TV mysteries


REVIEWED BY GEOFF BRADLEY:         


ACCUSED. BBC-TV, UK. 15 November through 20 December 2010. Featured players, left to right: Mackenzie Crook, Marc Warren, Juliet Stevenson, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Andy Serkis, Benjamin Smith & Peter Capaldi. Creator: Jimmy McGovern.

ACCUSED BBC TV

   This was a series of six separate plays (one hour each, no adverts) in which the central character is on trial and we see the story build up by a series of flashbacks of events leading up to the trial.

   We see little of the trial itself until the final verdict which comes just before the conclusion of each story.

   The series seemed promising since the writer was the much respected Jimmy McGovern, the man behind Cracker. It fact it turned out to be a series of unremitting and absolute tosh. I carried on watching story after story thinking that at least one of them must turn out well, but they were all deplorable.

   The stories were designed, I think, to enlist sympathy for the defendant but in that respect (as in all others) they failed in this household. One problem, for this rosy-eyed watcher, was that it was difficult to find a likeable character in the whole series but, even worse, is that the actions of so many of the characters were just unbelievable on so many levels.

   A series to be avoided.

REVIEWED BY GEOFF BRADLEY:         


ABOVE SUSPICION: DEADLY INTENT. ITV, UK. January 3, 4 and 5, 2011. Kelly Reilly, Shaun Dingwall, Ciarán Hinds, Celyn Jones, Amanda Lawrence, Stine Stengade, Richard Brake. Screenwriters: Noel Farragher & Lynda La Plante, based on the latter’s novel. Director: Gillies MacKinnon.

ABOVE SUSPICION: DEADLY INTENT

   This is the third in a series based on books by Lynda La Plante with Kelly Reilly as Anna Travis, a Detective Constable in the first two, but here for some reason bumped up to an impossibly young-looking Detective Inspector, and Ciarán Hinds as her rather grumpy boss, James Langton, now a Detective Superintendent.

   In fact Langton says that his and Travis’s paths haven’t crossed since the previous case but here they are together again investigating the death of an ex-cop at a scene involving drugs. We know from the start that a high-powered drug dealer has had plastic surgery to change his appearance, but it’s how Travis gets on to the case despite put-downs from her colleagues that take up the bulk of the story (shown in three one hour, less adverts, instalments).

   The whole thing is quite watchable but also quite risible in many respects both for Miss Reilly’s improbable dress sense as she investigates crimes in high heels and revealing tops, and the attraction here expressed, but not to each other, between the two leads.

   Disappointing, too, for this blue-eyed optimist, was the rather downbeat ending. So, in summary, it’s not bad but flawed and not to be taken seriously for a moment.

ABOVE SUSPICION: DEADLY INTENT

REVIEWED BY CURT J. EVANS:         


MONK

MONK. USA Cable Network. Seasons 1-4: 2002-2006. Tony Shalhoub (Adrian Monk), Jason Gray-Stanford (Lt. Randall Disher), Ted Levine (Captain Leland Stottlemeyer), Traylor Howard (Natalie Teeger), Stanley Kamel (Dr. Charles Kroger), Bitty Schram (Sharona Fleming).

   As an extremely devoted admirer of Golden Age mystery fiction — just read last week’s Lee Thayer review! — I perhaps have a tendency to not give credit where credit is due to more modern work.

   Yet I will freely admit that my favorite American television mystery series is one of recent vintage: the magnificent Monk, which ran from 2002 to 2009. My nephew John Hendricks prevailed upon me to watch this series, and I am glad that he did.

   In Monk, the eccentric Great Detective of grand, old tradition is alive and well (well, perhaps not entirely well). As brilliantly created by three-time Emmy award winner Tony Shalhoub, consulting detective Adrian Monk, traumatized by the murder of his wife, Trudy, is a teeming mass of compulsions and phobias, yet he is also utterly brilliant and indispensable to the San Francisco police, who, in classical tradition, clearly would not have a prayer of solving one of their sixteen yearly murder cases without him.

MONK

   Representing the San Francisco police force in each episode are the imposing but perhaps not overly percipient Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine, otherwise most familar to me from his creepy performances in the genre films The Silence of the Lambs and Shutter Island) and his bumbling, overgrown boy scout assistant, Lieutenant Randy Disher (as broadly though amusingly played by Jason Gray-Stanford, he seems to have graduated from a police college surely located somewhere on Gilligan’s Island).

   Completing this band is Monk’s personal assistant (and essential caretaker), the brassy and sometimes abrasive former nurse Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), who is later replaced midway through season three by the rather sweeter-natured (I think she has the patience of a saint) Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard).

MONK

   Appearing more occasionally is Monk’s psychiatrist (I think he has the patience of a saint), Dr. Charles Kroger (Stanley Kamel). Dr. Kroger’s therapy sessions with Monk are themselves often mini-masterpieces of humor (Kamel sadly died after season six, but thankfully he appeared in nearly half the Monk episodes filmed during his life).

   Season one of Monk has some inspired episodes (I particularly liked one that played a brilliant variation on G. K. Chesterton’s “The Invisible Man”), but also some clunkers. The series seems to have had a smaller budget (it looks more studio bound) in the first season and characters who had not quite gelled, as is common in debut seasons of series.

