Protection (2025 Kris Mrksa)

Begins with statistics. 3000 people are in witness protection and the officers who run the cases themselves have to have aliases. Their department has to be separate from any other police department.

Siobhan Finneran is assigned to a WP family that is wiped out by hit men, and her colleague (Barry Ward)  is also shot. But there's two problems with that. 1. He's not working on that case and shouldn't even know where the family is. 2. He is married but they are having an affair. The survivor, a little girl, knows something but is not telling and that puts her in danger from crime boss Alec Newman. So lots of good conflict.

And there's more conflict from investigating police Nadine Marshall and Katherine Kelly (Mr Bates vs the Post Office, The Long Shadow, Gentleman Jack). Chaneil Kular is her No. 2. Andrew Knott is a helpful DI, David Hayman is the father in deteriorating health, Nichola Burley is the cheated-on wife.

Siobhan we know from as far back as Rita, Sue and Bob Too, her debut, in 1987. Then lots of TV, notably Clocking Off (2000-02), Boy A (2007), Downton Abbey (2010-12), The Syndicate (2013), The Selfish Giant (2013), Cold Feet (2017-19), Happy Valley (2014-2023), Time (2021-23) and Alma's Not Normal (2021-24).

Mrksa is the creator but it's 'inspired' from an idea by Gary Madden, and there are co-writers in the shape of Polly Buckel and Giulia Sandler. A six-parter for ITV.

Cold Feet - Seasons 6 - 9 (2017 - 2020 Mike Bullen)

Fourteen years later, and Adam has more hair - an item that is dealt with early on. Although he's about to get married to a woman in Singapore, Karen David, he's having trouble with his son Ceallach Spellman, who's having an existential crisis. Poor old Pete is suffering from depression, though is also a carer for feisty James Bolan. Karen is being romanced by Art Malik and David is in legal trouble, and ends up in prison. Then he ends up getting involved with Siobhan Finneran and her violent husband Robert Glenister.

So it's all very smoothly and believably been revived.

Also new are Pete and Jenny's kids Jack Harper and Madeleine Edmondson (not Adrian's daughter - that's Freya) and Karen's daughters Daisy Edgar-Jones and Ella Hunt. And Adam's landlady, Leanne Best. And, irregularly, Callum Woodhouse as Josh.

There are other writers here and there.

Paul Ritter is a rather grumpy publishing partner who reveals he's a romantic fiction writer. Ivanno Jeremiah is Jen's cancer buddy. Eve Myles briefly dates Adam, but he's in love with Karen. Gemma Jones is the new Karen's mum.

Great twist has Pete on jury service and the defendant is only the little girl that Adam and Rachel were going to adopt, played by Sacha Parkinson (though strangely her story then completely peters out). David's brief acquaintanceship with homelessness is dealt with well (he's rescued by both ex wives!)

A disastrous birthday party:

Four Days (1951 John Guillermin)

A dreadful film. Neglected housewife Kathleen Byron has affair with boss Hugh McDermott's employee Peter Reynolds. He finds out, she tries to kill him, he attempts suicide, the fall causes memory loss... but the memory returns. Thankfully it's only 55 minutes.

A true indie made by Vandyke Pictures, whoever they are,

The Fugitive (1947 John Ford)

Was John Ford religious? Though set in Mexico, this is essentially the story of Jesus, and Three Godfathers, made the following year, is a parable about the three wise men. He was Catholic though not a church-goer.

Based on a Graham Greene novel 'The Power and the Glory', it harks back to the anti-clerical rule in Mexico in the 1920s.

Henry Fonda is the last remaining priest in Mexico who finds he is unable to flee the country. There's a great scene where he is summoned to pronounce last rites on a dying man but has no wine, so heads to a dodgy hotel to get some, but the proprietors start drinking it. Then he's arrested for having brandy (alcohol is also illegal). Another great scene where soldiers are after him but he's fallen asleep outside the taverna and no one notices him.

