The Inspector Lynley Mysteries - BritBox

 

Inspector Lynley Mysteries, based on the still emerging series of novels by Elizabeth George, the most recent one having been published in 2019, revolves around Inspector Lynley himself and his partner, DS Barbara Havers as they are assigned to the wide variety of locations, often beyond their Scotland Yard base, creating some tension with local police forces. Other points of conflict are often based on race, class, gender, education, and wealth, leading to an almost endless variety of possible stories. 

Nathaniel Parker as Lynley

Lynley, the eighth Earl of Asherton (played by the classically trained Nathaniel Parker), comes from a conflicted family of inherited wealth and position complicated by the effects of years of privilege. As “Tommy” Lynley, he has left his heritage behind for the challenge of becoming a police inspector, with whom many officers don’t seem to wish to work. In the first episode, he is joined by Detective Sergeant (DS) Barbara Havers (Sharon Small), a product of the working class who has risen  to her rank despite having a habit of irritating her superiors, mostly because of her quick insight and wit, as well as her awareness of her own worth as person. Such diversity creates a rich partnership within a fraught relationship, exactly the stuff creating lots of interesting dramatic opportunities. Their chemistry permits the duo to see situations from two viewpoints, often leading to greater insight into the crimes as trust between them grows and matures. 

Sharon Small

A Suitable Vengeance, episode 2.3, provides a portrait of Lynley’s background as he returns home with profiler Helen for their engagement party. As the story has progressed through a series of cases, Tommy’s background always moves between background (his origin story) and foreground (the cases) interspersed with his character. All this comes clearer in this single episode. However, he and (to a lesser extent) Havers emerge as the series continues. The growth of characters through the course of many dramatic series provides nuance, development, and familiarity with the characters, making them ever more irresistible. 

Lynsley's Family Estate

Lynley, himself, seems conflicted between his desire to shuck his aristocratic background of wealth and privilege, while simultaneously relying upon it. He’s frequently attracted to beautiful, but equally flawed, female characters who end up disappointing him (or dying). He cannot see or acknowledge the growing attraction and admiration he feels for Havers, whose humble background and lesser rank in the police force keeps him from seeing her qualities in full. This relationship forms the core of the series around which the crimes and their solutions are wound. The chemistry between the two central characters creates the tension driving viewers to return to this addictive series. 

English detective film is as much concerned with social class as American video deals with race, although both are available in generous helpings. I like the way different regions are portrayed in various parts of Great Britain as we watch these shows. Regional accents, a variety of historical settings, and always emerging characters and situations seem to provide an endless number of series now being introduced to new audiences. Suffice it to say there’s variety enough for all tastes. 

Since the Inspector Lynley Mysteries are based on a series of novels, I downloaded Elizabeth George’s For the Sake of Elena, a 464 page novel, the fifth of eighteen Lynley novels, from our local library’s digital lending collection.   I deliberately chose a sample we had already viewed in order to satisfy my curiosity. The first ten episodes of Lynley Mysteries were based on this crime series. Later shows used the George characters in films written specifically for television broadcast, not based on specific novels, but were based on original shows written for television.

 While I’m giving the source material for the Inspector Lynley Mysteries a read, the television films in no way rely on a viewer’s doing so. In fact, it might detract from your enjoying this very good television production. The television stories are excellent, and, as usual, I recommend watching the series in chronological order better to enjoy the writing quality and the imagination going into developing the program. You’ll find your time well spent.

Perry Mason - 2020

 

The criminal lawyer Perry Mason has stood for defending the innocent for nearly one hundred years. Author/lawyer Earl Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) wrote eighty Perry Mason novels and short stories, beginning with The Case of the Velvet Claws, published in 1933 and selling twenty-eight million copies in its first fifteen years. At the time of his death, he was the best selling American author...ever. Beyond the novels, six Perry Mason movies were made during the 1930’s, a radio show ran on CBS from 1943-1955, the television program starring Raymond Burr as Mason ran from 1957-1966. You can still view the first eight seasons of Perry Mason on CBS All-Access. 

