Mistresses - Season 3 (2010 Anthony / Clarkson / Glain)

Only a few scant days ago did I write 'I bought this as we were having a Sharon Small withdrawal after The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as good.' By the end of this third, shorter series (only four episodes) I was an emotional wreck. Good writing and acting.

Begins promisingly with the four girls meeting but all really angry with one another. What's going on? Then we find out.

And if you want to know, you'll have to watch it yourself.

Joanna Lumley turns up as Katie's mum.

The men: Patrick Baladi, Adam Rayner, Oliver Milburn (failed entrepreneur), Vincent Regan (wants to buy cake business), Mark Bazeley (photographer), Adam Astill (Jessica's former boss). And Alice Patten as the New York wife.

Ride the Pink Horse (1947 Robert Montgomery)

A really interesting film. Ex-serviceman Robert Montgomery arrives in a New Mexico town looking for the man who killed his mate - it's hearing aid wearing Fred Clark (White Heat, Sunset Blvd., A Place in the Sun). Montgomery encounters CIA man Art Smith (Letter From an Unknown Woman, T-Men, Brute Force), femme fatale Andrea King and a mysterious Mexican girl, Wanda Hendrix. And, finally, befriends a Mexican, Pancho, Thomas Gomez. Now all our characters are set up. Montgomery has a piece of evidence that can incriminate Clark - wants $30,000. How he's going to make that transaction and not get killed is the key.

Really well done, from its mysterious silent opening to a splendid scene on a merry-go-round. Great ending, where wounded Montgomery thinks he has only just arrived, doesn't know where the evidence is. Good terse post-war stuff, the angry returning soldier. Good atmosphere, Hendrix a striking presence. ('Flaquita'= 'little skinny girl'.) Good dialogue 'A snake with diamonds', 'Hold the glass in your hand if you're not thirsty' etc.

Add photography from the great Russell Metty and you really have something. Produced by Joan Harrison, edited by Ralph Dawson. Universal.

We know Montgomery from They Were Expendable and recall he had a distinguished navy war career. Films noir like this and Lady in the Lake clearly suited the veteran. When Ladies Meet and Mr & Mrs Smith were earlier acting jobs we're familiar with.

This was written by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, adapted from Dorothy Hughes' novel (she also wrote the novel 'In a Lonely Place'). Some of the source material had to be toned down - the gangster was originally a corrupt senator.

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973 Alan J Pakula & prod)

Social miscontent Timothy Bottoms on bicycle tour of Spain ditches it for coach tour, meets prim and proper and uptight Maggie Smith, who has an alarming habit of slipping into dysphasia. They both seem to have a habit of doing ridiculous things, she for example falling out of bed and breaking things, he punching through a hotel wall. Eventually romance is found. He's particularly not that easy to like, but eventually they set off in a shitty rented caravan, and she's almost seduced by a Duke. She confesses that she has the Dreaded Hollywood Terminal Illness and they both go home, though the last moments of the film show them married, in Spain, but whether that's a projection we don't know.

It's a bit of an annoying mess.

Written by Alvin Sargent (Paper Moon, Julia, Ordinary People, Unfaithful) and photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth.

Mournful looking Bottoms' career had already peaked here.

Show People (1928 King Vidor)

And so I meet Marion Davies, silent star and partner of William Randolph Hearst, whose pushiness probably ended up hurting her career in the 1930s. Ironically, this is a story about a girl from the South who somehow manages to get herself onto a Hollywood film set, becomes a star, and grows too big for her boots. Accordingly the audiences no longer warm to her and the theatres respond by telling the studios - something that would actually happen in Davies' life.

She's really quite an engaging presence. Her stupid mouth pose for a posh woman reminded me of Joanna Lumley as Patsy in Ab Fab. Loved also the title of the pretentious maid 'Excuse my depravity'.

Some fun cameos include Charlie Chaplin, John Gilbert (The Big Parade), Douglas Fairbanks and Vidor himself appearing at the end as the film director!

Co-starring William Haines, Dell Henderson, Paul Ralli.

With a synchronized music score and sound effects it must have been one of the last of the silents. Photographed by John Arnold at MGM.

