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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Sherwood BBC1

This is still quite watchable but has far too many plotlines (and, as I have said, far too few 'heroes'). This is doubly difficult because we are told it is 'based on fact' so presumably it is all legitimately in there. Otherwise it would be too Midsomer Murderous to pass muster. The chief remaining points of interest are:

(1) how they are going to demonstrate a link between a mass-murdering teenage nutter roaming around Sherwood Forest and the miners' strike of forty years before
(2) whether they are going to reveal the identity of the stay-behind police plant (he'd better be safely dead or the lawyers might get involved)
(3) but not the apparently extraneous 'Asian murders white daughter-in-law' sideshow now he's run off into Sherwood Forest himself.

Talking of whom it was an agreeable novelty having Asian minorities rather than black ones (on both sides of the blue line).
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Mick Harper
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Having now watched the next episode, all three questions remain moot. A tribute to the script-writing. What is not good scriptwriting is using the tired old formula

1. investigating cop visits cold case cop in his retirement home
2. cold-case cop having just a few weeks to live
3. is reluctantly prepared to tell all
4. but just as he is about to
5. investigating cop gets phone call. "I'll have to step outside to take this."
6. cold case cop having a loaded revolver in his memento box
7. and blowing his brains out

But it's based on a true story so if that's what happened, that's what happened.
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Grant



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I laughed when the copper asked the eighty year old on his death bed about his colleagues from forty years ago. He remembered all their names. Not even a single “Old whassisname, tall bloke with curly hair”.
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Mick Harper
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Have a heart. You have to empower characters (and plots) with all kinds of short cuts unless you want TV dramas to be played out in real time. Can you spare a few weeks of your busy life to watch Sherwood? Though I agree it only takes a few seconds to say "Old whassisname, tall bloke with curly hair” and for the other cop to say, "Sgt Blakeney, you mean" and then go to perfect recall.

I trust a conspiracist such as yourself spotted the woman character introduced for the sole purpose of mouthing the sentiments of the playwright. All about the Ridley Report and the imposition of capitalism blue in tooth and claw. I was in floods.
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Grant



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The woman character, played by the usually impressive Lindsay Duncan, was extraordinary. She just appeared to have been beamed down to utter, as you said, various liberal platitudes. Then she just left.

I think a lot of these writers go to a BBC training course to learn this. The quicker Nadine gets rid of the licence fee the better.
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Mick Harper
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Scheduling-wise, Sherwood is breaking the mould -- an episode every Monday and Tuesday. Either falling between two stools or the harbinger of the new. The weekly cliffhanger was the first time my genius was revealed to the world, aged ten (or whenever). The mystery villain had turned up at the end of that week's Paul Temple (or whatever) and the nation was agog to find out who it was. I announced to the world who it was. When it turned out to be who I said it was the world took note of this prodigy.

Little did they know that I had opened next week's newly arrived Radio Times, turned to the Paul Temple entry and read 'cast in order of appearance'.
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Mick Harper
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Grant wrote:
...to utter ... various liberal platitudes. I think a lot of these writers go to a BBC training course to learn this.

What conspiracist world do you live in, Grant? Every writer in the country believes liberal platitudes. And not various ones either. Exactly the same ones.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Pioneer Woman.

It's a cooking show where Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, who lives with her husband on a 433,000 acre working ranch, cooks up tasty meals for grateful cowboys. I was addicted until the lovable Ree told me cowboys loved iceburg lettuce. Really? John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Audi Murphy, I have watched all the greats yet not once can I remember a mention of iceburg lettuce. I guess it's time to take one final last puff on my Marlboro, tip my stetson, and move on.
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Mick Harper
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I had a 433,000 acre ranch once and asked the lady wife to cook for the hands but would she? She wouldn't even cook for me. That's why I gave it all up to live on my lonesome in a flat in Notting Hill. But you're right, I still get pangs. Vaping is not the same.
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Wile E. Coyote


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McDonalds and Doddery ITV catch up.

Bath as always looks lovely, as does the beautiful curvy eastender McDonalds. Surely one of the best chests on a TV tec. Doddery looks pallid and likely to fall over.

Anyway the plot is centred around a Linguistic Anthropologist, smartarse Jonathan Creek type Prof who lives in a windmill, sorry, lovingly restored loony bin on a hill, probably worth £5 million. The Prof's name is George Gilan, and they imaginatively got Alan Davies to play himself in the role. Gilan like Davies is somewhat mysteriously to Wiles, a babe magnet, who entrances females, including his 99 year old mum (Sheila Hancock), by his uncanny ability to work out peoples' upbringing, by their diphthongs.

A murder happens in park in full view. Who could have possibly done it. It's all very AE this one. The answer is simple and obvious.
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Mick Harper
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Well, Sheila Hancock was Morse's wife and Morse was the last big ITV police hit, so I don't think we've got far to look.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
Well, Sheila Hancock was Morse's wife and Morse was the last big ITV police hit, so I don't think we've got far to look.


Maybe a tad further than you think, as I now realise it was Sian Phillips not Sheila Hancock. I am not sure if it is sexist, ageist or both, to think that actresses once past 95, all look the same, but they do. This is an area where a bit more diversity would be beneficial, and that would stop the reviewer looking like an idiot. I shall complain to ITV.
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Mick Harper
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I looked a right idiot arresting her at the BAFTAs. You're fired as my bagman.
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Mick Harper
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Question: how did they arrange for the young PC Salisbury to look like the thirty-year-later DI Salisbury?
Answer: they chose Philip Glenister to play DI Salisbury knowing he had a son, Tom Glenister, who was also an actor!

Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington
Don't put your daughter on the stage
The profession is overcrowded
The struggle's pretty tough
And admitting the fact she's burning to act
That isn't quite enough
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Mick Harper
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McGuffin Deferred

Copper One: The Home Office won't reveal the name of the stay-behind informer.

Copper Two: Damn, it's vital both to me personally and to the investigation I am the head of. It couldn't be more important.

Copper Three: You'll never guess.

Copper Two: What?

Copper Three: I once saved someone's life (don't ask) and by an amazing coincidence that person turns out to be someone who happens to have a list of four phone numbers, one of which is the informer's (don't ask). He's always wanted to repay me so he's sent me the list. [Hands list to Copper Two]

Copper Two [thinks]: What I'll do is ring the four numbers in turn and find out who it is but, in order to ratchet up dramatic tension, before they get a chance to say who they are, I'm going to go into a whole rigmarole so they'll put the phone down without saying.

Viewer One: You think?
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