The Singing Detective (1988)

 

 Dennis Potter. The Singing Detective. (1988) Script of the TV series, which we enjoyed very much. Reading this, I realised how much I’d forgotten or missed. The detective figures in the fictions of a writer hospitalised for severe psoriasis. There are both fictional and real-life mysteries, the central one being how and why they intersect in the writer’s memory, and how real life translates into fiction. Potter layers present and past, memory and reality, songs and stories, family and social connections, acceptance and refusal of the truth (such as it is). The TV series is available online (recommended). I found this book resolved some puzzles, but mostly showed me how little I had absorbed the first time round.

Recommended. ***

Black Adder: All the scripts

Richard Curtis, Rowan Atkinson, Ben Elton. Black Adder: The Whole Damn Dynasty (1998) We watched the series when it first aired. A wonderfully absurd and intelligent send-up of our notions of the past. History ain’t what we think it is, especially when the Adder clan is part of it.
     Here are all the scripts, with some added material that makes better sense on the page than on the screen. As with all scripts, it helps to have seen the performances. Atkinson, Fry, Robinson et al are superb comic actors with impeccable timing and a large range of tone and sneer. The four Black Adder series are worth watching again and again; many episodes are available on YouTube. The series became increasingly dark, and the last one ends in the fog of war. As with all good satire, the targets are the ones labelled the Seven Deadly Sins in another context. It’s really the weaknesses and flaws of human nature that exercise the spleen of the writers. But I suspect that the weaknesses and flaws are the price we pay for the glory.
     Recommended for addicts; I doubt that the casual reader will find much to amuse them, but I have a faint hope I’m mistaken. ****

The Loch (TV series)

     The Loch (2017, 6 episodes) [D: Brian Kelly & Cilla Ware.  Laura Fraser, Siobhan Finneran, Jack Bannon] Shown on CBC TV. A serial killer rampages through a Scottish town ostensibly on the shores of Loch Ness. It’s Annie Redford’s first murder case. DCI Quigley leads the investigation, but Annie’s special, local knowledge is of course key, as is the expertise of profiler Albrighton, who has a history with Quigley. These and other complications spin out the story over six episodes.
     Worth watching for the well done shifts in relationships within the team, the families, and between neighbours and friends. The puzzle is overly complex, but a large part of that is the irrelevance of most of the information gathered by the team. Several of the plot lines are left incomplete, but I suspect that’s largely the effect of cutting up to 5 minutes out of each episode to make room for those damn commercials. Generally well acted, competent photography and music. **½

Two Thomases: Sympathetic Cromwell, Sleazy More

     Wolf Hall (2015; based on Hilary Mantel’s novels, who also worked on the screenplays) [D:Peter Kosminsky  Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Claire Foy] Six episodes that give us a Thomas Cromwell quite different from the cynical villain of Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, and a sleazier Thomas More, too. The dangers of living in a polity in which personal loyalty to an erratic monarch was paramount, and an careless word or phrase could condemn you to death, are nicely explored. The dircetor wanted a few too many closeups of a silent Cromwell, etc, and the pace is slower than we’ve become used to lately, but it’s an impressive piece of work. Apparently it was filmed with ambient light only, a stunt made possible by recent advances in digital light sensors. Much of the action is set in dark interiors, I suppose to underline the darkness of the human heart.

     I now want to read the novels. Mantel clearly sides with Cromwell rather than More. Henry VIII is shown as self-deluding but respecting Cromwell because Cromwell won’t play the sycophancy game. Anne Boleyn is as much a victim of her own ambitions as of her family’s scheming for power. Wolsey is a wily old man who failed to achieve what his master wanted; Cromwell’s loyalty to him guides his plans, but at the end it’s unclear how much Cromwell wanted Anne’s death as a just punishment for bringing about Wolsey’s downfall. ***

Wimsey deserves better than this.