Film damage in places made me thing of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse:

Remember My Name (1978 Alan Rudolph & scr)

Produced by his mentor Robert Altman, this is a slightly off-kilter story about a woman who comes out of prison and starts stalking his ex and his girlfriend. They are Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Perkins and Berry Berenson. Chaplin has acquired certain prison ticks like the disgusting way she has of putting out cigarettes, acts in some quite bizarre ways e.g. breaking into their house without them realising, running her car into theirs. She also has an unusual relationship with building supervisor Moses Gunn and has to endure some strange behaviour in the supermarket where Jeff Goldblum has given her a job, from Alfre Woodard and others.

The ending is strange - she sort of metaphorically locks him up but as the final shot shows, he can easily get out of the window and down the fire escape.

Photographed by Tak Fukimoto. Soundtrack also interesting in its choice of Blues numbers.

The sound design is interesting e.g. use of prison doors displaced over other action.  

Do not add me to the Alan Rudolph mailing list, however.

None Shall Escape (1944 Andre de Toth)

The war is over and a Nazi is on trial (thereby anticipating the Nuremberg Trials). Three witnesses tell the story, the first being vicar Henry Travers. In a Polish village in 1919, a German teacher Alexander Knox is to marry another teacher, Marsha Hunt, put she's a bit put out by his political beliefs and calls it off. He's later accused of raping a schoolgirl but there's not enough evidence and he flees to Germany. His brother Erik Rolfe tells how Knox became a Nazi and had his own brother taken to a concentration camp. And finally Hunt comes on, and relates how Knox came back to the now occupied village with his now radicalised nephew Richard Crane, who fixes his attention on her daughter Dorothy Morris. Knox is as vile to the people as you would expect, but when he orders a trainload of Jews, kids included, to be machine gunned before our eyes, on screen, it's strong stuff indeed. Considering Holocaust Memorial Day is coming up (Jan 27) it was most timely.

My only criticism is I would have liked the court to sentence him to death at the end, rather than the rather woolly plea that the United Nations will do right.

Our print (originally broadcast on TCM) is rather dark, unfortunately, as it's shot by the great Lee Garmes. Edited by Charles Nelson, designed by Lionel Banks, music by Ernst Toch, for Columbia.

Knox carries it well. He played the President in Wilson, but we'd know him from The Night My Number Came Up, The Longest Day, Accident, Puppet on a Chain, Nicholas and Alexandra.

Mistresses Season 2 (2009 Lowri Glain, S.J. Clarkson, Rachel Anthony)

Or 'Women Behaving Stupidly' part 2.

Jessica (Shelly Conn) has extremely stupidly married some rich dude but their's is an open relationship - in the pre-nup he tries to give her an extra £25k for each fling he's had! (She doesn't accept it.) But he's too close to his PA...

Katie (Sarah Parish) has learned nothing. She's now working at a hospital, starts a relationship with a tasty surgeon (Mark Umbers) but then starts shagging her ex (Steven Brand), a senior surgeon, who's married to Natasha Little.

And Siobhan... OMW where do I begin? She has started sneaking out at night and picking up randoms at a hotel. She and Hari (Raza Jaffery) try counselling - they haven't had sex in 18 months - but one of her pickups turns into a legal client and things start getting very awkward.

Meanwhile poor old Trudi (Sharon Small) is being continually lied to by Patrick Baladi. He's not paying £3k a month for some 'business debt', he's paying it for his dementia ex wife's care. I'm sorry, she should just bin him for lying. And it looks like her cake entrepreneur mentor Sean Francis fancies her...

The men are pretty much all awful too...

Our four leads are all great with perhaps Orla the stand-out.

Mistresses - Season 1 (2008 Rachel Anthony, S.J. Clarkson, Lowri Glain)

I bought this as we were having a Sharon Small withdrawal after The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as good.

And in fact could be called 'Stupid Women'. Sarah Parish, a GP, has been having an affair with one of her patients for two years, until he dies of cancer. Bad enough already. But his irritating son knows about another woman and won't let it go. End result is he and Parish start an affair. Fucking hell! (He's deeply annoying.)

Married Orla Brady (to Raza Jaffrey) has an affair at work with Adam Rayner and becomes pregnant - and it can't be her husband's.

Free agent Shelley Conn never wants to commit but after a one night stand with a female client - a client who is getting married the next day, I should add - she goes bonkers. I always thought Shelly Conn was a fine example of a gorgeous woman, but when she's in her 'provocative' lingerie she looks absolutely ridiculous!

Leaving the only one with any integrity Sharon Small, who's lost her husband in 9/11 six years before, raising two girls on her own. She starts a dalliance with Patrick Baladi, but we're a bit suspicious of him.

