It was fun seeing David Soul as a guest star on a Season 6 episode of Inspector Lewis. He played a visiting lecturer whose views on the genetic aspects of a criminal mind were controversial. It may be one of his best performances, even if it did end with him choked to death in his Oxford quarters. Then in Season 7 it was the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, who played an absolute monster of a character. He seemed delighted to be such an over-the-top bad guy.
These BBC mysteries are just about the perfect length. Ample time for twists and turns, but not so much time that they feel bloated. I’ve come to the conclusion that the problem with The Killing is that it’s hard to sustain a murder mystery over a season. The Danish took 20 hours for their first season to play out, and there were times that it felt like the story was treading water, but the international aspect helped them along. Unless the detectives are in jeopardy (and you can only play that card so often), then it’s hard to stick with them as they go through all of the mundane tasks of investigation. Sure, there’s an element of verisimilitude, but that doesn’t always make for good TV. I was happy to see that they stuck with the Danish series in terms of what happens to Sarah at the beginning of the second season, although I get the impression that, from a bureaucratic point of view, Sara Lund’s transfer would have been more easily accomplished.
I’m halfway through the first season of Orphan Black and I have to say that I’m impressed, especially by the performance of Tatiana Maslany. I’d seen the previews for the show when tuning in to watch Doctor Who, so I queued them up but am only getting around to watching now. The show is about a woman named Sarah, a bit of a hard case who was raised in foster care and who has a daughter of her own who is being raised by someone else. Sarah sees a woman commit suicide by jumping in front of a train. The catch is, the woman looks exactly like her. Exactly. She gradually learns that there are more of her kicking around—all around the world, in fact—and someone is determined to kill them all. There are some fantastic scenes where Sarah meets with some of her lookalikes. Maslany has a way of giving them each very individual, very distinct personalities. They look different, they talk different, they are different. One is a science nerd, one’s a cop, one’s a soccer mom, one’s a lunatic. Even more amusing are the scenes in which one of them pretends to be another, so the actress who plays Character A now has to play Character B pretending to be Character A. It’s a tour-de-force performance, and a compelling story. It’s a Canadian/US production, shot in Toronto, that ended up on BBC America for some reason. Recently renewed for a second season.
They packed a lot of story into the first episode of season 2 of Longmire. It felt much longer than 60 minutes, and I mean that in a good way. Haven’t seen this week’s episode yet.
The ad men on Mad Men have the weirdest drug trips ever. It was interesting that Harry Hamlin’s character tried to stage a bloodless coup while the Stirling Cooper folks were away on business. Joan also went off-script a bit. I’m not quite sure what the stakes are for the season overall. Only a few episodes left. Will there be a showdown between the two factions?
