AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Depp v Heard, The True Story (Channel 4)

He got first billing, that's always important, you get the left-hand side of the poster. I settled down to watch this three-part series with the principals playing themselves. I approved of the editorial decision to splice the action into she said/he said segments. The courts could learn from this since their policy of plaintiff said/defendant said means the jury has forgotten what one said by the time they hear what the other one says.

However I had to stop watching after twenty minutes. I had formulated the view from the London hearing, where Ms Heard won, that this was a travesty and he should have won. I decided I could carry on liking Depp, a view itself formulated by his cameo appearance on The Fast Show (where he was awful, he has no talent for British comedy, but showed the right spirit). It soon emerged from the Virginia trial evidence that he is awful as a person. I was too heart-broken to carry on watching more evidence of it.

[Mick Harper]

A postscript to the above is the observation that neither London nor Virginia has anything to do with either the people concerned or the actions complained of. Both were selected by the plaintiff -- Heard and Depp respectively -- in furtherance of the well-known practice of venue-shopping. London apparently favours women (who knew?) and Virginia men (one guessed). Why the courts tolerate this is yet one more example of how crap they are in general.

A further postscript is to observe it's nearly always daft to go to court in the first place. Depp should have taken it on the chin (irrespective of the truth) and continued with his stellar career (we'd have soon forgotten) rather than spending millions ruining it.

[Mick Harper]

Andrew Davies: Rewriting the Classics BBC4

You would think adapting novels for telly would be relatively easy, there is not even the restrictions imposed by feature films. Certainly the skill is regarded as at the lower end of literary pond life. Yet most of the time it is botched. Unless Andrew Davies is doing it, when it is always done brilliantly. Nobody can explain this so maybe this programme tonight will do so.

[Mick Harper]

Tina Turner just died, let's have an extended piece on Newsnight about... Abba.

[Grant]

What was funny about the ABBA piece was when they showed Benny (or the other one) some ABBA lyrics made up by AI.

"That's crap," he said. He was right but they were just as good as the real ABBA lyrics.

[Mick Harper]

Midsomer Murders (ITV)

A new series looms tonight. I probably won't watch it but I'm pleased it's there. A bit like the Coronation. What Oakeshott called part of the informal British Constitution.

I wonder if it will be the same Barnaby as the last series or his 'cousin' of the same name as happened when Bergerac left. That must have been an odd selection procedure. "Is your name Barnaby? No? Next!" If the police had a rank known as a 'Barnaby' we wouldn't be having this constant problem. I don't suppose Home Secretary Suella Braverman will give the idea much thought even though she is herself a like-for-like replacement of Pritti Patel. A rule for them and a rule for us. As usual. You sometimes cry out for a complete change. Westminster Murders.

[Mick Harper]

Steeltown Murders (BBC1)

This is an unusually good true-crime re-enactment. It captured exactly three things
1. The clannish incompetence of the south Walian police
2. The dreary nature of the south Walian landscape
3. The dreary nature of south Walian life.
I should know I was there at the time of the murders (there is no obvious connection).

The first episode contained two specially noteworthy gobbets
1. "People are always getting murdered in Neath" should be in the One Line Hall of Fame
2. Equity's rules demand new applicants not be registered under the same name as another performer. Hence the appearance in Steeltown Murders of Gareth John Bale.

[Mick Harper]

Countryfile (BBC1)

A reasonably important item on the welfare of chickens. Since we get through two billion of them a year, it's certainly important to them. Apparently chickens have been bred ever since the war to put on weight as fast as possible, hence keeping the price of chicken down. This has led to various excruciating side effects for the birds since while the important parts for us, the breast and thighs, are rapidly gaining weight, the important part for them, the lower legs, cannot bear the weight of the breast and thighs. There was no discussion as to whether a short life is a welfare issue but, considering the above, maybe it isn't.

Not that there was much of a discussion, The Countryfile presenter read out a long list of organisations that declined to comment. Basically all of them. The only ones that did, the Red Tractor scheme that guarantees farmed animals' welfare and the Min of Ag, contented themselves with variants on "Our standards are in line with, or exceed, accepted good practice." This is not good enough, they should be in line with the animals' welfare.

Nor is it good enough to ignore Countryfile, the accepted tribune of both animals and people.

[Mick Harper]

Sorry, Boys, You Failed the Audition (R4X)

This is an alt.hist forty-five minute playlet that starts with George Martin turning the Beatles down and Brian Epstein telling them that's it, Parlophone were the last hope. After some 'artistic differences' between John and Paul, the band breaks up and the non-Fab Four go their separate ways. The story covers the next six years as Frieda, the teenage Fan Club secretary, tries to keep the flame burning with ever-decreasing hope.

In 1968 Paul is a teacher at a Penny Lane comprehensive tasked with and failing to produce the Christmas musical. Frieda 'tricks' John into helping him finish the songs. They are so complicated George and Ringo have to be roped in to augment the school orchestra from behind the arras. The rest is alt.alt history.

I couldn't help reflecting that my own career has reached the same stage as the Beatles being turned down by Parlophone except the big difference is I make it to the top. Hear it here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03h6yrv It's quite affecting.

[Mick Harper]

I started on Midsomer Murders but was distressed by not one but two of my favourite bugbears.