It's actually very interesting and looks amazing thanks to Gabriel Figueroa, who trained under Gregg Toland and was also responsible for eminent Mexican films La Perla and Maria Candeleria, Bunuel's Nazarin, El, Simon of the Desert and Los Olvidados, and later for Under the Volcano, The Night of the Iguana, Kelly's Heroes and Two Mules for Sister Sarah.

With Dolores del Rio (Mexican star who made it big in Hollywood in the 1920s), Pedro Armendariz, J. Caroll Naish (the informer), Leo Carillo, Ward Bond, John Qualen.

Ford: "It came out the way I wanted it to - that's why it's one of my favourite pictures.. It wasn't popular...It had a lot of damn good photography, and we'd wait for the light - instead of the way it is nowadays where regardless of the light, you shoot."

Shots like this were making me think of de Cirico

Early talkies double bill: The Most Dangerous Game (1932 Irving Pichel, Ernest Schoedsack) / The Criminal Code (1930 Howard Hawks)

The Most Dangerous Game is significant because it anticipates King Kong the following year, in its exotic RKO studio jungle setting, its producer Merian C Cooper and composer Max Steiner, and its female star, Fay Wray. It's short. Hunter Joel McCrea becomes the prey of Leslie Banks.

David Selznick is executive producer.

One thing they could have made more explicit (it was pre-Code) is that when Banks goes over the balcony at the end he is then torn to bits by his dogs.

Considering it's even older, The Criminal Code is rather more interesting. DA Walter Huston sends young murderer Phillips Holmes to prison for 10 years, where he becomes ground down. Intense Boris Karloff, making an early impression, is a cell mate with a grudge. Then Huston becomes the prison warden - there's a great scene where the prisoners who all hate him sound out their protest, and he calmly walks among them smoking his ever-present cigar until they quieten - based on a true story. Lots of good moments, montages, long takes like kid learning his mother's died. Constance Cummings is the warden's daughter.

A Columbia picture, photographed by 'Teddy' Tetzlaff and 'James How', whose very underlit photography is in evidence. Andy Devine is an uncredited convict.

It was improved on Martin Flavin's play by Seton Miller and Fred Niblo.

The prison yard was an MGM set built for The Big House (1930).

This is the film Peter and Boris are watching in Targets.

Films of the Year 2025

Coup de Grace

Shoah

Adolescence

Grand National Night (1953 Bob McNaught)

Nigel Patrick - who I've come to admire in a variety of roles, such as fast-talking villain in Noose, rotten care home manager in Tales from the Crypt, Jingle in The Pickwick Papers and 'Mr Know-All' in Trio - was originally a respected stage actor. In WWII he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the army, then returned to the stage and screen. His wife from 1951 Beatrice Campbell (until her death) co-starred with him in this as the sympathetic friend. Patrick himself survived her by two years but was working on TV the year he died - good for him.

Here he's a horse trainer with an entrant in the Grand National. but married to extremely horrible Moira Lister, who is carrying on with another man. She tries to stab him, they fight.... and then she disappears and we assume he has murdered her. This is pretty obviously based on a play, by Dorothy and Campbell Christie, adapted by the director and Val Valentine. It's full of people saying 'Only got Scotch' - 'That'll do' sort of thing and characters called Pinky, Babs and Buns. Also with Betty Ann Davies, Michael Hordern, Noel Purcell  (the big Irishman), Leslie Mitchell, Barry MacKay, Colin Gordon and Gibb McLaughlin (butler). It was photographed by Jack Asher and was an early editing assignment for Anne Coates, who pulls of a most interesting montage of a dreadful night-time car journey. She also loved horses so that aspect of the film must have been appealing to her.

So yes, quite watchable.

Moira Lister

Nigel Patrick and his wife Beatrice Campbell

Cold Feet - Season 5 (2003 Mike Bullen, Matt Greenhalgh)

Who? You know, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool and Back to Black. And before that, Nowhere Boy and Control.

We put it on to cheer us up immediately after Adolescence and it was only the one where fucking Rachel gets hit by a truck! Cueing guest appearance from Jen from NYC (pregnant). At least Adam has reconciled with his dad, Ian McElhinney. David is seeing his divorce lawyer, Lucy Robinson.

