Midsonian progress

Further to my post of 8th July, I can now report that we have got half way through, that is to say through series 1 and 2 of  'Midsomer Murders'  - remembering here that this programme has reached the grand old age of at least series 16. How far have they got in far away Serbia (see first post of 15th July) where it is called 'Ubistva u Midsomeru'?

We fell asleep half way through the last episode of series 2 and had to complete in a second sitting, during which we did not, as it happened, fall asleep again.

But there was an odd trick of memory between the two sittings, in that I was unable to remember anything of what had happened in the first sitting. Then BH said the magic word - I forget what it was - and the whole thing popped back into memory. It was if someone had turned the light on in the room where it was all kept or perhaps opened the door. All there, but inaccessible. What other treasures of the past 65 odd years are lurking intact but inaccessible in other rooms?

Another trick was trying to spot members of the magic circle, that is to say well known luvvies who make regular guest appearances in shows of this sort and some of whom have kept it up even longer than the great Nettles himself. So during the second sitting, I recognised the voice of one of the lady luvvies but could not put either a person name or a programme name to the face; most frustrating. Eventually BH rides to the rescue again with the information that the voice in question belonged to Prunella Scales whom I had rather liked in Mapp & Lucia, the charity shop boxed set which we did before this one and which had been filmed around 10 years before this particular episode. Armed with this information I was then able to recover the Prunella Scales I had liked in the earlier series from that which appeared in the later. Amazing how much difference a bit of make-up can make.

The voice also made me think of Kent in the recent Lear when he talks of Lear's manner having something of authority in it: act I, scene IV where he says 'no, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master' (see 27th June). So, since Ms Scales has probably never been in a position of authority, she must be a good actress. Also something which the actors at the Globe Theatre are generally bad at, with no-one being likely to mistake them for people who had been in positions of authority.