Friday 30 September 2011

Sopranos Season 3 episodes 31-35

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Thursday 29 September 2011

Downton Abbey second swries begins and Fiona Bruce at Buckingham Palace

Wednesday 28th September has not been a good day for me. I went to bed late and got up early for a swim and a sauna when I was up to neither. I have remained tired which has affected my response to viewing and writing, going to sleep twice during programmes which had then to be viewed again.

I kept my shop at Asda to the planned buys and no more and also kept to the food plan with a breakfast of cereals and microwaved mushrooms, Tex Mex platter for lunch with cherries, a tea of half a dozen pieces of anchovies on dry crackers and an evening meal of a vegetable quiche with mixed salad followed by a small portion of grapes. I drank one cup of coffee and one can of Pepsi. Tomorrow I go one better and cut out the tea, with fish for the main course, a banana and grapes being the fruit. There is no alarm call but I need to be bright and active in preparation for the arrival of the new fridge between 2 and 4pm.

I watched Sunday’s second episode of Downton Abbey and write now about the first two episodes together with the a review of the first of Fiona’s Bruce’s three documentaries insights into the three state residences of the British Monarchy, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Holyrood House. I also watched the second programme which was more interesting and impressive but will leave the writing to another day and the latest in the series Who do you think you are which will be my next writing this week, although tomorrow in addition to sort out for the new fridge day I want to continue the annual accounts and documentation location programme.

It was warm and sunny today with another day promised to morrow. My hope is that the good weather will continue until Friday when I will go out and enjoy what could be the best fine day before the horrors of autumn and winter.

I did not expect much of Downton Abbey as saying anything original about the life of an aristocratic family at their country estate before and during World War I, especially as the separate lives and the interactions were exceptionally well covered in Upstairs and Downstairs, and in other televisions series and films, some based on works of Literature such as the glorious Brideshead Revisited. Upstairs and Downstairs was revived after 25 years for a Christmas special series following the success of Downton Abbey but in order to attract a new audience they introduced what was thought to be the proposed visit of the King with Mrs Simpson but turned out to be Mrs Simpson with Von Ribbentrop’s during his stay in the UK as Ambassador.

I am therefore a late convert to the series and accept that there is some fine acting in the substantial cast but remain to be convinced that it is worth all the accolades and critical acclaim.

The series is based on a country house Highclere Castle in Berkshire which I do not know and the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire which I know very well having covered the village as a child care officer between 1964 and 1967 and returned during the last decade to photo and remember my experiences during those three years.

Now to the main story of the family. The Abbey used to be the property of the husband of the Violet Crawly, Countess of Grantham played by Maggie Smith but following the death of her husband and her only son inheriting, she becomes the Dowager, a traditionalist and increasingly frustrated and a pain in the backside because of her loss of power and control. Her performance reminds of that great actress Dame Edith Evans and her role In the Importance of Being Ernest.

Her son, the late middle aged Earl, is played by Hugh Bonnerville, as a very boring man and inadequate man who becomes frustrated when there is no one available to dress him in the various fancy dresses worn by the upper classes. He manages to find himself a good man’s man called Bates who becomes the subject of a criminal conspiracy by an ambitious Footman called Thomas Barrow after he is caught stealing wine. He also attempts to blackmail the Duke of Crowborough his former lover who visits the household on the pretext of being interested in Lady Mary but with the purpose of getting hold and destroying letters between him and Thomas. Thomas jumps ship by joining the military nursing corps to get him out of being called up into the front line and in the current series he gets back home by getting his hand shot, returns to the community and is found a job as an orderly at the local hospital. No doubt he is to play some black role in the present series.

The Earl is again frustrated in the present series because he is not allowed to have a command in the slaughter taking place in France but is given an honorary role in his former regiment to help recruitment and raise morale at home. Just when he has got his life organised his Valet Bates is taken from him again. How will he cope?

The problem is that the Earl has no son and heir and things go from bad to worse when the relative trained to take over the inheritance is lost through the sinking of the Titanic. He then finds that the heir is a middle class solicitor and not of their classes which understandably infuriates the Dowager who behave like a grand bitch (as opposed a common one) when the young man comes along for a visit with his mother.). However his ascendancy could mean problems for the Earl’s three daughters although the new heir seems a decent and honourable chap and things look good for the family when he takes a shine to the eldest daughter, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery.
However she is not interested and is willingly seduced by a visiting well connected Turk, a foreigner, aghast, who then dies while in her bed. The scandal is covered up. She then resists the advances of her cousin three times removed and the new heir, Mathew Crawley played by Dan Stevens, because she is no longer a virgin, despite pleas from her family to protect her estate and i heritance, and moves to the London House and intosociety as a young eligible woman of means, but limited dowry.

Her mother, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) is also a traditionalist in terms of her role, supporting her husband but frustrated that she has been unable to produce an heir. When against the odds she becomes pregnant there is great excitement until the child is effectively murdered by her personal maid after ensuring a miscarriage when her Ladyship gets out of her bath and falls on a piece of soap. The maid feared she was being replaced by another member of the household, who in fact her ladyship was arranging a job as a secretary more suited to the girl’s talents. These two events confirm by natural hostility to ever trusting someone to assist in ones care even if one had the means to do so and the necessity,

The Abbey is an impressive building but nothing Like Buckingham Palace which is the first of three Royal Palaces the subject of a Commercial documentary fronted by Fiona Bruce on BBC TV.

I like Fiona Bruce because she communicates as an integrated, competent, single minded and honest individual, reflected in her television roles, best known for fronting BBC News at 6 and at 10 and for the Antiques Roadshow.

She has an atypical background with a father who worked his way from postal boy to the managing Director of a division of Unilever and an education which took her from the Wirral where I lived for three years to the International School in Milan and the Haberdashers Sixth form College before reading French and Italian at Hertford College where for a brief period she became a punk and died her hair blue. She worked in Management Consultancy before moving to advertising where she married a Director and has two children. At a wedding she met the Editor of Panorama and persuaded him to give her a job as a researcher and from which she progressed to being one the leading presenters for the BBC.

