What Are You Currently Watching (on tv/dvd)?

[fish]

Sounds like one of the good ones.

[Ian]

I like it.

Taggart - Death Call. When the wife of a wealthy landowner is found murdered and he appears to have fled the country with 40,000, it seems pretty obvious what's happened - until the landowner himself also turns up dead, with the money missing. A strong murder mystery thriller from the show's glory days (86 in this case). There's a nasty subplot with one of Taggart's own team being so convinced of the guilt of (as it turns out, a completely innocent) young man that he resorts to planting evidence to frame him. When Jim finds out, his reaction - needless to say - is explosive.

[Ian]

Sleepy Hollow episode 1. Mmm... I'll give it another couple of weeks, but I'm not overly enamoured so far.

[Ian]

Doctor Who - The Scream of the Shalka. The 2003 animated story with Richard E Grant as the Doctor. The most famous thing about it is, that for a brief month or two, this was being touted as the official continuation of the TV series, with Grant as the official Ninth Doctor. Before the thing even arrived on the BBCi website however, BBC1 suddenly announced the new series, relegating this, and Grant's Doctor, to unofficial status instantly.
Probably just as well, as I didn't like it very much!

[Ian]

Was surprised to see Robert Carlyle in a small role as a pushy journalist in a 1991 episode of The Bill today, about three years before he became seared into the nation's psyche as a working class bloke who goes off the deep end and goes on a killing spree in a particularly memorable (and shocking) Cracker.

[fish]

... seared into the nation's psyche as a working class bloke who goes off the deep end and goes on a killing spree...

As you do.

[Ian]

It was a famous role and story. Infamous for one of the best death scenes ever given to a regular character in a TV series - DCI Bilborough (Christopher Eccleston, no less!), bayoneted in the stomach by the crazed Carlyle and left bleeding to death on a Manchester road, talking to his colleagues by radio even as they try (in vain) to find him in time.

[Ian]

X Files: Blood. The spraying of "pesticides" and subliminal messages are being used to drive the inhabitants of a small town into a homicidal frenzy in this classic episode which manages to be both scary and blackly comic at the same time. Some of the messages are darkly hilarious.


HE'S GOING TO RAPE YOU


HE'S GOING TO KILL YOU


KILL HIM FIRST!

[Ian]

The classic missing Patrick Troughton stories The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear have been found in Nigeria and returned to the BBC. Already fully restored to pristine condition, and available to buy on iTunes! Enemy will be released on DVD next month, Web is out in February.

Yeah, baby!!!!!!!!!!

[Ian]

Doctor Who. Saw The Web of Fear last night, for the first time ever! What a great story. The premise is completely barking on paper - robot Yeti stalk the London Underground with cobweb guns while a giant fungus/web/mist slowly closes off all escape routes - but the acting, production design, direction, music and the sheer atmosphere of the black and white photography combine to give it a genuinely nightmarish quality. Superb stuff, very much deserving of its reputation and definitely one of the best Troughtons. Fantastic to finally get to see it after 45 years missing!

[fish]

...- robot Yeti stalk the London Underground with cobweb guns while a giant fungus/web/mist slowly closes off all escape routes - ...

Well obviously.


Does sound like a goodun.

[Ian]

It's also the very first story to feature Nicholas Courtney as (then Colonel) Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, a role he'd play on and off for the next 40 years!

It was a sequel to an earlier story called The Abominable Snowmen. Robot Yeti made a degree of logical sense (in Who terms) when set in the Himalayas.

[Ian]

Hmm, A bit concerned by the first two episodes of Whitechapel season 4. This has been a great old Gothic murder mystery thriller series but they seem to be going a bit daft now with suggestions of the supernatural and what not. I fear shark jumping territory is on its way.

[Ian]

Hannibal, episode 10. Very scary episode on a number of levels. Anyone with a phobia of someone hiding under their bed will want to look away now (!) while it is also pretty chilling that the killer is not your standard sadistic nutjob, but a young woman who is so mentally ill that she cannot see or recognise faces - and thus even people she used to trust seem like strangers or imposters to her - and who is labouring under the belief that she is already dead. Seriously unsettling stuff.

[Ian]

Taggart: Nest of Vipers. This 1991 thriller has got to be one of the all time best Taggarts. Two human skulls are unearthed on a construction site - could one of them belong to a young girl who disappeared four years ago and whose mother remains trapped in a life of pain and confusion? Soon after a research laboratory is broken into - and the only things stolen are a collection of some of the world's most poisonous snakes and spiders. As the police try to identify the skulls, it isn't long before that stolen property is being put to very deadly use... Thoroughly macabre, this is a dark, scary and very gripping Taggart. Even the resolution is disturbing - the killer has got to be one of the sickest puppies ever seen in the series, and even Jim is visibly rattled by this one. A classic.



And I must admit, it made me check my bed before slipping under the covers last night!