#oneaday Day 632: New Tricks

Longtime readers may recall that back in November, I started watching a show called New Tricks from the BBC. It's a detective show with an interesting concept: following the exploits of a fictional Metropolitan Police department known as the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (aka UCOS), the show sees its core cast (which gradually changes over time) reopening various cold cases and getting to the bottom of them.

I'm just coming up on the end of the tenth series out of twelve and I've been enjoying it a lot. It's been a consistently interesting watch, with some excellent characters who have some good backstories that get some decent payoff over the long term. I understand that the point I'm currently watching is where some people feel like it started to run out of steam a bit, leading to, among other things, one of the original cast members moving on because he felt things had become stale and another two departing after an apparently public spat with the writers, but I'm still enjoying the show with its new cast members. Former lead Amanda Redman said she felt like the cast had lost their anarchic edge in the later episodes, and I see why she said that — but really it's just a different vibe thanks to a different set of characters.

Of particular note is the presence of Nicholas Lyndhurst, an actor who I'm sure most people associate with comedic roles thanks to his most well-known appearances as Rodney in Only Fools and Horses and Gary Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart, but in New Tricks he does extremely well as a particularly serious-seeming member of the team. He still has his humorous moments, but they're mostly delivered through deadpan humour; the show is somewhat on the "gritty" side, but isn't above a bit of levity, primarily through little character moments.

The show covers an interesting time period, too. It launched in an era before smartphones and ran until the mid-2010s. A lot of things changes about society in that period, in retrospect, and it's interesting to see the show reflect that. Quite a few early episodes of the show are about Redman's Detective Superintendent Pullman character having to fight to be taken seriously in a world that is still very much male-dominated — and particularly after her assignment to UCOS came after a botched raid in which she shot a dog — and there are frequent explorations of the challenges people with mental health concerns have to face in their daily life.

Of particular note in this regard is the character Brian "Memory" Lane, who is a recovering alcoholic and highly likely to be autistic. Some of the best character moments in the show come from an exploration of Brian struggling to deal with simply existing in a world that he doesn't quite feel comfortable in, and the unique challenges he faces considering his background and his daily struggles. He could easily have become a pathetic, tragic character, but the show handles him well and shows that people contending with the things he is dealing with still have something to offer society, and that they can often find great comfort from the love of people who support them unconditionally. His exit from the show, involving an extremely satisfying resolution to a plot thread that had been dangling for most of the series' run, was handled very well.

The exit of Redman's Pullman character was a little more sudden, however, and it was a little unsatisfying. It feels like she just sort of suddenly decided to move on, and her reasons for doing so just weren't really explored all that much; on top of that, I feel like it would be a much longer process for someone in the Metropolitan Police, particularly in a leadership position, to be able to move on, whereas she was pretty much just out the door and gone. Her replacement, Tamzin Outhwaite's Sasha Miller, seems like a solid character, though, and has already had some interesting things happening to her in just the two episodes I've seen her in so far.

Dennis Waterman's Gerry Standing, as the longest fixture in the series, is a great anchor point for the show. While his cheeky chappy Cockney act could have easily become a bit tiresome, he is shown throughout the series to be a character with some interesting depth and plenty of admirable qualities, even if he sometimes takes a somewhat laissez-faire approach to following the rules. Some of his interest comes from his three amicable divorces and the fact that all his ex-wives and children form one big extended family, but he also gets plenty of his own moments to shine.

The show isn't anything particularly revolutionary and I'm sure it's not regarded as a "classic" or anything, but it did successfully run for twelve series, which suggests it was doing something right along the way. I've enjoyed watching it so far, and I'm glad I took a chance on it; if you're after a detective show to spend some time with, you could do far worse.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 537: Old dogs

Since I've exhausted both Death in Paradise and its spin-off series Beyond Paradise for the moment, I was looking for a new "detective" show to watch. I considered the other Death in Paradise spinoff, Return to Paradise, but thought I fancied something a bit different. And BBC iPlayer was certainly keen to provide suggestions.

I settled on a show called New Tricks, which I hadn't heard of before, but which apparently first aired all the way back in 2003, and concluded its complete run in 2015. I've watched two episodes so far, and while it's a very different sort of show to Death in Paradise and Return to Paradise, I've enjoyed what I've seen so far.

New Tricks (at least initially) follows the semi-disgraced Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman) of the Metropolitan Police who, after a botched hostage rescue in which she shot a dog and the person she was supposed to be rescuing flung himself out of a window, paralysing himself when he landed on a car several storeys below, has been placed in charge of the fictional "Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad", or UCOS. This is a branch of the Met specifically tasked with re-investigating unsolved "cold cases", with the officer in charge, initially Pullman, charged with wrangling a small group of retired former officers in the hope of their insights being able to put the various cases to bed once and for all.

