Waking the Dead - Season 5 /6 (2005-6)

Undertow. Oliver Brown. Unsuccessful estate agent Steven Hunt is suspected of killing several women. Grace works out he has a water fetish, and at one point he drowns a victim in a busy swimming pool without anyone noticing, even Spence and Stella, who are supposed to be keeping an eye on him. Mum Cheryl Campbell is over-protective, dad Peter Wight equivocal. When he finds the evidence the son did it, he drowns him in the bathtub.

Things pick up with Cold Fusion, an exciting tale in which Ed 'Tall Tales' Whitmore (largely) acquits himself. Young Spence was on the beat when he and colleague Mark Lewis Jones find a horrific double homicide of anti-nuclear protestors. It's now being re-examined. Stolen evidence suggests Spence had something to do with it; then Stella starts acting really suspiciously, so we have these good internal conflicts.

Then two things happen: a supposed nerve gas attack in the station, cut against Spence finding himself and suspect Paul Copley (Downton, Last Tango in Halifax) pursued by an assassin. All through this we're thinking 'top level MI5 cover up' and it turns out that Commander David Calder is highly involved. A slight failing is when we leave Spence isolated and injured, then go back to a debate about morality between Boyd and Calder - too long. It all ends thrillingly enough.

Richard Standeven directed.

Boyd 'assuring' the Commander of his cooperation

In the Season 6 opener we notice with some relief that Spence is not dead (and Q reckons he's dressing more informally); also that Stella has not been fired; and there's a mysterious new pathologist, Tara Fitzgerald (with no explanation of where Felix went).

Wren Boys by Declan Croghan is one of those unfortunate ones that doesn't know what it is. We quickly cross cut between young nun with stigmata Carey Mulligan, ritualistic goings on the woods at night and bare knuckle boxing, all to percussive sound effects. Features alarmingly aggressive dogs, gypsies, men with silly animal heads on and psychedelic woad!

Great scene where Boyd makes thick boxer confess with the aid of a small skeleton and the suggestion that they don't talk about the 14 years the boxer is going to get if convicted, is small atonement.

Singapore (1947 John Brahm)

Written by Seton Miller and Robert Thoeren. Pearl smuggler Fred MacMurray returns to Singapore to retrieve stashed jewels - finds his wife he thought dead Ava Gardner is alive but with amnesia and now married to plantation owner Roland Culver. Policeman Richard Haydn is after him, as is criminal Thomas Gomez and henchman George Lloyd. Spring Byington and Porter hall are tourists; Maylai a former servant.

Shot at Universal by Maury Gertsman, scored by Daniele Amfitheatrof. Edited by William Hornbeck.

"We should really be drinking Gin Slings with this," I said to Q.
"Any excuse," she said. "You don't even know what they are."
"It would be a good way to find out."

For the record it's Dry Gin, lemon juice, cane sugar syrup and soda water. Quite nice, I would have thought.

It's not the best film in the world, but quite engaging. Stock footage of Singapore is interesting.

Waking the Dead - Season 5 cont. (2005)

Subterraneans has a fatal overuse of a man in captivity going mad - show us a bit of it but don't keep forcing it down our throats. In fact two bodies have been found and they are somehow linked to a medical researcher, Toby Stephens, who begins to behave very oddly indeed. 'Did Ed  Whitmore write this?' Q asked at one point. 'How did you guess?' Turns out he (the researcher, not Ed) has never been even qualified as a doctor and has been claiming to have a good, globe-trotting career for 12 years! (I know, it's not very credible, but tell that to 'Tall Tales' Ed.)

Spence is still in a surly mood but at last Stella is fitting in better - in the next one, Straw Dog, she wins Boyd's approval by slapping a witness! Grace is caught up in a retrial of an old case, with seventies flashbacks where she's played by Emma Lowndes opposite DI David Norman. With Paul Freeman, Angela Bruce as the judge. It's written by Declan Croghan. It's a race against the clock as an imprisoned unfortunate is having his fingers removed, televised, one by one. (I kept thinking of Scream and Scream Again.)

