Christmas Crime

Sadly two weeks off for the festive period did not provide the opportunity for detective watching that I would have hoped. ITV celebrated with a string of Midsomer Murders but I’d seen them before.

My Christmas viewing consisted of just:

• 1 episode of The Perry Mason Mysteries which are the lame franchise where Perry Mason isn’t actually in it, but his sidekicks are. The main character was what my mum described as “a man who bursts into opera every now and then” who turned out to be Paul who was in one season of Law & Order.
• 1 episode of Murder She Wrote, which was a concept episode just narrated by Jessica Fletcher. Actually, it was probably better than the ones with her in and it featured a poodle.
• 1 episode of Monk where it is revealed that Natalie is from a wealthy toothpaste dynasty.
  

In terms of presents, I did much better with the first series of Kojak and The Streets of San Francisco being under the tree for me.

Crime Hotspots: San Francisco

The Law & Order series alone make New York the undisputed television USA crime hotspot. LA had years of Columbo and Perry Mason cases. Miami had Miami Vice, now CSI and Dexter. And of course Baltimore has made a late bid with The Wire and Homicide.

But today, our attention turns to another US city, San Francisco. Perhaps not so prominent recently (there is no CSI SF for one thing) but my reason for featuring it is more personal. I’m off to San Francisco this week.

In a bid to prepare myself for the trip, I was planning on absorbing some San Francisco crime drama. Sadly, I didn’t have access to ‘The Streets of San Francisco” which I remember vaguely but fondly from my childhood, but I did manage to watch a few episodes of Ironside, one of which featured the post office on Geary Street prominently in its plot.

Looking for something more contemporary, I was going to indulge myself in some Monk, which is set in San Francisco. But it is just set there – it is actually filmed in Canada.

I turned my attention then to cinema. I’d already seen Vertigo which is quite famous for its use of San Francisco locations, but watching another SF based Hitchcock, The Family Plot. The location didn’t play quite as big a role in this one though. I also attempted to watch Bullitt which shamefully I’d not seen. The city looked great in it, plenty of shots of the cable car, but I’m afraid I fell asleep in it.

Of course, the big one in San Francisco crime is the real-life crime of the Zodiac case. I loved the film and am still intrigued by the case. So in between photographing the bridge, vintage shopping, visiting galleries and bars, I’m determined to solve the case!

The Unsung Heroes

We were watching Monk the other week and the OH remarked upon how much he preferred Monk's second assistant, Natalie to his first, Sharona. I'd read somewhere that the actress playing Sharona left the show because she wanted more money. I don't know if this is true or not but I think I prefer the newer assistant too - Sharona always wore skirts that were too short and didn't flatter her.

Anyway, this conversation lead onto the question of what would happen if all of the detective sidekicks went on strike? Would lots of show suffer if the sidekicks left or would they continue regardless? Are some irreplaceable?

So the topic of my next poll will be "Who is Your Favourite Sidekick?"

Whilst there are some shows where there is an obvious hierarchy, many cop shows have a partner dynamic with both being equals, for example Benson and Stabler in SVU, Starsky and Hutch, Dempsey & Makepeace etc. Other shows go with the lone detective working on his own, without any help from others, like Columbo.

So its not been as easy as I first thought to put together the shortlist and I hope a few people will take the time to vote.

Not Psyched by Psych

I watch my first episode of Psych yesterday and I’m still not sure what to make of it. Billed as being from the team behind Monk, I thought it would be worth a watch, but on first impressions it wasn’t in Monk’s league.

It had the same comedic style that Monk has, but was lacking Monk’s heart. The premise is that this young guy, Shawn, is pretending to be a psychic as a way to get involved in helping the police solve their crimes. He isn’t actually psychic, just very observant. It is mildly amusing, but I didn’t really care about him enough.

Whereas with Monk, you want him to succeed because a) he’s a great detective and b) he’s lost his beloved wife, I don’t really know why we should want this impostor to triumph. He has a rival in a real policeman but this rival isn’t dislikeable enough for me to really root for Shawn at his expense.

So I won’t be rushing out to buy the box set or re-arranging my life to watch it again, but I suppose if its on, I’ll give it another chance.

Jumping the Shark

After listing the shows that have made me cry, I settled down to watch another episode of Monk. His assistant, Natalie, bumps into Monk’s dead wife Trudie, who claims she faked her own death to protect Monk. Another episode where the loss of his wife is central should have had me reaching for the hankies, but instead I think it is safe to say that this one could be described as ‘jumping the shark’.

Now if you aren’t familiar with that term, I’ll explain. It means when a show has ran out of ideas so does something unbelievable and over-the-top. It originates from an episode of Happy Days, where the Fonz jumps over shark-infested waters on his motorbike.

Were we really expected to believe that Monk’s devoted wife was not dead after all this time, tears and heartache? Not only had she returned, but she murdered an old man? I was finding it hard to believe, but no more so than the final conclusion. I don’t think I’m spoiling too much for anyone in revealing that it wasn’t really the late Mrs Monk, but an impostor. But does anyone really exist that looks so much like another person that even a husband could be deceived (albeit briefly)? I think not.

A plot devise of such silliness not seen since Bobby emerged from the shower in Dallas.