Conceptually, it's a tad silly, particularly since the initial lineup of old men all initially appear to be somewhat comedic caricatures. There's Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong), who struggles with severe mental health issues and an obsession over the case that ended his career on the force; there's Jack Halford (James Bolam), who talks to his dead wife when no-one else is around, but is otherwise the most well-grounded of the bunch; and there's Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman, the only constant member of the cast throughout the entire run of the show), who is a bit of a geezer and a "naughty boy", in his words, with a string of failed marriages behind him and a somewhat unorthodox approach to following the rules. The characters are all introduced as each having their own sort of "thing" that defines them, but just the initial two episodes shows that there's clearly potential for some interesting character work going on.

What I've found quite fun about New Tricks so far is that it blends quite a few disparate elements and comes out feeling quite coherent. There's the obvious conflict between Pullman being a modern police officer (by 2003 standards, anyway) — and a woman, at that — and these retired former officers, all of whom are set in their ways to varying degrees. And then there's the friction between the private lives of all the characters and their professional responsibilities. The show is, on the whole, somewhat on the "gritty" side, with the struggles the various characters encounter all being somewhat realistic and relatable rather than the easily resolved fluff or material for comic relief that the Paradise series tended to favour, but there's also plenty of comedy inherent in the whole situation — particularly when Pullman shows herself to be the sort of woman who takes absolutely no shit from anyone.

The fact that the show premiered in 2003 with a 90-minute pilot before going into full production in 2004 is an interesting consideration, too. In some respects, the way the show is presented makes it clear it's from a different time — and while I try not to think of 2004 as being too much "of a different time" to right now, the fact is, it was over 20 years ago — and it's quite pleasant to return to that world. I'm not talking thematically or in terms of societal norms displayed in the show, obviously, but rather literally the way it is presented. It has a theme song, for Heaven's sake, and one sung by one of the cast members (Waterman), at that! What was the last show you watched that had a full-on theme song — and, more to the point, one that had been specifically composed to include the show's title as part of its lyrics?

Anyway, that's about all I want to say about it for the moment. I'm looking forward to getting to know the series a bit better. I'd actually never heard of it before, somehow, but I guess if it ran for twelve seasons, it must have had something to it, no?

Or, to put it another way: it's all right. It's okay!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 496: Farewell, DI Parker

I am still watching Death in Paradise on my lunch breaks, and I've just got to the end of Ralf Little's run as the lead, Detective Inspector Neville Parker. He follows Ardal O'Hanlon, Kris Marshall and Ben Miller in taking the central role, and I think his run on the series might have been one of my favourites to date.

I enjoyed Miller, Marshall and O'Hanlon's time in the leading role, too, but Little's time in the hot seat felt like it had one of the most coherent character arcs for the central character. It helped that he, as a character, probably had the most room to grow of all the show's leading men to date — and the fact he was in place for about three and a half seasons, which is longer than his predecessors.

Death in Paradise is a heavily formulaic show, and to some people, that sort of thing can be annoying. Hell, formulaic shows are, at times, anathema to me — I can't stand reality TV shows that all adopt the "one of them gets voted off after a long, pregnant pause" format, for example — but for some reason, I find the relative predictability of Death in Paradise enjoyable, even comforting.

That extends to the role of the lead character, too: they're always a fish-out-of-water detective who has been brought across from some British police force (O'Hanlon's character, despite being Irish, was part of the Metropolitan Police in London before joining the Honoré gang) but the exact form of that varies somewhat. Miller's DI Poole was a grumpy old fart who gradually softened as he spent time with his comrades, until he was murdered, anyway; Marshall's DI Goodman was clumsy and scatterbrained but brilliant; O'Hanlon's DI Mooney was by far the character who was most at ease on the island; then Little's DI Parker went to the other extreme.

Initially resistant to everything the island of Saint-Marie had to offer — and allergic to everything — Parker was gradually brought out of his mosquito-repellent shell by his DS, Florence Cassell (Josephine Jobert), who had been a fixture on the show for some time, and showed some real character growth, culminating in him developing feelings for Florence. It was not to be, however, as not only did she reject him, at least partly because she was still smarting from the murder of her former fiancée, but a case forced her undercover and subsequently into the witness protection programme, conveniently bringing her time on the show to a close for a while.

Parker had a number of other good storylines along the way, too. They were ridiculous if you stop to think about them for a moment, but the same is true for the entirety of Death in Paradise. If a single locale had the murders per capita that Saint-Marie has, I suspect the authorities would declare it a complete lost cause and just firebomb it into oblivion. But I digress.

Probably the best of Parker's storylines was his holiday romance with a woman named Sophie. This initially appeared to be a complete mirror image of Goodman's romance with Martha, which ultimately led to him departing the show (and the pair getting their own spinoff series) but subsequently developed into something much more interesting. I doubt any of you reading this particularly care about Death in Paradise spoilers, but for the sake of anyone who might fancy watching this silly show, I will refrain from giving any further details for now.

