Lejink

This review encapsulates all of Series 6.

Series 6 of the ITV procedural crime drama saw the return of Sinéad Keenan as DCI Jess James leading the "cold case" team in another well-made, well-written and well-acted six-part investigation. Yes, the criticism could be levelled that the series has become formulaic, every one I've seen starts with a murder investigation arising from the discovery of a dead body from years ago. This then branches out to take in usually four or five apparently unrelated individuals but who are of course inevitably connected to the case and indeed destined to become suspects, then they're all brought together before the final reveal is delivered.

Along the way we get continuing insights into the private lives of DCI James and her second-in-command, Sanjeev Bhaskar's DI Sunil "Sunny" Khan, although sadly this privilege isn't extended to the remaining members of their team, which is a pity because they too seem on the face of it to be interesting characters and worthy of further development. Jess's marital problems continue from the previous series in that she still has to come to terms with the fact that her philandering husband slept with her sister. Can she forgive either or both of them, especially as her sister appears to be genuinely contrite and indeed is still suffering mentally from the aftermath, while her hubby now pleads forgiveness and that he won't be a bad boy again. But just what is that stray hair she finds on his jacket collar and to whom does it belong? Sunny meanwhile is on the rebound from his recently failed relationship and is now looking for love from the local female pathologist but his path to true love doesn't run smoothly either.

The case itself revolves around the murder victim, his body dismembered and the parts then strewn separately in local marshland, who turns out to have been a rather unpleasant man who was unfaithful to his wife and daughter, violent to the wife and indeed to his new girlfriend even after she aborted their love child. Just for good measure he also summarily dismissed an autistic man without paying him and finally was a grasping landlord who preyed on needy asylum-seeking tenants and subjected one family in particular to living in such poor housing conditions that their infant son actually died from a respiratory condition picked up in their damp-infested flat, thus enraging the family's translator, a fellow immigrant himself from Afghanistan.

There you have all the runners and riders in the parade ring for his murder with each of them having their own personal and work-related issues to contend with. Some of these are a touch over-sensationalised but with allowances duly made for some wokism aspects applicable to each of their stories plus an ending I worked out in advance, I still felt this show maintained its previous high standards

One of the secrets of the show's success is the excellent casting of all the supporting characters besides those of the established team, plus it's good to see the blossoming chemistry between Keenan and Bhaskar as the two leads.

I'm fairly confident judging by the quality of this latest run that there will be a series 7 to come and I will look forward to viewing it and enjoying it as I have done with all of the previous six.

I'm not quite old enough to remember all the detail surrounding the kidnap and murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games and of course, being British, I wouldn't have seen hardly any of the US TV network ABC's coverage of the events as they happened in real-time. This historic catastrophe has of course been covered in documentaries and most prominently in Spielberg's "Munich" feature, but the unusual approach taken here is to take a very much reactive rather than immersive view of events.

Told entirely from the point of view of the ABC channel's sport-section who happened to be on the air during a quiet shift mid-way through the Games, we see their media team react spontaneously to the breaking horror story which will immediately dominate global news. One amazing thing I picked up was that during the day of the disaster, the Olympic sporting programme continued to be broadcast on other channels, even while the terror was playing out in the neighbouring Olympic Village.

The moral dilemma of how to sensitively treat such powerfully emotive subject matter with the natural journalistic instinct to get the story out there before any of your rivals jump on it is writ large which seems to be the central point of the movie, the celebration of under-pressure journalism which it certainly does but perhaps at the expense of missing the real story that ten Jewish athletes were slaughtered in the first mass-televised terrorist attack.

I suppose I could have just watched the Spielberg film or the documentary, which I now probably will, if I wanted to properly appreciate the whole story from within and it's maybe my own fault for putting the cart before the horse in watching this movie first, but while I appreciated the skill with which the director and cast combined archive footage with the on-the-ground recreation of a live rolling news-story, I'm not sure I was completely comfortable with this approach.

I just felt as if my emotions were being misdirected to equate the tensions of making the wrong editorial calls in a news broadcast with the actual life-or-death scenario was playing out with a tragic outcome off-camera. Who cares ultimately if the sub-editor initially mis-called the fictitious rumour that all the hostages had survived the attempted airport rescue when innocent people did indeed lose their lives. That was the real story and anything that detracts from that just seems beside the point from where I'm sitting.

I'm sure I've long ago read author and screenplay writer, the late William Goldman's 1983 celebrated book "Adventures in the Screen Trade" in which I remember this particular project being prominently featured. Of course he wrote the original novel back in 1963 but this film didn't get made until 1987, so it must have been a pet project for him to keep returning to it until it finally made it into production. He did eventually get to write the screenplay and I'd like to think he was happy with the final Rob Reiner-directed outcome.

It doesn't feature any big-at-the-time stars in the cast although it did mark the screen debut of Robin Wright in the title part. I'm presently going through a run of family-entertainment fantasy movies, perhaps triggered by my recent disappointing viewing of the highly-publicised big-budget musical "Wicked", but I'm glad to say that back in the 80's, with about a tenth of the budget and far less special effects at his disposal, Reiner has made a rightly enduring minor classic of its kind, which entertains from first to last.

Rather like its contemporary feature "The Neverending Story", a fantastic story set long ago in an imaginary land is read aloud from a book this time to, rather than by a young child and in so doing his imagination comes to life in front of our very eyes too.

Fred Savage is the modern-day youngster initially reluctant in his sick bed to indulge his old granddad Peter Falk from his party-piece of reading him fairy stories but once the tale unfolds, he's hooked as indeed was I. A young princess, Wright, is separated from her love of a handsome young commoner and is then groomed to be the bride of a vain and uncaring despot, Peter Sarandon. Can she be saved from her terrible fate?

To her rescue spring an unlikely trio comprising a mysterious, agile young man (Cary Elwes) dressed in black wearing a Zorro-like mask and possessing Zorro-like fencing skills, a revengeful fellow-swordsman, Mandy Patinkin, out to kill the dastardly nobleman, Christopher Guest, who killed his father and a slightly slow-witted friendly giant, played indeed by Andre the Giant.

Pausing only whenever any kissing scenes loom in the narrative, the adventure, as you'd imagine ends happily ever after, along the way dropping some memorable lines ("Inconceivable!", "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!") and cleverly balancing the thrill-seeking expectations of a younger audience with knowing, mildly sardonic humour aimed at grown-ups.

The principals in the cast enter fulsomely into their parts, Elwes and Wright make for an engaging couple and who wouldn't want to partner up with a loquacious young D'Artagnan-type and a genial Goliath to save a damsel in distress. Nice to see Peter Falk as the wily old grandfather and of course we recognise young Master Savage from his long-running role in "The Wonder Years". I'm not sure however, that it really needed the rather obtrusive drop-in guest turns by celebrity Anglos like Peter Cook and Mel Smith, but these are counter-balanced by amusing cameos from Wallace Shawn and the great Carol Kane.

On the whole then, this was a delightful feature, which happily achieved its writer's twin aims of celebrating story-telling and book-reading.