Boyd is still periodically shouting at people, which is quite amusing.

The Mosquito Coast (1986 Peter Weir)

Paul Schrader has adapted Paul Theroux's novel faithfully - it's the exact same plot. And really something of a tragedy as Harrison Ford wants to get his family back to basics so they relocate to La Mesquitia, Honduras. Things start well with building and farming, then he gets carried away and builds a monstrous and hideous ice factory, which ends up causing his downfall. And ironically, which is so chemical based it poisons the river. The explosion is a bravura sequence, quite unsettling, made more so by the inclusion of some ghastly sound effects (like animals) - a big team  - all I can suggest is that Mark Berger is the Supervising rerecording Mixer (The Pledge, The Talented Mr Ripley, The English Patient).

Anyway it makes him crazier and more determined to get away from civilization which his sons, River Phoenix and Jadrien Steele are beginning to resent. He's so selfish. I don't know why 'Mother' Helen Mirren doesn't put her foot down - I guess she's not as strong a character.

River narrates, trying to balance his dad's craziness with his own sense of loyalty.

Andre Gregory plays a preacher who's on the brink of madness himself. Martha Plimpton's his daughter. And believe it or not, there's a small appearance from Butterfly McQueen.

It's a vivid film, well acted and put together, filmed with two crews in Belize. John Seale is the DP, Maurice Jarre the composer. John Soddart's the production designer, Thom Nobel the editor.

I remember not enjoying it the first time round. It's a depressing tragedy, but ironic and interesting, and at least he dies in the end! (And neither of his sons have had to kill him.) Unsurprisingly, it didn't do particularly well at the box office.

La La Land (2016 Damian Chazelle & scr)

The car horn that 1. blasts Mia in her car 2. signifies Seb is outside and ready to pick her up 3. tries to identify Mia at home.

The theatre where she performs her play is the closed down cinema.

'Le Cafe' by Miguel Dominguez

The Killers Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner

13.

Waking the Dead Season 5 cont. (2005)

We started watching Brangelina Mr & Mrs Smith but became quickly bored. Then we were going to watch Downton Abbey: A New Era which Google had told me was on Netflix - it wasn't.

'Andy', Georgia Mackenzie, is gone already. Boyd tries not to employ half-French Félicité du Jeu (Stella) but she turns up for work anyway. At a particularly bad time, as Boyd has been drugged and led to believe he drunk drove and injured a motor bike rider - that Spence believes this shit is incomprehensible. And it's not written by Ed Whitmore. I don't know why they've made the same mistake as Silent Witness - bring in a load of new writers who don't understand the characters / dynamics well enough.

So Boyd's suspended but carries on with the case etc etc. David Hayman, Diane Parish. How funny, I was only thinking Peter Polycarpou the other day and there he is.

Black Run was written by Raymond Khoury. I thought I'd had this one all worked out at the beginning - I was nowhere near close.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949 Robert Hamer & co-scr)

I don't think anyone would argue with me when I say that this is Dennis Price's best film. And I don't think anyone would argue if I also contend that this is Robert Hamer's best film. In fact no one will argue with me about anything I fucking say as no one reads this fucking blog except me and the Q. Evonne Goolagong is the best actor in the world. Mussolini had two left feet. Cartesian Dualism is a make of soft furnishings.

Dennis price was born to a military family in Twyford, but went into acting. Michael Powell spotted him on stage and cast him in A Canterbury Tale. Was bedevilled by drink and gambling, was a closet homosexual. That's pretty much all I can tell you.

'Balaclava Road, S.W.' Woodhurst Road, Acton. Well over a million each now

"My late husband, and his father the Duke, both unable to testify today..."

More BAFTA winning screenplays

2020. Promising Young Woman Emerald Fennell. 

Adapted: The Father. Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller.

2021. Licorice Pizza. Paul Thomas Anderson, 

Adapted: CODA. Sian Heder.