I was disappointed by the first of the programmes which centred on Buckingham Palace. I quickly worked out why. The series appears designed to encourage visitors to the establishments and I found the constant shots of Fiona looking good but also at home in the Palaces disconcerting. The second programme on Windsor Castle is a considerable improvement but I will leave writing about this programme until Downton Abbey has progressed

The photography of the series is brilliant and the interiors sumptuous. I would have liked to been given a better idea of the present day structure of the building. I appreciate there has already been features about daily life in the Palace involving the Queen, her husband, others members of her family, the staff and a state occasion so it is understandable that the documentary concentrated on the four areas which the general public are able to see. The state rooms used for official entertaining are open during August and September for a fee ranging from £16 for the state rooms for those over 60 to £28.50 for an inclusive visit to the Picture Gallery and the Royal Mews. Some 50000 individual are thought to attend the Palace for the Royal Garden Parties, State and other functions every year. The Palace building is owned and maintained by the Nation. The State rooms are at back of the quadrangle with the Private Apartments to one side and the garden is the largest private open space in the capital.
Although Buckingham Palace has a history, owned by the Duke of Buckingham as his town house in 1705 and acquired by George III as a private residence for Queen Charlotte in 1761, it did not become the official residence of the reigning Monarch in London until 1837 and the ascendancy of Queen Victoria. With the death of Albert she retreated to Windsor and to Balmoral so it was not until the 20th century and the Second World War that the Palace started to become the modern Head of State business of today.

Its structure had not changed significantly since Victoria and Albert’s modernization but following the bombing of the Chapel during World War II it was replaced by what is known as the Queens Gallery to exhibit works of art from the Royal collection to the public since 1962.

I cannot make up my mind whether to approve or disapprove of such manifest wealth being acquired within one establishment unless its pays its way in terms of maintaining Britain’s economic position in the world but according to what I read we are now subject to the global economy so that tourism while important and the holding of state Do’s to impress and bring on side other countries is perhaps necessary. I have continuing misgivings about the ongoing influence of Royalty, Palaces, Titles etc has on developing a meaningful egalitarian society fit for purpose in the twenty first century. I did not see the point of shots of Fiona riding the grounds or on a Gondola in the Grand Canal to demonstrate the authenticity of the paintings in the Canelleto gallery.

Returning to Downton Abbey I looked in hope for continuing indications of rebellion on the part of family members and among staff against the way things had become. In the first series Lady Sybil, the youngest become interested in feminine and attends some public meetings with the help of the radical chauffer and in the present series she decides to become a nurse or nursing auxiliary which although approved by some members of family they are concerned at her lack of experience in the basics including boiling a kettle and making a cup of tea. She therefore ventures below stairs for some lessons to the great merriment of the staff but with encouragement she is able to bake a cake for a parental tea. After training she returns to the community hospital which is given over to the war wounded of body and mind.

The reality of the war is brought home with one officer blinded in battle committing suicide because he was told he would have to leave those giving him support, particularly the former rogue footman and homosexual Thomas and by Sybil. She puts pressure her parents to use the Abbey for those needing convalescing so they do not have to immediately jump back to the reality of the war or civilian life.

One of the staff wants to know for her sister’s sake the details of a telegram saying the son is missing in action. When she turns to the Earl for assistance he has the unpleasant news that the boy was shot because of cowardice in the face of the enemy. He persuades her to hide the truth from her sister, adding that situations may not be as straightforward as they then appeared. This observation is not one which was made by anyone other than conscientious objectors at the time and has taken nearly 100 before the names have been added to some first world war memorials.

The Valet brought in to look after the Earl following the departure of Bates has returned from the Front with shell shock. He, as his predecessor, commences a relationship with one of the other staff.

And what of hero Bates who first refused to defend the allegations against him because he had taken responsibility for his wife being a thief and this had led to their separation. Coming into an inheritance Bates believes that he can persuade his wife to agree to a divorce so he can marry head Housemaid Anne Smith (Joanne Froggatt) who was instrumental in clearing his name in the first series. They talk of setting up a small hotel together and of a family. However this all comes to naught when Mrs Bates arrives and blackmails her husband into immediately leaving or she will cause his employer embarrassment by revealing information she has gained. For the second time Bates leaves under a cloud while Anne holds on to her love even if there is to be no happy ending. Another reality of war comes with scenes of the heir ‘Apparent’ in France and his awareness of the odds against returning home alive.

He is able to visit with official leave and meets again Lady Mary who finds that she has remained in love with him. She has become involved with an older, blunt speaking, newspaper magnate who at the end of a second episode asks her marry him reminding of the relationship in Brideshead between Lady Julia Marchmain and the American after Lady Marchmain and family turns against Charles Ryder (who also went to Hertford College). Mathew returns to the Front but is brought back to England to assist his commanding officer in a recruiting campaign. He has become engaged to someone who appears to have the confidence of the class but whose background is under question and there are further questions when she is spotted in conversation with the Lady Mary’s suitor as they admit to knowing each other previously.

A focus in the second series is the loss of the young male staff to the call up. We learn that her Ladyship has been pulling strings getting the local physician to support claims that two of the staff are unfit and therefore should not be required to have official medicals. When this is discovered the position is remedied. This all adds pressure and stress on the traditional head of below stairs, the Butler, Charles Carson, played by Jim Carter. He is an authoritarian traditionalist and when things go wrong at a dinner he breaks down and is ordered rest and then has to accept that some of the female staff will have to undertake the roles of the departing men.

The middle daughter Lady Edith has not distinguished herself so far having deliberately ratted on her old sister. However Lady Mary gained her revenge by wrecking the blossoming relationship between Edith and Sir Anthony Strallen, a family friend. In the present series Edith has learned to drive and offers to help tenant farmers, the Drakes, when their Tractor driver is called up. She enjoys the work and turns the head of the married farmer whose wife senses danger and does her best to stop the relationship progressing. She determines that they will employ someone else.

Because of the suicide the Lady Sybil persuades the family against the wishes of the Dowager to use the Abbey as a convalescent home and this appears to be next aspect of the story to be covered. A third series is already being written with the first ending with the Armistice as part of a Christmas special.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Tremé

The greatest joy of the new Sky Atlantic channel was Tremé, a glorious first series of ten episodes on the attempt by the core citizens of New Orleans to salvage something of their lives and their city after Katrina. The programme is full of great characters portrayed by a host of intelligent and sensitive actors and although there have been some award nominations the series is yet to gain the recognition it deserves. The background music-clips of jazz, traditional, mainstream and modern, Cajun and country western, is always sufficient to wet the appetite for more. There is another aspect of traditional jazz to be mentioned at the outset of the second series, ensemble, integrated story telling as well as playing which was the feature of the original New Orleans jazz music, although with strong solo performance which historically was developed more in Chicago than New Orleans.

One reason for the lack of recognition has been the stance taken by the Director and writers in presenting what happened as a political failure, alleging corruption in the building of the fortifications against flooding after the 1927 disaster, and the subsequent failure to give priority to the rebuilding of the city.

