Tag: seal of approval

Lady Vengeance

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★★★★
“Revenge is a bitch…”

This film may need two viewings. First time up, I was irritated by an apparent lack of coherence – which was particularly annoying, since the non-linear storyline seemed almost completely superfluous. Second time round, it bothered me less though remained, perhaps deliberately, disorienting, and I still doubt the need for it. But the re-view left me better able to appreciate the great central idea, a chilling meditation on justice, revenge, the thin line between the two, and the effects on those who become involved. The final part of Park’s loose trilogy (after Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy) is the story of “kind-hearted Geum-ja” (Lee), who spends 13 years in prison, for the heinous murder of a young child. Except, she isn’t guilty, and spends the time forging alliances which will help with her new goal: revenge on the real perpetrator (Choi).

The pace is stately, rather than adrenalin-driven, yet there’s no denying its place here. Much credit to Lee for a great performance in a complex character, capable of huge sacrifice in her quest for redemption: she cuts off a finger in front of the victim’s parents, and has to be physically restrained from removing more. Yet it seems that her charity and good deeds, such as donating a kidney to a fellow prisoner, may be part of her vengeance. And then, when her goal is within grasp…she steps back to allow others, perhaps better-motivated, to take her place. Or is the opportunity that she offers a poisoned chalice? The questions asked have no easy answers; neither proponents of capital punishment, nor those opposed to it, will find it comfortable viewing. By the end, there are no victims left; everyone is guilty – to use the old Sex Pistols line, no-one is innocent.

he DVD was released by Tartan Video USA on September 26th, and includes an interview with Park, a ‘making of’ documentary, and no less than three commentaries. Nice job! For more information, visit the Tartan Video USA site.
a.k.a. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Dir: Park Chan-Wook
Stars: Lee Young-ae, Choi Min-sik, Kim Si-Hu, Nam Il-Woo

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

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satana-kickass★★★★★
“The Smell of Female”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Violence. The word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favourite mantle still remains – sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn’t only destroy. It creates and moulds as well. Let’s examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakeable smell of female. the surface shiny and silken. The body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don’t drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs. Operating at any level, at any time, anywhere and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist, or a dancer in a go-go club!”

Made more than forty years ago, Faster was decades ahead of its time – which may explain why it was such a resounding flop on initial release. But in his autobiography, John Waters called it, “The best movie ever made, and possibly better than any movie that will ever be made,” and helped resurrect it: Rob Zombie is another big fan, and introduced its recent screening on – of all places! – Turner Classic Movies. For this is the kind of film, hell, the kind of title, Quentin Tarantino wishes in his wet dreams he could create. And yet, it’s also an interesting example of censorship as artistically productive: probably the tamest of Meyer’s films: subsequently (and, often, before) they would contain a great deal more explicit nudity. But very rarely did he ever come close to the same artistic heights.

It tells the story of three girls: go-go dancers, hot-rod racers and outlaws, led by Varla (Satana). One afternoon, their chilling in the desert is rudely interrupted by Tommy and Linda (Bernard, who’d become a Playboy centerfold in 1966), a “square” couple who also have a car. After racing against them, Tommy and Varla get into a fight, which ends with Varla snapping his back. The trio kidnap Linda, and drive off. Stopping to get gas, they hear from the attendant about a crippled old man, who lives with his two sons, and is rumoured to have a fortune as the result of an accident. The girls decide to pay him a visit, and relieve him of his money – only to find out that he may be even more twisted and sadistic than they are…

Where to start? What about with the dialogue, which is prime, ripe and firm as last year’s Gouda, even if Satana has a slightly-irritating tendency to belt out every line at the top of her lungs. But as Rosie (Haji) says, “Honey, we don’t like nothin’ soft! Everything we touch is hard!” – these broads are “like a velvet glove, cast in iron,” as another memorable line reports. Or, as Varla puts it, “I never try anything. I just do it.” Almost every line has a sneer attached to it, and while none of the actresses went on to do anything else of real significance, they are all perfect here. They’re obviously playing characters, but their characters are also playing characters, so it all ties together with either remarkable happenstance, or artistic genius.

