TV detectives

[Richard Tarleton]

It's interesting to compare a show that was actually made in the 70s/80s with one that's been made recently but takes place back on the 70s or 60s...Life on Mars(is that the correct title?) comes to mind. Somehow, the cigarette smoke is laid on too thickly and the details of life back then are overdone.

Mind you the cigarette smoke was pretty thick in The Sweeney (John Thaw's finest hour), Marthe! That was the best cop show in the 70's, IMV, by a long way.

Anyone remember http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JFb6XO-j0A - it had "Land of the Mountain and the Flood" as its theme music?

[Pabmusic]

Continuing from post 54, I thought I'd look up some Edmund Crispin quotes. Here's a passage from Frequent Hearses (1950), which is set in a film studio to the NW of London. Gervase Fen has been retained to advise on the script of a new film (he is, after all, the Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature), but his meeting with a member of the music department at the studio is interrupted by a phone call:

'"Damn," she said. "Excuse me... Yes, put him through... Good morning, Dr. Bush - Geoffrey, I should say... Triple woodwind? Well, I imagine it might be managed; I'll ask Mr. Griswold... It'll be the Philharmonia, yes." Dr. Bush crackled prolongedly. "No measurements for reels four and five yet? All right, I'll nag them... Yes, I know you can't be expected to write a score if you haven't got any measurements... No, there's not the the least chance of postponing the recording; you'll just have to work all night as well as all day.... Have you sent any of the score to the copyists yet?... Well, you'd better get on with it, hadn't you?... See you at the recording... No... Certainly not. Good-bye."

She put down the instrument. "A composer," she explained soberly, like one who refers to some necessary but unromantic bodily function.'

(Bruce Montgomery (aka Edmund Crispin) and Geoffrey Bush were good friends, as was Philip Larkin.)

Here we meet composer Broderick Thouless, in The Glimpses of the Moon (1977, but mostly written in the 1950s). He's naturally a gentle romantic, but became type-cast by writing the music for a successful horror film years ago:

'Thouless had launched himself at the task of manufacturing the Bone Orchard score like a berserker rabbit trying to topple a tiger, and by over-compensating for his instinctive mellifluousness had managed to wring such hideous noises from his orchestra that he was at once assumed to have a particular flair for dissonance, if not a positive love of it. Ever since then he had accordingly found himself occupied with stakes driven through hearts, foot-loose mummies, giant centipedes aswarm in the Palace of Westminster and other such grim eventualities, a programme which had earned him quite a lot of money without, however, doing anything to enliven an already somewhat morose, complaining temperament.'

[It's autobiographical, of course. Montgomery had struck it lucky writing the score for Doctor in the House; there then followed years of British comedies.] '"Come in and have a drink," he called [to Fen] "The recording isn't till Monday week, and the only section I've got left to do is where they fail to destroy it with an H-bomb. Though why they want music over that, God alone knows...The effects track's going to be so noisy that no one'll hear a note of that section, I can tell you. Still, good for one's performing rights, I suppose, that's if they leave it in, which they probably won't.'

You have to get used to dialogue like this (which annoys some people):

'"But who is the Botticelli murderer? [asks one character of Fen]

"I don't know."

"But you must know by now, my dear fellow," said the Major plaintively. "We're practically at the end of the book."

There's nine novels and two volumes of short stories, of which the best short story (and best title) is probably We Know You're Busy Writing, But We Thought You Wouldn't Mind If We Just Dropped In For A Minute. It's about a frustrated writer with a novel idea for growing cabbages.

There has been very little of his music recorded, though this seems to be available, and has the Concertino for Strings, which is good:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-String-Miniatures-Vol-3/dp/B00005NUOM/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1338796715&sr=8-6

[Northender]

Hello Richard Tarleton - yes, I remember it - and thank you for the clip!
Another entertaining 'double act' were Dominic Jephcott and Colin Blakeley in one of the 'Beiderbecke' series. Admittedly, a well-worn theme: enthusiastic, idealistic Oxbridge graduate comes up against State-educated, bitter, down-to-earth veteran, but well-acted. (I'm a great admirer of the work of Alan Plater).
Talking of Beiderbecke, I suppose Trevor and Gill also count as detectives of a sort?
Also worthy of 'Mentions In Dispatches':
The Chinese Detective
The Singing Detective

[Pabmusic]

Very much agree Pabmusic about Gervase Finn being a good candidate for TV treatment - any idea who you would like to take the part!

Hugh Laurie in serious(ish) mood would have been fine, but he'll be far too expensive now, after House.

[Pabmusic]

Anyone remember http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JFb6XO-j0A - it had "Land of the Mountain and the Flood" as its theme music?

Yes, quite well. It is a good example of TV popularising a piece of unknown concert-hall music. Alex Gibson and the SNO (as they were) had recorded it fairly recently, and the programme makers used it - it was the only recording for years.

[aeolium]

Not sure if the lugubrious (and late) Philip Madoc as DCI Noel Bain has been mentioned - one of the few Welsh contributions to the genre. I don't know whether these stories ('A Mind To Kill') were ever shown outside Wales.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not sure if the lugubrious (and late) Philip Madoc as DCI Noel Bain has been mentioned - one of the few Welsh contributions to the genre. I don't know whether these stories ('A Mind To Kill') were ever shown outside Wales.

Yes, they were; in the early months of Channel 5. I saw just the one episode when staying overnight in a hotel in Edgbaston (we didn't get C5 until the digital swap-over last year, by which time they'd stopped showing anything worth watching) - I enjoyed it very much.

Madoc was the definitive Cadfael for me, splendid though Jacobi was on telly.

[amateur51]

Hugh Laurie in serious(ish) mood would have been fine, but he'll be far too expensive now, after House.

Good call Pab - in which case, what about that fine actor Alex Jennings?

[Pabmusic]

Good call Pab - in which case, what about that fine actor Alex Jennings?

Really good, Ams.

[amateur51]

Really good, Ams.

Glad you agree Pab - shall we start a casting agency? And what if one of our would-be clients is found garotted on the stairs, clutching a copy of The Sporting Life with a series of letters cut out? Blackmail? Gad Sir, this one could run and run ...

[aeolium]

Good call Pab - in which case, what about that fine actor Alex Jennings?

Jennings was very good as Ashenden, Somerset Maugham's Secret Agent (perhaps a cue for a separate thread on TV spies).

[Pabmusic]

And what if one of our would-be clients is found garotted on the stairs, clutching a copy of The Sporting Life with a series of letters cut out? Blackmail?

And the missing letters form anagrams of Petroc Trelawny and Katie Derham.

[amateur51]

Jennings was very good as Ashenden, Somerset Maugham's Secret Agent (perhaps a cue for a separate thread on TV spies).

Well remembered aeolium

[amateur51]

And the missing letters form anagrams of Petroc Trelawny and Katie Derham.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And the missing letters form anagrams of Petroc Trelawny and Katie Derham.

Tricky.

Raid the law; make rot percent is the best I can do!