Parker's finale, which saw him all set to depart Saint-Marie on a worldwide journey of self-discovery — just in time for Florence to return to the island and realise her feelings for him — was a good one, too. The promotional material for the episodes on BBC iPlayer did a good job of implying that it might be Parker who ended up murdered in his last episode — as previously noted, it wouldn't be the first time the show had killed off its lead — but he ultimately got a good, happy sendoff. I was glad about that; as a character, it felt like he deserved a happy ending. Not that Miller's poor old DI Poole didn't, but the surprise, sudden nature of his departure was very effective, and I'm not sure it would have worked for a second time, even with multiple seasons in between them.

Anyway, I'm surprised at a few things about my enjoyment of this show. Firstly, quite how attached I am to the various characters. Secondly, how well it handles feeling coherent despite a core cast that has been almost completely replaced multiple times over the course of its various seasons. By firmly grounding the show in its geographical setting, and having characters like Commissioner Patterson and bar owner-turned-mayor Catherine, the show establishes itself as a firm base that the rotating core cast builds atop, and it works. It helps prevent the show feeling too stale — and it's nice to see that some characters do get the chance to come back, too. I was particularly pleased to see the return of Danny John-Jules' Dwayne Myers, especially since his former squeeze Darlene had become an officer of the Honoré force in the meantime.

It's ultimately all rather silly comfort TV, and I suspect as soon as I've finished watching its complete run, I'll forget all about it. But for now, Death in Paradise has been a thoroughly pleasant watch — and I look forward to seeing where it goes from hereon.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 475: A traitorous experience

As noted yesterday, today was a Work Day Out. Not a Work Day Out where we had to do any work, but a Nice Thing To Do Together, presumably for the purposes of "team-building" and suchlike. I may sound cynical, but honestly my workplace is such a nice, small company that any occasion like this just feels like a nice gathering of friends — albeit one where the boss foots the bill. Winner.

Our main activity for the day was The Traitors Live Experience, an interactive group game based on the (apparently) popular TV show. (I've never seen it. But that doesn't mean much these days.) I was a little concerned ahead of time that we might end up playing with strangers, but thankfully we had enough people in our group to ensure that our game, which had 11 people total (and could have supported up to 14) was entirely people who knew each other. While The Traitors TV show is based on the assumption that most of the participants won't know one another prior to playing, they have a lot longer to get to know each other; as such, since The Traitors Live Experience is just shy of two hours in length, I suspect it is best played with people you have, at the very least, a passing acquaintance with.

I'm going to explain how the game works now on the assumption that you, like me, have never seen The Traitors, so if you're a big fan of the show and you feel like I'm stating the obvious, I can only apologise. I am not able to comment on the experience from a fan's perspective, so this will have to do you for now.

After an opportunity to hang out together in a comfortable bar area (with seating!) before your game starts, you are led into the depths of the venue, through a series of creepy Resident Evil mansion-style corridors, until you eventually reach your "Round Table" room. Once ensconced in your seat of choice, which you will stay in for the majority of the game, your host introduces the game and how it works.

Before play proper begins, at least one Traitor is selected. This unfolds through everyone seated at the table blindfolding themselves with blackout goggles, then loud music playing while the host stalks around the room and taps one or more people on the shoulder, indicating that they are the Traitors for the game. The remaining players are the Faithful.

The Traitors Live Experience unfolds in two parts: "day"-based missions and "night"-based potential betrayals. During the day, the group as a whole is given some sort of task to complete, and successfully achieving this rewards the group as a whole with "gold". You don't actually win any cash (unlike the TV show) — the "gold" is simply a score of sorts. At the end of the game, if all the Traitors have been eliminated, the Faithful score all the points, while if even one Traitor remains, the Traitors take all the points. The venue has daily leaderboards for how well Faithful and Traitors have performed.

At night, everyone dons their blackout goggles once more, but the Traitors are invited to take them off partway through proceedings. At this point, one of several things can happen: they can "murder" someone by pointing at them; they can "blackmail" a Faithful, causing them to become a Traitor (though I believe there are conditions on when this can occur, such as when a Traitor is eliminated from the game) or nothing at all can happen. Once again, if someone is "murdered", the host silently taps them on the shoulder, and they remove themselves from the room before everyone else takes their goggles off.

Being murdered (or, in later rounds of the game, "banished" by the Faithful if they believe you are a Traitor) doesn't mean your game is completely over; instead, you are removed to a separate room where you can watch live camera feeds of the surviving players, and at various junctures you are given the opportunity to interact with the games they are playing by solving puzzles in the other room, or perhaps by finding creative ways to communicate "from beyond the grave", as it were. There was a nice vaguely "escape room" feel to this side of proceedings, helping even those who are eliminated early to feel involved in the complete game.