Often neglected are the male contributors, in particular Stuart Lancaster as the target of their scheme. Though confined to a wheelchair, he rules his twisted clan with a rod of iron; in many ways, this is an ancestor of the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with ‘the vegetable’ – as even his own father refers to him – a kinder, gentler version of Leatherface. Seeing the old man slobbering over Linda certainly shifts the audience, and helps to turn the murderous Varla and the other girls from villains into heroines, even as they progress their plan of robbery, because you sense their fate could end up being worse than death.

Rarely have all the aspects of a film come together with such perfection: it’s like throwing a dozen die and watching them all come up sixes. The editing; the script; the casting; the performances; the theme-tune alone is one of the best of the decade, and all the music helps drive the film along at a relentless pace. You could argue that it’s all idiotically unrealistic, and I would be hard-pushed to disagree. But I would, however, counter that this is much of the film’s appeal: it takes place in an alternate universe ruled by large-breasted, leather-clad, superwomen. Speaking personally, that may not be somewhere I’d want to live, but boy, it sounds like a fun place to visit. :-)

A militant feminist a decade before feminism was popular, Varla is also among the first openly bisexual women in cinema history, and the film is remarkably unjudgemental about the sexuality of any of the women. This helps explain why the movie’s cult appeal crosses so many boundaries, from the gay community to hardcore punk. And though they’re nothing to raise eyebrows today, Satana also used martial arts when they were almost unheard of in Hollywood. It’s sardonic, trailer-trash chic from an era that had yet to grasp fully the entertainment value of such irony. Others would aim at the same targets subsequently, mixing sex with violence in various ratios (Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik, The Perils of Gwendoline), but even now, few have come closer to capturing the heady, hyper-kinetic approach of Meyer’s finest work.

Dir: Russ Meyer
Stars: Tura Satana, Lori Williams, Haji, Sue Bernard

License to Steal

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★★★★½
“Thieves Like Us.”

This is an largely over-looked gem, featuring the future Mrs. Samo Hung (Godenzi – they married in 1995) in a role and performance which are so excellent, as to make you wonder why she apparently quit the cinema the following year [though she does have a cameo in Mr. Nice Guy, appearing in the cooking show audience]. She first came to attention in Eastern Condors and, despite a lack of training, developed a graceful, fluid style of action that works well. Her best known vehicle is She Shoots Straight, but for my money, this is even better.

She plays Hung, one of three sisters who are the business end of a family of thieves. Their guardian decides to pass the clan on to Hung, but another sister, Ngan (Aurelio, also from She Shoots Straight) wants control – she fixes a job so that Hung is captured, then takes over operations, using brute force and murder rather than skill and agility on their robberies. Three years later, Hung’s sentence is ended, but her sister immediately frames her again: to avoid jail, Hung agrees to co-operate with the police and work towards capturing her sister. She discovers Ngan has been hired to steal Napoleon’s death-mask, and the film climaxes with the two sisters battling each other inside the warehouse where the treasure is guarded.

This is almost two plots for the price of one, as on the police side, you have the investigating cop (Ng), who has to keep an eye both on his new partner (Ngai Sing) and a swordplay-novel obsessed nephew (Yuen Biao), who both want to help, but together are as much a distraction as an assistance. This lends itself to the usual goofy and unsubtle HK comedy – for example, Ng stripping to his boxers after believing there’s a bomb hidden in them – though these aspects don’t grate nearly as badly as I’ve seen elsewhere. There are also a bunch of cool moments to the plot which are probably unnecessary, in the larger scheme of things, but are thoroughly satisfying, and suggest someone actually thought the script out, again something not always the case in HK action cinema.

Godenzi is great, putting over a great combination of coolness and charisma, with a confident attitude that’s wholly justified. It’s established in the first scene that she knows how to push her sister’s buttons, and this comes back into play right at the end. Aurelio, a Filipina powerlifting champion, is a little less adept at acting, but is well-cast as the villainess, with a good sneer. There’s one amazing, politically-incorrect exchange between the characters, when they meet for the first time after Hung’s release from jail. Ngan sneers, “You look plump,” to which Hung replies, “Better than you, with sunburn like a nigger!” Ah, the 1990’s…

But this one is less about offensive banter, than action scenes which are top-notch, from the opening practice duel between the sisters, through to the final battle – this time for real. It’s particularly inventive as, early on, the sisters have to fight each other without making a sound, to avoid alerting the guards The highlight is, however, probably an amazing fight in a car-park – one of the top locations for mayhem in HK films, right up there with restaurants and warehouses – where everyone bar Aurelio gets involved. Her role as top villain there is delegated to Billy Chow, who went toe-to-toe with Jet Li in Fist of Legend, and he’s one hell of a formidable opponent. The action choreography is credited to Lee King-chu, but I suspect producer Samo Hung had more than a little involvement.

