Doctor Who and Downton Abbey Christmas episodes

I keep putting off commenting on the Christmas Day episodes of the above shows. Well, here's my thoughts.

Doctor Who was a bit odd. I don't mean odd as in strange or weird as its normally strange and weird. I mean odd as the story was a bit more straightforward than what I've come to expect from Stephen Moffat. Then again, maybe I'm getting used to his stories.

In any event it concerned the doctor crashing to earth in 1938 in a borrowed space suit and being helped by a lady played by Claire Skinner. He promises to help her in return, all she has to do is wish. Yeah.

So it's 1941 and she's had a telegram to say her RAF husband is missing presumed dead. She and the kids end up at a big house in the country wher the doctor is playing the part of the caretaker.

To cut a long story slightly less long, one of the kids goes through a present to a snowy tree world and disappears while following a wooden tree person.

Ok, that is a bit weird, I'll grant you that.

The doctor and the other kid follow and then the mum follows them. It turns out they are on Androzani Major (in a bit of name-checking to the last Peter Davidson story) and the bad humans are about to kill the trees with acid rain and the tree souls take refuge in Claire Skinner who pilots a big globe thing through the time vortex back to earth. And it turns out her husband isn't dead as he follows her trough the vortex as well.

So that's all ok, it's fine, not bad, I think as I look at my watch.

Then it goes brilliant as Claire Skinner convinces the doctor to go tell his friends he's not dead. He arrives outside Amy Pond's house and knocks on her (TARDIS blue) door. Amy answers and they stare at each other for a bit.

'So, you’re not dead,' Amy says. 'And a happy New Year,' smiles the doctor, embarrassed. 'River told us,' Amy finally reveals.

Karen Gillan is in full Amy frown mode. Is brilliant. That couple of minutes of them standing at the door makes me realise how sad it will be when Karen leaves next year. Sniff.

So, on to Downton Abbey.

According to the tv listings the episode lasted 2 hours. It probably did but in some ways it seems to have lasted about a week. There must have been about 27 advert breaks in it. Ok, 27 is an exaggeration. It was probably only 24.

For such a long running time not much actually seemed to happen. The main plot thread concerned Mary's impending marriage to Iain Glen, that actor bloke with the cool voice. It turned out that he was blackmailing her to marry him. As long as they were to be wed he was preventing the scandal getting out. You know, the scandle about her and the Turkish gentleman who went and died in her bed?

She discovers her dad knew about it when he tells her not to marry Iain Glen. Then she tells Wet Matthew. You remember Wet Matthew? He's the one who was paralysed in the war and then 'got better'. He was the one engaged to that nice Miss Swire who made the deathbed plee that he should get together with cousin Mary in order to be happy. Which then prompted him to go off in a huff and say that he could never marry cousin Mary and never forgive himself, etc.

Well, guess what? He's forgiven himself and asked cousin Mary to marry him. Honestly, you can't rely on him to make up his mind at all.

What helped the episode immeasurably was the complete absence of Lady Sybil and the Irish chauffeur. Let me state that I have no problem with the actress ho plays Sybil as she is quite pretty, and I don't object to the character. But that story line where she and the Irish chauffeur hooked up after displaying zero chemistry felt like a crudely engineered plot development that was jammed into the script as an afterthought.

Some other stuff happened involving a dog, and Bates was found guilty for murder much to the other character's surprise. Bates and his wife became slightly more interesting characters as they had to do all their scenes together in prison, and him in period manacles.

So, a slightly longer post than intended.

What to watch on TV this Christmas

Here's a few things that I will be watching on TV this Christmas.

On Christmas Day there is of course Doctor Who on BBC1 at 7pm. I expect there will be lots of running around and a soppy ending. Flying sharks will be unlikely this year. That's so 2010.

Later that evening there is a two-hour special of Downton Abbey. If there isn't anything better on I expect I'll give it a go while eating After Eights and Terrys Chocolate Orange segments.

(I'm still a bit miffed that they killed off the nice Miss Swire in the last episode. The poor thing had doomed written all over her the moment she turned up with Wet Matthew.)

Anyway. Back on the BBC from Tuesday 27 December to Thursday 29 December we have a new adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations. Do we need another one so soon since the last one in 1999? Maybe not, but we're getting one and I'll be watching. Gillian Anderson (returning to Dickens after 2005's Bleak House) plays Miss Haversham. But here's a photo of Vanessa Kirby as Estella, mainly because she looks prettttyyyy.

Finally on New Years Day we can look forward to the return of Sherlock and the long awaited event that is Lara Pulver as Irene Adler. I expect I'll have something to write about that.

Downton Abbey sisters in Radio Times

I know I was a little bit hard on Downton Abbey in my last post to this blog. However that didn't stop me from buying the new issue of the Radio Times that has a photo of the three Crawley sisters on the cover.

I'll be honest, I only bought it because there was a photo of the three Crawley sisters on the cover. I suspect it's largely to do with my strange and increasing attaction to the middle sister Edith.

Regardless of my motivations for buying said magazine here is a fairly good quality scan of the cover featuring Laura Carmichael, Jessica Brown Findlay and Michelle Dockery.

There are some actual words in an article about them inside the mag but I didn't bother scanning those.

I might tune in next Sunday night for a few minutes to see if Edith gets off with the Titanic guy.

Probably.

Spooks vs Downton Abbey

Both Spooks and Downton Abbey went head to head on Sunday nights so I had a decision to make: which one to watch "live"?

At first Downton won that battle. But as the episodes went on I was unsettled to discover that it was actually, whisper it, a little bit rubbish. Meanwhile I was enjoying the non-live episodes of Spooks a lot more than I thought I would.

