Season 22 - The Blackheath Poisonings (1992-1993)
If you're anything like me you have an old stack of catalogs in your bathroom. Signals and Acorn are perennial favorites even if they're over a decade old. Of course this leads to the problem that most of the DVD sets I'm coveting are now long out of print. One such DVD I desired was The Blackheath Poisonings. Oh, how I longed for it. It's in the British tradition of everyone in a large extended family living together who them start dropping like flies. Add in the fact that the family runs a successful toy company and live on the edge of a heath and the Gothic atmosphere is turned up to eleven. One day when I was checking my external hard drives I discovered that I had somewhere along the way acquired a copy. Which meant that all other shows were dropped because it was time for some poison! Three episodes later I wished I had taken the poison. Such potential wasted with too many tropes. Literally the only thing I liked was their house. It was a unique and highly tiled entryway that helped distract me from how completely stupid each and every character was in this series. I honestly don't know how it was possible for each and every character to be too dumb to live. Literally ALL OF THEM. The patriarch becomes severally ill and is recovering if his food is carefully prepped and monitored. But occasionally he relapses and eventually dies. Don't you think that, I don't know, someone would look for some food secreted about his room or a flask filled with liqueur that he might be sneaking against doctor's orders? When his son bothers to look after the death the flask is found in under a minute. But then again our earnest young crime solver is also in love with his "aunt" who was also his father's mistress and he spends all his time when he's not trying to connect the dots of criminality plighting his troth. To a women who could easily be his mother. Though of course the killer isn't done with one death, the elderly matriarch, Sister Monica Joan from Call the Midwife, she starts exhibiting the same symptoms and seriously, the family and the family doctor are like, what could it possibly be!?! She deserved to die. They all deserved to die. And I felt cheated with them using Patrick Malahide as a red herring. He's so wonderfully malevolent and scheming, but alas, this show is nothing more than a family bickering, having affairs, fighting for dominance, and wanting to sleep with Ian McNeice's wife. And that right there is why the first murder happened, because Ian McNeice is the killer. But it's SO much worse than that. Because he likes to dress in women's clothing and go to secret clubs and wander the heath dressed in widow's weeds. That's why his mother had to die, she saw him on the heath. Though there was no way that was Ian McNeice. There is no fat shaming on this blog, but it has to be pointed out that even in the early nineties Ian McNeice was an ample man. There was no way he fit convincingly into a corset to wander the heath. That's a body double. Which is why I didn't guess he was the killer, it wasn't that I didn't add up the pieces I just hoped that this was above hateful anti-trans tropes. But it wasn't. Though in my desperation to follow this up with something I would enjoy I rewatched all of Father Brown, so I have to thank The Blackheath Poisonings for being so bad, stupid, and hateful, for me to remember how much I love the denizens of Kembleford.
