"Lilyhammer" with Steven Van Zandt (2011)

Here’s a series I never heard of before. It was at the Library, filed under L for Lilyhammer. There’s no telling how many times I may have passed it by without notice, but for whatever reason this time I took it home with me. Glad I did.

Frank the Fixer; played by Steven Van Zandt; has testified against his “boss” in New York and as a result he needs to go into the Witness Protection Program. But he chooses not to head to Arizona or Florida; warm climates where most of the people in the program usually opt to relocate; he decides it would be safer if he were to relocate somewhere more obscure; and cold.

Remembering that he has seen Lillehammer on TV during the Olympics a few decades ago, he decides to cast his himself as a former restaurant owner and heads off to begin his new life in “Lilyhammer”; which is the way he pronounces it.

Once there he has to come to terms with life in a social democracy; where political correctness is the norm and hunting is not allowed. All of these things come into play as he navigates his new life, meeting his neighbors and in some cases corrupting them.

From the very first episode it is apparent that this man; who is trying to live his life unnoticed; is not going to quietly “fit in” with his new environment. He has troubles with the Employment Office; a personality conflict with one of the town’s police officers; is mistaken for an Islamic terrorist newly released from Guantanamo; and extreme difficulty understanding the passivity of the people.

But in spite of all the social differences; or perhaps because of them; Frank quickly discovers that people everywhere are really the same. They all want to be one step ahead of one another.  Great viewing; get ready to binge watch this one.

"In the Heat of the Night" - Season 1 (1988)

One of the gifts I got for Christmas was the First Season DVD collection from the TV series “In the Heat of the Night”, which was based on the 1967 film of the same name starring Rod Steiger as local sheriff in Bill Gillespie the town of Sparta, Mississippi. In that film a police detective by the name of Virgil Tibbs;by Sidney Poitier; is passing through Sparta on his way home to Philadelphia. While awaiting the 4:30 AM train he is picked up for the murder of the town’s biggest employer who is about to open a factory. The most often remembered line of the film occurs when Tibbs is called boy by the Sheriff and he replies with the stinging rebuke, “They call me Mr. Tibbs!”

The film was so iconic of the times that I never really paid much attention to the TV spinoff starring Carrol O’Connor; Archie Bunker from TV’s “All in the Family”; figuring that aside from the name of the series, there wasn’t much potential there. And, aside from that, what could ever top the scene where Tibbs; played by Sidney Poitier; smacks back the town’s oldest revered segregationist in his very own green house? Howard E. Rollins Jr. plays Virgil Tibbs in a very convincing manner, while never making you feel as if he is trying to emulate Poiter’s treatment of the role.

Well, last night (actually a few nights ago by the time you read this) I decided to check the series out, beginning with the 2 part Pilot episode, which sets up the whole series based upon the movie. I was pleasantly surprised. The hardest part of adapting any type of movie or show to another genre; particularly television; can be a road fraught with pitfalls.  It’s so easy to take something millions of people have come to love in its original form and screw it up.  However, I was pleasantly surprised at the way they adapted this story for the pilot. I still haven’t begun the rest of the series, but the pilot is really well done.

To begin with, picking Carroll O’Connor for the role of Gillespie was a great choice.  And the way they bring Tibbs back to Sparta for his mother’s funeral is fairly believable. The only real discrepancy is that in the film Tibbs was visiting his mother in a neighboring town, hence the need for the train connection. In the series she appears to have been a longtime resident of the town, which raises all kinds of questions about why he was portrayed as a stranger passing through in the film.

These differences aside the pilot is beautifully executed. They even have a scene where Tibbs gets to reiterate that they call him Mr. Tibbs after being called boy by Deputy Bubba Skinner; played by Alan Autry. This is good because it gets that whole image out of the way and allows the series to take on its own flavor. They must have done something right as the show ran from 1988 through 1995 drawing praise for the entire run. What can I say; sometimes it just takes me a while to catch on to something good.

"Doc Martin" with Martin Clunes and Caroline Catz (2011)

This quirky little series has a unique charm which will draw you in quickly. The characters are all richly developed. The story revolves around the simple plot of a doctor in a small Cornish town who has a baby with another medical professional. The two are unmarried.

Between the slightly inept Town Constable, the drugged out pharmacist, the cat woman, his off-beat “mother in law”, and problems associated with his rather brusque bedside manner combine to create some truly awkward moments for the Doc as well as those around him. In short, he has no bedside manner at all and is somewhat of a bull in a china closet. But, he is a genius.

One things for sure in this series; you never know what’s going to happen next; nor how Doc Martin is going to react to it. Nor, how the people around him will react to the things he says and does. You will marvel at the fact that this socially backward man could even land a woman at all, let alone one as sweet as his significant other. But will they last? This season finds her moving out to be with her mother, taking the baby with her.

