TV Episodes You Have Just Watched

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I just saw the first episode "She Hulk: Attorney at Law." Many sitcoms introduce multiple characters in the first episode. "She Hulk" really only introduces Jennifer/She Hulk and even she isn't very well-defined. (Her introduction is making a very generalized speech about social responsibility). Bruce Banner/Hulk, we already know from the MCU. Other characters, like Supportive Friend and Mean Boss are present, but I couldn't tell you anything more about them. This is a miniseries, not a regular series, but that's all the more reason to establish the characters early.

Sandman.

Rewatching Castlevania.

Archer.
Jessica Jones.

The Gadic Collection, episode of 'The Saint' from March 1968.

Set in Istanbul, where a number of valuable artifacts disappear from a museum, and various dubious types home in on Templar, convinced that he knows the whereabouts of the said items. It's all sorted out in the end of course, but not before two people have lost their lives, and an 'unlikely' person is revealed to be behind all the shenanigans.

Stars the British actor Peter Wyngarde, who 'blacks up' to play some sort of Middle Eastern gangster, in a manner that wouldn't be regarded as acceptable today. It takes 38 minutes of this episode before Templar whacks someone in the face by the way, a remarkable piece of restraint on his part.

^ I've taken the screenshots of the last two episodes directly from officially released dvds of 'The Saint'. The picture quality is perfectly acceptable, as you can see, but I don't think it's as bright and pin sharp as some of the earlier screenshots, which were from 'home-made' TV recordings. That's a touch disappointing.

Red Rose. Its an 8 part drama on BBC iplayer and based in Bolton.

I enjoyed it in the end. It was a bit hard for me to get into on the first episode because I couldn't relate to the characters but I stuck with it and watched the lot.

Interesting and a bit scary.

I'd give it 6/10

I'm giving 'The Saint' a break for a while, but only to spend a bit of time with its ITC sister show 'The Baron'. This stars Steve Forrest as the Texan troubleshooter John Mannering, who runs an antiques shop in Central London, but has contacts with British Intelligence and gets up to similar capers as Simon Templar.

Mannering is a bit more grown up and down to earth though, and there's not as much 'Smart Alec' stuff as you get with Templar, which is sometimes a good thing. Like Templar though, Mannering usually deals with problems by whacking the baddies in the mouth....

'The Baron' only ran for one series (1966-67, 30 episodes), which was largely due to the fact that it didn't do too well on American TV.

Away we go then, starting with episode 1, Diplomatic Immunity (20 January 1966).

Mannering travels to the fictional East European state of Pameranea to try to recover a number of valuable antiques which have been stolen in the UK and France by a member of the Pameranean embassy's diplomatic staff. He finds that a senior Pameranean government minister is behind it all. Mannering pays him a visit, relieves him of the antiques, and whacks him in the mouth. Then it's just a question of getting across the border, which turns out to be rather more difficult than anticipated....






Anyone speak Pameranean? Even if you don't, it's not that hard to work this one out...






No Iron Curtain stereotypes here, Comrades! The Pameranean Culture Minister, Anna Lobovitz.






Mannering deals with the crooked Pameranean Economic Affairs Minister, Georges Sforza, in typically sophisticated fashion - a right hook to the face.

Epitaph For A Hero, episode 2 of 'The Baron' (1966)

One of the most entertaining episodes. Mannering infiltrates a gang planning an ambitious jewel heist, and things are further complicated when his assistant, Cordelia Winfield, is captured by the gang. He ends up being coshed over the head by a revolver at one point, something which happens to him with astonishing regularity in this series, yet he never seems to suffer a fractured skull or end up in the neurosurgery ward. Templar was far too smart and 'cool' to let this sort of thing happen to him in 'The Saint'.

Stars Patricia Haines, who looks particularly striking in her bright red coat and black hat. There are also some interesting shots of Battersea Funfair, a legacy of the 1951 Festival of Britain, which closed down in the mid-1970s.











The whole episode is on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/d-nyzQLOUzw

Something For A Rainy Day, episode 3 of 'The Baron' (1966).

A crook, newly released from prison, plans to do a deal with an insurance company, using Mannering as an intermediary. It concerns the return of the valuable art treasures he had looted, and for which the company has already paid out. However, his former partners in crime also want to get their hands on the goodies, and the crook's daughter becomes a pawn in the game...

Stars Lois Maxwell, 'Miss Moneypenny' from the original Bond films, as an executive of the insurance company. She turns out to be a real dark horse, or a typical insurance company shyster, depending on your point of view.

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.
Real Time With Bill Maher.
She Hulk Attorney at Law.
Jessica Jones.
Primal.

Red Horse, Red Rider, episode 4 of 'The Baron' from January 1966.

Mannering travels to the fictional state of Khakania, a country which seems to be somewhere in the Balkans near the Greek border. His mission is to get a valuable art treasure representing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse out of the country, so that he can sell it and return the proceeds to a prominent citizen who is financing the campaign of a revolutionary movement which seeks to overthrow the country's right-wing dictatorship.

He finds himself in the hands of the revolutionaries' leader, Miros, who saves his life more than once, but turns out in the end to be a bit of a psycho who almost scuppers the whole thing.

Very lively episode, one scene even being a bit reminiscent of a Peckinpah film. Co-starring Jane Merrow, a regular in these ITC series from the late 1960s.

House Of The Dragon.
Jessica Jones.

Enemy of the State, Episode 5 of 'The Baron' (1966).

Set in an unnamed Eastern European country, Mannering and his assistant Cordelia are ostensibly guests at an art exhibition, but in reality are there to hand over a large sum of money to a British intelligence cell operating over there. It all goes wrong, Cordelia is imprisoned by the secret police, and Mannering has to come up with a cunning plan to release her. This he does by capturing the head of the local secret police (yeah, right!), and contriving an unlikely exchange deal.

Not bad, I'm fascinated by this sort of stuff based on the so-called 'Cold War' and depicted in shows like The Baron, The Saint, Callan, and so on, but how much of it had any kind of connection whatsoever with reality?





A tense scene between The Baron and Cordelia (played by Sue Lloyd), as she faces the prospect of several years in an East European prison.






This kind of thing is amusing and interesting in these ITC shows set behind the Iron Curtain. Is this a real language (I don't think so!), or some kind of made up stuff? Looks a bit Slavic, and the last word seems to hint at Croatia.

I just finished watching Locke & Key yesterday and while the season was good overall, the final two episodes were really trope-y and disappointing to me. Enough to kinda ruin my feeling overall for the show.

I took Hungarian night classes years ago and have listened to a lot of Hungarian music over the years and when I saw this it was obviously Hungarian to me. But I don't actually speak Hungarian and it doesn't translate into anything when I run it through a translator so I think your suspicions are correct. I think its Hungarianised gobbledygook.