The Sopranos Season 4 end episodes 45 to 52

Now to the latest episodes of the Sopranos which brings to an end the 12 episode Season 4. Previously we learned that Tony had acquired an interest in a Horse Pie -O-My (44) which Ralphie was said to have acquired, the thoroughbred begins to win so that Ralphie ingratiates himself by ensuring Tony makes good winnings. Tony became so caught up in the horse that he takes Carmela to see the creature at its stables and commissions a large portrait of himself with the horse. His affection grows to the extent of protesting at the use of the whip in a race despite demanding more and more winnings. He stays up all night with the horse when it becomes ill after Ralphie calls Tony after having not paid the vets Bills. Tony settles the account but becomes more obsessed with the horse. I have given this story top billing because it demonstrates that on one hand we have the ruthless killer and hard man crime boss earning a major living from crime which involves stealing from others yet he is has a soft centre in relation to an animal.

Tony continues to have a volatile relationship with his psychiatrist accusing her of failure when he discovers that his former girl friend Gloria Trillo had killed herself by hanging. He is able to understand the guilt he feels for his treatment of her but not that he will only feel better if he stops his whoring and getting involved with challenging women as well as ending his criminal activities. He has a frightening nightmare about Gloria. However she is soon forgotten when Tony is attracted to the girlfriend of Ralphie and they begin an affair. It is Valentina who persuaded Tony to have a portrait of him with the horse Pie O My painted. She responds to Tony’s advances because she dislikes Ralphie masochistic fantasies which Tony learns was also one of the reasons why Janice threw him out. This is also part of Tony wanting to always t be powerful and in control.

Tony is devastated when he learns that there has been a fire at the stables and that Pie O My has to be put down. He discusses the loss of the horse with Dr Melfi and she comments on his different outward emotions and reactions between the animal and people. In relation to people he becomes angry and goes into denial. He gets angry at this and says going to see Dr Melfi is a waste of time and money.

He announces he is ending the relationship once more at a subsequent session and Dr Melfi expresses concern pointing out the progress he has made no longer having life threatening panic attacks. She urges him to get into contact if problems arise. The precipitating cause of his reaction is her refusal to explain the meaning of a dream he brings to her. He is in a car (Calling all Cars) episode 50, sitting at the back with his wife the Ralphie the driver of his father’s Cadillac and Carmela sitting next to the driver. There is a caterpillar at the back of Ralphie’s head which turns into an attractive butterfly. Sitting next to Tony is Gloria Trillo one of his recent mistresses and then another Svetlana Kirilenko.

Immediately Tony leaves the office Dr Melfi announces to her psychiatrist counsellor that she has been released from her most troubling and personally challenging client. Tony then has another panic attack when on a brief visit to Miami. As with his wife you know that they have become so important to each other than the link with Dr Melfi is unlikely to ever be broken permanently.

While there are moments of affection between Tony and Carmela and they still share a marital bed, under the influence of her priest and having attended individual and joint sessions with psychiatrists she has become more disaffected especially as she transfers her affections to Tony’s driver and hard man Furio who he brought back from Italy after his visit there to take over enterprises previously controlled by Uncle Junior. Carmela encourages Furio to arrive early and come in for coffee, or some home baking when he calls and later when he needs work undertaken on his home. She mentions him when in bed with Tony although Tony does not mention appear to see the significance. She arranges to see Furio for a meal with his girlfriend. Furio calls on her on the pretext of having left his sunglasses.

Her feelings come to the fore when Furio goes back to Italy following the death of his father. Tony remonstrates with him on return for being emotional. Furio admits to Carmela he has nothing in common with his family anymore or his background in Italy and that his future is in the USA. Carmela has talked about him getting a regular job career as a dental technician for example.

She discusses her feelings with her psychiatrist who urges her to take no action but this appears only to act as a spur. She has her haircut to make her look younger which angers Tony because she has changed her appearance without his permission. Furio who has broken with his girl friend senses the come on and backs out. He is shocked by Tony’s behaviour when they make a visit to the native American run Casino and Tony is clearly having an instant relationship with a buxom house girl. Tony had commented to Dr Melfi that he could have bought a fast car with all the money he had spent $300 a session a week and with that he would have a blow job. Tony needs to get back for an important meeting so having spent $15000 at the tables a helicopter transport to the airport is provided and at one point we are led to believed that Furio is about to push Tony into the rotating blades, Furio backs out and when Tony asks what is going on, Furio says he got hold of Tony because he had got too close to the blades. Immediately afterwards Furio disappears and Tony appears is angry on learning that the man has packed up and gone back to Italy, Carmela, fearing Tony is responsible for the departure finds that his home has been cleared of all possessions and she is devastated. She becomes angry with everyone including her daughter Meadow and son CJ as well as Tony, finding fault at every opportunity. Meadow begins to work out the position and in a conversation with Tony where it is evident he does not realise what has happened.

Previously Carmela nags Tony about what happens to her and the family if Tony goes to prison or he is killed and presses him to make official provision. Tony is in fact secreting huge amounts of funds around the property and made other arrangement through his Counsel and a Russian contact for such a situation. He resists the pressure from Carmela after realising his wife and family will benefit from the Trust only through his death and he will not have access to the funds if his circumstances dramatically changed. Eventually going through one of his feeling guilty phases he gives in and signs the papers for the Trust creating a good atmosphere between the two for a short lived while. Carmela discovers where Tony is stashing cash and takes some money assuming he will not notice and which she invests in stocks and shares. When C J comes into the room one day Tony asks if he has been in the backyard alerting Carmela that Tony is aware some of the money is missing adding to the tension which is growing between them. In part this is because she has become aware that Tony is seeing someone when she finds a broken fingernail within his clothing (Mergers and Acquisitions(47))

Their getting into trouble son CJ settled down in a new High school again after his expulsion and threatened sending to an army training establishment after establishing a relationship with an attractive girl Devin with his mother ensuring that the two are not allowed time together when at home. When he visits Devin’s home he finds that her family is even wealthier than his.

C J has revealed to his friends that his father runs a Pole Dance club the Bada Bada and they go off in search but fortunately he is confused about the location and end up elsewhere. He is told off for staying out after the family imposed curfew.

He tries to find somewhere to be alone with Devin through his sister Meadow who has become a leading volunteer is a law/welfare and support, as well as doing well on her courses and making friend with Ivy Leaguers from normal middle and upper class families. She moves into shared accommodation with other Ivy leaguers and Tony and Camilla help with the move and settling in party to meet the other house sharers and their families. One of the parents comments how lucky her son is to have Meadow in the house because she is such a good cook, and is a model because of her work at the centre as well as getting high grades for her work. She knows more about their daughter than they do. Meadow has a new boyfriend who comes for a good family and is going to skiing with him at the family holiday home.

Mother and daughter have their annual birthday meal together and after a good start it develops into an argument. Meadow states that the problem is that she has become everything that Carmela wanted having had to drop out of college to marry Tony and that she now resents her daughter. Tony attempts to be a peacemaker and reminds Carmela that she has created the wonderful human being her daughter has become. This only serves to underline the misery Carmela now feels with the departure of Furio. Worse is to come when C J accuses his mother of treating him as a child and not recognising that he has become a sexual active young adult because she is aging. Tony has suggested to Meadow that he mother is possibly reaching the menopause. Meadow is surprised to learn that her father has been in therapy and also attending joint session with her mother. The impression gained is that she is seeing her father in a new light. CJ remains CJ as a subsequent event will demonstrate. This leaves three members of Tony’s immediate family to cover.

His sister Janice has commenced to take an interest in the widower Bobby Baccalieri and his two children after throwing out Ralphie. Seeing other women take an interest in the loyal gang member with a soft heart and good father she pretends that some lasagne prepared by Carmela is her own. She successfully gets Bobby to return to work for Uncle Junior who gets him to strong arm a union official to fix votes. She hopes this will stop him grieving for his wife. Tony approves the relationship which brings brother and sister together and they remember good family times. The relationship develops between the two

Janice begins to believe she has found a new good relationship unaware that Booby is grieving hard for his wife and visiting her grave daily. His daughter questions what happened to the birthday cake she saw in his car when he collected her from school. Bobby by admits that he buried it alongside the grave and Janice realises he is far from moving on and that her position is precarious.

The Court Case against Uncle Junior is continues to his growing disquiet at the way it is going and how he is being portrayed in the media. When he leaves court one day in (Whoever Did this) (48) he falls down the steps and hits his head. He is anxious to leave hospital as quickly as he can but Tony has the idea that Junior should use the accident to his advantage and claim that mental instability renders him unfit to plead and therefore encourages Junior to pretend he has lost part of his cognitive functions and is confused. He prepares for the various Tests the Court will require before it accepts the position. Arrangements are made for him to have a nurse to care for him and this is arranged by Tony through Svetlana the Russian with one leg who Tony arranged to care for his mother and who had the conflict with Janice who at one point stole her special leg.

As might be expected Tony cannot resist making with the woman but she then decides not to have a continuing relationship because he is likely to be too much trouble. The Uncle Junior plan also goes wrong when the official doctors determine he is fit to continue and the Trial judge anyway insists on going ahead. This causes them to go to plan B which is to get at a Juror.

Tony’s nephew and protégée Christopher backslides on his commitment to live in girl friend Adriana to give up drugs while she is concerned that the live music bar she has been given is being more and more used as an alternative hang out for members of the extended crime family. Having forced to spy for Christopher and his associates by the Feds she becomes paranoid at being found out, hurt and killed but no one has any idea this has happened although with the court case they assume they are being kept under close surveillance. Meadow has taken the lamp to university where the bug was planted to overhear the conversations in the basement. For some reason the Feds have decided not to mount another operation to replace the listening device.

After watching TV Adriana believes that if she and Christopher are married she will not be able to testify against him. A marital lawyer explains that this will only apply after they marry and therefore does not cover what happened beforehand and this has separately been discussed within the FBI who make no objection to the marriage as a consequence.

The most important and far reaching development of the series to date happens when Tony reveals to Christopher, who is full of drugs that he proposes to make him his eventual successor and therefore a confidante above his official number two. He says he wants Tony to bring the family into the 21st century. Christopher is so hyped up he comments that they are already in the 21st century a point which Tony fortunately overlooks. Soon Christopher is called upon to show he is worthy of the trust been shown.

