Category Archives: Small British village

2022, Acceptable for teenagers, Accidental Death, Amazon Prime Brit Box, Based on true facts, Basically Sad, Binge worthy, Bloody scenes, British Drama, British History, British Police, British Politics, Detective, Drama, Ethical struggles, Everybody lies, Family Secrets, Father-son relations, Fight Scenes, Government cover-up, Historical Fiction, Manslaughter, Marital Infidelity, Miners, Miners versus Scabs, Murder, Occasionaly violent, Panic Attacks, Personal Betrayal, Police cover-up, Police Culture, Police Investigation, Redemption, Revenge, Sister-sister relations, Small British village, Suicide, Suspense, Undercover police spy, Undercover police work, Violent, Wonderful acting, Yorkshire Accents

Sherwood (2022)

From IMDB:

Two shocking and unexpected murders shatter an already fractured community leading to one of the largest manhunts in British history.

From Amazon Prime Brit Box you can stream the 6 episodes of this north England series. Each episode is just under an hour.

In 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher crushed a coal miner’s strike, thereby earning her title of “Iron Lady.”  Hard feelings between the striking miner’s and those who continued to work, so-called “scabs”,  have persisted from then on.  Sherwood is a small town historically associated with Robin Hood.  Of all the town’s inhabitants only one family is a “scab” family.  Striker versus scab is the paramount theme of this series which continually bounces back and forth between 1984 and the present.

Past tragedies involved the  young policemen and miners who now are middle age going on retirement.  One challenge in watching this series is to match the young characters with their present-day versions.

There are three vital subplots:

  • Someone is murdering people with a crossbow. We soon learn who and the police hunt is intense.
  • Andy Fisher inadvertently kills his daughter-in-law and the hunt is on.
  • In 1984 there was an undercover police spy, dubbed the “spy cop”, who incorporated his-or-herself into the community.  Again there is this third hunt to find the “spy cop.”

If you watch much British drama you will recognize many familiar faces. As usual in British drama the acting is superb.  With such an engaging and suspenseful plot you cannot go wrong.

DO NOT MISS!

1987, Acceptable for teenagers, Amazon Prime, Art appreciation, Art History, Art Treasures, Basically Sad, British, British Drama, Church of England, Classic, Drama, Ethical struggles, Homophobia, Hopeless Love, Love Story, Old-Fashioned, PTSD, Quiet, Sensitive treatement of emotions, Sexual Tension, Slow, Small British village, Small gem of a film, Stuttering, Things Left Unsaid, Vintage Film, Wonderful acting, WWI Veteran, Yorkshire Accents, Yorkshire setting

A Month In The Country (1987)

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From Amazon Prime:

Five centuries ago, a mural was created in a country church in the north of England, and then hidden under layers of white paint. Looking at it again will be a distraction, the Reverend Mr. Keach tells World War I veteran Tom Birken, who will spend a month in the country restoring the mural.

From Amazon Prime you can stream this beautiful but sad classic British film which lasts 1 hour 36 minutes.

Direct quote from Wikipedia:

A Month in the Country is a 1987 British film directed by Pat O’Connor. The film is an adaptation of the 1980 novel of the same name by J. L. Carr, and stars Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh, Natasha Richardson and Patrick Malahide. The screenplay was by Simon Gray.

Set in rural Yorkshire during the summer of 1920, the film follows a destitute World War I veteran employed to carry out restoration work on a Medieval mural discovered in a rural church while coming to terms with the after-effects of the war.

The film was shot during the summer of 1986 and featured an original score by Howard Blake. The film has been neglected since its 1987 cinema release and it was only in 2004 that an original 35 mm film print was discovered, due to the intervention of a fan.

34 years ago Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh were a mere 27 years old while Natasha Richardson was even younger at 24 years of age.  (Sad note: Richardson died in 2009 from a head injury while skiing.) Has Jim Carter, the head butler in Downton Abbey, always looked the same age his entire life?

For some reason the above quoted summaries fail to mention that the character James Moon (Kenneth Branagh) was also suffering PTSD from World War I.

BEAUTIFUL BUT SAD! (Gooseflesh anyone?)

2020, Acceptable for teenagers, Agatha Christie, Amazon Prime, Ambiguous Conclusion, British, British Mystery Series, Confusing Plot, Contract Killing, Detective, Extramarital Affair, Failing Marriage, Imperfect, Marital Infidelity, Mediocre, Murder Investigation, Plot twists, Psychological Thriller, Small British village, Witchcraft

The Pale Horse (2020)

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From IMDB:

Is a trio of witches responsible for a series of sudden deaths or is there a rational explanation?

