Salamander

[Anna]

Oh, Shetland was excellent - I totally missed who had done what to whom and why.

Do you want me to say whodunnit? Might be a plot spoiler I didn't know that Ann Cleeves, who wrote the Shetland books (all 4 of which will be televised) also wrote the Vera books. Not that I saw more than a couple of Vera
Edit: crossposted with Cali - I do like Brian Cox but was that a genuine Fair Isle accent?!

[Nick Armstrong]

Do you want me to say whodunnit? Might be a plot spoiler I didn't know that Ann Cleeves, who wrote the Shetland books (all 4 of which will be televised) also wrote the Vera books. Not that I saw more than a couple of Vera

Quite. It's much better than Vera imo. (Made by ITV for the BBC, incidentally...). I've had some small involvement in its production. No one, not even the programme makers, can tell me why the Fair Isle born and bred main man has the Hispanic surname Perez!

[Anna]

Quite. It's much better than Vera imo. (Made by ITV for the BBC, incidentally...). I've had some small involvement in its production. No one, not even the programme makers, can tell me why the Fair Isle born and bred main man has the Hispanic surname Perez!

But he explained that in the programme - an ancestor of his was with the 1588 Spanish Armada, ship blown off course, washed up on the beach, married a local girl and there's been a Perez on Fair Isle ever since!! (Perhaps that was before you turned the subtitles on!)

[antongould]

Quite. It's much better than Vera imo. (Made by ITV for the BBC, incidentally...). I've had some small involvement in its production. No one, not even the programme makers, can tell me why the Fair Isle born and bred main man has the Hispanic surname Perez!

......and I thought it was Brian Cox ...is there no end to your talents Rumpole?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Do you want me to say whodunnit? Might be a plot spoiler

- No; I meant that the person who I thought had dunnit, haddunt.

I didn't know that Ann Cleeves, who wrote the Shetland books (all 4 of which will be televised) also wrote the Vera books. Not that I saw more than a couple of Vera

Oh, I liked Vera (some gorgeous scenery if nothing else) - but Shetland is much better.

[Nick Armstrong]

But he explained that in the programme - an ancestor of his was with the 1588 Spanish Armada, ship blown off course, washed up on the beach, married a local girl and there's been a Perez on Fair Isle ever since!! (Perhaps that was before you turned the subtitles on!)

[mangerton]

Just catching up with this thread now, and I've yet to catch up with Shetland. (tomorrow!) I'm sorry that you Southrons are having difficulty with Dundonian Brian Cox's accent. It's fortunate that Scots are able to cope with the myriad English accents and dialects.

This has long been the case, and was referred to here in the first series of Rab C Nesbitt, at about 6:30 in.

Anna is correct about the Armada connection. One of the Spanish fleet is supposed to have sunk near Tobermory, on Mull, having sailed round the north of Scotland to escape from Drake and his merry men.

[Dave2002]

This has long been the case, and was referred to here in the first series of Rab C Nesbitt, at about 6:30 in.

Very entertaining Rab clip ... though not sure I could stand a lot more of that. Rab seems a bit like a Scottish version of Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances - though Onslow was probably not so dynamic - and I always suspected that some of the scenes in that series were shot in places similar to some streets I know in Liverpool - though I fear that some house estates may look pretty much the same throughout the UK.

[Pegleg]

.... At the end Gerardi and Wolfs realised they were both on the same side (wanting to get Jonkhere, who had blown up Mrs Gerardi) so they made common cause in the final episode and got the bad guys

But not until Paul shaved his bread off (his own, not Klaus' false one) and what luck he developed X-ray vision or had the sixth sense to spot bad boy Klaus hiding in the wardrobe which he then used for target practice. In the game of Paul v Salamander, the second half fizzled out …..

Brian Cox in Shetland was priceless. Those Brando moments of fist to brow, and just how much special brew did he have to down to grow a gut that big? Talk about suffer for your art. The communication skills of his character so reminded me of my good self - minus the accent of course.

I haven't seen the new Italain job yet, but cheer up, didn't I spot Endeavour returns to our screens shortly.

[aeolium]

I'm looking forward to seeing a Dutch crime series as we've been through Italy, Scandinavia, France and Belgium. Apart from anything else I like the accents (in fact, English spoken with a Dutch accent even better). Any candidates - Penoza?

I remember enjoying some of the van der Valk programmes an aeon ago, but that was essentially a British detective series set in Amsterdam AFAIR.

[mangerton]

Edit: crossposted with Cali - I do like Brian Cox but was that a genuine Fair Isle accent?!

I have watched the episode, and (IMHO!!) any un-clarity of Brian Cox's speech was dictated by the part he had to play. Think about Bob Servant, where his speech was perfectly clear. I am not qualified to speak about a Fair Isle accent. I noticed he used the word "gey" several times. This means "very". ( eg "It's gey cauld the day" = It's very cold today.")

At the end, we heard "Faurs du fae?" " Fair Isle." That's my phonetic rendition of the question, and of course it means "Where are you from?" It certainly sounds plausible, bearing in mind other Scots dialects from northern parts of the country.

I'm now going to watch Inspector De Luca which I suspect will be easier to construe.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm now going to watch Inspector De Luca which I suspect will be easier to construe.

I lasted about 5 minutes. It was gey ridiculous the noo

[DracoM]

Ditto. Genuine grade 1 rubbish.
BBC trying to foist any old detective stuff in a foreign language on us on a Sat night?

Shame.

[mangerton]

Yes. I must agree with the previous two posts.

[Dave2002]

You didn't stick it out long enough. I've no idea whether it gets better, but it does get more interesting in more than one way after more than five minutes.