How’d You Spend the 99 Days of Summer 2023 (Part 1)?

by
Scott D. Parker

I read at lot and watched a lot of movies.

There. End of post. See ya.

What did I see and read? I'll recap the reading next week. Here's what I watched...and hopefully you did, too.

Summer 2023 Movies Were Great

When was the last time we had a summer movie season like this? I think many of us earmarked certain dates on the calendar to get ourselves to the movie theater. I did that nearly every weekend this year. The end result was that, with the exception of the Pixar film, Elemental, I saw every movie I wanted to see this summer. And I enjoyed just about every one of them.

The nostalgia of seeing Michael Keaton as Batman was one of the highlights. The film was quite good and I seriously loved the cameos. Speaking of nostalgia, it was great to see Indiana Jones one last time in a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. Heck, it even prompted me to rematch Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls (and it’s not as bad and you or I remember).

And how visually stunning was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Is that the best example of what you can do with animation to tell a rich, engrossing story like that? Asteroid City was another example of a visually interesting movie by local Houstonian, Wes Anderson.

Then there was Barbenheimer. Two great films, polar opposites, but the same weekend. The wife and I saw Oppenheimer on opening night. How stunning was it that a 3-hour movie largely consisting of people in rooms talking went by so fast? And that last line? Barbie was phenomenal. I found myself laughing one moment and tearing up the next. Such a bold, fresh, exuberant film. It’s probably the best of the summer.

But not my favorite. I only saw one movie twice in the theaters and that was Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1. It’s all there, in this film, everything you’ve come to love about M:I films, and this time, we get Henry Czerny back, chewing up scenery and dialogue. Hailey Atwell is a great addition to the franchise, and her chemistry with Tom Cruise is right there on the screen. And that final sequence…with the train? Fantastic. Just as breathless the second time as the first…and I knew what was coming. Love, love, love.

I saw an enjoyed other new films including Meg 2 (it’s exactly what you think it’ll be), Haunted Mansion, and, after watching the first one, Book Club 2. How frigging charming are those movies? More please.

I had the hankering to watch Mad Max: Fury Road (the fourth one) but after about 30 minutes, my wife suggested we go all the way back and start with the original. After the first two (which were interesting), she told me that I was going to feel compelled to watch Thunderdome but that I shouldn’t. She nailed it. What the heck was that? Fury Road was quite good.

There was some great TV as well. The finale of Ted Lasso! Season two of The Bear, especially that episode entitled “Forks.” A stunning hour of television. The old TV series “Brothers and Sisters” and our new favorite thing we’re catching up on: Parenthood. Oh, and on Netflix, there’s a spellbinding documentary called “Cave of Bones.”

Those are the highlights of what I watched this summer. Come back next week when I talk about what I read.

The End of New Amsterdam and the Twilight of Network TV for a Gen Xer

by

Scott D. Parker

One of my favorite TV shows ended its five-year run on Tuesday and I’m wondering if it’ll be the last great network show I watch.

New Amsterdam

Like Castle, New Amsterdam had me at the trailer. The show starred Ryan Eggold (whom I knew from The Blacklist) as Max Goodwin, the new medical director at New Amsterdam, the oldest public hospital in America (based on the real Bellevue hospital). Eggold’s performance on The Blacklist stood out, especially when he was in the same show as series star James Spader, but with Max, Eggold had a role to which he could bring his considerable charm and humanity. It didn’t hurt that he had Max’s mantra as a north star: How can I help?

If you watch the trailer, you get what the series was about: helping people despite the massive forces standing in the way. Over five years, and through a pandemic, Max and his colleagues kept running up against seemingly insurmountable odds. Sometimes they’d win, other times they’d lose, but they kept trying, striving to do what they can.

New Amsterdam ran on Tuesday nights on NBC right after the massive hit This is Us. My wife watched that show from the jump and, like many viewers, often ended episodes with tears in her eyes. I didn’t watch that show, but New Amsterdam proved to be my weekly dose of heartwarming tears.

Storytelling-wise, the writers of New Amsterdam often used a very small story—often a single patient—to tell a larger tale. Like all good TV shows, the supporting cast each had their time the spotlight. A particular favorite was Tyler Labine's Iggy Frome, a psychiatrist, who often ran up against the pillars of big medicine just as much as Max did. A season 5 recurring theme for Iggy was the crumbling of his marriage and having to come to terms with himself before reaching out to his ex-husband and asking him for a simple date, to try again.