Adolescence (2025 Philip Barantini, scr Stephen Graham & Jack Thorne)

Filmed in the director's familiar 'one take' style again with cameraman Matthew Lewis (who is also one of the operators). It's filmed with a gimbal so it's very steady and stable and could be passed from one operator to another. It is all continuous - no hidden edits. It makes for very gripping material. More than once I though of that powerful 2007 Andrew Garfield film Boy A.

One shot - where the camera seems to follow a boy out through a window, did use special effects, and the end of that episode has the camera being attached to a drone to make the high shot before coming back down to Graham - shades of Soy Cuba!

A thirteen year old is arrested for murder. His parents seem to know nothing about it.

The young cast are incredible: Owen Cooper, Fatima Bojang (one to watch - well they all are), Amélie Pease, Kaine Davis, Lewis Pemberton, mainly figuring in the school episode. I don't know where they find them all. Cooper really shows his stuff in the great one-to-one with psychotherapist Erin Doherty (The Crown).

Adult cast not bad also: Stephen Graham, Ashley Walters, Doherty, Faye Marsay, Christine Tremarco, Mark Stanley (solicitor), Jo Hartley, Hannah Walters.

A Stolen Life (1946 Curtis Berhardt)

Artist Bette Davis meets light house technician Glenn Ford on way to New England island, and they form an attachment. Why's she so secretive about letting him into her house? Because she has a manpulative twin sister, played by Bette Davis, and she steals him from her and they marry. Bitch! (Good superimposed trick photography.) Later, artist Bette meets pain-in-the-ass painter Dane Clark, who overacts somewhat. Then Bad Bette drowns, and everyone thinks Good Bette is the bad one and she goes along with it, but it turns out the marriage is almost down the drain.

She could have saved herself a lot of trouble by fessing up at once - I'm sure Ford would have realised he loved her. As it's left, she has inherited the rotten reputation of her multiple affairs cheating sister.

Karel Benes' novel was adapted by Margaret Buell Wilder and Catherine Turney. Sol Polito is credited as the lead cameraman but Bette's favourite Ernie Haller was involved also. Max Steiner's score (orchestrated again by Friedhofer) is suitably romantic.

It was the first film made by Bette's independent production company, B.D. Productions though clearly made with all Warners cast and crew and distributed by them. It was a success. Also featuring  Charles Ruggles and Walter Brennan.

Universal may well have nicked the idea for the twin sister Olivia de Havilland thriller The Dark Mirror, which was released later the same year.

Nobody Wants This (2024 Erin Foster)

Blogger Kristen Bell falls for Rabbi Adam Brody, cueing shiksa jokes and the like. Nice long tracking shots of the couple like Preston Sturges would do it. Entertaining and good. But only 10 x 25 minutes.

With Justine Lupe (Succession, The MMM), Timothy Simons.

We haven't seen much of Brody (who co-produced) lately, though he was in American Fiction, The Kid Detective and Promising Young Woman (briefly). We of course know Bell best for the Good Place and Bad Moms.

Countdown (1966 Dick Moder)

Lassie and Corey attend the Saturn V testing and firing centre in Florida, cueing lots of lesser quality NASA footage and shots of people looking up at the big rocket. It's a particularly dull and awkwardly written and directed episode. 

Lassie rehabilitates an anti-social German Shepherd and saves an eagle, an ugly looking specimen, before take off. 

Here it is:

I don't really know what Robert Bray's relationship with the dog was.

For the record most of these have been written Robert Schaeffer and Eric Frewald. Looks like they were running out of steam.

The Killers (1964 Don Siegal & prod)

A made for TV remake of the 1946 film, with additional racing angle. Like the first one, the two killers, Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager (in a playful performance) kill John Cassavetes (in a surreal way - they shoot him dead but there's not a drop of blood). Then start working out the backstory, which involved mechanic Claude Akins, Angie Dickinson (too nice for a femme fatale), and gangsters Ronald Reagan and Norman Fell.

Back projected racing scenes aren't great but Siegal has a sure hand in showing us the climactic bit of driving that allows them to ambush the mail truck for a million bucks.

