Showing posts with label Happy Valley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Happy Valley. Show all posts

Monday, February 08, 2016

TV News w/c 7 Feb 2016

Lots of exciting new programmes this week on the BBC (and the return tonight of the X-Files on Channel 5!).

If you missed it last night, you can catch up with Montalbano and Me: Andrea Camilleri on iPlayer.

An intimate portrait of the man behind Inspector Montalbano, as acclaimed Italian novelist Andrea Camilleri gives us access to the man himself, his work and personal history.

Camilleri shares the name and beginning of what will be the final Montalbano novel which he wrote when he was 80 - worried that Alzheimer's would strike. [He is still writing new ones.] The interviewer notes how all the Montalbanos are the same length and Camilleri explains that it is deliberate. There is a brief interview with Luca Zingaretti and how he got the job of playing Montalbano.

Tomorrow night sees the return of Happy Valley at 9pm on BBC One:

Eighteen months have passed, and Catherine is spinning plates at work and at home, where Ryan approaches his tenth birthday. Tommy, serving a life sentence in a high-security prison, finds a way of keeping a watchful eye over Ryan from behind bars, while Catherine becomes a murder suspect after finding a dead body.


and lastly on Saturday, on BBC Four from 9pm, the first two of the ten episodes of Icelandic drama, Trapped:

In a small Icelandic fishing port, a ferry docks. That same day a dismembered body is found in the river, sparking an investigation and a call to Reykjavik for detective reinforcements to assist the small local police force. With the ferry held in dock and a bad snowstorm threatening to cut off the town, chief of police Andri is under pressure to deliver results quickly.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Favourite Discoveries of 2014 (6)

Here we come to the last of the favourite discoveries of 2014 posts, and like Norman, my favourite discovery of 2014 was Happy Valley. I initially didn't watch it but at Crimefest, Mrs Peabody strongly suggested I should watch it, so thanks to BBC iPlayer, I downloaded all the episodes and watched them on my commute.

I absolutely loved the way that the lead character played by Sarah Lancashire was introduced, which you can see in the trailer below:




My second favourite discovery is also thanks to iPlayer - Salamander, a Flemish 24-style thriller. I wasn't sure after the first episode but I stuck with it and enjoyed it very much in the end. It makes a change to see Belgian country-side and and to hear the different languages and to see WWII from a different perspective:



Brussels / Belgium. Sixty-six safes are robbed during a spectacular and bloody raid on the small but influential and extremely discreet private bank, Jonkhere, in Brussels. The owners of those safes form a select club of powerful people in Belgium. The bank's clients hold high-level positions in industry, finance, the military, the magistracy, politics, unions. Strangely enough, only the safes belonging to these powerful people were hit, and while the perpetrators took no money, they did take documents. Pandora's box has been opened!

When a police detective starts checking the files of the robbery, he must soon run for his life...






Monday, January 19, 2015

Favourite Discoveries of 2014 (I)

As usual I have asked my fellow Euro Crime reviewers to come up with their favourite crime fiction discovery of the past year - be it book, film or tv series.

The first entry comes from Norman Price.

Norman Price's Favourite Discovery of 2014

My discovery of the year was on the television:


Happy Valley proved that British television could match the very best of American and Scandinavian crime fiction TV. A great script written by Sally Wainwright, who was also involved with that very good series Scott and Bailey, and brilliant acting by Sarah Lancashire as Police Sergeant Catherine Cawood made this one of the best police series of 2014. This series raised the perennial question of how a limited mostly unarmed police force and a justice system that appears weighted against the victims of crime can deal with criminal evil.

Monday, June 16, 2014

DVD Release: Happy Valley

I'm so glad that Mrs Peabody persuaded me to watch Happy Valley. I downloaded it via iPlayer and watched it over a week. Possibly not the best material to watch on the train - I was either shielding my screen because of the violence or holding back tears.

If you didn't watch it, it's out on DVD today.

Watch it for the fabulous performance from Sarah Lancashire.