2022. The Banshees of Inisherin. Martin McDonagh, 

Adapted: All Quiet on the Western Front. Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell.

2023. Anatomy of a Fall. Justine Triet, Arthur Harari. 

Adapted: American Fiction. Cord Jefferson.

2024. A Real Pain. Jesse Eisenberg. 

Adapted: Conclave. Peter Straughan.

2025. Sinners Ryan Coogler.

Adapted. One Battle After Another. Paul Thomas Anderson.

Ealing Studios Double Bill: Passport to Pimlico (1949 Henry Cornelius) / The Lavender Hill Mob (1951 Charles Crichton)

Stanley Holloway, Betty Warren and daughter Barbara Murray. John Slater and Jane Hylton. Paul Dupuis. Raymond Huntley. Philip Stainton. Sydney Tafler. Hermione Baddeley. Margaret Rutherford. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. Charles Hawtrey.

I was interested to see that not everyone is in a suit and tie, notably Holloway who rarely wears a tie. Many shirts have rolled up sleeves and did I actually spy a T-Shirt in that busy (black) market?

It was shot in Lambeth in the rainy summer of 1948. Cornelius, a perfectionist, would often lose his cool, for example bawling out 18 year old Barbara Murray in front of the extras, and frequently fighting with Michael Balcon - apparently a six week shoot took six months. It was, however, a big hit with the public and the critics, and Cornelius asked for a pay rise. Balcon turned him down and he promptly quit.

It's also a Georges Auric double bill.

Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway (it's also a Stanley Holloway double bill), Sid James, Alfie Bass.

Brilliantly written, by T.E.B. Clarke: The Geegaws casting process; that Guinness is helping the police find the gang; the schoolgirl's 'boyfriend' is a copper; chase through Police exhibition; the heist goes immediately wrong.

Photographed by Douglas Slocombe.

We Brits love it when people get away with cheeky crimes.

Avanti (1972 Billy Wilder & co-scr)

It's Izzy Diamond's birthday.

So brilliantly written. Love the way 'Permesso' / 'Avanti' turns into a kiss.

It must be the most successful long comedy - two hours 25.

Best of Waking the Dead

Anger Management. The flamenco one. And Boyd in therapy. John Milne, Andy Hay

Final Cut. The Performance one. Stephen Davis.

Cold Fusion. Ed Whitmore. S. 5 finale. Spence pursued by assassin.

Waking the Dead - Seasons 4/5 (2004-5)

Shadowplay by Ed Whitmore. Mentally unbalanced women are being manipulated to murder by the mysterious 'Shepherd'. At first we think it's overly-enunciating Paul Kaye, then suspect his brother, James Larkin, but of course it's Ed, so it's someone else entirely.

With Lucy Gaskell, Laurence Penry-Jones, Eve Best.

Eve Best was in The Shadow Line and The Honorable Woman

Mike Spragg is on camera. He shot 66 episodes of this, pretty much the whole of Seasons 3 - 9.

It was Claire Goose's decision to leave the show - she'd before it had a three year stint on Casualty. It was a bit of a shock to have Holly Aird (who in 2004 lived 'just round the corner' from her in Chiswick) depart also (she was pregnant).

Thus in the Season Five opener, Towers of Silence, we have a new DS 'Andy' Stephenson, played by Georgia Mackenzie, who unfortunately isn't assimilated very well into her first story, and also a new pathologist, 'Felix' (I know, what's going on?) Gibson, Esther Hall. The other surprise is to find Spence in prison, but in Joe Cozens' screenplay all is not what it seems.

The story involves some shadowy insurance company and a dodgy Indian importer / exporter of fake drugs, who all get away with it.

It's interesting watching these things in a continuous run - most people have to wait until the next year (at least) to watch the next series.

Waking the Dead Season 4 (2004)

Fugue States by Ed Whitmore. A young man injured in a traffic accident is discovered to be a missing five year old from fifteen years ago - Joe Armstrong. He claims not to know where he's been. And where's his twin sister?

