Several shows came to an end this week.
Wallander - just a three part series this one, but it probably cost a fortune for the BBC to make. The second episode had a rather over-the-top plot which seemed highly unlikely, but showed Wallander at his most Morse-like, i.e. falling in love with an unsuitable woman which clouded his judgment about the crimes. The third episode wasn't any more probable, involving a cross-dressing postal worker. I like the scenery and the doom-laden take on society falling apart, and I loved the theme music, but the plots were rather lame and I'm not sure I could have taken any more episodes. I deleted the two episodes of the Swedish version I'd recorded from BBC4 unwatched.
Life - Crews bought his ex-wife a white horse and found out who the real killer was. But lots of loose ends remain, setting up a second series where he can find out how high the corruption goes. And perhaps what becomes of the horse? I'll be tuning back in.
Cold Case - it hasn't come to an end so much as it isn't on the schedule for the next week, perhaps it is just taking a Christmas holiday. Frankly, I'm in need of a break too from its daily dose of misery.
One show that shows no sign of ending is Prison Break. "We're not getting out of here" seems to apply as much to the viewer as the Fox River gang. Its like being stuck in a maze (which actually also happened to me this week) - just when you think you are near the exit, the corridor turns into a dead end or you find out your mother worked for The Company.
Coincidentally the killer from Life turned up in Prison Break as a buyer for Sylla and Dutch from The Shield turned up as a gay man in Cold Case.
Small world.
Showing posts with label Cold Case. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cold Case. Show all posts
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
How to write an episode of Cold Case
1. Episode begins with a scene from the past. It could be anytime from 3 years ago to 60 years ago. A date will appear on the screen, but you can tell it is the past because it looks different. Anytime before 1965 will probably be in black & white (they didn’t have colour back then, you know), later will be in colour but with a washed-out haziness to it.
It will be a scene from the life of a group of people. They will be wearing the fashions of whatever the chosen period is and there will be a song from that time playing. Either there will be some obvious tension in the scene or someone will profess to being the happiest they’ve ever been. Someone will soon be dead.
2. Cut to the second scene. A dead body.
3. A retro police person carrying a file down to the basement bearing the name of the victim in the previous scene.
4. Fourth scene is the present day (this will be in sharp full colour with naturalistic lighting). A discovery is made or someone turns up at the police station – something that leads to the case being reopened.
5. Cue the dramatic theme music “Waaa, Waaa, Waaaa, De De De ” etc (I’m not very good at expressing music noises).
6. Next scene is present day and the detectives visit either the nearest and dearest of the victim or the person who was the chief suspect. You will see the person in question as they are now, with a quick flash to them “back in the day”. The drama of this will vary – it may be that they are an old man now and boy when the crime happened, or if it happened in the 2000s, they might just have a slightly better haircut now.
7. They will be asked a question and their response will be seen as a flashback, always with period detail and soundtrack.
8. Something that is mentioned in this will send the detectives onto another suspect.
9. Repeat the above three stages with an average of four more people. (Optionally, it can be peppered with hints of the personal lives with the detectives, normally their doomed relationships, but this would be a slowly evolving sub-plot over a whole series).
10. Evidence given by the last of these people will led back to one of the people interviewed previously. Return to them and repeat the process of question and flashback again. This may reveal the murderer or it may lead back once more to one of the other people already questioned, who will then be the killer.
11. The killer is arrested. He/She looks sheepish, both as he is now and as he was at the time of the crime. Montage of all of the characters in their current setting (with a brief glimpse again of them in the past), looking wistful or depressed. Melancholic or outright heartbreaking music from the period plays over.
12. Then the piece de resistance, the victim appears and smiles gratefully at the arresting officer. The arresting officer acknowledges them (even though they aren’t really there). All the while, the heart-wrenching music continues, tugging at the heart strings of the audience.
13. The case box is returned to the basement with “Closed” written on the box.
14. The music starts up again “De, Dedde Da” etc
It will be a scene from the life of a group of people. They will be wearing the fashions of whatever the chosen period is and there will be a song from that time playing. Either there will be some obvious tension in the scene or someone will profess to being the happiest they’ve ever been. Someone will soon be dead.
