Recommended Television Programmes

[jayne lee wilson]

Rejoice in The Lord...! He's back, BACK, BACK!

https://www.sky.com/watch/the-new-pope

[vinteuil]

Maybe Gatiss is spreading himself a bit thin though, with all these commissions. I say this having watched 'Martin's Close', his latest MR James adaptation, which was terrifying in its NON-scariness. In fact, it paled beside the classics from the 70s - or maybe it's because all the best James stories had already been done back then?

.

... yes, Martin's Close was disappointingly thin - so much so that we re-watched the 2010 Whistle and I'll Come to You (terrific John Hurt) just to remind ourselves how good an MR James adaptation can be.

But Dracula is proving to be a thing of wonder, even if episode 3 loses it a bit. Dolly Wells as Sr Agatha a real find - I hope we see a lot more of her in the future.


.

[LMcD]

.

... yes, Martin's Close was disappointingly thin - so much so that we re-watched the 2010 Whistle and I'll Come to You (terrific John Hurt) just to remind ourselves how good an MR James adaptation can be.

But Dracula is proving to be a thing of wonder, even if episode 3 loses it a bit. Dolly Wells as Sr Agatha a real find - I hope we see a lot more of her in the future.


.

I haven't seen that version, but even if he's only half as good as the wonderful Michael Hordern was in the genuinely scary adaptation broadcast the early 1960's it must assuredly be worth investigating.

[vinteuil]

I haven't seen that version, but even if it's only half as good as the wonderful Michael Hordern version from the early 1960's it must assuredly be worth investigating.

... here it is :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crvSbA1jjIA

.

[LMcD]

... here it is :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crvSbA1jjIA

.

Thank you! I found a link for the Michael Hordern version (1969, as it turns out) but, like most of my links , it comes up as 'Video Unavailable'. However, you can watch it by googling 'Whistle And I'll Come to You 1968'.
UPDATE!
I'm afraid I was disappointed in this unnecessary and unsatisfactory remake. Michael Hordern's quirky lonely academic was much more intriguing. Jonathan Miller clearly felt no need to tamper with the original story.

[Nick Armstrong]

Yes - tremendous fun. (Moffatt has definitely got a "thing" about cremation, though - the "corpse in agony as it burns" idea was used in Dark Water/Death in Heaven as well!)

And I also greatly enjoyed the Gatiss documentary that Bryn mentioned and alywin referred to - very glad to be reminded of the 1977 Louis Jourdan adaptation, too.

Agreed about Dracula parts 1 & 2, but as so often with the Gatiss/Moffatt oeuvre, they couldn’t sustain it and part 3 was pretty lamentable. It was the same with Sherlock over a longer span (thanks to more fecund/extensive original material from Conan Doyle, I think). Ultimately disappointing.

Utterly disappointing is how I’d describe Martin’s Close - a complete absence of atmospheric cinematography (astonishing for someone like Gatiss who claims to be a connoisseur of the genre) - and a shockingly bad (or badly-directed) performance by the bloke playing the Judge

We followed it up with a look again at Lost Hearts, rebroadcast last year: deeply creepy although playfully lurid. https://youtu.be/bm_mnNFapPU (It’s just over half an hour - for some reason it’s repeated during the second half of that link) Not an ounce of that in the new one...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Agreed about Dracula parts 1 & 2, but as so often with the Gatiss/Moffatt oeuvre, they couldn’t sustain it and part 3 was pretty lamentable.

Oh - I had my doubts for the first five minutes of Episode 3, when I thought they'd just gone bonkers, but then it picked up really well, I thought. The adaptation of the Lucy Westenra character was inventive and very well done - especially the "Blooful Lady" child role reversal, and the sound of the undead tapping on their coffins for eternity: crikey! And, of course, Renfield - originally the insane slave of Dracula, here something much worse ... a sycophantic solicitor! And an interesting interpretation of what Dracula fears and why.

(Incidentally, the cries of the Undead begging to be killed is another Moffatt Who-trope: he first used it in World Enough and Time, when Bill Potts encounters the prototype Cybermen, stuck forever in an eternity of unrelenting pain.)

[Pianoman]

We followed it up with a look again at Lost Hearts, rebroadcast last year: deeply creepy although playfully lurid. https://youtu.be/bm_mnNFapPU (It’s just over half an hour - for some reason it’s repeated during the second half of that link) Not an ounce of that in the new one...

Now that's how to do an MR James adaptation - Lost Hearts has always been my favourite, scared the ....out of me years ago and still stands up well, as does 'A Warning to the Curious', with hardly any 'special' effects and that haunting solo flute ...

[Pianoman]

For Babylon Berlin fans I believe the next season starts on January 24th on Sky/NOW, can’t wait for that although it won’t be the same without the crooked copper (assuming he didn’t survive the train incineration).

The flags are out here !!

[Jonathan]

Thoroughly enjoyed the first part of Dracula, there were some very funny lines in it. Will watch parts 2 and 3 over the next few days.

Really looking forward to "Good Omens" on BBC, it's been on Amazon for months but we don't have that. It starts on the 15th January.

[Nick Armstrong]

Now that's how to do an MR James adaptation - Lost Hearts has always been my favourite, scared the ....out of me years ago and still stands up well, as does 'A Warning to the Curious', with hardly any 'special' effects and that haunting solo flute ...

... and the haunting tune of the Italian boy’s hurdy-gurdy in Lost Hearts ... still going round in my head nearly 2 weeks later...

[Nick Armstrong]

Thoroughly enjoyed the first part of Dracula, there were some very funny lines in it.

True. I have a feeling that “I’m undead, I’m not unreasonable” is going to remain a regular one here...

[underthecountertenor]

Did anyone notice that, at the beginning of Episode 1 of Dracula, the hymn tune that was being sung offstage (presumably in the Hungarian convent chapel) was Michael (the tune for All My Hope on God is Founded)?

Both anachronistic and geographically unlikely. Knowing Gatiss (in particular) and Moffat, I find it hard to believe that it was carelessness, but I am struggling to think of an explanation other than that the tune is by Howells, and that the convent was later beset by wolves.

[jayne lee wilson]

The Trial of Christine Keeler is for me the best series on BBC for ages, in casting, acting, directing, several classes above World on Fire, Dark Materials... familiar tale but very well done here. Sophie Cookson is a true, gorgeous screen magnet as Christine (and the clothes are to die for - was there ever a more stylish decade?)....Norton pitches it just right as Stephen ( though "little baby" is somewhat overused...)....
Remember the girls getting dressed in Scandal, to the Shadows' Apache? This time it was less overtly sexy, to The Crystals.... da-doo ron-ron....still a kind of affectionate homage, I thought.

It can only get better as the story darkens and deepens... (should be on the green button! waiting a week is awful!).

As for Dracula, brilliantly executed first episode, yes, on every level, but perhaps more of a (very) clever parody than a truly gripping tale? My longterm favourite was always Herzog's Nosferatu, with the extraordinary Klaus Kinski, but in recent years I just can't watch anything about "the undead" - just creeps me out. Too close to the literal, mortal bone.
So my judgement of this latest version was confined to ep 1.....switched off during the crates-in-the-crypt scene and deleted the rest...(ever had a fly in your eye...?)...

[underthecountertenor]

though "little baby" is somewhat overused...)

'Somewhat'? It's driving me up the wall. But maybe that's the point. I am assuming that there will eventually appear some dramatic reason for the overuse (possibly in the form of Keeler/Cookson finally cracking and screaming at Ward/Norton about it). He says it awfully (and I mean awfully) well, I have to admit.

I agree that it is a great series so far, cast to perfection.