As it happens, I, a Faithful, was murdered quite early on due to my strong performance in one of the missions and making some solid observations during the pre-Banishment deliberations. I was worried that getting knocked out early would be boring and annoying, but actually it was rather fun, particularly once some other people joined me in the room and we had to discuss whether to help the survivors or actively sabotage their attempts.

The missions themselves are all pretty simple parlour game-style puzzles — I assume they have a bank of them available to randomise so that two games aren't exactly alike. In our game, we initially had a straightforward puzzle where we had to rotate dials on the table to accurately depict the cycles of the moon. This was followed by a "spot the difference" game where we were showed a model of a crime scene and some photographs of a few details from it, then shortly after, we were shown a different model of the same crime scene (and "the same but potentially different" photographs) and tasked with spotting five changes, with bonus points on offer if we could determine how the corpse was actually murdered.

After that, we had a game where we were challenged to press a hidden button under the table after an exact amount of time had elapsed — this was the one I excelled at, since I've always been rather good at that sort of thing — and, after I'd been eliminated, the group were tasked with arranging a set of Tarot-like cards in order (with us "assisting" from beyond the grave by flashing the lights in the Round Table room from afar) and, as the grand finale, the group were challenged to recreate several scenes shown in silhouette by equipping themselves with props and standing in place.

I don't know how close in execution the whole thing is to the TV show, but plenty of effort has been made with the presentation of everything. There's plenty of cool lighting effects, dramatic music and suchlike, and the "Round Table room" is nicely detailed, even concealing a secret exit to "Traitors Tower", where the finale sequence took place. The whole thing was very enjoyable, and I'm glad I overcame my initial misgivings about playing a game so based on social cues to enjoy the experience.

As I say, I feel like for certain types of people, the experience will lose some of its appeal if you attend in a small group and end up being paired up with strangers, but likewise some people will thrive in that environment. It's good that the game is seemingly flexible and doesn't force anyone to do anything they're uncomfortable with — prior to starting the game, you're given the opportunity to privately indicate if you'd rather not be a Traitor from the outset, though this doesn't preclude you from potentially being "recruited" later in the game if the Traitors' ranks find themselves thinning.

We followed our time at The Traitors Live Experience with a late lunch at The Ivy Market Grill, a posh and expensive restaurant on Covent Garden that lets you go "I had lunch at The Ivy" without having to actually go to the real Ivy in the West End or pay the astronomical prices required to become a member of The Ivy Club. I had a cheese souffle, a sirloin steak and a chocolate bombe for dessert. All of them were delicious and I am still stuffed even now, a good four hours after we finished eating. The diet has gone out the window for today, of course, but y'know what, it doesn't matter. I had a good time, and I can be back on track tomorrow. It's not as if I'm going to be eating like that every day, after all.

Anyway, all in all it was a very good day, and I'm glad I went along. I'm knackered now, though; on paper it might not sound like we did all that much, but when you take into account the train travel in both directions, add the walking required when progressing across London in various ways, add the energy required to keep your social batteries topped up for most of a day with the same group of people, it all adds up. So I'm back home now, writing this in my pants, feeling thoroughly satisfied. Probably an early night tonight, though.

Although Silent Hill f did arrive today, so…

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 449: Revisiting Teachers

Back in the dim, distant past before streaming video services were a thing, and in a wonderful time before the apparently collective decision that if you're not continually "consuming new content" you're Doing It Wrong, there were several DVD series I had on my shelf that were in almost continual rotation in my DVD player. Spaced, Black Books, Peep Show, Big Train, that sort of thing; a particular brand of British comedy, almost always originally broadcast on Channel 4, and in many cases involving the exact same cast members.

(Aside: a fair few of these have been sullied a little in recent years by their association with Graham "I Hate Trans People… Wait, Why Do You All Hate Me Now" Linehan, but I do try my best not to let that bother me too much, because these series — and the work of the actors therein, most of whom do not subscribe to Linehan's odious bigotry — will always be special to me.)

One of my absolute favourites was Teachers, which was a thoroughly interesting show. I've just re-acquired the DVDs of the complete season, and I watched the first episode last night for the first time in a very long while.

Teachers, if you're unfamiliar, is probably best described as a comedy-drama rather than an out-and-out comedy. It initially focuses on the life of a 27 year old English teacher named Simon, who works at a comprehensive school in Bristol. In later series, several of the original cast members (including Andrew Lincoln, who played Simon) depart to make way for a new ensemble cast, so as a complete run it's more of a snapshot of a moment in a group of people's lives rather than a particularly "personal" story as such. There are a few constants along the way, though.

One of the most interesting things about Teachers is its heavily stylised nature. A trademark of the show is how each episode looks at several days across a typical week, and the introduction to each week is done diegetically through the name of the day appearing on something in the world — on a billboard, on a sheet of paper being photocopies, on a computer display, that sort of thing. This is just the beginning of things, though.