Earl Stanley Gardner

Those of us of a “a certain age” all have Perry Mason in our backgrounds in some way or another. I remember the fifteen minute radio show, gathered around the radio in our third story New York apartment. In books as well as films and tv the formula of half a show dedicated to the investigation and the second half devoted to the trial, always ending in the accused being found innocent, is still the basic model for detective fiction and film. This formula for telling the Perry Mason story still dominates the current version, whose first season has just been completed on HBO Max, where it was green lighted for a second season before the first one ended. But the differences in style and substance are considerable, and perhaps not acceptable to some older Mason fans. 

Raymond Burr

The calm, self-possessed, Perry Mason played by Raymond Burr who inhabits the consciousness of so many of us, is not the current character at all. Perry Mason, played by Matthew Rhys, who you’ll remember as the two-lives spy in The Americans, is tortured by fear and doubt as a shell- shocked (now properly labeled as PTSD) WW I vet in 1931 Los Angeles. The series provides back-stories for all the major characters appearing in the books, on film, radio and television - Della Street, Hamilton Burger, Paul Drake - but they’re nothing like the mid-century cutouts you’d recognize. No Black characters appear in the original Perry Mason shows, while this iteration is filled with color, awareness of women’s concerns, ethnicity, and real language you’d never experience on television. 

Matthew Rhys

The plot, very broadly, concerns the kidnapping and murder of an infant child. Also, front and center is a  religious zealot looking and sounding a lot like the famous (notorious) evangelist, Amy Semple McPherson, who created a national sensation during the 1920’s and early thirties from her base in Los Angeles, played by Tatiana Maslany.  Mason is a down-at-the-heels private investigator doing the legwork for DB Jonathan, played by the always terrific John Lithgow. Included is a full-scale explanation of how the attorney Perry Mason emerges, as well as other familiar Mason characters like Della Street and Paul Drake. All the characters emerge as complex individuals, each coping with real issues complicating their lives while making them interesting as well as arresting. Cloaked in moral, sexual, and religious ambiguity, this story moves way beyond anything you might see on network television, even today, which remains one of the great gifts of streaming television.  

Juliana Rylance as Della Street

The settings are period Los Angeles, nighttime scenes are often dark and threatening while agricultural and desert surroundings brightly, even harshly lit. The film noir atmosphere provides a perfect setting for tortured, often violent lives of the characters. Car lovers will enjoy this series simply for the range and quality of antiques on display. The sets capture the period highlighting architecture, furniture, lighting fixtures, and more to create perfect settings for the hardship of the times. The script reflects the racism, sexism, police, and civil corruption into which Mason tries to bring his simple morality of right and wrong over what’s simply legal. 

Running for eight recently completed episodes on HBO Max, Perry Mason proved itself to be a highly rewarding, tension-filled police/legal procedural with plenty extra. Ratings were: IMDb = 8, Rotten Tomatoes = 75%. Irene sometimes found it to be “too talky,” but I enjoyed the pacing, development, and nuance of the plotting and acting added to the pleasure of the entire production. Perry Mason has been renewed for a second season, which I hope will lead to several more.

Yellowstone - A Modern Western

 

The great West, as portrayed in movies since The Great Train Robbery, was made in 1903 and known as the first western. From my first experiences with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger, the myths of western self-sufficiency have fevered my imagination, and built our nation as well as our notions of manhood, inspiring while damaging us, too. A leader in this tradition was the great sixties era Bonanza, standing out as a model for Yellowstone as the family empire built on the power, will, intelligence, and hard work of a patriarch whose children cannot possibly live up to his standards, but strive to be true to the great mythic tradition they come from.

Kevin Costner

Executive producer and star Kevin Costner has contributed mightily, and often with great sensitivity and intelligence, to this tradition in films like Dances with Wolves, Wyatt Earp, Silverado, and more. In Yellowstone, as John Dutton, the patriarchal figure, he’s a fifth generation rancher, a billionaire trying to preserve the traditions of a cattle ranch set in unbelievably beautiful scenery beside Yellowstone National Park. Besieged by commercial development, age-old conflicts with the indigenous population (referred to as the Confederated Tribes), as well as local, regional, and national politics in a modern world where ranchers break horses and fly helicopters on the same day, there’s endless room for drama, conflict, action, sex, and intrigue in this compelling series. 

Now completing its third season, the program retains its drive and drama, often also tugging at the heartstrings as characters develop further every week. The program sometimes displays raw violence in large and small ways. For instance, newly hired and properly taken into the inner circle, new ranch hands are brutally branded with a large Y on their chests, making their jobs a lifelong, two-way commitment, and Yellowstone a place you leave at great peril. Gunfights no longer feature two men meeting each other face-to-face on Main Street, but often control and revenge are taken with automatic weapons in military style insurgent raids.