Into this comes a different strand - a former doctor Sean McGinley who was renowned for taking abused children out of their families. And a hospital doctor Ray Stevenson and his daughter and wife Maimie McCoy and Denise Black.

Mel accidentally shoots a deaf man who it turns out figures; Mel we learn has herself been adopted with an unfit mother, who she anonymously goes to visit.

In Anger Management, written by John Milne and Andy Hay, who also directed, Boyd is seeing a therapist and trying to learn how to control his anger - good work from Trevor Eve here. A man - who is an incredible flamenco guitarist - Nigel Terry - comes out of prison. And a man at his halfway house has committed 'suicide'. Into the mix comes a criminal T.P McKenna and his ex-con assistant Q (who was in Silent Witness as well), and a former prisoner (who's also practising anger management) Andrew Tiernan.

Part one ends with a brilliant flamenco performance cross cut to the assault on Frankie, a seriously well edited sequence by Adam Trotman and / or Joanna Garrard. Kevin Byrne is credited as the flamenco composer but the just brilliant guitarist isn't credited. 

Loved Boyd losing it with Q in a swimming pool - "Why didn't you make the right choice??" (This is an actor who rather mysteriously refers to himself as 'Q'. Nothing to do with my Q.)

I've just seen young Terry in The Lion in Winter and he was also Arthur in Excalibur and played Caravaggio in 1986.

Then in The Hardest Word (Doug Milburn) Boyd and the team are forced to work alongside somewhat dodgy coppers Phil Daniels and Paul Reynolds (who was in Press Gang!) as they investigate seemingly kinky murders. A distinguished cast includes Phyllida Law, Julian Glover, James Dreyfuss and Emma Fielding, a psychiatrist who it turns out has her own murky upbringing.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943 Jacques Tourneur)

It was 34°C.

It's unavoidable. Give me a hot, late night, a glass of cognac and a spliff, and I'll be watching I Walked with a Zombie, a film I would defend as being worthy of the Top 100 title for its consumptive, rich, eerie and utterly oneiric atmosphere. Is it, to use William Boyd's great word, a work of febrile imagination? Or is it, to defer to Lewis Carroll, tulgey?

Words are no good. Let's consider the stripy, textured lighting of one undersung hero, J. Roy Hunt. Witness the magic of this simple light on / light off:

If that isn't enough to conjure up the correct mood, how about some dreamlike stairs shots?

Frances Dee and Tom Conway:

 

Not just stripes, textures:

Unforgettable night walk through the cotton fields conjures up Onibaba:

Dee with Christine Gordon...

...meeting Darby Jones

It is my favourite of all the Val Lewton RKO horrors: Mark Robson was still editing then and the legendary Roy Webb wrote the music. If Roger Corman didn't have these strangely haunting films in mind when he produced his own series of horrors, I'd eat the hat I don't own. (He doesn't mention them in his autobiography 'How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime'.)

There's quite a lot of opacity to this tale - Tom Conway's wife (Christine Gordon, her only performance) cannot be a zombie - yet when she is stabbed, she doesn't bleed. And what was going on with her - was she about to leave him for his brother, drunkard James Ellison?

Tourneur met Val Lewton when both were working for David Selznick on David Copperfield in 1935. When Lewton set up his mini-studio at RKO, producing that series of intelligent and atmospheric horror films, Tourneur was his first choice, and he directed Cat People, this and The Leopard Man, all of which are terrific - but for pure atmosphere, and its subtext of island culture and slavery, this one takes the cake. And eats it, if that doesn't scramble metaphors too badly.

Frances Dee is the nurse, Edith Barrett the enigmatic Mrs Rand. Sir Lancelot (a Trinidadian singer who lived until the age of 98) seems like a nice polite man, but when he finds Dee on her own, he's almost threatening her with his calypso (Q says warning). Theresa Harris is charming as the maid, Darby Jones memorable as Carrefour (was he stoned, or had the RKO medics given him starey potion?) I love that moment when he's at the house, advancing, and there's a close shot of him that's quite out of focus - it doesn't matter, in fact it may have been deliberate. 