Way back in January of 2013 my Mom and I become obsessed with the reboot of Father Brown. It had just the perfect light touch. What's more it had Mark Williams. Which is actually how I heard about the show. Most people think of him as Arthur Weasley, a role to which even Father Brown did the occasional nod. I am not most people. To me he is Olaf Petersen, "I've been to Titan, I've been to Juno, I can name eight things that go in jars that you know!" Olaf, you didn't deserve to die aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf, but you will forever be missed. When my Mom's health started to fade a lot of shows we watched fell by the wayside. Which means that somewhere around season three or four we had stopped watching Father Brown. The one upside to this clear demarcation point in my life is that going back now and catching up on shows I used to love I have so many more episodes to watch. Because as my life was derailed Father Brown was chugging along. Last year when I went back there were eleven seasons to catch up on! It goes to eleven! I mean, technically it now goes to twelve, but at the time I picked the show back up there were eleven seasons and a hundred and twenty episodes. All those adventures with Father Brown, Mrs. McCarthy, Lady Felicia, Sid, Inspector Sullivan, Sergeant Goodfellow, and of course, Hercule Flambeau! And then the new characters, Inspector Mallory, Bunty, Brenda, and Mrs. Isabel Devine whom I hadn't even met yet! This is a show that's simply done and that's why it's so comforting. It's a place where time stands still. Literally. It was until the season nine final and their hundredth episode, "The Red Death," that it actually became a new year. Despite having previous holiday episodes and several big events having to have occurred simultaneously, like Sid serving time before actually committing a crime, time was immaterial until the arrival of Claudie Blakley as Mrs. Devine who somehow brought time with her. As each season since has been approximately a year. I know! It's shocking how time is now flying in Kembleford! If they're not careful they might actually catch up to Sister Boniface in the sixties! While each season of this show has been a delight and, for Mrs. McCarthy, a way to dabble in her own homegrown variety of McCarthyism, this current season was especially delightful. What set it apart you say? I like how the mysteries were more tailored to the leads. In previous seasons it's murder comes what may, be it a travelling circus or a cult. Now we have the crimes reflecting the interests of our leads. Mrs. Devine loves acting and we got a historical reinactment, a murder mystery play, and a radio drama. For Ruby we had a ballroom dancing episode. And for Flambeau, we had him appear to go straight. I mean, we knew it had to happen eventually... But even with a divinely Gothic episode, "The Horns of Cernunnos," and us FINALLY meeting Violet Goodfellow and the return of Blind 'arry, Lady Felicia took the cake. In her episode, a now undoubted classic, "The Sisters of Aeschylus," Dan Douche Scott, AKA John Hopkins from Midsomer Murders is murdered and Lady Felicia asks for a little help on her novel. Which is some of the best and most comedic acting that I have ever seen from Nancy Carroll. Lady Felicia doesn't understand similes! Oh, how I never want this show to end. These are my friends. I get them. I get their humor. BATS!
Earlier this year I watched all the episodes of Endeavour that have currently been released. The biggest joy of watching the prequel to Inspector Morse is Roger Allam as Fred Thursday. So obviously once I had watched all the episodes of Endeavour I started having severe Roger Allam withdrawal. The Morse withdrawals were staved off by moving directly onto an Inspector Morse rewatch. Thankfully BritBox came to the rescue for all my Allam needs with the timely release of Murder in Provence, an adaptation of the Verlaque and Bonnet series by M.L. Longworth. Allam is still firmly in the crime solving genre, but he's traded in his trademark mac and fedora for blue suits and skies. And as for his day of the week sandwiches? They have been upgraded to fresh seafood and delectable French cuisine. This is a series as much about the lifestyle of Provence as it is about the crime solving. Which brings me to one of the main criticisms of the show by reviewers, and that's it's a show about France, set in France, and yet where are the French actors? It's like the stable of British actors who appear in murder mysteries were just given trips to Provence instead of French actors being found. And while yes, I can agree with this criticism, I have two rejoinders, it could have been worse, with the British actors putting on French accents, and Roger Allam. This show got made because of his star power. It's not blind luck that this show actually crashed BritBox when it premiered. This wouldn't have happened with a French cast, which is just a sad truth. But seeing so many actors who have been on Endeavour and Father Brown in different roles with their old costars is just comforting. Which is what this show is, a comforting murder mystery, with a little more style and substance than most. Though what I really connected to was the relationship of Antoine Verlaque and Marine Bonnet as played by Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll respectively. They are an older couple who are unmarried and yet have a fruitful relationship surrounded by quirky friends and family. I defy you not to love Marine's communist mother and Didier Laurent AKA Dirk Gently by another name. But going back to their mature relationship, they have real conversations, about health issues like prostates and menopause. And yes, I feel like it ages me saying that these conversations add some weight to the show, but it's refreshing seeing these subjects handled in a matter of fact way amongst all the other issues of a crime solving life. Even if Nancy Carroll is far younger than you would guess!
City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments Book 4) by Cassandra Clare
