Cult TV Blog

I have been away and watched some current day television. It was rubbish, by and large, but gave me some ideas for posts here. I watched some Murder She Wrote and remembered how I got myself in trouble some time ago by asking if Angela Lansbury strikes Americans as a convincing American. I was hoping for a yes or no answer and didn't get one! So I thought I'd relive it by writing about an American playing Miss Marple. ...who of course isn't a convincing English person to a native speaker, but this film does a good job overall of portraying a cast of mixed nationality as British, while having a good go at dealing with our ridiculously complicated social stratification, and the film ends up very watchable. I would be interested in how they sound to US viewers. In general I shouldn't like this film, because it is a festival of big names, in addition to Helen Hayes we have Bette Davis and Leo McKern. They are such good actors that their presence isn't distracting. I s...

I'm on holiday this week and hence a post about one of my favourite Avengers episodes, which is a jolly romp about a hotel. Except it isn't, since this Avengers draws on the classic fear found in many a dream, where the protagonist finds himself in a situation where nobody believes him. In this case the prison is a luxury hotel and nobody can believe it is a prison. Out here in the real world this situation is of course what underlies many a situation of abuse, and it is no coincidence that I am writing this post shortly after the Abbot of Ealing Abbey has belatedly resigned from his position in the wake of the inquiry into child sexual abuse showing the paucity of his response to complaints. One of his predecessors is in prison after being on the run from the police, and another monk and several lay teachers are also in prison. But who would have believed that those holy men would be abusers? Just as who would believe a hotel would be so difficult to escape from? That is t...