Things go from bad to worse for Ralphie. When he has the care of his son for the day the boy plays with the son of a neighbour who is unsupervised shooting real arrows into the air and asking the son to allow these to fall on a hand held target. Off camera the son misjudges the flight of an arrow and his chest is pierced. Although the child survives he lives in a state of coma which understandably aroused much anger on the part of her ex wife and makes Ralphie feel great guilt to the extent he goes to visit a priest. Worse is come when Tony is called out to the fire at the stables and sees his horse destroyed. When Tony breaks the news that the horse has died Ralphie appears disinterested and tells Tony that his son is showing signs of improvement. Tony believes that Ralphie caused the fire after taking out $200000 insurance and asks if he has been contact with the man who they arranged to set fire to the old restaurant of Artie Bucco to avoid a murderous hit being staged there. The two men fight and in his rage over the death of the horse Tony kills Ralphie and then contacts Christopher who is in a drug haze to help him get rid of the body.

Tony is concerned about the state of Christopher which is not helped when the young man points out that one of their own captains getting whacked could be a problem. Tony tells Christopher that he is the only one who knows and therefore any problem is with him. Tony does not feel as guilty about killing Ralphie as some of his other victims because of what the man did to one of the strippers at the Bada Bada.

In the tradition of the Sopranos end of series it is in the penultimate episode that issues which have been simmering hot up and in some instances explode. We have already had the death of Ralphie as yet one more of the originals gangster crew is killed usually the hands of another members rather than by someone outside or the intervention of the law.

There is no personal concern or regret at the disappearance of Ralphie who it will be remembered alienated h the New York Under Boss Johnny Sacks because of a joke made about his wife and indeed it was Tony attempt to broker peace reminding that conflicts within the families are settled by sitting down and negotiation and not by unilateral action such as Whacking in the episode- The Strong Silent Type (49).

Paulie Walnuts is released from prison full of anger that Tony and his other colleagues have not visited him in prison for fear of being targeted even more than they are present. He ignores the fact that he has been given no show jobs at the new development site which Tony runs in association with one of the New York families. He is not appeased by the coming out party at the Bada Bada

The release of Paulie leads to information coming to the family of a way to defraud the US Federal Government of millions of dollars through buying up run down and inexpensive properties and doing them up for re-letting This leads Christopher into a black ghetto neighbourhood where drug dealing predominates. It also has implications for relationships with the New York family where Sacks lives with his wife in a grand country house within the New England territory controlled by Tony(Watching Too Much Television) (46). Paulie need for more money arises from deciding to place his mother in the top retirement complex where Tony had placed his mother Livia. When Paulie finds that his mother is not going to be able to join regular social activities with former friends who are also in the home, Paulie begins to lean on their children and including the use of his crew to persuade a reluctant son to exert pressure on his mother. He also maintains an association with Sacks who implies to the New York boss is appreciative of his contact and that Soprano is not highly regarded.

There is now a move by the New York boss via Sacks to gain more money from activities controlled by Tony, The first is the housing fraud. When Tony refuses to contribute a portion of the profits, Sacks arranged for the man who does the official property assessments for the government funding application to switch to them or be beaten up. The man is then beaten up by Tony’s crew for not fulfilling his undertakings to them. This is a regular occurrence for anyone who works for the Mafia.

There is also a request for an ongoing percentage of the new Hotel/apartment complex which is progressed with the main structures completed and the fitting out in process so when negotiations fail another union official comes along and calls a full strike from his members because there is no union Labour on site. When Tony is persuaded that a sit down settlement is the way forward he goes down to Miami to see the son of the New York Crime boss Carmine for assistance with the father and Sacks. Carmine and his son play golf with Sacks in an effort to broker a deal. When Tony arrives at the sitdown he finds the New York boss is not present and the terms are the same as before so he walks out. However there is an exchange between Sacks and Tony suggesting that they ought to take action to end the reign of Carmine

Tony has expressed concern that Paulie is not delivering the same weekly tribute as his other captains. Paulie attends a wedding where he approaches the New York boss and finds that he has no special position. He therefore decides to regain the confidence of Tony by breaking into the home of one his mother‘s friends when he thinks she is out. She returns and threatens to call the police so he has to kill her. However he is then able to impress Tony with the amount of his tribute that week.

Tony was at the Bada Bada club when the large portrait of him and the Horse arrives and he orders it to be burnt. When he is not there Paulie says it is worth $25000 and takes it home and hangs it up in his living room. The pictures seems to grow in size which each camera visit and to have a haunting effect on Paulie.

It is Christopher who becomes Tony’s main concern. In a drug and drunken state he sits on Adriana’s dog without realising what he is doing and when she returns she finds the dog has a broken neck and is dead. When she protests he beats her up so she turns to Carmela for help and Tony is furious saying that if Christopher had not been kin he would have whacked him. They bring in a Counsellor who gets everyone to write down the negative way that Christopher has behaved and when he is in a sound condition they confront him with the home truths on the basis they will do this in a non judgemental way. However when Christopher refuses to cooperate they lose their temper and beat him up so that he ends up in hospital.

The Feds have already told Adriana they have arranged a place for Christopher in a rehabilitation centre because in his present condition he is of no potential use to them as a witness. Tony insists he is admitted as a voluntary patient and lets him know that he has one of his men at a nearby motel with the authority to whack him if he attempts to leave before he is considered ready. The sequence is an amusing one. There is a similar light hand aspect when Janice brings around Bobby and his children for an evening meal and insists that C J stays in to entertain the children. Devin comes round for coffee and CJ takes her two his room on their own until Carmela finds out and takes the visiting children up insisting that they play a game with them. C J‘s solution is get out the ouija board and frightens them pretending their mother’s spirit is with them.

This then is the setting for the final episode of the series. (Whitecaps)52 when as is custom some matters are resolved while other are left for season five.

Adriana collects Christopher after he has been declared rehabilitated under observation from Tony’s appointed minder. Also keeping watch are the Feds. Adriana had admitted to Christopher that she is unlikely to have children because of an abortion that when wrong. Christopher had seen marriage as a means for starting a family and is devastated but eventually forgives her. There sis the impression that they are starting out again in contrast to what happens between Tony and Carmela. Everything else is placed in perspective. Things start off well when Tony says he wants to buy a beach home on the Jersey shore -Whitecaps. He takes Carmela and the family to see it saying he is buying as a future holiday home for his children to enjoy and Carmela is thrilled at the development although worries about the cost. There is a further complication in that the house is under sale to someone else and Tony uses the influence of his position to persuade the owner to sell to him and Carmela says it is a good investment because of size and location reminding of her career attempt as a Home sales agent.
The disaster strikes as one of Tony previous mistresses rings Carmela in a disturbed condition and spills the beans on her relationship with Tony. This is Irena who was taken up by another member of the Crew who Tony beat up because the man had dared to have a relationship with the woman even though they had broken up, The beating up caused the man to separate from Irena which was the catalyst for her desperate call to the house and speaking to Carmela. This is the last straw for Carmela so that when Tony returns home he runs over his golf clubs which have been thrown into the driveway and where Carmela is throwing out all his clothes and possessions from upstairs windows, She demands that he leaves and will get a restraining order when he refuses.

He does leave and goes to Irena’s place where he finds Svetlana who explains the background. He goes off and stays at Whitecaps. Tony tries to back out of the purchase because of the changed circumstances but is held to it.

Meadow and Carmela fight over the situation with Meadow raising the relationship with Furio which Carmela vehemently denies. Meadow demands to know why Carmela was prepared to eat shit for years until now and storms off.

Meanwhile Tony has set on forcing the owner of the property to back off from the purchase and return his $20000 deposit. He load his home cinema speakers onto his boat and offshore plays as loud as possible disrupting a lunch party the owners are having. Tony repeats this including at night until they give in.

Tony returns home and tries to exert his rights but Carmela stands her ground. A J helps Tony clear out the pool house cinema so that he can stay there. However this does not work and the couple continues to row going over the history of their marriage and Carmela admits she her only recent happy moments have been the visits of Furio. Tony nearly punches her but punches holes in the wall instead and she calls him a fucking hypocrite. A J pleads to go and live with Tony but Tony says he must now be a man for his mother. Meadow wants them to return to Counselling and thinks over the extent to which she has taken her parents and home for granted. Tony tries to ring Dr Melfi but puts the phone down when she answers. She tries to ring him back but finds the number is now blocked. Carmela and A J watch Tony leave the home. There is something final about this, or so it seems.

Meanwhile Uncle Junior get his mistrial when the threatened Juror fails to agree the verdict. Uncle Junior appears far from elated with the result and takes it out on his crew member Bobby Scalerico whose relationship with Janice appears to have taken a turn for the better. Junior appears to spike this wanting attention from Bobby.

Johnny Sacks admits to Tony his hatred for the way his boss has treated him over the years and Tony tells Christopher to take out a contract on Carmine to make it look like a one of car jack killing.. He arranges for the two men involved in taking his car when he went into their neighbourhood for drugs to do the killing, Meanwhile at the race track Johnny advises Toy that his boss wants to settle so they arrange a meet. They settle for 15% instead of 40% much to the horror of Sacks. Carmine expresses sympathy over the marital break up and Tony commends the man’s son. The behaviour makes Tony wonder if Carmine has got wind of the hit on him. Tony calls off the hit and Chris meets the two men and kills them. Sacks lets his tongue rip about the behaviour of his boss and says Tony can trust him and should not have backed out of the assassination and take over deal. Tony keeps repeating that Sacks should not be saying this now to him. It is possible to read from this how things might go in season six.

Morse as young man and John Thaw

This week has so far proved a challenging experience commencing with a common cough cold, spending the night being tested at the General Hospital, thought my washing machine had broken down discovering two programmes about the character Morse and one about its actor creator John Thaw, watched on TV the two local Premiers Clubs have brilliant wins, together with a number of films and listening to excerpts of the most the most popular 300 classical work on Classic FM radio formed by amalgamating all the annual public voted lists at Easter for the past sixteen or so years. There were some surprising results and I was able to name a choral work of sublime beauty, heard previously but never identified.