     Lord Peter Wimsey: Clouds of Witness (19720 [D:Hugh David. Ian Carmichael et al] Awful adaptation of Dorothy Sayers’ novel. A screenplay that’s about as banal and simplistic as you can get, stretching the story over 5 parts (225 minutes). The amount of padding this requires makes it mind-numbingly slow. The characterisation is superficial, and that’s the politest way I can say it. Bland cinematography  with poor lighting and bad sound adds to the pain. The editing is strange, so put it mildly: long shots of unmoving faces are suppose to convey menace, I guess, or maybe comic fun. It all depends on the owner of the face. And so on.
     We stopped watching this mess part way through episode two. The 1987 adaptations of Sayers' novels starring Edward Petherbridge are far superior. It’s unfortunate that the two series treated different novels.  Based on my disappointment, I want to rate this a BOMB, but I guess one star is fairer: *

DCI Banks: three episodes

     DCI Banks Series 4 (2015).  DCI Banks is a melancholic, passive-aggressive, but tenacious DCI, the kind that’s never satisfied with the easy answer, who worries at the niggling little details that don’t fit until all the bits and pieces slide around and rearrange into a true picture. My kind of ‘tec. These three episodes are well-scripted original stories, the writers have understood Peter Robinson’s character very well. The narrative pace is slow-moving enough to allow immersion into the Yorkshire ambience and to engage with the characters, but fast enough to maintain tension. You can find out all the spoilers you might want in Wiki's article.
     But my advice is to just watch them. The books are also worth reading. ***½

Morse: Deadly Slumber (1993)

      Deadly Slumber (1993) [D: Stuart Orme. John Thaw, Kevin Whateley, James Grout, Jason Durr et al] The owner of a private clinic dies in what looks like an accident or suicide. Prime suspect: the father of a girl who was severely brain-damaged four years earlier when the nurse acting as anesthesiologist made a mistake. A typical Morse plot, with Morse twice sure that he has the killer, and twice noticing a minor detail that doesn’t fit. The mood as always is elegiac. This time, parental love is the focus. Well scripted, well acted, well paced, a pleasure to watch and to mull over. I’ve read most of the Morse novels, and I think the TV series is better than the books. This one is "based on the characters". ***

The Code (2012)

     The Code (2012) Presented by Marcus Du Sautoy. Three-part series about mathematics, and its role in describing the universe. An excellent overview and introduction to mathematics, clearly explained, with better than average visuals, and emphasis on everyday, real-life applications. The title alludes to Du Sautoy’s metaphysics: the code is a method of making sense of the world. The series is worth watching more than once, especially of you’ve forgotten most of your high-school math. Above all, it’s reminder of how much of our economy, our technology, our politics, our social life, even our  private lives is described and explained by the code, whether we know it or not. Understand the code, and you understand the universe.
     Or so it seems.
     Du Sautoy believes that mathematics underlies reality. I don’t. I believe that mathematics is one of many symbol systems we use to make models of our experience, models that are good enough to help us survive. We make mistakes in creating those models, and some models are more than a little off. The only check we have is that the models work. But I don’t think they answer the question of what’s really out there. If they did, then any model that works is a true representation of reality, at least insofar as it works, at least a partial truth, at least a limited glimpse of the real. Trouble is, we have models that contradict each other. When that happens we get into squabbles about which one is truer than the other. There’s no question that the religious models work in the sense that they give people a reason to get up in the morning. But they contradict each other, and they contradict mathematics.
     The mystery about mathematics is that it works so unreasonably well. Why? There is no good answer that I know of, there is none that satisfies me. But I think the observation that mathematics begins with physical interactions between us and the world around us offers a clue. Other animals do this too, sometimes so well that we want to ascribe conscious reasoning to them. It may be that a crow figuring out how to unlock a cage is reasoning consciously, but we’ll likely never know. We do know that we can devise algorithms that reason about the data that we feed in, and produce more reliable results than we do ourselves. Reasoning does not require consciousness.
     What then does require consciousness? The kind of understanding that enables us to choose the kind of reasoning we need, and more than that, to recognise and understand new problems, and devise the reasoning to solve them. It’s at this level of understanding that Du Sautoy’s belief in the underlying reality of mathematics occurs, and that I disagree.
     Not that it matters. This level is so abstract that it’s not about reality anymore, but about our images of reality. Those are all finally private. The wonder is that language enables us to share these private imaginings as well as we do. We can share mathematical models better than any other, which deepens the mystery.
     The series can be watched on TVO. ****

