stoltravel

Writing from Australia, in this year of the plague 2020, after seeing the Rambling Boy episode. Morse and Lewis are being replayed and Endeavour being played on free to air. Luckily, I'm working through Lewis on DVDs without commercials. I think that the Rambling Boy episode must be one of the high points of the entire Lewis project, on so many levels - reflecting Lewis' emotional health recovering, the next step of Lewis and the delightful Hobson, warmth of Innocent, reflections on the lifelong pain of losing a baby, the life-changing benefits of reaching out for and accepting help - all this and 2 murders and 2 attempted murders. Rambling Boy has no particular literary allusions, but I think the number of character and emotional arcs in the episode more than makes up for it. On the DVD I have just rewatched the last 10 minutes or so (the academic sitting on the bench with her bag of welcome and pregnancy gifts, the wonderful scene in the pub with Lewis Hobson innocent and Hathaway, DC Gray (who's Black) giving life lessons to the young ones, and the closing walk together) 4 or 5 times. The screenplay was by Lucy Gannon, her one and only Lewis episode. She and the storyline are not from the traditional Inspector Morse canon, but the emotional attraction and story arcs are enormously attractive. like the wonderful opera experience of shared songs, ;like Verdi's Libiamo . or a Mozart of Rossini aria with 4 or more characters interweaving. So I believe that the emotional arcs cover more than adequately. A pat on the back to colour grading on Lewis esp in series 3 on (I guess due to the influence of the Masterpiece American coproducers?). The warm colour temperature, giving every scene the golden light that we photographers love to capture, improves the emotional temperature of the entire series. The older Inspector Morse episodes with the daylight/colder/more natural? colour temperature) play as cooler/grimmer. Watching all three series of the Morse universe (the Morse original, the Lewis sequel and the Endeavour prequels) is very satisfying, like re-watching the Ring cycle. I do think that the later series of Lewis, when the producers and the concept and the performers got into the groove, are the most satisfying from my perspective. A warmer emotional tone than the often querulous Morse and the very downbeat Endeavour that had to lead in to Morse. I agree that later Lewis is the pick of the Morse universe.

Super-realistic. Not overglamorised. The artistry and stories were compelling.

Having seen all 50 episodes it was like watching a Wagner Ring cycle - with Malotru as Siegfried and the many leitmotif story arcs, the gods and their vengeance. I could go on but this series is art, not just an espionage procedural. It makes you feel for the characters, helped by carefully developed acting styles, dialing down facial expression to enance the intensity and meaning. I was reminded of master actors like Michaelk Kitchen of UK series Foyle's War, who was famous for dialing down the words in the script and the range of facial expressions to allow enhanced major acting commuinication.

The show is so realistic. It had the courage to kill off well-loved characters even into season 5, like excellent shows such as Spooks, Berlin Station. Some viewers in France were saddened by the last 2 episodes but I sawq them as important to the development of the show, and was on tenterhooks while watching the final 2 episodes waiting unnerved for an impending unknowable twilight of the gods moment (again the Wagner overtones) which it delivered.

A strategic segment was the presentation by Marina (AKA Sylvie) to new recruits in S5e8, which was Rochant's final episode as show-runner and writer. Her words (his words?) laid out the theme of what I'd seen over the preceding 48 hours, and ran through to the end - the words paraphrased

SYLVIE AKA MARINA: I see you all have a form to fill out. We call it the burial form here. One question asks do you want to become an undercover agent? Next is a box to tick. Ticking the box means you'll spend at least the next 12 to 18 months here at HQ. If you wish to work undercover one day you mustn't be exposed in between missions. You can't travel or be in the field. So we keep you here. While others travel the world living exciting lives, we do all we can to protect your virginity. Basically we bury you so that you may become the DGSE's pilot fish one-day. Your mission will then be to identify potential traitors overseas. Working under cover means operating for several years under an FI, fake identity. We also call it an alias. You will practice your profession - literature teacher, seismologist, IT specialist, arms smuggler. But your real job will be to observe, to search for weaknesses, flaws and angles of attack so that the desk officers can recruit those that we'll call sources. They also often use an FI so the sources never really know who they're dealing with. Your real job will be to destroy the lives of people who are not necessarily bad, just foreigners who serve their country and have access to information crucial to our security. People deemed bad just because they live across the border and know things their government wants to hide from us.

Waiting with great anticipation for the hoped for series 6.

Just finished watching Maigret in Montmartre again, and absolutely loved it. Pitch perfect in recreating George Simenon's Maigret and Paris between the wars.

The casting was superb. Atkinson was excellent as the dour down beat Maigret, perhaps almost too dour in places but with good range. But the surrounding cast was delightful also. I loved the scrumptious Lucy Cohu as Madame Maigret, her beautifully understated mix of fondness, frustration and patience with him was wonderful, together with Maigret's low-key approving statements of "you're a very clever person" when she made a pivotal suggestion. The understated but loving relationship was superbly evoked including in the last frame. Mme Maigret as scripted and performed is a hidden gem anchoring the series through the downbeat.

And, through all the faded glories, the seedy smoky foggy environs perfectly staged and captured, the ultimate message of deliverance through relationships and positive outcomes shone through in four relationships. Very well scripted, I thought, to deliver a positive end to a very downbeat storyline.

This reimagining, or is it imagining, of between the wars Paris was superbly done (great location work in Budapest, where did they get those crooked and worn steps?). Full credit to the BBC and production company, in the usual superb English manner, of recreating the historic environment, making it totally believable in a very high-quality cinematic manner, and dropping us into the environment.

I accept the cast speaking "working person" English, rather than franglais, which is just as believable as when I watch Kenneth Branagh's series of Wallander with working person English in Sweden.

I look forward to more Maigret, and more Atkinson, and more Madame Maigret as well.