MONK

   Season two, on the other hand, seems to me nearly flawless. The ingenuity of the mystery plots often is quite remarkable, in my view, for forty-five minute television shows.

   Some highlights from various episodes include: perfect alibis (“Mr. Monk Goes Back to School” and “Mr Monk and the TV Star”); a locked exercise room murder (“Mr. Monk Meets the Playboy”); a bizarre case of a parachutist drowning in mid-air (“Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico” — this is not quite fair play but still very clever and wonderfully outre); a murder committed by a man in a coma (“Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect”); and the classic situation of the murder committed during the performance of a play (“Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater” — this crams novel length complexity into a small space).

   With their impossible situations and miracle problems, many of these episodes successfully invoke the brilliance of the Golden Age of the detective novel, as penned by such past masters as John Dickson Carr, Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode.

MONK

   There is also an episode, “Mr. Monk and the Three Pies,” that was surely intended as an homage to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Clearly modeled on Jacques Barzun’s favorite Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” “Pies” also introduces a brother for Adrian Monk (the gifted Oscar-nominated actor John Turturro), who in turn is obviously influenced by Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft (he’s not fat, but he’s even smarter than Adrian and, more phobic as well, he’s essentially immobile, never leaving his house).

   Often in addition to being clever, the series is extremely funny. Mr. Monk confronting a rather less than five-star motel in Mexico should have you in stitches, as should his being forced to sham marriage with Sharona (in “Mr. Monk Gets Married,” which involves another classic Golden Age plot, the treasure hunt).

   Season three strikes me as not quite up to the sheer perfection of season two. There was a particular plot structure that, while clever, became overused in this season and there seemed, in the middle of it, to be evident problems with the actress playing Sharona. (She was entirely written out of one episode and apparently was either fired or quit.)

MONK

   After Sharona was abruptly and completely written out of the series, a replacement for her, the chipper Natalie, had to be written in, and her relationship with Monk did not really gel until season four.

   Another problem from my perspective is that the series started to indulge a bit much in the psychodrama of Monk’s obsession with his dead wife, Trudy (she even starts to appear to him in physical manifestations). A true Golden Age traditionalist likes the writer to stick a bit more to the plot!

   However, there are some excellent episodes in season three, including one of the very best in the series, “Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever,” which takes a remarkably original and delightful approach to the classical “drawing room lecture” (where the Great Detective reveals all to the assembled suspects).

   Also compelling are “Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic,” a clever inverted mystery (where we know who committed the murder) unfolding entirely within a highway traffic jam, and “Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas,” which revolves around the strangling murder of an unwanted wife while she was alone in an elevator (this one is reminiscent of a classic John Dickson Carr-John Rhode novel).

MONK

   Season four nearly maintains the level of season two, with a raft of clever episodes: Monk confronting a rival detective who somehow is smarter than he his (“Mr. Monk and the Other Detective”); Monk reuniting with his brother to confront a really baffling murder problem (“Mr. Monk Goes Home Again”); a case involving the teasing question of why someone would break a stock analyst’s right hand (“Mr. Monk Goes to the Office”).

   More from season four: A variation on the Paris Exposition “Lady Vanishes” problem (“Mr. Monk Gets Drunk”); a variation on Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (“Mr. and Mrs. Monk”); a variation — okay, seemingly total theft from — Anthony Berkeley’s classic poisoning short story, “The Avenging Chance” (“Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa”); a comedic variation on the amnesia plot (“Mr. Monk Bumps his Head”); another perfect alibi case (“Mr. Monk and the Astronaut”) and Mr. Monk solving a present-time murder while serving on a jury (“Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty”).

   Once again, some of the episodes are extremely funny, especially “Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist,” with it hilarious parody of the Laurence Olivier-Dustin Hoffman “Is It Safe?” scene from the film Marathon Man. Some are funny and poignant, like “Mr. Monk Goes to the Office,” because we realize that behind the humor of Monk’s eccentricities are really mental disorders that set him apart from humanity and make him a very lonely man. As Monk regularly pronounces, his genius truly is “a blessing — and a curse.”

   Simultaneously successfully portraying the amazing deductive genius of the classical Great Detective and making us see as well his human side in the modern manner makes Monk a pure blessing.

Reviewed by DAVID L. VINEYARD:         


THIS GIRL FOR HIRE. Made-for-TV movie, CBS, 01 November 1983. Bess Armstrong, Celeste Holm, Cliff De Young, Hermione Baddeley, Scott Brady, Howard Duff, Jose Ferrer, Beverly Garland, Roddy McDowall, Percy Rodrigues, Ray Walston, Elisha Cook Jr. Directed by Jerry Jameson

   This 1983 made for television movie aired on CBS as a pilot for a proposed series about B.T. Brady (Bess Armstrong), a somewhat less than perfect female private eye with a penchant for trench coats and fedoras, an exotic mother, Zandra (Celeste Holm) who is a former B movie actress living in the past (the 40’s to be exact), and a policeman boy friend (Cliff de Young).

THIS GIRL FOR HIRE Bess Armstrong

   The plot involves a group of mystery writers, one of which — an arrogant and obnoxious fellow (Jose Ferrer) has been murdered. The writers are Hermione Baddeley (Agatha Christie more or less), Scott Brady (Spillane down to the pork pie), Howard Duff, Beverly Garland (who writes under a man’s name), and Roddy McDowall (who writes a Saint like character but is not Charteris).

