Silent Witness 26 (2023)

When you see that the season opener The Penitent is written by Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble, with Dudi directing, you're on fairly safe ground it's going to be a good one. And it is, with the 'Ndrangheta's tentacles being felt everywhere and everyone and their families threatened.

Nikki is being forced into finding one of their number in witness protection and kill him. We think she'll come up with a plan to make it seem like this has happened, but in the end, doesn't get the chance to go through with it.

Great moment where she enters Jack's (new) house and a menacing man appears over her with a hammer - it's a Hitchcockian moment - but he's the contractor... or is he? Sense of menace not helped by fast flash-forwards of Nikki seeing Jack being killed. 

The denouement is really clever and totally unexpected.

Felt there were film references - scene in church and hospital felt like The Godfather, Q noticed tin can in pig likely a Jaws reference, others..

Whilst all this is going on we're introduced to lapsed Orthodox Jew Alastair Michael and brusque data-obsessed pathologist Aki Omoshaybi.

With William Willoughby, Sophia Myles, Matteo Carlomagno, Issy Knopfler (daughter of Mark).

Silent Witness 25: History (2022)

An ambitious six part story, linked by former pathologist Sam (Amanda Burton) and what's going on now with her and her husband's medical data company (Hugh Quarshie). The Health Minister is shot and killed by a long range assassin but was she the real target? It turns out that Nikki's former husband Matthew Gravelle is involved, causing her to withhold evidence from the police. (Did we know Nikki had been married, albeit briefly?) The opening two are by Ed Whitmore.

She and Jack are at least having some kind of a relationship, and she's there when his father dies in Ireland.

Into the main story are smaller ones: a woman claiming to have killed her husband (Christine Bottomly, writer Caroline Carver) - Duncan Preston is the old-school investigating officer and Simone's missing sister is a sub-plot; a burned body connected to a farm (writer Phil Mulryne). Jemma Redgrave rudely investigates again, Clive Russell and Mark Frost (Unforgotten, The Long Shadow) are familiar looking suspects.

Then we go back to the main story for the last two episodes - I feel this is maybe rather unwieldy storytelling, written by Alyn Farrow and Katerina Watson. Of course Sam isn't a bad guy! Of course the Chinese have a dodgy involvement! And of course it's all down to a corrupt Government official as usual! Security of personal data is a hammered home theme.

Ian Puleston-Davies is the (typically) belligerent DSU who finds out too late he should have been looking out for his No. 2 Shireen Farkhoy.

The Odd Couple (1968 Gene Saks)

 

Not Simon's debut - he had written tons of TV movies and series in the fifties, and screenwritten After the Fox and Barefoot in the Park before this.

The Odd Couple TV series ran from 1970-75 and starred Tony Randall as Felix and Jack Klugman as Oscar:

The first season at any rate was shot on the same set as the movie.

Living (2022 Oliver Hermanus)

A more concise retelling of Kurosawa's famous 1952 original (by Kazuo Ishiguro) is a perfect vehicle for Bill Nighy. 

Helen Scott's production design and sets gorgeously photographed by Jamie Ramsay in the unusual aspect ratio of 1.5:1.

The Bad News Bears (1976 Michael Ritchie)

Discussed elsewhere, the behaviour of the kids, and their grossly inappropriate language, is great fun. Matthau loved working with them, would hang out with them between takes and tell them raunchy jokes; thus he was one of them, not the star.

The Bears: Chris Barnes, Erin Blunt, Gary Lee Cavagnaro, Jaime Escobedo, Scott Firestone, George Gonzales, Jackie Earle Haley, Alfred Lutter, Brett Marx, David Pollock, Quinn Smith and Tatum O'Neal.

Music: Bizet's Carmen. On camera: John A Alonzo (I fear our print to be a shade darker than he would have liked).

I first saw it on December 27th 1977, gave it 7/10 and particularly rated Matthau, O'Neal and Alonzo. Tatum thought she was the big star but her performance had to be cajoled out of her.

