30 Days of [Any Favourite] TV Show - 6

[thisbluespirit]

19. Something that made you think

Public Eye nearly always makes me think, and that's one of the main reasons why I like it. For something that features very low-key, mundane stories most weeks, it causes me to spend a lot of time thinking about it and rewatching things and working out what it's about. It varies (episodic old TV!) but most of the time, it expects me to make my own mind up, it doesn't tell me what I should be thinking. Which takes a little while to get used to, but it's wonderful once you have.


20. Something that made you laugh

Oh, meme, you want me to sit here and describe jokes while everyone else looks on unmoved? Okay, once I rewatched the Christmas episode from S6, that made me laugh quite a bit. (My favourite part is when Frank shouts at two carol singers, and then turns round, looks at them, and plaintively begs for a chip.) Also, the whole of the scene in S5's "Transatlantic Cousins" between Frank and Sir Roger L'Ettrell is just priceless. You'll have to take my word for it, but, really, you should have been there...


21. Best series opener
22. Best season finale

If you've been paying attention so far, you'll realise "Best anything" usually winds up at S4, so... "Welcome to Brighton?" and "A Fixed Address" (S4 opener and finale). "Welcome to Brighton?" is so bleak I find it hard to watch, but it's still exceptional TV.

For the other series: S1-3 don't have any openers/finales surviving. "Don't Forget You're Mine" feels like an opener (and a great one, too), but it isn't. If "Cross That Palm When We Come To It" existed, it might win best finale but it doesn't. (It's quite intriguing that the only time in 10 years that Public Eye knew it was coming back, they set up a really impressive story arc. I can't help but wonder what they'd have done if they'd ever had that knowledge again?) "A Mug Named Frank" (S5 opener) probably has the best opening scene, in terms of effectively introducing the character - Frank, in a supermarket, stops to help a shoplifter. (♥) S7's opener "Nobody Wants to Know" is pretty strong, too. But S4, people, S4.


23. Crackiest moment

There aren't a lot of cracky moments in Public Eye (at least not that I can think of off-hand), but there is one that's down to the fact that the first few scripts were written before the lead was cast, and so Roger Marshall still had in mind that Frank would be a man of iron. (Fate and the S1 producer happily had other ideas.)

So, in the first surviving episode, Frank's getting beaten up by two hired heavies... and the next scene, they're both lying unconscious. How did that happen? The mind boggles. Maybe he tried his divide and conquer tactics and had them fight each other, or an anvil fell out of the sky? Or they both inexplicably fainted, who knows? (I'd add in the whole storyline in which he's hired as bodyguard to a millionaire, except that Frank clearly found the whole idea as amusing as I did.)

Oh, and this:


I've shared it before, I know, but still. Nothing else in the entire series made me laugh so hard. (It's not even the shop he goes into; it's the one opposite.)

There are probably moments from various episodes by a writer called Philip Broadley that should go in here, but... there is just not enough time in the world to explain all the random that might involve. My brain might break again.


30 Days of [Public Eye]

1. Favourite Episode
2. What You Wish Happened
3. Favourite regular character
4. Favourite guest character
5. Least favourite episode
6. Best title sequence
7. Most romantic moment
8. Missing episode you would like to see found
9. Favourite photo/screencap
10. Favourite ship
11. Favourite writer
12. Favourite director
13. What show-related fanworks would you like to see?
14. Worst decision
15. Scene that made your heart break
16. Best scene involving eating/drinking
17. Something that made you happy
18. Something that made you sad
19. Something that made you think
20. Something that made you laugh
21. Best series opener
22. Best season finale
23. Crackiest moment
24. Best scene involving music/dancing
25. Crime against fashion
26. Favourite quotes
27. Favourite non-romantic OTP
28. Most surprising moment
29. Favourite location
30. Favourite costume/clothing/accessory

Comments

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

I love the episode titles. That question mark in "Welcome To Brighton?" sells it perfectly, and I love "A Mug Named Frank". Somehow it's extremely evocative.

I keep meaning to do this meme. I earmarked thirty questions, chose a TV series, and then stopped. You win at fandom. :)

[thisbluespirit]

It's not as if there's a deadline. :-)

I love the episode titles.

They're mostly dialogue from the episodes, which is one of the reasons they're so random. They get less so as it goes on, which means, annoyingly, all the really bizarre ones are lost forever, and we'll never know what was going on in things like "I Went To Borrow A Pencil and Look What I Found", "You Think It'll Be Marvellous - But It's Always A Rabbit", "You Should Hear Me Eat Soup", or "Tell Me About the Crab".

