Upcoming BBC Mystery - 2014, 2015

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

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.

Sherlock Holmes - The Aragorn Complex

[The third of a series of posts which bind my twin loves, philosophy and TV detectives, for no reason whatsoever. Previously: Broadchurch: By Grace Ye Have Been Saved, Inspector Morse: The Transcendence of Art. Upcoming: Foyle's War and moral absolutes.]

Irene Adler: Do you know the big problem with a disguise, Mr. Holmes? However hard you try, it's always a self-portrait. 

Sherlock: You think I'm a vicar with a bleeding face? 

Irene Adler: No, I think you're damaged, delusional and believe in a higher power. In your case it's yourself. 

~Sherlock Season 2: A Scandal in Belgravia

According to Guinness World Records, Sherlock Holmes is the single most portrayed literary human character ever. There’s just something about this middle-aged white bloke in a deer-stalker that awakens the fanatic in a person. In modern times, we tend to shape him in the image of our own cultural mores (as we have Doctor Who). Watching the representative Holmes of each decade is almost like an automatic acid test of the zeitgeist. The latest two, in particular, highlight our modern take on heroes.

Inspector Morse - The Transcendence of Art

[The second of a series of posts which bind my twin loves - philosophy/theology and TV detectives - for no reason whatsoever. Previously: Broadchurch - By Grace Ye Have Been Saved. Up next: Sherlock Holmes - The Aragorn Complex. Upcoming: Foyle's War and moral absolutes.]

“Your aesthetic sense seems to be causing you no end of trouble, Chief Inspector,” says one suspect in the enormous body of Oxford-dwellers under investigation by Inspector Morse.

Anybody that has known me more than a week or two will probably tell you that one of my nerd obsessions is British detective shows. But my standards are high. While your average chalk-and-cheese buddy-cop mystery show is fun, I get bored unless it starts to take a stab at something deeper (see Midsomer Murders, Elementary).

Inspector Morse, at first glance, doesn’t seem to do this. Morse is a broody intellectual with odd habits. Sergeant Robbie Lewis, his partner, is a cheerful, ordinary family man. It’s the Formula. 

But Morse is more than the sum of his eccentricities (as, for instance, Hercule Poirot has become under the subtle grooming of David Suchet.) Morse doesn’t just like good things because they are commonly accepted as Good Things, but because they are genuinely excellent. And while the show has shot Oxford’s homicide rate into the stratosphere, its mystery doesn’t really center around death, but around life, and the longing for something transcendent.

Happy 140th Birthday, G.K. Chesterton

I think it's probably a fair bet to say that no author has taught me more than G.K. Chesterton. On the other hand, the author who has taught me least would have to be, yep, G.K. Chesterton. It's an appropriate paradox.

Chesterton lived and breathed on paradox. His ability to enlighten me on matters spiritual is nearly immeasurable, but there's the rub: he may only enlighten those things which one already knows, which already lurk in the mind and form the basis of his favorite virtue: common sense. No other author has such a talent for revealing to me the truths that are, or should be, immediately evident.

This is, in fact, the premise of one of his greatest books: Orthodoxy. In it, he voiced many of the questions that plagued him as a young seeker.

"How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?" 

"Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" 

"Can [one] hate [the world] enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?"

Tolkien on the Incarnation

Incarnation proves the intrinsic worth of each human person. 

~J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 136

The Incarnation of Jesus Christ was one of the central ideas in J.R.R. Tolkien's theology. Besides his philological attention to the whole idea of the word-made-flesh, he was interested in in the Incarnation’s refutation of the perceived schism between body and spirit, an idea particularly fostered in modern times. In the good old days, it was branded a heresy: Gnosticism. The Gnostics believed in the supremacy of the spirit over uncouth bodies. The vice versa equivalent would probably be modern secular materialism, placing all emphasis on what can be quantified. Both ideas are popular now, with trendy pop-Buddhism taking the place of Gnostic spiritualism.

Sara Groves - Invisible Empires - Album Review

I still remember the day I saw that stories were about more than events, but ideas, characters, and truth. This discovery didn't extend into music until recently. Could there be an equivalent of great literature in music? I watched the ideas. Andrew Peterson’s Light for the Lost Boy takes on the loss of innocence, and ultimate redemption. Matthew Perryman Jones’s impossibly good Land of the Living is so complex I still haven’t figured it all out, but dabbles in sin, death, grief, and redemption. I leapt into the stimulating world of ideas and their expression through music and poetic metaphor.

Sara Groves’s Invisible Empires is a first, though. She takes on ideas, all right, but ones that you generally wouldn’t find in music and certainly not in the mainstream CCM. Ideas like: bio-ethics, escapism, current politically correct ideology, the pressure to conform to society’s ideal, and death. It sounds more like science fiction topics.

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.