Sandra Mae Frank's Dr. Elizabeth Wilder was the Chief of Oncology. The actress is also deaf. She became a love interest to Max in the last season and I found it wonderful not only to see how a deaf surgeon navigated the world of the hearing in the operating room but also how the writers showed a burgeoning love often in silence and sign language.

I enjoyed seeing Jocko Sims's chief surgeon come to terms with things he could not easily fix--like his personal life as well the relationship with mostly absent father--and how Jocko imbued Floyd Reynolds with deep grace and understanding. And Janet Montegomery's Lauren Bloom, a character who grappled with addiction and showed how the messiness in life can be dealt with, but that it's hard and it takes one day at a time, one decision at a time, and the struggle never ends.

The writers and directors brought all their resources to bear in fun way, sometimes using time-honored tropes quite effectively. They did so for the finale episode, adding a nice twist that pulled all the tears from my eyes. [I’ll add my thoughts about the finale at the bottom of this post.]

But what really got me thinking about the end of New Amsterdam is what it might signal for me as a viewer: Would this be the last network TV show I watched on a regular basis?

Network TV for Generation X

Born in 1968, I remember when there were three networks, PBS, and a local UHF station here in Houston. By the time I got to middle school, we had two more local stations, but that was it. Every fall, the three networks would roll out their Saturday morning cartoon lineup, showcasing them in specials that aired the previous night. There'd be articles in the local papers for the new fall TV shows (including a side-by-side grid) and big splashes on TV Guide. I remember scanning all those resources and then making a schedule for what I'd want to watch.

This practice pretty much continued through the publication history of Entertainment Weekly and the birth of the internet when information was much easily found. I'm always game to see what the Big 3 had planned.

With the birth and rise of streaming TV, however, things began to change. Netflix would drop every episode of a new show and you could binge them all in a weekend. Other services followed suit. It was a different way to watch TV. Not wrong, mind you, but different. Just because I grew up in the weekly format doesn't mean I don't appreciate having all episodes of a season at my fingertips. Ever since last summer, my family has been watching the entire run of Friends, an episode a day at dinner, something that would have been difficult prior to streaming. But there is something to having a week to think about and digest plot elements and revelations of any given episode. I remember when Lost was airing, the morning after, a group of us would discuss the newest episode over coffee. It was quite fun.

Things change and I change with them. That's how life is, but I will say I dug when Disney+ opted to drop episodes of its Marvel and Star Wars TV shows on a weekly basis. Sure, it meant the company would secure subscriptions for a longer time, but it was fun to think and read about what the latest revelation about Wanda (WandaVision) or The Mandalorian or Andor might mean.

As Fall 2022 approached, I did my usual thing that I've done all my life: I scanned what was returning and what new shows would debut. New Amsterdam was top of my list even though I knew going in it would be its last. And a shortened 13-episode season at that. It was, however, the only returning show I watched and cared about. The only other network show I watched live--SyFy's Resident Alien--wouldn't be returning until 2023.

That left the new shows. As I read about them and watched previews, I experienced something foreign to my experience: none of the shows appealed to me. Granted, I'm a middle-aged guy now so that might be a thing, but you'd think the shows at CBS would be in my wheelhouse. Some of them probably should be. I'm looking at NCIS or FBI, but for whatever reason, I just never started.

The Future of Network TV

So what's next? Network TV is not going away, but perhaps that majority of its viewers are. The Boomers are slowly dying and us Gen Xers are now in middle age. Millennials grew up in the 1980s and 1990s so they remember what it was like to be in front of a TV on Thursday nights (or set the VCR) but for Gen Z, the ones born in the late 1990s, I don't think network TV barely registers. My son, now twenty-one, rarely watched anything on "live" TV after he stopped watching Blue's Clues. His network is YouTube and streaming. When he moved out of the house, I made sure to load the apps of the local TV stations on his smart TV. "It's for the weather at least," I told him. He just showed me his phone. "I get the weather here."

And he gets his TV there, too.

Now that New Amsterdam is gone, network TV is now the place I watch Stephen Colbert every night. And football until the Super Bowl and then golf on Sunday afternoons without football. If you throw in ESPN, it's also the place I'll catch NBA games, but I think you're seeing the trend. Network TV might become the place for live events where scripted TV shows are things I'll catch on a streaming service.

Might network TV have lost a viewer? Unlikely. Come next fall, I'll still read about the new shows. There might be another New Amsterdam, a new This is Us, or a surprise sitcom that comes out of the blue. I will always be curious to see what network TV has to offer.