2. Cut to the second scene. A dead body.
3. A retro police person carrying a file down to the basement bearing the name of the victim in the previous scene.
4. Fourth scene is the present day (this will be in sharp full colour with naturalistic lighting). A discovery is made or someone turns up at the police station – something that leads to the case being reopened.
5. Cue the dramatic theme music “Waaa, Waaa, Waaaa, De De De ” etc (I’m not very good at expressing music noises).
6. Next scene is present day and the detectives visit either the nearest and dearest of the victim or the person who was the chief suspect. You will see the person in question as they are now, with a quick flash to them “back in the day”. The drama of this will vary – it may be that they are an old man now and boy when the crime happened, or if it happened in the 2000s, they might just have a slightly better haircut now.
7. They will be asked a question and their response will be seen as a flashback, always with period detail and soundtrack.
8. Something that is mentioned in this will send the detectives onto another suspect.
9. Repeat the above three stages with an average of four more people. (Optionally, it can be peppered with hints of the personal lives with the detectives, normally their doomed relationships, but this would be a slowly evolving sub-plot over a whole series).
10. Evidence given by the last of these people will led back to one of the people interviewed previously. Return to them and repeat the process of question and flashback again. This may reveal the murderer or it may lead back once more to one of the other people already questioned, who will then be the killer.
11. The killer is arrested. He/She looks sheepish, both as he is now and as he was at the time of the crime. Montage of all of the characters in their current setting (with a brief glimpse again of them in the past), looking wistful or depressed. Melancholic or outright heartbreaking music from the period plays over.
12. Then the piece de resistance, the victim appears and smiles gratefully at the arresting officer. The arresting officer acknowledges them (even though they aren’t really there). All the while, the heart-wrenching music continues, tugging at the heart strings of the audience.
13. The case box is returned to the basement with “Closed” written on the box.
14. The music starts up again “De, Dedde Da” etc
Monday, September 29, 2008
Banned
I’ve been banned from watching Cold Case!
The OH has banned me from watching it. I don’t see how he is going to enforce this exactly but he is doing it for my own good since an episode of it yesterday left me sobbing.
I’ve often mused on whether it is callous to watch so many crime shows, that depict so much death and suffering and what that must say about my character. What makes most crime shows tolerable is that they focus on the process of solving the crime or the criminal without too much time given to the victim. But recently I can’t stomach SVU and now it seems Cold Case is too much for me, and what these have in common is that you are constantly reminded of the victim.
The episode of Cold Case that had me in tears involved a murder from the 1960s (my favourite period so I was looking forward to this one) but it was a case that had only just come to light when a body was washed up by the sea. It was the body of a child. I should have just turned it off at this point. The story involves four year old twin girls, an abused wife and a wonderful Sixties soundtrack that just added to the sorrow. It was all too much for me to take.
Perhaps the OH was right to ban it.
The OH has banned me from watching it. I don’t see how he is going to enforce this exactly but he is doing it for my own good since an episode of it yesterday left me sobbing.
I’ve often mused on whether it is callous to watch so many crime shows, that depict so much death and suffering and what that must say about my character. What makes most crime shows tolerable is that they focus on the process of solving the crime or the criminal without too much time given to the victim. But recently I can’t stomach SVU and now it seems Cold Case is too much for me, and what these have in common is that you are constantly reminded of the victim.
The episode of Cold Case that had me in tears involved a murder from the 1960s (my favourite period so I was looking forward to this one) but it was a case that had only just come to light when a body was washed up by the sea. It was the body of a child. I should have just turned it off at this point. The story involves four year old twin girls, an abused wife and a wonderful Sixties soundtrack that just added to the sorrow. It was all too much for me to take.
Perhaps the OH was right to ban it.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Cherry-Picking Cold Cases
This week we will part company with our cable television provider. We started out with Homechoice about six years ago and the service was great. Unfortuately they were taken over by Tiscali and the service worsened. Television reception has been poor with periods of complete unavailability. So we are moving to Sky.
The new service will hopefully be more reliable and give me access to more detectives, but the one thing I will miss about the current provider (when the service actually works) is the on-demand channels. Through this service I was able to watch the whole of the first series of Criminal Minds and around a dozen episodes of Cold Case.