George Gently & Miss Fisher: two TV series episodes

     Gently: The Lost Child (2012) Episode 3 of the 2012 season. [D:Nicholas Benton. Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby] An adopted child is kidnapped, but the reasons aren’t money. The kidnapper was himself an adopted child. The adoption agency is run by a woman with well-meaning but mistaken motives. Gently and Bacchus must navigate an emotionally intense tangle of past history, motives, secrets, and events. People are unable or unwilling to reveal essential knowledge because they are afraid of their own vulnerability, and because they want to do what’s best for their partner. Well meaning motives cause trouble. Gently and Bacchus’s own lives mirror some of the relationships they must investigate.
     Like the other Gently episode we’ve seen, this one’s moody, sad, psychologically complex. Hunter (the author of the books) clearly is more interested in how the random collisions of private and public knowledge and motives lead to catastrophe. ***

     Miss Fisher: Raisins & Almonds (2012) [D: David Caesar. Essie Davis, Nathan Page.  Based on the books by Kerry Greenwood.]
     It’s the 1920s. The Hon. Phryne Fisher is for some reason displaced to Melbourne. There she lives in a fine house with a full staff and several hangers-on that assist her in her investigations. Just how she has created a PI career for herself is unclear, since this is the 5th episode. The series is now in its third season, we will watch it when we can.
     The series is agreeable fluff, lovely clothes and cars, stereotypes galore (Australia at the time was still very much a colony), many different accents, and light-weight historical references, which in this episode form a large part of the plot and puzzle. The McGuffin is a formula for synthetic rubber, created by the murder victim, who has Zionist connections. Family rivalries motivate the murder. There’s some kind of romance developing between Miss Fisher and Inspector Jack Robinson. Miss Fisher has a gun and a dagger, both of which she uses when she needs to. In short, an adventure romance of the kind that is rarely written these days, which may explain why these books are quite often translated into video.
     The scripting, acting, photography add up to competent story-telling. A well-crafted entertainment. Worth watching if you like this genre. Wikipedia has entries on both Kerry Greenwood and the TV series.**½

Gently with Class (2012)

     Gently with Class (2012) [D: Gillies MacKinnon. Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby] Rerun on WGBH. From the series Inspector George Gently, based on books by Allan Hunter : see the Wikipedia entry.
     Moody photography, with elliptical story-telling, cross-cutting and flashbacks, which develop the puzzle and the theme jigsaw piece by jigsaw piece, until the final punch-line that makes the socio-political point: the new rulers of Britain will be just like the old ones.
     DS Bacchus is convinced that James Blackstone, son and heir of Hector Blackstone, drove the upturned car half-submerged in the river, in which a girl drowned. Bacchus has twice arrested James for drunk driving, but James’s  mother has twice drawn him out of harm’s way.
     But this time it’s more complicated. Bacchus is itching to take the toffs down. Gently just wants to find out who done what. None of the suspects tells the truth, and when they do begin to spill it, they don’t tell the whole truth. As often happens in such complicated stories, the denouement is a perfunctory exercise in tying up loose ends. If the script follows Hunter’s novel, his real focus was on class and class-driven resentments. That was well done; we almost don’t care who actually did what.
     Gently is an interesting character, oddly detached from his job, the passion to uncover the truth concentrated in Bacchus. But Bacchus doesn’t want the truth for the sake of justice, he wants it as a weapon in the class war. Well done entertainment. **½

2026-02-05: The series is being rerun by GBH, available on PBS Passport. It has also been issued on DVD, I've found several seasons at the usual 2nd hand sources.

