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Reviews
Engrenages (2005)
Better and darker with each episode
This 8 part French detective serial is going out un-publicisied on BBC3 in the UK. It has some resemblances to the very darkest American cop shows, but is really grimmer and dirtier. There are unifying themes and tangents which may work into the main plot. It's impossible to explain how different things are from a UK police drama. The legal system is very different and it's fascinating to follow - who has power to do what to whom. The Police and Prosecutors aren't exactly corrupt, but in a way they can't help being. The police look like criminals and work out of what seems like a run-down basement. A brilliantly convoluted thriller, with all the fascination of a really alien legal system, Paris backdrop, washed out colours, general decay. Final episode on BBC next week, but you should be able to see it somewhere. I see from Amazon France that there's a second season.
The Cops (1998)
A step ahead of other police dramas
This was a drama that refused to allow you any easy entertainment, had you quite disorientated at regular intervals, made 'minor' dramatic events absolutely absorbing, and was transfixing from the start nearly to the finish, which I felt slackened off a bit. There are hardly any clear moral rights and wrongs. The actors are mostly completely amateur, but obviously brilliantly schooled by the producers/director in how to be realistic. Just every so often the BBC can come with work such as this, like 'Bodies' which make standard police/hospital/etc. dramas seem absurdly unreal by comparison. I came out of these programmes feeling genuinely stirred, and, as if I'd really been involved in something.
Invasion (2005)
Please just slow down and let it happen
Spoiler for UK viewers not on digital - one episode ahead.
I hope the rumours aren't true and the TV company isn't ditching this series and I'm sorry that so many people around the world have such short concentration spans. The build up of tension and character is excellent and Mariel is a brilliant central character, constantly ill at ease with herself and not knowing exactly why. The Sheriff seemed to be probably a nasty bloke, but after his confrontation with the psychopathic girl it seems different. This is a very ambitious series which treats us like adults and I just hope it works out. In the UK terrestrial channel they show Invaders at 8pm *censored*. It's ludicrous, and makes some of the scenes completely meaningless. All they had to do was show it at 9.00. Lucky we get it uncut on digital. I think the US is one or two episodes ahead of us, I'm not sure. Does anybody know?
Green for Danger (1946)
The *perfect* comedy whodunnit. (VERY MILD SPOILER)
This is a perfectly constructed, beautifully written British comedy whodunnit from the beginning to the delightful end. It belongs in the same class as 'Kind Hearts and Coronets', though less ambitious, and certainly 'The Lavender Hill Mob'. It's a pick-me-up post war film which starts off with Alisdair Sim's delightful narration and then introduces a very tense and quite complicated plot surrounding mysterious deaths at what used to be known as a 'cottsge hospital'. V2 rockets are falling everywhere to add to the tension. A third of the way through Alsdair Sim appears in person as a detective, and lights the whole thing up with sublime comic acting, helped by a wickedly funny script. (IMHO Sim is the greatest comic actor in the whole of cinema.) The only reason I can think why this film isn't more well-known is that it's so perfectly understated that it passes 'under the radar' as it were. The fact that it's only available on video in the US, and not the UK is a scandal.