At the core of the series there was and remains a conflict between those who wanted to protect and to celebrate the African, West Indian, French culture with at its heart traditional jazz and blues music born from the slavery and racism intermixed with eclectic fine food cooking, and those who genuinely wanted to clean up a city where the drug culture was rampant and crime and organised crime with regular killings the order of every day and who saw the disaster as the opportunity to create a New Orleans along the lines of Dallas and Houston in neighbouring Texas. White supremacy remained rampant.

One cannot escape the macro issues covered in the series although the programme is a delight with its constant snippets of the range of music emanating from the city. When the first series ended I was not sure if it was returning after the shock suicide and series departure of the most prominent of the actors John Goodman as Creighton Bernette, an English Teacher at a University who was working on a novel about the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how the failure of the response to that situation governed what happened with Katrina. He developed national notoriety through a video Blog in which he made rants against the authorities using a flurry of expletives to voice his dissent and frustration. His departure was a loss but added to authenticity the life of a city that had become dependent on Conventions and tourism with the jazz entwined with drugs and sexual libertarianism.

While the Goodman character ranted his “white” educated wife ran a one woman with assistance civil rights legal office in which she has established a close but love hate relationship with city officials especially a local police commander. She remains angry as well as devastated by the suicide for her husband who she regards as cowardly act abandoning her, their daughter, and the city he professed to love. She initially refused to arrange a Second Line for his funeral.

A permit is required for a jazz band to parade through the city in relation to funerals and the Second Line is the familiar walking celebration after the burial to the Wake and which starts mournfully and then bursts into an energetic celebration to mark the life of the subject. Aspects of the walking dancing are the fluttering of handkerchiefs and the twirling of umbrellas. To be accorded a Second Line is a mark of respect. Toni has to drag herself to the Second Line for her daughter’s sake, than her own.

In the first episode of the second series, Accentuate the Positive which continues the story of all the former characters less Goodman it and begins fourteen months after the disaster on All Saints day in the Fall.

I say Glory B, because I eventually found the first episode which I had recorded and then accidental erased when started to view last weekend and thought I had just cancelled because I was too tired to enjoy. I had to go through the alphabetical list of the several hundred Sky Anytime plus programmes to reach Tremé and find the first episode so Glory B because without it would not be impossible to do justice to what promises to be as important if not even better a series than the first

Toni (Melissa Leo) Goodman’s widow has a new assistant who struggles to understand what her new boss is talking about with reference to Indians, Second Liners and such like. She also has a friendly breakfast/lunch meeting with the police chief to discuss a raft of problems arising from the youth Curfew, the continuing racism and million other problems over a year after the event. This is the worst side of USA especially as Federal and public services are understaffed, overwhelmed and bureaucratic while those with money concentrate on how to make more.

Her main problem is with Sofia, (India Ennega) their daughter who is at High School and who her mother suspects is cutting classes and generally being anti social redirecting the anger she feels at the death of her father against her mother and society in general in which she gives voice by echoing the approach of her father with a video Blog ranting about the situation with a musical rap of the word fuck continuously repeated. We learn that 100000 homes are still to be recovered with the displacement of the residents involved.
In the second episode Everything I do Gonh be Funky Toni grows more anxious about Sofia as they attempt to celebrate Thanksgiving by going out to a restaurant and later talking things over with a third party takes up the idea of using her connections to get the daughter an Internship with the Mayor’s office which she is taken for an interview by the assistant in the third episode On Your Way Down, after she stays out late defying Curfew with a mix of college friends at a jazz playing bar.

Throughout the first series Toni had helped La Donna Batiste Williams (Khandi Alexander) to try and find her brother who disappeared during the hurricane. The story unfolds that he was picked up on his way to the restaurant when he worked on suspicion and then held because of a warrant for his arrest which had in fact been sorted but was not correctly recorded. He had been caught up in the situation where the prisoners had been moved out and the authorities were then paid a premium by the Government to look after them. When they track him down they find it is someone else who has changed names because he was wanted on a more serious charge. They eventually find the body of the brother, just one more victim but at lest they are able to give him a burial.

In this series it seems her main focus of attention will be a new case she initially refused to take on because of existing commitments and moving into new office premises. The case is of a white out of town parent who visits to try and find out how his son died given that he was said to have been found in the street close to some looters. His son visited the city a few years before with a group of friends. They returned home but his son decided to make a new life which had ended so abruptly. He wanted answers to take home to his wife and relatives and Toni use her links with the police Lieutenant Terry Colson (David Morse) to try and get the real story as so far everyone he contacted by phone provided conflicting information.

Toni gets to talk to the street cop who says he was called out to sort out the body a few days after the flooding and that the body was in a ransacked supermarket store shay in the head with three cartridge cases nearby and that some paper work had been sent in. Subsequently there is no trace of the report or the evidence. At one point a black female cop is talking over the situation of a Federal investigation with her boss where there has been denial of the order was given to shoot to kill looters. He says he does not understand why those in authority do not admit the order was given and that mistakes were then made. My instinct is that the two sequences are related.

La Donna, the previous client, is remarried divorced but living apart from her second husband, a dentist and her two sons by the first marriage in Baton Rouge, upstate in Louisiana. In the first episode of the new series she goes to see her husband for a marital visit but he wants her to sell up the bar she runs in New Orleans and the home of her mother who has also died in the intervening months and make a new life away from the city. He may suspect rather than know that after the hurricane damage she had a brief relationship with her former husband Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce).

Her husband visits the city in the second episode to celebrate Thanksgiving bringing the two step sons with him. They think it is strange not being with their grandmother again. The bar is struggling because of a lack of trade and she considers starting live music. One night in the third episode she is in the bar locking up on her own when she sees young men outside and one who she speaks to before two perhaps three break in and she badly beaten and raped as well as losing her stock, money in hand and even the keys to the premises.
She is in a bad state in hospital afraid and ashamed because of what has been done to her dependent on her husband but unwilling to talk to the police or deal with the sexual aspect of the assault. She is given various medications to prevent sexually transmitted diseased, HIV infection and pregnancy. She wants to get home as quickly as possible. Her former husband has decided to try and lead a band on his own as he is finding working difficult and calls on the bar having previously asked abut doing a gig to find it closed not knowing what has happened,

The former husband, Antoine is a Trombonist constantly in search of a regular job earning a basic income from a part time job as an assistant music instructor in a middle school. We see him in this episode playing a mournful solo over the grave of a friend and in a gig in which he speculates with another instrument player that their lives could have been so different if they had been trumpet players attracting all the pussy! He is living with Desireé, the mother of their daughter who works in primary school but has found herself losing seniority and pay in the shake up following the disaster. She attends a parent night to find more turning up and speaking out than ever before, such are the changed circumstances.

