Season 21 - Adam Bede (1991-1992)
For about six years in the late eighties and early nineties everyone seemed to fall under the mass delusion that Patsy Kensit could act. She was everywhere. I don't know if it's because of her music career with Eighth Wonder or the, to me, completely baffling successful of Absolute Beginners, but she was the "it girl" of the moment. As an aside, if a movie stars David Bowie and I buy it for a dollar at Half Price Books yet am never able to bring myself to finish watching it, that is the definition of a bad movie. In fact Robert Altman takes the piss out of it in the first few minutes of The Player. Now that is a movie worth watching. As for Adam Bede, the only reason I have this on DVD is because it was included in The George Eliot Collection and it was cheaper to buy the whole set than to buy Middlemarch separately, and I needed my Rufus Sewell. I know you know what I'm talking about. When I got the set ironically the first adaptation I watched was Adam Bede because I was in the mood for some Iain Glen. This was long before Game of Thrones and therefore the reason I was mildly obsessed with him was because of Wives and Daughters. You know I really think Mr. Preston and Cynthia could have made a go of it. But that wasn't to be. And ironically Adam Bede is just another Iain Glen doesn't get the girl story. And yes, it's a recurring theme. The only lasting impression I have of that first viewing is thinking how depressing it was. I also remember that I had some disappointment that Patsy Kensit survived. I mean, if she's going to darken my door the least she could do is slump over and expire on the stoop. What annoys me most about her casting is this is peak early nineties casting, Iain Glenn, James Wilby, Susannah Harker, and Alan Cox! Think how good this could have been without her? Especially when the supporting roles are played by Jean Marsh, Julia McKenzie, Freddie Jones, Patsy Byrne, and George Innes. Oh, and George Innes, he is fabulous. Most known for his roles in The Italian Job and Upstairs, Downstairs, he has only one scene where he's in the witness box and he describes the dead child Patsy Kensit's character has left under a bush, and it's just heartbreaking. Even if she wasn't guilty as sin, for being Patsy Kensit AND for abandoning the child James Wilby got her with, I would have convicted her just due to the testimony against her. To have one actor outshine everyone made you realize how pedestrian this adaptation is. It's nothing more than a girl being seduced by the lord of the manor and getting with child, thus destroying the good village boy who truly loved her. AKA Iain Glenn not getting the girl. Again. So therefore I maybe shouldn't lay all the blame on Patsy Kensit? I mean, her casting technically just adds to the peak early nineties vibe... And it's not like this rather pedestrian story could have been improved. At the end of the day her character was transported to Australia and the much nicer girl played by Susannah Harker got the boy. So, win win in the end? Or maybe it was a Pyrrhic victory?
Danger UXB is about a bomb disposal unit during World War II created by the late great John Hawkesworth. The show goes into the danger and minutiae of dismantling a bomb and making it safe. The unit are constantly having to figure out the insidious new ways the Nazis have invented to create the most damage and to make bombs almost impossible to defuse. This even includes the introduction of the dreaded Butterfly Bomb. Now, I'm not saying that I could 100% disarm a bomb after watching this series, but I think I'm definitely in with a chance. Which is actually rather useful because they are still finding UXBs to this day. Not that I'd want to. Watching this show was stressful enough without having real world implications. The show starts with Anthony Andrews as Brian Ash, a man with no experience put in charge of bomb disposal. Which means that we the viewer get to follow him into this world that basically meant your life expectancy was measured in days. The problem with Brian Ash and therefore Anthony Andrews is he's too boring. He's your general romantic hero lead. The blue-eyed blonde haired boy who the women swoon over. In fact he's soon having a romance Susan Mount, the married daughter of boffin Doctor Gillespie who is a specialist in bomb fuses. Their romance is the definition of milquetoast. You don't care because you actually feel that deep down they probably don't care. It's too contrived and trope heavy. Which means, of course, she has a husband who's a codebreaker, who suffers mental breaks and whom she has to see to. Eventually he dies and that means they can be together and in the only moment of their relationship I approve of, she realizes he loves his men and the thrill of defusing a bomb more than he'll ever love her and that's where the series ends. Suck it Susan. Suck it! Because it's the men who make this show. 347 Section, 97 Company is made up of the best of the best in British character actors but Robert Pugh, George Innes, and Kenneth Cranham all deserve a special shout-out. Especially Kenneth Cranham. When I watched this show it happened to coincide with Kenneth Cranham being in everything I was watching. I don't know how he was so ubiquitous, but there he was on the stupidly renamed C.B. Strike, then popping up on the final season of Doc Martin, then on Inspector Morse and Pollyanna, even the nearly unwatchable Reilly: Ace of Spies. I was viewing shows spanning fifty years of British television in no particular order and there he was. There he always was. And he was always fabulous. His character of Lance Corporal Jack Salt was more interesting in one minute of screen time than Brian Ash was for the entire series. He had a wife up north but was conflicted and worried about the safety of this woman whom he'd met. Everything keeps compounding on him, even where he's home on leave and his house, with his wife inside, explodes before his very eyes. He's eventually taken out by a Butterfly Bomb in what I view as suicide by cop. He had so much trauma and that gave us viewers someone to root for. We wanted him to suceed. But, when you're not sure if you'll live another minute every minute is precious. If there's anything this series imparted to us, it was this. Oh, and that Nazis are evil. All Nazis are evil. There are no exceptions. They take delight in creating killing machines. If you're on the side of the Nazis YOU are a baddie.