The washing machine problem is the easiest to write about as only a change of fuse in the wall plug was required. Did not panic and was only delay from commencing the weekly wash by a few minutes.

I will only briefly mention a programme recorded on Sunday evening about the life and work of John Thaw, the actor who played the City of Oxford named Detective Morse created by Ted Dexter and which proved to be a great joy, but I will delay writing in depth having ordered an inexpensive biography and also a book written by his second wife about their relationship. John was married to former contemporary drama student at RADA and she admitted they had married too young. He maintained contact with their daughter and this continued when he married his second wife, the actress Sheila Hancock, who had become a widow with a daughter who he adopted. The couple had a daughter themselves and one of the joys of recent times was to experience a programme in which two former wives and their three daughters spoke with such loving affection as well as disarming honesty about someone who continued to have a positive impact on their lives. John was very fortunate to have enjoyed relationships and the company with five remarkable women who will be as much the subject of my writing when additional information becomes available information becomes available.

The only other aspect which I will mention now is that I did not approve of the role which brought him and Denis Waterman International fame as two “act first and talk latter” detectives in the Sweeney (1975 to 1978) although by then he had appeared in five other TV series, made half a dozen films for television, appeared in nine films and nine stage plays including one with Laurence Olivier in 1962. I disliked this form of policing portrayed in the Sweeney in part because had been brought up with viewing the police through the eyes of Jack Warner who filled cinema theatres with his performance as George Dixon of Dock Green in the Blue Lamp and which led to the TV series Dixon of Dock Green in which he ended each episode with “Goodnight All” portraying the ideal community orientated police officer which politicians extol today. The character was very different from Morse who had been an undergraduate at an Oxford College for two years, drove a classic Jaguar car, listened to grand opera day and night, supped pints of real ale and had read widely.

The series came to an end after 13 years because the author of the original novels decided enough was enough and Morse dies. There was a follow up series in which his assistant Lewis was promoted to Inspector and he was joined by a young man who had graduated from Oxford but was also something of a loner. He comes close to a relationship several times but there is always a development which prevented normal progress.

I had mixed feelings about the decision to create a successor series with Lewis but the combination of the seeing the city of Oxford where I lived in five locations in five years and the inclusion of another serious, sensitive and educated man as the Assistant to Lewis meant that by the second series I came to appreciate the work for what it was.

It was only during Monday afternoon that I discovered there was to be a two hour drama to mark the 25 years since the first episode of Morse was aired. It would feature a young Morse arriving to work in Oxford for the first time. There was an excellent article in the Guardian previewing the event although the majority of respondents were horrified at the prospect. I therefore watched more from curiosity than expectation. I was impressed and moved, and the one off ticked all my boxes and wrote to the Guardian expressing the hope that if my reaction was shared ITV would commission a series.

Shaun Evans looks younger than his 32 years and his performance was uncannily a young Morse working as a detective constable in a concrete town who is drafted with colleagues to help the city who were looking for a 15 year old school girl who had gone missing at weekend. He and another colleague are assigned to the city team directly engaged in the search and he is asked to circulate flyers on a door to door search to find out anyone has any sighing of the young woman.

We are introduced to the sights, the atmosphere of academic Oxford and to his love of Opera. We are aware from a scene when he takes lodgings that he had an adult relationship which ended unhappily for him. He also believes from studying the available reports that the missing girl possessed a number of poetry books was of interest and this is reinforced when he visits the household and finds that the books are expensive editions. He also finds crosswords cut from the local paper used as book marks but with only one word completed. This latter aspect is not immediately drawn to the attention of viewers but I noted the clue without appreciating the significance.
Morse concludes from the completed entries that the crossword is being used to arrange assignations in places around Oxford at a time on the Saturday evenings. His theory is ridiculed by the sergeant assistant to the Inspector until the body is found at the destination of the last crossword. His enquiries lead him to speak once more to the close friend of the dead girl at the school, and visit the garage where her boyfriend works without progress being made.

Before the body is found he is asked to investigate the apparent suicide of a student on the banks of the Isis a tributary of the river Thames and this brings him to his former college where he meets up with a former fellow student, now a Don, and on his way to becoming a Professor. He was attempting to visit the young man’s Tutor and on learning that the man is not in college goes to his home where he finds that the wife is a former international Opera soloist whose work continues to mean much to him. When the husband returns he appears shocked at the news, but mentions that the student had been a falling off work over the previous six months. At that point there appeared to be no connection between the missing and now confirmed murdered girl and the student who committed suicide.

We have previously been advised that the girl had been scheduled to go out with a friend from school that refused to answer questions about their relationship and movements and we were alerted that this girl appeared to hang around a garage dealer of Jaguar Cars. The famous Red Jaguar driven by Morse is sitting as a new model on the forecourt and the Detective Inspective also uses a Jaguar which young Morse drives when asked bring in the Inspector one morning because the Detective Sergeant is late in supposedly sick. Thus young Morse acquires his interest in the Jaguar car.

(Morse has also visited the lodgings of the dead student and discovered he shared these with another student from Australia who had also mentioned the change in the behaviour of the deceased over the previous six months).

Once the body of the girl is found the Detective Inspector then takes Morse with him rather than his Sergeant to the mortuary where the pathologist reveals that there had been no sexual interference but the girl had a pregnancy expertly terminated (indicating money and influence) and the Detective Inspector asks Morse to Interview again the friends of the girl at school and also the Local Newspaper who published the crosswords. That there was no sexual interference is a clue because the girl was naked with her clothes around her.

It is necessary to turn a blind eye that young Morse is being asked to undertake inquiries on his own that would have been undertaken by Morse senior, either on his own or with his sergeant present, although in fairness in Lewis the sergeant is given a more independent role than Lewis was given by Morse. Morse at this point is only a Detective constable however.

It is therefore Morse who undertakes the task of visiting the Oxford Mail and asking the editor about the author of the weekly crossword written under the name of OZ. The Editor is played by one of the daughters of John Thaw and comments to the young man that his face is familiar to her. She cannot give the address as the crosswords have been submitted voluntarily and anonymously, arriving by post each week, except for the past week when they were delivered by hand by a young man and unfortunately the person who had seen him was away on holiday. However Morse remembers from one of his visits to see the tutor of the deceased student an artefact with reference to a classical phrase or person, I cannot remember which, under the name of Oz and therefore visits the Tutor again to confront him with the discovery of the relationship between the crosswords and murder. Morse was a noted crossword addict throughout the TV series so this aspect also has resonance.

The tutor admits that he is the author of the crosswords and that he had a relationship with the girl. This came about when he and the former contemporary of Morse at the college were debating the possibility of working class young people being able to enter Oxford if given the right opportunity. The two men had seen the girl at some function and made a bet that the Tutor could not get her into the university Pygmalion/My Fair Lady Style. It was this aspect of the story which struck a chord with me because those of us who attended Ruskin College and Platter Hall as colleges of further education passing an approved Oxford University Diploma were eligible if our examination and tutorial records were good enough to be given up to three interviews at an Oxford College and if approved by a college would be invited to enrol as an undergraduate on a bursary for an honours degree, taken over three years but only required to undertake the second Public examination as the first examination which included a paper in Latin would be bypassed because of the Diploma qualification.

While admitting that he had commenced a relationship with the girl he explained that he had prepared the crossword for positing in the usual way which he had handed to his wife. He had gone to the meeting place arranged for six and waited but the girl had not arrived. It emerged that the girl had a relationship with the deceased student until six months ago when with the relationship with the tutor she had broken the one with the student account for his change in behaviour. It also emerged that the wife had forgotten to post the letter and had given it to the student to take into Oxford for them when he had come to the house for a tutorial. Moreover the crossword which the paper had published was that intended for the following week suggesting it had been removed from the the author had prepared in advance as was his custom. It appeared to be an open and shut case that the student had arranged to meet the girl, murdered her and then taken his own life.

There was another aspect the story which emerged from the interviews with the closest friend of the dead girl. This girl continued to be uncooperative but another girl at the school approaches Morse to say that she was the close friend until the now murdered girl had taken up with a trio of girls who were boy crazy. The unhelpful girl eventually admits that she, the murdered girl and other friends had been invited to a party held at a country house, but the murdered girl had left early to meet someone. The girls at “the parties” are organised by the owner of Jaguar car dealer. The attempt by the Detective Inspector and Morse to get cooperation from the Car dealer is thwarted as he refers to Masonry and influential friends including the head of the detectives. The investigation is further thwarted when they visit the County House where the “party” was held and they are confronted by a government security officer who tells them firmly to lay off this aspect of the case. The story is set at the time of Christine Keeler affair of girls provided at a country house Party at home of Lord Astor at which she met War Minister John Profumo who denied in Parliament having an affair with the girl who also an affair with a senior diplomat at the Russian Embassy and a West Indian Drug trafficker.

The Inspector and Morse get a similar reception when they go to see a well known local criminal who has escaped justice because of influential friends in the past and who appears to be the organiser of the parties. The episode had opened with the party and that an evident influential figure departs immediately for London the girl , subsequently murdered is reported missing.

The outcome of the attempts to block inquiries is that the Inspector makes another visit to the Garage owner, asks Morse to go to the car to collect his tobacco and then when Morse returns the garage owner has been beaten up and is giving two large packets from the contents of the safe. Morse strongly disagrees with the tactics being used. Later Morse is summoned to see the Chief of Detectives; Morse had noticed that the girl in a photo on the desk is that of the close friend and party goer of the murdered girl. The girl cooperates with information on the understanding her father is not told. Now Morse is asked to give evidence against the Inspector but refuses and told to return to his normal duties at his home station. Morse hands in his resignation.

Morse is also upset because his case that the killer was the Tutor has been shot down when a member of the public comes forward to say that he saw a girl wearing the dress shown in photos at bus stop very early in the morning on the road by the woods where her body was found. The time of death had previously put in the evening

On arriving in Oxford Morse was teetotal but under the influence of the Inspector he had commenced to drink beer, now he become intoxicated and goes to visit the former opera singer to say goodbye and to get her to autograph a long play record. He makes a pass which she politely side steps emphasising the love for her husband.

