More Silent Witness (2011-12)

Season 14 finale: The Prodigal. Michael Crompton. Director James Strong.

Basically, a shooting in the Dutch Embassy, police shot and killed, a boy gone missing. Naturally Harry finds the boy and is great with him as always. It all fits devilishly together, even down to why a different pathologist (who Harry tutored) is called in.

With Matthew McNulty (After the Flood), Kate Ashfield, Lorcan Cranitch, Sarah Solemani, some Dutch people, Oliver Chris (Trying, Emma.)

Season 15. Death Has No Dominion. Ed Whitmore. Director Andy Hay.

Nikki's Dad had died and she can't process it. Because Leo and Harry have rowed, she is assigned to a murder which everyone assumes involves the mysterious 'Wraith', an attention-seeking madwoman, and into the path of obsessed detective Vincent Regan, who can't process his wife's death.

Without giving anything away, it's even more devilishly clever than the last one!

Harry is teamed up with pregnant detective Shelley Conn.

The Best Silent Witnesses

Divided Loyalties. Niall Leonard. Dead woman and baby. Drugs. 'Stukie'.

The World Cruise. Tony McHale. Auschwitz resurfaces.

The Fall Out. Tony McHale. Multiple vehicle pile up. And a spare arm.

Closed Ranks. Tony McHale, Season 6. Leo's wife and daughter are visiting when a case similar to one of his old ones appears.

Answering Fire. Dusty Hughes. Fire in hotel. Dodgy politician.

Choices. Doug Milburn. Harry befriends kid who's involved in night club drive by shooting.

Cargo. Doug Milburn. Boat of illegals capsize. Infectious disease on board, and little missing girl who Nikki just will not give up on.

Body of Work. Rhidian Brook, Season 10. Harry and Nikki are starting to get it on when an old flame of Harry's turns up dead.

Schism. Christian Spurrier. A bit far-fetched, but Nikki is kidnapped.

Hippocratic Oath. Tony McHale. Two bodies in one coffin...

Shadows. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble. Killing spree at Uni. Season 13.

Bloodline. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble again. Harry in The Third Man. 

A Stressload of Silent Witness (2011)

Not so much in the first one, First Casualty, by Oliver Brown and Michael Crompton, directed by Keith Boak. An army lieutenant is clearly showing signs of PTSD, Kieran Bew. Both he and his former colleague's girlfriend are found dead - is it murder? Army colleagues involved are David Ajala (Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, Starred Up), Darren Morfitt (good as sergeant; he also appears in a Season 20 episode as a DCI!), Theo Barklem-Biggs (Rogue Heroes).

The suspect runs away again, twice...

But it's the next film, written by Dudi Appleton (who also directed) and Jim Keeble, Bloodlines, that really shakes the barley. In an arresting flash forward, Harry is seem running through the streets of Budapest covered in blood. It turns out he's out there to perform an autopsy that has already been cremated - the corrupt nature of the city coming through already; and to visit his new GF, rights campaigner Lili Bordán. There's a jokey feel to the early scenes -

Nikki: What is it, have you shagged everyone in London?
Harry (looking pointedly at her): Not quite.
Nikki: I think you like her, this Ava.. Eva.
Harry: Anna. Yes I do. I've only spent a couple of weekends with her, but yes I do like her. But I love you.

This jokey feel is maintained through to Budapest and even to a meeting with Anna's father, Julian Glover. But then Anna is murdered and Harry's seen the assailant, but in fleeing knowing he's become the No.1 suspect, and suddenly we're in The Third Man territory, where no one can be trusted, and Hitchcock's classic Wrong Man on the run. But then when at the end of episode one Harry is killed (and the look of terror on his face is fabulous) it's like the end of the world... To say more would be a spoiler, but it goes places you wouldn't expect at all.

 

The two writers talk about it here. "Sometimes, it seems, you don't give the audience what they want and they like you for it."

The film does for Hungary's tourist board what Finding Rachel did for Zambia.

Ferenc Elek plays a shabby former idealist, Kata Dobó a junkie prostitute, who both help Harry (both wonderful performances). Mike Kelly's the diplomat, Iván Kamarás the dodgy detective.

Some of its flash forward editing - by Katie Wieland - is in the Boydell Class. She's worked on high profile stuff like Slow Horses, GoT, Big Little Lies, Taboo and two more of these coming up. It was photographed by Tim Fleming.

Walk A Crooked Mile (1948 Gordon Douglas)

Another Edward Small production, for Columbia, saddled with a solemn and redundant voiceover which keeps telling us things which are bleedin' obvious.

FBI agent Dennis O'Keefe teams up with Brit Louis Hayward to stop secret plans being leaked from top nuclear facility - how it's being done is the interesting denouement, but before that happens the couple are almost executed by the murderous gang - saved only by an emigré who has lost her family to Nazis and is willing to sacrifice all for her new Mother country yatter yatter. Raymond Burr is one of the nasties.

Shot in chiaroscuro by George Robinson, a routine Columbia B movie photographer. Written by George Bruce from Bertram Millhauser story. The title is better than the film.