After week 4 I did the "switch". Now Spooks would be watched live and I would get around to Downton later. Probably.

Episode 5 of Spooks was a pretty good one. The gang kidnapped a CIA guy because they reckoned he was up to no good. This called for some action with Lara Pulver hanging out of a car firing a gun. Her cheekbones were looking particularly lovely in that episode.

After the cliff-hanger ending (Harry captured by bad Americans!) I turned over to ITV1+1 (I think) to watch the later broadcast of Downton.

I lasted about 10 minutes before I turned the TV off in disgust. That was just after Mary dropped her cup of tea juxtaposed with Matthew going over the top.

I mean, really...

I came to the sudden conclusion that I didn't care about any of the characters (with the possible exception of the middle daughter Edith who I am finding strangely more attractive as time goes on). I don't care about Bates and his on-off wedding with the maid lady. I don't care about the Irish chauffeur and his working man speeches. I certainly don't care about Matthew and Mary

So I skipped the rest of episode 5.

The final Spooks was on last night and rather than run about through the streets of London trying to defuse a nuclear bomb it was actually a low-key finale set mainly in an abandoned military bunker. In fact it looks like it was filmed in an actual abandoned military bunker. If not the production designers did a great job dressing the set up wherever it was. It was a fitting cold war setting for the revelations that followed.

The episode did veer into melodrama at the end when the Russian guy killed his wife and then the Russian son went after Harry with a broken piece of glass in revenge. "There goes Ruth," I thought, and sure enough there was another name on the MI5 memorial wall by the end of the episode.

Oddly there was a "surprise" cameo with the guy who played Mr  Darcey in the Keira Knightley movie returning to say about two lines of dialog.

Final Spooks over I gave Downton a try for 15 minutes. To be honest I found it a much more interesting experience watching the thing without having seen the previous episode. It appears that the footman (I can't remember his name) who fancied Daisy died, but not until he got married to her on his deathbed. There was a new maid to replace Amy Nuttall who now has a baby. She was doing The Acting at one point. Matthew was sulking in a wheelchair going on about being only half a man. I really wanted someone to slap him with a wet fish.

The most interesting bit involved the middle daughter Edith (who by now I am finding very attractive indeed) befriending some Canadian guy with a burned and bandaged head, who claimed to be the long-lost heir of Downton Abbey after getting amnesia on the Titanic disaster.

I mean you can't make this stuff up.

Oh wait, you can...

Downton Abbey 2.1 and Spooks 10.1

Last night saw the return of Downton Abbey on ITV and Spooks on BBC1.

Downton as expected turned out to be a solid piece of duvet tv. It ticked a lot of boxes for manufacturing some angst for most of the main characters. It is now 1916 and the Great War is raging in France.

The main event of the episode was the return of heir to Downton Abbey from the front. He turned up with a shock fiancee. The Michele Doherty character was doing some serious gazing-across-the-room acting. Later she is found doing some uncharacteristic praying by her bedside for his survival. They had a farewell scene at a train station as he returned to the front. Those are always good. I liked that he was all convinced he was not coming back from France, almost like they are setting him up for a shock exit? She insists on giving him her 'lucky' stuffed toy.

I expect that stuffed toy to be in the shops for Christmas.

I also liked the Penelope Wilton butler approaching the doctor as he tries to get out of being called up on account of his 'bad lungs'. He could have at least coughed.

And remember the nasty footman? He's now a stretcher bearer in the trenches and is desperate to get home. He holds a lit cigerate lighter above the trench in order to get his hand shot by an obliging German sniper. He sobs his thanks as the blood pumps from his ruined hand. I actually think the episode was quite successful in this sequence as they made me have sympathy for an unlikable character and made it quit believable that one would go those lengths to get out of the madness of the trenches.

The Bates story seemed a bit contrived to me though. One minute he's planing his future with the maid he's sweet on. The next minute his wife turns up. She was was a bit too much boo-hiss evil and was clearly added to the story just to split up Bates and his true love. He is forced to resign his position and leave in order to stop some scandal spreading and Hugh Bonniville's resulting whine about Bates leaving service didn't ring true.

In other developments the youngest daughter baked a cake and the Irish driver expressed his love for her.

I think I might like Amy Nuttal's new maid lady. Must be a redhead thing.

I'll be keeping my eyes out for any melodramatic bar of soap incidents.

Spooks was ok in a tired sort of way. The characters uncovered a plot to kill a Russian and Lara Pulver managed to shoot the assassin while wearing an evening gown. I expect that we will see her staring into a mirror a lot to signify that it's the first person she's killed. Her voice reminded me a bit of Eva Green.

Lara Pulver Spooks article in Total TV Guide

Today is "new TV listings mag day" and I was hoping that the Radio Times would have a nice Lara Pulver article for me ahead of Spooks returning on Saturday.

However while the Radio Times and most other mags do have some Spooks content there is very little Lara-specific stuff going on.

Fortunately Total TV Guide (somewhere between the TV Times and Whats On TV in terms of quality) does provide us with a nice full-page photo of Lara looking very lovely indeed...

It would appear that she spends the episode in an evening dress running around with a gun. I can only assume there is yet another embassy siege with her colleagues being held hostage. Sounds good to me.

It is worth noting that all the TV guides are presently having a collective swoon of excitement with the return of Downton Abbey. The TV Times has even produced alternate Downton Abbey covers to collect and be passed on to future generations. The Radio Times has a foldy-out cover to fit in bigger picture of the stars, no doubt worth framing and hanging in the living room.

All well and good, but Spooks and Downton are on at the same time on Sunday. And my DVD Recorder has packed in. I may resort to recording on on good old VHS. Remember that?