Considering the lack of blood at the beginning the killers are allowed (by the censor) to be quite rough with Dickinson,and there's plenty of blood at the end. The film went in fact direct to cinemas. Good cast. Music by John Williams. Universal.

The White Lotus - Season 3 (2025 Mike White & d)

Natasha Rothwell was in the Hawaii one. Joined by son Nicholas Duvernay.

Tayme Thapthimthong is besotted by Lalisa Monobal.

Walton Coggins (dark, unhappy past; Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight) and Aimee Lou Wood.

They befriend Charlotte le Bon and Jon Gries

Michelle Monaghan (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Leslie Bibb and Carrie Coon old 'friends'.

Family comprising Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook.

Lek Patravardi is the hotel owner / singer / actor, a big star in Thailand.

Eight episodes for HBO. I am told by my reliable Q that it's called The White Lotus after its creator. Although she might have been winding me up. I'm not sure.

"Padding!" I kept crying above the too-loud nightclub scenes, as so little happens that actually advances the story.

Cold Feet - Seasons 3 & 4 (2000 - 2001 Mike Bullen, David Nicholls)

Karen's booze loving mother played by Mel Martin comes to stay. Jen hooks up with tech millionaire Ben Miles. David has a most unwise affair with a very pushy sex pest Yasmin Bannerman. Adam runs into first love Victoria Smurfit (About a Boy) in Northern Ireland. Pete has a short fling with Ramona, Jacey Salles, and a teacher, Pooky Quesnel, which somehow fizzles out.

Then Rachel and Adam attempt to adopt (Adam charming the little girl on their first meeting a great scene), Pete falls for new girl Australian Jo, Karen stops drinking and gets a job with a publisher, Sean Pertwee. And Jacey now gets billing in the main titles.

Ends with Pete and Jo's wedding in Australia, funnily enough where Mike Bullen has ended up. And Sean Pertwee is really bugging Karen to have an affair, despite being unfaithful to his wife before - he's so annoying!

The Roaring Twenties (1939 Raoul Walsh)

From a story by Mark Hellinger, who based it on real characters. Begins in WWI, where tough cookies Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart meet, along with more sensitive Jeffrey Lynn. Unable to work, Cagney gets mixed up in illegal booze, with Gladys George (Dana Andrews' step mom in The Best Years of Out Lives) and old friend Frank McHugh (one of his more substantial roles), whilst attempting to romance dancer / singer Priscilla Lane (who, with Lynn, represent the wetter end of the cast). 45 minutes in, Bogie turns up again, also in the illegal booze business, and the bad boys team up.

Don Siegel had just started working in the montage department at Warners, and together with Jim Leicester and 'Bob' Burks they designed some incredible montage sequences e.g. one representing the Wall Street Crash.

It seems both seminal and derivative, if not too contradictory, for example, murder set up in Italian restaurant. Directed with brisk efficiency, photographed by Ernie Haller. Bogie and Cagney are great, special mention to Abner Biberman as Bogie's no. 2 (His Girl Friday, Winchester '73).

Cagney rated Walsh (who directed him also in The Strawberry Blonde and White Heat) as one f his favourite directors because "if I don't know what the hell to do - can get up and show me".

Hal B. Wallis produced.

The Letter (1940 William Wyler)

Alexander Walker: 'By supressing Davis's emotions, Wyler exposed her genius..' and talks about her stillness, and her glasses 'she puts on at times of crisis to do her lace work add another cold-paned screen between her true nature and us'. He also points out the one moment of alarm she displays, when she bends to pick up the letter Gale Sondergaard has dropped, and the latter steps back, like she's about to strike, and Bette freezes. I have to say this has always been my favourite scene, with the wind blowing the wind chimes, and Max Steiner's music (orchestrated by Friedhofer) emulates the tinkling, with Gaudio's lighting picking up the textures, and the oriental gentleman (Willie Fung) who we are convinced is smoking something illegal before Sondergaard *arrives*.

I find the ending quite shocking. It's a most successful film.

