Reviews

Interesting angle on this film. I was in a table quiz once where the question was posed: "Who played the title role in the film 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'?"

It raised a lot of debate as the question could be perceived from two very different perspectives. Is the answer John Wayne (whose character fired the shot) or is it James Stewart (whose character gained the REPUTATION as the man who shot Valance)?

Depending on your viewpoint, either and both answers are correct. So I throw the debate open on this forum and I'd be very interested in the views of the great IMDb family. Was it Duke or Jimmy?

Excellent episode in a series that hit its peak in this season with numerous memorable scenarios and situations.

One tiny element that may (or may not) have been overlooked though is that Tom is still alive as the clock ticks over into 9th April and thus past his scheduled death but in the original timeline, he was killed on the 8th. Given the time difference between Vietnam and home, there were still at least 11 hours to go before it was midnight back in the US so he wasn't quite safe yet. He might have been killed any time up to 11:00 in Vietnam and still be counted as 8th April.

Series 1 was funny and quirky. This was the series where we meet and grow to love the seven disparate characters individually.

Series 2 was funnier thanks to the introduction of the hilariously sinister Ally Fraser played by the peerless Bill Paterson.

Series 3 was very well written and produced - probably the best of the lot. Hat tip to Noel Clarke whose introduction and insertion to the group was a seamless and hugely impressive tribute to the late Gary Holton.

Series 4 was stretching things a bit but still very good. All the usual boxes were ticked: Neville got into an embarrassing situation, Barry ended up in jail, Oz got some lovin' and somehow, everyone conspired to prevent Dennis getting some. In Auf Wiedersehen Pet, some things never change.

Series 5 however (just two episodes) was an unmitigated disaster, a train wreck and a monumental mistake. Appalling writing, storyline and script. Hard to believe that the creators of the earlier work could have churned out such substandard work. Craftsmen such as those in the cast would have been ashamed to be associated with it. If you're a fan of the show, steer clear. It's two hours of your life you'll never get back.

This show is so bad, a spoiler could only serve as a public service. A monumental mistake to take such a brilliant ensemble group and serve them up a script and plot as absurd and badly conceived as this. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever and does nobody in the cast any favours. Even the storyline stinks to high heaven. Why and in what universe would six men released from a hostage situation in barbaric conditions not want to get the hell out of there? How would they not want to run and not look back pausing only perhaps to point the 82nd Airborne Division in the direction of the location of their captors? What would possess them to stick around and finish a building contract for the very people who'd imprisoned and mistreated them? (And where did they get the materials for the job, the local B&Q perhaps?) A far better use of resources would have been a documentary about the four preceding series or even a "where are they now" featurette. Anything really would have been preferable to this abomination.

The opening episode of series 8 offers encouraging signs that this long-running cop show is going to step up. It's long overdue and many of the characters had begun to stagnate. The format was predictable and repetitive and the series had been in danger of morphing into a saccharine-infested sentimental family show instead of an interesting series about a family of law enforcers. A sort of Hill Street Blues meets The Waltons. (I always fast forward through the excruciating family dinner scenes. They generally serve no other purpose than to offer homey parables and innocent analysis of complicated situations by the precocious children and offer nothing to the bigger picture.) However, the sudden and brutal departure of Linda and Danny's heartbreaking reaction to it, the attack on Erin's ex and a new mayor seeking the removal of Frank from 1PP gave Blue Bloods a welcome transfusion. The final scene in this episode realigns Danny's perspective and offers hope for a more dramatic storyline in place of the schmaltzy insular over-the-top Oirish family dynamic which had become the default calibration for the series.