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.
When there's a successful television show the powers that be will do anything to expand the brand. The most common in recent years is to do a prequel series. Just look to the success of Young Sheldon and you know what I'm talking about. This reboot of Ian Rankin's surly Scot could be considered "Young Rebus" if you will, because most people associate the character with Ken Stott who was in his fifties when he played the role and Richard Rankin is only forty-two. I though will be pedantic and say that the OG Rebus, AKA the magnificent John Hannah, was actually four years younger than our new Rebus when he played him in 2000 and therefore they are just trying to pull the wool over your eyes and this isn't a "young" reboot it's more of a "gritty" reboot. Just look to the wannabe Jack Irish opening credits. Back to John Hannah. Because really everything goes back to John Hannah. I was a fanatic about Rebus back in the day. It filled the void left by McCallum. And despite claiming that when Ken Stott took over the role it was season two of the show, it was a full five years after John Hannah's last episode so I view it as an entirely different series. A series I just couldn't get into. Perhaps because my mom kept complaining that Ken Stott wasn't John Hannah. Same mom. Same. So I was intrigued by this reboot. I mean, as long as Richard Rankin didn't sing "Joy to the World" this was a very stable move for him to create a long-running series for his post Outlander career. Plus the first season is only six episodes long so I did a seven day free trial of Viaplay and got to see it at no cost to myself other than time. So what did I think of it besides the fact that whomever did the opening credits had watched Jack Irish one too many times? It was totally serviceable with not a single likable character. In fact most of the characters are too dumb to live. I mean, his brother is desperate to pull his life out of the shitter and does one stupid thing after another. You do not rob from drug dealers. You do not kill their bosses. There's just so much basic common sense that went out the window that I can't believe any sane person would view these characters sympathetically. As for Rebus? He just can't keep from making himself unhappy. He just wallows. And, like his brother, makes stupid decisions that put him in the crosshairs of the higher-ups. In other words, it is your bog standard disgruntled and dissatisfied copper which could take a few lessons from Dept. Q because at least there there's a few more relatable characters and no boxing club. Seriously, no show should be allowed to have boxing clubs or fight clubs ever again. It's been overplayed. But at least with the end of Outlander we'll still get our Richard Rankin fix as the show has been picked up for another season. Here's hoping it grows. And that the second season doesn't kill the only likable character. Again.
Tony and Susan by Austin Wright