Didn't recognise the lawyer - James Stephenson, who's good. He died of a heart attack in 1941 just before he was about to take the lead role in King's Row... Nor Bruce Lester. (Victor) Sen Yung we knew, and Herbert Marshall of course, and didn't recognise Cecil Kellaway (he's only fleetingly in the party scene).

A Hal B Wallis production of a Somerset Maugham play, written by Howard Koch. Wyler directs in long takes, but Warren Low & George Amy's editing is also notable.

Wyler's at it again with one of his all-backs-to-camera shots

Cold Feet Seasons 1 & 2 (1997 - 1999 Mike Bullen)

Notes: Pilot is in that odd digital video format ITV used back then, wider than 4x3, meaning on DVD the edges of the frame are missing. And this effects both seasons. Even the 'Dolby Surround' emblem is cut off! It has terrible music of its time which was thankfully replaced on season 1. Mike Bullen is the actor in the terrible play!

Great fantasy moment:
David to Adam: "..so if it's blended from a variety of different countries' grapes, it won't be any good."
So Adam decks him!

Rachel is really annoying! Had forgotten quite how messed up the characters are.

Lennie James is Rachel's ex, Rosie Cavaliero is an annoying girlfriend, Sunetra Sarker and Ricky Tomlinson cameo.

Larry Smith (Calvary, The Guard, The Forgiven) shot a couple of them. Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) directed a couple, so did Tom Vaughan (Starter for 10, You & Me).

The Voyager (1966 Jack Hively, Dick Moder)

The one where Lassie braves a hurricane, stupidly leaps off a ship, is chased by a stock footage shark, is tried for suspicion of being a turkey killer (wins case by having baby turkeys walk harmlessly all around her), is pursued by a bull and helps two stupid Huck and Tom wannabees on a Mississippi raft episode, in which they are all saved from certain death by a mute and very young Richard Kiel! Ends with lots of New Orleans flavour as she and Ranger Cory keep missing each other before the love dog-man ending. Phew!

I guess the whole thing is a Mark Twain adventure - it's even the name of the steam boat that picks her up.

Four episodes stitched together. Mire is on great form as always.

The Magic of Lassie (1978 Don Chaffey)

The owner of the Lassie brand Jack Wrather agreed with Rudd Weatherwax that their film should be more in the spirit of Eric Knight's original story, with grandpa James Stewart (70) reluctantly having to give the dog back to Pernell Roberts (not a great performance) who claims to be his rightful owner, to the dismay of boy Michael Sharrett. Lassie - 'Boy', or Pal VI - of course soon escapes from her new home in Colorado, eludes pursuing helicopters, is aided by wrestlers Mickey Rooney and Mike Mazurki (71), and waitress Alice Faye (63), and a troupe of singing banjo players, and rescuing a kitten from a fire, before she finally returns home. The big, BIG mistake they made was to make it a musical, with co-writers the Sherman Brothers also penning unremarkable (and frankly, at times, really cheesy) material. Otherwise it might have worked better... though the director doesn't understand how to do a Lassie Come Home properly - for example, a couple of times we see the dog on her travels, then the camera pulls back for a really wide landscape shot - 'Look how great America looks'. That's not how you do it. As Conrad Hall once said, 'Point the camera at the story'.

Stephanie Zimbalist is the fairly redundant sister and I'm not sure who plays her love interest, but he's awful.

Strangely muddy camerawork too. 

The Dark Man (1950. released 1951 Jeffrey Dell & scr)

Partly of interest for its quantity of exteriors shot around the south of England (interiors at Merton Park). It's an Independent Artists production. Didn't recognise a single name of the crew.

A woman (played by Natasha Parry) has witnessed a murder; because this is printed in the papers, the murderer (Maxwell Reed) is after her. Scotland Yard detective (Edward Underdown) is enlisted to look after her and catch the culprit. I can't say he does a very good job.

There are a couple of quasi-Hitchcocky bits, one the staging of a murder, but the better one, a series of shots with the woman on the beach, the murderer sat behind her, and groups of workmen and cricketers around, who gradually dissipate... but then she just runs away and the murderer doesn't pursue her - all tension ebbs away. Curiously fluffed ending as well.

