Beyond the Roundels

I am all behind with what I've been watching, as well as other things. In the summer, I watched Bill Brand (Thames TV 1976), starring Jack Shepherd in the title role, as a ex-college lecturer and idealistic new Labour MP for an industrial northern borough. It also featured Lynn Farleigh as his wife, Cherie Lunghi as his girlfriend (amusingly, called Alex Ferguson) & Alan Badel.

It was quite a high-profile series at the time and earned Jack Shepherd a BAFTA nomination, but I had very mixed feelings about it. ( Maybe it would have been better without Bill Brand? )


I have also watched two (and a bit) episodes of the psychological horror anthology Shadows of Fear, ( Mixed feelings, but also pretty pics and the Revenge of Isabel Archer on the wrong suitor (but it's easy to make a mistake when everyone's called Ed )


* I am still grudgy at Ed Bishop for pushing her down the stairs in UFO. I am delighted she got her revenge, even if she got confused about which Ed she should be sending down the stairs. These things are perfectly understandable, and they were both mean to her anyway.

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:
( Unintentionally amusing moment )

( The Questions )