   In solving the case B.T. is aided by her mother’s old Hollywood contacts and haunted by a mysterious fellow (Ray Walston) of suspicious motives.

   If any of this sounds a little familiar it may be because save for the actual plot, the characters, setting, and the name are all taken from This Girl For Hire by G. G. Fickling — the first Honey West novel, by a husband-and-wife writing team.

   This is not an adaptation of that book — at least not officially. In fact among the army of writers on the teleplay, the characters are attributed to Clifford and Jean Hoelscher. Neither has any other writing credits; other than this film Clifford’s name appears only as an editor and sound designer on a handful of movie and TV productions.

   Is it just a coincidence that this This Girl For Hire was apparently created by a husband and wife team too (Jean could be a man, but I’m guessing not) who have no other screen writing credits whatsoever?

   I don’t know about you, but something stinks.

   It’s not the movie, thankfully It’s nothing special, but a pleasant way to kill two hours, with Armstrong a feisty likable unlikely private eye, Celeste Holm underutilized, and Brady pretty much doing a dead on imitation of Mickey Spillane. Nice to see the old faces, and the plot isn’t terrible. Nothing great, but not terrible.

   Did I mention B. T. Brady’s dad was a murdered detective — just like Honey West’s father?

   If I recall this right I think she even lives in Bellflower, the Los Angles suburb Honey is from.

   A much bigger mystery than any solved in this mediocre film is how they used the title of the first Honey West book with a plot so similar to it. You can’t copyright titles, but neither can you write a Civil War novel called Gone With the Wind and get away with it.

   Who were the Hoelschers? Why is this their only credit? And how come no one noticed or mentioned this was so close to the original Honey West — not the later Honey, or the Anne Francis Honey, but the one in the first couple of books — who, like B.T. Brady is a bit of a klutz and a bit out of her element as a private eye.

   To paraphrase Red Skelton about a joke that didn’t get a laugh — I just state the problems, I don’t explain them.

   Anyone have a solution?

   Is this a lost Honey West movie in all but name? A case of out and out plagiarism that they got away with? A huge unlikely coincidence? Corporate intrigue? Cosmic Karma?

   Poltergeist?

   I place the mystery in your hands, oh mighty bloggers on this site.

   What the heck is going on here?

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS (Crime & Mystery Television)

by TISE VAHIMAGI


Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)

   It is hardly surprising, perhaps, that one of the main reasons why so little has been written about the TV crime and mystery genre is that while everyone knows what constitutes as crime drama, no one has been able to define quite what it is. As has often noted before, the general consensus is that the crime and mystery, at its core, is a puzzle.

TISE VAHIMAGI

   Essentially, when not a Whodunit (identifying the criminal) it is a Whydunit (the reasons for the crime). While the puzzle factor does indeed lie at the heart of the genre, the shape and structure of the puzzle may adopt a myriad of forms.

   Certain basic characteristics can be deduced from the presentations themselves. It is more often than not contemporary. It has an urban setting (the city). It involves a crime of some nature (murder and robbery being among the foremost).

   But these, of course, are not the mandatory hallmarks of a TV Crime & Mystery. The Western, for instance, has lawmen and outlaws, gunfighters and hold-ups, but they are hardly crime and mystery. Although in keeping with the TV vein here, the 1870s investigations of gunfighter/private eye for-hire Shotgun Slade (syndicated, 1959-61) and the police procedurals of Denver police detective Whispering Smith (NBC, 1961) may well be the cause for some constructive argument. And not forgetting Richard Boone’s early forensics in NBC’s Hec Ramsey (1972-74).

TISE VAHIMAGI

   It has been expressed before that realism rather than stylization, a sense of authenticity and not outright adventure are the keynotes. The settings, the look, the narrative, and the procedure are all intended to be realistic. Or at least plausible. Content may often appear to be ritualized and behaviour somewhat stereotyped, but the characters are (in the majority of cases, at least) individuals rather than archetypes.

   In this view, the TV genre is at times variably flexible and tends to be audience-led. It often bows to contemporary flavours and fashions. Its richest moments, however, offer access to a world not normally afforded the ordinary citizen, the slightly sinister world of the dogged detective or the cynical street cop, the nocturnal prowling of the private eye or the ice-cold operation of a secret agent.

   The spirit of the genre is that law and order must be maintained at all costs, or, from the flip side of the coin, outwitted, outsmarted, and even defeated.

TISE VAHIMAGI

   It can take the form of the pursuit: quiet and observational (as in Maigret [BBC, 1960-63], Agatha Christie’s Poirot [ITV, 1989-93; 1995]) or physically fast and furious (The Sweeney [ITV, 1975-76; 1978], Starsky and Hutch [ABC, 1975-79]), or even the long-form (The Fugitive [ABC, 1963-67]). It can be a psychological chess game (Cracker [ITV, 1993-96]), a medical examination (Quincy ME [NBC, 1976-83]), or a forensic probe (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [CBS, 2000-present]).

