Reputation / Pilot (2006) d. Bill Anderson
Russell Lewis's story (screenplay by Churchett) features Perfect Numbers, a sleep clinic, a company making sports cars and a typically messed up extended family. Lewis we learn has lost his wife in a hit-and-run accident and we are introduced to Hathaway - Laurence Fox (James's son) - and new boss Innocent (Rebecca Front); Clare Holman is still around, we're pleased to see.
A maroon Jag makes a startling appearance, and we learn of the Endeavour Scholarship for music, which stipulates beneficiaries should play with 'soul'.
Charlie Cox is the unbalanced young man; Sophie Winkleman, Jack Ellis, Jemma Redgrave, Danny Webb, Flora Spencer-Longhurst.
The series made by Granada / WGBH Boston.
Whom The Gods Would Destroy d. Marc Jobst, scr. Daniel Boyle.
The ghost of Morse hangs over this case, with which he had been peripherally involved, and helpfully (or not so helpfully) leaves a cryptic clue. Anna Massey remembers him fondly. Richard Lintern, Crispin Redman, Adrian Rawlins and Richard Dillane are linked from some old-school Dionysian drug club...
The Cricketers is the pub (Woking). West Wycombe Park is (again) used for the country house exterior and 'temple', the main house at Allanbay Park in Binfield!
Missed Dexter in both these...
Old School Ties d. Sarah Harding.
Alan Plater's first screenplay for the franchise is marked by his dry and laconic wit and invention. Lewis is tasked with baby-sitting a criminal-turned-writer (he despises his dark glasses in all weathers, and being a 'professional Geordie'), who makes the unusual choice to stay on his book tour at the prison-turned-hotel Malmaison. He warms to him a bit, though, and as he's at the point of being honest - "I throw myself at the mercy of the court", he announces - when he is shot dead.
Don Gallagher is he, and his wife / agent who turns up is Gina McKee. Then there's a group of Machiavellian students, one of who (or is it whom?) throws his bike through a shop window in protest - using the location / props intelligently.
A bromide is a copy, a 'bromide statement ' is one of little value intended to soothe or placate.
Thought I saw Dexter crossing a quad... And with Cathy Tyson.
Expiation d. Dan Reed, scr. Guy Andrews (three of the latest Victoria, and episodes of Prime Suspect, Poirot, Maigret).
Good episode involving a seemingly perfect pair of couples and their children leads to a topsy-turvy and disturbing plot beyond imagining when one of the number is found hanging. Lewis/ pathologist Dr. Hobson relationship going well, though she keeps suggesting Hathaway's the fanciable one; Lewis also has eyes for a next door neighbour, cuing line:
"Sorry, I've got to be going."
"You haven't even arrived yet."
The main relationship is going well. Laurence Fox is great. Great sub-plot involving dying don John Wood, with tense and unusual death-bed scene.
Couples are James Wilby, Julia Joyce, Adam Parkinson and Lucy Robinson (Cold Feet). With Pip Torrens, Phoebe Nicholls.
I think it's in this series that Lewis confesses to Hathaway that after Val died he drank a bottle of brandy a day for a year; he then took stock, and 'the next year, drank two'. Hathaway pulls off a very risky gambit with a man dangling from the top of the Museum of Natural History!
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