 It's a beautifully curious film, from Tom Conway's opening dialogue with Frances Dee "That luminous water - it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies - a glitter of putrescence." It's very moody, considering it's studio set - the sugar cane fields beautifully done. 

There's a terrific melancholy also under the surface about slavery - that statue that was the ship figurehead is the last shot of the film. Plus the rites of the household staff.

Alcoholism, voodoo, drums, a horse which will take its drunk passenger home, the beautiful irony of the 'witch doctor', a zombie, that haunting finale in the sea, stripes and shadows.....

A heady and unbeatable concoction.

It's J Roy Hunt's finest hour and is one of the most texturally interesting examples of cinema photography ever.. A cameraman on B pictures, he's also known for the noir Crossfire (Roberts Young, Mitchum and Ryan), In Name Only (Cary Grant and Carole Lombard), the original She, and the first Astaire-Rogers pic Flying Down to Rio; many others since 1916.

Love those wind-powered hanging flute bowl things, same sort of principle as an Aeolian Harp.

The suspense sequence where Carrefour approaches the plantation with Frances Dee in the garden is pure Tourneur.

Writers Ardel Wray and Curt Siodmak researched voodoo deeply. According to Chris Fujiwara, author of 'Jacques Tourneur: Cinema of Nightfall' Wray rewrote it and introduced the slavery element which makes it so resonant. Sir Lancelot helped them find genuine voodoo musicians, and that calypso he sings was his own composition. The art direction by Albert D'Agostino and Walter Kelly is inspired. 

According to Joel E Siegel's book, because of the title, hardly anyone went to see it.

Teresa Harris, an essential member of the cast. Also in Baby Face, Jezebel, Tourneur's Out of the Past, The File on Thelma Jordan

Waking the Dead: Season 4 (2004)

In Sight of the Lord. Tony McHale. Murders by nine inch nail through the head, going as far back as 1948. There's a military connection. The thugs involved beat one of their own platoon so badly he's in hospital for six months - and doesn't shop them / there's no enquiry? I think there would have been. Still, quite a haunting story, with Michael Byrne, a steady worker since 1963, Geoffrey Bayldon, Clive Wood, JJ Feild.

False Flag. Stephen Davis. An old IRA killing is uncovered - it's Timothy West's son (and Dearbhla Molloy). But a 'false flag' is where a country makes out another country is the culprit, and in fact it's the UK turning on its own. Also Boyd and the unit are being investigated by Caroline Lee-Johnson.

With Danny Webb, Tom Georgeson.

I believe it's Petersham Place SW7.

Above, Boyd not talking any shit from authority, something he shares with other beloved TV detectives like Morse. And Foyle.

Waking the Dead - the missing episodes (2003)

Where the BBC fears to tread, U will provide. I'd never even heard of U. So Stephen Davis' screenplay is about institutional child abuse - why is that a reason to keep it off iPlayer?

Charlie Creed-Miles had received repressed memory counselling uncovering abuse in a care home; Navin Chowdhry is a fellow damaged survivor. Saskia Reeves is the counsellor who brings the story to Boyd's door. Michael Pennington, Ian Hogg and Tom Bell are possible suspects (I picked the wrong one - in fact I'm not quite sure who the guilty party was now).

The Blue Gardenia (1953 Fritz Lang)

Covered in Peter Bogdanovich's interview only as this:

This is a particularly venomous picture of American life.
The only thing I can tell you about it is that it was the first picture after the McCarthy business [Lang had been blacklisted as a Communist], and I had to shoot it in 20 days. Maybe that's what made it so venomous. [Laughs.]

What's venomous? A woman (Anne Baxter) is jilted by her Korean war soldier beau; accepts a blind date with a womanizer who gets her drunk and tries to rape her. So she slugs him with a poker; then as the police close in, feels increasingly guilty. She approaches a seemingly sympathetic journalist (Richard Conte) who shops her to the police. Oh, Ok - fairly venomous, then.