There is little or no depth here, only really what Godenzi brings to the table. But there is, equally, little or no intent of depth either: this was created purely as entertainment, nothing more, and on that level it succeeds admirably. It’s a real shame Godenzi chose not to follow a career as an action actress since, on this showing, she could well have ended up as big a star in the field as Michelle Yeoh.

[A note on spelling. The sleeve says ‘LicenCe’, but the print goes with the S. The former is also grammatically inaccurate, so I’ve gone with the S spelling throughout this article.]

Dir: Billy Chan
Stars: Joyce Godenzi, Agnes Aurelio, Richard Ng, Alvina Kong

Model Operandi: Affair of the Heart

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★★★★

Back in the day, I was a big comics fan, but have largely ignored the medium since coming to America in 2000 [there are still two large, unopened boxes in the hallway closet!] I think it’s perhaps the Scot in me coming out: graphic novels are an expensive way to pass an hour or so. Props first, therefore, to Caramagna and Budd, for keeping the cost of their first issue to an extremely reasonable price The story therein centers on the theft in France of a priceless diamond, the Heart of Josephine, and the quest of supermodel Legsy Diamond and Ann Lezbee, the implausibly-bosomed Special Ops Presidential Intern, to retrieve it.

Perhaps the biggest weakness is this storyline tries to cram too much in. As well as the search for the diamond, we also have Legsy’s family background, inter-model agency rivalry, her boss’s previous intrigues, a relationship with an investigating cop, and so on. While this sets up many potential storylines for future issues, it does feel somewhat heavily laid-on, and I tend to feel that less would be more. They’re going for an almost-Alias level of complexity, but twenty-plus hour-long episodes gives you much more scope for exposition than 88 pages, especially in an action-oriented title like this.

That said, the artwork rocks. Bright, crisp, colours mesh perfectly with bold lines, and capture the pop aesthetic delightfully. Every page is the kind of work which deserves to be framed and hung on the wall – though occasionally is perhaps a little too breast-fixated for me to really appreciate it! [I read it in the canteen at work, and felt a little uncomfortable doing so now and again 8-)] Style-wise, I was reminded a bit of the Adam Warren Dirty Pair comics, and that’s pretty high praise since I do have a page of art from that hanging on the wall here. I’m certainly looking forward to future editions, and this first issue is something any action heroine fan should check out.

Available now from AHP Comics, 88 pages, $5.99
Words and Ink: Joe Caramagna
Pencils and Colors: Dennis Budd

The Nest

  By

★★★★
“Aliens Assault on Precinct of the Living Seven.”

Despite influences all over the place – Assault on Precinct 13, Aliens, Night of the Living Dead, The Magnificent Seven – Siri takes and runs with them very effectively. Laborie (Farès) is a career soldier, tasked with transporting an Albanian gangster to his trial; but the convoy is ambushed, so she and her men hole up in a nearby warehouse on a deserted industrial estate. However, it is being robbed by brothers Santino (Magimel) and Nasser (Naceri), plus their crew – and the attackers have also followed them, intent on rescuing their boss. Can they survive until help arrives?

It’s a well-constructed story, with some thought going into the explanations. Part of the thieves’ preparation was to black out cellphones in the area, and the film takes place on Bastille Day, so fireworks drown out the gun-battle. The violence is also nicely realistic; when people get shot, they stay hit; fans of the game Counterstrike will particularly enjoy this. But the rest of us should too. Laborie is a serious action heroine, who takes no nonsense as she takes charge, wielding authority and her assault-rifle with equal proficiency. And the tension mounts inexorably, as the faceless enemy close in, cutting off the space to those trapped within.