The Three Burials of Mesquiades Estrada (2005 Tommy Lee Jones)

Written by Guillermo Arriaga, and thus not presented in a strictly linear manner. However it becomes clear that Jones' Mexican buddy Julio Cesar Cedillo has been killed, by border control officer Barry Pepper - it's a revenge tale as Jones kidnaps the cop and forces him to accompany him and the corpse into Mexico to bury him in his home town.

As soon as we meet Pepper he punches a fleeing Mexican woman hard in the face - I was hoping something bad would happen to him in return and pleasingly, it does, for much of the film. He also had a dreadful attitude to his wife January Jones.

It's quite amusing, had me in mind of both The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Good make-up of the corpse.

Beautifully filmed by Chris Menges. Edited by Roberto Silvi.

With Dwight Yoakam, Melissa Leo, Levon Helm (blind man), Mel Rodriguez.

I'd long wanted to see this - now I have.

The Duchess of Duke Street (1976 John Hawkesworth)

Producer Hawkesworth brings his Upstairs Downstairs sensibilities (and filming style) to the BBC, as chef Gemma Jones defies the upper classes for her shot in early twentieth century London.

We seem to have missed the beginning (only the opening episode thankfully) and find herself already having made a good impression with a Major, Michael Culver (Roland's son) and Lord Bryan Coleman, but is pressed into marrying butler Donald Burton so she can be mistressed out to the Prince of Wales, Roger Hammond. That I find a bit much.

Familiar faces in June Brown, John Raply, Doreen Mantle, John Welsh, David Cater, Robert Hardy, Christopher Cazenove, Richard Vernon.

She later starts a hotel, despite her husband trying to ruin her; has a baby, exposes fraudsters and adulterers. Entertaining series.

There's also something insanely catchy about Alexander Faris's theme tune.

Silent Witness - wrapping up Season 24 (2021)

In  Brother's Keeper (Marteinn Thorisson) you begin to wonder whether Paulette Randall has ever directed actors before, in badly staged and acted story involving underground boxing, which seems fairly unbelievable - the distancing effect of Covid is quite clearly felt here. Lorraine Ashbourne holds her own. Simone (Genesis Lynea) is the new pathologist. And it's her GF who's investigating, Danielle Henry.

Then for the finale, Matters of Life and Death, written by Martin Crompton (someone heard me and commissioned one of the seasoned SW writers, who also did the last finale), a murder is discovered in Nikki's pathology class - a good start. Then looks at relationships. Simone gets Jack a date. Nikki most unwisely has a relationship with a student. (What was she thinking?) Then Nikki kisses Jack... but then he hears she's had the affair and goes all bitter.. There's even a rather sweet relationship between Jack and care home resident Sian Phillips.

Good cast: Nicholas Woodeson, India Eva Rae, Steven Wight returning as the DS. And lots of rain.

Little Fugitive (1953 Ray Ashely, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin & scr)

Richie Andrusco is the seven year old who - believing he has shot his brother Richard Brewster - wanders off on his own to Coney Island,

I wondered if the camera was hidden, or they just get away with a lot because it's always pointing down, at small boy height. Engel is credited as cameraman, it was carried at waist height and you looked down into the viewfinder; Orkin edited with Lester Troob. Eddy Manson's score uses the harmonica imaginatively. It was apparently shot silent.

Allegedly an influence of the French New Wave. However it's not referred to in my de Baecque and Toubiana Truffaut biography, not the director's own 'Films of My Life' nor in the pages of the collected Cahiers du Cinéma Vol.1. But I find this quotation on TCM, authored by Sean Axmaker in 2009, ""Our New Wave would never have come into being if it hadn't been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with his fine movie, Little Fugitive" - Francois Truffaut - though no source is given. I'll have to investigate.

It's very good. Won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was Oscar nominated. I'd never heard of it before.