She has decided to accept a government grant to leave her family home because she does not have the cash to renovate but the problem is the house was built by an ancestor and passed on through generations perhaps without any official deeds of ownership being created. She points out that for them to get a new mortgage they would need to marry, a comment which Antoine chooses to ignore. During the second and third episodes we follow his attempts to find musicians including female singer for the band which costs money which he does not have. He continues to take casual work jobs and to be under pressure from his mistress to marry and provide a stable home for them together. He gives up the job teaching music as a primary school because he cannot cope with the behaviour of the children.

There are four individuals, previous couples, who split up with two of the four establishing a relationship together. The most anarchistic of the four is Davis McAlary a white part time DJ and song writer from a comparatively wealthy but unconventional family who has had his troubles with the law. In this series he loses his job as a DJ for refusing play a broader range of music. He is devoted to New Orleans Culture and remains angry at what happened and the official response. He had some financial success with a protest record. He has been living a chaotic bachelor life since his girl friend went on tour.

She is Annie Tallericp (Steve Zahn) a classical trained violinist of Asian family background) who are the start of the series had a relationship with a street musician Sonny (Michael Husiman) keyboards and guitarist who uses drugs with the consequences that he fails to get regular work inside and repeatedly messing up relationships. When Annie finds another woman in her bed she leaves and an attempt at reconciliation fails she becomes homeless and having spent a good day of festivities with Davis she turns to him for help and becomes his girl friend.

Because she is a talented musician she is becomes the subject of various offers including a lounge artist with an established pianist and with the tour band where she is a great hit with her playing and also participating in vocals. Sonny makes a good attempt at cleaning up the home before her return which impresses her. However he tries to avoid taking her to meet his family, but she is a great hit and stays behind while takes a mad aunt to a Hip Hop bounce music session in during which it appears the approach is to bend over and parade your backside.

During a lounge performance at the opening of a photographic exhibition about the effects of the hurricane on the city, Annie comes across a photo of her former boyfriend rescuing a baby and this reminds they established a relationship in the first instance.

Sonny meanwhile is having a hard time on the street playing on his own. He falls for a classic theft by a couple of teenagers. One unplugs his amplifier and when he goes to protest another steals the collected cash can. He then returns home as the police break into the place where he is staying to arrest the flatmate, He then finds his keyboard smashed and his guitar stolen soon after deciding that he needs a band job to get off the street. He places notices asking for work without success as the weeks go by and then learns that Antoine needs a guitarist and tries to persuade a fellow street musician to lone him his guitar for the interview. He cannot get Annie out of his mind and knows he needs to remain clean and get regular work if he is to have any hope of continuing their relationship

The fourth member of the quartet is Jeanette Desautel who tried to make a success of her own restaurant with money from her New York State parents. She had a casual relationship with Davis providing him with expensive meals and wine and although they did not appear compatible there was obviously a bond stronger than sexual attraction.

It was Janette who employed La Donna’s brother. Following one disaster after another she returns to New York and ay the start of the second series she is working for a top highly volatile chef with a tendency to scrap dishes if they are not perfect even if the customers get tired of waiting and walk out. She has turned her back on the life her parents want for her and has lodgings some distance from where she works sharing with a couple of gay men. She appears to spend her free time in bars and picking up men one who robs her before leaving the following morning. She is called back to New Orleans when Davis who has been collecting and redirecting mail finds the place broke into and by the time police arrived the place has been trashed. She sleeps on the couch of a former staff member before going to the FEMA office with regard to her previous claim for assistance in relation to the restaurant where her parents had provided the funds to get it fixed to open pending payment.

Another central character also at the FEMA office at the same time as Janette is Albert Big Chief Lambreaux (Clarke Peters). A Mardi Gras Indian, who dresses up in costumes which are works of art and museum pieces to dance and play on Mardi Gras days, usually under the influence of drugs and therefore always in conflict with the police. In the first series because his home is a wreck from Katrina he moves into the vacant closed bar of a friend who has not returned to the City. He tries to persuade the authorities to open new Federal Housing development which remains closed because it is not earmarked for the Black community. He breaks in and Squats attracting media attention but leaves in compromises which enables the Indians to have their day on the street during Carnival.

He is depressed at having to leave the bar and returns to camping at his home while he waits for settlement of his claim. He enjoys an open air Thanksgiving with his friends and his son who has returned home for the event. His son Delmond (Rob Brown) is a talented modern jazz player who now lives and works in New York and also goes on national tours with his music selling well for jazz records. There is conflict and pride between father and son over the music he plays and his rejection of the culture of his father. Father refuses to accept any financial help from his son.

When in New York the son is horrified by the contempt other Black musicians have for the music and culture of New Orleans, although he has often said worse. Similarly Janette is horrified on reading an article lambasting the quality of food in New Orleans and one feels that both will return to the City. The son expresses disappointment at a restaurant club date where the audience are lukewarm to the music and the place is half full. He is advised about the growing importance of the Internet in music (2006) with using MySpace, Facebook and other new media contact points. He sacks his manager who clearly does not know or want to know about the changes underway.

A new face this season is Nelson Hidalgo (Joe Seda), a young man say early thirties who waltzes into town in smart suits and cars with the suggestion of high political fixing and possibly Mafia links, possibly con man and all three, with a local cousin but saying he is going to be big time because of the opportunities. His first venture is to get a FEMA demolition contract where he sub contracts the work to an existing local operative offering a money making deal and when this is delivered in quick time he invites the local operative to his hotel for drinks and suggests a new deal in which the man will get a top slice of 12½% and he admits he will make 50%. I am unsure what the reaction was to this level of profiteering. We see him at the race track, going out in the evenings eating the local food and going to bars and to the music as well as being with several high maintenance young women. His first contact appears to be a major Republican developer, but when he takes up the suggestion of befriending the Democratic Mayor he appears to cut not ice because he is not local yet just as he is leaving the office he finds the TV crews arriving because new Recovery Tsar has been appointed (who is from out of Town).I have recorded the fourth episode but will wait to view with the fifth and sixth and then review and write again if I can bear to wait.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Goobye China and Gently Upside Down

Alan Hunter was a prolific writer of police detective fiction with 46 books about Inspector George Gently of Scotland Yard who commenced as a mature officer and who managed to continue working from 1944 to 1999, although I not know if the later novels were set in the past. The BBC commissioned or bought four mini series of self contained dramas after seeing the pilot in 2007. Apart from 2009 when there were four episodes there have been two in the other three years, 11 in total.