The ending is arguably a little weak, and there is the occasional dip into cliche – Laborie gazing at a photo of her kid, for example. However, on the whole, this is a fine, well-crafted piece of entertainment, which beats up most similar attempts to come out of Hollywood lately. Siri has since headed that way (he directed Bruce Willis in Hostage), and one hopes the studio system does not dilute his undeniable eye for action. Give him Resident Evil 3, with Farès alongside Jovovich, and we are so there. :-)

Dir: Florent Emilio Siri
Stars: Nadia Farès, Benoît Magimel, Samy Naceri, Anisia Uzeyman

Naked Weapon

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★★★★

Naked Weapon (2002)After a decade of “sequels” that weren’t worth the video-tape they were apparently filmed on, Wong Jing finally went back to the well in 2002 for what is, in truth, a surprisingly-tame movie. Given the names of the lead actresses (“Maggie Q”, “Anya”) sounded more like porn starlets than anything, I was expecting loadsa sleazy fun, but they’re model names, and this is probably closer to Heroic Trio – also directed by Ching – than the original.

In fact, the nipple-count here barely reaches two, mostly right at the start when Madam M’s (Wong) assassinettes go on the job, only to be killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. Her boss clearly takes the long-term view, kidnapping forty thirteen-year olds girls, and whisking them off to a remote island for a six-year version of Survivor. At the end, they are down to three in number: Charlene (Q), Katt (Anya) and Jill (Jewel Lee, who is a genuine Wu Shu expert, and also doubled for the other stars when necessary). However, dogged CIA agent Jack (Wu) is still on the trail of Madam M, falls in love with Charlene during an encounter in the back of an ice-cream truck – which must have been fun, given Wu was Q’s ex-boyfriend – and vows to save her from a life of meaningless murder.

The action sequences are great: director Ching is noted for his wire-work in films like A Chinese Ghost Story and Hero – it’s used to great effect here, just don’t expect “realistic” fighting skills. The editing is weird in that it’s not coherent, but still works – it’s almost like highlights, in that consecutive shots clearly don’t connect, but still are effective, and give a good sense of how the fight is progressing. The editors on shows like Alias could learn a lot from this. Speaking of which, the film has much the same feel as a feature-length version of the series, back when it was still good fun, and before the whining and angst took over. Exotic locations, high-fashion, plenty of ass-kicking – on that level, this film certainly delivers. It’s also a nice bonus to see Cheng Pei-Pei (Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger) as Charlene’s mother, though I kept expecting her to bust out a few moves on the bad guys.

Instead, there’s a laughable scene after an assassination attempt on her by Jill, at the behest of Madam M, who realises she could lose Charlene back to her mother. Jack ends up carrying the wounded parent to the hospital, but keeps stopping to converse with Charlene, which had us screaming, “The hospital! It’s over there! She’s bleeding profusely!” at the TV set. And in general, I’m unconvinced by the story, which suddenly shifts angles in the third act. Up until then, it’s been angling towards a confrontation between the girls and Madam M; that’s suddenly discarded, in favour of a villain we’d not seen before.

Despite possessing more holes than a golf resort, Wong Jing’s script is pretty restrained; even the lesbian aspects are more implied than shown, and mercifully, the dumb comedy beloved by Wong is almost entirely absent. However, there is a rather nasty rape scene to end the training; while I can see the point, it does go on past what’s necessary and doesn’t fit with the generally slick tone. For even when the film is gunning down pre-pubescent girls for attempting to leave Madam M’s fantasy island, it does so in a…well, “tasteful manner” isn’t perhaps the phrase, but you know what I mean.

For in general, this is fast-paced, mindless entertainment, not to be taken the least bit seriously. At least, that’s my view: reading others, it’s clear opinions differ sharply on this one: “In a year of relatively disappointing Asian films, it’s one of the worst around,” says filmsasia.net, but hkfilm.net calls it, “The best movie of 2002.” Weirder still, one person described this as “boredom-inducing”, which had me checking to see whether they were discussing the same film. If you’re bored here, you probably need to lay off the caffeinated beverages for a few days: those of us with normal metabolisms should be more than entertained by this fluff.