There's an almost hallucinogenic quality to certain sequences in Teachers, which certainly in the initial series is intended to reflect the somewhat turbulent state of mind that our hero, Simon, is in. Simon, you see, is a bit stressed out and starting to have significant doubts over whether he actually wants to be a teacher, and his rather rocky relationship with his peer in the English department, a stern woman named Jenny (played with great enthusiasm by Nina Sia), certainly doesn't make things any easier.

Sometimes these stylised sections are very obvious, such as when Simon returns to school the night after a drunken night out, during which he and his friends broke into the school and let a sheep in, among other things, and starts hallucinating that a full-on forensics team is dusting down his classroom for prints. At others, they are subtle, such as peculiar things happening in the background of scenes — the aforementioned sheep continually shows up throughout the series, for example — or little sound effects, such as when Jenny aggressively touches Simon on the shoulders with her fingertips while admonishing him, and you can hear the sound of sizzling.

One of the best things about the show is the ensemble of Kurt and Brian, played by Navin Chowdhry and Adrian Bower respectively. This pair are, in many ways, the worst of the worst. They're male chauvinist pigs constantly obsessing over people's arses, they always do their best to avoid getting out of having to do anything, they're utterly irresponsible, and they're absolute pranksters.

And yet you can't help but love them. Their behaviour towards women, which might initially seem winceworthy in the somewhat more enlightened world we supposedly live in today, is endearingly, amusingly pathetic in light of the fact that the pair of them seemingly get no action whatsoever for the vast majority of the run (that and the female members of the cast are more than capable of standing up for themselves); their irresponsibility actually comes across as a relatively healthy method of coping with the potentially overwhelming stress of working as a teacher; and their pranks… well, they're always amusing.

Probably the absolute best thing about the show, though, is its use of music, which almost exclusively consists of late '90s/early '00s Britpop and indie rock. In some respects it dates the show enormously — as does the fact that a plot point of the first episode is that teachers are no longer allowed to smoke in the school building in the "smoking room" — but in others it forms an absolutely core part of the show's identity.

Teachers is great because it tells some believably human stories about a distinctly down-to-earth cast of characters and doesn't get hung up on high drama — which is something that subsequent school-based TV shows, like Waterloo Road, could be accused of — and focuses on just being entertaining. Watching Teachers is like being included in this little friendship group of characters; you get to see them at their best and, more frequently, their worst — but that "worst" is never anything particularly serious — and it's always a joy to be among them.

It's definitely a show that is very much "of its time", but after revisiting the first episode earlier, I'm looking forward to watching some more.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 423: Destination X

I watched a potentially interesting new TV show the other day. I've only watched one episode so far and I'm not 100% sure if it was actually any good or not, but the concept was, at least, interesting.

The show is on the BBC and is known as Destination X. I was mostly attracted to it by Rob Brydon being in the presenting role; I have a lot of time for Brydon and his work, and this looked nicely different from his usual panel show stuff.

The concept of Destination X is that a bunch of randos are thrown together and, via various circumstances, placed in a situation where they don't know where they are going and, at various legs of their journey, where they are. At the end of each episode, each contestant has to plop an "X" down on a map of Europe where they think they are, and whoever's X is the furthest away from where they actually are is booted out of the competition.

Naturally, numerous obstacles are placed in the competitors' way, but they also have the opportunity to earn clues as to where they are, too. There are "challenges" along the way, which can potentially provide clues to everyone, but which also give a particular advantage to whoever had the strongest individual performance in the challenge.

In the first episode, all the contestants were stuck in a box, with various items of imagery adorning the walls. The box was split into an "A" side and a "B" side, and the group was asked a series of questions with two possible answers. Each contestant had to stand on the side they believed was the correct answer, and, without revealing whether the answer was correct or not, they would then have the opportunity to look out of a tiny window of the box to see either a clue (if they were on the "correct" side) or a red herring (if they were on the "wrong" side).

There's also some artificial drama added, at least in this first episode, by the person who "won" the challenge having the opportunity to bring someone else along to gain their particular advantage — and they also have the option to earn another clue, on the condition that no-one else must learn that clue, otherwise they'll be immediately disqualified. It sounds complicated, but it makes sense in the moment.

It's an interesting format, for sure, though there are some rather mean tricks played on the contestants even with the supposedly "helpful" clues — the worst of which was having a helpful guide tell them about a building they were standing in front of them in German… when they were actually in France. The added "drama" just felt a bit gratuitous, too, particularly given that the person given the opportunity to conspire with another contestant and/or screw the others over clearly was not at all comfortable with this side of proceedings.

As with any show featuring (supposed) members of the general public, too, the cast appears to have been picked to have the maximum possible number of annoying dickheads in it. There's a particularly odious-seeming individual who is obsessed with social media, and they come across as a complete tool. I have little to no doubt that there is heavy scripting and editing involved in order to make these otherwise boring members of Joe Public into "characters", but, again, it feels a bit gratuitous, and not really necessary in a show where the basic format is already kind of intriguing.

