etymophony

This depicts a reality that stunted anglocentrics will find confusing, many of whom forget that most people don't have English as a first language and that most people have "an accent" when they speak our tongue. If nothing else, it's such a relief to hear and see how all those non-anglophones, a majority of the world's population, communicate and solve problems, resorting occasionally to English ("with an accent" -of course and 110% better than my Czech!- ) as a llngua franca. This is part of the reality in the drama. To dub it all or to put it all in one language, or with references to only of the three national cultures involved, with their different histories, different policing issues, etc., might make it more palatable to US-Americans used the cultural babyfood of Hollywood but it would totally deny what the story is all about.

Whether or not you enjoy the performances on this DVD (I liked some, disliked others), it's a wonderful document of how pop and rock music became part of the UK establishment. Particularly illustrative of this process are, I think: [1] Brian May's hilariously bloated pomp-rock rendition of "God Save The Queen" from the ramparts of Buckingham Palace, complete with massive symphonic-size orchestra and a final cadenza milking both an interrupted cadence on bVI and repeated V-I "classical" cadences; [2] the appearance of what seems like a sheepishly grateful rather than uncomfortably anarchic Ozzie Osbourne; [3] Sir Paul McCartney's embarrassing churning out of "Hey Jude" as an audience-participation singalong, complete with the knight's predictably "spontaneous" "yeah" and "one more time" interjections. At least Ray Davis (Kinks) seems to retain an impish edge in "Lola" and there is something sadly moving about Brian Wilson's almost zombie-like performance: times, moods and attitudes that once were but are no more.

Unless designed to poke fun at Hollywood stereotypes of the UK, this "Daggers" episode is, apart from Falk's usual charisma and convincing ham acting from Blackman, an unmitigated disaster. As a Brit, I find it tiring, even insulting, to see and hear notions of the UK, England in particular, reduced to the level of Dick van Dyke's pseudo-cockney, with the action running in upper-class environments that may have flourished before P G Wodehouse moved to the USA in the 1920s or in Agatha Christie's 1930s heyday, but which had virtually disappeared by the 1950s, not to mention the 1970s. Even Dick de Benedictis, famous for effective TV underscoring (e.g. Perry Mason Returns), descends to producing pastiches of time warped Georgian classicalness, as if the Hollywood view of Britain were incapable of advancing beyond the time of George Washington. "Daggers" is an embarrassing exception to an otherwise remarkable run of Columbo productions.