Marcella - ITV review

A few years ago, a chap at ITV asked me who I'd like to be cast as Hannah Scarlett in a projected televised version of the Lake District Mysteries. Several names sprang to mind, some of them more obvious than others. Among them was that of Anna Friel, a terrific actor whom I first saw in Brookside many years ago. She's become a big star since then, and I didn't really think she'd ever become Hannah. In fact,,that particular TV deal - like every other television deal to date concerning my books - never came to anything, though it did pay for a couple of lovely holidays. But tonight, Marcella aired on ITV. And guess who plays the eponymous female cop? Yep,it's Anna.

We first see Marcella, bruised and battered, recovering in a bath from some mysterious ordeal. What has happened to her? Well, by the end of episode one, I wasn't much the wiser, but I thought the storyline was engaging - definitely good enough for me to keep watching. The script is by Hans Rosenfeldt, who wrote The Bridge - it's his first drama for British television.

Inevitably, some elements of the storyline are familiar. (The same will, no doubt, be said if ever the Lakes books do make it to the screen - and you never know, it may happen one day...) But that, to my mind, isn't really a problem. So many detective stories have been written that true originality is very, very rare. The key question is whether the writer has mixed up the ingredients skilfully enough to produce something truly appetising.

When judging TV dramas, I often think back to the early series of Taggart written by Glenn Chandler. Those stories had a quality of the off-beat that Marcella, for all its quality, lacks. But the London setting is evocatively presented, the mysterious link between the killings and corruption in a construction business (shades of The Long Good Friday?) are nicely done, and Friel has a compelling screen presence. We'll have to see how the plot thickens, but so far, I'm rather taken with Marcella.

The Lookalike - movie review

The Lookalike is a very recent film - so recent, in fact, that I've not read any reviews of it. I wondered if this was a bad sign, and the fact that the cast was completely unknown to me (this is probably just my ignorance, as the actors do a very good job) didn't help. My anxieties were compounded when I gleaned that it's a story with a plot which revolves around drug dealing. I read a report of an inquest into the death of someone who died from a drug overdose recently, and found the sheer waste of lie and potential to be very sad, and deeply depressing. Drug dealers in films may be marginally less repellent than their real life equivalents, but I usually find stories, whether in the form of a novel or a screenplay, about their world utterly unappealing. So why did I decide to give the film a try?

I suppose it's because I'm fascinated by stories about identity, and the idea of lookalikes is one that has interested me for a long time. Similarly, I'm very interested in twins, especially identical twins, and the very close bond that exists between them. Some of the most interesting books and films I know concern mysteries of identity of one kind or another. I recently watched again an early episode of Taggart that made clever use of the notion of identical twins  - though during the Golden Age, Ronald Knox made clear his disapproval of plots that relied on the cheap trickery of introducing a character's twin at the last minute.

Rather to my surprise, I found The Lookalike to be, on the whole, a gripping and entertaining story. It's also convoluted, in a way that I found unexpectedly satisfying. I don't want to say too much about it for fear of giving the main twists away, but briefly two brothers who need to make money in a hurry get involved, separately, with two attractive women, whilst at the same time becoming embroiled in a scam with two very unpleasant gangsters.

One of the gangsters has accidentally killed an attractive young woman who was to be used in a sordid money-making scheme. They need to find her lookalike in order to make sure that the money comes in, and one of the brothers is given the job of finding the unlucky woman. I felt that one character behaved in a self-sacrificing way that was, to me, unbelievable, and this did weaken the film's impact. Nevertheless, it kept me watching from start to finish, and wondering how things would turn out. .Not a masterpiece, but not bad, either.

The Craft of Writing: Economy of Style

A book I've just been reading, and a TV show I've just watched, made me think about the value in writing of an economical style. If a writer avoids wasting words and scenes, the material makes so much more of an impact, and this is, I think, true in all forms of fiction. Short stories, certainly, but also novels. Now, a novel's length allows space for some digression, and there are plenty of examples of this working very well. On the whole, though - and certainly for writers who are not very experienced - I think that less is more.

The book in question is a Golden Age mystery by Leo Bruce that I'll cover on this blog shortly. It's actually an interesting and relatively original story, with a memorable setting. There was plenty to like about it. But for me it fell short of the highest standards because there was just too much padding. Too often, I was willing Bruce to get on with it. And that's not a reaction that a writer wants in readers.