The Dutton Family

Action in the series alternates between the conflicts and machinations of the Dutton family and life in the bunkhouse where there’s an active social life as well as dreams, challenges, and choices. The secondary characters are well drawn, convincing personalities adding to the show’s richness. The three Dutton offspring, each one a damaged yet compelling personality tortured by the early death of their mother and deeply conflicting motives, strive to succeed. Meanwhile, Costner’s John Dutton drives them all to keep the family together and the ranch in one piece. 

The Bunkhouse

The cast is filled with quality, but not big, recognizable names. Dutton’s two sons and a daughter are, as you might suppose, each dealing with such an overpowering father in their own ways, and by season three coming to terms with their relationships. Spouses, lovers, and children are all built and damaged by the relationships, as in any good soap opera. 

For, after all, Yellowstone is a first rate horse opera which has attracted loyal fans to what must be the Paramount channel’s most successful offering ever. A fourth season of Yellowstone has been optioned, but filming has not yet begun due to the pandemic. We watched the show through our cable system’s app’s on demand feature, which reduced, but didn’t eliminate, the commercials. It can also be rented without commercials from Amazon Prime Video or other film outlets. Just Watch is a useful website for discovering every channel carrying particular programs. Season three will end in a couple of weeks, and I look forward to the coming season four with great anticipation. Stream from the beginning to keep the history and the story straight. The biggest star of the program, however, is the incomparable western scenery.

The Kominsky Method - Netflx Review

We haven't watched a half hour situation comedy on television for years. I don't know how many it's been, but the cuts and ads we've seen simply haven't motivated us to be willing to endure the increasing number, rate, and time taken up by endless, repetitive commercials. A few months ago, knowing for sure we were going to spend increasingly less time on the road, we dipped our toes into streaming television, and a new world opened to us. I'll have more to say about this part of the journey in another post. Suffice it to say that our viewing habits have had a remarkable change worth writing about extensively on this blog. 

The Kominsky Method, starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin as two aging friends living through the crises affecting to old men, is a half hour laugh out loud comedy/drama which captivates almost immediately while encouraging the viewer to keep on watching until the season ends leaving us waiting eagerly for season two. Nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, the series, which only debuted in November of 2018, has yet to be reviewed, so one can only hope.

Michael Douglas

Alan Arkin

The eight episodes currently available on Netflix tell the story of Sandy Kominsky, one hit wonder actor who has become a drama coach in Los Angeles, and Norman Verlander, a crotchety semi-retired agent, whose wife of fifty years dies in opening episode. Their relationship forms the core of this always engaging program as they negotiate their own relationship along with their trials and tribulations with their daughters, lovers, and work. The dialogue is snappy, often profane and off-color, laugh-out-loud funny, and real. The drama is often touching as these two fine character actors open themselves, wounded as they may be, to each other while seeking to find meaning in their lives. For me, each episode ended too soon. As episode eight ended, I was already looking for more.....

Part of the fun in The Kominsky Method comes from the use of guest cameos, sometimes larger than the ordinary guest appearance of a major actor, like Eliot Gould and Ann Margaret, with Gould playing himself reading an Alex Trebek commercial, and Margaret playing a close friend of Verlander's late wife. Both appearances touch the heart while challenging the memory. 

Chuck Lorre

Produced by Chuck Lorre, often called "The King of the Sitcom" has produced and/or directed many commercial situation comedies which have been major hits on network TV as well as long-running money-makers for the networks. Shows like The Big Band Theory, Grace Under Fire, Two and a Half Men and others have broken boundaries to expand the limitations of the genre. Moving to streaming television on Netflix has increased his ability to broaden his scope and given him a larger pallet of language, nuance, subtlety and courageousness to explore. He accomplishes this with infectious glee.

All of season one of The Kominsky Method is currently available on Netflix, a subscription television service available through your favorite streaming device. We use ROKU, with which we are pleased and thankful to have as the quality of commercial television continues to decline, reaching its low during the weeks during the Holidays, dominated by parades and sports. Great buys in smart TV's will be available as the post season shopping may be even better than the seasonal period just past. Enjoy!