So not actually a great testament to female behaviour in the noughties. Ironically they are all - at some point or another - mistresses. The acting's fine.

At times, Edmund Butt's music sounds exactly like Tom Newman, proving how influential he was.

Bollocks of 2026

It's sadly early to start this list (5 January) but unfortunately we have a contender already, Hunting Wives, some crap about a woman who finds herself in the gun packing heart of Texas Republicanism. The title indicates how crap it will be.

Can You Keep a Secret? Dawn French, Mark Heap 'comedy'.

Silent Witness (1996 Nigel McCrery)

This series has been recommissioned every year without fail since 1996, making it surely one of the most popular ever. McCrery was a former murder squad detective. We watched a two parter called Long Days Short Nights, written by Ashley Pharoah and Nigel McCrery. It's quite meaty and torrid, involving a group of hedonists led by wealthy decadent Colin Salmon and Emily Mortimer, and features unsettling post mortem stuff, occult murders, sex tapes and a public blow job for coke scene that is quite un-BBC.

The forensic team comprises Amanda Burton and William Armstrong (and Janice Acquah).  Police are John McGlynn and Claire Higgins, and Ruth Gemmell who we recognise from somewhere (an episode of Lewis, an episode of The Inspector Lynley Murders, and Bridgerton.) Matthew Steer is the misbehaving youth.

The next broadcast episode, Silence Visible is not on iPlayer. It's the story of a gay man who is murdered in a police cell and the suspicion it might have been one of the cops. Perhaps it was deemed to be no longer acceptable.

So the next we saw was Sins of the Fathers, another merry tale of a young Vietnamese woman Teo-Wa Vuong who confesses to her older and horrible fiance that she was raped on the journey over. He goes crazy and attacks her. We're not sure what happened next, but a body is discovered. Burton strikes up a bond with her.

In tandem Burton is confronting her sister Ruth McCabe over the murder by bomb of their father, by the IRA.

In a sad finale, DS Cox Ruth Gemmell dies. And they have to do a post mortem, which I found very odd. It was fucking clear what she died from. But I checked it - it's police practice, as the death is deemed 'sudden and unexpected' and a PM must be done.

The Black Widow (1951 Vernon Sewell)

A Hammer thriller with an intriguing premise: a man driving one night stops to help an 'unconscious' victim who suddenly coshes him, takes his money and car. Then in high speed pursuit crashes and dies. Leaving the victim with amnesia and no idea who he is, whilst everyone thinks he's dead. Stumbles into house and life of Jennifer Jayne, who calls a doctor, cueing some awful dialogue:

"He has, has he? Dearie dearie me."

and

"She says you've lost your memory."
"Yeah, kinda stupid isn't it?"
"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't."

Anyway he tracks down his wife Christine Norden but she's shocked as was planning to run off with friend Anthony Forwood, and they go through with the funeral anyway thinking they can then bump him off and no one will be any the wiser. He follows them to the funeral at which point he should have stepped forward and prove to everyone (Vicar, servants) that he is still alive. But instead he doesn't and leaves himself in danger.

It's a stupid film with generally poor performances and weird touches, like a radiator being halfway down the staircase to the wine cellar.  Allan MacKinnon wrote it from Lester Powell's radio series 'Return From Darkness'. Jimmy Sangster is the AD.

The Night Manager - Season 2 (2026 David Farr)

John Le Carré had died and never had a Carré sequel been written without him. Farr says the idea for how it continued came to him in a dream. What that idea was, I can't remember.

Anyway, it's ten years later. Opens with Olivia Colman seeing Roper's body and pronouncing him dead. The Tom Hiddlestone character has had a complete identity change and is running a group of Intelligence surveillance agents. Sees something that convinces him there's a connection to the old Richard Roper dodgy arms deals. Without authorisation he sends his team in and two of them are killed. A survivor, Hayley Squires (I, Daniel Blake), joins him to seek out the bad man responsible, Diego Calva.

In Episode 3 (of 6) I was just thinking "This isn't as good as the last one, because Hugh Laurie isn't in it" and guess what happened?

Camilla Morone, Alistair Petrie, Douglas Hodge, Indira Varma, Michael Nardone, Paul Chahidi.

Looks like it cost a lot of money even if they didn't actually go to all the locations. Photographed by Tim Sidell and edited by Izabella Curry (with Napoleon Stratogiannakis on 2 and Dan Crinnion on 3). Music Federico Jusid.