Although leaving he had continued to mull over the case and that the dress found next to the body of the girl appeared smaller than her natural size. He went to phone in his thinking about the dress when it also struck him what had been written on the arm of the dead girl. They had first thought it was the partial number of a vehicle and then a partial address but inquiries had proved negative. Now he realised it was a telephone number although incomplete. He had someone at the party had given the reference to girl.

Back at the office the resignation had been handed back. The Inspector had shown the head of detectives the photo of his daughter naked at the last party. The head of detectives and the Sergeant are also implicated in turning blind eye to the parties, corruption and other criminality through their Masonry association.

The plot thickens as they say. The car dealer is half beaten to death by the older sister of the dead girl. It is revealed that the sister was in fact the girl’s mother who had become pregnant when she a school girl and she had left home and her daughter brought up by the grand parents as their own. The father was the car dealer. He survives the attack but in a vegetable state.

Morse tracks down that the telephone belonged to the London home of an Oxford Member of Parliament and Government Minister but when the Inspector and Morse visit he denies any involvement and throws them out. Later the same security man who had warned them off when they visited the party venue visits the Minister and gives him an ultimatum to resign or commit suicide on instruction from the Prime Minister Harold (Wilson).

Morse had then checked the clothing retailers in the City to try and find out who had bought the undersize dress for the dead girl and his finding shocks and distresses him although why is not immediately revealed. I had guessed the situation already.

The former opera singer is giving a concert for charity at the Oxford Playhouse, attended by her husband sitting in a box and Morse had enquired and been told that tickets had been sold out long before. Now he and the Inspector visit the theatre to arrest the woman for a double murder, that of the girl and that of the student she attempted to frame.

The student and the girl had become lovers but the relationship had ended when she was taken up by the tutors and their experiment bet to do a Pygmalion /My Fair Lady. His wife had realised her husband was then having an affair with the girl. She had first replaced the crossword for the week with the one for the following week which had a different place. The girl had first gone to the party, met the Minister and accepted the telephone number and then gone to meet the tutor. However it was the wife who had turned up and strangled the girl. The following morning she had met the student who was in fact her lover and killed him making it look like suicide. She had stayed at the bus stop near where body of th girl lay the following morning was wearing an identical copy of the dress found by the body of the girl and a wig having removed the original outfit which she later burned along with second dress and the wig. She had stood at the bus stop until she was sure she been seen by a passer by before returning home. She commits suicide in police custody. Morse agrees to withdraw his resignation and take up the offer of a move to the City with the promise of help for accelerated promotion.

While there are moments of questionable credibility the strength of the characterisation of Young Morse is such that I remain impressed and hope there will be a series. In fact this point is made in the Guardian on line during the day and Wikipedia that the commissioning of a series as a no brainer having attracted the second largest number of viewers for the holiday weekend at over six and a half million

I end here to have lunch go and see the film about the life of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Great Expectations, Downton Abbey, Emma and Mansfield Park

A feature of television at Christmas is a congestion of times past for the landed gentry who live in fine country houses and this year was no exception with Emma and Mansfield Park, a Downton Abbey Christmas special and from Time to Time. I also include the Dickens Great Expectations.

I have been less of a Jane Austin fan than the Bronte sisters as her portrayals of the superficiality between the landed gentry leave me cold. Mansfield Park and Emma is the same story told with different principal characters in the sense that a man and a woman become close friends over a period of time and only later appreciate that they also wish to become adult lovers and because they are friends there is confidence that their love could be long lasting if not happy ever after.

I have not read Emma the 1815 comedy of manners among the genteel of Georgian Regency England and therefore have been guided by others about the authenticity and effectiveness of the 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role and Ewan McGregor and Greta Scacchi among the cast. A year before there had been a USA set version called Clueless and last year an India film called Aisha. The television productions have been more faithful to the original intentions with versions in 1948, a six part BBC serial in 1960 with another in 1972 and a four part version in 2009. In the same year as the Paltrow the BBC produced a single session film with Kate Beckinsale which should be the one to compare. By coincidence this film featured on ITV in the afternoon so my decision to watch the second part of the Harry Potter finale and then write about the series proved justified in more ways than I had anticipated. The Americans, NBC and CBS have produced three TV versions in addition and there have been seven stage productions, including three musical versions.

Emma is an intelligent young women stuck in a world where she has too little to do other than gossip and match make about which she no talent. She is only twenty one so allowances are made for her youthful silliness.

I am not sure if we learn when her mother died but with the marriages of her sister and her governess she lives alone in the country house with her father who leads his own life and therefore leaves Emma (Woodhouse) to enjoy the country walks, the picnics and dancing with her permitted circle of contemporaries. She enjoys the company of her father’s friend George Knightly unmarried and in his late thirties whose younger brother has married Emma’s older sister. They have five young children and prefer nuclear family life but indulges his wife’s enthusiasm for vacations and visitations. Something which she shares with her young sister who one predicts will follow in similar fashion.

Having decided that she is a good match maker Emma sets her sights on finding a husband for her friend Harriet Smith who is illegitimate, and raised locally and not part of the set until introduced by Emma. When a local farmer and his sister take an interest in Harriet, Emma does all she can to prevent a relationship developing and insists that the girl rejects the offer of marriage from Robert Martin and friendship of his sister because she believes the girl could do so much better.

She targets the new young Vicar Philip Elton but he first sets his sights on Emma and when Emma rejects him, he quickly marries another young woman from out of town called Augusta because of her income of £10000 a year. The woman but lacks the genteel qualities of her new circle and is written as pretentious and boastful and likes to have her own way. She struck me as very suitable for her husband who in the tradition of the Church of England is an ambitious man with only the trappings of Christianity lacking religious sincerity.
There are two other principal characters. The first Frank Churchill, the son by his previous marriage of Mr Weston who has married Emma’s governess of sixteen years and who acted as a substitute mother to Emma, exercising good influence but limited to having been a servant in the household. Frank has taken the name of the husband of Mr Weston’s sister who raised the boy has their own after the premature death of his mother. He was raised in Richmond in Yorkshire but becomes an immediate hit when he visits except for George who becomes jealous when Frank sets his sights on Emma. He appears to be good in his judgement when Frank returns briefly to London for the purpose of getting a haircut.

The other principal character is Jane Fairfax who has been raised by her grandmother and a spinster aunt to be a spirited and sensible young woman of musical and social talents but because she is without fortune to make an appropriate marriage she appears destined to become a governess. She and Frank Churchill became acquainted while holiday in Dorset and where he executed a rescue of the young woman when out on a boat trip which ended in heavy winds and high seas.

Frank arranges a dance at the local Inn at which Mr Elton declines to dance with Harriet Smith who has to sit and watch the others enjoys themselves. Mr Knightley steps in. When Emma and Harriet are walking to her home one day they are accosted by gypsies in one version for their purses and by begging children in another. Harriet who falls to the ground is rescued by Frank Churchill and Emma gets her wires crossed and believes the girl has become infatuated with Frank who appears to be taking an interest in her when in fact she is taken with George Knightley.

There is a strawberry picking tea party at the home of Mr Knightly who owns the great house and estate in the areas. Mrs Elton says he should have asked her to organise the event but he puts her down saying that this will be the responsibility of his wife when he finds her but he remains in control until he does. I was struck by the volume of perfect strawberries on show in the British film version which does not reflect the size of the beds in the kitchen garden where they picks those they plan to take home.

There is a significant difference between the two films in the scale of the picnic to Box Hill which remains an important visitor attraction to this day and which I visited as a child in an extended family outing by bus. I revisited a few years ago and it is possible to park the car at the top of the Hill In the British version film the party includes footman, cooks and maids in their uniforms who transport screens and comfortable chairs as well as setting a table with a full buffet style meal displayed. The Paltrow version the picnic is modest by comparison.

This is a pivotal event because Emma humiliates the spinster aunt of Miss Fairfax and is severely reprimanded by George who is disgusted and disappointed her behaviour and she is suitable chastened and remorseful. However the crunch event is when the news arrives that with the death of his aunt, Frank Churchill has announced that he and Miss Fairfax are engaged. They were secretly engaged after meeting during the Dorset holiday but could not disclose further because of the anticipated disapproval of the aunt. With her death the relationship can be acknowledged. Because Mr Knightly had made his carriage available to Miss Fairfax her grand mother and aunt for a musical evening, Emma had thought he was interested in the young woman at one point and that it was George who had provided the sister with a piano for Miss Fairfax who is considered an excellent pianist and singer could play. In fact it was Frank Churchill who arranged the delivery on his supposed mission for a haircut in London. George returns home and visits Emma as soon as he learns of Frank’s deception. The scene leads the two disclosing their long term affection for each other. Meanwhile Harriet had regained contact with the farmer Martin and his sisters and they are also to be married. The film ends with a joint wedding.

Apart from her attractive facial features and body it is difficult to see what George sees in Emma It can be argued that at least Emma does not spend all her time seeking a partner or pursuing a fortune. However she must be condemned for the attachment to class and belief in her superiority over others. She contributes nothing to humanity. Miss Paltrow is excellent without a trace of an American accent and I preferred her version to that of Kate Beckinsale. Mark String is excellent as Knightly and Bernard Hepton as Emma’s father in the latter.

While the basic story of Mansfield Park is the same there is much more substance to the characters with an awareness of the true nature of slavery and the lives of the majority. Fanny Price is the second eldest of nine children whose father spends his time drinking and in an opium haze after being pensioned on half pay as a naval Lieutenant because of disability. While Fanny’s mother has accepted her fate she plots a better life for her daughter and arranges with one of her two sisters that Fanny should be raised at Mansfield Park where their other sister has married the owner. Like Fanny’s mother Lady Bartram (Lindsay Duncan) has retreated from life into her role as a dutiful housewife and it is the third sister, a widow and former wife of the Church of England vicar who comes to greet Fanny some two hours after she has been dropped off at the main entrance of the Mansfield Park in the early hours after the long coach ride from Portsmouth.

Fanny is to be brought up in the main household with four first cousins. The eldest when an adult accompanies his father on a visit to their wealth making plantation in Antigua. The elder brother disapproves of the use of slaves and as drawn the stark reality much to the horror and disgust of his father. He returns early from the trip and then is brought home from London by drinking friends when his money runs out. He is then struck down with fever and nearly dies.

