verygrumpyoldman

A brilliantly written piece of black humour, basically being about having a really rotten festive season, especially for poor old Santa who's wound up dead. Mostly set to Tami Neilson's haunting singing of You're Gonna Fall, as featured throught the episode. Yes there's death, but what else in a murder mystery? There's no blood or gore, and such bad language as exists is by innuendo, no worse than The Two Ronnies. Many macacbre machinations about the body itself, but again no worse than a dead Inspector Barlow on a bus with a super-cool John Cleese comedy sketch from the 1970s. This episode also features Dennis Buchanan, the soapy solicitor we've learned to love and loathe. His arrival is given by a super-smooth six second slow-motion strut along the police station corridor (again set to the musical score) with wonderful chorerography, putting me in mind of similar one in Scrubs with Dr Kelso. Dennis' smarmy smile, made merely by mouth but not eyes, is legendary. I enjoyed the episode immensely. To prove the point about Christmas being for giving, there's the heartwarming finale whereby an unused Xmas blowout lunch is given gratis to the Coppers, rather than having all the food wasted.

Fair enough....this was supposed to be a dramatic and romantic conclusion to the season. But the closing scene on the bus didn't work. Even had Dr Blake purchased a ticket (which we weren't shown) it's doubtful the bus driver would have stopped to let him board - having already moaned to Jean about the delayed departure. But then he never says a word, nor checks the supposed ticket. Also, all the other passengers sit there like stuffed dummies. When Dr Blake went to sit down at the back next to Jean, they'd all have turned around either to stare of say 'what the *** are you doing, delaying us like this'. The short walk along the bus should have been done in slow motion, to give the impression of time standing still. Then they could have held hands before the other passengers had time to react. So a second in real time, but seemingly far longer for those in love. Easy peasy. Is my cheque in the post?

All episodes of this series are very good, but some, including this one, are outstandingly brilliant. So much so I'm keeping it to replay at a later date. It's also good for brushing up on French, using the subtitles if you can't get all the words spoken. Maigret seems to attract feisty young Ladies, and this heroine is one such. An added acoustic feature, wonderfully executed, is the band playing at the venue, but somehow a type of Latin American arrangement not a million miles away from the Rupert Davies Maigret theme from the 1960's. Most impressively, it's then woven into all the remaining incidental music for the rest of the episode. Relaxing evening entertainment with witty dialogue, no coarse language and a complete lack of high speed car chases doesn't get any better than this. It's ideal for the old brigade - but obviously so, with thanks to TPTV for bringing it to our screens.