Gazette 1.2 and 1.3

Heh, already getting behnind on this.

1.2 (Turn A Blind Eye) - Easy highlight of this episode was two wonderful film sequences of Gillian Wray walking around pristine "civic modern" landscapes. If watching archive television is (in part) an attempt to escape in time into a yearned-for past, then it is footage like this that does a lot of the heavy lifting. The unhurried edit pace allows one to savour a lot of background detail, I often feel like I am "hoovering up" the texture of the era.

Ralph Michael is a lot of fun as Colonel Chamberlayne, very reminiscent of Hugh Laurie playing a slightly sneery but generally amiable old buffer.

The central thematic conflict between truth-telling and profit (via fear of libel suits) is meaty stuff, not the sort of debate one sees much (at all?) in popular drama these days, when I suppose it is a foregone conclusion that Money Wins (or fiscal pragmatism, anyway). Interestingly, the Hadleigh character is the one taking the moral high ground, his independent wealth allowing him to assume perspectives not dictated by greed or fear of financial hardship - this was often the case in the later Hadleigh series as well.

With this episode I properly noticed the end credits, which constitute a bizarrely jerky pan over what is presumably a picture of the Yorkshire Dales.

1.3 - (Exposure) - Another solid ep, with the Gazette pitted against a shit of a local businessman. Norman Claridge's Appleton character hoves into focus as a vigorously waspish attorney.

There is some more of that ultra-stagey dialogue, which I realise is made slightly more prominent by Jon Laurimore not quite selling it - Harper takes a good run-up at his trickier lines and puts a bit of flourish into them, as befits his character - poor Laurimore is playing a more stolid middle class kind of bloke and some of Walters' attempts at aphorism and/or grooviness feel a bit forced. He's also sweating under his armpits a lot - in fact this is a sweaty show all over, there is lots of beaded perspiration on brows.

I don't mean to rag on Laurimore, his is an excellent presence in the show and I do like the way television felt comfortable with portraying more undemonstrative, "normal" characters baqck then.

There is a nice "friends together" ending with a mildly surprising coda. The series is building well and it's a pleasure to look forward to catching an episode on a quiet evening.