Raymond Burr is the creep who gives her one too many Polynesian Pearl-Divers, whilst Nat King Cole sings the title song in a rare live appearance. (Well, not that rare. He was in The Blue Dahlia as well.) 'Chinese peas'? Is there really such a thing? (Yes, smart arse - also known as Snow Peas. I'm so suggestible I now really want Chinese food.) Charles Hoffman adapted Vera Caspary's story.

It's a Warner Bros picture - Nick Musaraca imported from RKO. Music by Raoul Kraushaar.

With friends Ann Sothern and Jeff Donnell, Richard Erdman (photographer), George Reeves (detective), Ruth Storey, Victor Sen Yung (uncredited waiter).

Waking the Dead Season 3 (2003)

We seem to have gone into the stupid era of television filmmaking - you know, when there's a big whoosh sound effect with edits. It's so overdone. A particular culprit is found in Multistorey (Ed Whitmore) which involves a multiple shooting from a car park - every flashback opens with a gun shot sound effect which is unnecessary and also confusing as actual gunshots are heard throughout.

Sean Pertwee is in prison for the shooting, which we feel he can't have done... Boyd's mate was one of the victims. Ed does one of his signature crazy Boyd moments in a scene where he works out witness Brendan Coyle didn't actually see the killer - then tells no one about this huge piece of news. (As it turns out this was probably a good move, but doesn't seem so at the time.)

The gun squad is headed by Robert Pugh and vixenish Kim Vathana, with a seemingly helpful Jason Hughes. Guy Henry is also in it also, thus reuniting him and Pugh from Sword of Honour. And Cliff Parisi, Shirley Anne Field. It's one of those ones that when it's over you feel it wasn't, on balance, particularly credible.

Then in Walking on Water, Boyd is tested by a 'Maria' who was a 'Mark', mixed up with a fishing family, three members of which have disappeared. A quick search of the Thames Estuary and the sunk boat and corpses are recovered, leading to sinister horror film sound effects and creepy dead people appearing - we don't need this sort of treatment at all, thank you. Homosexuality and cocaine reveal themselves as story points (Simon Mirren wrote it).

Boy, the tide comes in quickly around these parts. Boyd and Mel are only out there for about five minutes when the tide's come in and completely cuts them off.

Here we go again with over-sensitive BBC - iPlayer doesn't contain the next story, Breaking Glass, by Stephen Davis, which IMDB summarises as 'The CCS is alerted to sexual abuse of young boys in care homes. The team race to identify the murderer before his vengeful victims reach him.' Which seems pretty chicken shit of them.

And then, the Performance episodes - well in my mind, anyway - written by Stephen Davis and directed by Betsan Morris Evans, edited by Pamela Power, who I've never heard of but whose claims to fame would be from cutting The Duellists (1977) and The Hunger (1983). There's a really dizzying opening montage, also featuring an old car, which triggered the opening of Performance - and that was before I'd seen a very familiar style of property in Notting Hill. It's not 25 Powys Square, but it's very similar:

There's good humour amongst the team for a change and lots of great energy with interrupted lines all over the place. The story involves London crime gangs, an Obeah woman (Sharon D. Clarke - Ellis! - a committed performance) and Spence's missing Dad.

Richard McCabe is an entirely dodgy estate agent:

To keep the Performance theme going, there's also a sub-plot about a controversial film shot in 1967 called 'Projections' featuring gangland ultra-violence. 'The studio got so freaked out they took it off and re-cut it.' Exactly the fate of Roeg & Cammell's film. Also, a famous rock star is going to move into the house! Come on... That was Ken Russell as the director. (The film clips have amusingly really bad sound effects.)

Long scene filmed for real on old London bus all adds to the resonance:

With Gina Bellman, Earl Cameron (Pool of London), Pat Bowie (above). It's called Final Cut, by the way.