   The setting can range from Miss Marple’s cozy English village of St. Mary Mead to the dangerous night-time streets of The Wire’s Baltimore. Then there’s the milieu, the occupational routine of the sleuth. Or the social and/or professional world they inhabit. The hospital/medical milieu (Diagnosis Murder [CBS, 1993-2001]). The clerical milieu (Father Dowling Mysteries [NBC, 1989; ABC, 1990-91]). Wealthy eccentrics (Burke’s Law [ABC, 1963-65]). Horse racing (The Racing Game [ITV, 1979-80]). Et cetera, et cetera…

   Because it contains so many elements and facets related to crime, engaging the viewer from a variety of directions, the TV genre can not be defined precisely.

TISE VAHIMAGI

   The basic story-telling characteristics are an extrapolation of the forms and formats of, in one-part, the literary genre, one-part the radio drama and one-part the cinema. The TV form (not unlike the literary form) can embrace almost any genre, and can pursue any narrative strand. It can be set in the past or in the present. It can select as its point of narrative focus the law enforcer, the criminal, or the innocent bystander. It can be a TV play, a TV film, a miniseries/limited serial, an episodic series, or a series of self-contained episodes or thematic episodes (the anthology).

   The detective or sleuth character is usually the leading figure in the narrative. Leading the path that the viewer is obliged to take, they follow the pattern of the investigation. It is the sleuth’s particular application to the details of the crime that provides the dramatic interest or action (whether the gung-ho tactics of a Lt. Frank Ballinger of M Squad [NBC, 1957-60] or the careful scrutiny of a Hercule Poirot).

TISE VAHIMAGI

   The sleuth may have an assistant (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson) or a partner (Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis). Or may consist of the a team (Ironside [NBC, 1967-75]) or a specialised squad (the cold cases unit of Waking the Dead [BBC, 2000-present]).

   The subgenre of the private detective provides, usually, the loner (Peter Gunn [NBC, 1958-60; ABC, 1960-61], Shoestring [BBC, 1979-80]). Among the subdivisions are the amateur sleuths (Hettie Bainbridge Investigates [BBC, 1996-98], Kate Loves a Mystery [NBC, 1979]) and the sleuth couple (The Thin Man [NBC, 1957-59], Hart to Hart [ABC, 1979-84], Wilde Alliance [ITV, 1978]).

   They can belong to established organisations (The FBI, Scotland Yard, MI5, the CIA, the French Sûreté, Interpol) or carry out their assignments on behalf of made-up agencies (U.N.C.L.E., C.O.N.T.R.O.L., Nemesis, CI5).

   The most popular, and the most associated with the TV genre, has been the police drama. Mainly the Police Detective (Columbo [NBC, 1971-77; ABC, 1989-93], Inspector Morse [ITV, 1987-2000]) but also the Police Officer (Dixon of Dock Green [BBC, 1955-76], Joe Forrester [NBC, 1975-76]).

TISE VAHIMAGI

   Among the subdivisions here are the undercover cop (Wiseguy [CBS, 1987-90], Murphy’s Law [BBC, 2001-2007]), the internal affairs/investigations cop (Between the Lines [BBC, 1992-94]), as well as the mobile cop (Z Cars [BBC, 1962-78], Highway Patrol [syndicated, 1955-59], CHiPs [NBC, 1977-83]).

   The Adventurer. Thrill seeker; often on the lookout for dangerous and exciting experiences. Perhaps a round-up of the expected suspects along these lines would include Roger Moore’s The Saint (ITV, 1962-69), Robert Beatty’s Bulldog Drummond (in “The Ludlow Affair” pilot [ITV, 1958] for Douglas Fairbanks Jr Presents), The Agatha Christie Hour (with “The Case of the Discontented Soldier” [ITV, 1982]), Raffles (ITV, 1977), Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar (BBC/A&E, 1986), Modesty Blaise (pilot; ABC, 1982), The Lone Wolf (syndicated, 1954), Jason King (ITV, 1971-72), The Baron (ITV, 1966-67) and, since this type of programming seems to have the greatest appeal to casual TV viewers, the countless others that we could all name.

   The Private Detective (or Private Eye) has had a long and popular run in the TV genre. In the traditional American sense (77 Sunset Strip [ABC, 1958-64] as team, The Rockford Files [NBC, 1974-80] as loner) as well as the more British tradition of the ‘consulting detective’ (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [ITV, 1984-85], Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime [ITV, 1983-84]), along with the occasional UK leanings toward the American style (Public Eye [ITV, 1965-75]).

TISE VAHIMAGI

   The Hard-Boiled sleuth (Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer [syndicated, 1957-59]) comes into this category. Also the amateur sleuthings of The Snoop Sisters (NBC, 1973-74) and The Beiderbecke Affair (ITV, 1985), either by design (a sense of over-curiosity) or by accident.

   Perhaps as a footnote to the private detective division is the insurance investigator (John Ireland in The Cheaters [ITV, 1962-63]) or investigator for the diamond industry (Broderick Crawford in King of Diamonds [syndicated, 1961]).

   The Lawyer sleuth and the Legal Procedural offer stories combining both private investigation and courtroom drama (Perry Mason [CBS, 1957-66], Sam Benedict [NBC, 1962-63]), and in more recent times the format has been used for corporate as well as constitutional enquiry (L.A. Law [NBC, 1986-94], Judge John Deed [BBC, 2001-2007]).

