Midsomer Murders

Midsomer Murders is being repeated every afternoon on ITV1, so we've been recording them and watching them - and it's weird. Sinister. The plots are absolutely daft, but there's something mesmerizing about the whole show. It seems to be set somewhere that's not quite here, and not quite now, and I think the time and the place might be Hell.

Oh, Orlando Bloom was in the one we watched last night - before he was famous - and he was in cahoots with the chap who plays Brutus in Rome. Genre-shock! Also, there was a house in it called Lothlorien, and a whole exchange about Tolkien. But, presumably, this was all before Orli got famous for the whole Elf thing. Wooo, spooky.

John Nettles is very good in it. And it gets the most bizarrely sparkly cast of stars. Well, British character actors but, dammit, they're stars in this house.

Family viewing

Watching an episode of Secret Army at the weekend brought clarity to the nature of the suckage of Robin Hood.

Do you remember Secret Army? It's the 70s BBC drama about the underground railroad in Belgium during the Second World War, smuggling out crashed British airmen, all from their base of operations, which is a cafe. They turned it into 'Allo 'Allo (honestly, they did). (And what exactly went on in that meeting, you have to wonder: "Do you know what this programme about the Nazi occupation of north-west Europe needs, Bob? It needs more laughs.")

The episode we watched at the weekend was particularly good. It was about a little boy who befriends a British airman hiding in a barn, and manages to get in touch with the resistance in his small town, with not entirely positive consequences for the people around him (this being a 1970s BBC drama). Brian Glover is in it as a German colonel. (hafren, we said, "I read a book once - green it was" and thought of you.)

So basically it's the same set-up as Robin Hood, isn't it? You've got your villagers, you've got your outlaws on the run, you've got your resistance moving between the two, you've got your occupying baddies (Nazis/Normans), you've got your trial of the week.

So why does Robin Hood suck so much? Well, it's because nothing happens. Two episodes in, and they've done exactly the same plot in each episode, which is the not entirely interesting story: "One or more of our number have been captured! Let us effect his escape, and without suspense, given he is the lead/they are the sidekicks!" Which - despite it being five minutes shorter than your average episode of 1970s BBC drama - makes it crashingly dull. There aren't even any interludes with men in antler-hats to keep you going. But in Secret Army, you didn't know what was going to happen to the kid, and you didn't know what was going to happen to the airman, and this all despite how you knew for a fact that all the leads were going to make it to the next episode.

The other thing that was good was that the Sheriff/Gisborne, Servalan/Travis characters in Secret Army (Kessler and Brandt) took part in the plot without actually having to interact at all with the resistance - you know, hand-rubbing and cackling and saying things like, "Now I know your weakness: you will not kill but I, I am willing to destroy all in my pursuit of you!" - they just sat in an office and bitched about the best way of going about the investigation into whether or not there actually was an airman on the loose (which they never did quite determine, IIRC).

Anyway, apparently Robin Hood is getting good viewing figures and very good audience appreciation ratings, and my mate Commander Lytton loves it, so what the hell do I know?

Lies and damned lies

Thanks IanG: Amazon reviews of A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates.

"If you liked Finnegan's Wake, you'll love this!"

Make sure you try "Surprise Me!"