But it has been a fascinating realization that the end of New Amsterdam likely marks a point in my lifetime of TV watching.

What about you? Do you still watch network TV or are all your favorite shows on a streaming service?

The New Amsterdam Finale with Spoilers

One of the tropes the writers used in the finale was to give each character their origin story via flashbacks. We see how Max, Elizabeth, Iggy, Lauren, and Floyd each found their way into the practice of medicine. I'll add that I kind of hoped for a flashback to Anupam Kher's Dr. Vijay Kapoor but, as my wife suggested, perhaps the show and the actor didn't part well. Ditto on both accounts for Freema Agyeman as Dr. Helen Sharpe, Max's previous love interest.

In one of those tricks via editing, you see Max's last day at New Amsterdam with his young daughter, Luna, as they try and get out of the hospital. Max has resigned the position of Medical Director in order to spend more time with Luna. There is, of course, a major emergency that will harness the powers and abilities of all the staff and it forces Max to miss the mermaid parade yet again (it's something Luna always wants to attend but they kept missing it because of Max's job, thus the resignation).

 

The editing trick is where you see what is presented as the next medical director, a young woman who showed up and has to deal with whispered rumors about her. Halfway through the show, as Max's edict of "How can I help?" has been uttered more than once, I looked over to my wife and said, "If the final four words of this entire series isn't 'how can I help?', then the writers will have missed a golden opportunity."

They didn't, but they went one better. My wife figure it out first and suggested it: "I think that new medical director is Luna all grown up."

Boom! That is exACTly what it was. Some writer I am. I didn't even see it coming (although, to be fair, I rarely try and guess stories while I'm in the middle of them because in that moment, I'm a viewer/reading rather than a writer).

Turns out, Luna's origin story was Max's last day at New Amsterdam. And it is she, looking directly at the camera, who speaks those famous four words: How can I help? Cut to black and cue the tears.

Oh, and props to the writers for not showing us older versions of the same characters. I first thought I might've wanted to see a gray-haired Max, to see him be proud of his daughter, but then realized my error. And here's the veteran writer tip: you don't have to see Ryan Eggold in old person makeup to know he's proud of his daughter. If you've written characters well, stuff like that is understood and doesn't always have to be shown. Besides, New Amsterdam no longer belonged to Max. It's Luna's story now.

The Surprising Humanity of Resident Alien

By

Scott D. Parker

I really enjoy being surprised by stories and characters.

I started watching the TV show Castle because of the premise and Nathan Fillion, but over time realized that Stana Katic’s Beckett was a deeply emotional character that arguably had the biggest character arc of the entire series. John Scalzi’s novel Redshirts was advertised as a Star Trek parody but ended up delivering an emotional ending so vivid that on the day I finished the story, I couldn’t even talk through the ending to my wife without breaking down.

Add to this list the TV show Resident Alien on the Syfy Channel (still dislike that styling). Billed as a starring vehicle for Alan Tudyk, Resident Alien follows Tudyk’s alien character as he crashes in a small Colorado today. He assumes the physical form of the town doctor—Harry Vanderspeigle, a human who does not survive—and attempts to go about his mission to destroy all humans. In the process, however, he meets and interacts with the residents of Patience, Colorado, and learns what it means to be human and all the messiness therein.

Let’s be honest: Tudyk is a gifted actor who can make you laugh so hard you’ll stomach will ache. A great example of this is the movie “Death at a Funeral,” the original British version. Here, Tudyk’s Harry has an odd way to “smiling,” a childlike wonder at the world, a love of “Law and Order,” and a penchant of saying exactly what he’s thinking without any nuance. In every episode, there will be moments that will definitely make you laugh out loud.

A show like this might need someone of Tudyk’s caliber to get it greenlit, but the supporting cast is what makes the difference, and in Resident Alien, the cast is wonderfully just…normal. And human.

Sara Tomko plays Asta Twelvetrees, a Native American nurse who works with Tudyk’s Henry very close. She’s a town native—nearly all the characters are, a trait that plays into the interactions—who gave up her daughter when she got pregnant in high school, the father being a pretty abusive guy. That decision haunts Asta as it would anyone, which is especially hard when the daughter is now in high school herself.

