My problem with ‘Elementary’ (after 2 and a half seasons): there’s simply much too much of it. It’s a solid, entertaining show, at times even hilarious, but the murder of the week format over 22 episodes per season is just not doing the quality any favours. I keep returning to this for three or five episodes - and then I’m just not interested any more.
And this while I think generally the characters are not just more realistically drawn and developed than their British counterparts, they are also more likeable because they don’t carry the entire Holmes canon heavy on their shoulders. The whole ‘Elementary’ is much less concerned with its own importance or a frantic search to be ‘clever’. I came to dislike that particular schtick of the competition. But why oh why must there be so awfully many episodes? I really wish they had made just half the number.
I watched it around two years ago every workingday it started when I came home. I really liked it a lot with a couple of twists (Moriarty/ Adler), but because I saw it twice in a row I don’t think I will buy it, because the repeatedly entertainment turned out to be fairly limited. It’s not like Columbo that I can repeat it endlessly and still like it.
I Know This Much Is True (2020 HBO series starring Mark Ruffalo): I thought I knew where this was going, based on Mark Ruffalo’s appearance on The Graham Norton Show. I don’t know if I’m misremembering what they talked about. As always, they were trying to describe the plot without giving away any spoilers. And maybe there was some intended misdirection. I’d have to watch again.
Anyway, I anticipated a possible supernatural, or at least “unreliable narrator”, element to the story, but it stayed mostly on track as a believable view into the life of someone living with schizophrenia, and the toll it takes on his twin brother. We witness their emotional pain, but also that of others in their lives. Pain is the dominant theme. What arises out of that is whether flawed, damaged people can find their way forward, even when everything seems hopeless.
Ruffalo’s portrayals of the twin brothers are nothing short of remarkable. I expected that, given his track record. But the real revelation, for me, was Rosie O’Donnell. This is only the second movie I can recall seeing her in (the other being A League of Their Own). I completely believed her as the social worker, which I did not expect.
I Know This Much Is True is an intense, draining experience … but one that is well worth it.
I also watched the DVDs of the later Columbo episodes from the late 80’s/early 90’s. I always had the memory that it wasn’t very good, also fueled by everything you read about it over the years, but quite honestly? I thought it was pretty good and still fun. Maybe not at the same high level as the original episodes, but it certainly wasn’t bad.
Well, I have to admit right away that I skipped the episode that I remembered as the worst Columbo episode ever. I mean the second episode: Smoke and Shadows with Fisher Stevens, the least charismatic actor and murderer ever and in a very boring episode with a crappy ending. I understand what they were trying to do, namely a young director a la Steven Spielberg, with a nod to him because he once directed the first episode of Columbo, but the result was really crap.
But what I had apparently completely forgotten is that a number of strong actors returned to play the murderer in this newer series, including George Hamilton, William Shatner and Patrick McGoohan even twice and he also directed a number of episodes. They all delivered!
But the one who really stands out above everyone else for me is Rip Torn, he really is the ideal Columbo villain this time. It is actually practically impossible to find and point to even one scene in which he is not scamming someone, lying, or cheating on his wife. It was really fun to watch him, the episode itself wasn’t even very special, but Torn made up for everything on his own!
I have to watch the last couple of episodes, I think I will do next weekend.
Oh! I forgot to mention: there is also the participation of probably the biggest movie star to ever participate in the series, namely Faye Dunaway as murderess. She knows how to completely seduce both me, the viewer and Columbo and make her eat out of her hand, as we put it in the Netherlands. There is also a nice supporting role from Rod Steiger as an ex-Mafia boss in another episode. Even one of the episodes features Robert Culp, unfortunately not as a murderer this time, which is a bit of a missed opportunity.
In short: the newer episodes also have their fair share of positive aspects, but… if they are mediocre in quality, they are immediately the least good of the entire series.
Weird, the wife and I have recently gotten into this one as well after studiously avoiding it when it was first on, like you possibly because it was contemporary to “Sherlock” and I could only muster enough broad-mindedness to tolerate one 21st-century “update” of the characters. (I wonder if that lends any credence to the idea that, say, a Superman TV show can’t succeed while Superman movies star a different actor, and vice-versa?).
Around Thanksgiving, I read “A Study in Crimson,” in which author Robert Harris takes the unusual approach of writing an adventure for the Basil Rathbone version of Sherlock Holmes as he appeared in the Universal film series, set in the 1940s with Nazi spies, barrage balloons, buzz bombs and the whole nine yards. That in turn led me to seek out the films and watch them again for the first time in decades, and now we’ve landed on “Elementary” which brings Holmes even further ahead in time.
In general, and maybe because I’ve now had all that other material to loosen me up, I’m quite enjoying the show, and it’s one of the few shows I like that my wife actually likes as much or more, so there’s that. Still working on the first season, so we’ll see if and when boredom sets in.
It also helps that I’m no longer bound by “loyalty” to Cumberbatch’s series, which started well but ended in the most spectacularly horrific crash and burn in television history, which is saying something from a guy who’s old enough to have endured in real time the last couple of years of The Six Million Dollar Man and Season 2 of Space: 1999.