Two Miss Marple Videos (2013)

     Two Miss Marple Videos (2013) A Caribbean Mystery and Gresham’s Folly. Starring Julia MacKenzie, who is no Jean Hickson, but she’s very good all the same.
     These new adaptations of Miss Marple stories pick up on hints in Christie’s texts and elaborate them. Mostly this deepens the characters and improves the dialogue. But they also use visuals to generate ambience and mood that Christie may not have had in mind. The Joan Hickson versions had a feeling of deep currents; here they are closer to the surface.
     Occasionally, the adapters allow themselves a joke. In A Caribbean Mystery, Ian Fleming appears as a hotel guest. He tells Miss Marple he’s writing a spy thriller but doesn’t have a name for his hero. The guest lecturer, presenting a slide show on the island’s birds, announce himself as “Bond, James Bond.” Eureka! This is also the story in which Mr Rafael meets Miss Marple. In a later talehe gives her the task of preventing a crime. The murderer is a wife killer, a type that Christie used more than once, perhaps as a revenge on her unfaithful first husband.
     Both these tales rely on secrets from the past to make motives plausible. In both, the murderers are psychopaths, charmers who feign empathy they don’t feel, and in both the motive is mere money. But sometimes secrets are revealed inadvertently, and then self-preservation leads to secondary murders. Christie believed that killers were overconfident, that they could not imagine being outwitted by mere mortals, and so found added killings easy. There’s a good deal of truth to that, but I think it’s more likely that psychopathic killers just can’t imagine how serious their crimes are, and therefore can’t imagine that ordinary mortals want to find them and thereby restore the balance we call justice. A lack of empathy not only limits one's capacity for relationships, it also limits one’s ability to foresee how others will act, and so limits planning for the future.
      Both videos are good entertainment, especially for Christie fans. **½

Poirot: Deadman’s Folly (2013)

 

    Poirot: Dead Man’s Folly (2013) Ariadne Oliver calls on Poirot because a Murder Hunt that she’s organised doesn’t feel right. A convoluted plot involving adultery, fake identities, family loyalty  and such eventually unravels and the perps are unmasked. Many of Christie’s plots are implausible in the cold light of hindsight, but this one is more implausible than most. It’s also a weak entry in the David Suchet Poirot series, with too many shots of Poirot doing his Chaplin walk around the grounds of the house, along the river, in town, and so on. **

Apocalypse: World War One (2013)

   
  Apocalypse: World War One (2013) A series of one hour documentaries made by cobbling together contemporary movie footage to illustrate the story of the Great War. The footage has been digitally enhanced as much as possible, including adding colour and sound. The result is a pretty good account of the war as it unfolded, with emphasis on the mistakes that guaranteed both horrifically stupid slaughter and a continuation of the conflicts in another Great War a generation later, as well as the many local and not so local horrors that still bedevil international politics in our own time. A good introduction to the history of the 20th and 21st centuries, in other words. I wouldn’t hesitate to use it in a middle- or high-school history class.
     The story overall is depressing: 8 million civilians and 4 million soldiers died, as best as can be estimated. Worse, it’s clear that the war began and was continued because a bunch of mostly old men thought they could realise their dreams of empire. Or more accurately, so that they could validate the illusions of their own importance. When people justified their actions by referring to their country's “legitimate” interests, or its “rightful” place among the nations, they were really talking about their egos. Schoolyard politics is all it really was: boys play these games and grow out of them, but the emperors and others of their class did not.
     Worst of these was Kaiser Wilhelm II, a classic example of the Paranoid Ineffectual Male, who believes that everyone is out to diss him, and compensates by trying blow them all up. The glory and honour that these wimps were pursuing was at bottom their fear that others in their circle of idjits would not “respect” them, ie, acknowledge that they were superior. Which of course they weren’t, and they knew it, so they tried to prove their superiority by going to war. The same insane value set underlies calling murderous Alexander of Macedonia “the Great”.