Asta’s best friend, D’Arcy Bloom (Alice Wetterlund), owns the town bar after a skiing accident at the Olympics derailed her career. She’s a borderline alcoholic who so often makes the wrong decisions that you basically think her lot in life is already cast. She thinks that, too, so when she interacts with everyone, there’s general assumption D’Arcy will just always choose wrong.

Sheriff Mike Thompson (Corey Reynolds) and Deputy Liv Baker (Elizabeth Bowen) provide a steady dose of comedy (just in case you think I’m only zeroing in on the everyday drama). Mike’s a veteran cop from Washington, DC, who left the big city for the small town after his partner was killed. He often doesn’t have the right ideas but hides that fact behind over-the-top bluster. Liv is basically ignored by Mike even though she has her brain in the police game and is often correct about the central mystery of the story: what really happened to the real Harry and why are the government officials snooping around. Bowen deadpan delivery, laced with a real-world resignation that she knows she’s too good for the department but doesn’t know how or where to move.

The mayor is a young Ben Hawthorne (Levi Fiehler), a slight man who likes to make candles and takes a backseat in nearly everything and from everyone, especially his more dominant wife, Kate (Meredith Garretson). He dated D’Arcy when they were in school together and Kate sometimes wonders if there’s still a spark.

There a pair of child actors work mentioning as well. Judah Prehn plays Max Hawthorne, the only child of the mayor and his wife. He and his best friend, Sahar, (Gracelyn Awad Rinke) can see Tudyk’s true alien form. Initially they’re scared but soon some to realize they can get things just by threatening Henry.

This may seem like a lot but the story lines are woven pretty well. There is the overarching story of Tudyk’s true mission and which humans ultimately come to know the truth. That’s almost always played for laughs and the laughs are full and genuine.

But it’s the small moments that makes this show rise above others and shine, and this week’s episode was a great example. Asta did a thing that tormented her so Harry used his alien ability and wiped her memory of the incident. The ripple effect meant she missed not only that memory but other things as well, things that hurt others. It was then that Asta told Harry that everything humans experienced, the good as well as the bad, is equally important. For Harry, he’d just as well just be happy, yet that’s not always possible.

D’Arcy’s actions the past few episodes, relationship-wise, were like walking on thin ice. Would she keep making the bad decision and self-sabotaging her life? That’s what she’s always done and there was a moment in this week’s episode when she fell back into the same habit. She had a moment of reflection and made her choice.

Lastly, there was a recurring theme of death, specifically end-of-life. Henry doesn’t understand it and wants to just have it happen away from him. But as a doctor, he needed to be with a dying man who told Henry how good his long life was and how ready he was to see his deceased wife.

Within the span of about ten minutes of the episode, I went from laughing and literally holding my sides to wiping away the sting of tears.

That’s the kind of show Resident Alien is because that’s the way life is. This is a great show and I highly recommend it.

Review: Reacher

 

By Claire Booth

Finally. After 26 books and a short (ahem) feature film career, Jack Reacher is finally getting the proper treatment. The new TV series, Reacher, premiered Friday on Amazon Prime and after watching a few episodes, I can say it has several things things going for it.

The first is arguably the most important—the physicality of the lead actor. Reacher is a huge guy. It’s not an incidental attribute to the character. As anyone who’s read one of the books knows, it’s key to everything. And the hulking actor Alan Ritchson fits. He also gets the deadpan element of Reacher’s personality: analytical but capable of cracking a joke—if he wants to.

“We were very lucky to find Alan. He nails it on every level,” Child said in an interview with Denver’s ABC 7 (he lives part time in Fort Collins).

Second, it’s a TV series and not a movie. The TV format is just better for crime fiction series. Remember the different beloved series that tried to for successful runs as movies? Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski, and Lee Child’s Reacher are some. Then think about the TV shows, where the characters have time to develop into an ensemble and the plots have time to twist and turn. Think Craig Johnson’s Longmire or Justified (yeah, I know that one was based on just a Elmore Leonard short story, but let’s not quibble when the end product turned out to be genius).

This season of Reacher gives us just one book (the first in the series, The Killing Floor), not an inexplicable mish-mash of several books and a resulting choppy narrative like the movies did. This isn’t to say that the show is a deep and profound look at loss or corrupt law enforcement or small town politics. It’s not. But it’s a head-butting, leg-breaking, no-middle-name good time. Just like the books.

 

Review: Nailed It! The Beauty of Baking Badly

By Claire Booth

I’ve had a lot of things going on lately (car accident*, laptop meltdown**) that have caused me no small amount of stress. Getting the aftermath of all that sorted out derailed my usual crime television routine. I’ve finally been able to sit down a bit the last few days, and the perfect show for my current mindset popped up.