I had a very different experience when I watched again an episode of Taggart that I last saw when it was screened, way back in 1987. This was The Killing Philosophy, written by the brilliant Glenn Chandler, and it was a masterclass in how to write economically. From start to finish, the story packed a real punch. There are plenty of thrillers from a quarter of a century or more ago that show their age. But this screenplay was clever and occasionally witty, and included some interesting observations about society and people's behaviour, without labouring them.Chandler was ambitious enough to pack a great deal into his story,and he managed to do so without being cumbersome because his style is lean and he never overdoes things.

The Killing Philosophy is the story of a masked man - "the Bowman" - who terrorises a series of women in Glasgow. When a weird student falls for an attractive married woman, he comes up with a cunning plan to dispose of her husband, and the plot complications come thick and fast. I enjoyed it just as much the second time around. When it was first screened, I was just thinking about the idea that would become my first novel. I like to think that Glenn Chandler's brilliant example reminded me of the need to keep the story driving forward, and it's a lesson I try to keep in mind when writing to this day.

Classic Taggart - Nest of Vipers

We often recall television programmes of long ago with great affection, only to be rather disappointed when we see them today, in an age when production values tend to be so much higher,and even very good shows are apt to look very dated. There's still, in my opinion, a great deal of nostalgic pleasure to be had from watching the best shows of the past, but I have to admit that sometimes they don't stand up to searching comparison with today's television.

I wondered if this would be the case with the shows in the Classic Taggart DVD set which I was delighted to receive as a present recently. I decided to start out by watching a story written by the show's creator, Glenn Chandler, which dates back to 1992. Nest of Vipers made a great impression on me when I first saw it - the storyline is creepy and complex,and you can never be sure where it is going. But would it stand the test of time?

The answer was a triumphant yes. Even now, the pace, complexity and sheer fascination of the story is as good as anything you will find on television today. In the course of the past year, I've watched plenty of enjoyable crime dramas, with cop shows ranging from Lewis, Endeavour, Vera, Shetland, and DCI Banks among the best. It remains to be seen if they will last as well as Nest of Vipers, but suffice to say that I've not seen anything better in the past year, even though this time I could remember some, at least, of the plot twists.

The success of the story owes a huge amount to Chandler's brilliant script, and also to Mark McManus's superb performance as Taggart. In this story, he becomes emotionally involved with a woman whose daughter has been missing for four years. When two skulls are discovered, reconstruction work suggests that the daughter has been found at last. But who was the other victim? And what is the link between the discovery of the skulls and the sinister killing - by means of snake venom - of people connected with a company involved in scientific research?

Dougray Scott, no less, made a great impression in this show, which was a stepping stone to a highly successful career. The cast as a whole was excellent. I admired again the skill with which Chandler scattered his red herrings, and how cleverly he built suspense and mystery. All in all, Nest of Vipers is a superb piece of television, and along with several other early Taggarts, one of the best crime shows I've ever seen.

How many characters in a novel?

When starting a new book, a vital question is: how many main characters will take part in the story? This is closely linked with the question of how many murder suspects to include, although the two issues are not quite identical. I often give this a lot of thought, because it is vital that readers care about the characters, even if they don't like some of them. My latest reflections on this topic have coincided with reading a book by Ruth Rendell which highlights the dilemmas that an author can face.

I mentioned the other day that I pay attention to and try to learn from critical, as well as positive, comments in reviews, as long as they seem sensible, and supportively meant. In relation to a couple of books I've written in the past, a question has arisen about whether the early part of the book was challenging because of the introduction of a significant number of people and plot strands. (On this topic, Kate Ellis and I agreed at Blackpool last week that our tendency in this direction had been influenced by those wonderful early series of Taggart by Glenn Chandler.)

In The Frozen Shroud, I tried to address this by reducing the number of potential suspects. This made me worry that the solution to the mystery might be too obvious, but I'm reassured by the reviews that are in to date. With my new book, though, I'm going to tackle the issue in a different way.

Ruth Rendell's The Saint Zita Society boasts an unusual way of helping the reader disentangle what was going on. Rather than have a 'cast of characters' in the manner familiar from some trarditional mysteries (those fine writers Ngaio Marsh and Christianna Brand were keen on this device), the publisher included a diagram of Hexam Place on the endpapers of the book. This showed the houses and listed their occupants. A neat concept though I have to say that, even so, I  found myself overwhelmed with the number of people who cropped up in the first fifty pages, not something I've ever experienced when reading with this gifted writer. Clearly, she too is continuing to experiment with her approach, and that is what keeps authors fresh..

