Agatha Christie's Poirot - The Labours of Hercules - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Elephants Can Remember.

It's practically a fact of nature that if you're cooped up with a number of people in a house in the snow, someone will be dead by the end of the weekend. If a small rotund Belgian man is there, you might as well call up friends (after calling your family solicitor) and say goodbye.

Complete with the requisite creaks in the night, the latest Poirot episode, The Labours of Hercules, must have been extremely difficult to adapt. The original consisted of a dozen quirky, loosely related short-stories, which culminated in a night-club called Hell (really). The adaptation picks a few of the best elements and combines them into a charming but bittersweet tale that feels unique in all the Poirot canon. We have German psychology, a dastardly serial killer, eccentric, hilarious foreigners, gorgeous vistas in a setting reminiscent of Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel, and the return of our favorite femme fatale, Countess Vera Rossakoff (and if you don't know who that is - SHAME - watch The Double Clue.)

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Elephants Can Remember - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Dead Man's Folly

A couple, General and Mrs. Ravenscroft, walk along the white cliffs of Dover, arm-in-arm. The dog runs ahead, barking happily. They smile at one another. A few seconds later, a shot rings out, and the two lie dead.

Thus kicks off the climactic season of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, running circa 1989. Despite an added storyline involving murder by hydrotherapy (a psychiatric treatment in which the patient is blasted with scalding then freezing water), this episode is not as uniformly dark as Murder on the Orient Express, the intense conclusion to the previous season.

Ariadne Oliver’s appearance adds a good element of humor. Her slapdash, jovial demeanor is the perfect foil to Poirot’s fastidious world-weariness (which has become a little old—dude, one smile won’t hurt.) During the reception for her Crime Novelist of the Year award, Mrs. Oliver is cornered by the formidable Mrs. Burton-Cox, a mother with an ax to grind. Does she remember her goddaughter, Celia Ravenscroft? Yes, well, what she wants to know is did General Ravenscroft kill his wife, or did Margaret Ravenscroft kill her husband?

My 5 Favorite Con-Men

Regular readers here at Longish will know that I'm more than a little obsessed with British detectives. So now, for a change of pace, let's get to know my favorite British con-men. There are a few conditions—con-men are not criminals of the vulgar sort. No, indeed; these dashing figures eschew unsophisticated fisticuffs, and make do with intelligence and witty repartee. For this reason I would not nominate Moriarty (his weapon is strategy, a general of the underworld), though I would almost nominate Saruman (disqualified because his witty repartee stems from an enchantment.)

Also, they must be loads of fun. Let's start with the most fun of them all...

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Dead Man's Folly - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: The Big Four

Like most TV shows throughout the last decades, Agatha Christie's Poirot has become progressively darker, but Dead Man's Folly is a welcome return to a simpler age (similar to The Big Four, which I had not seen when I first saw this episode). Yes, a simpler age with murder, adultery, and other deadly sins, but they're all mercifully off-screen, and I'll have no qualms in watching this with my younger siblings. (True enough, I love the Suchet adaptation of Orient Express, but it's nice to have something lighter once again.)

With summer in the air, wealthy squire Sir George Stubbs and his fragile, childlike wife Hattie plan a grand fête for their Devonshire neighbors to celebrate their recent acquisition of Nasse House. Fancy dress, fortune telling, and a coconut shy are all scheduled, as well as a murder hunt designed by mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver. But Mrs Oliver is convinced something is amiss, and asks Hercule Poirot to attend the festivities as a means to put her mind at rest.

In this classic Christie plot, we have an enormous cast of barely distinguishable British suspects, a garden fete, a murder. The first half the plot is heavy on exposition, and feels a little staged as character after character walk up to Poirot and begin to talk about themselves and their backgrounds. The cast would have been much more manageable if several characters had been cut, but the significant ones stick out just enough to remember who's who. The necessarily heavy amount of suspect interviews is relieved by inter-cutting punctuated with moments of Mrs. Oliver. Cadfael and Lewis fans will notice Hugh Beringar (Sean Pertwee) and Superintendent Innocent (Rebecca Front) among the crew.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - The Big Four - Episode Review

[Originally posted at Longview.]

And so it begins. The gang is officially together again for the first time in thirteen years (though also the last, for Japp and Ms. Lemon.) Unfortunately, it’s only for a few scenes in this eccentric but enjoyable addition to the Poirot series. The Big Four was Agatha Christie’s attempt at a conspiracy thriller, mixed among the usual Poirot body-in-the-library cases. She couldn’t quite leave that format behind, and her conspiracy conveniently takes the shape of multiple murders in country houses. Mark Gatiss and Ian Hallard’s adaptation is at its strongest when it is focusing on these quirky, clever episodes.

