Long ago in the mists of time, there was a programme produced by George R R Martin where he didn’t kill off your favourite characters all the time. It’s beauty and the Beast, with Terminator’s Linda Hamilton as Catherine, and Ron Perlman, under some great Rick Baker makeup, as Vincent.
The first episode here is Down to a Sunless Sea. Fast Forward through it, it looks like the plot involves a rich psycho with whom Catherine becomes involved, who then flips out with her, ties her to a chair, she then clonks him with the arm of the chair and she jumps out of a set of french windows (in a stunt that looks genuinely painful) while Vincent does his obligatory train surfing to get there almost in time.
Before the next episode, there’s the end of an episode of A Kind of Living.
Then, another Beauty and the Beast, Song of Orpheus. This episode is written by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, both of whom went on to work on several other genre shows, like 24, The X Files and Homeland.
It was directed by Peter Medak, who made the movie The Krays and even directed a couple of episodes of Space 1999.
Vincent’s father receives a message from the world above, and ventures out there to find something he won’t share with Vincent. There’s a flashback where we see him testifying to the HUAC (Joe McCarthy’s Communist witchhunt) making this the second programme dealing with the blacklist I’ve seen recently. He was a scientist working on nuclear fallout. He was also engaged to a woman, but when he was blacklisted, her father forced her to end the engagement.
The woman is dying, and a crooked charity campaigner (Paul Gleason) has his hooks into her. He kills the attorney representing her, and when Father comes across his dead body in his office, he’s arrested.
It’s all resolved with some very genteel action, and Father and his former fiancée get seven days together before she dies.
This is all so syrupy, it makes me wonder if Game of Thrones is a direct result of Martin’s wish to do something completely opposite to this.
There’s another chunk of A Kind of Living before the next episode.
the next episode is Temptation. Catherine’s colleague is seduced by a lawyer in a firm representing a criminal the DA is prosecuting, and when he finally tells her they should wait until the case is finished, the riva; firm get him arrested on a bogus drug bust. Plus, Linda Hamilton gets to beat up a guy trying to kill her, which makes a nice change for this series.
After this episode, theres the start of an Adam Dalgleish mystery, A Taste of Death. The tape runs out during this.
Adverts:
- trail: Blind Date/Beadle’s About
- Heinz Spicy Soup
- Cadbury’s Chocolate Milk Drink
- trail: A Taste For Death
- TV Times
- trail: Bust (with Paul Nicholas, that charisma black hole)
- trail: Beadle’s About
- Woolworth’s – Brother Beyond
- Veuve du Vernay
- Capitalcard (I miss those)
- TV Times
- trail: The match
- trail: A Taste for Death
- trail: The Match
- philips washing Machine
- Woolworth’s
- Argos
- Bols
- Walker’s Crisps
- Ireland
- trail: Murder She Wrote
- trail: Murder She Wrote
- Twiglets
- Black & Decker Irons
- Tetley Tea
- Smash Hits 88
- malaysia
- trail: Match
- trail: Murder She Wrote
- Cadbury’s Roses
- Woolwich
- calor
- British Telecom
- Pinocchio on video
- Cadbury’s Chocolate Break
- trail: The Zero Option
- trail: Britain’s Railway
- Hamlet
- Fisher Price mini-chef
- Tennent’s LA
- Yellow Pages