidential elections. Violence and widespread panic break out as the zombies become more aggressive in their political ambitions.
Recorded from ftn on Wednesday 11th July 2007 21:58
After this, the recording stops after the start of Beadle’s About.
Here’s the ad breaks.
Adverts:
trail: Man’s Work
L’Oreal Revitalift – Andie McDowell
Norwich Union DIrect
Ireland
trail: Boston Legal
trail: Night Stalker
British Gas
Felix Roasted
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Pimms – Alexander Armstrong
Shredded Wheat Bitesize
Indesit Moon
Medium on DVD
Currys
Tesco
Magnet
Halfords
trail: McIntyre’s Underworld
Flags of Our Fathers/Letter From Iwo Jima on DVD
Bic Soleil
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Pearl Drops
Halfords
Ski
Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut
Apetina Feta
Elite Beat Agents – Nintendo DS
Elastoplast Spray Plaster
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trail: World Poker Tour
trail: Night Stalker
Abbey
Sainsbury’s
Pearl Drops
First Response
Pimms – Alexander Armstrong
Fruit Shoot
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in cinemas
There’s a trail for the Proms – exactly the same trail as last year, but with a different set of music, and a different voiceover.
There’s also a full trail for Heroes.
And another trail for Mock the Week and Hyperdrive.
Then, the an episode of Sensitive Skin – The Signals. This is the third episode of the second series. Joanna Lumley plays Davina, still coping with the death of her husband. Her friend Sam (Oliver Cotton) runs a gallery.
She bumps into Tom (Anthony Head) a personal shopper who tells her her polo neck doesn’t suit her, after she has been complaining to a friend how her husband gave it to her for Christmas, despite knowing she hated polo necks. He tells her what he does and invites her to come to the store and see what they have.
After she buys a lot of stuff at his store, they get trapped on a pedalo. They seem to be hitting it off. He tells her about his ambitions. “I want to set up a sanctuary for women, just for women. We’ll do everything Toenails, clothes, psychology, the lot. You come in as one woman by the time you finished your stay. You leave as someone else, someone that’s closer to who you are.”
Her neighbour is Jean Marsh, who seems to be going through a personal crisis of some kind.
Tom has a muscle car.
Maggie Steed plays Davina’s sister Veronica. Their mother is dying in hospital, and she blames Davina for her husband’s death. So visiting times are a bit tense.
Things appear to be going well, until her neighbour sees her and asks her “Has he asked you for money yet?” Tom, it seems, was romancing her just a short time before, and he dumped her when she declined to invest money in his Woman’s Sanctuary. “I’m sorry, love, so sorry. I just couldn’t let him do it to you.”
She goes to see Sam at his gallery. He’s foolishly agreed to hold an exhibition of native New Guinea sculptures. “The problem is that there’s fifty more out the back.” He comforts her when she bursts into tears.
Media Centre Description: Comedy with Joanna Lumley as Davina, a widow coming to terms with loss and love in modern-day London. Davina meets Tom Paine, a personal shopper, who helps her to believe that there is life (and style) after widowhood. But her new neighbour Lizzie has some news that may derail her hopes.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Tuesday 10th July 2007 21:58
After this there’s a trail for The Alastair Campbell Diaries and a trail for the next episode of Jekyll (which wasn’t on on Saturday because of the Live Earth concerts, which I completely failed to record.
Then the recording finishes with the start of Newsnight.
VHiStory 