30 Days of [Any Favourite] TV Show - 8
May. 7th, 2014 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisbluespiritLet's finish this meme, since I've said all I need to in the vid...
26. Favourite quotes
I included a bunch in my big Public Eye post, so I'll just find some different ones I also like, except for this, which is my favourite:
Helen: "A man seems to think all he has to say to a woman is 'I need you' - she'll pack a nightie and a toothbrush and run!"
Frank: "Perhaps some people don't mind all this soul-stripping. But I'm not an onion that you can all peel, one layer each all round. Like it or lump it, this is the way I am."
Ron: "You must have some ambition, some purpose, something to aim for?"
Frank: "Right now, what I'd like to aim at is the nearest pub. Half a bitter and a pork pie. Or is that too ambitious?"
Frank: "Responsibility. A quaint, old-fashioned thing that you seem a bit short on."
Tom Hooper: "One life. How many compromises?"
27. Favourite non-romantic OTP
Frank & Percy. There aren't a lot of contenders. (It's not really a coincidence that Frank's two main friends both decided fairly quickly to take an interest in him, whether he liked it or not, and are both quite persistent about it.) Anyway, Inspector Percy Firbank is intrigued from the start by a private detective who's more concerned about an old lady losing an item of sentimental value than the recovery of stolen property, and when Frank moves to Windsor, he does some background checks on him, and keeps an eye on him from then on - and even after he leaves the series.
"John VII. Verse 24" may not be great, but it is a good Percy & Frank episode - at the end of Frank's first year at Windsor, someone has information that Percy may be corrupt, so he investigates, because Percy's not his friend, that would be silly. And through the course of the episode he drives himself half demented over the possibility, and after that he's willing to go so far as to admit - on occasion - that they are friends. And Percy'll meddle in Frank's affairs to try and help him, but he doesn't give a damn about him, obviously. And then sometimes they get together and accidentally kill people. It's an interesting relationship. As Frank says, they should never swap information. They always do somebody no good.
28. Most surprising moment
The most surprising moment is so surprising that if I told you, you'd have to kill me. Or another answer might be that it surprised me from the start and kept surprising me right up till the end (well, at least the penultimate episode).
29. Favourite location
Hmm, I like what exists of the Birmingham location work - especially the first episode set there where Frank runs all over Birmingham New Street and you can see them still building it, but probably Brighton. 1960s Brighton in black and white, and bleakness contrasted with seaside trappings. Windsor/Walton/Chertsey just don't compare.
30. Favourite costume/clothing/accessory
Does a mug count as an accessory? I'm deciding that it does. I was going to do some screencaps, but I think everybody's got the idea by now, but Frank (not being a person who talks about his feelings much or really cares to admit too often that he has them) is given a mug by Mrs Mortimer at exactly the same moment he tells her he's leaving her. And so the series doesn't have to keep mentioning her, we just see that Frank still has his mug. When it breaks, he glues it back together, he puts a rose in it, and when Mrs Mortimer arrives to see him, it gives her some hope to see that he still has it. Mugs have meaning, you see. (The previous one that broke on the day he left her was the one she read his tea leaves in as a joke and told him that everything would work out...)
One of the things that amuses me, though, is that while Public Eye is impressively good with continuity, the props department are less so. I like to imagine someone there running round going, "Oh, what, that was supposed to be in more than one episode? Whoops, sorry, we broke it/sold it/lent it to Special Branch!" (They apparently really did run around panicking every time it came back trying to find Frank's mac.) Anyway, there are at least four mugs, if not five: The first one has lines on it, then the next time we see it (two episodes later) it doesn't, and the font's chunkier. Then they get one with the right font but no lines which lasts out from late S5 to early S7 and the F gradually gets rubbed out - Frank is turning rank in S6. And then, when he moves to Chertsey and gets his mug out again for the first time in four or five episodes, it's got its F back, before it loses it once more in another couple of episodes. The mug is also magic, you see.
Don't look at me. I'm not suddenly obsessed with items of crockery.
(Now, what show next for this meme? ;-p)
26. Favourite quotes
I included a bunch in my big Public Eye post, so I'll just find some different ones I also like, except for this, which is my favourite:
Helen: "A man seems to think all he has to say to a woman is 'I need you' - she'll pack a nightie and a toothbrush and run!"
Frank: "Perhaps some people don't mind all this soul-stripping. But I'm not an onion that you can all peel, one layer each all round. Like it or lump it, this is the way I am."
Ron: "You must have some ambition, some purpose, something to aim for?"
Frank: "Right now, what I'd like to aim at is the nearest pub. Half a bitter and a pork pie. Or is that too ambitious?"
Frank: "Responsibility. A quaint, old-fashioned thing that you seem a bit short on."
Tom Hooper: "One life. How many compromises?"
27. Favourite non-romantic OTP
Frank & Percy. There aren't a lot of contenders. (It's not really a coincidence that Frank's two main friends both decided fairly quickly to take an interest in him, whether he liked it or not, and are both quite persistent about it.) Anyway, Inspector Percy Firbank is intrigued from the start by a private detective who's more concerned about an old lady losing an item of sentimental value than the recovery of stolen property, and when Frank moves to Windsor, he does some background checks on him, and keeps an eye on him from then on - and even after he leaves the series.