Is it better than Naked Killer? A difficult call, and one that likely depends on your state of mind – as well as whether the word “good” could ever be applied to Killer, a lurid blast that really could come from Hong Kong, and probably only from before the Chinese takeaway of the colony. Weapon is certainly better-crafted and has more crossover appeal: our son was going to pick it up in Blockbuster, till we informed him it was already part of our unwatched pile. On the whole, I think Weapon is the one more likely to be watched again in future – if only because Killer would require the room to be carefully swept for lurking minors and maiden aunts first.

[The sidenote of importance here for the DVD is: watch your language. As usual with Hong Kong movies, we opted to see it in Chinese with English subtitles. It wasn’t until the making-of documentary that we realised it had been shot mostly in English (Wu + Q do, others, such as Cheng, don’t), and we’d actually been watching a dubbed version. Oops. ;-) However, upon further viewing (hey, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it!), it doesn’t really make that much difference. The main benefit of the English track is, at least on the DVD we were watching, it’s available in DTS, which definitely enhances things.]

Dir: Ching Siu-Tung
Stars: Maggie Q, Anya, David Wu, Almen Wong

House of Flying Daggers

  By

★★★★
“The eternal love triangle gets a spectacular, if chilly, swordplay reworking.”

Since the success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, fellow arthouse director Zhang Yimou seems to have become obsessed with one-upping Lee. First was Hero, a sumptuous and multi-levelled tale of revenge and betrayal starring Jet Li; now, we get House which while slightly smaller in scale, is clearly going for the same tragically romantic feel as CTHD. Policeman Leo (Lau) suspects Mei (Zhang), an arrested blind prostitute, is part of the titular rebel group, so sends Jin (Kaneshiro) to win her confidence by helping her ‘escape’, then going with her to the Flying Daggers’s base. However, it gives nothing away to say that Mei and Jin start having feelings for each other, as they battle through the countryside, and it’s no surprise to discover that several other characters aren’t what they seem either.

First things first: Zhang cements her position as the finest action actress currently working. The fights here, under the direction of Ching Siu-Tung, are memorable, fluid and are among the best I’ve seen in a long time, mixing straight martial arts, wirework and CGI to elegant effect. [The CGI does go overboard, for example, when used to create falling snow which never actually lands on the characters!] Unfortunately, the film has but two speeds: full-steam and grinding halt, and between the battles becomes very talky, without much genuine emotion. After you realise the multiple levels of deceit, it’s impossible to commit to a relationship with any of the characters; honesty is largely missing for the first hour and half. What this needs is humanity, which CTHD found in the fine acting of Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh.

Originally, Anita Mui was part of the cast, but on her death, the script was rewritten – one wonders if she might perhaps have given the film a warmer heart? Still, the eye-candy side of things is luscious; costumes, cinematography, sets and sound come together [the Ukraine largely standing-in for China] to make one of those epics where any shot could be printed, framed and hung on the wall. Pity it has little more emotional depth than your average photo.

Dir: Zhang Yimou
Star: Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Song Dandan

Azumi 2: Death or Love

  By

★★★★
“Not quite up to the original, but a damn fine “stab”, hohoho.”

I went into this with low expectations, based on some scathing reviews and the lack of Ryuhei Kitamura, whose directorial style made the first such a joy. I’m pleased to report then, that this surpassed expectations, with some nice imagination and a bevy of action heroines (including Kuriyama, whom you’ll know as Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill, Volume 1), as well as the expected high body-count. It follows on loosely from the original, but heads in a slightly different direction; our heroine is still intent on her mission, but is diverted by a wandering samurai, part of a rogue gang, who reminds her of Nachi, her childhood friend she had to kill at the opening of the original film.

Meanwhile, her target has an entire set of ninjas at his beck and call, such as a spider-guy who weaves lethally sharp webs, and a man with a very sharp, double-ended spear (with boomerang capability!), all overseen by a woman whose armour has a chain dangling – for no apparent reason – between the nipples. [This was written by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who gave us the anime Ninja Scroll, and much of the same sensibility towards extreme violence is on view here, although the chain is the sole nod to that one’s, ahem, interesting view of female sexuality] All of whom must, naturally, face Azumi, before the inevitable finale in which our heroine takes on an entire army, then go one-on-one with its leader.

