And another picspam...
From The Strange Report (ATV, 1968) this time. More colour 1960s TV, with David Collings - and Anneke Wills. (There will be much more Anneke Wills once I watch the rest - she's one of the three main characters - and her clothes have their own credit.)
Anyway, this arrived, and I watched Ep 1 and, since I had got the impression it did some more interesting stories (a little like Special Branch, having Current issues and things, but with action and colour, and Anneke Wills), I was a disappointed that it was so cheesy, but Anneke Wills in colour makes up for a lot. (Also Robert Hardy.) So I thought, I might as well just skip to David Collings's episode, & see what that was like.
Well, he didn't survive the opening credits. That's a record. Anyway, the thing is, this one was much, much more interesting. Except that following the amazing cheesiness of ep1, I was not expecting this one to turn out not to be your standard murder mystery but a little one-episode psychological tragedy. (And while more than five minutes of David Collings would have been nice, everyone spent the whole episode talking about his character and trying to work out how he came to die, so it felt like he was in it a lot more than most of the guest actors who did survive.)
So, picspam. No spoilers (you can't count 'pics from the opening sequence' as spoilers).
Every happy party needs someone to come along and be miserable in it. (More doorway posing also.)
Prf Marks introduces his friend John Anders to his friends Ham and Evie.
I did promise David Collings and Anneke Wills, yes?
John Anders is a brilliant young neurosurgeon, who nobody likes very much. He lives for his work, keeps everybody at a distance and sneers at lesser mortals. (So we hear.)
Oh, except for one person - Nurse Peggy Gale, his fiance. ("He let you get through," says Evie later on. Peggy: "Yes. I suppose I'm just stubborn, or I love that way.")
Then John Laurie gets up to speak about how wonderful the hospital is, so Anders smashes a few glasses and interrupts with an uncharacteristic outburst. (Yes. It is Fraser from Dad's Army - and David Collings is doomed!)
Anders: "Heroic geniuses? Well, we're not, any of us, are we? We're just a cheap lot of glory-hunting hypocrites... No, let's have the truth for once, shall we, about the almighty surgeon - that butcher in a hero's halo. His secrets and his mistakes. The death toll behind the news, the hastily buried failures. These are his guilt, our guilt. But strictly not for publication."
Dr Hornsey: "You're drunk, Mr Anders. Go home!"
Our intrepid heroes call back to see if he's okay later on. They seem to be good at missing the obvious...
And then everybody has a go at checking he's dead:
(It's pretty much immediately made clear that this isn't a sordid tale of drugs - he's a diabetic and it looks as though he took a second dose of insulin while drunk. So, a sordid tale of drink, though. Oh, and this episode's drunk!David Collings was a first.)
John Laurie then arrives and also feels the need to double check that Anders is dead.
And that was it. But Anneke Wills is very pretty:
I was going to put the details of the plot under a spoiler-cut, because it really was unexpected and interesting (and sad!), but apparently, also really complicated, so I'd better not. Let's just say that it involved dealing with depression, euthanasia, medical ethics, suicide and murder by proxy. Which after the first episode with villains from some mediterranean dictatorship running around with bad accents, kidnapping people, came as a shock. But it was very good. I now have no idea what to expect of any of the other episodes.
Anyway, another picspam. I didn't feel like doing anything else just now.
Anyway, this arrived, and I watched Ep 1 and, since I had got the impression it did some more interesting stories (a little like Special Branch, having Current issues and things, but with action and colour, and Anneke Wills), I was a disappointed that it was so cheesy, but Anneke Wills in colour makes up for a lot. (Also Robert Hardy.) So I thought, I might as well just skip to David Collings's episode, & see what that was like.
Well, he didn't survive the opening credits. That's a record. Anyway, the thing is, this one was much, much more interesting. Except that following the amazing cheesiness of ep1, I was not expecting this one to turn out not to be your standard murder mystery but a little one-episode psychological tragedy. (And while more than five minutes of David Collings would have been nice, everyone spent the whole episode talking about his character and trying to work out how he came to die, so it felt like he was in it a lot more than most of the guest actors who did survive.)
So, picspam. No spoilers (you can't count 'pics from the opening sequence' as spoilers).
Every happy party needs someone to come along and be miserable in it. (More doorway posing also.)
Prf Marks introduces his friend John Anders to his friends Ham and Evie.
I did promise David Collings and Anneke Wills, yes?
John Anders is a brilliant young neurosurgeon, who nobody likes very much. He lives for his work, keeps everybody at a distance and sneers at lesser mortals. (So we hear.)
Oh, except for one person - Nurse Peggy Gale, his fiance. ("He let you get through," says Evie later on. Peggy: "Yes. I suppose I'm just stubborn, or I love that way.")
Then John Laurie gets up to speak about how wonderful the hospital is, so Anders smashes a few glasses and interrupts with an uncharacteristic outburst. (Yes. It is Fraser from Dad's Army - and David Collings is doomed!)
Anders: "Heroic geniuses? Well, we're not, any of us, are we? We're just a cheap lot of glory-hunting hypocrites... No, let's have the truth for once, shall we, about the almighty surgeon - that butcher in a hero's halo. His secrets and his mistakes. The death toll behind the news, the hastily buried failures. These are his guilt, our guilt. But strictly not for publication."
Dr Hornsey: "You're drunk, Mr Anders. Go home!"
Our intrepid heroes call back to see if he's okay later on. They seem to be good at missing the obvious...
And then everybody has a go at checking he's dead:
(It's pretty much immediately made clear that this isn't a sordid tale of drugs - he's a diabetic and it looks as though he took a second dose of insulin while drunk. So, a sordid tale of drink, though. Oh, and this episode's drunk!David Collings was a first.)
John Laurie then arrives and also feels the need to double check that Anders is dead.
And that was it. But Anneke Wills is very pretty:
I was going to put the details of the plot under a spoiler-cut, because it really was unexpected and interesting (and sad!), but apparently, also really complicated, so I'd better not. Let's just say that it involved dealing with depression, euthanasia, medical ethics, suicide and murder by proxy. Which after the first episode with villains from some mediterranean dictatorship running around with bad accents, kidnapping people, came as a shock. But it was very good. I now have no idea what to expect of any of the other episodes.
Anyway, another picspam. I didn't feel like doing anything else just now.