"John VII. Verse 24" may not be great, but it is a good Percy & Frank episode - at the end of Frank's first year at Windsor, someone has information that Percy may be corrupt, so he investigates, because Percy's not his friend, that would be silly. And through the course of the episode he drives himself half demented over the possibility, and after that he's willing to go so far as to admit - on occasion - that they are friends. And Percy'll meddle in Frank's affairs to try and help him, but he doesn't give a damn about him, obviously. And then sometimes they get together and accidentally kill people. It's an interesting relationship. As Frank says, they should never swap information. They always do somebody no good.
28. Most surprising moment
The most surprising moment is so surprising that if I told you, you'd have to kill me. Or another answer might be that it surprised me from the start and kept surprising me right up till the end (well, at least the penultimate episode).
29. Favourite location
Hmm, I like what exists of the Birmingham location work - especially the first episode set there where Frank runs all over Birmingham New Street and you can see them still building it, but probably Brighton. 1960s Brighton in black and white, and bleakness contrasted with seaside trappings. Windsor/Walton/Chertsey just don't compare.
30. Favourite costume/clothing/accessory
Does a mug count as an accessory? I'm deciding that it does. I was going to do some screencaps, but I think everybody's got the idea by now, but Frank (not being a person who talks about his feelings much or really cares to admit too often that he has them) is given a mug by Mrs Mortimer at exactly the same moment he tells her he's leaving her. And so the series doesn't have to keep mentioning her, we just see that Frank still has his mug. When it breaks, he glues it back together, he puts a rose in it, and when Mrs Mortimer arrives to see him, it gives her some hope to see that he still has it. Mugs have meaning, you see. (The previous one that broke on the day he left her was the one she read his tea leaves in as a joke and told him that everything would work out...)
One of the things that amuses me, though, is that while Public Eye is impressively good with continuity, the props department are less so. I like to imagine someone there running round going, "Oh, what, that was supposed to be in more than one episode? Whoops, sorry, we broke it/sold it/lent it to Special Branch!" (They apparently really did run around panicking every time it came back trying to find Frank's mac.) Anyway, there are at least four mugs, if not five: The first one has lines on it, then the next time we see it (two episodes later) it doesn't, and the font's chunkier. Then they get one with the right font but no lines which lasts out from late S5 to early S7 and the F gradually gets rubbed out - Frank is turning rank in S6. And then, when he moves to Chertsey and gets his mug out again for the first time in four or five episodes, it's got its F back, before it loses it once more in another couple of episodes. The mug is also magic, you see.
Don't look at me. I'm not suddenly obsessed with items of crockery.
(Now, what show next for this meme? ;-p)
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 07:42 pm (UTC)Like it or lump it, this is the way I am.
Bravo, Frank.
But dear me, he's a man of time, isn't he! A pint of bitter and a pork pie. Can we make that a glass of water and a vegetable samosa, Frank?! ;)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 04:39 pm (UTC)But dear me, he's a man of time, isn't he! A pint of bitter and a pork pie. Can we make that a glass of water and a vegetable samosa, Frank?!
If you're offering, he'll probably try anything once (though he may not like it if it's too exotic for him), but otherwise, ha, no. When other people are being obnoxious, he starts glorying in being dead common. :-)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 05:42 pm (UTC)Put 'em on the back foot, Frank...
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 09:59 am (UTC)And yet so often it's true, so whaddya do then?
Frank: "Right now, what I'd like to aim at is the nearest pub. Half a bitter and a pork pie. Or is that too ambitious?"
Whatta man, I can see why you like him.
So Mrs Mortimer got the mug from Hogwarts? ...
...
All I'm sayin', I'm not a Potter-head, but a Hogwarts/PE crossover would be jolly amusing. Maybe Frank as a beaten-down, exasperated Potions master, unintentionally and inadvertently assisting Harry in casually vanquishing Snape or Voldemort?
...
Oh look, everybody else on the parade ground just stepped back. Thank you for volunteering, lost_spook!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 04:42 pm (UTC)All I'm sayin', I'm not a Potter-head, but a Hogwarts/PE crossover would be jolly amusing. Maybe Frank as a beaten-down, exasperated Potions master, unintentionally and inadvertently assisting Harry in casually vanquishing Snape or Voldemort?
You don't need a crossover to get Alfred Burke in Harry Potter - he is in it already. For all of about five seconds in Chamber of Secrets, he was the previous headmaster, Armando Dippet & there's a portrait of him in Dumbledore's study.
But otherwise I don't think I'm up to writing Harry Potter crossovers!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 05:36 pm (UTC)Sadface though! 'Harry Potter & The Mysterious & Ultimately Unresolved 70s Human Drama' really ought to exist... Maybe with Frank recognising Voldemort as a previous client who'd done a Reggie Perrin from the Muggles' HMRC.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-09 01:00 pm (UTC)But yes. :lol:
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 02:40 pm (UTC)You'll have to do the other 30 questions now. Be obsessed with another show - it can't be possible;)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 09:40 pm (UTC)Thanks for all your posts on this - it was interesting to read.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-09 01:02 pm (UTC)Aw, well, I'm glad of that. It's very nice to have LJ as a place to waffle about the things you can't in rl, so it's good it wasn't too dull for everyone else!