It could have been an accident. He decided to sip a surreptitious sup and slipped. Splash!

4.10 A Surfeit of H₂0

A great episode title (definitely one of the series’ top ten) with a storyline boasting all the necessary ingredients (strange deaths in a small village, eccentric supporting characters, Emma even utters the immortal “You diabolical mastermind, you!”), yet A Surfeit of H₂0 is unable to quite pull itself above the run of the mill.

Of course, in the such glorious days as these of HAARP and – alleged – weather control, an evil corporation (Granny Gregson’s Glorious Grogs Incorporated, its factory engaged in the fermentation of intoxicating liquors; selling various invidious varieties of vino, basically – this is a fine episode for alliteration) indulging a localised downpour “for about a year” seems almost innocuous. Although, they have the right general idea for their nefarious scheme; providing “relentless, never-ceasing rain” to order: “It’s the biggest military weapon since the nuclear bomb” (and we had one of those a few episodes back).

Steed mentions cloud seeding in passing (but not Wilhelm Reich), but isn’t clear quite how the diabolical types are supposed to have achieved this in Colin Finbow’s sole teleplay for the show. Sidney Hayers, in his second spin in the director’s chair following The Cybernauts, delivers inventively, particularly when it comes to finding such unlikely elements as a manhole in the middle of field. My favourite visual signature, however, is the Naked Gun-style cartoon body print puddle left by a drowning victim (John Kidd’s Sir Arnold Kelly).

Part of the problem with this one is that the villains aren’t remotely interesting, even given the estimable presence of Geoffrey Palmer in his fourth and final appearance in the series. Dr Sturm (Albert Lieven) – geddit? – at least has a suitably despicable torture technique, though, possibly inspired by the previous year’s Goldfinger, strapping Emma down on a vegetable press (“Well, I will just have to squeeze this information out of you”).

Steed: What is it?

Joyce: Old bark.

Steed: Must have put the dog in it, too.

More memorable is Steed’s obligatory object of flirtation (“Can I help you?”: “Anytime”), Joyce Jason (Sue Lloyd, for whom Michael Caine memorably made an omelette in the same year’s The Ipcress File), particularly his pestering her for wine purchases (vegetable wines, hence the press: “Have you ever tried to tread potatoes?”) before settling on Buttercup (“Now, that’s more my cup of tea”). Macnee’s on great form as an infernal nuisance (“See he gets what he wants and get the idiot out of here”).

Jonah Barnard: The flood cometh!

Mrs Peel: Yes, well I’ve put a down payment on a canoe.

The supporting eccentrics don’t quite attain classic form, alas, although Noel Purcell is memorably boisterous as prophet of doom Jonah Barnard, mocked by villagers and preaching to a congregation of a boy and dog, transforming into highly pugilistic mode (“Mr Steed, I’m not a violent man by nature, but when faced with the problem of survival…”) and strangling a villain with gusto (“Hallelujah!”), the latter possibly a wry commentary on religious extremism.

There’s also Mr Cheeseman himself, Talfryn Thomas, in typically scene-hogging mode as Eli Barker, with the occasional memorable line (“Poaching isn’t like stealing, is it?” he comments of his drowned brother’s career path).

Mrs Peel: Gentlemen should knock before entering.

Steed: What are you, a sparkle in a seaweed soda?

Mrs Peel: No, I’m a kick in the nettle noggin.

The highlight, as it often is, is the interplay between Steed and Emma, from his casual rescue of her (above), to a discussion of Eli’s demise (“It could have been an accident. He decided to sip a surreptitious sup and slipped. Splash!”), to Steed expressing surprise at Jonah’s accusation of Emma entering a pit of iniquity (“Is she a very sinful woman?”) to the flattening of Steed’s bowler (“It was over very quickly. I don’t think it suffered”).

Indeed, there’s nigh on a torrent of good lines (“Lovely weather we’re not having” and the titular “There seems to be surfeit of H2O in this vicinity”), the bare bones are promising, it’s fun seeing Steed hopping in and out of different costumes according to location rather than design, and Emma’s always dressed to impress, but this one never quite gets beyond an arresting premise.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983)
(SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. That doesn’t mea…

You keep a horse in the basement?

