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Super Snappy Speed Reviews: TV Edition (Vol. 3)

Posted on 08/12/201907/12/2019 by Ndrw

Spoiler Alert

Anyone who has not seen The Crown, Dickensian, A Touch of Cloth, Star Trek: Voyager, Fawlty Towers or ‘Allo ‘Allo is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

It’s that time again! I’ve selected a random assortment of TV programs and reviewed them all in just a few short sentences. As ever, these reviews reflect nothing but my own personal opinions and impressions, abridged, compressed and foreshortened into a few brief statements of my opinion. The TV shows I have selected have nothing in common, save the fact that they are all fictional. They are not necessarily shows I particularly liked or disliked, nor are they sorted into any particular order. So, here we go.

The Crown

I love this show, far more than I thought I would. Compelling drama concerning both the personal and public lives of the British royal family, masterfully written with well rounded characters and contemporary themes delivered in a subtle and sensitive manner.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Buy The Crown (series 1-2) on Amazon

Dickensian

I am outraged and incensed that this show was cancelled after a single series because it was fan-dabby-dosey. Combining characters and settings from all your favourite Charles Dickens stories, this story focuses primarily on Inspector Bucket (Bleak House) investigating the murder of Jacob Marley (A Christmas Carol) though interweaving subplots also abound. It doesn’t really feel like a massive crossover; it feels (I am pleased to say) like a single story in its own right, with characters who naturally belong together, despite their disparate origins. A strange program, but in the best possible way.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Buy Dickensian on Amazon

A Touch of Cloth

A spoof British police drama which balances the traditions of teeth-clenching British crime drama grit with non-stop low brow humour, cheap gags and general silliness. A bizarre program to be sure, one which I felt faintly sullied by watching– but I have to admit, it made me laugh for the first episode or two. Got a bit bored after that though.

My rating: 🌟🌟

Buy A Touch of Cloth (series 1-3) on Amazon

Star Trek: Voyager

Arguably the last great Star Trek spin-off before it all went downhill with Enterprise, Star Trek: Voyager follows the adventures of a single Starfleet crew stranded on the other side of the galaxy trying to find their way back to Earth. It’s certainly not my favourite Star Trek series, but it stands up well next to Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation, featuring story-writing which ranges from okay to excellent. Some episodes are very obvious rehashes of former Star Trek glories, but the more original episodes are generally worth a watch.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Buy Star Trek: Voyager (The Complete Collection) on Amazon

Fawlty Towers

What can I say about Fawlty Towers that hasn’t already been said? An elder statesman of British comedy despite (because of?) its subtle-as-a-brick and fairly formulaic humour (Guests annoy Basil, Basil gets a bit more mad, hits Manuel, harasses guests, climaxing in one final embarrassing disaster). In terms of writing, acting, production and just about everything else, it shouldn’t be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with other classic British sitcoms… but it does. I love it.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Buy Fawlty Towers (The Complete Collection) on Amazon

‘Allo ‘Allo

Another classic British sitcom based on the life of a French cafe owner during the German occupation of France who finds himself unwillingly embroiled in the French resistance while at the same time trying to run a cafe, conceal two stolen paintings, conduct two extra-marital affairs, stave off the unwanted advances of a male Nazi officer, and hide two British airmen from the Nazis. I’ll be honest: it didn’t quite tickle me to the extent it should have given how well written the humour was (though it did tickle me), perhaps because it relied too heavily on that one comedy trope I can’t stand: repeating only slight variations on the exact same joke in every episode. Still, a good show, worth watching if you’re in a silly sort of mood.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Buy ‘Allo ‘Allo (The Complete Series 1-9) on Amazon

DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT ALL THE PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF SUPER SNAPPY SPEED REVIEWS

Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Children’s Edition (Vol. 3)	Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Books (Vol. 4)
Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Children’s Edition (Vol. 2)	Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Doctor Who Edition
S uper Snappy Speed Reviews: Children’s Books Edition (v ol 1)	Super Snappy Speed Reviews: TV Edition (vol. 2)
Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Writing Apps for Android	Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Books (vol. 3)
Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Games Edition	Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Star Trek Edition
Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Books (vol. 2)	8 Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Film
5 Super Snappy Speed Reviews: TV Edition	8 Super Snappy Speed Reviews

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.

I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

TV Review: Doc Martin (Series 9)

Posted on 17/11/201918/11/2019 by Ndrw

SPOILER ALERT

Anyone who has not seen any part of the ITV series Doc Martin is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

Well it’s finally probably definitely over this time, probably. The last episode of the last ever series(?) of ITV’s extremely popular comedy/drama, Doc Martin, aired on Wednesday past. And so it seems only fitting that I do a little review of the final series of a show which has been with us now for fifteen years.

Before series 9 started, the last few series of Doc Martin had been unremarkable. It felt a bit like the main story (the ‘will they, won’t they’ between Louisa and Martin) was well and truly over after series 7, since Martin and Louisa had already got together, had a baby, split up, got back together, got married, separated and got back together again and were now living in marital ~~bliss~~ contentment with a son. What more could they possibly do before fans started throwing bricks at the TV and screaming for them to just get divorced already?

