Not wonderful, but I have rented season 2. The thing about crime shows is that they are almost always in some way derivative of Sherlock Holmes. The central character is always some eccentric genius with some anti-social character traits (Monk, Colombo, etc.) In fact, though I’ve always thought of writing a mystery novel, this seems to be the problem with the genre … what’s the mystery? There seems to be only two ways to tell a mystery story
1. Character-centric – Sherlock type character and his quirks solve traditional mystery.
2. The mysteries themselves are convoluted to deliberately confuse audience (which is really NOT a mystery … but hey …).
Wire in the Blood starts with type one and ends up with type 2.
Monk was at least more successful at maintaining type one (they did think up one hell of a character trait) but lost it when Sharona left. I lost interest. Sadly, however, as it was a really good show.
Other than that I have been busy this week. I did watch Bill Bailey’s “Cosmic Jam” finally the other day. This is in the earlier Bill Bailey, playing up his long-hair hippie image, telling more jokes about drugs than I think even he felt comfortable with. Classically trained musician and now having been in a few really great shows (“Black Books”), his image has come back down to earth a bit more.
I started watching "Part Troll", which is newer and LOT funnier, but I got a bit tired.
I recently saw the newest Steven Wright special (it’s been like 20 years since the last one I saw, when I saw him live in ’87) … and I was reminded how, like a lot of comedians who first start out, they usually have an image they present. Especially if they are weird. Steven Wright is very much the same comic he was 20 years ago (“My nephew has HDADD; High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely concentrate, but when he does, he’s very clear.”) but the show was a little short and padded out with a very long dull film at the end.
Anyway, I am saving a lot of stuff for the weekend.
Tonight Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses chief muse) is playing in Austin and I'm really annoyed that I can't go. It would mean taking part of the afternoon and part of tomorrow off and that just wouldn't fly. Sorry, Kristin. Couldn’t stop in Houston?
1 comment:
Have to agree with what you said about Monk - Sharona helped make that show.It had all the right ingredients. I don't think I caught much of it after that.Why did they mess with it.The buggers.
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