   Spies, government agents and espionage have been in the literary genre almost as long as the crime and mystery genre itself. However, for the most part, their activities on both the printed page and the small screen have been popular for as long as there has been established political enemies to fight – which means, the genre was popular for most of the last century and remains (with the threat of terrorism), unfortunately, popular today.

TISE VAHIMAGI

   The television espionage genre has presented the spy (the Anglo-U.S. side, of course) as either a lone crusader (during the communist witch-hunt early 1950s; I Led Three Lives [syndicated, 1953-56]) or as part of a secret, highly organised corporation, an element that reached its peak of popularity (quite often as parody) during the 1960s (The Avengers [ITV, 1961-69], The Man from U.N.C.L.E. [NBC, 1964-68]).

   Later, Callan (ITV, 1967; 1969-72) returned the genre to a more serious track, culminating in John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in 1979. The highly popular Spooks (BBC, 2002-present; in U.S. as MI-5), for instance, features a youthful team of operatives involved in anti-terrorist activities. And so it goes…

   The Period Sleuth has been popular on UK television since the early 1970s. A winning combination of costume drama and detective fiction, the works of such authors as Christie, Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, and others, have produced the sagas of Lord Peter Wimsey (BBC, 1972-75), Father Brown (ITV, 1974), Campion (BBC, 1989), the ITV Sherlock Homes series (with Jeremy Brett; 1984 to 1994), Agatha Christie’s Poirot (ITV, 1989-93; 1995) and The Mrs Bradley Mysteries (BBC, 1998-99). The fascinating Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries (Citytv, 2008-present) continues to fascinate.

TISE VAHIMAGI

   Occasionally, there are observations on contemporary life from the distant viewpoint of ancient Rome and Medieval England (the Falco and Brother Cadfael stories, respectively). The most popular period, it seems, is the fairly recent past, roughly the late Victorian era of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper to the ‘nostalgic’ decade of the 1960s with Crime Story (NBC, 1986-88) and Heartbeat (ITV, 1992-2010).

   A small note on the future and/or fantasy as ‘setting’: Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel (BBC, 1964); The Outer Limits (ABC) episodes “The Invisibles” and “Controlled Experiment” (both from 1964); The X Files (Fox, 1993-2002); Star Cops (BBC, 1987).

   The Scientific Sleuth has surfaced intermittently over the decades (The Hidden Truth [ITV, 1964], The Expert [BBC, 1968-69; 1971; 1976]) until 2000 when CSI blazed a trail that brought the work of forensics experts to the fore.

   Weapons and ballistics experts have featured in past stories, and currently Dexter (Showtime, 2006-present) has amassed an unexpectedly popular following by portraying the work of a blood splatter specialist (alongside his alter ego as a serial killer). The criminal psychologist has also gained a following over the years, especially with the success of Cracker in 1993 (Profiler [NBC, 1996-2000], Wire in the Blood [ITV, 2002-2008]).

   Needless to say, there is more to the TV Crime & Mystery than just the above basic descriptions. In time, I intend to discuss aspects of the TV Gaslight Era drama, the Underworld, the Psychological Thriller, and other related TV forms.

   In Part Two of PRIME TIME SUSPECTS, I will trace early examples of the genre (from 1930s/1940s TV works by Christie, Edgar Wallace, G.K. Chesterton, Patrick Hamilton and Edgar Allan Poe, among others), leading up to the episodic series of the late 1940s (such as The Plainclothesman, 1949-54).

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here.

REVIEWED BY MICHAEL SHONK:


RAINES. NBC-TV, March 15 thru April 27 2007. Created by Graham Yost. Cast: Detective Michael Raines: Jeff Goldblum, Captain Lewis: Matt Craven, Carolyn : Nicole Sullivan, Lance: Linda Park, Boyer: Dov Davidoff. Recurring Characters: Dr. Kohl: Madeline Stowe, Charlie: Malik Yoba.

RAINES Jeff Goldblum

    Raines is a rare example of a creative television series with a premise so different even the seasoned TV mystery fan will be pleasantly surprised.

   Detective Michael Raines is a failed writer turned homicide detective who needs to talk out the crime with someone. When he loses his partner, and no one else will partner with him because they think he is a weird jerk, Raines turns to the dead victims.

   Raines is not Topper meets Sherlock Holmes. The dead victims are not ghosts but figments of Raines’ own imagination. Because of this, the victims can not tell Raines anything he does not know. In “Fifth Step,” the victim’s head had been shot off by a shotgun blast. Raines sees the headless victim walking around until he sees a picture of her.

   In each episode we watch how the victim changes as Raines learns more about the dead person. In the pilot, Raines imagines the dead girl as a young innocent woman. As he learns more that image changes. When he learns she may have had an affair with a married man, Raines’ image of her changes to resemble Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, complete with the film’s theme song playing on the soundtrack.

RAINES Jeff Goldblum

   As Raines and the viewer learn more about the dead body the character of the victim becomes more developed. No longer is the victim just a body to start the mystery. He or she becomes more and more real to the viewer, so much so we mourn the loss and tragedy of the victim’s death.