William Hartnell has a small role. Underdown was in Beat the Devil and Thunderball, and much on TV, Parry in Midnight Lace, Reed we only know from The Clouded Yellow.

Towards Zero (2025 Rachel Bennette)

Anjelica Huston (great accent), Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Ella Lily Hyland (his ex, who we just enjoyed in Black Doves), Mimi Keene (the new wife), Anjana Vasan (Wicked Little Letters, Killing Eve), Clarke Peters and his ward Grace Doherty, Jack Farthing (disgraced nephew), Matthew Rhys (alcoholic detective), Adam Hugill, Khalil Gharbia.

Thankfully not written by the vile Sarah Phelps. Reenactment of Christie's 1944 novel. Didn't recall the plot at all from the Marple versions we'd seen. Generally engrossing and well done, though cunnilingus interruptus on the stairs is frankly ridiculous (though quite funny). And the denouement somehow didn't quite work for me.

Photographed by Laura Bellingham, edited by Mark Keady, Agnieszka Liggett and Christopher Watson, production designer Lucienne Suren.

The striking opening to episode 2

The heart-warming ending

Sadly  I read today that HBO did not recommission Perry Mason after Season 2.

Lassie double bill: Flight of the Cougar (1967 William Beaudine) / Hansford Point (1968 Jack Hively)

We've skipped a few years since the last ones - Robert Bray's looking older and fatter. (In fact alcohol was getting the better of him.) These are again 30 minute continuing episodes stitched together for extra cinema bucks - though I'm not convinced that there would have been great audiences for these in 1967.

Flight of the Cougar is ostensibly about testing meteorological equipment at height using a glider, piloted by cute - but goes nowhere - Merry Anders. But then - and you have to be there to believe it - Lassie helps a cougar who has been shot, by taking its new cubs to the protection of a cave, then feeding it stolen steaks. He (or she) also fights off a vicious wild dog and tames a wild horse. And rescues the fallen glider lady. Phew!

The homely worlds of Lassie and the new 'groovy' generation uncomfortably collide in the second film. Corey attempts to get two kids to trade their land in a new conservation scheme - I'm with them - why should they? After saving Lassie from the old disused mine saga, they are all friends, though have linguistic banterings. Then the boys save their girl friend from drowning, but she's in trouble with daddy for staying over all night. Good job she gets pneumonia so they can't bang her! Lassie would have protected her anyway.

This says it all:

Honestly - the older one's at college, too

The dog we're seeing here is Mire - Baby tragically died of cancer aged only seven, in 1966. But Lassie IV is just as brilliant as his forebears - the moment Corey catches him with a purloined steak in his mouth and that look of guilt in the dog's eyes is classic.

The Durrells - Seasons 3 & 4 (2018 - 2019 Simon Nye)

Aunt Barbara Flynn has died - mum and Larry visit England. Larry gets mixed up with often naked Henry Miller. Les becomes a policeman, Margot an x-ray assistant. Spiro's wife and kids leave him, leading to almost romance with 'Mrs Durrells'. Gerry has a girlfriend.

Here's some examples of Ben Wheeler's fine work:

Daisy with fine Croatian actor Goran Navojec

Then in four, war is in the air. Josh presumably has had a better offer, as most of his scenes are shot in a room in Paris. Margot is in England, discovering the cinema (L'Atalante and I think something from Fritz Lang). We finally meet Mrs. Spiro, who starts an affair with Basil (Miles Jupp).

But in an eye-watering finale, the kids all return home and put on a version of Odysseus for the village before embarking for England.

In a wonderful follow up documentary, What the Durrells Did Next, we learn about Gerald's success with his books and conservation zoo in Jersey, from where there's that amazing footage of a boy having fallen in to the gorilla enclosure being protected from the others by one gorilla - Gerry's humane animal treatment literally in action.

Daisy is coming up in Prime Target, was in The Long Shadow, The Capture and Dalgleish

We realise that Simon Nye has done a splendid job of depicting this eccentric family and made it a warm and funny series. (New mother: "If anyone wants me, I'll be next door, asleep in a pool of my own tears.") We also think Elbow nicked the Greek end credits song.