samkydd

I’ve been an avid TV cop show viewer since a child and although in recent years some of the offerings on television have been quite poor in terms of plot, subject matter, credibility and acting ability,one series from the 90s which had enormous appeal, was Frost. The earlier episodes were based on the books of R D Wingfield, as with Morse and the Colin Dexter novels, but many later episodes were written by screenplay writers taking up the characters and situation and writing in the style of the original.

One of the best aspects about earlier Frost episodes was that like just like a real police detective he always had more than one case on the go, and there were usually three plots to focus on e.g. a missing girl, an evasive burglar, the discovery of skeleton of a murder victim from 30 years ago etc, which showed the apparent bumbling and disorganised Frost character at his best trying to juggle his time and resources between each case, which is how it is in the real world (but unfortunately never always with the same 100% success rate as on the telly).

The last two feature length episodes of Frost however have been a bit of a cop out. They’ve resorted to the old TV favourite from the days of the hour long episode of just having the one murder case to solve and the main man devoting all of his time to it a la Wycliffe . This is disappointing because it goes against the style in which the original characters and stories were created, and makes for quite a bland detective drama especially in a "feature length" extended format. They should bear this in mind when commissioning another episode because the last one was a disappointment and smacked of "cashing in" on a once popular series.

The other problem I have with TV cop shows now is that they will insist on making it very boring for the viewer by adding one ingredient that almost guarantees that you’ll leave the TV and go and do something more interesting like scrape the oven out, or polish every pair of shoes in the house; the psychological profiler.

It’s tired, very worn out and extremely boring for the viewer to include such a character and I’m surprised it was included in the latest Frost and also in an episode of Morse. “You’re looking for a rapist murderer who doesn’t like women, lives with his elderly mother, is something of a loner and eats pork pies!” Then two hours of policemen being anti to the profiler, who is nearly always a woman which makes it easier for CID to ridicule because they’re inevitably going to be blatantly sexist towards her anyway, and all her hypothetical psychological “mumbo-jumbo”! Later they nab a suspect taking his mum to the Post Office to collect her pension, and he swears abuse at a young police woman, and when they search his car they discover empty pork pie wrappers and discarded jelly, and his mobile ‘phone with only one number in his ‘phonebook, his mum’s!

Other contemporary and useless additions to TV cop dramas, ideas which have drifted over the Atlantic in recent years, are the hostage negotiator and the forensic scientist. The hostage negotiator is all very boring and most of us would rather see the heavy mob crash through the door, free the hostages, beat the hell of the “hostage takers” and nick ‘em bang to rights!

The forensic mob is also a turn off, where so much technology is used and they go to great lengths to explain it so much so that you usually fall asleep like it was an IBM seminar or something!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Marky B

Never been a fan of it:to me it is just Del Boy in a hat and raincoat.
Ta Ta
Marky B [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsup.gif[/img]

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

samkydd

[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.gif[/img]--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marky B @ Sep 29 2005, 04:54 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Never been a fan of it:to me it is just Del Boy in a hat and raincoat.
Ta Ta
Marky B [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsup.gif[/img]
[/quote]

Well I thought that, as with Regan playing Morse, but I met a girl who was Morse mad and she persuaded me to sit down and watch a complete episode The Way Through The Woods (1995) and I enjoyed it. Over the years I've watched all the other episodes too! I certainly couldn't get on with John Thaw playing that northern lawyer bloke though.

I read the Frost books long before the TV series came about and David Jason plays the character pretty true to the R D Wingfield original. The supporting cast is also very good and overall it has been done well. I don't relate Jason to Delboy, or Scullion in Porterhouse Blue, or Granville in Open All Hours. I'm no expert but I think he's a pretty good actor and gets into his characters very well indeed. I didn't like Delboy much, he was too much like Arfur Daley, and in my view Minder was an extended copy of Turtle's Progress and just as enjoyable!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"