Street Angel (1928 Frank Borzage)

Perhaps not quite in the same league as 7th Heaven but another strong slice of romantic drama from Borzage again teaming Janet Gaynor with Charles Farrell. Set in Napoli it has a seriously gripping beginning in which Angela needs money for her mum's prescription, clumsily attempts to solicit a man, steals and is immediately caught and sent to prison, makes a plucky escape, finds her mum dead, and then is protected by a travelling circus who hide her from the police in the drum that has been damaged in scene one! Phew!

And then she meets artist Farrell.

Has great moments like the policeman who will allow Gaynor one last hour with him. or the prostitute who tries to seduce him, and the very powerful ending where the lovers reunite and he tries to kill her...

Gaynor is brilliant again. Her last appearance was in The Love Boat in 1981! Other notable films: The Young in Heart, A Star Is Born (the original) and Lucky Star, another Borzage-Farrell collaboration from 1929.

All glowingly shot by Ernest Palmer again, with Paul Ivano, impressive sets by Harry Oliver.

It's pronounced 'borZAYgee'.

The Best Things in 2026

I Swear

Say Nothing.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

One Battle After Another. Far fuckin' out, brother!

Bird (Andrea Arnold)

Le Notti de Cabiria

Materialists

Hamnet (and, come to that, Hamlet)

7th Heaven

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962 Robert Mulligan)

There's one thing that I will declare - this film wouldn't be as good without Elmer Bernstein's brilliant score. Also I noticed future Clint Eastwood collaborator Henry Bumstead is the art director.

Gregory Peck was apparently in real life just like Atticus.

Who, by the way, seems to have a good relationship with his neighbour Maudie (Rosemary Murphy), who seems also to be single. They'd make a good couple.

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962 Vincente Minnelli)

Having just stayed in the Via Veneto is was most timely to enjoy this as it was partly filmed in and around the Hotel Excelsior; and also in Trastevere and the Spanish Steps.

Most enjoyable, overheated melodrama though we can't see what Kirk Douglas ever saw in Cyd Charisse - she's awful.

Irwin Shaw novel adapted by Charles Schnee; also The Bad and the Beautiful, Red River, They Live By Night. Photographed by Milton Krasner in CinemaScope.

7th Heaven (1927 Frank Borzage)

A stunningly romantic drama, set in Paris in pre-WWI, based on a play by Austin Strong, adapted by Benjamin Glazer (Katherine Hilliker and HH Caldwell are credited as 'editors' and title writers). That a film can retain such power over almost a hundred years is impressive indeed. And I have to attribute its success in part to Janet Gaynor, who is just great as the depressed and bullied sister of Gladys Brockwell, a monstrous drunk - the scene where the sister flees and is beaten whilst the camera tracks back at speed into the street is incredible. Gaynor also won the Oscar.

Enter sewer worker Charles Farrell ("I am a remarkable fellow!") who grudgingly and reluctantly gets involved and transforms her life.

Memorable dialogue (OK, titles) - when he kisses her - "I didn't mean it. Don't think you can stay."

Full of so many good moments I don't want to list them for fear of spoiling my next viewing, but I was variously in tears, laughing out loud and on the edge of my seat. The war scenes are as strong as anything in The Big Parade. It's great to finally catch up with these great classics and find out how terribly good they are.

Great synchronized score and effects - innovative mix of soundtracks between domesticity and war, well edited (by Barney Wolf). Borzage won Oscar as Best Director for his masterpiece.

Photographed by Ernest Palmer and Joe Valentine in 1.2:1.

With Albert Gran, David Butler (fellow street cleaner), Marie Mosquini, Emil Chautard, Ben Bard, George E Stone (the 'Rat').

I have to rethink things: the first Golden Age of Hollywood was the twenties. It's a bit like watching an opera - 'La Boheme' or something - without the singing.

Silent Witness - Season 24 (2021)

Reputations. Pete Hambly. They seem to have introduced a load of new writers recently - who are all these people and where are the good old ones like Prager, Crompton, Appleton & Keeble and Whitmore? 

Murder in hospital, involving Karen Bryson (The Split), Nicholas Farrell. Adam has lied on his CV - he's for the boot.