Jekyll and Hyde (1990 TV Film)

 "'Evil' is not a scientific word!"

Adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde always have a bit of a problem in that you can't just adapt the source material- the novella is entirely framed around the big reveal at the end that Jekyll is Hyde, rather than being blackmailed and controlled by him. And... we've all been spoiled that surprise for 139 years. Any adaptation therefore has no choice but to craft its own tale based around the duality of Jekyll and Hyde, overemphasising the difference between them in terms of personality, and sometimes crowbarring in other characters from the novel in another context.

So it is here. There's no mystery; Jekyll transforms for the first time fairly early on in what is a rather good effect. Utterson appears, in the person of Ronald Pickup, but the excellent Joss Ackland gives us a very different Dr Lanyon, not a friend of Henry Jekyll but a true antagonist.

And this antagonism between them grows into a complex love tragedy between Jekyll (Michael Caine may be phoning it in a bit but he can't ever fail to be excellent) and Sarah (Cheryl Ladd is rather good here, and her accent never slips) which takes up a huge amount of screen time.

However, this is a cut above most adaptations in that it shows Dr Jekyll's deep moral flaws rather than using his two selves as representing good and evil. In particular, Jekyll gives a deeply chilling speech on what is essentially eugenics during a lecture and this, rather than anything Hyde does, is easily the film's most chilling moment.

Well, aside from the shockingly clever ending!

The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It

 "The unexpected but accurate bisecting of the Belgian foreign minister; the Royal College of Needlework massacre; the strange affair of the seven boiled bishops; and the man-eating poodle of Lambeth Palace enigma?"

This is, shall we say, somewhat obscure. A one-off ITV comedy thing, co-scripted by and starring John Cleese, and with his signature absurdist verbal humour all over it. It's not available anywhere officially, as far as I know, and will certainly never be seen on television again- it was 1977, and there's a little light racism on show here. But let's just say that YouTube happens to exist, shall we?

But damn, this is funny. Don't get me wrong, it's uneven, and it would be absurd to expect the plot to make sense. But there are some delightfully clever touches and, despite the fact it all looks extremely cheap, the performances are excellent. Atrthur Lowe steals the show as the most bumbling Watson ever, but Connie Booth is also hilarious as Mrs Hudson. And Denholm Elliott is, of course, his usual superb self.

It's also illuminating as to the world of 1977- the Chinese delegate to the Police of Five Continents meeting has Mao's Little Red Book; there's a hilarious spoof of both Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford; and there's a rather funny scene with a very 1970s computer. Oh, and there's a nicely casual skewering of all sorts of pop culture detectives.

This is not, by any means, one of the best things John Cleese has ever done. Some bits are funnier than others. But this is just so much fun to watch.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Smiley Sets a Trap

"Ever bought a fake picture, Toby?"

We get closer to unmasking Gerald in a slowly gripping final episode, but we begin with a rather odd character, Jerry, player with delightful eccentricity by the legendary Joss Ackland. Yet Jerry speaks in a bizarre “Red Indian” argot of “braves” and things that are “heap big”, a retro type of casual racism from a very different age. This, like the BP petroleum station, reminds us that this was made fiery years ago and makes me, a young man of forty-two, to feel not perhaps in the very first flush of youth.

Jerry, while admittedly confessing to some xenophobia owing to Toby Esterhase’s Hungarian origins (very much played down in this adaptation) Jerry drips more suspicion on Esterhase, who forced him to sit on suspicious information of Soviet troop movements on the Czech-Austrian border just after Prideaux (who seems to have gone AWOL) was caught.  So Toby is lured to George’s lair and, in a series of gripping scenes where Alec Guinness demonstrates the art of acting at its finest, interrogated and turned, a pawn who knows not what lies behind the suspicious largesse of Witchcraft. With Esterhase an innocent dupe, the suspects reduce to three...

I like this. I like it a lot- and I saw an article in the Guardian about a week ago that praised Tinker Tailor to the skies. So far I’m finding it very good, indeed excellent, but not quite first class, in spite of the performances. Yes, there’s a certain subtext of national decline and doing the right thing in spite of that, without reward- yet I can’t help feeling that the slow pace and silences, while unquestionably a good thing, flatter the series somewhat by allowing the viewer to fill in the subtext.

Still, Smiley is setting a trap for Gerald; let’s see how it ends...

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Series 2- The Copper Beeches

"There has been some villainy here..."

Yet again we have a governess (a young Natasha Richardson) called Violet as usual, troubled by the odd behaviour of her employer Mr Rucastle (a gleefully entertaining Joss Ackland), and a splendidly entertaining story of an imprisoned daughter that gets more than a little Charlotte Bronte at the end.

Again, though, the subtext is of the countless young Victorian girls who are being horribly oppressed by these patriarchal figures everywhere, which is really quite dark. And, as Holmes and Watson travel on the train down to deepest, darkest Hampshire, Holmes speaks of how the pretty houses of the countryside are to him a symbol not of beauty but of isolation, of "the impunity with which crimes may be committed". Behind this often light-hearted episode lies some real darkness.

There have been some fine episodes of late but, unlike the first series, the second series starts with one of the finest episodes yet.