Upcoming BBC Mystery - 2014, 2015

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Endeavour - 2nd season. Americans can catch this excellent Inspector Morse prequel every Sunday on PBS, from July 6 to July 20. Bringing back Shaun Evans as Endeavour Morse, and the lovely Roger Allam as his ursine mentor, Inspector Fred Thursday, the show follows the pair as they investigate a series of murders among Oxford's evocative spires. Needless to say, there shall be opera, ale, romance, and old cars. For those of you who can't wait, check out my reviews: Trove, Nocturne, Sway, and Neverland.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - 13th and final season. At last, we on this side of the pond are going to see the conclusion to the long-running series starring David Suchet as the eponymous Belgian. The old cast members, Hugh Fraser, Philip Jackson, and Pauline Moran, will reprise their roles as, respectively, Captain Hastings, Inspector Japp, and Miss Lemon. Two episodes will air on the PBS Sundays after Endeavour, July 27 and August 3 - these two, and the last three will be exclusively online at Acorn.tv every Monday from July 28 to August 25. Update - Reviews thus far: The Big Four, Dead Man's Folly, Elephants Can Remember, The Labours of Hercules.

Gracepoint - 1st season. Already filmed, and also starring David Tennant, this American remake of the superb British miniseries Broadchurch will air this fall on Fox. Frankly, I'm skeptical. The trailer seems a point-for-point copy of the original - nothing unique. Another thing: will they keep the religious element? It was essential. My review of the original.

Endeavour Season 2 - Neverland - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Sway

The season finale begins with Nunc Dimittis, the Canticle of Simeon (here's a good recording):

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant

depart in peace
according to Thy Word,
for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation
which Thou hast prepared
before the face of all people.
To be a Light to light on the Gentiles
And to be the glory of Thy people Israel.
Glory be to the Father
And to the Son
And to the Holy Ghost,
As it was the beginning,
Is now and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen.

The music is intercut with scenes of D.I. Thursday who, like Morse at the very beginning of the season, is taking a medical exam. Resembling Simeon, Thursday feels the encroachment of age, and the advent of a younger generation. We’ve always known that, however enjoyable, the Thursday-Morse partnership couldn’t go on forever. From the first moments of Neverland, we feel that gentle shift begin.

Endeavour Season 2 - Sway - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Nocturne

Endeavour is certainly hitting all the common detective series Trope episodes early on. Usually, it takes a few seasons before we have the Serial-Killer-With-A-Vendetta-For-Our-Hero episode, or the Meet-The-Family episode, or the Old Flame episode. Endeavour used all three in the first season. I initially thought this week's installment was a repeat of Fugue - a Serial Killer thriller, but it turns out the mystery itself is secondary to the emotional drama of an Old Flame.

Here's the thing though: for once, it's not Morse's old flame, it's Thursday's. This gives quite an unusual texture to the story, and once again focuses more on Morse's boss than the protagonist himself (I'm not complaining). Like Home, another Thursday-central episode, a pivotal theme is family. Sway focuses on marriage, love, and fidelity. (Spoilers ahead.)

The story itself comes second to the character drama. A serial killer is on the loose in Oxford (once again), strangling married women with a pair of fancy silk stockings. Morse tracks the stockings to a department store called Burridge’s, where a number of highly suspicious men stalk the stocking aisles. In the course of these investigations Morse meets an Italian woman named Luisa, who, the instant Thursday enters the room, collapses in a dead faint. This scene was probably a lot funnier than it should have been.

Endeavour Season 2 - Nocturne - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Trove

This week’s episode of Endeavour takes a Scooby-Doo twist, complete with a haunted mansion, creepy little girls, and a historical mystery. Most series have one or two murder-in-the-past episodes, practically all the Sherlock Holmes short stories have some link to history, with Poirot it’s Five Little Pigs and Elephants Can Remember, with Father Brown The Sign of the Broken Sword, with Morse The Wench is Dead. 

Endeavour goes back to a mass murder in the 1800s. Morse becomes involved while investigating a murder in a museum. Questioning witnesses leads him to a girls’ school, where a small band of students are staying for the summer holidays. Soon enough he senses foul play and delves into the place’s history, discovering the legend of Bloody Charlotte, the only survivor of the Victorian massacre, and possibly the culprit.

Needless to say, this means the house is haunted, and quite a few heart-thumping sequences ensue. Honestly, Morse and Thursday (while showing their usually quality) take backseat to the small, earnest drama in the school, and the excellent performances from the young actresses. 

Endeavour Season 2 - Trove - Episode Review

My review of last year's season finale: Home

Endeavour Morse has always been the Doctor Who of detectives—a dynamic main character who draws us through plots of varying degrees of ridiculousness. If you can’t laugh at the inherent absurdity, it simply will not work. This episode is particularly tangled, with three wildly different threads turning out to be connected. I think.