The Shadow Collector by Kate Ellis

The Shadow Collector is the 17th and latest entry in Kate Ellis's series featuring Di Wesley Peterson.and set in a fictionalised version of Dartmouth. Reading these books has, over the years, made me keen to explore the area, and towns like Dartmouth and Totnes ('Neston' in this book), to which I've only paid flying visits in the past.

Very often with Kate's books, there is an atmospheric theme that links in with her interest in archaology. For example, in The Jackal Man (which, along with The Cadaver Game, is my favourite of her novels) it was Egyptology. Here it is witchcraft. Eighteen years ago, two modern 'witches' were found guilty of murdering two girls whose bodies were never found. The older woman is now dead, but her daughter is released from prison shortly before the action begins.

Kate, like me, is a fan of the dazzling early series of Taggart, written by Glenn Chandler, which used to begin with a series of complicated and seemingly distinct storylines which were eventually woven together in a compelling and elaborate way. This approach is mirrored in the opening chapters of this novel,which introduce several storylines, and an extensive cast of characters. In true Taggart fashion, It's a bit dizzying in the early stages, but as the book develops the strands begin to connect.

There's a very clever twist towards the end that I didn't see coming, even though I had focused on the right culprit. As with classic Golden Age mysteries, you do need to suspend your disbelief in one or two places (was the original evidence strong enough to sustain two murder convictions? why did the culprit make one particular life choice?) , but Kate's skill with plot makes this a  pleasure. As she is a good friend of mine, it's difficult for me to be totally objective, but I genuinely believe that this book, like the other Wesleys, will appeal to fans of Golden Age stories as well as lovers of contemporary mysteries with lots of plot complications. It's extraordinary that this very entertaining series is not even better known.
 

Case Sensitive: The Other Half Lives, episode 2 - and TV dramas' length

Case Sensitive: The Other Half Lives concluded tonight, and a lot of plot development was packed into an hour. This meant that some bits of the narrative seemed rushed – especially in the way that the two detectives got together, seemingly out of the blue. This made me wonder about the pros and cons of splitting up a crime drama like this, in two hour-long episodes, shown on successive nights, in this case a Thursday and a Friday. What is the best way of presenting a TV crime drama?

In the 1980s, the early and best days of Taggart, stories were split into three episodes, each an hour long, shown in successive weeks. This template worked extremely well for the clever and complex Glenn Chandler stories, and I was hooked time after time. For me, this remains classic TV crime.

Conversely, the rather stately place of early two-hour single story episodes of Inspector Morse had a different kind of appeal. One was drawn in by the mood of the show, as well as the story-line (and, of course, the superb acting, high-calibre screenplays, and fantastic setting.)  This model continues to work brilliantly with Lewis, and overall the Oxford-based series are my favourites in the two-hour format. I’ve also enjoyed Inspector George Gently, and Vera, which are based on the same approach.

The Case Sensitive template has been used, for instance, in the adaptations of the books of two fine writers, Peter Robinson and Mark Billingham. I’m not myself convinced, though, that the two-parter is such a great idea. Really, it’s neither one thing nor the other. The Other Half Lives was watchable, but somehow, I felt, more could have been made of Sophie Hannah’s material.

The Killing II - review

The Killing II finally came to an end this week-end. I'm not going to talk about the story-line in detail, because I imagine that some readers of this blog will be wanting to catch up with the later episodes in the near future. But a few thoughts do strike me.

This was a show of ten episodes of an hour each, which I felt began very well, and also ended strongly. At first I thought there was a tocuh of early Taggart in the enigmatic and inter-related story-lines, but this comparison only survived the first couple of episodes. Althought the plot was tangled, and had one or two good aspects, it wasn't as clever as the work of Glenn Chandler, who created Taggart.

The acting was good and the production values were pretty high. However, I felt the story sagged very badly in the middle. There were stretches when I was rather bored, and this was because the characters' relationships, although not without interest, weren't compelling enough to sustain such a protracted exercise. The political aspects of the story really didn't excite me at all.