Well, as bold a move as it was, I was pleased to see series 9 did not really focus too heavily on Martin and Louisa’s relationship with one another. There was a lot more focus on Martin’s career, which was put in jeopardy when the GMC come to investigate his fitness to continue practising medicine; the difficulties Martin and Louisa have producing a second child and the lives of other characters, particularly Morwena and Al, who are about to get married.

In actual fact, this series had a great deal of potential. Individually, each episode was very enjoyable. The classic Doc Martin humour seemed as fresh as ever and there seemed to be lots of different story lines all intermingling in a way which promised a worthy climax for such a popular and long running show. I was loving it…

Until we got to the end of the series, that is.

Don’t get me wrong, the final few episodes were good fun in and of themselves, however in the last episode or two, it felt like most of the key story-lines which made up the overall story arc had either been rushed to a sudden ending or forgotten about entirely. For example, Martin and Louisa trying to have a second child could have easily provided a whole series worth of rising tension climaxing in a dramatic final resolution. However it was poorly executed. They acknowledged their difficulties in having a second child early on in the series, began attending a fertility clinic and in the final moments of the last episode, Louisa reveals that she is pregnant. There was, however, nothing in the middle; no rising tension of any kind, unless you count the odd cheeky comment from minor characters here and there.

It also looked like something significant was going to happen with the undertaker. This brand new character popped up in quite a few episodes and there seemed to be some tension between her and Louisa for some reason that was never fully explained. In the final moments of the series, she asks Martin to father her child as a sperm donor. Martin refuses and that’s that.

The final episode in particular felt a bit anticlimactic when compared with the final episodes of other series. Usually these feature the highest drama, as the rising tension is finally released in one big medical emergency in which Martin performs some heroic medical procedure to save the day while resolving all emotional conflict between himself and Louisa. None of that this time. Martin went for his final assessment with the General Medical Council and, realising how poorly he had performed, decided to resign from being a doctor, moments before Louisa announces her pregnancy. There is a tense moment as they realise he has picked a bad time to quit his job, Martin says a very uncharacteristic and out-of-the-blue ‘I love you’ and that’s that. Frankly, the series did not feel finished.

If I sound like I’ve hated this series, nothing could be further than the truth. I looked forward to it every week and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was funny, it had drama and it was everything Doc Martin should be on an episode-by-episode basis. Only the sloppy story arc let it down, which was real a pity on the final series. I’ll still be getting the DVD though and I encourage you to do so too.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Click here to pre-order Doc Martin series 9 on Amazon

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Super Snappy Speed Reviews – TV Edition (Vol. 2)

Posted on 17/06/201817/06/2018 by Ndrw

SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers, anyone who has not seen Star Trek: Discovery, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Hooten & The Lady, Endeavour or Doc Martin is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

Yes it’s another day and another instalment of Super Snappy Speed Reviews. So far we’ve reviewed books [2] [3], TV shows, films, computer games, writers’ apps and even the Star Trek movies, so this time it’s going to be all about TV shows. I’ve picked 5 TV shows entirely at random from my DVD rack/Now TV/Lovefilm/etc. accounts and reviewed them all in no more than four or five sentences.

As ever, these reviews reflect nothing but my own personal opinion. The TV shows I have selected have nothing in common, save the fact that they are all fictional stories. They are not necessarily stories of the same genre, nor are they necessarily TV shows that I particularly liked or disliked, nor are they sorted into any particular order. These reviews reflect nothing but my own impressions and opinions, reduced, powdered and decimated into a few short sentences. So without further ado…

Star Trek: Discovery

Star Trek: Discovery promised a lot more than it actually delivered. Roddenberry’s utopia has been replaced with a grim world where Starfleet personnel see nothing wrong with using living creatures to power their engines and the crew are all at each others’ throats. It’s also got far more bad language and other adult content than we’ve become used to after fifty years of Star Trek. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a top-notch TV space opera, almost as good as Star Trek… but it’s not Star Trek.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

If you’re sick of the dark and gloomy superhero films/TV shows we’ve been getting served up recently, you might want to have a look at this ’90s gem. From a story writing point of view, it focuses far more on the developing relationship between Lois Lane and Clark Kent than on any superheroing (verb: using superpowers to rescue people while wearing impossibly tight spandex) and I think that is what makes it so compelling. It’s lighthearted, cheesey in the extreme and yet not entirely without substance. Be warned, it does end on an unresolved cliffhanger.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Hooten & the Lady

My wife and I were perusing Now TV one day when we stumbled across this ‘rip-off Indiana Jones meets rip-off Lara Croft’ type show. Don’t be put off by my use of the word ‘rip-off’, however. This is a thoroughly entertaining show, especially if you long for the days of feel-good adventures and light-hearted love triangles that don’t really come to anything. I should point out, however, that if you have even the most elementary knowledge of history, religion or archaeology, you might want to switch your brain off. It’s a fun show, but there’s a lot of nonsense in it.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Endeavour