I'm not sure if I'm going to watch any more of it, but I didn't dislike the first episode that I watched. I may watch another one or two episodes to see if it's worth sticking with; you never know, you might enjoy it, though, so that's what today's post was all about!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 407: More Death in Paradise

My slide into middle-age is ongoing as I find myself continuing to watch Death in Paradise, the murder mystery show about a fish-out-of-water detective from jolly old England finding themselves solving murders on a Caribbean island with probably the highest murders per capita figure in the entire world.

I'm up to the fifth season now, which is well into second lead Kris Marshall's tenure on the show. His arrival at the start of the third series, thanks to the impressively ballsy move of murdering the former lead, DI Poole (played with aplomb by Ben Miller), marked a notable shift for the show, but it handles it well. Most crucially, it continues to be enjoyable and appealing for much the same reasons as when Miller's Poole character had the leading role, and I suspect that later changes in the core cast will continue this trend.

It's not just the lead that changes, either. While Danny John-Jules' excellent Officer Dwayne Myers remains in place for a significant portion of the run — I believe he finally stops being a regular around the seventh season or so? — the other "main characters" shift around a bit. The lead detective's second, initially a young woman named Camille (Sara Martins), departs the show partway through the fourth season after having been a failed love interest for both Miller and Marshall's characters, and is replaced by Florence (Joséphine Jobert), who initially takes the place of Fidel, one of the uniformed officers in the show, and is subsequently promoted to take Camille's place after the latter takes a job in Paris. The open "second uniformed officer" slot is then taken up by JP (Tobi Bakare), who stays in place, as far as I can make out, until the end of the show's present run.

Anyway, point is, the cast undergoes some quite substantial changes over the course of the show's complete run to date, but it still feels coherent. There's a good sense of "handover" from prior cast members to new ones, and the overall "feel" of the show remains remarkably consistent.

Part of this is entirely deliberate, and somewhat lampshaded by the structure of the show — especially the denouement, during which the lead detective gathers all the main suspects and witnesses together, then dramatically explains whodunnit, how and why. Early in Marshall's run on the show, he is introduced to this format as being how DI Poole did things, and there are plenty of jokes in subsequent episodes when certain individuals talk about going to arrest a suspect, only to be told "that's not how we do things around here".

It's intensely, extremely formulaic, but in many ways that's what makes it so comforting. The details of each case are different enough to keep each episode feeling fresh, but the structure of the storytelling is always the same. It's a structure that works, and is effective at telling a fun murder-mystery story over the course of each hour-long episode.

I've always had a real spot for detective stories. I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories as a youth, in a book that basically reprinted all the old Strand magazine pages they originally appeared in, in extremely tiny print. I played a bunch of detective-style adventure games with my mother as a kid — and continued to do so into my adult life. And I don't think there's a detective-style TV show that I've watched to date that I haven't enjoyed.

There are some today who would probably argue that this sort of show is "copaganda", and I get that. There are many things one can criticise the real-world police for, and in more recent years I really feel like I understand why some people feel quite so aggrieved at the very existence of police forces.

But at the same time, a good old murder mystery is a classic story format with good reason, and a cast of police officers is an ideal vehicle for telling a story like that. So I don't feel the slightest bit guilty in unironically enjoying shows like Death in Paradise simply for what they are. The real police may, in many ways, suck, but that doesn't mean you can't root for fictional detectives to crack each case!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 388: Death in Paradise

I've started watching Death in Paradise. This is a TV show that my wife watched in its entirety during quiet and boring moments at work a while back (she has a lot of quiet and boring moments at her job) and which I always enjoyed any time I happened to sit in the comfy chair in her study, usually to cuddle a demanding cat.

After watching Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators and A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, I thought I may as well just watch Death in Paradise from the start. And I'm really enjoying it.

For the uninitiated, Death in Paradise is a heavily formulaic murder mystery show in which a fish-out-of-water detective from Great Britain (or, for a period later in its run, Ireland) finds themselves acting as the Detective Inspector for a little police station in the town of Honoré on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie. Initially, this role is taken up by Ben Miller (of comedy duo Armstrong and Miller fame) who plays Detective Richard Poole, but over the course of the show's complete run to date, the lead role changes several times — including, via a rather ballsy move at the opening of the third series, the murder of said lead. Spoilers, I guess.

Death in Paradsise is not a particularly demanding watch. And when I say it's formulaic, I really mean it; each episode very much has a standard structure, and it sticks pretty rigidly to that format. Sometimes this sort of thing annoys me, as I find myself expecting each of the obvious story beats, but the cases themselves are interesting and varied enough that the repetitive structure of the show has not yet become an issue for me.