   Raines is eager to solve the case and get the victim out of his head. When he does solve the mystery, we have grown close enough to the victim to share Raines’ relief and sadness of closure.

   The humor is dark, sarcastic, and at times can be laugh out loud funny. With the dead victim hovering around Raines waiting for answers, we feel the anger that fuels such humor. As a result the humor in this series has substance that is rare outside Raymond Chandler.

   Jeff Goldblum is perfect as Raines, a man who lives with the terror he might be insane, yet driven to help find closure for the dead victims and those close to them.

RAINES Jeff Goldblum

   Award winning showrunner Graham Yost (Justified, The Pacific) enjoys twisting the normal roles and rules of the mystery genre. In “Meet Juan Doe,” the police artist wants to do “graphic novels” and his sketch of a badly disfigured Mexican looks like Eric Erstrada.

   Perhaps the best genre description of Raines is Victim Noir. Everything including the plot is centered around the victim. In “Stone Dead”, the plot begins as a story about a racist’s revenge against a judge, but as we learn more about the victim the crime changes. Often the backdrop of the crime challenges Raines’ perspective regarding social issues such as the homeless, addiction, and illegal immigration.

   Raines is a series no TV mystery fan should miss.

   All seven filmed episodes can be seen at Hulu.com.

REVIEWED BY GEOFF BRADLEY:         


MIDSOMER MURDERS. ITV, UK. Season 13, Episodes 4-6. John Nettles (D.C.I. Barnaby), Jason Hughes (DS Ben Jones), Jane Wymark (Joyce Barnaby), Barry Jackson (Dr Bullard), Kirsty Dillon (WPC Gail Stephens).

MIDSOMER MURDERS

   This past fall we had a burst of four new episodes of this long-running series (2 hours each, less adverts). I missed the first of these but the second, “The Silent Land” (03 August 2010) was a typical episode with a con man who leads a “ghost walk” around various sites in the Midsomer area.

   Of course when a body turns up he is able to attract more followers, though he clearly makes things up and Barnaby pooh-poohs all things ghostly. However the producers couldn’t resist, after all the crimes have been cleared up rationally, giving Barnaby a ghostly encounter of his own.

   The third, “Master Class” (06 October 2010), was, I’m afraid to say, even worse (possibly the worst episode ever, though there have been some pretty bad ones) with a totally barmy story based on a vision — yes really — that a young girl has, replaying an incident when she was a babe in arms.

   The characters, actions and motives were unbelievable and the whole was a complete mess. Unless you are a Midsomer completist you will do best to avoid this episode.

   Following that the fourth episode, “The Noble Art” (13 October 2010), though not the most intriguing of stories, maybe, was a return to the good old days with a story that made some sense and a villain that one could make out if the clues were picked up on. If only they were all like this.

REVIEWED BY GEOFF BRADLEY:         


LAW & ORDER: UK. ITV. Series Three: 09 September through 21 October 2010. Bradley Walsh, Jamie Bamber, Harriet Walter, Ben Daniels, Freema Agyeman, Bill Paterson.

LAW & ORDER UK Series Three

   Another seven episodes (making a total so far of 20) of original Law & Order stories adapted to a London setting.

   Somehow it doesn’t quite work, partly, perhaps, because the stories were designed to operate in a slightly different culture. Maybe it would have been better to commission new stories and fit them within a more recognisable British setting.

   An exception might have been “Masquerade,” based on the US episode “Good Girl,” which seemed, to me at least, to be rather stronger than the others. I’m not convinced, however, that prosecutors in England would investigate in the way they do here.

Of course when I’m watching the original I have no idea how the legal system works in New York (except from watching similar programmes — although as I’ve said before the difference in procedures between L&O, NYPD Blue and CSI:NY leaves this viewer rather confused) and accept it all without a quibble.

FIRST YOU READ, THEN YOU WRITE
by Francis M. Nevins


   I recently unearthed an Ellery Queen mystery, or more precisely a mystery about EQ, which will not be solved easily if at all. The September 2002 issue of Radiogram, a magazine for fans of old-time radio, includes “In the Studio with Ellery Queen,” a brief memoir by Fred Essex, who was a producer-director for the Ruthrauff & Ryan advertising agency in the early 1940s when one of the programs the agency brought to the air every week was The Adventures of Ellery Queen.

   At this time Ellery’s creators, the cousins Fred Dannay and Manny Lee, were working out of an office in mid-Manhattan but asked the agency not to disturb them while they were in the throes of creation. “[T]he boys in the mail room who would deliver two mimeographed copies of the finished script each week were instructed not to enter the office…but to throw the fat envelope through the transom above the door.”

   At the time in question, Essex recalled, “Carleton Young played Ellery….” We know that Young took over that role in January 1942, when the series returned to the air after a 15-month hiatus, and kept it until August or September 1943 when he was replaced by Sydney Smith. Essex occasionally directed an EQ episode, and in his memoir described a segment where the murder “was committed in a radio studio that was supposedly rehearsing a crime program.”

   Essex recalled that the guest armchair detective that evening was radio comedian Fred Allen, and that he failed to solve the mystery. What’s wrong with this picture? Simply that The Sound of Detection, my book on the Queen series, lists no episode during Young’s tenure where Ellery solved a crime in a radio studio and no episode at any time where Fred Allen was the armchair sleuth!