      It’s significant that these people were either incapable of doing real productive work, or unwilling to do it. So they had no real purpose in life. If you neither make stuff that other people want, nor provide services that other people need, you are useless. Many are unable, and suffer terribly. But too many of the so-called ruling class were and are unwilling, and glory in their importantly non-productive life. That whole class of bully boys were useless.
     Unfortunately, too many of the rest of us buy into their insanity and agree to go kill each other to prop up those fragile egos. We also have fragile egos, a terrible need to validate our self image by seeing it reflected back to us in the fear and loathing of those whom we would oppress. It’s also significant that these people need to have fancy uniforms and “decorations” to prove that they are important. Anyone who needs that kind of crap needs psychiatric help.
     A good series, useful as a reminder of what humans are capable of when they surrender to a delusion. **½

Columbo: Publish or Perish (1974)

     Columbo: Publish or Perish (1974) [D: Robert Quine. Peter Falk, Jack Cassidy et al.] Publisher Riley Greenleaf arranges the murder of Allan Mallory, his best selling author, in order to prevent his defection to a rival house, staging an alibi of obnoxious drunkenness for the time of the murder, so that he will appear to be framed. Columbo must break the alibi and discover the link between Greenleaf and hit man Eddie Kane. A split screen is used to show the murder and the alibi at the same time. The acting is barely a cut above wooden, and even Falk seems to sleepwalk through his part. Mickey Spillane (in real life a hard-boiled pulp fiction writer) plays Mallory, and demonstrates that he can’t act. A below average entry in the series, barely complicated enough to fill the 73 minute screen time. *½

Jericho: The Hollow Men (2005)

      The Hollow Men (2005) [D:Tom Shankland. Robert Lindsay, David Troughton et al] A courting couple dies by knife wounds, recalling a series of unsolved similar murders of 30 years earlier. A second murder puts pressure on Jericho and his team.  Personal problems, office politics, and family conflicts make their teamwork less effective than usual, but Det. Sgt. Harvey’s persistence in interviewing “John Bull”, a nutcase serial confessor, leads to the insight that breaks the case: “The murderer is someone like me”, says John Bull; he’s a traumatised WW1 vet. Det. Constable Caldicott almost becomes the murderer’s 6th victim, but Jericho and Harvey arrive soon enough to prevent that, and get Caldicott to his wedding on time. Another satisfyingly complex and nuanced episode. Jericho’s interrupted romance with Juliette, a French prostitute, begins again, so there’s hope this wounded warrior will find some healing. **½

Columbo: Double Exposure (1973)

      Columbo: Double Exposure (1973) [D: Richard Quine. Peter Falk, Robert Culp, et. Al] A motivational researcher, Dr Keppel, murders Norris, one of his clients, who’s about to fire him. He uses a subliminal cue, a single frame spliced into the draft  promotional movie, plus elevated heating, to trigger thirst, and runs a cassette tape, which enables him to shoot the victim at the drinking fountain while supposedly reading the script. He’s over-confident, of course, commits a second murder, and finally is trapped by Columbo’s use of subliminal stimuli.
      The story is nicely conceived puzzle, with enough character development to make us suspend disbelief of its more far-fetched notions, such as the precision of subliminal stimuli. The Columbo series enjoyed a deserved success, in large part because of Falk’s conception of the character. Columbo pretends to be puzzled, confused, and not very bright, which disarms the perpetrators. The narrative focus is on how Columbo solves the puzzle. The scripts are always well done, with good parts for the secondary characters, straightforward visual story telling, but occasionally intrusive music signalling some evil deed about to transpire.
     Like US movies generally, there is a surprisingly naive sense of evil. Evil spreads its effects like a stain and causes grief well beyond its immediate victims, but there’s almost zero awareness of that here. The victim’s wife is set up for a poor alibi, Dr Keppel’s projectionist is too willing to profit from Keppel’s crime, Norris’s business colleagues seem unaffected by his absence. Minor additions to the script or the acting would have added the hints of depth and wider context that would make this an outstanding series. As it is, it’s very good, and forty years later it still wears well. **½