Inspector Gently is no Wallander although Martin Shaw as Gently is as good as Kenneth Branagh, an actor who made his national name through the TV series of the Professionals as Raymond Doyle with Lewis Collins as Broadie and Gordon Sinclair as their CI5 boss George Cowley and a long way from Spooks. Doyle was recruited from the ranks of the police and later he was to star in the last three years of the series The Chief (Constable) and a long running battle with the Home Office. From this he graduated to a Judge, Judge John Deed and to more battles this time with Justice Department officials and Politicians who hated his independent mind and tendency to achieve the truth and Justice. So there is logic that he should also perform in the role as a confident, thoughtful successful villain catcher of the novels.

The novels are set in East Anglia and the Broads whereas the TV series was moved to the North East with the recent series set in the city of Durham although the County headquarters has long been located on a site on the outskirts of the city along with County Hall.

In Gently Upside Down the episode appears to be set in the 60-70’s era when young girls first started to wear colourful skirts and a regional TV show featured young people dancing to the latest records. Three young women become part of an audience where the director and his camera has a penchant for attempt find out if the girls are wearing knickers, something for which a national TV series achieved notoriety before attention was directed to Pan’s People. There was a TV rock and pop show in the North East but some two decades later called the Tube which featured a host of regional bands some from the North East who went onto national and some to International fame. In the Gently programme the director/producer takes a liking to one of the three friends and finds her frank and direct approach life in keeping with the changing times and moves her in as hostess forcing the aging professional and Lethario to throw in the towel and move back to London. In the North East The Tube was the starting point for Muriel Gray, Leslie Ash and more significantly Paula Yates other with Jules Holland as with the Tube, the TV show in episode becomes national

Now to the ploy having already mentioned three suspects for the murder of an exceptionally bright sixth former destined to Oxford who had disappeared with a small suitcase and whose body is discovered in shall grave in woodland.

There are six possible suspects for Gently to sort out in total. The producer director of the show in his thirties but with a definite eye for the girls. Then there is the former host also with a reputation for inviting the participating young females for a drink after the show and where there is evidence of an exchange of notes written on a beer glass mat between him and the deceased. He makes no secret of trying it on with the lasses at every opportunity but admits the murdered girl had knocked him back with her clever wit.

The third possibility is another bright girl at the school and friend rival of the dead girl. She is found to have lied about the evening of the disappearance claiming to have gone to the show with the third friend but had not done so. The fourth suspect is the music teacher as again it is shown that his alleged alibi of being at home with his wife and children is not so. However it is eventually established he was having an affair with the young woman offered a career in the TV show and alleged friend of the deceased.

The fifth suspect is the working class miner father of the girl who is shown to have lost his temper and hit the girl in the mouth the night she disappeared. There is the dark suggestion of an illicit relationship although he and his wife argued that they failed to understand or be able to communicate with their amazing daughter who lived in her world, with an ability to quote poetry lines to suit most situations and conversational exchanges. His frustration comes from never having had the opportunity for an education and to express his poetic soul, something which is revealed when his wife insists that he reads out what he wrote when their daughter was born.

This then brings the most likely suspect, the older English teacher of the girl and father of the young woman launched on a TV career. He becomes the chief suspect when it is discovered that over a decade before he had a relationship with a sixth form pupil of ability who now undertakes menial work as a single parent supporting her bright secondary school attending son. It is established that he did have a relationship with the dead girl and was the father of her unborn child and that the girl had packed the case with a view to moving into with the school master who wife had taken her life from mental troubles leaving her husband to bring up their two daughter, an elder daughter by many years who acted as house keeper to the rest of the family.

Yes and she did it. The girl had called at the home knowing the father and younger daughter were out to announce her intentions to the older sister/housekeeper and in effect to say she proposed to become step mother to a woman several years old. The depressed daughter perhaps taking after her mother had snapped and killed the girl unintentionally and then father full of remorse but also minded to protect his career, had attempted to bury the girl and deny any knowledge of what happened.

The format of this episode is similar to one of the early novels, the third in the series, Gently Down the Stream. As in the TV series Gently has an assistant, a sergeant. In the novel Dutt the assistant appears colourless, does a lot of hard work which brings rewards but never is able to put two and two together. In the TV series the assistant is not a likeable character. He messed up his marriage and fails as a bachelor now about Town. He is prepared to cross the line, breaking in to premises without a warrant and roughing up prisoners. He is an unlikely police detective. Another aspect of the book compared to the TV series is that the characters tend to be stock and one dimensional. Moreover I worked out who did it, and who therefore did not by page 65 of the 248.

A business man who can afford a Chauffer Cook, Housemaid and Gardener is identified as the victim of a fire on a one birth boat on the broads at the end of week’s hire. Gently is brought in when the pathologist determines that the man was shot and died before the fire. Gently discovers the man had hired the boat with his personal secretary who had disappeared and that shortly before the holiday the man had drawn several thousand pounds, a fortune at the time in the 1957 and had commenced to liquidate the business. It looked as if the couple were about to run away together although the girl and the chauffer had disappeared.

The disappearance of the chauffer suggested he had killed his employer for the money and because the man wanted to sack him because he was regarded a supporter of his legal wife who had recruited him. The young secretary was considered a possible accomplice having duped her employer.

Another possibility was the man’s son a poet and Oxford University student who did not get on with his father but he is ruled out when it is discovered he was checking on his mother because she was having an affair with the family solicitor. The daughter who is a fan of her father is unwilling to explain her full whereabouts on the evening of the murder The book portrays something of the life on the Broads, those hiring out boats and those making living in other ways.

Eventually the young woman, the secretary, is tracked down, living of her own and she attempts to take her own life and then gives the impression that she is the guilty one. But her personality and her way of life suggest otherwise and moreover there has been another murder of a woman who appears to have found something out. And who has passed on some money, money which it looks belonged to the dead man. Then of course it is worked out.

The business man is not dead and is posing as someone else in disguise. His daughter is an accomplice to the deception because she is an amateur actress. She had been accidentally discovered by the woman and she had to die also. What I do not understand is why the two did not just run off together. Everyone would have been with that.

Nearly all the novels have Gently in the title and I do not know if they feature someone else or the writer could not think of a suitable title to make a play on Gently. In Goodbye China. China is a solitary man, considered to be a tramp, who is found dead. This is not so much a dun it but you prove it and what is there to prove. We are given aspects of the truth as the episode progresses. A large young man of limited abilities living in a residential institution goes to the kitchen one night and there discovers two brothers messing abut looking for something to steal. Recognising the youth as a simpleton they tie him up take him out to a park where there is one of those old wooden roundabouts where the young man is placed and is pushed round and around as fast as possible, something that he hates.

The bullying is seen by an old man who lives in lodgings nearby overlooking what has happened and he cones down to remonstrate. The boy with mental disabilities always has with him a pack of cigarette cards, a full set which he likes to look at in their order one to 50 in rows. These falls out and the youth attempts to gather them together but one of the attackers prevents him and the old man gathers some and attempts to return them. The young man is enraged at what has happened, lashes out and the old man falls, hits his head and dies.