The show is helped along very much by its cast. Thus far, I'm coming towards the end of the second season, so I'm still in Ben Miller/Detective Richard Poole territory, but I've caught a little bit of several of the later series, which include excellent comic actors such as Kris Marshall, Ardal O'Hanlon and Ralf Little. The supporting characters are also very good, with Danny John-Jules (best known as Cat from Red Dwarf) putting in a particularly strong performance as one of the station's regular police officers, and Don Warrington as Commissioner Selwyn Patterson steals the show any time he's on screen with his understated, deadpan performances.

The show strikes a great balance between serious drama and entertainment. It's not as explicitly comedic as something like Shakespeare & Hathaway, but it is notably light-hearted — perhaps a strange thing to say about a show in which at least one person gets murdered every episode, but an accurate statement, nonetheless. It captures a good feeling of camaraderie between the core cast, and the growth in Miller's Poole character as the series goes on is endearing to watch, even as he remains steadfastly stiff-upper-lip British about everything.

Like I say, it's an undemanding watch, good to throw on when you don't really want to tax your brain too much, and thus I'm never going to hold it up as The Best Thing Ever or anything. But sometimes that doesn't matter; sometimes you just want something that has enough substance to be genuinely engaging and entertaining, but which doesn't make excessive demands of its audience. Death in Paradise very much falls into that category. No deep lore, no need to listen to podcasts to understand each episode after watching them, no worrying that you've missed out on major serialised storylines — aside from the occasional replacement of the lead role, of course.

It's simple, uncomplicated entertainment, and I'm all for that. So I'll be watching a lot more of it!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 379: I watched A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

After enjoying Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators recently, I found myself hankering after another murder mystery type thing, and BBC iPlayer was good enough to recommend a show called A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, which sounded intriguing. I hadn't heard of the show before but I liked the premise and it sounded like an interesting contrast to the somewhat comedic tone of Shakespeare & Hathaway, so I took a chance on it.

A couple of days later, I've finished watching the full series of six episodes, and I really enjoyed it, so I thought I'd talk about it a bit today.

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is apparently based on a novel of the same name by Holly Jackson. Specifically, it's an adaptation of the first novel in a series of three and a bit — I say this because the last one is described as a "novella" rather than a "novel" — and it looks as if the show has been renewed for a second season, so presumably the plan, long-term, is to adapt the whole series.

The premise of the show is that A-grade and possibly autistic student Pip is preparing for university admissions, and part of this process involves the preparation of an "EPQ" — an Extended Project Qualification, which some students in England and Wales do to add to their "UCAS Points" total. I'd never heard of this, as it was introduced after my time in the classroom as both student and teacher, but apparently it adds up to about half an A-level points-wise. But I digress.

Pip decides to do her EPQ on a notorious local incident in which a young woman named Andie Bell went missing and was assumed to have been murdered, but her body was never found. Her boyfriend at the time, Sal Singh, was assumed to be the murderer because he was found to have committed suicide shortly after Andie went missing, but something didn't seem right to Pip. She starts investigating and — spoilers, I guess — eventually brings the full truth of the situation to light, though not without encountering numerous roadblocks and a lot of soul-searching along the way.

Being a 17 year old girl, Pip doesn't go about her investigation as a policeman or private detective would. Instead, she engages in the sort of subterfuge only a teenage girl is capable of, aided and abetted in most circumstances by Sal's brother Ravi, who also has doubts about whether his brother was really a murderer. Over the course of the series, she breaks into houses, steals evidence, attends illicit raves, puts herself in mortal peril on multiple occasions and somehow manages to survive the whole experience.

It's very much a "suspension of disbelief" kind of show, because a lot of things just sort of seem to work out quite conveniently for Pip, and there are several instances where she almost gets caught and could quite clearly have been collared after the fact, but manages to escape any real consequences. But once you're immersed in the show, none of this really matters, because it's a really fun ride; you root for the plucky Pip as she repeatedly gets into things well over her head, and come out cheering for her when she finally manages to uncover something missed when the case was originally investigated.

Part of Pip not suffering any real consequences for the things she does stems from the "Good Girl" part of the title; Pip is renowned as a good girl, a straight-A student and someone who has always been well-behaved and sensible. As such, she can get away with a lot of things, even when her parents expressly forbid her from continuing to work on the case on the grounds that it's dangerous and threatens to dredge up terrible memories for several local families.

Towards the end of the series, the show really gets into this theme in a somewhat literary manner: the concept that someone can appear to be a "good person" on the outside, but actually harbour darkness in their heart. Exactly what form this "darkness" can take varies from person to person; in Pip's case, it manifests both through her willingness to flout the "rules" of society to get the job done, and her own sense of guilt over the past. She believes that a chance encounter shortly before Andie's disappearance may have indirectly been a catalyst for all this, so part of her initially altruistic-seeming investigation is to absolve herself of that guilt.