From Amazon Prime you can stream both hour-long episodes of this mystery story supposedly based on a story by Agatha Christie.

But don’t bother with this adaptation. Thank to a warning found in IMDB:

Sarah Phelps “version” is a complete mess. The production has an excellent cast including Rufus Sewell, who is magnificent as usual. The set design and costumes are top notch and even the cinematography and music are good, but…

Sarah Phelp’s story, script and directing are terrible. She makes an utter train wreck out of the original story and what’s left makes no sense at all. I can only hope that Sarah Phelps writes and creates her own scripts for future projects as she has no talent adapting existing stories.

Much of what the reviewer says rings true. Oddly enough I enjoyed watching what is essentially a good production. Indeed Rufus Sewell is very good.  But the ending left me confused.

If you are interested, read the Wikipedia account of the novel where you will see that there is very little in common with the two versions.

Skip this unfortunately watchable mess.

2017, Alcoholism, British, Dark, Depression, Disturbing Image, Drama, Explicit sex, Farm Life, Father-son relations, Gay theme, Grim, Grungy, Mother-son relations, Netflix Streaming, Nudity, Personal Betrayal, Possibly depressing, Romance, Sex Scenes, Small British village, Yorkshire setting

God’s Own Country (2017)

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From IMDB:

Spring. Yorkshire. Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.

From Netflix you can stream this one hour 44 minute complete film.

Francis Lee won a Directing Award (World Cinema — Dramatic) at the Sundance Film Festival for this BAFTA-nominated film.

Yorkshire farming as vividly and unsparingly portrayed in this film shows what a grubby occupation such work really is.  No one it would seem gets to remain free of mucky mud for very long.

Meet the Saxby farming family: Johnny is the gay, lonely, desperate, dutiful son. Martin is the father now crippled by a stroke. Deirdre (played by the famous British actress Gemma Jones, who was 75 years old during the filming) is the mother.  What a cold, barely speaking trio they make! All the father does is bark out orders, despite his stroke impaired speech.  Affection does not fit into this unrelentingly grim world.

Lambing season arrives and so does the temporary Rumanian farm worker Gheorghe.  Watching Gheorghe do farm work is a pleasure. He seems to care about the “beasts” (as the family calls the animals). In one scene a lamb is born dead, which happens a lot. At the same time another newborn lamb needs a mother. So we watch (in unsparing detail) Gheorghe skin the dead lamb and wrap that skin around the orphan lamb so that the mother of the dead lamb will accept the orphan and allow it to feed.

As far as the gay theme goes,  the growing love between the two men is developed in remarkable subtlety.  Never in the film is it easy (or initially even possible) for Johnny to express himself openly. Johnny is probably one of the most repressed and inarticulate men you may ever encounter. Be prepared for full nudity and their initial somewhat violent sexual encounter.

To encourage you to enjoy this remarkable film I will reveal that the story, for all the intermittent setbacks, has a happy ending. So sue me for the mild spoiler!

 

2015, Acceptable for teenagers, Amazon Prime Brit Box, Beautiful Seaside Town, British Mystery Series, Detective, Eccentric cast of characters, Flirting, Forensics, Gay theme, Mediocre, Mother-daughter relations, Murder, Murder Investigation, Small British village, Surfing, Suspense

The Coroner (2015)

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From Amazon Prime (Brit Box):

A high-flying lawyer returns, after a messy divorce, to the small town she escaped as a teenager to take up the post of Coroner. She finds herself thrown together with her old flame who broke her heart twenty years ago – now the local policeman – and they are forced to work together.

If you want to see the offerings from Amazon Prime’s Brit Box then you have to subscribe separately to Brit Box which is very inexpensive.

Brit Box offers 2 seasons of “The Coroner”.  Each season offers 10 episodes. Each episode lasts about 45 minutes and is a complete story.

Jane Kennedy is the coroner and Davey Higgins is the local policeman and her old love. He is married and faithful although he only mentions his wife whom we never see.  All 20 episodes show this pair flirting and discussing their old life in this small,  beautiful English seaside town named Lighthaven.  Her mother has a lover. They are a bawdy couple who together run a seaside pub.

As crime series go, this one is somewhat mediocre, easy on the emotions and never very violent. Think “Doc Martin” plus a few murders.

