tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499771778569209667.post7330440164439679144..comments2024-03-28T22:31:58.632-07:00Comments on Flying Totems: Queen Watch: "The Adventure of Auld Lang Syne"Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590397694589547524noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499771778569209667.post-86110605923185679352016-04-01T23:20:40.745-07:002016-04-01T23:20:40.745-07:00The Internet Movie Database gave me the exact date...The Internet Movie Database gave me the exact date of first broadcast. It struck me as unusual anyway. I'm curious to know how many people took note of the weirdness back in '75. My interpretation is off the cuff, but it feels right.<br /><br />Yeah, I had read Nathanael Booth's series on the show, and that ultimately led me to thinking about doing the same thing. He had the Blogger blog, then moved to Wordpress, but eventually the Wordpress blog got wiped. Seems to be one of the "lost to Twitter" bloggers, which is too bad. But the old Blogspot site is still up, as I recently found out. Which is good. He's got interesting things to say about crime fiction and film in general.<br /><br />I've only seen one episode of the Gambon Maigret series. It had to do with an abortionist. I don't quite recall if the abortions themselves were a crime - it's not in France now, but I think it was at some point - or if it were simply a matter of the patients being hurt or killed. A cross-cultural translation like that probably can work, but as you imply, it's tricky.<br /><br />That does sound like a lame confession scene, although I'm cracking up imagining it.<br /><br />Glad you're enjoying it. These are fun to do.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06590397694589547524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499771778569209667.post-30062168536193772302016-03-21T19:57:14.206-07:002016-03-21T19:57:14.206-07:00Your review of this one provides an equal to the d...Your review of this one provides an equal to the delight we found in watching the episodes ourselves. Since we saw them first as these dvds it never occurred to me that "The Adventure of Auld Lang Syne" was first aired in September, although, as you noted, of course it would have been. That tv shows followed the actual holidays makes a certain amount of sense but for the fact that when they're rerun the timing is often seriously out of joint. Your point that the writers liked the idea of a new Ellery Queen series beginning with a new year celebration sounds very reasonable.<br /><br />Another <a href="http://generalthinker.blogspot.ca/2011/01/ellery-queen-adventure-of-auld-lang.html" rel="nofollow">writer</a> described Ellery's being sidelined in this episode as follows:<br /><br /><i>Unfortunately, by relying so much on the dying clue, the writers had themselves stuck. It's inconceivable that Ellery should show up and not immediately deduce what the seemingly-random call means; therefore, the writers are forced to go out of their way to keep Ellery out of the case--first by making him oversleep and miss the actual party, and then by pulling (literally, from nowhere) a date with whom he must reconcile before he can proceed to the scene of the crime. It's a transparent play for time, but what else could they do? Well, they could have come up with more interesting characters to be suspects, but given what they're working with, I guess we can hardly blame them. To his credit, Jim Hutton plays the scenes brilliantly, making them seem almost--almost--like they belong in the episode.</i><br /><br />Overall, your take is far more entertaining. He mentioned the telephone exchanges too but what gave me a big smile was when you said: By 1975 I suspect a lot of the needed expertise was in Miami Beach retirement communities. Too true.<br /><br />We had an interesting encounter with another older (91-92) BBC tv series about George Simenon's Maigret starring Michael Gambon who we really admired in 'The Singing Detective'. (I hope you get to see that some time). Anyway, the Maigret series is a British production about a French policeman in Paris (fair enough). Since they chose to play it as thoroughly British it felt very uncomfortable. Just imagine a French chief inspector using phrases like 'bloody good show' and 'by jove' to get an idea. Worst of all, though, was the tedium of watching (the very watchable Gambon) basically acting like a neighborhood nosy parker then suddenly coming up with the solution to a crime from out of thin air.<br /><br />In one episode when Maigret finally got around to accusing a female character of murder, she paused for several interminable seconds, put the back of her hand to her forehead and admitted that she did it. We decided to not watch any more of them. <br /><br />Thanks again for the entertainment of reliving our delight in Ellery Queen.susanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16747450215034568033noreply@blogger.com