Due to my new regime of watching more tely and without the 590+ channels i had before, this blog will become more frequent.
Dalziel and Pascoe waddled back on Sunday 6th May. So used to having two-parters delivered in consecutive days (cf. Waking The Dead), I am quite upset about having to wait until next Sunday for the closing part. Not as upset as I am with the actual programme.
How can we make a bombastic return to BBC One? I know! Pentangles and tarot crap! So clumsily handled are nearly all Occult Whodunits (O.W.) on TV that it’s a genre all to itself with some or all of the following ingredients to make the cack potion: tarot, dragons, blood rituals, spells, white witches, Hallowe’en, dodgy vicars, swinging, issues over inheritance, dead old women. The D&P O.W. had much of this, including everyone’s favourite Swazilandian Richard E. Grant as a spooky/evil hypnotist. And some absurd stuff about dragons. These aren’t supposed to be Warhammer fans. Groan.
I have it on good authority that Warren Clarke is a knob. On screen he oozes this, but not in a suitably Dalziel way as he used to. Like any programme the longer it runs, the more self-knowing the performances become cf. Johnson in new Peep Show, Frost towards the end of Touch of Frost, Homer. Dalziel now delivers lines that Monkfish from the Fast Show would be embarrassed by: ‘Oi posho stop being so pleased with yourself and make me a cup of tea two sugars!’ The scene with the smoking in the office was dreadful. Dalziel has become a parody of Dalziel, a smoking sexist arsehole but without the subtlety or humanity of previous series, a classic situation.
Pascoe has put on a lot of weight since All Quiet on the Preston Front. Paradox time: as Pascoe has put on more weight, his character has lost any weight it once had: in the beginning he was married (to that pretty fit lady who has now disappeared from our screens, maybe she’s on Doctors); he had marital problems; he was divorced; he had another love interests. His character was relatable-to, a horrible phrase. Without a love interest, and the pangs that we all know that go with this, he is left with his indivisible dislike of Dalziel. And that is all. There was a hint of something-maybe I’m just on heat-between Pascoe and Posho but nothing happened. So Pascoe is a shell of a character, albeit a slightly heavier shell.
A haunting flute is not something you normally relate to D&P. But to go with all good O.W.s it is a must. The imperative remix of the Saint-Saën song that Jonathan Creek snatched is here in abundance, not what you expect from D&P. It was over the top, unleashed when there was a flashback or thunderclap. I’m no Angelo Badalamenti but I know when to turn it up to 11, and The One To Watch on BBC One never needs an 11.
There was also a stupidly savage and unbelievably symbolic death. Has The Da Vinci Code construed to make all secondary deaths on TV be found in a pentangle? Satan has a lot to answer for.
I don’t think I’ll be in next Sunday night when the concluding part will be aired. And I’m not sure that many people who watched the first part will be either. I will put my hands up and say I was intrigued by the One To Watch trailer-what’s Richard E. Grant doing there, why are those toffs drinking each other’s blood?-but I was mightily disappointed. Give me Trevor Eve poking about under a church any day. I wish they hadn’t got rid of Claire ‘FHM’s 100 fittest’ Goose on Waking the Dead.