Caught myself watching an episode now and then when I happened upon it and found it quite interesting. But not enough to make me a regular viewer. Daresay that it might have made more impact without the Cumberbatch series.
But whenever I really need a fix of Holmes, I’ve got my Jeremy Brett box sets at hand…
…think, think…
Haven’t watched those for years, you gave me an idea there…
My husband loves that series. I know he’s feeling nostalgic when he dusts off his DVDs and sits down to watch. I can watch episodes from the original Star Trek, but I just can’t work up any enthusiasm for Space: 1999. Part of my problem is that I remember Martin Landau and Barbara Bain from Mission: Impossible, and so I just can’t buy into them here.
Where did the new uniforms for Season 2 come from?
Must have been an Adidas outlet somewhere in Britain…
Space 1999 was actually quite huge for a few weeks here. There was a Panini sticker album and a cover story on Zack, the prime comic magazine for franco-belgian comic art. Plus a photo tie-in to the pilot episode, giving some more feedback on the characters. It was promising to be the next Star Trek - until it was not.
The storylines were pretty pedestrian, the effects not very convincing. Apart from the few scenes at the Eagle hangar ramps it was way beyond what the older competitor had shown, also in terms of production values. The second season tried to give it more action and attraction with the shape shifter alien. But overall it was doomed. Its cult status was mainly earned by there not being many other sf shows at the time. I dare say it might have fared better had they just done one more UFO season.
Yes, there were Eagles, action figures and that strange gun they had. Another thing Space 1999 had going for it. The Garry Anderson shows - UFO, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet - generally kept the toy departments in the stores in business. At least until Star Wars broke all the records.
But Space 1999 really petered out after a brief few months - it started its run here when production was already cancelled - and the weird selection of episodes and cutting them to size to German tv scheme saw to it there wasn’t a true demand to see more of the show.
It was perhaps also bad timing, Britain was in an economic downward spiral and their tv’s strong sleeve, making the most out of a shoestring budget, just didn’t lend itself to a genre that needed at least some money to spend on sets and effects. People wanted to see something with space ships and aliens, some Star Trek version updated to the 70s. That just wasn’t Space 1999’s turf.
Had that show come in a Black Mirror environment and put the emphasis on what the bizarre odyssey meant for the Alphans this could be a success even today.
The first season was bleak and creepy, almost Twin Peaks-like with its “wait, is everyone just dreaming” vibe. At the time, it fascinated me, but now it’s hard to get through. I do love the Eagles and the look of the original control room. I never did entirely decide where I fell on the “laser-firing staple guns.” “Dragon’s Domain” is glorious, just the kind of therapy-inspiring nightmare fuel that only British SF can provide. But Landau and Bain were both past their sell-by dates as “dynamic leads” and seemed to be in a never-ending contest to prove who could provide the most wooden delivery.
I still remember watching the first episode, where Koenig is taking a shuttle to Alpha to assume command, and thinking, “That would be a cool job. I wonder if I’ll still be alive in 1999?” (does the mental math) “Yeah, but I’ll be really old. Like 35!”
I actually greeted the second season with some excitement because they pulled on colorful jackets over those lame pajamas and revamped the theme song with an “action” vibe, but it didn’t take long to realize it had gone in the toilet in every way that really mattered.
Where did the new uniforms for Season 2 come from?
More to the point, where did Tony Verdeschi come from? No sign of him at all in Season 1, then suddenly he’s one of the most important job-holders on the whole Moonbase.
What kind of killed the show for me in the end was that I learned it had started life as “UFO: Season 2.” UFO is such a superior show in every possible way that I’ll forever lament it didn’t get a shot. (“The network says we need a couple of big American stars to sell the show.” “I know just the ones we need.”)
When I was a kid I had a crush on Barbara Bain. I watched Space 1999 only to see her, but I didn’t realy care of the series itself, I can’t remember anything about it, I believe I didn’t realy understand it, I was around 8 or 9 years old when it was aired in The Netherland if I remember correctly. Nowadays I would watched it for Catherine Schell, by the way she’s also in the newer Columbo series as a woman who wants revenge on Columbo, because she sees him as the one responsible for her husband being convicted and dying in prison.
By the way, as a child being crazy about a lady from TV, who could be my mother in terms of both appearance and age, what does that say? What would Freud think about this?
UFO season 2 would have had the major advantage of playing in a familiar environment, with a mysterious adversary that sets out to undermine Earth’s defences and infiltrate key positions. They could have reused first season sets and expand on some of the moon base/SkyDiver elements while location shooting wouldn’t have called for too much expense since it wasn’t supposed to be all flying cars and aliens. It’s a shame that show didn’t get to see its second season.
Never really warmed up to it, and even though my brother and I used to watch it, I don’t remember that much of it. It just wasn’t Star Trek, and also, maybe it just wasn’t for 7 year olds. Also – unlike with Star Trek – I never watched any re-runs of it. But I did love those Eagles
BTW, the German Wikipedia article on the series says that parts of the sets were reused in the radar jamming room in Moonraker. No reference is given, though. Anyone who knows more?
