You know the ones I mean: generally well-acted, pretty darned good (as in superior to most cable fare on US TV) production values, great music and sound, scenery and settings to die for, interesting faces and voices, etc. OTOH, pretty predictable plots, lots of evidence why Britain used to be “GREAT Britain” (with tons of pointers for those who want to emasculate the US as well *sigh* ) and far too much use of “classic” whodunit camera techniques. And what’s with the stupid four-episode “seasons”? That’s pretty crappy, guys. Just sayin’.
So many good things hampered by a few glaring faults. Better than what I can find on cable TV, though.
Still… Positives include Inspector Lewis, the spinoff from the long success of the Inspector Morse books and the series. Sometimes I want to say, “Take Inspector Lewis, PLEASE,” but usually it’s really quite good on the whole. An example: the theme music. Just wonderful stuff, but I could swear one motif in the theme is outright “borrowing” of a Beethoven motif. That in itself is only to the good, of course (heck, I’ve “borrowed” a motif here and there for development into something else, myself), if I am correct (just noticed it–yeh, I’m kinda slow *heh*–and haven’t replayed the section I’m thinking of in my mind’s ear, but it seems so at first thought), but, regardless, that it even evokes such a thought is an indication of the quality of the music.
And that reminds me: it’s probably time for my quarterly refreshment of Beethoven’s oeuvre in my mind’s ear (it used to need refreshment less often for memory replay, but my mind’s ear just ain’t what it used ta be, ya know? :-)). Fortunately, just about every recording of every Beethoven work I’ve been able to lay my hands on is now stored on my Amazon Cloud Drive (as well as available to load en masse onto a pocket-sized mp3 player) and accessible to listen to almost anywhere on multiple devices.
So, thanks to the prod from Inspector Lewis, I’ll be “seeing” the aural landscapes of Beethoven’s mind’s ear a bit more directly over the next couple of weeks’ time. Thanks, Robbie.