   Either Essex misremembered radically or there’s still some information on the Ellery of the airwaves that hasn’t been unearthed. I hope to live long enough to find out which.

***

   Anyone in the market for another EQ mystery? As most mysteryphiles know, roughly between 1960 and 1966 Manny Lee was suffering from some sort of writer’s block and unable to collaborate with Fred Dannay as he’d been doing so successfully since 1929.

   Ellery Queen novels and shorter adventures continued to appear during those years, with other authors expanding Fred’s lengthy synopses as Manny had always done in the past. We know who took over Manny’s function on the novels of that period but not on the short stories and not on the single Queen novelet from those years.

   â€œThe Death of Don Juan” (Argosy, May 1962; collected in Queens Full, 1965) is set in Wrightsville and deals with the attempt of the town’s amateur theatrical company to stage a creaky old turn-of-the-century melodrama.

   Could this be a clue to the identity of Fred’s collaborator on the tale? In his graduate student days Anthony Boucher had worked in the Little Theater movement, and on his first date with the woman he later married the couple went to a creaky old-time melodrama.

   This is hardly conclusive evidence but, if I may borrow a Poirotism, it gives one furiously to think. Between 1945 and 1948 Boucher had taken over Fred’s function of providing plots for Manny to transform into finished scripts for the EQ radio series. Might he also have performed Manny’s function a dozen or more years later?

***

   The first publisher of the hardcover Ellery Queen novels and anthologies was the Frederick A. Stokes company, with whom Fred and Manny stayed from their debut in 1929 until 1941. A few months before Pearl Harbor they moved to Little, Brown and stayed there through 1955.

   After a few years with Simon & Schuster (1956-1958) they moved to Random House and the aegis of legendary editor Lee Wright (1902-1986), who among other coups had purchased Anthony Boucher’s first detective novel and the first “Black” suspense novels by Cornell Woolrich.

   What was behind their earlier moves from one publisher to another remains unknown, but when I interviewed Wright more than thirty years ago she explained why Queen left Random House. The year was 1965, a time when Manny was suffering from writer’s block and Fred called most of the shots for the two of them.

   He left Random, Wright told me, ”literally because Bennett Cerf didn’t invite him to lunch. His feelings were hurt….I said: ‘Fred, Bennett isn’t your editor. I am. You’re sort of insulting me. My attention isn’t enough for you, it has to be the head of the house, is what you’re saying.’”

   Fred tended to be hypersensitive to any hint that mystery writers were second-class literary citizens, while Manny over the years had come to hate the genre and his own role in it, to the point that he described himself to one of his daughters as a “literary prostitute.”

   That he and Fred could have disagreed about this and everything else and still have collaborated successfully for so long is nothing short of a miracle.

***

   When I was ten years old, for no particular reason I began squirreling away the weekly issues of TV Guide as my parents threw them on the trash pile with the week’s newspapers. The result is that today my bookshelves are weighed down by a week-by-week history of television from the early Fifties till the end of 2000, a goldmine of information unavailable elsewhere.

   One such nugget is buried in the listings for Thursday, June 14, 1956. One of the top Thursday night programs broadcast that season was the 60-minute live dramatic anthology series Climax!

   That particular evening’s offering was “To Scream at Midnight,” in which a wealthy young woman breaks down and is placed in a sanitarium after being thrown over by her lover. Her psychiatrist becomes suspicious when the man reappears and claims he wants to marry her.

   Heading the cast were Diana Lynn (Hilde Fraser), Dewey Martin (Emmett Shore), Karen Sharpe (Peggy Walsh), and Richard Jaeckel (Hordan). John Frankenheimer directed from a teleplay by John McGreevey which, according to TV Guide, was based on something by Highsmith.

   But what? I can recall no novel or story by her from 1956 or earlier (or later either) that remotely resembles this plot summary, but I am no authority on Highsmith. Joan Schenkar, author of the Edgar-nominated The Talented Miss Highsmith (2009), has read every word her subject ever wrote, including hundreds of thousands of words in her diaries.

   When I sent her a photocopy of the relevant TV Guide page, she too couldn’t connect the description with any Highsmith novel or story.

   That makes three mysteries about mysteries in one column, all of them probably unsolvable. If any readers have suggestions I’d love to see them.

***

   Breaking News! My chance encounter last Thanksgiving with that website devoted to William Ard has borne fruit. Ramble House, a small publisher with which every reader of this column should be acquainted, has arranged with Ard’s daughter to reprint a number of her father’s novels of the Fifties, probably in the two-to-a-volume format pioneered by Ace Books back when Ard was turning out four or more paperback originals a year. More details when I have them.

Prime Time Suspects (Crime & Mystery Television):
An Introduction, by Tise Vahimagi
.

    It must have been sometime around ten years ago that I discovered Rosemary Herbert’s excellent encyclopaedic work The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing (Oxford University Press, 1999), loaded with a myriad of cross-references and ‘see also’ footnotes. For me, this book opened numerous avenues of further exploration within genre literature as well as being something of a mini education in various genre elements and associations.