The Life of Python (2000)

     The Life of Python (2000) A compilation of clips and interviews, plus an English version of one of the two German episodes for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, made in 1972. The interviews are strictly for Python fans, the selected clips will raise a Huh? Or a chuckle or a guffaw, depending on your fan status. The Dead Parrot is missing, and none of the clips is complete. The German episode includes a long sketch based on a mix of Grimm fairy tales, suitably messed up and parodied, and a real treat for fans. I’m a fan, I thought this three-video set was worth watching, but non-fans will no doubt find it merely average. It’s from Jon’s collection. ***

Sherlock: His Last Vow (2013) (TV series)

     Sherlock: His Last Vow (2013) The TV series has come His Last Bow, and like the other films, has taken Doyle’s story as inspiration, not as source. The visuals emphasise the multiple layers of secrecy, betrayal, and conspiracy. It’s a complicated plot running at several levels, which are interconnected by the usual villain, a power-hungry psychopath. We learn even more about Watson, his wife Mary, Mycroft and Sherlock’s childhoods; that’s one of the strengths of this Sherlock series, it takes the characters seriously, they’re not just plot devices. Well done as story-telling, and especially as visual narrative. For once, the current stylistic schticks (helicopters, rapid cutting, shifting camera, layers of glass and multiple reflections, etc) work as they should. The last scene points to a sequel: Moriarty is back. ****

Gwynn Dyer. War (1985)

 

     Gwynn Dyer. War (1985) Dyer devised, wrote much of, and presented a TV documentary series on war. This book is based on or related to that series, and while it includes much material from it, it is not a print version. Both aim to explain the development of war, and the need to find an alternative or replacement for the present system of independent sovereign nations, each of whom sees no moral limits on pursuing its own interests, and each of whom sees all others as rivals. It’s an impressive work, and although a few things have changed (climate change being now as great a threat to human survival as nuclear war), the central thesis is as valid as ever. We do still run the risk of stumbling into a world-wide nuclear war, the results of which will make the current argy-bargy about climate change utterly irrelevant.
     Dyer’s central point is that war and civilisation were invented at the same time, and that we have to separate the two. Early civilisations, city states, competed for resources, and the invention of war made conquest a quick and relatively cheap way of increasing wealth and expanding territory. For thousands of years, the inefficiency of killing technology meant that war cost the victor relatively little. The victors usually destroyed the enemy as thoroughly as possible, but war itself was profitable. That has now changed. A few so-called conventional weapons, e.g., tanks and fighter bombers, unopposed are capable of destroying a city. We are stumbling towards alternatives to war, but whether we will devise a way of living together on our crowded planet before some fool triggers Armageddon is anyone’s guess. **** (2008)