Prequels are often rubbish; Endeavour is not. This show balances complex mysteries (a little too complex, if I’m being critical) with a rich cast of characters that can just as easily stand alone, apart from the original Morse canon. In addition to solving mysteries that his (rather lazy and/or inept) superior officers cannot, this show focuses heavily on the formative years of the Morse character and the personal issues he faces as he develops into the character portrayed by John Thaw. It’s intense, but not overwhelmingly so. Do yourself a favour and watch it.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Doc Martin

I really like this show. It balances drama, comedy and a rich cast of distinctive, well-written characters in a way few modern prime time TV shows manage. Having said that, I feel like they should’ve probably axed it after series 7 or so. The story is clearly finished now and it is beginning to feel a little bit like ITV is flogging a dead horse.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

I’m hoping to do author interviews here on Penstricken over the coming year, especially with new fiction authors. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

Until next time!

To Catch a Killer (A Little Too Easily)

Posted on 10/04/201610/04/2016 by Ndrw

SPOILER ALERT

Although every effort has been made to avoid spoilers, anyone who has not seen the ITV television-movie Maigret or read the Georges Simenon novel Maigret Sets a Trap is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

I’m normally quite fussy about reading the original of any story before I watch the film/TV adaptation. It’s not that I favour one over the other; I just like to get a feel for the original author’s unique angle on his/her story before sampling other people’s homages to it. That being said, when I heard that Rowan Atkinson was going to be starring as the main character in ITV’s television adaptation of Georges Simenon’s detective novel Maigret Sets a Trap, my curiosity got the better of me.

There are a couple of reasons I was so keen to see it but what really piqued my curiosity and what caused me to break with my usual tradition of reading the book first was the fact that the main character (a fairly sour-faced French detective called Jules Maigret), was being portrayed by Rowan Atkinson; a British actor best known for playing fairly silly comedy roles such as Mr Bean, Johnny English and Edmund Blackadder.

I will admit that it took a couple of minutes to get used to Atkinson’s face being so serious. His features are very striking and he has made a career out of comical facial expressions, not least of all in Mr Bean, where he has made an art of telling jokes without uttering a word. My disorientation only lasted a minute however. Atkinson’s acting and the general mood of the film were more than adequate to create the serious and mysterious ambiance needed for a good, solid detective story.

I do love a good detective story. I think secretly we all do. Mystery is very compelling. It’s what makes a detective story so captivating; something puzzling has happened and we simply can’t go to bed until we’ve had all our questions answered! That means, of course, that it is important that the reader/viewer of a detective story never knows for certain who committed the crime until the last moment (that was always my biggest objection to Columbo!). Those unanswered questions are what keep us on the edge of our seat. Without them, there’s no mystery and no story worth telling. Those detailed conversations you have with your family during the ad-breaks about who you think the killer might be and why are half the fun of watching a detective drama in my book.

And that, dear reader, is the main thing that ruined this first episode of Maigret for me.

The episode opens midway through an investigation conducted by Jules Maigret into four similarly styled murders. The victims have nothing in common except the colour of their hair and Maigret is, frankly, utterly failing to catch the perpetrator. And so he sets a trap, using female police officers as bait. At first, this seems to have all the makings of a good TV detective story; a compelling hard-nosed detective; pressure being applied to remove the detective from the case because of his failure to solve it; a series of mysterious murders that cause my wife and I to exchange numerous increasingly wild theories about ‘who dunnit’; the looming threat of more deaths; a dangerous plan to force the killer to reveal himself…

But then the plan goes ahead fairly early in the story, nobody gets killed as a result of Maigret’s risky move and someone is arrested against whom a truck-load of evidence is immediately forthcoming.

‘It can’t be him.’ I say to my wife. ‘It definitely, definitely, definitely can’t be him. It’s too obvious. It’s never the first guy they arrest, especially not when they find so much evidence against him so easily.’

So we carry on watching it for another half hour or so, quietly confident in our individual theories about who the real killer is while Maigret continues to hold and interrogate someone who we assume is an innocent man…

Only it turns out it was him after all and the person who I thought maybe was the killer is actually never actually seen again. Oh sure, they try to throw us off the scent by having another murder committed while the killer is in jail but by that point it’s painfully obvious that it was the killer’s wife who committed this last murder just to protect her husband and so we are not fooled and neither is Maigret.

I was prepared for the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to take Rowan Atkinson seriously as a serious detective and was pleasantly surprised to find that I thoroughly enjoyed his performance. If I was giving out prizes for acting or creating the right ambiance, I would have nothing but praise for Maigret but when it comes to that all important story, I must admit to feeling like I had been robbed of a good mystery and I am not nearly as enthusiastic about the second episode (due to be aired later in the UK later this year) as I was about the first.

My most sincere congratulations to Rowan Atkinson (and indeed, all the cast!) on a very good and very non-comical performance. Hopefully the plot for the next episode, Maigret’s Dead Man, will do greater justice to the acting and ambiance of the first episode.