While Doc Martin struggles to come to terms with his personal life, he saves just about everyone else’s. This is another of those great British series which I never see on TV; electing to watch them binge fashion instead when they are released as DVD’s. Though I have started with the 5^th Season, the characters are immediately familiar, and basically what you see is what you get. 

"Longmire" with Robert Taylor (2012)

I ran across this series in the library. I've never heard of it before; and it’s surprisingly well written and acted. A newly widowed Sheriff, Walt Longmire; played by Robert Taylor; along with his new deputy, Vic Moretti, a woman from Chicago;  played by Katee Sackhoff;  are confronted by every sort of crime imaginable in Absaroka County, Wyoming. And, surprisingly, there is a lot of crime.

Saddled with a deputy Sheriff named Branch, who aspires to replace him, the Sheriff has to navigate not only the crime scenes, but also the ambitions of his colleague. His drinking is not helpful. And his daughter is very pre-occupied with getting her dad back on the dating scene, while the sheriff still keeps his wife's ashes on the mantelpiece. All of this does not help with his drinking.

Aided by an Indian friend, Henry; played by Lou Diamond Phillips; who owns the Red Pony, a local restaurant; he also has to straddle the two worlds which comprise parts of Absaroka County. That is, he must deal not only with crime in the white world, but must also find ways to elicit the cooperation of the Police on the Indian Reservation. To that end, his friendship with the Lou Diamond Phillips character is essential.

From murder and drug cartels, to everything else imaginable in a big city, County Sheriff Longmire must solve these crimes without the help of big crime labs and forensics. He has to use his skills as a human being; along with some common sense; in order to keep the peace in his corner of Wyoming.

Beautifully filmed, credibly acted and well written, the series is a real sleeper. 

"Foyle's War" with Michael Kitchen (2002)

Michael Kitchen is everything you’d look for in a Police Investigator as he takes on the role of Chief Inspector Christopher Foyle in this multi-part PBS mini-series from 2002.  As the war with Germany wages on the other side of the channel, he is itching to get into the fight. That is, until he realizes the value he still holds in protecting the home front, where criminal schemes abound. With Germany only 30 miles away and advancing through Belgium; cornering the British at Dunkirk; there are people at home who would rather capitulate than fight. It becomes up to Chief Inspector Foyle, along with his Army Assistant, “Sam”, played by the lovely Honeysuckle Weeks, to solve these crimes, which range from outright murder, to sabotage.

This is the first UK edition, which is about 400 minutes long, spread over 4 episodes in Northern England. The stories are somewhat reminiscent of Agatha Christie, with an underplayed sense of mystery. Inspector Foyle and “Sam” are tasked with solving some very unusual crimes, even while dealing with their own personal problems. The Inspector is a widower, with a son who is joining the RAF. “Sam” is from a more rural area and her Vicar father wants her home.

From the very first episode, “The German Woman”, the viewer is drawn into the beautiful scenery of the English countryside, which serves as a placid background for the tumult of the war. When the German born wife of a local landowner is killed while horseback riding, suspicion falls on everyone in the town of Sussex. But careful sleuthing on the part of Inspector Foyle and “Sam” leave them to a corrupt system of evading the draft. The suspicion for the motive then falls on the dead woman’s husband as the cause of the murder. But that still leaves open the question of why his wife was murdered, and by who?

In “The White Feather” a young girl is accused of cutting the telegraph wires from the local military base; a crime which could see her hung. Although she does not deny committing the crime, the question still remains as to why, and for whom, she has placed herself in such jeopardy.

In the third story of the series, “A Lesson in Murder”, a conscientious objector dies while in police custody. Mystery abounds in this case, where class and privilege clash with the responsibilities of the ordinary man.

In the final episode of the 1^st season, when Inspector Foyle and “Sam” are confronted with the stabbing death of a man in his home during a bombing raid , they find a statuette. That statuette brings them into contact with the curator of the local museum, who is tasked with packing away all of the art treasures under his domain for safe keeping.  But some things just don’t add up, and the foolproof scheme to keep the statuette hidden is foiled by the combined efforts of Inspector Doyle and “Sam”, as well as the occurrence of the air raid.

Filmed with great attention to detail, the countryside seems to leap from the screen with each story. The sets, and the wardrobes are both impeccable, giving the stories a true flavor of the times in which they take place. The stories were written by Anthony Horowitz and the filming was directed by Jeremy Silberston and David Thacker. The whole series is exactly what we have come to expect of the BBC; excellent writing and storylines which both inform the viewer, as well as make them think.