The ‘Burbs (1989)
(SPOILERS) The ‘Burbs is Joe Dante’s masterpiece. Or at least, his masterpiece that isn’t his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch, or his high profile masterpiece Gremlins. Unlike those two, the latter of which bolted out of the gate and took audiences by surprise with it’s black wit subverting the expected Spielberg melange, and the first which was roundly shunned by viewers and critics for being absolutely nothing like the first and waving that fact gleefully under their noses, The ‘Burbs took a while to gain its foothold in the Dante pantheon.

It came out at a time when there had been a good few movies (not least Dante’s) taking a poke at small town Americana, and it was a Tom Hanks movie when Hanks was still a broad strokes comedy guy (Big had just made him big, Turner and Hooch was a few months away; you know you’ve really made it when you co-star with a pooch). It’s true to say that some, as with say The Big Lebowski, “got it” on fi…

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You can’t keep the whole world in the dark about what’s going on. Once they know that a five-mile hunk of rock is going to hit the world at 30,000 miles per hour, the people will want to know what the hell we intend to do about it.

Meteor (1979)
(SPOILERS) In which we find Sean Connery – or his agent, whom he got rid of subsequent to this and Cuba – showing how completely out of touch he was by the late 1970s. Hence hitching his cart to the moribund disaster movie genre just as movie entertainment was being rewritten and stolen from under him. He wasn’t alone, of course – pal Michael Caine would appear in both The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure during this period – but Meteor’s lack of commercial appeal was only accentuated by how functional and charmless its star is in it. Some have cited Meteor as the worst movie of his career (Christopher Bray in his book on the actor), but its sin is not one of being outright terrible, rather of being terminally dull.

I mean, I am just a dumb bunny, but, we are good at multiplying.

Zootropolis (2016)
(SPOILERS) The key to Zootropolis’ (or Zootopia as our American cousins refer to it; the European title change being nothing to do with U2, but down to a Danish zoo, it seems, which still doesn’t explain the German title, though) creative success isn’t so much the conceit of its much-vaunted allegory regarding prejudice and equality, or – conversely – the fun to be had riffing on animal stereotypes (simultaneously clever and obvious), or even the appealing central duo voiced by Ginnifier Goodwin (as first rabbit cop Judy Hopps) and Jason Bateman (fox hustler Nick Wilde). It’s coming armed with that rarity for an animation; a well-sustained plot that doesn’t devolve into overblown set pieces or rest on the easy laurels of musical numbers and montages.

So credit’s due to co-directors Byron Howard (Bolt, Tangled) and Rich Moore (of The Simpsons, Futurama, and latterly, the great until it kind of rests on its laurels Wreck-It-Ralph) and Jared Bush (presumably one of the th…

I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies.

"Predalien" The Alien-Predator-verse ranked
Fox got in there with the shared universe thing long before the current trend. Fortunately for us, once they had their taste of it, they concluded it wasn’t for them. But still, the Predator and Alien franchises are now forever interconnected, and it better justifies a ranking if you have more than six entries on it. So please, enjoy this rundown of the “Predalien”-verse. SPOILERS ensue…
11. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
An almost wilfully wrongheaded desecration of both series’ legacies that attempts to make up for AVP’s relative prurience by being as transgressive as possible. Chestbursters explode from small children! Predaliens impregnate pregnant mothers! Maternity wards of babies are munched (off-screen admittedly)! It’s as bad taste as possible, and that’s without the aesthetic disconnect of the Predalien itself, the stupidest idea the series has seen (and that includes the newborn), one that was approved/encouraged by ra…

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

Supposing I help you fix the bishop?

The Avengers 3.20: The Little Wonders
More memorable for Steed (undercover, naturally) planting a smoocher on a surprised Mrs Gale than its plot of Mafia-esque “clergymen” electing their new leader. This isn’t bad, and Macnee’s having a lot of fun as the Vicar of M’boti, but you can’t help feel it should have been a lot more lunatic.

Beardmore: What if he’s a phoney, and doesn’t know Harbottle was playing a double game?
The mob organisation is known as Bibliotek, and Steed is replacing the deceased Reverend Harbottle who, we learn, has been involved with another group led by Sister Johnson (Miss Moneypenny Lois Maxwell, who strikes a very Bond-esque image at one point, blazing away with a machine gun in a nurse’s uniform). She’s posing as the carer of the Bishop (David Bauer), the head of Bibliotek, while attempting to bring about his demise with Dr Beardmore (Tony Steedman of Citizen Smith). Complicating matters in a way that fails to really elicit interest is a German doll containing mi…

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

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