celticman's blog

Cuckoo in the nest. Get it? That’s the premise of this comedy. Robert Lindsay was a kind of cuckoo in Citizen Smith and later the father of a couple of cuckoos with Zoe Wanamaker in My Family. Even old Del Boy with his three wheel van, Independent Trotter firm, and would be entrepreneurial ways, was a kind of cuckoo to the straight Trotter family. So this would be Cuckoo (played by Andy Samberg) to a straight middle-class family is played for...

I watched the BAFTA winning Welcome to Logos, with current projections of India (not China) becoming the most populous nation on earth this gives a camera’s eye look at the bottom, the shit heap, of the pile. I mean no disrespect. The camera follows one entrepreneur who sweeps the Kolkati streets in which jewellers wash their bodies and clothes for dust. Gold dust. He shares a room with fifty others, who all do the same thing. Their landlord...

Dr Pamela Cox talks us through what it was like to be a servant during the industrial revolution. The good servant had to be invisible, omnipotent, omniscient and know his or her place. The master was always right, even when he was wrong. It wasn’t just the aristocracy that had servants. The growth in industry led to an affluent middle class. To avoid the drudgery of housework and to retain any degree of social status they too had to employ...

Directed and written by Ferzan Ozpeteck. BBC 4 I’m the kind of saddo that watches most of his programmes on BBC 4. I started with Wallander and became something of a Wallander junkie. I even watched the British attempts. Then there was the twenty hours of The Killing. Yeh, I was transfixed by every episode. The only thing that could run it close is the recent episodes of The Accused (on BBC 1) which have been the best thing on telly this year...

Let’s try and sell this idea. You get a guy that's like an American gangster. I’m thinking Robert de Niro here, but someone a lot cheaper. So we get Steven Van Zandt. We put him in the witness protection programme, but we don’t send him to Detroit or New Jersey, we send him to Lilyhammer. Get it. That’s in Norway. It’s not a gangster in New York. It’s a gangster in Lilyhammer. Not surprising the locals don’t understand him. They speak Norwegian...

I like Jimmy McGovern. I like The Accused. His production company creates a drama and sells it to BBC. They give it a prime spot. Prime billing. I watched the last series. It’s formulaic. Someone’s ‘The Accused’ and the first question that needs to be answered is who? The flip side of this is who is the non-Accussed? Because the dead don’t make good witnesses it’s usually the guy or girl that has been seen in the opening scenes, but is no longer...

The Bank Job (2008) Film 4 is a Jason Statham film, which means it’s going to be bad. As bad as as a Steve Seagal? As bad as a Schwzenegger or any of those other kung-fu kind of action heroes –I’m thinking Van Damme, Vin Diesel and all the other white Van lads- that are so bad they are actually quite good? Well it wasn’t too bad, which says nothing at all. I’m not going to spoil the film by telling you the story. Most Stathan films are just one...

When’s a secret not a secret? When you’ve got a film crew following you around. David and Miriam Lapp risk excommunication from the Old Order Amish faith in Pennsylvania. There’s a stricture in forbidding photography. There’s a stricture against having a phone in the house, but having one in a shack outside, or in the garage, is acceptable. The garage isn’t a place where the car is kept. That’s where the horses are kept that pull those wheeled...

Line of Duty is the best drama on telly. The climax of this five part drama, five hours of google-eyed viewing is on BBC 2 tonight. Written by Jed Mercurio of Cardiac Arrest fame, it’s as taut and tight as you’d expect from such a veteran. If you really want to know what Mercurio is about then a good start would be his novel Bodies, and as a former doctor he knows where they are buried. Bodies follows an intern through his brutal initiation into...

Wallander BBC 1 9pm. Yeh, I know. This isn’t the real Wallander. The BBC 4 Wallander that looked like an ex-football player, all jowly and gone to seed, with a bit of a drink problem, a bit of a women problem, a bit of a life problem. But on the bright side he did have a dog Jussy and some nice Scandinavian scenery. Kenneth Brannagh has a dog named Jussy and he has the nice Scandinavian scenery. There’s also lots of international production...