The sixth season of Nailed It! released on Netflix this week and it’s sheer escapism just when I need it. Yes, the crime shows I usually watch are also escapism, but there’s always some part of my brain that’s analyzing them—what works, what doesn’t, how they develop characters, whether the solution is satisfying. Nailed It has none of those things. There’s no crime—unless abusing small kitchen appliances has become a felony—just ridiculously fancy example cakes that inept bakers try to copy.

Host Nicole Byer with baking professional Jacques Torres and a cake most definitely not made by a contestant.

Host Nicole Byer is funny but never descends into meanness, which is especially impressive when you’re having to eat something that tastes like gravel or looks like the cat coughed it up. Some guest judges are better than others, but she’s able to pull along the ones who aren’t so that they don’t detract.

This contestant forgot to add the flour.

If you haven’t watched yet, I recommend you start at the beginning. The show has honed its comedic attitude over the six seasons, making increasingly funnier use of its subtitled baking tips.

I can’t wait to see what words of wisdom this season brings.

* I’m okay. The verdict is still out on my car, though. Lots of damage when the guy plowed into me and spun the car around.

** Microsoft sucks.

Favorite Movies and TV Shows Featuring Railroads

by

Scott D. Parker

Earlier this week, over at the Western Fictioneers blog, I posted this column. It served as a fun list of my personal favorite movies and TV shows that feature trains, but it also revealed the cover of an upcoming collaboration with David Cranmer, aka Edward A. Grainger.

Enjoy.

When you think of what makes a western a western, railroads and trains naturally make it onto the Top 10 list. They may not be in the Top 5, but they certainly play a significant role. I know they did when it came time for me to write my own western stories, especially with the creation of Calvin Carter, Railroad Detective. You see? It's right there in his title.

David and I emerged on the scene more or less at the same time, now over a decade ago. We each ended up creating a western hero. He created Cash Laramie, the Outlaw Marshal, who, along with his partner, Gideon Miles, deal with outlaws and desperadoes wherever they rear their ugly heads. For me, I spawned Calvin Carter, a former actor who, in the course of tracking down the man who killed Carter's father, learned he had a knack for detecting. He often dons disguises and uses his acting abilities to bring a certain amount of flair to the role of his lifetime.

A while back, David suggested we team up our heroes and, after a decade of stops and starts, the first pairing of Cash and Carter will be published this fall. In Cash Laramie and the Sundown Express, owlhoots have hijacked the inaugural run of the fastest train in the west, and it's up to Cash and Miles to retake the train. Unbeknownst to them, Carter is on board, in disguise, as he, too, attempts to thwart the hijackers while saving the passengers, including the renowned actress Lillie Langtry.

David thought it a fun idea if I made a list of favorite trains in movies and TV. I agreed, but then quickly realized something. Not only did my list almost instantly get filled with non-western ideas, but some of the more well known westerns to feature trains were movies or TV shows with which I am not familiar. Thus, you won't find Hell on Wheels on this list because I simply haven't watched it. And while I have watched both versions of 3:10 to Yuma, I can't speak with any authority because I can't remember a lot of the plot. 

So, with these caveats in mind, here's my list.

The Great Train Robbery (1978)

If I'm being honest, this might be the first heist film I ever saw. From the opening of Sean Connery's voiceover explaining how the gold is transported and secured, you sit on the edge of your seat wondering if he and his team will pull off the robbery from a moving train. 

Many of the scenes I first saw in my youth remained with me, but two always rose to the top. The ending, when Connery's Pierce, escapes on the police carriage as he was destined for jail, smiling all the way, his arms extended in a sort of bow, really stuck with me. Only now that I think of it do I think a part of Carter's DNA must have emerged from Connery's performance.

The other scene that has always stuck with me is Donald Sutherland's Agar as he runs into the train office and makes wax impressions of the keys, all within 75 seconds. I was enthralled by that kind of thinking and ingenuity. I think this film might've set the stage for my continued enjoyment of heist films, and it undoubtedly enamored me with the charming con man.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

I only saw this film for the first time this century as it is my wife's favorite western. And really, what more is there to say about this Sergio Leone epic that hasn't already been said? Ennio Morricone's score is brilliant, giving the film not only its epic feel but saying, through music, how the modern world is encroaching on the frontier in the form of the railroad.

