woodaqualung

This series was highly popular when first broadcast on ITV almost 40 years ago.The basic premise is that 3 undercover police officers are seconded from the Met(London Police) to an unnamed city in the North Of England where they are totally unknown to the local villains,hence the title.The trio are led by Det .Sgt Bulman played by Don Henderson whose trademarks are his perennial gloves ,nasal inhaler and plastic carrier bag.The stories aren't just the usual drug dealers,pimps and blaggers,but suspect councillors and people who get themselves involved in crime by their lack of common sense. Dennis Blanche plays Bulman's action man sidekick and the trio is completed in the first two series by the excellent Frances Tomelty, who to be honest,never seemed totally happy with the role and was replaced in series 3 by Fiona Mollison who was a kind of Purdey like character,posh accent and well able to look after herself in a tight corner. At times the stories can be very slow moving,making Inspector Morse look like Starsky and Hutch but the lack of shootouts and car chases adds to the worth of the show. Available from Network DVD in the UK and currently very well priced for the complete series on Amazon UK. Worth getting hold of if you're a fan of British cop shows from the period. The series spawned a spin-off "Bulman".

I came to this expecting to see a masterpiece,as trumpeted by various critical writings and Kermode on the B.B.C..It's not.It started off well but once the central character,at least from the point of view of the British Army, reaches the beach it goes down hill.There is zero character development which results in myself,for one, having no particular investment in any of the characters.The Army personnel featured are universally a bunch of wasters,which is not the case for the majority who maintained their discipline and espirit de corps(read any of the numerous written works on the subject(or download them to your tablet if holding a real book is too tiring).The R.A.F. sequences are a bit better until the end where the Tom Hardy denoument is laughably bad.You might accept this junk in a comic book(sorry,graphic novel) adaptation but not when you're depicting what a real life piece of equipment can do.Can't say more without a spoiler,but anyone over 40 who knows anything about real aircraft will get my meaning. Finally,I would have preferred C.G.I. for the Royal Navy sequences but what we get is a couple of modern R.N. ships bedecked with painted plywood disguises for the superstructure-really laughably bad,although the small boat sequence with Mark Rylance did have some dramatic affect.I could have done without the rather pointless Cillian Murphy character . In short the film is a computer game with some real people shoehorned in for the Playstation generation..Don't get sucked into spending a fortune to see it.Wait until the DVD comes out,watch it and then give it to the local charity shop.Watch the 1958 telling of the story with John Mills and Richard Attenborough in which you do have empathy for the lads in the platoon and for Bernard Lee,Attenborough and their crew,unless of course black and white films hurt your delicate little eyes..For a more detailed account of the rescue there is an excellent 3 part mini series Docudrama which is really worth seeing.

Another film based on a Morpurgo novel,War Horse being the other,and like that film it's an exercise in emotional button pushing for the generation who are likely to know sod all about the history on which the work is based.It's laying on 21st century attitudes and morality to events which occurred 100 years ago when the world was very different.Yes it was terrible by our standards that deserters were shot and that poor defenceless horses were killed,but it's infinitely more horrifying that a huge portion of a generation who didn't run away, died or were maimed..The film is the cinematic equivalent of the kind of "ooh wasn't this terrible?" documentaries which infest the lesser Free To Air TV channels here in the UK.And by the way I'm by political persuasion a Lefty.

The film making is OK.The story of the brothers growing up in a rural village in Devon is fine and Alexandra Roach has the bonniest smile on British TV.It's when the lads join up that it pumps out the clichés like a Lewis gun.

Watch "For King And Country" for a good depiction of a soldier on trial for desertion and perhaps " Journey's End" for life in the front line(the 1970's version is really good".