Thriller: Lady Killer

Yesterday I went to Leamington Spa, which is not far from here but is always an expensive journey because there is someone there with the same taste in TV as me, who keeps selling his or her DVDs to the entertainment exchange, and I keep buying them. Yesterday I bought series 1 of a series I have never heard of before, Rogue's Rock, but which I find I like because it is definitely out of the same stable as Freewheelers, even down to some of the same music. In non-TV I bought the horror film spoof Young Frankenstein, and bought the boxed set of Thriller. I have seen the show before but not for some time and have somehow never blogged about it here.
Thriller is one of those series which is described as legendary by some, and since it is an anthology series, you can often find it described as mixed. Lady Killer is the first episode, and it's excellent, despite embodying virtually everything I dislike in television of this era! For a start the three main characters are played by very familiar faces indeed, and it is a little strange to see Robert Powell with Tara King and Agent 99! What saves the situation here is that both women play roles which are quite different from the roles in which I am familiar with them. Feldon in particular plays a character who very successfully turns the tables on her nasty piece of work husband, played by Powell. He gets the lack of emotion required by his character exactly right, and the calculating way in which he plots is really quite chilling. Thorson's role requires a certain naivety, so of the three my opinion is that her character is least successful because she reminds me personally too much of Tara King's hero worship of Steed. This is of course entirely personal and other people may not see the role like this.

There are other things which tend to put me off usually. Of course there have always been people from all sorts of places in Britain, and that isn't a problem at all, but it normally annoys me when I know that some of the cast are American because that was perceived to make the show more attractive to US audiences. Is that actually the case? My perception from the TV blogosphere is that people from the US love UK TV without the assistance of their compatriots. Apparently there are also people called Anglophiles who love everything British even our tea! It is of course the fact that commercial considerations decided the casting which normally irritates me. It doesn't here though. Also normally I would be very critical of the claustrophobic feel of the obviously set-bound recording, but in this case the claustrophobic feel is exactly right to increase the feeling of danger.
Just one or two criticisms. The first is a plot weakness, because while the episode manages to be gripping to the end, from before the middle it is very obvious that Tanner is going to come a cropper, the only question is how it is going to happen. There are also some weaknesses in his characterisation: a man who marries his second wife without telling her about the first is asking for trouble. I have a criticism of the technical production of the Network DVD boxed set, which is that at the end of each episode it begins playing another episode. Somebody wasn't concentrating when the episodes were remastered and then they weren't checked properly before being released.
In other news it has been a glorious weekend here and I have been bare chested for the first time this year.
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