Meanwhile the second son who has been a close companion of Fanny since she arrived in the household has been betrothed to someone appropriate according to his parents. She is Mary Crawford who when the older brother takes ill contemplates the advantages that his death will mean that that her future husband becomes the heir and inherits the estate. She is similar to Mrs Elton in several ways. She has a brother who appears intelligent and superficially charming and at first takes an interest in one of the two daughters of Sir Thomas and Lady Bartram. He also reminds of Frank Churchill. This ends the relationship.

Maria is the eldest daughter of the Bartram’s who is pursued by Mr Rushworth who has £12000 a year but who is also a boring young man. She prefers the brother of Mary Crawford who something of a romantic womaniser. She runs off with Crawford soon after her marriage, gains a divorce but Crawford fails to marry her.

Julia is the youngest daughter who also fancies Crawford but is pursued by Tom Yates, a drinking partner of the eldest son. He and Julia run off together.

For a time Henry Crawford also took an interest in Fanny which Sir Thomas considers to be a good match. Fanny is not interested and when Sir Thomas gives her an ultimatum of marriage or return to her family she chooses the latter. In the novel she is between eighteen and nineteen years. She is pursued by Crawford when she returns to Portsmouth who in the film pays a young man to bring an entertainment of fireworks and a host of white doves to outside her home. When he befriends the family and appears to accept their comparatively low lifestyle Fanny warms to him and briefly consents to a marriage which she quickly withdraws. He goes off in a huff and quickly transfers his affections.

With the two daughters away from home and Lady Bartram wrapped him in her own world it is Edmund who is sent by Sir Thomas to ask Fanny to return when Tom becomes dangerously ill and it is she who nurses the older son much to the gratitude of Sir Thomas and Edmund.

The essential difference between Fanny and Emma and Edmund and Mr Knightly is that neither are natural social creatures preferring to spend their time reading and in good conversation. Fortunately for both they come to realise their adult affection as well as teenage friendship and shared interests. Before leaving home Fanny had developed a close relationship with a younger sister who shows some of the same qualities as her older sister. Their friendship is renewed when she returns home and in due course she joins Fanny and her husband at the Park.

According to my research there is a significant difference between character of Fanny in the original text and the film. There is acceptance of slavery and their family lifestyle in the book which is made into an issue in the film. In the book Fanny is shy and timid where as in the film she is single minded and self confident. She is physical weak and often tired in the text but an extrovert and outspoken in the film What the film version also attempts to do is to suggest that Mansfield Park is autobiographical Jane Austin in that Fanny spends a great deal of time writing from childhood and using scare family funds for paper when she returns home.

In the book she finds Crawford’s attention unwelcome and far from returning for as a punishment goes to escape his attentions. There are various other changes some work but others distort to an extent to arouse hostility from fans of the writer. I like the film version.

And now for something of a very different- A 2011 three part adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations. In my view there had been nothing until now to compare with 1946 film which has John Mills as Pip the young man and Alec Guiness as his friend Pocket. Jean Simmons played Estella the younger and Valerie Hobson as Miss Haversham with Finlay Curry and Bernard Miles also featuring.

In the present BBC production Ray Winston as one of his better roles as Abel Magwitch and David Suchet is Jaggers. The story has become well known as a consequence of the films and TV production although the original text merits the reading. I possess a family edition in the Heron Great Works series but I must confess not to have read but I am placing with the other volumes for reading during 2012. We encounter Pip as a young boy in the care of his married elder sister who husband Joe a blacksmith treats the child as his own.

The various films and series all open with the Pip encountering an escaped convict in chains, Abel Magwitch and he frightens Pip into getting a tool to release him from his enchainment. Pip also brings the man a slice of home made pie. Pip also encounters a man with a scar on his face who is another escapee. Magwitch is captured with the file and pie and the authorities assume that the file has been stolen from the forge which is returned causing great concern to the sister but Joe appears more understanding the situation and Magwitch is struck by their kindness in leaving him the food. The event is pivotal to the story as is the next development.

Pip has an uncle who delivers supplies by trade including to the local great house where the lady of the house is looking for a local young boy to keep her adopted daughter company. Pip is suggested and while his sister sees this as a great opportunity for family advancement her husband is unsure. Pip enjoys the visits despite the strangeness of Miss Haversham, a comparatively young woman who lives as a recluse where the dinning room is laid out for a wedding breakfast from years before. The young adopted girl Estella is unkind to Pip who she regards as inferior until an event which changes their relationship. Relatives of Miss Haversham call with their son but are refused access to Miss Haversham. They are incensed when the find Pip is allowed into the house and upper floors. He is told to immediately leave by Miss Haversham who cannot cope with his visit because of the situation and when he leaves he encountered the son of the visitors who behaves like Estella, the daughter towards Pip but in this instance Pip defends himself and strikes the young man down. This delights Estella because he has made something happen.

When sometime later Pip and his step father are summoned to Hall the sister believes they are going to be rewarded and made up. However Miss Haversham has a different idea and offers to pay for Pip to be indentured as an apprentice Blacksmith. She arrange the formal document with the help of the family layer Jaggers who is another character who is play a key role in the story.

While they are at the Hall the sister humiliates the hired help at the forge and he batters her to near death so she is rendered into a vegetable state for the rest of her life. The hired help makes it plain to Pip that he is answerable to him rather than directly through his step father. Having been given a taste of the life of genteel classes Pip is disappointed by his fate.

Seven years later Pip, now a young man, is summoned back to the Hall and introduced to Estelle now a beautiful young woman who is about to go to Paris to a finishing school before going into society in London to have her pick of eligible young men for marriage. Estelle tells Pip never to come back to the House again although there is an evident attraction between the two. Because Pip has completed his apprenticeship Joe tells the hired help his services are no longer required because the Forge cannot sustain three adult workers. This further antagonises the help who determines to get his revenge.

There is then an event which is to shape Pip’s destiny. Jaggers arrives to say that a secret benefactor wishes to enable Pip to have the life of a gentleman in London society. He will be given a weekly allowance which he will collect once a week from the Solicitor and then if he follows his instructions and guidance he will inherit a fortune when he comes of age (twenty one years). He can make no enquiries about his benefactor but Pip immediately assumes this is Miss Haversham and that the intention is that he should become the partner for Estella. He visits the Hall and the lady says nothing to dissuade him from the notion although she does not confirm his assumption. Pip sets off for London in new clothes acquired with money given by Jaggers to set himself up on arrival.

In the second episode Pip is provided with a guide for becoming a gentleman in the form of Herbert Pocket who Harry encountered at the Hall as the obnoxious relative of Estella. He is a much changed individual in having sacrificed his income and inheritance for life with the young woman he loves. He has to find work in order to marry and for this he needs some capital but in he meantime he is undertaking services for Jaggers which includes helping to become a gentleman. While his influence is positive and he acts responsibly, Pip in his anxiety to be able to impress Miss Haversham and Estella begins to spend way above his means thus gaining the disapproval of Jaggers. The first casualty is his relationship with his step father who has to visit after months of not hearing anything. Joe realises that Pip has become ashamed of his former life and is pretending that he has always been a gentleman.

Pip explains to Pocket his love for Estella and then finds that his friend far from being impressed is alarmed. Pocket explains that Miss Haversham was jilted by her fiancée who turned out to be an adventuring con artist disappearing after she has settled some money on him. Pip ignores the advice to have nothing more to do with mother and daughter and accepts an invitation to return to the Hall to find that Estella has returned from Paris and Miss Haversham wants him to accompany his adopted daughter to London for the social season and finding a husband. Pip thinks that this is an invitation for him to begin a relationship with Estella.

Pip has become a self centred waster of his fortune incurring great debts in anticipation of the fortune he expects to inherit from Miss Haversham. When his sister dies he visits briefly just for the service as there is a dance to attend with Estella that evening.

One day at the office of Jaggers he arrives early and meets one of the other gentlemen looked after by the lawyer. This man is a member of the landed gentry and quickly establishes a relationship with Pip who does not realise that Bentley Drummle is using him and soon admits his disregard for someone without a proper background. He first learns the reality when is taken to an upper class brothel. He tries to warn Drummle off taking an interest in Estella when the two meet at a Ball. Pip remains convinced that his affection is reciprocate after he and Estella have shared a kiss although she later dismisses this as using him to gain practice as was the purpose of the original invitation to Haversham Hall all those years before. When she announces that she is to marry Drummle she explains to Pip she has a cold heart and has been brought up to bring unhappiness to men. This was the aim of her upbringing; taking revenge on men for what happened to her adopted mother.

There is one good streak left in Pip that he arranges a career for his friend Pocket with the help of Jaggers Chief Clerk, promising to pay the balance of fee required of £500. As a consequence Pocket is able to marry and the wedding is a cause for celebration.

Pip then discovers the truth that it was Magwitch who is the benefactor when the man comes to his room with a vast quantity of money, his inheritance. He is horrified believing that the funds are the proceeds of crime. He refuses the inheritance and with the allowance stopped his debtors mount their demands. He goes to see Miss Haversham and persuades her to give him the funds required to pay off the debt incurred in securing a career for Pocket, He agrees never to return and Miss Haversham finding that Estella is returning all her unintentionally sets fire to her self as she burns the letters.

Pip has discovered the truth about Estella and Magwitch. Magwitch was married and his wife was wronged by an individual who in fact is the man who wronged Miss Haversham. His wife had attacked the man giving him a scar and he is also the individual who has escaped from prison with Magwitch. He had not been caught and had made a good living for himself in London society as a gambler. Magwitch had taken the blame for his wife’s action in order to save her and his daughter from transportation to the prisons of Australia. Magwitch believed his child and wife had since died and he had made his fortune from sheep at the end of his sentence. Although he was a free man and the money honestly earned there was a stipulation that he should never return to London on pain of the gallows. Pip discovers the maid servant of Jaggers is the former wife of Magwitch and that their daughter is Estella given to Miss Haversham.