In the case of other characters, the darkness is more obvious. One character, crucial to the eventual outcome of the case, describes himself as being fundamentally a "good person" but having a "dark seed" inside himself; he believes that everyone has such a "seed" inside themselves, and it just takes "the right conditions for it to grow". In his case, it most certainly did grow, leading him to commit unforgivable, unconscionable acts — though to his credit, once he's caught he does appear to be legitimately remorseful — and surprise everyone around him that he was capable of such things.

I don't want to get too much into the details of the story because I think it's worth watching and the twists and turns of the narrative are, of course, part of the appeal. So instead I'll talk a bit about the overall presentation of the show, which is excellent.

The visual direction is striking and dynamic; no scene is truly static, and the show makes great use of close-ups to highlight both characters' emotions and the danger and discomfort Pip finds herself in when getting a little too close to the truth. The actors are all very well-cast — Emma Myers as Pip is particularly excellent, as one would hope for the lead — and manage to nail a feeling of realistic diversity without feeling tokenistic. This is relevant, because matters of racism do play a part in the narrative; as Ravi points out, as enlightened as we might wish we all were, the fact is that certain types of people — particularly middle-class people who live in a small, affluent town — are inclined to believe that a "brown boy" (as he puts it) might not have the best interests of a "blonde white girl" at heart.

The show isn't obnoxious about this message; it only brings it up a couple of times, and it is a worthwhile contemporary talking point. The sort of small town in which the majority of the narrative unfolds is the kind that would be inextricably associated with white, middle-class England, but Pip in particular, as a thoroughly modern Good Girl, is above such things. Part of this is down to the fact that her mother married a Nigerian man after Pip's biological father passed away when she was just a year old, and as such, she has always been exposed to the idea of diversity and tolerance on a daily basis. But it's also a reflection of the modern youth: conscious of social issues, aware that society still has problems, and open about wanting to do their part in making things a little bit better.

Where the show is really striking, though, is in its use of music. There's a lot of contemporary music used on the soundtrack, and it is often used to emphasise powerfully emotional moments; it's always very loud compared to the relatively quiet dialogue sequences, though, making for an attention-grabbing contrast between the more personal, intimate moments and the bigger picture of what is going on.

The contemporary popular music is contrasted with an excellent original score that highlights the tension of numerous scenes, in some cases mimicking "sound effects" to reflect what is going on. During a sequence where Pip's beloved dog Barney goes missing, for example, the soundtrack makes use of a somewhat "sonar"-style motif to reflect the search that is going on; initially, it's almost hard to determine whether the sound is diegetic or not, but as the texture of the track builds up as the tension increases, it becomes clear that it's part of the overall soundscape of the show.

I really enjoyed A Good Girl's Guide to Murder overall. After finishing one episode, I was keen to immediately watch the next, and I must confess I have spent my whole morning watching the final three episodes because I really wanted to see how things turned out. It's compelling, well-crafted and exceedingly well-presented viewing, and while it's perhaps not particularly realistic if you stop to think about things too much, it doesn't take long for that to cease mattering and for you to be drawn in to the narrative.

Yes, it may primarily be aimed at teens — it was a BBC Three show, after all — but don't let that put you off if you're a little older and still enjoy a good murder mystery. I found myself thinking as I watched that it would make a good anime, and I think that's testament to what makes it good — like the best anime series, it's a show that all ages can get something out of; it doesn't talk down to its core audience, and it doesn't feel cringeworthy and insincere to older viewers.

Definite recommend, then. Here's hoping that second series materialises!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 366: Bardic Investigations

I have now watched roughly half of the complete run to date of Shakespeare and Hathaway: Private Investigators, and I'm still really enjoying it. It's low-effort TV but not in an "insulting to your intelligence" sort of way; more that it's quite gentle in terms of both it's dramatic and comedic aspects.

A good example of this is the fact that in the 21 episodes I've watched so far, there hasn't been a single fight scene, and action scenes in general are fairly limited. There's been a few car chases and a number of on-foot pursuits, too, but given the two protagonists are neither exactly in the prime of life, they mostly conclude with them outwitting their quarry rather than taking them down dramatically.

There's no swearing, either. I don't mind a bit of effing and jeffing at all — heaven knows I do it enough around here — but it is nice to watch a show that isn't being particularly tryhard about showing the "gritty" side of life.

In fact, as I noted in my first impressions, Shakespeare and Hathaway is mostly rather cartoonish, or perhaps more accurately, theatrical. Villains are unmistakably evil, with most of them practically twirling their figurative moustaches at every opportunity. Far from making the show cheesy and silly, though, this is one of many things that helps it to be so easily digestible and enjoyable without demanding too much of the viewer.

I'm not saying all TV should be like that by any means, but in an age where I know multiple people who won't start watching a new series if there isn't an analysis podcast running alongside it, it is very nice to watch something that just knows what it is, and which delivers consistent, straightforward entertainment.

An easy recommendation, then, if only for the exchange "What's the first rule of stakeouts?" "…no farting?"