Lynley (2025 Steve Thompson)

A reboot of characters based on novels by Elizabeth George, previously dramatized in a series running 2001-2007 with Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small. Steve Thompson wrote them all.

Leo Suter is the posh, Jenssen Interceptor driving DI and Sofia Barclay his somewhat strange-accented DS. And DCI Daniel Mays has something over the new DI.

A Place of Hiding. An art collector on a remote island, who styles himself Augustus Caesar, is found murdered. Funnily enough when I saw a terminally ill woman in bed, I thought 'She did it' as a joke - turns out it was her.

This Body of Death. 

A woman being stalked is found murdered. Is it her ex?

Lynley takes rap for Havers' disappearing to hospital and is suspended but she sticks by him, to Mays' disappointment.

Careless in Red. 

Drowned body in Norfolk Broads. Something's going on in 'close knit community' where GP doles out drugs without prescription and coppers don't report crimes. Turns out the murderer killed his own grandson. Ooops!

With No One as a Witness. 

Dead drug dealers found with curious crucifixion wounds on them. They are connected to a church. And a college professor.

Picture Perfect (1997 Glenn Gordon Caron)

Story by Arleen Sorkin (no relation) & Paul Slansky & May Quigley, screenplay credited to Sorkin & Slansky and Caron. We all know what that means. Don't we? 

The gorgeous ad exec Jennifer Aniston finds her colleague rogue Kevin Bacon only finds her attractive when he thinks she's with another man - what a shit! (That's enough to put her off to start with don't you think?) Moment at party where gorgeous Jen in gorgeous dress is standing on her own is nonsense - would have been men all around her, and women, knowing the advertising game as I do. Anyway then she has to make one up so gets Jay Mohr to act as BF - naturally he falls for her. And you know exactly where it's going to go, but that's fine.

One thing - I think Olympia Dukakis is underused - should have brought her in to third act (or last third of movie, if you want to put it that way). With Illeana  Douglas.

I bought it because it's edited by Robert Sleepless in Seattle Reitano (who you'll remember started as being one of Dede's boys) and it's a polished piece. Not sure why it's rated so low on IMDB at 5.5. Gorgeous Jen should give it at least 6.5 automatically.

Photographed by Paul Sarossy, music by Carter Burwell.

Chalet Girl (2011 Phil Traill)

After The Rip it was nice to see a bright and clear piece of photographic work by Ed Wild.

It's not the best film in the world but it's fun and reminded Q of her Leysin days. Written by Tom Williams.

Thankfully editor Robin Sales knew not to cut away from Felicity's close up when she delivers her key monologue on the top of a mountain.

When she comes to stop on her snow board she's always got her back to the camera, so I don't think she was allowed to do much of it herself.

Ed Westwick is not American. But was in Gossip Girl.

'Hair gum'.

It's not a Picasso

The Rip (2026 Joe Carnahan & scr)

It was shot - by Juanmi Azpiroz - with Netflix's usual disregard for lightness and clarity, and with their painfully loud sound effects track, so marks off for both of those. But the story is quite enjoyable as buddy cops Matt Damon and Ben Affleck uncover a cartel cash house with $20 million - who in their team is crooked?

With Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Catalina Sandena Moreno, Sashe Calle, Kyle Chandler.

After it was over I said I next wanted to watch something that I could actually see.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: The Finale (2007)

Yes, we were a bit gutted to realise that the final season only had two films unlike all the others.

Know Thine Enemy. Writer Ed Whitmore.

A schoolgirl is found dead and abused. Then another one goes missing. The tenuous clues are to a red headed woman and a possible map. This leads to abused wife Honeysuckle Weeks and her ghastly husband James D'Arcy, but are they the kidnappers? As the girl is also diabetic, we haven't got long. Mark Bonnar is an additional cop.

A side of Honeysuckle we haven't seen before

And Lynley and Havers fall out over how they each construe the case. But of course are reconciled at the end. I wonder if they knew it was the end? Who knows? One or both of them might have been heartily sick of it all by then. Interviewed by Ian Wylie in 2007 Sharon said

“I’m really going to miss it,” she told us.
“I think I would like, perhaps, an episode as a final episode, because we didn’t know that was the final episode that was ever going to be shot.
“So we haven’t had any round-up to anything. That might be nice.
“But, otherwise, I’m really enjoying a character which is probably more similar to me in a way. I’m enjoying the change.” (This would be a reference to Mistresses.)
We also spoke about the web campaign to save Inspector Lynley.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it – bring it on. I’d like to do another one.
“If people thought that they might quite like that, that might be quite nice.
“I think Nat Parker is rallying up the troops as well – come on!” 