Merchandising genius: you can even get a somewhat-peeved looking Azumi Kitty…

The action is probably the main area that isn’t quite up to par with the original; Ueto’s shortcomings aren’t as well-covered up, and while Kaneko is a competent director, he isn’t Kitamura – though who is? But this is also about half-an-hour shorter than the original, which had a lot more slack; that’s still somewhat of a problem here, though never for long, and the same bleak tone is apparent, with the final shot showing Azumi being followed by a literal, and apt, river of blood. I suspect any disappointment is largely because the first film was such a blast: when taken on almost any other terms (and, certainly, on its own merits), this is still a cut above (hohoho, once more!), and highly entertaining.

Dir: Shusuke Kaneko
Star: Aya Ueto, Yuma Ishigaki, Chiaki Kuriyama, Shun Oguri

Thriller: A Cruel Picture

  By

★★★★
“Lives entirely up to its Swedish title: Thriller: en grym film.”

Right from the first scene, depicting the molestation of a young girl, this is remarkably unrelenting stuff. 15 years later, the heroine (Lindberg), turned mute by her ordeal is kidnapped, turned into a junkie and forced in prostitution. Oh, and had an eye destroyed by her pimp (Hopf) – in loving, close-up, slow-motion that is rumoured to have involved a real corpse – after clawing the face of her first client.

Finally, it becomes too much, and she starts – with striking methodicalness – to prepare her revenge. She learns shooting, martial-arts and driving skills, and loads up with a sawn-off shotgun, as well as a handgun hidden in her hair, and goes around blowing away everyone she deems unworthy [Though how does she know where to find them? I imagine it’s not as if they hand out their home addresses…], before challenging her pimp to a duel in the bleak yet beautiful Swedish countryside.

The impact on Kill Bill, both in storyline and style (Elle Driver, in particular), is obvious – not to mention Ms. 45 – but Vibenius has a far less frenetic approach. Indeed, his style is so deliberate, you may be forgiven for dozing off, even during the fight scene, which uses such slo-mo as to become almost surreal. It’s a refreshing antidote to the MTV-style editing beloved by the likes of Alias. Less successful is the hard-core sex; while it certainly has an impact, it’s a double-edged sword, and is hardly necessary. Lindberg, clad in a long trenchcoat and colour-coordinated eye-patch is grand, and this is certainly unique. Fun? No. It’s hardly even entertaining, and must have freaked out the drive-in crowd during its mid-70’s run. But memorable? Sure. And ripe for a remake starring Christina Ricci? Hell, yes.

Dir: Bo A. Vibenius
Star: Christina Lindberg, Heinz Hopf
a.k.a. They Call Her One-Eye + Hooker’s Revenge

Bad Girls: season four

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★★★★
“Back behind bars, and back on track.”

badgirls4The real strength of Bad Girls is the almost limitless possibilities of the scenario; if ever things are in danger of getting stale, it’s easy to lob in fresh characters to get the pot stirred up and create whatever angles you want. Exhibit A: new governor, Neil Grayling (Gadds), whose arrival gave the show a whole new direction, at least among the staff – and particularly Jim Fenner, who discovered a whole new viewpoint of sexual harassment. Not that it really made him see the error of his ways, of course.

Obviously, within the general prison population, life went on as before. Well, that’s if “as before” means murder, suicide and escape attempts, a birth… And – with the departure of Helen and Nikki at the end of Series Three – new lesbian couple, Cassie and Roisin, though their whining grew increasingly tiresome as the series went on. Truth be told, there also wasn’t a great deal of light in this season; after a while, you yearned for something to take the weight off. Even the two Julies seemed on a downward spiral.

However, the strongest point of the show this year was the full-flowering of Yvonne Atkins (Henry), who has become the focus around which the series revolves, and one of the best female characters in any TV series. It started with her being set-up for murder, but by the end, we were aware there was much more to this fabulously complex character, underneath the hard shell. Every scene with her in it was a delight to watch, and kept the show a shining jewel in the crown of British television. The cliffhanger at the end (who lives? who dies?) had Chris scurrying immediately for Ebay, and series five.

Star: Linda Henry, Jack Ellis, James Gaddas, Isabelle Amyes