The boy is the only child of a local senior police officer and his wife who they usually look after but placed in the institution for the occasional night or weekend if they are away and unable keep him with them. They are devoted to the young man in other circumstances. The officer is known to Gently from their previous experience together in the Met and they have mutual high regard. The officer finds out what happened. The two attackers have become out of control of their father, a pig farmer, since their mother left home with another. They have gone off the rails since always getting into trouble with the police. But Gently finds there is no record and that the area appears to have far fewer convictions for youth crime than would be expected. The police are operating an illegal and secret corporal punishment system with the approval of parents as an alternative to the young people gaining a record.

The father had allowed the two tearaways to be taken by an assistant to a senior police officer two an approved school where one of the staff allows the boys to be held in no longer used holding cells in the basement and where are kept the instruments of birching from the time when they would be part of the sentencing of the young people. The reason why police have access is because the wife of the assistant is having an affair with the staff member.

Unfortunately the two young men refuse to be broken by the physical punishment and therefore there is continuing risk that they will reveal what happened and therefore the son could face a charge of manslaughter or be removed from their direct care because of his temper and potential danger to others. Worse still one of the young men commits suicide and his body is taken away and held at the local mortuary with a sympathetic coroner treating the case as a the death of unknown individual.

At first the assistant wants to take the blame for the involvement of his superior, He has nothing to live for as his wife is establishing a new life with the staff member the Approved school. However when she sees his willingness to take responsibility and his continuing love for her she is prepared to stand by him although he will lose his job and go to prison for his part in what has been happening. The former colleague pleads to let matters rest because if he goes to prison, his wife will not be able to cope with the son and the boy will become a permanent resident of an institution. The sergeant suggests that they do walk away but Gently arrests his friend. Gently is not the virtuous one authorising the Sergeant to break into the residence of the Pig farmer when he is not there to try and find evidence about the whereabouts of the brothers. He finds some of the cigarette cards which Gently had previously seen in a drawer when inspecting the bedroom but had not appreciated their significance until seeing the son of the former colleague playing with part of the same set of cards.

The episode ends with Gently working out where the old man had lived and spending time in his room. The man had been an informant for Gently in times past and they had become friends in the way that an Inspector can become friendly with an informant. The man was however grateful for the help that Gently had given to starting a new life.

Gently by the Shore is the second of the publish novels in the series. A body is washed up on the beach of a seaside resort and no one comes forward to identify the individual who has been stabbed four times. The reason being that he arrived in the town wearing a beard.

The local police are forced to call in Gently because of publicity about the case although they regard the matter as a routine checking of what has been done and confirmation that without any leads or identification the mystery will remain unsolved. Slowly Gently unravels a case of international intrigue.

To the amazement and denials of the local constabulary Gently uncovers that the town is the headquarters of a secret organisation bent on taking power. The chief is someone who owns the local arcade and alcoholic drinking bar frequented by low life’s and dodgy characters including a blond prostitute from London up for the holiday season with her pimp Peachey. Under threats of death she had lured the man, an American of central European background to a condemned home on the cliff which experts anticipated would fall into the sea at any moment because of coastal erosion. The murderer, a man with a facial scar, had attempted to skip the country after lying low until the publicity and the Inspector and gone away.
He is caught by the British security service who had been investigating the activities of the organisation with the help of Interpol. They were after the top man in the UK but were prepared to settle for the murderer.

Gently persuades them to release the prostitute on the basis that she and the pimp will be at risk from the boss who it is hoped will show his hand which of course he does attempting to use the same knife or kind of knife as used to kill the man on the shore. Of course there are lots of twists and turns involving several characters and a sub plot of counterfeit $100 bills with two local minor villains braking in to try and find the rest of the loot and hen being implicated in the murder by the actual villains who take back the money from where it was hidden and replacing it with the clothing of the naked man on the shore.

Gently triumphs having kept quite at a top level meeting between the local Chief Constable and team and the National security people, until the opportune moment when he reveals that he knows who the leader is and how to catch him. There is a good portrait of a season town in the early fifties.

Martin Shaw is excellent as the Inspector and the writers and directors manage to engage the audience with characters who interest so that we overlook flaws in the plots. I was not engaged in similar manner by the novels although those were the early ones and I shall try and find some of his later works especially any where the TV series has been based to come to a final conclusion.

Monday 19 September 2011

Miracle Day

The fourth series of Torchwood was worth watching and the conclusions well worked out although it was written in such a way to enable a future series covering the same subject matter and therefore some issues are left unresolved. My one other critical conclusion is that the story should have been condensed into six rather than its ten episodes.

Torchwood was an original Wales BBC creation born out the Saturday evening adolescent intended time travelling perennial series of Dr Who and intended for adults, although the recent series of Dr Who have concentrated on good acting, and stories with subjects to satisfy adults as much as adolescents with a interest in the concept of Time Travel.

Whereas Dr Who regenerates every couple of series to allow for new actors of proven ability to play the central character, he is as old as eternity and his forays into the future have been limited, include alternative dimensions and inter galactic time travel and the problems between races. Time travel is via the original police call box at a time when such boxes stood on street corners along with phone and AA boxes and contained dedicated phone lines, the idea being that the time travelling vehicle would blend into the UK landscape unnoticed so now it tends to arrive not on the street where it would stick out like a sore thumb in a contemporary landing or pre telephone landscape but in some location where it can remain unnoticed. A feature of the series has been the awareness of beings from different worlds and time periods of each other and a period in the UK future when what appears to be a British led world force called the Unit was set up to counter the periodic arrival of beings from across the Galaxy, usually with the intent of dominating the earth planet or exterminating the people if not the planet.

Captain Jack Harkness, called captain because he first appeared in a Dr Who series set in World War II, is not from the past, but from the future who returns to help out with individuals he has recruited because the UK faced some challenge which threatened the basic humanitarian and democratic approach of its mainstream politics. He therefore knows the past from the vantage of the future and can intervene to change was happens in the present. He is an immortal who can experience pain and suffer in the present and therefore if one wishes to see a biblical reference or make biblical conclusion this is possible.

When the third series The Children concluded it was assumed that it was also the final programme using the concept and central character. His adorable and courageous heterosexual Welsh female assistant, Gwen Cooper had found herself a normal Welsh husband, and because of her past involvement in uncovering the anti democratic wheeling and dealing with aliens on the part of the UK government, sacrificing children to feed a monster in return for a quiet life she has retreated to an isolated cottage on the Welsh coast which according to Wikipedia is the Old Rectory, in Rhossili Bay owned by the National Trust which together with English Heritage manages ancient sites and buildings at arms length from Government.