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS

    With a child-like sense of wonder, perhaps, it also induced me to visualise a television Crime & Mystery genre version. An exploration of the TV genre shaped in the book’s fascinating cross-reference format and structure. Instead of author entries, overviews of genre TV series.

    I went on to spend months compiling an outline and a book proposal. During this time I indulged in an almost fanatical research programme (rather prematurely) which, ultimately, resulted in several large cartons of documentation. But it also enriched my life with marathon viewings (via VHS/DVD) of previously unseen genre series.

    When the book proposal and chapter outline were complete, I pursued various possible media publishers. However, I soon discovered that these ‘media’ publishers (at least the London-based ones) seemed to barely have a grip on aspects of cinema history. That Television — genre television, at that — was considered not even a footnote in the grand scheme of things exploitable.

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS

    Fortunately, Steve has very graciously allowed me to put some of this research and enthusiasm to use as an occasional series of observations on popular cycles and phases in the history of the TV Crime & Mystery genre.

    I intend to call it Prime Time Suspects (Crime & Mystery Television). For this on-line format I have revised (and greatly shortened) the draft of my original Introduction:

    It is a dangerous — and perhaps insane — undertaking to attempt to compress into a series of installments the history of a television genre as prolific and for the most part as rewarding as the Crime & Mystery. A genre that has enjoyed viewer popularity for over 60 years.

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS

    The only thing that may be possible here is something of a bird’s eye view of the various TV forms and phases. My interest here will be to share a discussion of the series and programmes in this history, both in their relationship to their sources (literature, of course, as well as radio and cinema) along with the general evolution of the medium and its developing culture.

    There was a time when the approach to genre television tended to be structuralist, often dismissive. For instance, Tom Ryan, writing in Sight & Sound in 1976, noted that “Kojak, Columbo, Police Woman, Joe Forrester, S.W.A.T., Streets of San Francisco, and the others are seen to merge into each other, distinguishable only in terms of the different stars in each of the series.”

    Rather uncomfortably, this crude opinion sounds somewhat like the once held, blinkered view of the “Hollywood production factory” of cinema — until it was noticed (originally by French Cahiers critics, later exemplified by Andrew Sarris) that there were significant differences within the genres.

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS

    One of the earliest writers to observe and evaluate aspects of television was Jack Edmund Nolan in his pioneering TV column in the pages of Films in Review magazine (running from around the mid 1960s).

    Nolan was perhaps the first to apply Sarris’ auteur theory to television, observing and analysing the small-screen work of directors ranging from Stuart Heisler to Sam Wanamaker (and, in one instance, even considered Roger Moore’s directorial excursions during production of The Saint series, ITV 1962-69).

    There can be no doubt that, taken in bulk, the genre series which concern us regularly tend to perpetrate distortions and omissions which have proved extremely galling to this writer’s critical generation. My contention, ultimately, is that many of the short-run, lesser-known series can be richer in nuance, in tension, in character and intricacy of plot, than they have been given credit for in the past.

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS

    For instance, Ralph Meeker’s laconic military police investigator in Not for Hire (syndicated, 1959) and Roddy McMillan’s Glasgow private eye in The View from Daniel Pike (BBC, 1971-73) are more than equal to the acclaimed NCIS (CBS, 2003- ) and Baretta (ABC, 1975-78), respectively.

    It may be easy enough to summarize an epoch by selecting the most distinguished series, and concentrating thereon. But the manifest conveniences of this process have confirmed one of the principal distortions of TV criticism. The impression is conveyed that run-of-the-mill series never say anything, that vivid or insightful remarks or situations are a monopoly of a few prestigious individuals (the Stephen Bochco or Lynda La Plante productions, for example).

    Ranging from world-wide counter-espionage to the mean streets of the private investigator, the television law keeper is impelled by an almost idealistic world-view and a belief in justice, a commitment to order, and, at times, a sense of chivalry. The quest for justice underlies all of these activities; the plots follow a pattern of murder, corruption, and the establishment of a governing system to solve a puzzle and to return a sense of order to its citizens.

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS

    Even though the genre has a strong tradition of unique conventions and the programmes themselves have been popular from the early days of broadcast television (the mid 1930s) to the present, a lack of attention may be the result of a certain confusion over precisely what comprises the TV genre. It has been described so narrowly as to include the police detective procedural exclusively, and so broadly as to encompass virtually any TV series featuring a crime.

    I would like to think that the occasional chapters that follow will take steps toward what may be an original definition of TV Crime & Mystery, emphasising the importance of the formal TV crime puzzle and its attendant characterisations and codes of behaviour.

PRIME TIME SUSPECTS

    The TV genre includes not only police detectives but also similar related crime and mystery forms, such as adventurers, spies and investigative science experts. One of my central aims will be to demonstrate just how rich and rewarding these programmes can be in their own sub-divisions. I concluded eventually that only a mapping of the various sub-genres existing within the larger field could provide the overview I was looking for.

    Future installments will have me looking at, for example, the late 1950s Private Eye cycle (Peter Gunn, 77 Sunset Strip, etc.), the Prohibition Era Mob (The Untouchables, The Lawless Years, etc.), the New Age of Agatha Christie (UK television period 1980 to 1992), among many other genre cycles and forms.

       — Tise Vahimagi is currently the TV Database Editor for the British Film Institute.

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