Silent Witness Season 14 (2011)

A Guilty Mind. Timothy Prager. Director Sue Tully.

Three deaths in one night at hospital. Nikki in danger again - no wonder she's referred to a psychotherapist. This one almost ventures into horror film territory and is a little far fetched, though tense and enjoyable. Nikki's flat, round the corner from the Royal Albert Hall, looks rather amazing (and expensive). It's Queen Alexandra's House, SW7, used as female only student accommodation!

And I think it's nearby Onslow Square Gardens where the professor is shot.

The routinely horrible investigating detective is Mark Lewis Jones with Kelly Harrison. Arsher Ali is becoming a regular in the 'cutting room'. With Roy Marsden, Sinead Keenan and Sorcha Cusack.

Lost. Richard Davidson, director Anthony Byrne. Nutty archaeologist Mark Benton uncovers a body which isn't as old as he thinks. Links to the 'Ketamine killings' which Leo investigated back in the eighties, draws him back into world of victim Barbara Flynn and the now imprisoned murderer Sean Baker. Helps crystallise his thinking on adoption.

Tony Pitts (All Creatures, Giri/Haji, Peaky Blinders, Funny Cow, Red Riding) and Christine Tremarco (Adolescence, Clocking Off, The Responder) investigate.

Harry's old pal Charlie Creed-Miles, who funnily enough we earlier saw in (almost) debut in Press Gang, drops his son on him and disappears.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948 Preston Sturges and scr)

Didn't think too much of it when we last saw it 13 years ago; seems much better when reevaluated. Rex Harrison is funny from the off as conductor not wanting to believe anything bad about his wife, glamorous and younger Linda Darnell, but can't help accepting she's had an affair. Over the course of three classical music performances he imagines different outcomes to the news involving murder, forgiveness and accidental suicide. Then when he tries to recreate the murder he finds it's much harder than he's imagines in the funniest scene. "Number please."

Many trademark long takes, inspired use of sound effects, distinctive extreme close-ups. With many Sturges stock company in bit parts. Rudy Vallee, Lionel Stander, Barbara Lawrence, Kurt Kreuger, Edgar Kennedy, Al Bridge, Robert Greig etc.

"So simple a child can use it"

Thunder on the Hill (1951 Douglas Sirk)

A convent opens its gates to flooded villagers - and a young woman who is about to be executed for murdering her brother. But strong willed nun Claudette Colbert doesn't believe she's guilty.

Atmospheric tale of faith and justice, adapted from Charlotte Hastings' play 'Bonaventure' by Oscar Saul and Andrew Salt. Great to see a new Sirk for the first time. Atmospherically designed and filmed (at Universal) - Bernard Herzbrun & Nathan Juran (coincidentally I was half-watching and enjoying his terrible Jack the Giant Killer earlier while cooking) and William H Daniels.

Cast: Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas (doctor), Anne Crawford (his wife), Philip Friend (Fiance), Gladys Cooper, Michael Pate (village idiot), Connie Gilchrist  (whose 'Never throw away newspaper or string" becomes usefully prophetic).

Good music by Hans J Salter, another of Hitler's gifts to the USA.

Sirk doesn't say a lot about it in Halliday's book, other than that he wasn't interested in the religious angle at all. It was his first picture for Universal, and he liked them because they let him work on the material and left him alone to cut.

No Reservations (2007 Scott Hicks)

An utterly predictable remake of  German film, which is fun. Catherine Zeta Jones inherits Abigail Breslin and runs up against new chef Aaron Eckhart. Carol Fuchs adapted Sandra Nettlebeck's original screenplay (which is a much higher rated film on IMDB).

The restaurant is at 22 Beeker Street in the Village.

She looks guilty and sheepish at the same time

Don't bother parking properly

Trois Couleurs Rouge (1994 Krzysztof Kieslowski & co-scr)

There's a moment where Irène Jacob says to Jean-Louis Trintignant "I feel I'm in the middle of something important going on around me" and that's a bit like what watching this film is like. Because the rather beautiful piece of parallel action going on to Jacob's life, involving a neighbour who is studying for a law exam (Jean-Pierre Lorit) and whose girlfriend (Frédérique Feder) cheats on him, is actually the former life of strange reclusive ex Judge Trintignant, who befriends Jacob over a runaway dog.

Has some stunning moments, like the camera dropping from the balcony at the theatre. And interesting sound (the sound from the very opening for example coming in much later - Jean-Clause Laureux).

For the third time a wizened old person tries to get a bottle into the recycling - but this time she is helped. And the finale brings back the characters from the previous two films. It's a most interesting trilogy of films. Written again by Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiwicz with contributions from Agnieszka Holland, Edward Zebrowski and Edward Klosinski.

Photographed by Piotr Sobocinski (Marvin's Room), composed by Zbigniew Preisner, production design Claude Lenoir, editing Jacques Witta. It was nominated for key BAFTAs, Oscars and Césars but didn't win any.

At the very end of the film

Jacob was in Au revoir Les Enfants (1987) and starred in Kieslowski's The Double Life of Véronique in 1991, which also sounds good.