I appreciate how the locomotive and the building of the railroad serve as the central character in this film, a character that is, in effect, the march of time and we people must adjust to it or get out of the way. And, unlike many westerns that feature railroads, it was a dirty, hot, and mind-numbingly brutal job, but a job that needed to be done, no matter the cost. Of all of Leone's films, this one remains a favorite.

From Russia With Love

I love James Bond and nearly all of his films, but as I've gotten older, I've become more interested in the movies with smaller stakes. This film, the second in the franchise, has a pretty spectacular train sequence that the historian in me loves. 

After Bond and Tatiana Romanova have escaped with the Lektor cryptograph machine, they flee on one of the most famous trains: the Orient Express. In these scenes in the middle of the film, you get to see what it was like to travel in style in what is probably the last major decade where train travel was considered a viable economic means of transportation before planes surpassed it.

Key to my enjoyment of the train sequence is the fight between Bond and Red Grant (Robert Shaw). It is the close confines of a train compartment that give the fight its brutal nature. No gadgets, just fists and brawn and brains. A different Bond (Roger Moore) would again fight in a train (Moonraker), but this Sean Connery version--look at that; two Connery films--is my favorite.

The Wild Wild West

No discussion of westerns and railroads would be complete without a mention of The Wanderer, the train and tricked out rail car of James West and Artemus Gordon. Again, TWWW was my first, favorite western TV show. Being a Star Wars kid, I loved the gadgets, the steampunk-before-steampunk-was-a-thing vibe, and West and Gordon's "home." No matter how many time owlhoots or Dr. Miguelito Loveless boarded the train, you knew there was something the Secret Service agents could do to get themselves out of any predicament. 

Not only the gadgets, but I also appreciated how there was science equipment for Gordon to do his investigations and his disguises. 

Like the bridge of Star Trek's Enterprise, so many episodes either began or ended on board The Wanderer that it became a crucial component of a wonderfully entertaining TV show.

Back to the Future: Part III

When David asked me the question about railroads in the old west, this is the first one that came to mind. 

I consider the first film to be one of those perfect films not only as a time capsule of its time, but the storytelling mechanics within the movie itself. The second one gave us three looks: their future (2015, now our past), an alternate 1985, and a trippy return to the events of the 1955-part of the first film. 

But I have a special love for Part III. Set almost entirely in the old west, director Robert Zemeckis basically made a western that held true to all the aspects we have come to love about westerns, but with a twist. Doc Brown not only makes a steam-powered ice machine but he also gets a delightful love story.

Act III's central action sequence is on a train, one they have to get up to 88 MPH as it pushes the futuristic Delorean down the tracks and back to the future. Plus we get a spectacular crash as the locomotive in 1888 falls off the incomplete bridge and crashes into Eastwood Ravine.

As fun as that is, however, it's in the movie's closing moments when we get a truly over-the-top train. Doc Brown, his wife, and two boys (Jules and Verne) return to 1985 to say good-bye to Marty McFly in a *flying train*. 

Mic. Drop

Well, those are my favorite trains in movies and TV. What about yours?

That Last Minute of a BBC Series Premiere: Unforgotten

By

Scott D. Parker

BBC shows are a unique thing, and I always find them fantastic.

No matter how tranquil or gritty they might be, there has to be some secret story bible because many of them start the same way. We are shown the detectives, usually in a station or finishing up the last case, chit-chatting with fellow officers. We get to see the victim but we don’t yet know what to feel about him or her other than an untimely death. Then there are all the characters that we’re going to meet and be part of the case.

Yes, I know this is elementary storytelling, but with BBC shows—especially the wonderful Unforgotten—you don’t have anything else to go on. You just see these random characters and not only do you not know who they are, but you also don’t know why they’re important.

Unforgotten, which began its fourth season here in America this past Sunday on PBS, is a cold case show. Interesting timing considering my wife and I just started watching the old CBS show Cold Case just a few weeks ago. What I appreciate most about Unforgotten is the "normalness" of the characters. No typical detectives here (i.e., raging alcoholics with ghosts of the past), just normal people—anchored by Nicola Walker’s DCI Cassie Stuart and Sanjeev Bhaska as DI Sunny Khan, complete with backpack—doing a dirty job, looking into cold cases. Season two was particularly great.

