BCnU!
Saturday, March 24, 2012
"THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF DISNEY"
I've heard that 'Saturday Night Live' allegedly ripped off this idea for the sketch, but I'm not sure from who, so that's why the word "allegedly" was inserted......
BCnU!
AS SEEN ON TV: "ALBERT CAMPION"
"ALBERT CAMPION"
CREATED BY:
Margery Allingham
PORTRAYED BY:
Peter Davison
AS SEEN IN:
'Campion'
TV DIMENSION:
Earth Prime-Time
From Wikipedia:
Albert Campion is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and
short stories by Margery Allingham. He first appeared as a supporting character
in "The Crime at Black Dudley" (1929), an adventure story involving a ring of
criminals, and would go on to feature in another 17 novels and over 20 short
stories. Supposedly created as a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers' detective Lord
Peter Wimsey, Campion established his own identity, and matured and developed as
the series progressed. After Allingham's death her husband Philip Youngman
Carter completed her last Campion book and wrote two more before his own
death.
Albert Campion is a pseudonym used by a man who was born in 1900 into
a prominent British aristocratic family. Early novels hint that he was part of
the royal family but this suggestion is dropped in later works. He was educated
at Rugby School and the (fictitious) St. Ignatius' College, Cambridge (according
to a mini-biography included in "Sweet Danger"). Ingenious, resourceful and
well-educated, in his 20's he assumed the name Campion and began a life as an
adventurer and detective.
The name "Campion" may have its origin in the Old
French word for "champion". Another source says the name was suggested by
Allingham's husband Philip Youngman Carter, and may allude to the Jesuit martyr
St. Edmund Campion. Carter and St. Edmund Campion were both graduates of
Christ's Hospital school. Campion's fictional college, St. Ignatius, supports
the Edmund Campion connection, since St. Ignatius of Loyola was the founder of
the Jesuits.
'Albert Campion' is revealed early on to be a pseudonym. In "Mystery Mile",
his true first name is said to be Rudolph, while his surname begins with a K. In
"The Fashion in Shrouds" he also mentions his first name being Rudolph but
confides he changed it asking people to call him Albert as he didn't like the
name Rudolph.
Allingham makes various
references to Campion's aristocratic background, and hints at a connection to
royalty in several asides. A study of the books suggests his father was a
Viscount, and was already dead at the start of the series. Campion's mother is
mentioned several times and writes a letter in "The Fashion in Shrouds", and
Campion borrows a car from his older brother (apparently the current holder of
the title) in "Mystery Mile", but neither of them appear in person. In "Sweet
Danger" it was mentioned that his brother was "still unmarried" and therefore
Campion is likely to "come into the title some day" although there is no
suggestion in the books that this actually occurs.
His sister Valentine Ferris
plays a central part in "The Fashion in Shrouds"; in that book, it is revealed
that they are both estranged from most of their family. In "Police at the
Funeral", the venerable Caroline Faraday is aware of his true identity, and
knows his grandmother Emily (who she refers to as "The Dowager") - she calls him
by his real name of "Rudolph" and states at one point that the rest of his
family blame Emily for encouraging Campion in his adventurous ways.
Albert Campion is mentioned at the Wold Newton site (links to the left,
adventurists!)
BCnU!
Friday, March 23, 2012
LEDGER DOMAIN
In the world of TV crossovers, I'd say this is big - even when it's so trivial......
In last night's 'CSI' episode "Malice In Wonderland", the 'CSI' franchise
officially merged with the 'Law & Order' franchise*:
The New York Ledger is the tabloid often seen in the 'Law & Order'
mothership and just about all of the spin-offs. And it had its own series as
well - 'Deadline'.
BCnU!
* Dick Wolf would tell you that 'Law & Order' is not a franchise. It's
a "brand".......
"THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO" - AS SEEN ON TV!
No, this isn't one of our daily "ASOTV" showcases, literary edition.....
In the latest 'Grimm' episode ("The Plumed Serpent"), Portland detective Nick Burkhardt was investigating an arson case which involved one of the "wesen", a creature known as a "Daemonfeuer".
From Wikipedia:
Daemonfeuer (DAY-mon-foy-uhr) are dragon-like creatures. There are not a
lot of these around anymore. Daemonfeuer can cough up vapor produced of their
own fat which is highly flammable. Igniting the produced vapor makes them appear
as if breathing fire. Daemonfeuer is a combination of the German words for demon
and fire. First seen in "Plumed Serpent".
"I got it long before the books," she said simply.
"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" exists only in two fictional universes so
far - the Literary one and the Movie Universe. (Eventually its two sequels will
join it in the Cineverse as well.) For the TV Universe, it is only considered
as a book and a movie.
However.....
Recently Sony, who controls these Stieg Larsson properties, put pressure on
CBS regarding their proposed pilot 'Quean'. To be produced by Warner Bros. TV
and Silver Pictures, 'Quean' was going to be about a girl who could hack
computers working for a private eye.
The show's creator agreed to overhaul the concept so that she would now be
working for a law firm. I think the show's original concept was generic enough,
but Sony wasn't satisfied. An outside law firm advised CBS to just drop the
whole project and so now it's dead.