The couple now have a child and have no direct contact with her parents who continue to live in Wales (Swansea) where one contact is a policeman with a soft spot for Gwen. All the other Members of Torchwood had died and Jack who is immortal but nevertheless can experience pain returned to his normal place of abode. A feature of the series has been that deaths occur of characters that we care about and therefore mourn and wish the outcome had been different.

The latest series Miracle Day began with the execution an American paedophile and child murderer after years of stays while the process of is there justification for a pardon to life imprisonment plays its journey through the courts and the office of state governor. Oswald Danes is brilliantly played by Bill Drummond as inherently evil, calculating and clever with no redeeming features until the final episode.

His survival of the execution acts as the trigger for Miracle Day, the day when everyone stops dying even when they are burnt to crisp or bodies severely mutilated self aware life continues. Such a person to survive is Gwen’s father.

I will not pretend that I fully understood the complex stretch out plot but here goes my best try.

Back in 1927 Immortal Sins (episode 7) homosexual Jack is on a mission in the USA which involves stopping some imported artefact (alien creature) coming to life when he falls in the love of his life with an Italian Immigrant named Angelo who Jack is forced to abandon having promised otherwise when his immortality is discovered by the owner of a Mafia controlled butchers shop in Little Italy and where he is subjected to horrific blood shedding attacks to test his ability to survive whatever they do him and vials of his blood are collected on the basis that his blood has unique immortality properties. More may have been explained about the alien being/force and its potential impact but has now been forgotten

What we learn, subsequently, is that three families related to those who participated in the orgy of attempted killing of Jack, feed Jack’s blood to the supernatural creature to create the Blessing, a force with great power to influence and take over people and who creates a single channel shaft like presence throughout the earth planet with two access points one in Shanghai and the other in Buenos Aires, literally poles apart and that coming face to face with the forces enables individuals to confront all aspects of their personalities and invest them with great powers of insight and power over others.

I believe there is significance in the reference to three families although in this series they are represented by one woman in Shanghai and there also appears to be an important contact in the USA about whom I will also refer later.

After 1927 that is some 93 years later, the families are said to have removed all record of their existence and set about building a world wide net work through a corporation PhiCorp whose emblem is a circle(representing earth) with a slash ( representing the Blessing polar shaft) created from the two blood manufacturing laboratories on the sites where there is access to the Blessing. The network includes placing people within all aspects of government at a political and administrative level throughout the world and it is only in the present that the organisation has become ready to fulfil the purpose of the Blessing on earth.
The idea was to successfully create world wide panic as a consequence of no one dying. There was the problem of the exponential growth in population with disease and old age, accidents and wars having no effect, how is everyone to be fed housed and clothed? The social consequence are horrific in that no one can commit murder any more and the economic catastrophic as the life insurance market collapses one obvious example. The first objective is to create a form of international government with all the governments participating in the building of extermination ovens which reduces the whole human body and skeleton to cinders and deployed on all Category one humans, that is those who should be dead but of course they are not because of the blessing and therefore must experience the horror of being incinerated feeling and aware of what is happening to them in their final moments.

(This is another form of Nazi final solution but applying first to all the undead but also provide the opportunity of getting rid of any opponents of the new order which plans a take over of the world so those in charge can determine what everyone does and does not, how long they live and do not with those in charge having immortality. In the first part of series attention is given to finding out about these special facilities being built all over the world and to expose their actual purpose and how they are being misused but later as financial and social chaos occurs everyone appears to accept the exterminations centres as a necessary evil.

As with Dr Who it is BBC Wales who originally commissioned Torchwood but after the popular series ended someone came up with the idea of establishing an Anglo USA enterprise and originally interested Fox, although I am not surprised they pulled out given their ideology, compared to that of Jack and those recruited to Torchwood. However it was through the Anglo USA financing that the story line and setting became Trans Atlantic and in the first episode after Miracle Day Commences Government agencies throughout the world (presumably) but notably those in the UK and USA receive a one word clue Torchwood. This is investigated by an analyst at the USA CIA office Ester Drumwood and her boss Rex Matheson (the statutory Black guy) estranged from his medical doctor white wife, but the CIA members quickly find all trace of Torchwood eliminated) but persist on their own with Rex travelling to the UK (Cardiff airport) with help from the British Government to locate Gwen and Jack who had returned to prevent what happens happen and extraordinary rendition them back to the USA in episode one The New World.

Gwen is therefore separated from her husband and child and on the plane to the USA Jack is fatally poisoned by an accomplice of the Blessing planted by their boss back in the CIA office. Because while everyone on earth cannot die, the Immortal Jack has become mortal and as he is the only person who can stop the Blessing killing him before he works out what and where is who and what is the only obstacle to plan being put into full effect now that everything else and everyone needed is in place. In Rendition with the help of the medical wife of Rex they save Jack but realising they are not safe the trio go on the run when arriving in the USA and are joined by Esther. So there is in effect a combined USA and Welsh new Torchwood team.

The young attractive ( in an over painted glossy sense) Jilly (Kitzenger) is employed as public relations officer for PhiCorp and is instructed to make contact with the paedophile Oswald Danes and turn him into a kind of second coming John the Baptist announcing the age of the Blessing helping people to prepare for the World Order. He is at first reluctant and Jack attempts to persuades Oswald to tell the truth about what is happening but instead during his world wide telecast he makes the announcement about the Blessing as instructed.

In episode 4 Escape to LA there are two developments with Rex and Esther going to find out what is happening at one of the new special sites where Category 1 individuals are being taken to be managed for their own the public good. When Gwen finds that her father who had a heart attack but did not die is being taken to a site in Wales she returns to the UK in secret to also find out what is going on and uses her policeman friend to gain access to the holding area where her father is being held.

At some point and which I cannot now remember both Jack now mortal and Rex are shot and would have died except for the Blessing and later transfusions of blood from Jack are used to keep Rex alive.

The estranged wife of Rex has become separately involved in trying to find out what is happening and she agrees to pose as a Government Inspector to gain access to the holding area and to question the man in charge about what is going on Rex also gain access with a video camera and enters the inner compound and discovers the existence of the ovens which are yet to be brought into operation. When the man in charges realises that his role is being challenged and he thinks the wife is going to file a bad report about him, he knocks her out and destroys all trace of her in an incinerator with Rex helpless to prevent the murder The Categories of Life episode 5.