To make the most of it while I could (and the OH was out watching sport), last night I thought I would watch a couple of episodes of Cold Case. After 20 minutes of loss of service (this is why it is going), I decided that I would cherry-pick the episodes to watch as I've seen episodes here and there and don't have enough time left to watch them all. I decided that I would go with my favourite period in history, the 1960s. The three I started up weren't from that decade but the fourth one "The Volunteers" was. It involved hippies, Vietnam, draft-dodging, illegal abortion, Black power and communes. There was music by Jefferson Airplane and references to Woodstock and bell-bottoms. It was marvellous.
Of the 11 episodes currently available to watch, it turned out only one was set in the Sixties, so I just watched the next two episodes in the sequence as it looked like there might be an interesting background plot involving the detective, Scotty Valen's girlfriend. The next episode was "The Lost Soul of Herman" which was about basketball and the 1980s. It wasn't bad, but not was good as the previous one (the Eighties are never as good at the Sixties). Then it was "Resolutions" which was a crime from the cusp of the millennium.
I stopped after that as the OH had returned and we ended up watching a bit of Quadrophenia instead!
The new service will hopefully be more reliable and give me access to more detectives, but the one thing I will miss about the current provider (when the service actually works) is the on-demand channels. Through this service I was able to watch the whole of the first series of Criminal Minds and around a dozen episodes of Cold Case.
To make the most of it while I could (and the OH was out watching sport), last night I thought I would watch a couple of episodes of Cold Case. After 20 minutes of loss of service (this is why it is going), I decided that I would cherry-pick the episodes to watch as I've seen episodes here and there and don't have enough time left to watch them all. I decided that I would go with my favourite period in history, the 1960s. The three I started up weren't from that decade but the fourth one "The Volunteers" was. It involved hippies, Vietnam, draft-dodging, illegal abortion, Black power and communes. There was music by Jefferson Airplane and references to Woodstock and bell-bottoms. It was marvellous.
Of the 11 episodes currently available to watch, it turned out only one was set in the Sixties, so I just watched the next two episodes in the sequence as it looked like there might be an interesting background plot involving the detective, Scotty Valen's girlfriend. The next episode was "The Lost Soul of Herman" which was about basketball and the 1980s. It wasn't bad, but not was good as the previous one (the Eighties are never as good at the Sixties). Then it was "Resolutions" which was a crime from the cusp of the millennium.
I stopped after that as the OH had returned and we ended up watching a bit of Quadrophenia instead!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Cold Turkey
I've really not watched much at all in the last few weeks.
Apart from:
Two episodes of Medium that I fell asleep in before the end
Two episodes of the first series of Cold Case
An episode of Diagnosis Murder that I started to watch whilst in Spain, but it turned out it was one I'd already seen.
I'm away again this weekend so I doubt I'll get to watch anything for a while yet. Bother.
Apart from:
Two episodes of Medium that I fell asleep in before the end
Two episodes of the first series of Cold Case
An episode of Diagnosis Murder that I started to watch whilst in Spain, but it turned out it was one I'd already seen.
I'm away again this weekend so I doubt I'll get to watch anything for a while yet. Bother.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Cold Case, Cold Case, Cold Case
Today, I wasn't watching "Waking the Dead" nor "New Tricks", but that other show about cold cases, the imaginatively titled "Cold Case".
I've seen an episode or two of it before, but this afternoon I came across a new "on demand" channel that included Season 4 of Cold Case.
As I didn't have much else to do (I'd already been to the shops, repotted my tomatoes, read the newspaper and done lots of walking) I watched three episodes of it on the trot.
The first case involved high school kids in a mall massacre, the second a female Iraq war veteran and the third an urban miner. Each time the team interviewed several potential suspects, before eventually find their culprit, who each time was someone they'd already interviewed earlier.
I'm pleased I've found this series as there doesn't seem to be much else on at the moment and it is easily watchable. As the fact that I've just watched three episodes in one session illustrates.
I've seen an episode or two of it before, but this afternoon I came across a new "on demand" channel that included Season 4 of Cold Case.
As I didn't have much else to do (I'd already been to the shops, repotted my tomatoes, read the newspaper and done lots of walking) I watched three episodes of it on the trot.
The first case involved high school kids in a mall massacre, the second a female Iraq war veteran and the third an urban miner. Each time the team interviewed several potential suspects, before eventually find their culprit, who each time was someone they'd already interviewed earlier.