Pip with the help of Pocket before he and his wife leave England to take up a posting abroad with his firm and Wemmick the Chief Clerk Pip helps to hide Magwitch who now has a price on his head placed by the man who wronged Haversham’s and Magwitch’s. The plan is for Magwitch to return to Australia, taking ship once he has left the waters of Thames within the London boundary. However in London Pip is being followed by the former assistant to his step father, the man who effectively murdered his sister. His first intention is to kill Pip but he then learns of the connection between Pip and Magwitch and claims the reward once he had obtained the details of the plan. Pip plans to accompany Magwitch to Australia but the plan is thwarted when instead of reaching the London barrier bell they find their adversary with the authorities waiting. In the fight that follows the enemy dies but Magwitch is injured, captured and taken to prison to await the hangman’s nose. He dies from his injuries before with Pip telling him that his daughter lived and became a beautiful young woman and that she will be loved for ever by Pip.

Back in his room he is attacked by the step father’s former assistant who reveals that he also severely injured the sister. Pip manages to overcome the man who off screen is then taken into custody.

When Pip confronting Miss Haversham her dress catches fire and she dies from her injuries. Pip returns to the home of his step father and apologises for his behaviour. In the film when returning from his job as an estate manager or clerk of some king he meets his uncle who says he is no longer on hard times because Estella has returned to the Hall a widow. Earlier we learn that he husband died from a riding accident for which she thanks his horse! He returns to Hall for a reunion.

Dickens had two endings for his work. In the first the two meet in the a street in London, admitting that because of the suffering experienced during her marriage she had learned to undo the cold heart created by her adopted mother. The final edition of the published work they meet in the ruins of the Hall. However there is to be no life happy ever after for them. They meet and they part as friend but at peace which each other and the world.

I had also hoped to write about Time to Time a 2009 British film which is an adaptation of the Children’s novel The Chimney of Green Knowe. I saw the opening on the morning of my Christmas trip but left for lunch and the return journey hoping to see the rest on the ITV player. Alas it is not included. A thirteen year old boy is sent to the care of his Grandmother at the family country house when his father is declared missing in action during World War II and his mother determines to go to London to try and find news and establish a new life for herself and her son if he does not return. The family have been estranged because his father had married someone who was not approved and Vice Versa.

The film had Maggie Smith as the grand mother and also Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey which is not surprising given that they are both cast into key roles in the series by the Director of the film Julian Fellows who created Downton Abbey. The boy encounters ghosts when exploring the house and finding his way blocked by a wall to the wing previously destroyed by fire. The grandmother is matter of fact about the ghosts and the boys is able to travel into past times thus earning the family history and its secrets.

There was a two hour Christmas special at Downton Abbey in which some issues are resolved while others are left open for the next series.

The main developments are that the truth about why Lady Mary is marrying Sir Richard Carlyle comes to the attention of her father who although disappointed tells her not to marry and that he and the family will support her, suggesting that she goes to stay with a relative in the USA and find someone to love and marry there. She also tells the truth the Matthew who under pressure from his mother and the Dowager comes to terms with his guilt about the death of his fiancée and is therefore able to start afresh with Mary, despite the threat from Carlisle that he will expose the family and its scandals.

The second nice development is that Daisy, the kitchen maid eventually goes to see her husband’s father at his farm. He explains that William was not an only child but that all his brothers and a sister had died so after childbirth as had his wife. Daisy is still wracked with the guilt of having married William on his death bed when she did not love him. She visits after cook plays around with a Weegee board used to communicate with the dead and pretends it is William telling her to visit his father. She accepts that she was regarded as special by William and the offer of the father to treat her as a daughter. More and more she has become more than a kitchen maid and is encouraged by a visitor to the household to leave and better herself. The father in law advises her to tell of her complaint to cook and ask to be promoted to an assistant. The cooks is agreeable to this subject to the funds being available.`

The third nice development is that the youngest daughter who married the Irish revolutionary chauffer Branson has become pregnant and the Earl agrees to invite the couple to stay at the Abbey.

However there is no such good news for Sir Robert’s former valet who was taken off to prison accused of the murder of his wife. He is convicted and sentenced to death. Sir Robert uses his connection to have the sentences commuted to life and then promises to continue work to establish a miscarriage of justice. Mrs Bates has planned to leave the Abbey and go to London because of the publicity anticipate as part of the threat from Carlyle. With the reprieve she withdraws her resignation.

The manipulating Thomas is thwarted in his effort to become his Lordship’s Valet to replace Bates and under the continuing influence of O’Brien kidnaps Sir Robert’s dog and locks him a woodland shed aiming to find the animal and get into the good books. The plan misfires and he is unable to get to the animal when the search is called off because of other developments. When he goes out in the morning he finds the shed opened and animal not there. He falls and in a dishevelled state returns to find his Lordship out walking with the animal which was found by a couple of villagers who had claimed the reward. However his Lordship is impressed that Thomas had gone out looking and had had come to some grief in the effort thus signalling that he may well get his wish to function as the valet until the future of Bates is settled.

The events are set at Christmas with the traditional shoot on Boxing Day. This is an event still taking place in country house to this day. The Duke of Edinburgh had organised and planned to lead the Boxing Day family shoot at Sandringham until his was hospitalised for an operation to relieve a blocked artery.

The Boardwalk Empire season two ends

The Boardwalk Empire is a creation which followed Romanzo Criminale in attempting to marry entertaining fictions with historical events including historical characters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. The second series came to an end with some powerful reminders of the evil committed by many of those in glamorised accounts of the lives of the gangster who profited out of the Prohibition of alcohol years in the United States.

In previous coverage of the second season I explained that the main character Nucky Thompson had resigned from his office as City Treasurer and was being indicted for election irregularities as well as under investigation for various crimes identified by the Prohibition agent Van Alden. His main route for bringing alcohol into his area was being blocked by coastguard and customs and Al Capone had arranged for a hit man to kill him but Nucky has escaped with a damaged hand. He had given his mistress Margaret the impression that he was seriously consideration her suggestion that he should give up all his criminal enterprises and settle down with her and her two children who he asks that they refer to him as their father. However although Margaret is pleased with the development, it far from the truth.

He had attempted to blackmail Van Alden who had a child by Nucky’s former mistress but Van Alden had cut a deal with the Fed attorney who had been sent to proceed with the prosecution despite Nucky’s effort to get political contacts in Washington to ensure that the case was dropped on technicalities.

Nucky decides to go to Ireland with Owen Sleater to meet IRA leaders allegedly bringing with him the body of his father to bury in his original homeland. He has all the appropriate paperwork to bring the coffin into the country without it being opened. This in fact contains repeating rifles and some ammunition which Nucky demonstrates to a group of IRA leaders. He says he can provide 3000 of the weapon in exchange for Irish Whisky. The plan misfires when the results of secret negotiations with the English are announced and prospect of a settlement which will end the killing. Nucky is however able to negotiate a deal with one of the group who own a distillery and had a substantial stock which he is unable to sell because of the conflict with the English. Nucky does a deal which leads to the import of the whisky as peaches with episode 10 titled Georgia Peaches.

While he was away Nucky had arranged for Chalky White to encourage his people to create unrest and go on strike. The focus is on the main hotel in town at the height of the tourist season - The Ritz Carlton. Here the all black kitchen crew work long hours for low pay and are required to eat basic food during short meal breaks. They go on strike during which time Nucky does a deal to sell a large quantity of the imported whisky and then to get the men back to work.

The Commodore and others begin to question Jimmy’s handling of the situation. Jimmy wants to settle the dispute so they can go back to making profits however the Commodore and others what a tough stand and arrange for Nucky’s brother Eli to organise some stick waving strike breakers to confront the pickets outside the hotel. In the melee the former Sheriff while Eli recovered from a bullet wound and back now as deputy is severely beaten up. This proves to be a message from Eli to keep his trap shut after he is interviewed by the Feds.

This then proves counter productive because the deputy is willing to give testimony that it was Eli who carried out the murder of the former husband of Margaret, Nucky’s present mistress. In the penultimate episode the Feds exert pressure on Eli to testify that he undertook the murder on instructions from Nucky, this they say will save him from the electric chair.

Because of the failure to use political influence Nucky has changed lawyers but despite his best efforts he warns Nucky it would be wise to put his financial affairs in order. Then they have a stroke of luck. Nucky has employed a black man during the period of the strike for which he is appreciative. He appears to be hanging around while Nucky and his new lawyer discuss his situation. Nucky is short tempered with the man but the lawyer presses the man to have his say. The man mentions that he attended the local Baptist church and was present at baptism ceremony at which van Alden had drowned his assistant!

Despite admitting his affair and fathering a child which appears to have brought into the good books of the Fed prosecutors van Alden has continued to supplement his official earnings with the cash taken from prohibition raids. He is approached with a proposition to raid a meeting at which Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and other local gangsters are putting up money for an illegal enterprise. It is suggested that a Prohibition raid at the appropriate time would net each of them $150000 and they shake on the deal. However events move quickly after the revelation that van Alden had intentionally killed his assistant to shut him up and when he is about to be arrested at the office and his gun is being taken the Prosecutor’s assistant is wounded and van Alden makes what appears to be a successful run for his life. Another witness against Nucky appears to have been neutralised.

Before Nucky had set off with Sleater to Belfast, the man had a sexual experience with Margaret but on return he keeps his distance. After her rejection by her brother in New York and his refusal to allow her to have contact with her sisters and help them she turns more to the local pastor who has already intervened over the behaviour of her son. While Nucky is in Dublin her daughter contracts polio with the implication that she might be unable to walk again. The girl is discharged from hospital wearing leg braces. The local clergyman is in attendance and he continues to put pressure on Margaret to renounce her dependency on the illegally obtained wealth of Nucky and his general patronage. She is consumed with guilt about everything including the disappearance/murder of her former husband. When she is issued with a subpoena Nucky makes it plain that he will not tolerate her giving any testimony.

However it is Jimmy Darmody and his wife Angela where the main focus of the final season episodes lies. As previously mentioned Angela has discovered that her husband was plotting to kill Nucky Thompson and she has taken up with a new arrival in the community, an authoress with bohemian friends. It was also Angela who had shown kindness to the facial damaged former comrade of Jimmy who had become his assassin.

Jimmy had commenced to deal with a gangster leader in Philadelphia who runs a butcher's which provides opportunity to dispose of the carcase of victims in his pies! Jimmy has an unpaid debt to the man which he ignores in his new status as the King of Atlantic City replacing his former Guardian. When the gangster crosses another of Jimmy’s associates he indicates it will be no loss if the man is assassinated. Unfortunately for the second time in a recent episode the assassination is botched and it is the assassin who is killed and when the gangster finds a match box from Atlantic City in the man’s clothing he makes the assumption it is Jimmy who has attempted to kill him.