In the Middle Men episode 6 Gwen works out that something awful will happen to her father if he remains so with the help of the policeman and her husband they smuggle her father out and hide him in the family home in Swansea. Rex with his video film manages to escape from the site at San Pedro with the man in charge being killed. Rex, Esther and Jack direct their attention to the offices of PhiCorp and learn that the organisation is a front for the Blessing which is connected to the Miracle and to Shanghai, where earlier we had witnessed someone trying to kill themselves after investigating what was going on at a military protected former blood transfusion blood bank centre.

Gwen returns to the USA to rejoin the team only to be contacted by those behind what is happened and told that if she wants to see her husband and daughter again she must deliver Jack to them. Torn between emotions, she puts her child and her husband first.

This brings to the last important four episodes where the story unfolds and as suggested the first six episodes could have been condensed to at least 3.

It is Immortal sins as Gwen prepares to hand Jack over to save her family the two are confronted with truths about themselves and Jack recounts/relives what happened in Little Italy in 1927. With help of her PC friend Gwen’s husband and daughter are rescued so she does not need to hand Jack over, but goes voluntarily on learning that he is to meet the love of his life Angelo.

In End of the Road Jack finds that Angelo has not remained young but has aged in the normal way and is approaching death but then he dies the only person in the earth world to do so. Jack finds that the bed is placed over a special area made of an extra terrestrial substance which has protected or prevented Angelo from the effects of the Blessing. The situation is still a trap for Jack as back in the CIA officer in addition to the Director who was thought to be the individual acting for PhiCorp there is someone else with access to all that is going on and she arrange for CIA to arrive and apprehend the Torchwood people and Jack because of the continuing threat they pose. It is in this episode that Jack is shot and because of his switch from immortality to mortality his life is also in danger.

In the penultimate episode The Blood Line Jack has come to the UK and Gwen arranges for him to be cared for in Scotland where he believes it is important that stocks of his blood are created especially if he is unable to survive the wounding, Back in Swansea the family survive one attempt by the Category 1 finding police to locate Gwen’s father but the man charge says he is not satisfied and will return. Gwen is also aware that the family home is under constant observation.

Early on in the series it had been discovered that for decades PhiCorp had been stockpiling in secret warehouses the world stock of pain killers as means of help to persuade the population to accept that those who should have died but do not and who therefore now suffer in pain want to be incinerated as do their relatives as a means of bringing the pain to and end. Gwen ram raids into a chemist where stocks of the pain killers and drugs are being strictly controlled by the new world order in order to help the suffering of her father which she smuggles into the house through two Pizza boxes. In the USA Jilly’s role as minder for Oswald Danes has come to an end and she is at a loose end when she is approached by someone who appears to be part of the three families network and says she is to have a special role and a new identity and will go to Shanghai to meet a member of the families.

Oswald Danes with knowledge of this comes to the UK and gain entry to the home of Gwen’s family and demands to see Jack threatening to reveal to the authorities the presence of Gwen’s father. While Esther is still a wanted by the CIA individual on the run and on the outside, Rex has returned to the fold and operates independently with only his boss knowing what is going on because it is evident that there is a mole high up in the office and another colleagues has been working on a new programme which will be able to trace any calls made from the office to the enemy.

It is from the contact between Jack and Oswald Danes that they work out that at the two former blood bank transfusion centres poles part that the Blessing is located Jack and Gwen and Oswald head for Shanghai and Rex with Esther head for the location in Buenos Aires with the mole in the service desperately trying to find out what is going on

In The Blood line episode 10 we learn that the role of Jilly is to re write world history as the new world order begins in earnest. Because of the collapse of pension funds as the able bodied are living longer the world has moved into financial Depression and the economy about to collapse world wide. They are also about to blow up the two openings to the Blessing so that the force will able to continue and regenerates on its own without the possibility of being adversely affected. Jack has worked out that if his blood is shed into the mouth of the Blessing at both ends at the same time it will set up a counter force field which will seal the Blessing and ends its power. Those who should have died and will die from the usual natural causes, accidents, murders and wars will do so once more. Normal order should be quickly restored.

Unfortunately the mole at CIA headquarters has found out about the visit of Rex and Ester to Buenos Aires with Jack’s supply of blood and when a troop of local soldiers are about to take Rex and Esther to the site to send Jack’s blood into the Blessing at the same as Jack gives his blood directly, an agent of the Families blows himself, the other troops and the blood supply up. The mole back at the CIA does not know that Rex and Esther survived or that Rex has found out that because of transfusion from Jack to keep active because of the constant loss of blood from being shot, his blood can be used to still seal through a kind of chain reaction the Blessing back into an inanimate state.

Because both sites are heavily guarded the two sets of Torchwood individuals allow themselves to be captured and the Shanghai people do not realise until it is too late that Jack had turned Oswald into a human bomb who will blow them all up and therefore Jack’s blood will stop the Blessing, The representative of the three families explains that this will not work because they have destroyed the supply of Jack’s blood at the other end but then it is revealed that Rex’s has the blood in himself. Gwen is concerned that this could mean the end of Jack and Rex but the two understand that this is the price that has to be paid and we remember that Jack is from the future so he knows the actual risk.

In Shanghai Jilly who has witnessed events now attempts to escape before the place blows from the explosives already in place. Jack who has survived the blood giving and Gwen have to over power Jilly to get into the lift with her. Oswald clutches the Family member and blows to the two up, and the site, as the three others escape, although it looks as Jilly has been killed by the force of the explosion and its fireball.

Jack accompanies Gwen to her home where her husband has been with her father as he experiences the passing that should have happened before, They attend the funeral and Gwen is able to return to normal life with husband a child and live openly.

I cannot remember if she also attend the funeral in the USA of Esther who is shot and does not survive after the Blessing is closed in Buenos Aires. Rex is at the funeral with the Mole alongside having destroyed the evidence of her existence, she believes, but as she is about to depart, possibly as the new CIA head, Rex is able to get a reproduction of the information in the programme about the telephone number and employee name of the leak. When she realises her cover is blown she attempts to shoot her way out and hits Rex before is still able to shoot her and kill her.

What they find is that Rex has now the same recuperation powers as Jack so although he experienced the pain and technically died from the shot his body immediately heals removing all trace of the shooting. He appears to have become another immortal but we do not know if he also has the time travelling powers.

Meanwhile Jilly has survived and has been returning the park bench in hope of meeting her contact. When he eventually arrives he discloses that all is not lost and that what happened was in effect a trial run. The families apart from the lost member continue to exist as do the majority of their people around the world. The implication is that there are also other sources of the Blessing to be exploited. That is here is to be at least another series if the reception and audience figures suggest it is financially profit making! The final thought is that if Rex has become immortal through blood transfusion then why not the Members of the three families and therefore has the woman in Shanghai also survived and what of Oswald Danes?