Tuesday, 24. October 2006, 23:51:15
James Woods, Shark, TV Programs
CBS pulled a another major coup this season, bringing James Woods, one
of the finest actors out there, to their network for a weekly series.
The series is called Shark, and is currently airing on Thursday
night right behind CSI: Vegas. Being a long standing James Woods
fan, I just had to check out the show.
James Woods as "Sebastian Stark"
In the series, Woods plays ex-defense attorney Sebastian Stark.
Following a case gone bad, Stark goes into a funk and is eventually
pulled in to work for what was formerly the opposition -- the L.A.
District Attorney's office. There Stark functions as a Special
Prosecutor for high-profile cases, assisted by a team of young legal-
eagles. If you can image True Believer turned 180 degrees inside
out, with character elements of Best Seller and Salvador
thrown in, you'd essentially have Shark.
I don't have the time to do a full review. I simply wanted to mention
the series due to James Woods. It's always a pleasure watching Woods act
in just about anything, and here you're getting him free once a week on
a show that started off slow but which has been getting better from
episode to episode.
Incidentally, Episode 4 ("Russo") features about as much of an old-
fashioned, rather shady private investigator as you will see these days,
P.I. Harry Russo (wonderfully played by William Forsythe). Even though
Stark goes up against him, it is great watching the interplay between
the two characters. Russo even has a rather hot, red-headed secretary
who appears for about two seconds. But, hey, that's two seconds more hot,
red-headed P.I. secretary than I've seen elsewhere lately. Sometimes you
have to take what you can get.
Anyway, check it out!
Monday, 23. October 2006, 23:52:36
private detective, private-eye, Magnum P.I., TV Programs
According to The Thrilling Detective Blog Magnum P.I. has placed first
in the Sleuth Channel's informal public opinion poll for Most Popular T.V. Detective.
Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) as I usually remember him:
Walking down the beach thinkin' about stuff.
For a look at just all that was screwy about that poll, I will you refer
you to Kevin Smith and the TD blog linked above. But I thought that
since I had the time, and since the character of Thomas Magnum was in
fact a true fictional private detective (as opposed to a cop, or a
lawyer, or a part-time "sleuth" or whatever) that I would put something
about it here at P.M.P.I.
Back during a certain "down period" that I went through in the mid-80s
(waltzing Matilda, as the Aussies say) I had nothing much to do for a
few months but to look for work and read and watch television. I did a
little bit of reading, and quite a bit of television viewing (which I
hadn't done for years at that point). One of the programs that I tuned
in on during this period was Magnum P.I. The series was in syndication,
which meant a pretty much back-to-back stream of Magnum episodes. So I
watched a lot of them. Then, a couple years ago, out of school during
the summer and up late at night, I began watching Magnum again. So let's
just say I've put in my time with Magnum and Higgins and the rest of the
crew.
Now the strange thing is that after all those episodes, some viewed a
good number of times, I really can't remember Thomas Magnum doing any
of what you would call real investigation on the show. I'm sure he
did, of course. In a few episodes. Right? Somebody tell me he did do
some actual private-eye detective work in some of the episodes.
These are the the things that I remember most about the Magnum P.I.
episodes:
- Magnum sitting around and whining about something or other
-
- Magnum getting chased by Zeus and Apollo, the two Dobermans
-
- Magnum taking long walks on the beach with a voice-over monologue
in the background as he thought about stuff
-
- Magnum surf-boarding, kayaking, or swimming, usually with the voice-over
monologue again while he thought about even more stuff
-
- Magnum going here or there in the Ferrari
-
- Magnum getting bitched at by Higgins for driving or otherwise "injuring"
the Ferrari
-
- Magnum trying not to listen to Higgins' stories, or Higgins trying not to
listen to Magnum whine
-
- T.C. piloting Magnum around in his helicopter and complaining that Magnum
this time sure as hell was going to pay him for it, which Magnum never did
-
- Magnum meeting up with this or that female but never really getting his
shit together about her
-
- Flashbacks to Viet Nam which always had something or other to do with
whatever the hell was going on in the present
Okay, like I said I think he must have worked a real case or two along
the way. I remember him pulling his .45 out in a couple of episodes, and
in a couple of episodes he actually fired it. But mostly you'd just see him
tuck the .45 at the small of his back under his Hawaiian shirt and that would
be it.
Incidentally, if you want an authentic Magnum P.I. hawaiian shirt, you can get one
here. If you want to get the Magnum P.I. Detroit Tiger's baseball cap
or the Magnum P.I. blue jeans, you can get those just about anywhere. You'll
have to provide your own .45, of course.
I thought Magnum was a likeable guy, in the main. He whined too much for
my taste. And he had this water fetish thing which doesn't appeal to me.
And he never seemed able to make friends with the damn dogs, which you
think that down the years would be a given. Maybe he was just a cat
person, I really don't know. And he just never would grab the girl and
kiss her good and hard, that was tough to understand, too.
But I think all of that could be forgiven if the series would have been
just a better P.I. show. But it wasn't. Nevertheless, I watched it
anyway -- for some reason or other. Life is strange like that sometimes.