(1) I hate investigators having a personal connection with the case because I have to watch out for extraneous factors. This week, as it seems she does every week, Mrs Barnaby has such a connection. She is 'an excellent soprano' (who knew?) with the Midsomer Mummers who have been singing Gilbert & Sullivan for a hundred years, though this year are being killed in such alarming numbers it may be for only a hundred years.

The obvious whodunnit -- Mrs B is bumping them off to get better parts -- will turn out to be a red herring. The real culprit will be revealed by an increasingly enfeebled DCI Barnaby (why on earth does she stay with him? why on earth do ITV?) though from a clue discovered by the lady wife -- or possibly the dog who duets with her in the Barnaby kitchen. A different dog, by the way, but let's all avoid distress by not speculating how the one from the last series met his grisly end. They have given him due remembrance by calling this one by the same name. Doubtless his cousin.

(2) Lewis (Morse's old sidekick who got his own spin-off series) has turned up as a bit-part player in this one. Since the producers had thousands of bit-part actors to choose from, this certainly won't be a coincidence. I predict that Barnaby will be murdered in the last episode of the current series, and Mrs Barnaby will team up with Lewis in The Midsomer Private Detective Agency that replaces it in the ITV summer schedules.

Sometimes I think I'm entitled to a series of my own. 'The AEL Investigates with your host, M J Harper.' Though obviously it won't actually be me but someone whose appearance and general mien doesn't scare the average viewer witless.

[Mick Harper]

The Assassination of Olof Palme (cont)

Because of the unfamiliarity of the broad facts of the case, it is much easier to see the elements of conspiracy theory. Consider what would happen if a lone nutter offed your Prime Minister and then escaped into the gloaming to remain unidentified for evermore. Surely the following would happen

1. Nobody could ever know who assassinated. your elected leader, or why. A perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
2. All prime ministers are connected with multifarious strands of genuine conspiracy-theory bodies eg CIA, KGB, local extremists, foreign extremists.
3. Pick one.
4. These genuine bodies have multifarious connections of their own.
5. Start joining up all these genuine connections.
6. You have a four-part series perfect for cable television.

In the case of Olof Palme this is what seems to have happened. The connection finally seized on -- after a dazzling array of other potential candidates which filled the first two hours -- was the white supremacist government of South Africa.

Their secret service (BOSS by name, you might remember) was indeed a nasty outfit operating a worldwide dirty tricks (and probably an assassination programme) against the ANC. Olof Palme's government was providing fifty per cent of the money needed by the ANC for its worldwide programme of dirty tricks (and a fair amount of murderous terrorism) against apartheid South Africa. So you can see the rationale for believing -- and to be honest it may well have been true -- that BOSS killed Palme. If so, the irony is that it wasn't a conspiracy at all

* Palme was a combatant, he was funding ANC terrorism.
* BOSS was a combatant, they were the 'sword and shield' of the democratically-elected government of South Africa.

It wasn't an assassination, it was one soldier shooting another soldier and returning unscathed to his own lines.

[Mick Harper]

A Victoria Derbyshire interview on Newsnight made me squirm. She kept asking 'probing' questions about whether the Prime Minister of Estonia really was in line for the NATO secretary-general's job, up against our very own defence secretary, Ben Wallace. What could the poor woman say? She couldn't deny it and she couldn't confirm it. She could just squirm. She didn't do that too well which may have scuppered her chances. Being able to lie blandly is a prerequisite of the job.

Come on, Vicky, we'll never get the glass ceiling shattered if you insist on pulling up the ladder now you've made it. Though whether Newsnight Presenter rates higher than Secretary-General of NATO is not something anyone can calculate with precision. It beats being Prime Minister of Estonia outa sight though. And Defence Secretary of the United Kingdom but stacking shelves at Tesco comfortably ranks higher than that.

[Mick Harper]

In Our Time: Louis XIV R4

Dear old Melvyn gathers his Louis XIV experts around him and they spend forty-five minutes discussing Versailles or Gobelin tapestries or some soppy bollocks. Not one second on foreign policy which is what the nation has tuned in for. That's what happens when you put people from outside the M25 in charge but thankfully he's coming up to the BBC's mandatory retirement age, 105.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Kerry was crying as she was left feeling suicidal after an interview by Phillip. Phillip is feeling betrayed by his treatment by his former ITV pals. Alison is now on TV, in tears about Phillip. Everybody agrees that Phillip's former boyfriend and current wife are also really, really depressed, most probably this is down to Phillip, but we don't really know as they are not giving teary interviews.

Phillip is now welling up, it turns out he was also suicidal, but thanks to the support of his daughters he is now getting over it.

I have to say it's nice, someone's well-being is now improving.

[Mick Harper]

On Assignment (ITV1)

I learn from Rageh Omaar that Santa Muerta is the fastest growing religion in Latin America -- twenty to thirty million adherents already, already. The local Catholic Church is outraged. "It is for people who are desperate," opined a gentleman clad in scarlet robes. "These people devoted to Santa Muerta also come to mass. And sometimes they look for magical solutions. Santa Muerta is their own magical protector. They have a bad reputation, they are in criminal zones, drug trafficking. Cartels. Christ is love and forgiveness but Santa Muerta allows them to kill. At the end they are left with nothing. They look for twenty thousand solutions to see which is the correct one instead of looking for the one that works."

Let me whisper two words in your shell-like, monsignor. "Spanish Inquisition." And two more: "Never fails." It's no use bleating to Rageh Omaar, he's got his own troubles at ITV.