Jack Taylor S03
I had missed that there was a third and final season of Jack Taylor, which follows a rough and ready PI ‘who takes on the cases the Garda (Irish police) won’t touch. (I think I confused it with Jack Irish, featuring a similar character in Australia, which I also need to finish watching.) I did enjoy the first two seasons, but I can see why this season ended the series. It seemed to be casting around for a way to make this throwback character more relevant to modern times, including a ridiculous romance with a much younger policewoman and the final case involving video games. The attempt did not work.
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Van Der Valk S04
This series has always been a little odd, as it features English speaking folks solving crimes in Amsterdam without ever speaking Dutch. Even putting that aside, I got quite worried early in Season 4 when series star Marc Warren, who has demonstrated elsewhere that he really can act, descended to David Caruso level, i.e. posing manfully while uttering dialogue that I assume is supposed to be pithy. The series has always veered dangerously close to CSI-style banality, but the remaining 2 1/2 episodes of Season 4 pulled the series out of that trough, delivering some satisfying crime solving with minimal banality.
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Paience
Patience is another entrant in the burgeoning subgenre of ‘outsiders working with a police squad’ that has become popular of late, and I would say it could be one of the better examples. Patience happens to be an autistic archivist who handles the files in the basement of the York police station. She is also a puzzle fanatic, and when she encounters a detective who is not put off by her eccentricities, puts those skills to work as part of the team.
I am not qualified to judge whether this is a proper representation of autism, though I do recognize some of Patience’s traits from my own life, particularly the need to find patterns in reality. Regardless of the portrayal’s verisimilitude, she is an interesting character, and the crimes are interesting too. The show also makes excellent use of its setting in the medieval city of York, with the main weakness being the soundtrack, acoustic piano and chamber music that at times becomes overbearing.
Patience could go either way if they make more seasons. I hope they choose the more interesting path of digging in to the character of Patience rather than normalizing her.
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McDonald & Dodds S04
Speaking of medieval English cities, this series set in Bath returns with another three episodes featuring a mismatched pair of detectives, one young and ambitious, the other old and eccentric. By now the two have figured out how to get along, fortunately as that plot line was getting boring, and instead each gets to stretch out a bit thanks to some clever plotting. This was the best season yet IMO.
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Vuncent
I watched both seasons of this English crime series featuring veteran actor Adrian Dunbar as a retired detective who keeps getting drawn back in to helping the local police force he used to work for solve crimes. It’s a little old-fashioned, particularly when Dunbar’s character is hanging out at a local jazz club, but most of the time it works, and the production values and writing are top notch. I would call Vincent solid rather than spectacular, but it does deliver.
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Vera
This old reliable has finally come to an end after 14 solid seasons totalling 56 episodes. The inimitable Brenda Blethyn truly embodies this character, crotchety and brilliant, someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, often to the dismay of her subordinates. The final season of two episodes is up to scratch, delivering a satisfying conclusion to Vera’s tenure on the force. The setting in Northumberland remains as beguiling as ever; I will miss visiting this part of the world for a few hours every year.
There was no indication of this in the script, but I can’t help but wonder if there will be a spin-off where, like Vincent, Vera is drawn back in to help her old force solve the tough ones.
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The Bay S03-S05
Yes, I did watch three more seasons encompassing 18 45-minute episodes of this English crime series, but they really didn’t make much of an impression. The series focuses around a Family Liaison Officer in a semi-rural area on the coast of Lancashire, which should be a fertile set-up, creating all sorts of opportunities for conflict and conflict of interest, given the family of the victim themselves might be involved in this or other crimes, but this opportunity was largely eschewed in favour of banal plot lines involving the FLO’s family. The production values are good, and there are moments involving subsidiary characters that approach brilliance, but overall for me the series fell flat.
One oddity if you do watch Season3 – check out how the lead actress is apparently being directed, at the end of almost every scene, to look worried, no matter what the actual content of the scene was. The repetitive close-ups of her face looking worries get rather weird.
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