I'm pleased I've found this series as there doesn't seem to be much else on at the moment and it is easily watchable. As the fact that I've just watched three episodes in one session illustrates.
Friday, March 07, 2008
36 Hours of Crime & Flu
Still off work ill, but just about managing to crawl to the lounge to watch television and then to the computer to break up the day. The novelty of daytime detective watching has truly worn off and I'm regretting watching Criminal Minds so quickly.
In the last 36 hours, I've watched the following:
Crossing Jordan - I watched it but through my flu-haze I struggled to follow it properly. It was nearly over before I realised there were two separate crimes, which was why I was confused. Like I said, I'm ill.
Season 5, Disc 2 of The Shield - three episodes in total. I wasn't enjoying it but then as the plot moved away from the Strike Team and onto Dutch and Claudette instead, I started to get back into it. I had only just remarked how I would prefer it if they had their own spin-off series, when Claudette fell down and the episode ended. We now have to wait a couple of days for the next installment to arrive.
Law & Order SVU - the second episode about Olivia's brother and whether he is a rapist. I'd seen the first episode a while ago but missed the follow-on, but last night, all the loose ends were tied up.
Intelligence - the first ever episode of it - or rather the first twenty minutes of it before I crashed out. It looked quite good although a poor man's The Wire or Sopranos perhaps.
Ironside - another good episode about using a television show to trap a killer. The television show was part Crime Watch, part debate. It was interesting that the same worries about crumbling society and rising crime were issues in San Francisco in 1970s as they are in the UK today.
Charlies Angels - an episode from series 3 about a psychics. Not bad, but it is late period Angels where Farah has been replaced by Cheryl Ladd and its just not the same. I miss Farah's big hair. I attempted to watch a second episode involving 'the death of Charlie's favourite folk singer'. The plot involved drugs and laundrettes but even so I slept through it.
Cold Case - Whilst I've seen other cold case based programmes, I'd not seen this show before, perhaps because it is on Sky One, rarely a good sign. But it was ok. It was about the murder of a yuppie trader and although it was complete with 80s soundtrack and detail, it didn't get in the way of a pretty good plot. I liked the device of switching between how the person looked at the time of the murder and how they are in the present.
That's an awful lot of crime - no wonder I feel ill but at least I've managed to avoid Diagnosis Murder.
Anyway, I must get back under my duvet as Randall and Hopkirk will be starting soon.
In the last 36 hours, I've watched the following:
Crossing Jordan - I watched it but through my flu-haze I struggled to follow it properly. It was nearly over before I realised there were two separate crimes, which was why I was confused. Like I said, I'm ill.
Season 5, Disc 2 of The Shield - three episodes in total. I wasn't enjoying it but then as the plot moved away from the Strike Team and onto Dutch and Claudette instead, I started to get back into it. I had only just remarked how I would prefer it if they had their own spin-off series, when Claudette fell down and the episode ended. We now have to wait a couple of days for the next installment to arrive.
Law & Order SVU - the second episode about Olivia's brother and whether he is a rapist. I'd seen the first episode a while ago but missed the follow-on, but last night, all the loose ends were tied up.
Intelligence - the first ever episode of it - or rather the first twenty minutes of it before I crashed out. It looked quite good although a poor man's The Wire or Sopranos perhaps.
Ironside - another good episode about using a television show to trap a killer. The television show was part Crime Watch, part debate. It was interesting that the same worries about crumbling society and rising crime were issues in San Francisco in 1970s as they are in the UK today.
Charlies Angels - an episode from series 3 about a psychics. Not bad, but it is late period Angels where Farah has been replaced by Cheryl Ladd and its just not the same. I miss Farah's big hair. I attempted to watch a second episode involving 'the death of Charlie's favourite folk singer'. The plot involved drugs and laundrettes but even so I slept through it.
Cold Case - Whilst I've seen other cold case based programmes, I'd not seen this show before, perhaps because it is on Sky One, rarely a good sign. But it was ok. It was about the murder of a yuppie trader and although it was complete with 80s soundtrack and detail, it didn't get in the way of a pretty good plot. I liked the device of switching between how the person looked at the time of the murder and how they are in the present.
That's an awful lot of crime - no wonder I feel ill but at least I've managed to avoid Diagnosis Murder.
Anyway, I must get back under my duvet as Randall and Hopkirk will be starting soon.
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