He makes his way to Atlantic City and in the absence of Jimmy kills Angela his wife and her lesbian lover. In Under God's Power She Flourishes, the penultimate episode of the series, there are several flashbacks to Jimmy’s relationship with Angela during his time at university when he was yet to learn that the Commodore was his father and that his mother had been procured by Nucky when she was only fourteen years of age. We also learn of the circumstances which led Jimmy to joining up and serving in France during World War I and which led to his son being born during the long absence. The couple have only married recently.

Jimmy’s mother has a solution to the situation in which the child is told that his mother has had to visit relatives in Paris and that he will soon forget the women and regard his grandmother as his mother. There is the suggestion of incest between Jimmy and his mother. Jimmy is horrified at the idea that he and the boy should quickly forget Angela and this sends him into a rage he which he attempts to strangle his mother. His father intervenes and the two men struggle and Jimmy stabs his father wounding him badly but not fatally. It is then his mother tells him to finish the job so he stabs his father again, this time he dies.

Jimmy arranges for the death to be declared accidental and then discovers that under the Will the bulk of the estate falls to the former servant who attempted to kill the old man previously. Jimmy destroys the Will on the understanding that he will inherit and then his son. There is an import clue in this respect.

The final episode of the season begins with Jimmy and his minder raiding a meeting of the Klan and demanding to know the names of the three men that gunned down the workers of Chalky White, the event which opened the season. Jimmy then gives Chalky five thousand dollars for the families of the four victims about 60% that had been asked for and then the three men who we witness being beaten before being tortured to death in revenge.

Jimmy also announces to the remaining conspirators that he proposes to make peace with Nucky by insisting they withdraw their statements against him. His brother Eli is to take the wrap for the vote fixing. With the disappearance of Van Alden and the suicide of another key player the case against Nucky falls apart. He tells Margaret they should marry to prevent also testifying. When Margaret sees the way he is helping her daughter to walk she agrees to the marriage going to confession beforehand.

Everything seems to be going well for Nucky. The case against for the main charges which included murder and ballot fixing falls apart at the initial hearing and Nucky is released. The former deputy is left to carry the can for the murder. The present Sheriff, his brother Eli. is persuaded by Nucky to accept the charges laid against him for ballot rigging which will result in a sentence of two years of which the maximum he will serve is one, possibly less. Nucky promises to look after the wife and the many children.

It is then Jimmy who invites Nucky, accompanied by the Irishman as bodyguard to a talk. Jimmy explains that he was opposed to organising the hit on Nucky which is the truth and that it was Eli and the others who pressed that it should go ahead with what proved a botched operation. Nucky says he will look out for the man responsible for the death of Jimmy’s wife but separately we know that the man who was responsible is doing business with one of Nucky’s crime associates and that this raises a dilemma about what should be done with the toss of a coin being suggested.

Nucky and Margaret have married and she has invited him back into her bed again. He mentions that the government has agreed the money for the new fast road between Atlantic City and New York. He asks his wife to sign over to him the land along the chosen route which he had bought cheaply.

We see Jimmy having a day on the beach with his son and the boy’s grandmother in attendance. We also see him with his friend from the trenches urging him to recover from his experiences. He then insists that the friend remains behind while he goes to meet the killer of his wife who Nucky has telephoned to say has been located. Jimmy says this is something he must do. When he arrives at the agreed meeting place there is Eli on shotgun duty, Nucky and man supposed to be the prisoner. Jimmy is expecting the situation and unarmed. He says that he died in the trenches in World War I. He warns Nucky that after a while the drink, the drugs and whatever does not help and you are left with the guilt and no one to help you cope with it. Nucky appear hesitant about killing his former ward and who he treated as his won son. However he appears to shoot and finish him off. So we lose someone who has been a pivotal character in the series, second only to Nucky himself and perhaps Margaret.

Meanwhile we learn that agent van Alden with his child and the nanny have moved to a new city as man and wife when they are given lodgings. We also see Margaret transfer some, if not all, the land from herself to the church and not her husband. We do not know if she is doing this on her own initiative as her price for the saving of her husband or with his blessing. There is to be another season of this award winning series. We also learn the second seasons of the Game of thrones based on the second book is to being in April.

The Perfect Spy

The attention given to the Leveson Inquiry led to postponing my further watching and writing about the books, films and TV series of the works of John Le Carré but the Leveson Christmas and New Year break provided the opportunity to engage in some viewing and the 7 hour long episodes of A Perfect Spy which includes a good portrait of his real life father. The great questions are first how close are we allowed to get to the personality of Le Carré the spy? Are we also shown aspects of the personality of David John Moore Cornwall? Thirdly how much of myself do I see in this looking glass?

Spies for whichever country have characteristics in common. At the simplest of levels they are required to lead two lives and they are required to keep secrets from those closest to them. They must also be able to lie convincingly. For those who go undercover whether in the homeland monitoring organisations and individuals or overseas setting up networks and risking the lives of their agents as well as themselves there is need to be able to function in situations of extreme risk and danger.

Spies like soldiers should be able kill their enemies and accept that however much they take care there will collateral damage. A fourth grand question is: Can anyone with the Will and a level of physical and mental ability be trained to be a spy as most people can be trained to become soldiers or factory workers, or do some individuals have the personalities more suitable than others? I suspect the answer is both but that some individuals are more comfortable and find the role easier and will prove the most effective but also the most likely to become double agents. Others will need to believe that God is on their side and will not be able to function if their particular faith is lost.

Midway during the BBC adaptation Magnus Pym, the Perfect Spy faces a government selection panel for MI6 having undertaken bread and butter intelligence work during his university and national service experience for the MI5 and the military. He is asked about his father and argues that he has little contact from choice and then when asked about a Pym who is a successful conman he pretends this is his uncle, an approach he maintains even when a panel member points out that some criminality in ones background is an asset not a handicap.

Because of language ability he is to be sent to Czechoslovakia where he is asked about his willingness to undermine the regime even if his actions result in collateral damage which he justifies in shortening the life of the regime. But it is not his employers who give him the distinction of being the Perfect Spy. This we are to find out later.

I will also add, by way of introduction that knowing something of the story, although I have no recollection of seeing the series, perhaps because it did not feature George Smiley or Alec Guiness, I some apprehension. It was Christmas a time for celebration and being with family. It was not a time for a close examination of one’s failures and failings even if it should be! I have been impressed watching an episode a day over four days when returning to my Travel Lodge room and then cramming three episodes on my return home last night after a challenging drive home with several million others.

As a boy, Magnus Pym grows up in the 1930’s, a few years before me, enjoying being part of the wealthy fast cars and fast women lifestyle of his life and soul of the party confidence trickster father, played by Ray McNally, and an abused mother who tolerated that her husband also enjoyed the company of two young women of easy virtue which it later emerges he ran for profit, with associates who include Tim Healey and who in real life included the Kay twins. Early on Father and Healey are carted off to prison although the police fail to get hold of the filing cabinet in which all the records of his dodgy deals are kept. This cabinet becomes a gateway to freedom, of a kind.

The family lose everything including their home, and mother and son are required to turn to the father’s brother who is a blood and thunder preacher at the local Baptist type chapel. The brother is not just a bully who severely beats Magnus but there is the suggestion that he sexually abused his sister in the past and it is this which is used to blackmail him into given the two a home. The man’s wife is a secret drinker in the teetotal household. Their lives are a front and in fact one of the glaring issues of the series is that everyone leads at least two lives and has secrets with varying degrees of success at keeping them.

When, after his mother is sent off to a psychiatric hospital and at a Sunday school or children’s service someone has a fit, Magnus decides to use the same ploy to get himself out of the household, but the appointed nanny sees through the stunt, so he seeks revenge by peeing over the carpet in his uncle’s study, and when about be caught has another pretend passing it fit which the doctor suggests could be appendicitis and take him of to hospital where he is reunited with his father, Rick and Healey who have been released from prison during the first year or so of World War II. Phew. The context is that this was still the era when children had to been seen and not heard and males saw it their duty to beat their children as they themselves had been beaten to bring about acquiescence and self control.

In real life it is understood that Cornwell was sent to a preparatory boarding school which was bullying and abusive. In the film his father is soon back to his wealthy lifestyle this time exploiting the black market, commenting at one point that Magnus is perhaps one of 20 boys in the land who enjoyed a steak dinner that evening. After the war and shortages became less advantageous for commercial exploitation, his father becomes involved in a scheme defrauding the government by obtaining grants for renewing bomb damaged properties and then a scheme getting wealthy and lonely people to give up their capital for a superior income 10-12% is mentioned together with a return of capital to the estate. Nothing like the promised interest is paid and the capital disappears.

In real life I believe his father went to the USA at one point while Le Carré was sent to Sherborne Public school so he would become an English gentleman and a lawyer to become chief justice. In the series Magnus is bullied at the school because of his tendency to fabricate tales about his father’s exploits in the war. He carves the initials of one bully in the chapel, a flogging offence and this is an act which is to haunt him later. I am not sure the extent to which most parents forget the their acute awareness as children because of the need to move on from their own sinful behaviour and acts of wickedness or if there are those of us, like Magnus who remain haunted be all their experiences, traumas and short comings from the ideal of behaviour that has been implanted in them.

It is however fact that before going up to Oxford Le Carré spent at least a year 1948 1949 in Berne at the University where he made friends with a British Diplomat and his wife through the local English Church. According to a documentary about the life of Cornwall he commenced to undertake courier jobs for British Embassy and to provide intelligence on local extremists at the University.

In real life he also spied on left wingers and trade unionists when at Oxford and was then recruited to home intelligence service by someone who had moved from Sherborne School to the Principal of an Oxford College and on whom the character of George Smiley is based. In this production of the written work I am yet to read it is the contact at the British Embassy in Berne who is to become his mentor and sponsor for his life as a spy. In real life Le Carré was then recruited by MI5 before MI6 which he had to leave after the success of his book “The Spy who came in from the Cold published in 1965 and by which time he had over 25 years of involvement at different levels. He is now in his early 80’s.

