Sunday 16 August 2015

Criminal Viewing: "Witnesses" and "Ripper Street"

Alors! I am enjoying the exceedingly mysterious and dark French crime drama "Witnesses" currently showing in the UK on Channel 4.
We are in a coastal town in Northern France (pas de Paris) and someone is digging up freshly buried corpses and tableau-ing them in estate show houses. Is this a developers' macabre tiff? Or some act of revenge on the limping, cane-toting but appropriately named former detective - Paul Maisonneuve?  And... there is the reappearance of a serial killer who clearly has seen one too many Batman films judging by his killing maquillage. With chalk cliffs and sea mists... a chain-smoking female detective avec un peu de difficulté with her spouse... it is all very Gallic I do say. And I do enjoy it.

Not so The Old Man, I fear. He is nervous of French crime dramas, will not stay in the same room as "Spiral", so whilst he do keep me company watching "Witnesses"... he is getting grumpy. For I have made the mistake of pointing out that the actor who plays Paul Maisonneuve is known for comedy roles and had in fact played the French "Doc Martin" in their version of the Martin Clunes' series. The Old Man now complains to me that the actor is not very funny. I roll my eyes.
The Old Man have also complained that a scene on a ferry be shrouded in mist one minute and not... the next. I roll my eyes again and point out that he... who do live on the western tip of Cornwall... where nowhere is more than eight miles from the sea... should understand better the nature of sea mist. There one minute, gone the next... back again when it feels like it.... Alors... c'est le brouillard de mer, n'est pas?

Anyhoo. For sure The Old Man do not stay in the room whilst I do enjoy the return to terrestrial telly of "Ripper Street"... my steam-punk, fave of an almost-over-the-top Victorian crime series. Oh them baddies be so bad. I did bewail the BBC mad decision to axe it in a previous post but Amazon Prime did step in with filming and streaming and now BBC is showing the new series on terrestrial telly. Hope they paid a nice amount for it... and hope it remains a success with more to come.

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