Shaun Evans and Roger Allam return for a second series of this popular prequel to Inspector Morse, starring as, respectively, D.C. Endeavour Morse and his mentor-cum-sidekick, the lovingly decent Inspector Thursday. Overall, the episode is a welcome return to the homicidal society of Oxford (I immediately smiled to hear the closing theme song).

Sherlock - His Last Vow - Caring is a Disadvantage

My review of last week's episode: The Sign of Three

[Originally posted at Longview]

After the highs of the first episode, and the lows of the second, I really wasn't sure how to approach His Last Vow. I shouldn't have worried. It's a really tightly scripted episode, with impeccable pacing and a bundle of surprises, if somewhat lacking in dramatic tension compared to last season's finale.There shall be spoilers.

Sherlock - The Sign of Three - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: The Empty Hearse

Warning: spoiler-filled rant ahead.

And…apparently the game is not on. It’s tradition that the middle episode of each season of Sherlock will be the weakest, but The Sign of Three is possibly my least favorite episode of all three season so far. The tragedy is, I know Steve Thompson – the writer – can do better. While season one’s The Blind Banker was corny, season two's finale The Reichenbach Fall was excellent.

But let’s get down to it: the first thirty minutes are great. We’re thrown back into the swing of things, as Sherlock starts to deal with the idea of life without single John. “It changes people, marriage,” says Mrs. Hudson, widow of a double-murderer. The wedding itself starts about twenty minutes in—naturally we completely skip any proceedings inside the church and fast-forward to the reception. A group of amusing flashbacks show Sherlock organizing the wedding, warning off Mary’s ex-boyfriend and having a brief Iron-Man-3-esque personal cute kid. Sherlock has a conversation with Mycroft which, once again, emphasizes how much the wedding is going to change the Watson-Holmes relationship.

Then comes the speech, which I expected to last about five, maybe ten, minutes. My first mistake.

Broadchurch - By Grace Ye Have Been Saved

[The first of a series of posts which bind my twin loves, philosophy and TV detectives, for no reason whatsoever. Next up: Inspector Morse: The Transcendence of Art, Sherlock Holmes - The Aragorn Complex. Upcoming: Foyle's War and moral absolutes.]

“A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret...that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!”

~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities


Broadchurch isn't a murder mystery. Sure, there's a whodunit at the center of the plot, but that's not really what it's about. Instead of whisking in a clever clogs London detective who then, having dispensed almost divine justice, sweeps cleanly out of the aftermath, Broadchurch places its two main characters directly in the path of the storm.

Sherlock - The Empty Hearse - Episode Review

(Originally posted at Longview.)

Okay, so yeah, I'm going to be talking about everything that happened. And what happened last season. If you want a spoiler free review...go elsewhere, and good luck. However, I will attempt to keep the third season spoilers above the break. If you’ve come here looking for a review pointing out some hitherto unnoticed aspect in a well-crafted, tightly edited essay, you’re looking in the wrong place—this is just my impression, over-long and rather self-indulgent. But fun to write.

So let's face it, we've been waiting two years to find out how Sherlock fell. Was it worth it?

The short answer is: yes.

The long answer? Well, it was always going to be a little anticlimactic to those who had spent any time immersed among the wildly varying internet fan theories. It turns out, my guess was pretty much completely correct…they didn't throw us a last-minute curve-ball, they didn't unveil a brilliant, unexpected solution, they aren’t smarter than us (we do, after all, outnumber them by a few million). The great thing is, though, that they are quite aware of that, and so decide to mess with our minds in other ways.

2014 BBC Mystery

Source

This is older information - for the latest, follow this link. 

My last mystery post, on 2013 mysteries, had several series that are still yet to come out, but their release date is a little bit more certain.

Sherlock Season Three is now certainly coming out in 2014, with a January 19 release date for the U.S. The Beeb has also announced a December 25 minisode, though whether that'll extend to us on the other side of the pond has yet to be seen. Needless to say, the hype is getting pretty loud, since it's been two years since season two's cliffhanger ending, and the speculation is intense. The greatest question is: why does Watson have a mustache?

Martin Freeman's real life partner, Amanda Abbington, will be joining him on-screen as his wife, Mary Morstan, which ought to be fun. Lars Mikkelson is signed on as the new villain, and certainly has large shoes to fill after the amazing Andrew Scott.

Foyle's War - Sunflower Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: The Cage

One of the greatest attractions of murder mysteries are the conclusions. After a dramatic confrontation (usually in the library, surrounded by a group of suspects), the crook is bundled off to an undisclosed but hopefully sinister end. Lord Peter Wimsey observed that “in detective stories virtue is always triumphant. They’re the purest literature we have.” On the other hand, in spy stories, corruption and lying are often rampant on both sides, and stories end in a muddle of gray. James Bond is not paragon of justice.