In the TV series Magnus goes to Berne with an alleged Baroness Weber who has convinced his father that she is the rightful owner of a treasure box of art and manuscripts worth a fortune. They stay at the best hotel and she runs up huge bills at local stores buying fashionable clothing and jewels. His father has given Magnus a sum of money which is only to be handed over to the contact once Magnus has inspected the contents of the box. The Baroness persuades Magnus to hand over the funds after seducing him and then disappears. Magnus has to do a midnight flit and then undertake a series of manual work jobs as well as relying on charity to survive as his father has also disappeared again.

He then gains a scholarship at the University which brings him into contact with the British Embassy contact and spying on locals but there is no reference to the role as a courier.

He befriends a refugee in the same lodging house who claims to be a poet and they spend hours together discussing life. The man, Axel, is deported after Magnus reports to the British about his life. The suggestion is that he is either a Russian communist agent or a left wing extremist. It is an event which is to govern the rest of the story although it is not signalled at the time. In fact the reality is that he was then a struggling poet, seeking truth and grateful for the friendship of Magnus who he calls Sir Magnus and a refugee without paper but a limp.

In the third and fourth episodes Magnus, now played by Peter Egan for the rest of the series, has returned to England and is up at Oxford, a period when in reality he continued to provide intelligence on extremist clubs, societies and individuals at the university. The series does not cover this period in his life.

The reason for his appearance in the series is the selection of his father as a Liberal Democrat Candidate in the General Election. His father is still surrounded by his former cronies and one suspects that his choice of party was dictated only by his ability to con his way into the confidence of local hierarchy at a time when politics was very local and dependent on the war record or trade union support for the two main parties, before the era of TV campaigning and where local meetings would be well attended and covered by the local newsprint media. Rick is still up to his tricks finding ways to be able to book the Town Hall eve of Poll public meeting which traditionally would go to the sitting candidate or political Party which had won the previous Election.

Before the meeting Magnus discovers as young woman attempting to break into the filing cabinet which years before Magnus has held the key to prevent the police gaining access to the records of his father’s criminal deals. By this time Magnus has learned the art of surveillance and getting into locked places to view records and he does so in order to find the papers about the women’s father. The story goes back to the days of the insurance/income providing scam in which the subject handed over their capital for an income and protection when in old age as well as securing the capital as inheritance for the family. In this instance not only did her father see little of the promised income but on his death bed he had been persuaded to sign over the estate, which included a farm, so that the family was left penniless.

The young woman was spending the rest of her days attempting to bring Rick to justice.

Magnus who has already been placed in the position of endorsing his father’s campaign and which he does with a two edged choice of words, provides the young woman which ammunition to cause his father a major problem at his final public meeting by revealing that Rick has been to prison. Rick however is seasoned at being able to turn most verbal attacks or criticisms to his advantage. He pretends that as a young man he had used postage stamps from the petty cash box as a junior clerk which he had intended to return, an offence which even in the days before the World War II was unlikely to have led immediately to prison as a first conviction. He then uses a parable of the son given a second chance in order to win the crowd on the night over to his side, although he later admits that the headlines in the local paper was the reason why he did not succeed with the electorate in general.

Magnus had become engaged to a young woman of good standing and family background and has provided a cover story about his father being abroad. Somehow Magnus has got to learn of the wedding which he gatecrashes with his cronies, provides crates of Champagne and an expensive limousine as a wedding gift although while he showing the bride his generosity police vehicles are seen arriving in the background. There is then the scene as Magnus attempts to explain why the vehicle was immediately taken away.

While serving in army intelligence during national service Magnus is contacted by his former friend in Berne Axel who despite knowing that it was Magnus who turned him in says that out of friendship he can provide him with great intelligence which will further his career having become a spy for the Communists in Prague. He therefore knows all about the role of Magnus. He reintroduces Magnus to the former secretary of the extremist club at the University in Berne and with whom Magnus has what is suggested as his first sexual affair. She is called Sabina. He had attempted to use her to gain information about the club members although she had resisted his efforts to gain access to the membership list so he had been forced to break into the filing cabinet where the information was held and this had led to identifying Axel as an extremist as well as stateless refugee. She is to be his link and means of gaining the information which is to put him in the good books of his employers and further his career.

We know that in reality that Le Carré worked for MI5 before moving to MI6 and overseas postings but in this series he has moved from the army to MI6 and the relationship with his wife become quickly strained because of absences and the secrecy He is posted to Europe first to Prague and then to Berlin. There is a tense situation before a potential defector is met and who turns out to be none other than Axel with a record of their dealings to date including that Magnus complied with a request to provide low level intelligence for the high level stuff which Axel provided. Now he is to be blackmailed in a one way situation when he is provide the highest level of information in relation while he will appear to have established an excellent network of fictitious and false agents who will appear to provide quality information which will be either false or of little long term value. The only consolation is that his contact will be again Sabine.

When in Berlin he is contacted by the police in the middle of the night and fearing his role has been discovered he attempts to hastily destroy film and other giveaways of his trade. He then discovers it is his father in jail for yet another scam and a police chief who knows and respects Magnus and fixes for his father to be released.

His wife cannot cope with his absences and secrecy and faced with his departure to Berlin, seeks and gains a divorce. Magnus is one of those men who need a wife and family to provide a background cover of stability and commonplace when in reality he craves, like his father for the excitement of trying to beat the odds. In fact it is evident that Magnus has turned into his father. Gregarious, able to make friends quickly wherever he goes, and enjoying the illicit, Magnus like his father enjoys sex whenever the opportunity arises. The immediate employer is always Jack from the Berne Embassy and he takes a fancy to Jack’s woman friend Mary, who Magnus then marries and has a son, Thomas.

We then catch up with Magnus his wife and child in Washington but according to a suspicious associate and new CIA family friend” Grant Laderer he is always on the move all over the USDA talking to officials and getting secret information which he hopes is only being passed on to the UK. On a family picnic the issue of the Criminality of Artists versus the Artistry of Criminality is raised. And the extent to which one has to be a barking psychopath to enjoy their work, which they do.

It is 20 years since his recruitment by Axel who is also in the USA and an Embassy official and believes it is time for them to retire and he later offers Magnus a Dacha in the Black Sea with a chestful of medals. Magnus explains that for him he has become the game. A committee of USA officials led by one Harry Wexler think they know the particular game he is playing having noticed some curiosities in the computer analysis of Magnus and his Czechoslovakian networks.

Celebrating Christmas with his family, Magnus is called out to a bar where he meets his yet again destitute father and Magnus provides him with a steak meal but refuses to invite him home for the festivities making available fresh funds as he has in relation to various American cities where enterprises failed. The Americans insist on coming to London to put their suspicions to senior British intelligence officers but Jack dismisses it all as a Czechoslovakian attempt to frame Magnus. Recalled to London and haunted by his past, Magnus, under a false name, takes secret lodgings with a Miss Dubber (Peggy Ashcroft) at his childhood now desolate seaside holiday centre one of a row of near empty guess houses. He has survived the interrogation about his contacts, including the curiosities thrown up by the computer analysis but the Americans remain suspicious.

More years pass by and the family take a secluded villa holiday on the Island of Corfu. His teenage son Thomas is curious when an eastern European speaks with Magnus at an English cricket match in the capital city. The boy also notices that two youths appear to be watching and later he sees them outside the villa. The stranger is Axel who is again suggesting they retire. When Thomas hears his father telling his mother the man was an English Joe she wants to know why the deception. Several times she says he can tell her anything but she just needs to know. Magnus would like to but keeps his distance, including his escape visits to the Devon private guest house.

Magnus decides to extend the holiday so he can write a novel, with his son returning to school. At the airport the boy again notices the youths but Magnus again dismisses concerns. When he is out his wife starts to read the novel. He is then recalled by Jack to Vienna where he learns of his father’s death. There are those who experience an exhilarating sense of freedom when a parent dies which other become wounded. Over three decades have passed and the original two girls his father ran, now old women, explain they do not have the funds to arrange a funeral and cover his debts, Magnus provides a good cheque.

He then goes in search of Sid and the filing cabinet which Sid is reluctant part but Magnus says he will arrange for collection and later this is transported to his flatlet in Devon. The death of his father means that he wants to settle his account and next he tracks down the former pupil at prep school whose initials in carved in revenge and which led to a flogging. Magnus is having a category one break down and disappears to his Devon hideaway.

When Magnus fails to return to his wife in Vienna she calls Jack who visits Mary in Vienna and begins to interrogate her. Jack learns that Mary was asked to keep a joint Diary in which there are several meetings with someone called Poppy. He also discovers a document camera hidden in the chimney breast with film made in a communist state. Magnus has also shown interests in Jack’s wife in the past. She had been about to admit something when her husband had been called away because of the death of Rick. Now she reveals that early on she had removed a couple of sheets of information from the security file and which concerned the role of Sabine and her connection with Axel. Jack’s worst fears, given the way he defended Magnus against the Americans come to haunt him. He accuses Mary of knowing something was wrong for years. Jack arranges for Mary to watched day and night for some indication of the whereabouts of Magnus but it is Axel who contacts her at mass and says he knows how to get in contact by sending a coded message on the Czech radio similar to that which the UK to contact agents throughout Europe during the Second World War.

Members of Magnus network go silent. Jack realises Prague is rolling up the fake network and the extent of Magnus’s betrayal is finally revealed. Magnus also senses his time is up and it is evident he is preparing to take his own life writing long letters for his son, his wife, Jack and Axel. He has become a close friend with his landlady and buys her a present before effectively saying goodbye.

Jack has taken Mary with him plus a local armed special squad as Magnus is known to have with him a service revolver. They hear one shot and Magnus is found with half his face blown off.

The key scenes occur earlier especially between Magnus and Axel. Magnus shows his appreciation for the way he and Jack ran him but he wishes his life had been different and that he had not been set on the road to so much betrayal. When sleeping with Jack’s wife, or may have been Mary she tells Magnus that he had never loved any woman which Magnus had to concede and we learn that he uses the same love making expressions as he had with Sabine four decades before and likely with his two wives other women. He says that the creation of his son is the only worthwhile thing he has done outside of being the Perfect Spy, an epithet awarded to him by Axel.