I am still intending to watch the original series of The Killing, which attracted so many rave reviews. But overall, I'd have to rate The Killing II as a disappointment. It had a number of strengths, but to justify ten hours of story-telling, you need to have a really outstanding tale to tell. For me, at least, The Killing II too often felt like an endurance test. The story simply wasn't strong enough to justify such an investment of time.

The Killing II - review

The Killing II started on BBC Four this week-end and I made sure I watched it. I missed out on the first showing of the original cult hit series from Denmark The Killing, a gap in my TV viewing I mean to fill as soon as I can, given the enormously positive reception it received.

So what do I make of the follow-up? Well, the first two episodes were extremely watchable (the more so by comparison, since the previous night I’d watched a rubbishy film called The Resident which was shorter than the two hour-long episodes but was so annoying that it felt as though it might never finish).

The story is a mix of the personal and the political, a bit like the recent UK series Hidden, but better. A woman is found murdered in bizarre circumstances. Her husband is a suspect, but it soon seems that there may be a link with a second killing. The woman was a military lawyer who worked in the Middle East, the man was an ex-soldier. A third strand of the story involves another ex-soldier, now confined to an institution and mysteriously denied his release.

The structure of The Killing II reminded me of the early series of Taggart. Three or four enigmatic story-lines, connected in some (we hope) ingenious way. And, as in the Glaswegian series, dogged detective work, this time by Sarah Lund and Ulrik Strange.  The suggestion at the moment is that Muslim fundamentalists are responsible for the killings, but we don’t really believe that, do we? Could the military man who is father-in-law to the institutionalised bloke be key to the story? That’s my bet at the moment, but we shall see. I certainly plan to keep watching.

Vera and Lewis

Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera Stanhope, had a good second outing with Telling Tales, based on a first rate novel by Ann Cleeves.The screenplay was by Paul Rutman.

This was a story where a good deal of focus was on the characters of Vera and, to some extent, her relationships with her sidekick and members of her team. It's interesting to compare and contrast this enjoyable new series with an old favourite. I gather, to my amazement, that we have now had no fewer than five series of Lewis, of course following countless episodes of Inspector Morse. And the latest series ended with a highly enjoyable episdoe, The Gift of Promise.

The story was about the murder of a woman who runs a scheme to promote the cause of gifted children, and as ever the body count quickly mounted. But what I liked most was the way the story was set up. Usually in Lewis, there is a crime right at the start, but this time a whole range of seemingly unconnected and sometimes rather odd incidents occurred. All very tantalising, and it reminded me of the early days of Taggart, when Glenn Chandler came up with some wonderfully convoluted story-lines. Here, the mysterious threads were gradually woven together - an excellent example of screenwriting and possibly my favourite Lewis so far.

Little Voice

Little Voice, the 1998 movie, is not a crime film – although it features several actors very familiar in roles from crime films or TV series – but has a screenplay which illustrates the interplay between story-line and characterisation. It is based on a play written by Jim Cartwright, and I thought it a well-crafted piece of work.

Cartwright’s approach is to create vivid and memorable characters. Jane Horrocks is Little Voice, the almost mute young woman who is devoted to her late father, a fan of light music, and possesses a dazzling gift for mimicking singers such as Shirley Bassey, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe. Her mother, played by Brenda Blethyn, is loud and tarty, and she is ‘discovered’ by a small time showbiz agent, played by Michael Caine. The cast also includes Ewan Macgregor, Alex Norton (Burke, from Taggart) and Philip Jackson (Japp, from Poirot.)

Blethyn and Caine give wildly over-the-top performances, but for the very good reason that these are called for by the way in which the screenplay is written. Cartwright’s story is straightforward, and would not work if his characters were subdued. In this respect, the demands of the story reminded me of the demands of an action thriller – with a straightforward plot, there isn’t much room for subtlety of interpretation, but the effect can be very satisfying if the performances are strong.

And the performances in Little Voice are strong. Above all, Jane Horrocks is excellent, and her singing quite superb. Apparently Cartwright wrote the original play especially for her, and I can see why. The setting, incidentally, is in Scarborough, a resort I know very well indeed. My parents first met there, and made many return trips on holiday, taking me with them year after year. I’ve not been to Scarborough for some years, but seeing the town again in Little Voice was a trip down memory lane.