But it has a wonderful way of hooking you, and it all leads up to that final minute of the series premiere. Other than the cops doing their job, uncovering a thirty-year-old crime, there are the other main characters, including Andy Nyman. Now, I know you’re not supposed to laugh at a show like Unforgotten, but my wife and I both started cracking up when Nyman showed up on screen. We know him best from the up roaringly hilarious film, Death at a Funeral, the 2007 film directed by Frank Oz (trailer here). Nyman played a hypochondriac who had some unfortunate fecal issues. I know Mr. Nyman would like a couple of Yankees know he’s more than that character in that movie, but Death at a Funeral is one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen. I’m guessing Nyman’s role in Unforgotten will help us add a layer on his acting credentials.

Anyway, back to that last minute. We’ve seen five random folks, each with their own lives and individual problems. Then, as the camera shows us those five people going about their lives, the detectives are briefed on the case. A crucial piece of evidence has been discovered and you realize…well, it’s a spoiler, right?

Yeah, it is. The show’s only had one episode aired so you can easily catch episode two tomorrow. The premiere is available via your local PBS station and Amazon Prime. 

But suffice it to say the BBC shows have a unique way of hooking the audience’s attention and glueing us to our screens. And I’ve always loved how they do it and I can’t wait to find out more.

Cold Case: The TV Show With Heart

by

Scott D. Parker

It's not every television show that makes me emotional. Despite what you might think, it's pretty rare and often coincides with a series finale. But when it comes to Cold Case, I've teared up about three times watching the few episodes of season one, making it a truly special show.

Discovering the Show

My wife finds a lot of our shows we watch together. I’m not into her “murder shows” (AKA all those true crime series) but but both love detective shows. After reading some review somewhere, she started watching Cold Case a couple of weeks ago. One evening, I waltzed into the TV and she was finishing up the second or third episode of the series. I recognized Kathryn Morris as the lead for this show we just never watched. We both remember the commercials, but I had to go back and research when it actually aired (2003-2010). Shrugging, I sat down and watched the end of the episode.

Then immediately asked to watch the next one with her.

The Premise

Kathryn Morris plays Lilly Rush, a homicide detective specializing in cold cases. She has a lieutenant (John Finn), a pair of peers (Jeremy Ratchford as Nick Vera and Thom Barry as Will Jeffries), and, a couple of partners in the first half dozen episodes. Justin Chambers (Karev from Gray’s Anatomy) was in the first few episodes and he left as was replaced by Danny Pino as Scotty Valens. Not sure the reason Chambers left, but whatever.

Each week, the team tackles a cold case. The, ahem, cold open is always the flashback to the murder. What helps put you in the mood for the time period is the extensive use of era-appropriate music. There we see the characters and the victim and witness the crime.

Flash to the present and Lilly, with her new eyes, does her research and starts to investigate. In the nine or so episodes I’ve watched (up through episode 12, but I missed episodes one and two), Lilly always gets her bad guy.

But that’s not what makes this show special. In nearly every network TV cop show, the bad guy is going to get caught. Whether it’s the science of CSI or the foot leather of Colombo, the bad guy always lose. Cold Case is right there following this same pattern.

So why has it yanked tears from my eyes on at least three separate times?

Because it makes you care.

And those last scenes.

The Fun of Casting

For stories that take place more than a decade in the past, the casting director had the fun task of finding actors to play the same characters at different stages of their lives. This is incredibly effective, especially when it involves kids. Multiple times during the episodes when Lilly goes to interview a person, the present-day actor and the past actor will flash back and forth. It’s to help you remember which one is which, naturally, but it jolts your thinking. 

Some of these crimes involved characters who were children at the time, but no matter how old they were, they still witnessed or were affected by a crime. By having the younger actors flash in and out, it serves as a visual reminder that, for many people involved with a crime, they remain in that time forever. The father who lost his daughter will always be that age in which the cops gave him the bad news. Ditto for the young men in 1964 who had to hide their homosexuality for fear of violent recriminations. 

The Fun of Seeing the Actors

The oldest episodes are now seventeen years old. That’s not too far in the past, but it’s just far enough to where the wife and I have seen them in other roles. I recognized Silas Weir Mitchell’s lips when they were all that the camera showed in early scenes of his episode. He played Monroe in Grimm while another future Grimm actress, Bree Turner, also appeared. The most fun so far is Brandon Routh, the future Superman in Superman Returns. 

