‘I think, sir,’ a boatman from Cornwall famously once remarked to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘when Holmes fell over that cliff, he may not have killed himself, but all the same he was never quite the same man afterwards.’
‘Marriage changes people’, Mrs Hudson coos in ‘The Sign of Three’, oblivious to the fact that, in the very books she sprang from, marriage was always but a footnote in John Watson’s adventures with Holmes.
The first instalment of this two-part finale left us with Princess Ariadne sentenced to a traitor’s death; her fate sealed after the revelation that she aided Jason’s escape from the palace in the aftermath of his failed assassination attempt on Queen Pasiphae.
Hot on the heels of last Christmas’s really rather excellent Treasure Island, Sky1 have set their sights on another literary adaptation: John Meade Falkner’s swashbuckling tale of smugglers on the South Coast, Moonfleet.
Downton Abbey never fails to over-promise and under-deliver. There is, at least, a kind of consistency in this; but it makes for exasperating viewing. After the calamitous events of last Christmas’s festive episode, this year, writer Julian Fellowes was taking no chances. Like an over-cautious Christmas tree decorator, he sought to take his characters out … >
Matt Smith was magnificent – never more so than as the aged toymaker whittling away at his wood. Raggedy man, we shall miss you. But then, you knew that already.
Negatus’ kinks are further developed in this finale, as his boss Imperatrix is due to arrive to sort things out herself, due to Negatus’ incompetence. In disguise as a tramp (the titular Ernie), Negatus plans to destroy Debbie once and for all. Along the way he learns that being pure motiveless evil isn’t necessarily great for your self-esteem.
With the werewolf shenanigans of ‘Hunger Pangs’ past, and not even referenced, the opening part of Atlantis’s Christmas-straddling finale was rooted in earlier events. Returning in a dream that saw Hercules dead, Jason was reminded of the fateful bargain he struck with Pasiphae’s vengeful sister, the witch Circe. It was a creepy and effective start to a storyline full of promise.
Shouldn’t Jim Broadbent have been classed as a National Treasure by now? Kept in The Tower of London with the Crown and whatnot, only to be released so that he can appear in top quality drama? Broadbent is, and always has been, the big birthday cake of drama – seeing him at once both excites and reassures. You know you’re in for something special.
It wasn’t always called ‘The Great Train Robbery’, but history has a way of swaddling itself in mythology.
Back in 1963 it was known as ‘The Cheddington Mail Van Raid’. And in the same way as that title removes any notion of excitement and romanticism from the act, so Chris Chibnall’s A Robber’s Tale strips away the mythology that has crystallised around the greatest folkloric tale in British larceny and presents us with the facts (or as close to them) of what was a train robbery that time wrongly mythologised into something ‘Great’.