********
A few updates are in order. Roger Mosley, who played T.C. Calvin on the
Magnum series, went on to be a major television director. I think he
directed some of the later Magnum episodes, too. He was one of the first
major Afro-American television directors. He is currently serving as a
Director of the Director's Guild of America.
As for Tom Selleck, he has lately appeared in the television movies Death in
Paradise, Night Passage, and Stone Cold. They are based upon works by
Robert B. Parker, known for his Spenser series of private-eye books. Evidently
Parker had at least something to do with the script writing for Stone Cold,
and in fact the original title was Robert B. Parker's Stone Cold. In these movies
Selleck plays Chief Jesse Stone, the sheriff of the small New England town of
Paradise. I've seen two of the series, and they were pretty good. I hope they
make more of them.
Monday, 7. August 2006, 19:45:28
DaVincis Inquest, Canada, TV Programs, Review
DaVinci's Inguest has been around since 1998 and is now in
syndication. It will be very familiar to Canadian viewers and has racked
up numerous awards there. Elsewhere, such as the United States, it
occasionally airs on regular or cable channels but is not very well
known. In my neck of the woods, being only 90 miles from the Canadian
border and an hour hop on a plane out of Vancouver, it airs a couple
times a week on a few different channels. From what I've read, it is
syndicated in about 45 different countries worldwide. It's an old show
now. But I thought I would review it anyway since I've come to like the
show so much.
The set-up for the show centers around Dominic DaVinci, played by
Nicholas Campbell. DaVinci is the Coroner for the city of Voucouver,
British Columbia. It's his job to investigate deaths and find whether
they are due to natural causes or suicide or whether they are due to
foul play -- homicide. Where there is doubt, he has the power to convene
an inquest before a jury. As such the whole system is portrayed on the
show, from the homicide cops to the pathologists to the prosecutors and
other members of the local and national bureaucracy. It's not exactly a
cop show -- and yet it is.
Coroner Dominic DaVinci (Nicholas Campbell) on the scene.
DaVinci is a stubborn, reformed alcoholic, occasionally sexist (really
out of stupidity more than personal inclination), quirky, and
fundamentally likeable. He will fight for the rights of innocents and
victims, but he's not about to waste time either on cases that seem to
be weak on evidence. He occasionally has to walk the razor's edge
between families of victims, the cops, and the bureaucracy. Campbell
does an excellent job with role, portraying both the successes and the
dismal failures.
Besides DaVinci, the two leading characters you will see most often on
the show are the homicide detectives Mick Leary (Ian Tracey) as the
young, headstrong cop paired with Leo Shannon (Donnelly Rhodes) as the
older, conservative, jaded member of the team. It's a combination you've
seen before, but revamped inasmuch as the wide range of social topics
embraced by DaVinci's Inquest gives new fuel to such a pairing.
Tracey and Rhodes have a very good chemistry together, and you find
yourself looking forward to the portions of each episode that feature
them. There are other cops in the show as well, but I'll leave those for
the reader to discover since this must be a short review.
Detectives Leo Shannon (Donnelly Rhodes)
and Mick Leary (Ian Tracey) take a break.
But the regular cast is only a part of DaVinci's Inquest. In each
episode we find a vast assortment of prostitutes, dealers, hangers-on of
dealers, families of victims, homeless people on the streets, poor
elderly in group homes. The main cast of DaVinci's Inquest is
essentially the whole social fabric of Vancouver. Many minor characters
are featured in multiple episodes -- coming in and out of notice like
people in real life sometimes do. A young prostitute hangs on to a
female detective who might be the only friend she has. A man who is
convinced his daughter was murdered (she wasn't) refuses to accept the
truth, and repeatedly comes in to visit DaVinci and bare his soul.
DaVinci's Inquest rides on a sea of social ills and problems that
might or might not have any solution. In one sequence of episodes there
is an on-going debate about the possible creation of safe-injection
houses for drug users. DaVinci argues that the users are often the
victims of violence and safe-injection houses would protect them. World-
weary Detective Shannon argues that the establishment of safe-houses
would only encourage drug use. No conclusion is reached. The debate
merely continues, and one is left with the feeling that either
alternative stinks. A similar debate goes on with regard to legal Red
Light districts for prostitution.
DaVinci's Inquest emerges as fundamentally different than most
American programs of its general type. Law and Order is too often
about the process itself; and the various CSI programs are
incredibly condensed and unrealistic high-tech procedurals in which
justice is plopped down in a matter of hours. DaVinci's Inquest
is more similar to Crossing Jordan or to L&O: SVU,
although it is broader than each. It is grittier than most American
programs, inasmuch as the series is filmed in Vancouver entirely and can
make use of many more outdoor sequences than American programs, which
tend to do the outdoor stuff in a matter of weeks before they go back to
Los Angeles to shoot. It should also be said here that DaVinci's
Inquest often contains a fair amount of humor thrown in between the
cracks, in spite of its often noir-like feel.
If you can get DaVinci's Inquest on your local cable channel, I
recommend you give it a view. It is a refreshing change from American
programming, "in spite of its realism." I would imagine also that it will
be released on DVD, although so far I've only been able to find Season 1
out there at Amazon.
P.M.P.I RATING (OUT OF 5)
WIDGETIZE