It's a shame, too, if only because I like that title of 'Quean'.
Since Sony was so adamant on this, I'm thinking that they plan on some day
creating a TV show about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist - probably once
the movie trilogy has run its course. And so they didn't want any clones, no
matter how slight the resemblance, to be littering and diluting the TV
Landscape.
BCnU!
WHAT I'M WATCHING
My latest series for lunch-hour viewing at work is a ten episode compilation of 'The Rogues'. It's the story of an international family of swindlers, led by David Niven, Gig Young, and Charles Boyer, with Robert Coote and Gladys Cooper providing support from their familiial base of operations.
I started off with "The Personal Touch" and it felt like the series launch
that it was - all of the principles appeared (although Boyer was a voice-over),
and there was an elaborate ruse to open the episode which established the
premise.
But check out these guest stars:
Walter Matthau
Dina Merrill
Alfred Ryder
John Dehner
And there was a great supporting cast of character actors:
Marcel Hillaire
Dabbs Greer
John Banner
Johnny Silver
I now have another episode under my belt, with James Gregory playing their
mark, and once again the whole family was involved. If they can keep up the
quality I've seen in this light-hearted con game, it should be a pleasurable ten
lunch hours at work!
BCnU!
AS SEEN ON TV: BROTHER CADFAEL
BROTHER CADFAEL
CREATED BY:
Ellis Peters
AS SEEN IN:
'Cadfael'
AS PLAYED BY:
Sir Derek Jacobi
TV DIMENSION:
Earth Prime-Time
STATUS:
Multiversal
(Literature, Television)
From Wikipedia:
Brother Cadfael is the fictional main character in a series of historical
murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith
Pargeter under the name "Ellis Peters". The character of Cadfael himself is a
Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey, in western England, in the
first half of the 12th century. The historically accurate stories are set
between about 1135 and about 1145, during "The Anarchy", the destructive contest
for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud.
As a
character, Cadfael "combines the curious mind of a scientist/pharmacist with a
knight-errant", entering the cloister in his forties after being both a soldier
and a sailor, this experience gives him an array of talents and skills useful in
monastic life. He is a skillful observer of human nature, inquisitive by nature,
energetic, a talented herbalist (work he learned in the Holy Lands), and has an
innate, although modern, sense of justice and fair-play. Abbots call upon him as
a medical examiner, detective, doctor, and diplomat. His worldly knowledge,
although useful, gets him in trouble with the more doctrinaire characters of the
series, and the seeming contradiction between the secular and the spiritual
worlds forms a central and continuing theme of the stories.
From the source:
"I have seen death in many shapes, I've been a soldier and a sailor in my
time; in the east, in the Crusade, and for ten years after Jerusalem fell. I've
seen men killed in battle. Come to that, I've killed men in battle. I never took
joy in it, that I can remember, but I never drew back from it either. [...] I
was with Robert of Normandy's company and a mongrel lot we were, Britons,
Normans, Flemings, Scots, Bretons - name them, they were there! After the city
was settled and Baldwin crowned, most of us went home over three or four years,
but I had taken to the sea by then, and I stayed. There were pirates ranged
those coasts, we always had work to do. [...] I served as a free man-at-arms for
a while, and then I was ripe, and it was time. But I had had my way in the
world. [Now] I grow herbs and dry them and make remedies for all the ills that
visit us. [...] To heal men, after years of injuring them? What could be more
fitting? A man does what he must do."
Using the search engine at the Wold Newton site, I found no mention of
Brother Cadfael. The fact that he lived centuries before the impact of the
meteorite at Wold Newton is hardly a deterrent, considering that several members
of the Wold Newton family can be found thousands of years before. Neither is
his vow of celibacy a roadblock to tracing his family tree, considering that he
sired a son while still a soldier in the Holy Lands.
But until such time - if any! - when some Wold Newtonist does the research
into a connection for Brother Cadfael, I'm content with making a few suggestions
as to his associations with characters to be found in the Tele-Folks Directory
of Toobworld.
I've made the suggestion before, but Cadfael may have teamed up with a
Gallifreyan Time Lord without ever knowing it - and I'm not referring to the
Doctor! It could be he had dealings with the Meddling Monk, who could have
returned to that basic time period in Earth's history, or he was still stuck
there from a century before, thanks to the First Incarnation of the
Doctor.
And then there is the family of Sir Thomas Grey of 'Covington Cross'
castle. The exact dates for the episodes seen in this short-lived ABC series
were never really nailed down.
But all in all, Brother Cadfael on his own is a notable addition to this
run of Great Detectives as seen in Earth Prime-Time.
BCnU!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
"THE INCIDENT" WITH THE NUMBERS
I've seen only two of the three "Incident" movies so far, and in each of those first two, one of "the Numbers" from 'Lost' were cited.
In "The Incident", eight German prisoners of war were beaten to death by fellow prisoners and their deaths were listed as "natural causes".
In "Against Her Will: An Incident In Baltimore", twenty-three patients were crowded together in horrible conditions down in the basement of the Walnut Hill mental health facility.
4 8 15 16 23 42......
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