This mix-up of the two genres worked for the first two episodes, but Sunflower comes dangerously close to compromising the entire premise of the show. In this episode, Foyle is tasked with a mission he finds very unpleasant: protecting a Nazi. Karl Strasser is making up for a dark history by feeding MI5 Soviet secrets, but he’s begun to receive death threats. Queue Foyle, the world’s worst bodyguard. His efforts on Strasser’s part seem only half-hearted.

Foyle's War - The Cage - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: The Eternity Ring

If one is a detective, it’s a fairly certain occupational hazard that your privacy will be violated by a man—wounded in some manner—stumbling into your office, gasps out a cryptic phrase to the tune of “Purple Elephant!”, and falls dead.

“This man has been murdered, Holmes!”

It had to happen. Except, in this case, the man stumbles into a hospital, gasping out the phrase “Ten I!” Meanwhile, a woman gets a mysterious phone call, promptly disappearing and playing merry hell with operations at MI5.

Things are a bit less chaotic than episode one—Foyle is starting to settle into his new job (because, let’s face it, he has nothing to do in retirement but fish and drink scotch), Sam is finding her feet as Foyle’s secretary, and Adam has begun awkwardly campaigning in the dastardly world of politics. And how’s life at the work place? Horowitz has spun a world of lies, interdepartmental spying, and blackmail. Needless to say, Foyle doesn’t fit in. Though actually, he does a bit. Foyle isn’t above using a little misdirection, but it’s still his tenacity that gets him through.

Foyle's War - The Eternity Ring - Episode Review

TV shows, after a few years, often slip into a well-worn groove. All the actors know their place, their character, and things move along with an enjoyable professionalism, albeit a slightly predictable one. Foyle’s War was axed in 2008, but in 2010 the show was, to use a hackneyed phrase, back by popular demand. In the previous finale, the detective had retired (again), and there is no war to be Foyle’s. There was no groove to be well-worn. In 2010, without the war, Foyle had lost his bearings. Sure, the reboot was unpredictable, but had lost its sense of place and was moving into dangerous territory with Foyle's background.

However, series 7 has returned Christopher Foyle to familiar ground: wartime corruption and intrigue. At the same time, the world is radically different. Episode 1 opens in the New Mexico desert with the test of an atomic bomb. This ain’t The Body in the Library. It’s the Cold War, and the stakes have been raised—the Soviets are the new enemy. Foyle is trapped into working for MI5 in a dilemma worthy of an Alex Rider novel (which would make sense, Mr. Horowitz.) Foyle is called upon to investigate a Russian defector and a possible band of spies: the Eternity Ring. Thus ensues a twisty espionage caper, probably a bit too complex, but thoroughly enjoyable.

Endeavour - Home - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode.

Professor Alistair Coke Norris’s death in a hit and run accident seems open and shut—but this is Morse. After some poking around, and informing the mild-mannered wife (Poppy Miller), it’s revealed that he to vote on a sale of college land that, predictably, involves some shady dealings. Also predictably, C.S. Bright is not happy about this turn of events. While at first amusingly Wodehousian, Bright is becoming more and more irritating and obstructive to Morse and Thursday. (By the way, this is getting a little wearing. Isn’t there anything else he does?)

But Bright’s political sycophancy becomes a real danger when one of Thursday’s old adversaries, Vic Kasper, turns up. From the moment the two set eyes on each other, it’s obvious they have A History. Following that revelation, this episode is more about Thursday than Morse (though perhaps it always has been.) Morse learns even more of his mentor’s old secrets. Somehow, though, these tidbits seem less interesting than the knowledge of Italian, war-time reminiscing, and dinner-table banter in earlier episodes.

Endeavour - Rocket - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode.

With appropriate timing, this week’s Endeavour features a visit from royalty. After last week’s episode, Rocket’s comparatively lighter tone is welcome.

The prospect of a visit to Oxford by Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret, who is to unveil the British Imperial Electric Company's new "Standfast" Mark Two missile, has Chief Superintendent Bright, slated to provide security, on red alert. But when an unpopular worker is found murdered in a secluded area of the shop floor, Endeavour must pursue the truth -- and then justice -- from the sidelines…and in the intoxicating presence of Alice Vexin, an old acquaintance from his days at Oxford.

Featuring a plot involving factory owners, unions, and Middle Eastern businessmen, my political correctness detector was running on full spin. Perhaps it was unfair, but after the rampant PC in Lewis, I wanted to see how Endeavour measured up. And while it wasn’t as gutsy as good old very anachronistic Morse, neither did it descend to blatant caricaturing.  The factory is owned by the Broom family, a group composed of five vindictive individuals. There’s the mother, a domineering, spiteful but practical businesswoman. The daughter, Estella, similar to the cold, enigmatic character of the same name from Dickens’s Great Expectations. Two awkward brothers, another brother dead four years back, and a shifty father round off that happy family.