Doctor Who - The End of Time: review

The End of Time was a two-part holiday special episode of Doctor Who which saw the departure of David Tennant, who has been superb in the role of the Doctor, and the arrival of Matt Smith. The story involved the attempt of the Master (played by John Simm, who was so good in Life on Mars) to take over Earth, and the intervention of the Time Lords, led by that one-time James Bond, Timothy Dalton. Aiding and abetting Tennant was the splendid Bernard Cribbins.

Given such a starry cast (Billie Piper and June Whitfield were among other famous faces that popped up) the show was always going to be fun to watch, and so it proved. As usual, I enjoyed Russell T. Davies’ script; he is a very good television writer, although his Doctor Who stories sometimes seem stretched out beyond their natural limits, with the extra time occupied by rather sentimental interludes, and this was for me the only weakness of The End of Time. Overall, though, it was good holiday entertainment.

I first watched Doctor Who in the days of the first Doctor, William Hartnell, and it’s interesting to see how writers have grappled over the year with the departure of their hero. In television, this may be due to an actor afraid of becoming type-cast, or even dying. Taggart survived the death of Mark McManus, and the show is still named after his character, although I don’t think the stories are quite as compelling as in the early days, when McManus was at his best and Glenn Chandler wrote some quite brilliant scripts.

In crime fiction, the author may simply tire of writing about his or her detective. Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, although public pressure (and lots of money) persuaded him to revive the great detective. When Nicolas Freeling killed off Van der Valk, he had Arlette, the cop’s widow, take centre stage, although not with the same level of success. I once attended a talk given by P.D. James, when she described killing off your hero as ‘foolish’, and within the crime genre, I’m inclined to agree. But in the anything-goes world of Doctor Who, a Time Lord can transform himself and sometimes, as in the Tennant era, with dazzling results.

Wallander - The Village Idiot

I'm just back from my holidays, about which more soon. One of the many good things about getting away was the chance to catch up with a bit of reading - in fact, I was reminded of how hard it has become to carve out enough time to read novels. But I've devoured four good ones, while soaking up the sun, and will have a bit to say about each of them.

Meanwhile, I raved recently about the excellence of the Swedish TV interpretation of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series. ‘Mastermind’ was superb. Just before going away, I watched ‘The Village Idiot’, again with Krister Henriksson in the lead role, world-weary as ever, and my good impression has been confirmed, even though I didn’t think this story was in the same street as ‘Mastermind’.

On reflection, I think the brilliantly enigmatic feel of the early scenes of ‘Mastermind’ reminded me, subtly, of the appeal of early episodes of ‘Taggart’, more than twenty years ago. In the days when Mark McManus starred as Jim Taggart, and Glenn Chandler wrote most of the scripts, the Glaswegian cop series was unmissable, as far as I was concerned. Now, sadly, it is pretty routine, and the current run of stories rarely sets my pulse racing.

Perhaps the mistake with ‘Taggart’ has been to go on for too long. I hope that the same fate does not befall ‘Wallander’. In ‘The Village Idiot’, a troubled man strapped to a home-made bomb holds bank workers, and a woman customer, hostage, but the resolution of the siege is not the end of the story by a long chalk.

Interestingly, the script writer broke one of the ‘commandments’ for detective stories laid down in the 1920s by Father Ronald Knox. I won’t say which one, for fear of spoiling the story, but I think the script just about got away with it.. .

Jack in the Box

I’ve watched again a very early episode in the ‘Jonathan Creek’s series, featuring a mysterious death in a sealed underground tomb. It must have been suicide – yet there are reasons to suspect murder. The plot is pleasingly convoluted, with plenty of twists before the truth is finally revealed.

This is a first rate television mystery, with marvellous chemistry between Alan Davies and Caroline Quentin as the two lead characters. When Quentin left the series, she was replaced by Julia Sawalha, who is quite gorgeous – but I felt that Quentin’s wit and charm were irreplaceable.

One of the stars in this episode was Maureen O’Brien. Maureen, Liverpool born, is an accomplished actress who has appeared in many shows, including the wonderful early 'Taggart'. She is also a successful crime writer, and her novels, which come out rather sporadically due to her acting commitments, are well worth seeking out.

Some years ago, I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Maureen at the late lamented Crime Scene convention, conceived by Maxim Jakubowski and held at the National Film Theatre for a number of years. She is an extremely pleasant lady, and her success in two distinct careers in the creative arts deserves the utmost admiration.