 

Havers: "I know we've got to watch this some time but,,,"
Lynley: "Not now."

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023 Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K Thompson)

More remarkable animation, but it's exhausting - I had to watch it in three chunks. And I was disappointed that at two hours ten we are left on a cliffhanger, with Miles in the wrong dimension, finding he himself is his enemy the Punisher (I think; try and take me to Marvel Court and sue me if I'm wrong).

Some of the action (fights with Hole Man or whatever his name is, escape from Spider-Man HQ) is just too much - if they'd cut it down more maybe we could have got to the conclusion earlier.

But it is wonderfully done with incredible attention to detail.

Written by Christopher Miller, Phil Lord and Dave Callaham. 

With the voices of Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Luaren Velez, Jason Schwartzman, Jake Johnson, Oscar Isaac, Daniel Kaluuya etc. Donald Glover appears in live action.

The credits include a composer Daniel Pemberton, editor Michael Andrews, production designer Patrick O'Keefe, and a costume designer Brooklyn El-Omar. Then 56 people are credited in the art department, 58 in the sound department and no less than 328 in the special effects team and 241 animators.

I showed the Q the opening: she got it.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2006-7)

 S. 5, 3. Chinese Walls. Ed Whitmore.

Murder of young woman in Hyde Park. Links to her half-sister Georgia Mackenzie, and her online sex business, colleague Jonas Armstrong, arrogant lawyer Samuel West and his clerk Lindsey Coulson, and parents Diana Hardcastle and David Yelland. With child abuse sub-text it's strong stuff.

S. 5, 4. In the Blink of an Eye. Ed Whitmore and Suzie Smith.

More strong stuff, as a former war photographer is murdered in Soho; links back to Bosnia war. Shockingly ends with death of leading character.

Ania Sowinski, Indira Varma, Danny Webb, Gary MacKay, Serge Soric.

So after the shock ending we had to start

S.6, 1. Limbo. Ed Whitmore.

Understandably Lynley is dealing with grief through booze. What he needs is a very personal case going back 13 years, and the disappearance of the young child of friends. When the body is discovered he travels to Rome to pick up the boy's elder sister; he somewhat improperly has sex with her and she's found murdered. As the prime suspect he's arrested by antagonistic DI Geraldine Somerville.

Georgina Rylance, Nicholas Farrell, Samantha Bond, John Shrapnel, Nick Hyde, Ed Stoppard, Denise Gough.

Good casts they get. And the films get better as the series proceeds.

Who is Ed Whitmore. anyway? His biggest body of work by far is 36 episodes of Silent Witness (mainly across seasons 13 - 28). And 22 episodes of Waking the Dead (Trevor Eve, Sue Johnstone). Latterly he wrote three of the Grace series. Previously Arthur and George. And He Kills Coppers. So, yeah - Ed Whitmore now has a new fan. Interview here, in which he revealed that his writing apprenticeship was to watch Chinatown 100 times, from which he learned everything he needed to learn about writing!

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials (2026 Chris Chibnall)

A two and a half hour version, in which it's pretty likely that Edward Bleumel is a bad guy and that he shot himself in the library - the real villain though was a surprise. The stuff about the Seven Dials sect with the clock faces though is just so much rubbish.

Mia McKenna-Bruce is able to carry it and is a spunky heroine who disobeys everything detective Martin Freeman tells her. With Helena Bonham-Carter

Distracting direction by Chris Sweeney, who has a tendency to throw in very high and wide or overhead shots for no good reason. The blocking in the scene between McKenna-Bruce, Bonham-Carter and Alex Macqueen is so annoying as he's in the middle of the two and has to keep turning from one to the other - again, distracting. And so many clocks everywhere - not necessary.

And the photography is in the Murkovision beloved by Netflix (DP Luke Bryant). For example, have a look at this candlelit scene:

Compare to a shot from The Inspector Lynley Mysteries from 2003 (DP Graham Frake):

What do we think? Less realistic but sharper and more beautiful? Or, let's go to the beauty of Si Bell (from Miss Austen):

That's just delicious. But still ever so clear. See what I mean?

Anyway, it was quite enjoyable.

With Iain Glen, Hughie O'Donnell, Nabhaan Rizwan (Film Club), Corey Milchreest, Dorothy Atkinson, Mark Lewis Jones, Tim Preston.