Those Last Scenes

Every last scene shows the bad guy being led away by the cops. And in every scene, you get the actor flashback to the past actor. So you’ll see the old man being cuffed and walked past the young boy he killed. And you see the young actor! Ditto for all these episodes. In "A Time to Hate,” the one from 1964 and the murder of a gay man, not only did the creators show you the young actor, but they reinforced the message by using The Byrds’s “Turn Turn Turn.” I could hear the wife sniffling just as she heard me.

How did we miss this show first run? Not sure, but I’m glad the wife found it and we’re watching it. In the cop genre, there are a lot of good shows over the years, but I can’t think of many who pull at the emotions so frequently and so well.

I know what we’ll be watching the rest of this summer.

Glitch TV Show - An Unexpected Delight

by

Scott D. Parker

“Just watch the first episode and let me know what you think.”

That was the request my wife made about Glitch, a TV show out of Australia now streaming all three seasons on Netflix. What was it about? Dead people crawling out of their graves.

Sold.

The show has a solid cast of characters, but the anchor is James (Patrick Brammall), a local policeman in the fictional town of Yoorana in southern Australia. He is called to a local cemetery in the middle of the night for a rather unusual reason: people have crawled out of their graves, in perfect health, but with no memories of their past lives. James enlists the aid of a town doctor (Genevieve O'Reilly) who conducts tests on The Risen. The stinger? One of them is James's wife, Kate (Emma Booth). We know her backstory a bit: she died of cancer and now James has married Kate's BFF, Sarah (Emily Barclay) who is now pregnant. 

The other formerly dead folks include Paddy Fitzgerald (Ned Dennehy), a man who died almost two centuries ago, Charlie (Sean Keenan), a World War I veteran with a statue modeled after himself, Kirstie (Hannah Monson), a young woman with a tragic past, Maria (Daniela Farinacci), an Italian wife who died in a car crash with her child, and Carlo, a man who early on sets the rules for The Risen: as he passes a certain point over a bridge, he disintegrates.

The Science? 

One of the best things about Glitch is it never loses focus on what really matters: the characters. What would it be like to have died of breast cancer and return healthy (and with breasts)? What would it be like to be the victim of a murder and come back, barely remembering who your assailant was? What would it be like to be a gay man in a world in which that was not only a crime but something to keep hidden. 

The creators of Glitch, Tony Ayres and Louise Fox, know that the foundation of a good show is characters we care about, and the wife and I instantly were drawn into the complicated life of James. Here is a married man with a pregnant about to give birth who not only has to figure out why and how dead people have come back to life but one of them is his dead wife whom he stil loves. Patrick Brammall excels in his role as James, often showing his emotion only by facial expressions. The anguish is clear on his expressions and his actions. Even when he makes choices we don't agree with, we felt for him. 

But my wife and I also felt for the other characters, some more than others. Another standout is Chris (John Leary), James's fellow policeman and the single character who remains unaltered by the science of the show. Leary shows Chris coming to terms with what his eyes show him (Kate alive? Other dead people alive?) and the sometime duplicitous actions by James. As the show went on, he became the one character I sincerely wanted to survive. Leary's performance, like Brammall's, are all in his actions, some you expect, and others you don't see coming. Chris has to live with the choices he makes. I shan't tell you, one way or another, what is his fate. You'll have to watch to find out.

By having multiple generations of people awakened, you get to see how, say, Paddy, deals with the 21st Century (he of the 19th). Ditto Charles, the veteran of the Great War. Kirstie and Kate have less of a learning curve, but their backstories still prove compelling.

Back to the science (or magic?) of how these people returned to life, the show does give an explanation, and it is enough of one to pass muster. But there's not a lot of focus paid on it. All attention is given to the characters, the ones who have come back and the ones who, somehow, are also "altered" and who seem to be out to kill the Risen.  

Who are they and why are they trying to kill The Risen? The show keeps their origins vague for the most part--better to propel the mystery of the show--but some characters change during the course of the 18-episode, 3-season show. 

The Ending

I've read a few articles about the show and fans were notified that season 3 was going to be it for the show. But, the showrunners promised, while the show was cancelled, a satisfying conclusion was to be delivered.

And they delivered. In spades. And tears. 

Not to give away the ending, but the wife and I were simultaneously satisfied and wiping away tears. It was an excellent ending, well earned, and wholly predictable when you look back on it. But even if you guessed how the show needed to end, it doesn't take away from the emotion of the moment. Any show that brings tears to my eyes is a good show. That Glitch, a show with a very unusual beginning, did so, makes it a wonderful 18 hours of television, and one of the best things we've seen on TV in 2020.

Highly recommended