I reread the book, and wrote this review I wrote in 2010 :
     Dyer, Gwynne War (1982) I've been reading Gwynne Dyer's book about war. He wrote it in 1982, basing it on a television series on war that he made for the CBC and PBS. It's a gloomy and depressing subject, but anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take account of war.
     Dyer’s thesis is that civilisation and war were born of the same agricultural revolution that led to the invention of cities, to an increasing human population, and the accelerating developments of technology and science that have made war a suicidal institution in our own day. Significantly, all the ancient references to cities take it for granted that they are walled and gated: cities were invented to protect people from robbery and murder, and war was initially merely highly organised crime, and as such was profitable. Nations and states (ie, their rulers) that went to war got what they wanted politically and economically at a price they could afford to pay. That is no longer the case. The next world war will cost the destruction of our civilisation. The smaller local wars of our day end in stalemate, in which the losing side often turns to brutal terror instead of giving up its political ambitions.
     Dyer wrote at a time when nuclear war between the great powers was a real possibility, either in direct confrontation, or triggered by a minor war between their client states. The probability of a world-wide nuclear war is both lower and higher than it was then. Lower in the short term, because the major powers do not want to destroy themselves; higher in the long term because global warming could well trigger wars of survival, in which people could see the destruction of rivals as the only way to ensure a passable standard of living for themselves. The only environmental concern Dyer discusses is nuclear winter, which would certainly result from a nuclear war, for even a minor, localised one would entail the explosion of several dozen weapons, each several times the power of the ones that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whether that would reverse global warming is another question, but there wouldn’t be many people left to observe the answer or contemplate it, and they would have other things on their minds than arguing a moot controversy..
     Dyer’s conclusion, that war must be replaced by something else, is slowly entering people’s consciousness. Despite the Conservatives’ exploitation of the jingoistic “support for our troops” in Afghanistan by the more paranoid, most Canadians (and Americans) realise that some rule-based protocols for conflict resolution must be found. The core dispute is about who will make and enforce the rules: no one wants to surrender their “national sovereignty”, but it will have to happen. The rise of the international criminal court at the Hague is a promising start. Even though none of the major powers are willing to accept its jurisdiction over themselves, they are quite happy to use it as an alternative to war to keep the lesser tyrants in line. There is also a much greater willingness for groups of nations to intervene within a country, if its ruler displays ambitions to widen his tyranny over neighbouring states, or threatens the making of profits.
     But war is still the primary means for forcing political change. Or rather, attempting to force political change. As the US failure in Iraq, the NATO failure in Afghanistan, and the failed (and ever more brutal) rebellions in central and southwest Africa show, war is less profitable than ever. Except of course for the armourers. ****

This snippet was written before the above:
     I've been reading Gwynne Dyer's book about war. He wrote it in 1982 when he made a television series on war. It's a gloomy and depressing subject, but anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take account of war. The reasons for war vary from the laughable to the serious, the results range from no change to the status quo to the destruction of whole nations. Recorded history is about 6,000 to 7,000 years old, and over that time span the one constant has been war. The earliest records make it clear that war is older than writing, and as far as we can tell began around the time that humans invented agriculture and herding. These two inventions gave humans some control over their food supply, enabling the growth of human populations, and providing time and resources for arts and crafts. But the increased wealth came at a price. It required control over the people that tilled the land or watched the herds, and it made land itself valuable. If someone took your land, you would starve. The result was the invention of war. War is organised killing of other groups of people in order to take from them what they will not give by way of trade.
In short, in order to make agriculture efficient, we invented the state; and in order to protect ourselves from other states, we invented war. We call this state of affairs civilisation. (2010)

 

Death is Now My Neighbour (1997) TV episode

      Death is Now My Neighbour (1997, a Morse Special) A young woman is shot through a drawn blind, the murderer aiming at her silhouette. The only clue is a silly greeting card from a lover. The next morning, her neighbour, a journalist, is shot to death. Morse is in top form, and Lewis supplies the missing link when he realises that a pair of initials written down by the second victim indirectly point to the murderer. The motive for the killings derives from academic ambition: a new Master of Lonsdale College is about to be elected.
     A satisfying mix of blackmail, secrets, sex, abuse of power, and assorted minor sleaze. But if one hasn’t ever seen a Morse, one will be hard put to follow the allusive and elliptical style of narrative, which depends on the viewer’s familiarity with Oxford, Morse, Lewis and academia. The solution is plausible, and fairly solved. The acting hints at enough back story that we engage with each character, even the maid who brings the breakfast to the hotel guests. As usual, Dexter has an uncredited part, this time he says a Latin grace. A couple of bonbons: we discover Morse’s given name, and he meets a woman that’s his intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional equal. Fade-out on their arm-in-arm entry into a posh hotel.
     The episode feels like a series-ender, but there will be two more, and Lewis will apply the lessons learnt from Morse in his own career as Inspector. The series succeeds because of the consistency its fictional world, and because it pays attention to the effects of evil. We also like Morse, despite his flaws. Or because of them. Take your pick. This is the third of fourth time we’ve watched this episode. It wears very well. ***