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

That's genius. There's most of us struggling to find half decent titles, and they come up with that! And those titles are gold. I suppose it wouldn't work for every show, but they seem perfect for this one. And what titles! Of course I had to go looking for a list. "It Had To Be a Mouse" is a good one. "If This Is Lucky, I'd Rather Be Jonah"; "It Must Be the Architecture - Can't Be the Climate". That rabbit one is hard to beat though.

Did they manage to locate scripts for the missing episodes? One of the things that makes the loss of so much of "Adam Adamant Lives!" easier is that the DVD set includes scripts of the missing episodes. Mind you, there's a lot less of them. I want to know what he found instead of that pencil!

[thisbluespirit]

They are great, aren't they? :-D

I don't think there are many (if any) existing S1-3 scripts, either. There are some episodes that exist in audio only, though one of them only in fragments, plus TV Guide summaries, and that's about it. (The summary says the rabbit one is about a hit-and-run accident, which... has no obvious connection to the quote whatsoever.) There's also an ATV behind the scenes feature showing the filming of a scene from "You Can Keep The Medal" and an ITV promotional reel for "It Must Be the Architecture" - they're on the DVDs as extras (so is one of the audio-only eps). Most of those, mind, are all S2.

(I've been looking at the episode summaries now for the first time. The S1-2 ones are relatively explicable. S3 seems to have got surreal: "Police work comes Marker's way... he moves into new lodgings... and some very strange people find that the wages of sin is - porridge!" (Mercury in an Off-White Mac, apparently.)

[john_amend_all]

So, in the first surviving episode, Frank's getting beaten up by two hired heavies... and the next scene, they're both lying unconscious. How did that happen? The mind boggles.

Well, there's always Ancelyn's technique of getting them to charge at him from opposite directions and then stepping out of their path...

[thisbluespirit]

It's about as likely as anything else. Which is to say, not very. (They've already got him up against the car and are pummelling him good and proper.) It's a mystery. :-)

[oonaseckar.livejournal.com]

'Welcome to Brighton?' is a pretty ominous title right from the kick-off. Just the thought of trying to get parked, fighting your way through the indie shopping bit to pay over the odds for organic cucumbers sold by sneering hipsters, feeling the pier wobble under your feet like it's waiting for the disaster-headline-of-the-week and the seagulls eye your ice-cream... The horror. Poor Frank.

Although if it's between the seagulls and Frank, it sounds like your chips would be safer with the birds.

Maybe he tried his divide and conquer tactics and had them fight each other, or an anvil fell out of the sky?
And then the Tasmanian Devil whirled past, fists akimbo? That would be so great...

[thisbluespirit]

Gosh. Sounds worse than Whitby on a Bank Holiday. :-)

And then the Tasmanian Devil whirled past, fists akimbo? That would be so great...

there's no evidence to say it didn't.

[oonaseckar.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Whitby is lovely. All the little craft shops with the jet and the turquoise. And the fish and chips are better, if Frank's such a connoisseur, too... See, if it had been 'Welcome To Whitby' there'd have been no need for the ominous question mark.

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: But what about a) Whitby in dreadful weather or b) Whitby on a bank holiday with literally nowhere to park, so you have to go off to Staithes or somewhere? Half a question mark?

[oonaseckar.livejournal.com]

Oh, hang on, plus Dracula! I suppose Whitby always merits a question mark...

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Apparently the answer is that everyone should watch S4!

[thisbluespirit]

Except it's no place to start... ;-)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

I didn't actually suppose it was...

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

I remember the Fanny's Curios pic; what a wonderful name for a shop. What you really need is for umpteen episodes of this to turn up in an out-of-the-way studio in Slovakia, where it will turn out that millions of people tuned in every week for their dose of Frank's life. It also means all those people will be convinced that life in Britain is exactly like that.

It could be worse. They might think we're all living like people in UFO.

[thisbluespirit]

I don't think Public Eye sold abroad at all though - too British in the non-eccentric/quaint way. But the idea of a Public Eye-loving small country is quite fun, :lol:! (Mind, life really was like Public Eye. It's just changed since. In some ways, like purple suits and names that you can't give to innocent antiques shops any more.)

Aha! Now I know why you don't mind the purple suit - it'll go beautifully with that purple wig of yours... ;-p