Crying Shame

Last night I watched an episode of 'New Tricks' on BBC1. I was feeling a little tired and emotional as, truth be told, I'd had a little too much to drink the night before, plus I was aching from my first ever yoga class. So I wanted something easy to watch, that wouldn't tax my brain too much, so I thought New Tricks would be ideal.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that it often makes me cry. Its James Bolam's character that does it mainly - with his mourning for his dead wife, talking to her shrine in the garden. To make matters worse, last night's episode was set in an old people's home. My gran has recently had to go to live in a home, as she needs constant care after a stroke, so it hit a bit of a raw nerve there. Suffice to say, by the end of the episode I was sobbing quietly to myself.

But this is not an isolated incident. I've cried at several detective programmes. Although detective shows are about death, they very rarely focus on grief or sadness - the solving of the crime is the focus, so I realise I'm not supposed to cry, but I have. Here are a few other incidents:

Homicide: Life on the Streets - 'The City that Bleeds'
The episode where three of the cops are shot had me in tears. It was by far the best episode of this series that I've yet to see which is saying something as it is always very good. What was particularly moving was the way the other cops reacted to the shootings. Somehow I don't think my workplace would be affected in such a way, but then working in the arts doesn't really have that sort of risk.


The Remorseful Day – the final episode of Morse
I knew he was going to die, I cried most of the way through in anticipation and was inconsolable when he collapsed. It was his loneliness that got to me. It reminded me of when our family dog, Rebel, went & lay in the snow to die.

Various episodes of Monk
I know it is supposed to be a light-hearted series, but sometimes the stuff about his grief for his wife just gets to me and I’ll have a discrete cry. I think there may have been tears in the episode when he wanted to adopt the little boy too. The episodes with his brother, Ambrose, also tug at the old heart strings, despite the ridiculousness of his character.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
I'm pretty sure this has made me cry on several occasions but the one that stands out most was the episode '911' in Season 7 where a little girl rings Olivia claiming she has been kidnapped and there is a race against time to find her.

Familiar Faces

Detective programmes are always rich hunting ground for spotting actors known for other things, either before they were famous or after their star has faded. Columbo is the possible exception as in the seventies episodes, they may have got some people while they were in their prime.

One of the Monk double-bill yesterday starred Andrew McCarthy. Sweetly handsome, object of teenage desire, Andrew Carthy here has a cold-hearted philanderer and killer. I would have been shocked had I not already seen this particular episode and already witnessed how age had hardened him. If she could have seen how he'd turned out, Molly Ringwald would surely have stuck with Duckie.

But the big spot of the day came in Law & Order SVU. The Law & Orders are always good for the spotting game - most of the cast of the Sopranos have popped up in it somewhere along the line and a few of The Wire too. But last night's guest was wholly unexpected. The episode, 'Surveillance' involved an attack and stalking of a musician. The first suspect was the conductor, a good-looking man in his fifties with a distinctive drawling voice, who was strangely familiar. The OH didn't recognise him at all. Then inspiration struck - it was Dex Dexter!

Who? You may well ask. Dex Dexter, one-time screen husband of Joan Collins/Alexis Colby in Dynasty, that's who. As a youngest watching Dynasty, I though he was quite dashing although my father assured me he was a dreadful actor, perhaps not in the league of Ken Kercheval, Dallas' Cliff Barnes who was agreed in our household to be the worst actor ever.

Anyway, I was certain it was him which was surprising as I hadn't seen him since the late 80s. On looking him up on IMDB I was proved right. It was Michael Nader. He doesn't seem to have done much since Dynasty besides a stint in All My Children which doesn't get imported to the UK and an episode of Perry Mason that I've yet to see.

Unfortunately, his character wasn't guilty in this case so he disappeared from the screen mid-episode. But it was good to see him again.

A week's viewing

I've watched a lot of detective programmes this week due to illness and all round inertia. As well as the heroic amount of Law & Order, I've also watched the following:

Diagnosis Murder (x2) - the first I've mentioned already, the second involved a deranged shrink trying to blackmail Sloane into murdering someone for him. The plot was pretty much stolen from 'Strangers on a Train' but with less tennis.

Sue Thomas FB Eye(x2) - The rather woolly portrayal of the FBI was getting on my nerves slightly, but the second episode involved human trafficking so was dark enough to balance out the fluffiness of the rest of it.

Ironside (x2) - I still don't like this much. The second episode was about a cop killer, who, if I've understood it correctly, was angry at the police after being caught drunk driving so then went on a revenge killing spree. It seemed a bit extereme to me. Still not happy with the portrayal of the token African American - not sure what his actual job is, but in this episode he just seemed to offer refreshments to the team. As for the blonde woman, her role is just to look pretty and blonde.

Monk - a massive four episodes, including a hilarious one where he was put on anti-depressants and became upbeat, wearing hawaiian shirts and referring to himself as 'The Monk'. He lost his powers of detection, nobody liked his new persona and he had to revert back to his old ways. Perhaps not the most sensitive portrayal of OCD, but I do still like it and shamefully I often find it quite moving. The last episode was the introduction of his new assistant - I much preferred the original assistant, but apparently she wanted more money to stay in the show.