 

2015, Acceptable for children, Acorn TV, Autobiographical, Based on a Book, Based on true facts, British, Brother-Brother relations, Brother-Sister relations, Coming-of-age, Could Be Sad, DO NOT MISS, Feel Good For All, Husband leaves wife, Mother-daughter relations, Mother-son relations, Nostalgia, Quiet, Romance, Senior citizens, Small British village, Small gem of a film, Teenagers, War Deserter, Wonderful photography, WWI

Cider With Rose (2015)

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From IMDB:

In 1918, with her husband working in the War office – and subsequently leaving the family – devoted mother Annie Lee takes her step-daughters and her own children to live in the idyllic Gloucestershire countryside, the youngest being the sickly Laurie, known as Loll. Here they witness two feuding matrons, Granny Trill and Granny Wallon and shelter a young army deserter hiding in the woods until his capture. At school Loll and his classmates are terrorized by the formidable teacher Crabby until hulking Spadge Hopkins literally puts her in her place. Far more important to Loll’s schooldays are the captivating Burdock sisters, Jo and Rosie, and, as he grows into adolescence and beyond, eventually leaving home to seek his fortune, he samples the delights of cider with Rosie.

From Acorn TV:

This beautifully shot, elegiac drama is a coming-of-age story set in a remote English valley post-WWI. Raised by his kindly mother (Samantha Morton, In America) among a pack of siblings, Laurie Lee experiences the wonders of love and friendship but also the brutality of loss and death. “Brilliant performances underpin a lyrical, languid, and poetic adaptation [of Lee’s memoir]” -The Telegraph.

From Wikipedia:

Cider with Rosie is a 1959 book by Laurie Lee (published in the US as Edge of Day: Boyhood in the West of England, 1960). It is the first book of a trilogy that continues with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). It has sold over six million copies worldwide.

From Acorn TV you can stream this heart-warming 89 minute film.

Annie Lee, the mother, is played by Samantha Morton (Alpha in the 2019 The Walking Dead).  Granny Trill is played by Annette Crosbie (Clarice Millgrove in  Call the Midwife) whose face was immediately familiar to me even though at the time of filming she was 81 years old.

If you want a beautiful yet sad-at-times reproduction of WWI life in rural England from a century ago, DO NOT MISS!

2013, British, Bullying, Could Be Sad, Drama, Ethical struggles, Gloomy, Journalist, Mental Illness, Military, Murder, Netflix Streaming, Revenge, Sad small town, Small British village, Suicide, Violent, War Veterans

Southcliffe (2013)

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From IMDB:

Following a raft of shootings in an English market town, the crimes are retold through the eyes of a journalist and the tragedies’ victims.

Netflix Steaming offers 4 episodes of so-called Season 1. However, as far as I can tell the story ends with the fourth episode.

After watching the miserable life of the long-suffering shooter so that we understand why he goes berserk, we get to know some of the inhabitants of the sad, small British town Southcliffe. David Whitehead, the reporter who is also a native of Southcliffe and who has bitter memories of the town, is the center of the story as he digs for information and interviews various townies. There are two guilty provocateurs, each with his own reaction to the shootings.

Basically this is a very depressing story with not a bit of sunlight visible, despite the fact that it is very well done. You are warned.

 

 

2013, British Mystery Series, Child abduction and murder, Detective, DO NOT MISS, Extramarital Affair, Family Conflict, Father-son relations, Murder Investigation, Murder Trial, Netflix Streaming, Pedophilia, Police Culture, Serial rapist, Small British village, Trailer Life, TV Series

Broadchurch (2013)

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From IMDB:

The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart.

REVISED REVIEW 2020:

From Netflix you can now stream 3 seasons of this British crime series.  Each season consists of 8 episodes where each episode lasts about 45 minutes.

Yet another wonderfully constructed British detective procedural set in Dorset, England. Details may be found in Wikipedia. As the summary above explains, the major emphasis in the Season One 8-episode story is the conflict between families due to the murder. It takes 8 more episodes in Season Two to close the Sandbrook murder case.

Season 3 consists of two plot threads:

  • Mark Latimer (played by Andrew Buchan) has never gotten over the murder of his son. His obsessional desire for revenge is hurting his marriage to Beth Latimer (played by Jodie Whittaker).
  • Broadchurch is now threatened by a serial rapist. Trish Winterman is the first rape victim we meet. She is played by Julie Hesmondhalgh who also played Jill Weadon in the British TV series The Trouble with Maggie Cole.  Her physical appearance in Broadchurch is so different from her physical appearance in The Trouble with Maggie Cole that it took me a while to even recognize her.

David Tenant as Inspector Alec Hardy and Olivia Colman as Detective Ellie Miller carry the story.  Secondary themes are their personal problems.

In the entertainment area of British detective TV shows, this series is a DO NOT MISS!

 

2013, Amazon Prime, Comedy, Complicated, Divorce, Dysfunctional Lives, Explicit sexual discussion, Father-daughter relations, Feel Good Not For Children, Lesbian Theme, Made For TV, Marital Infidelity, Melodrama, Netflix Streaming, Optimistic, Quiet, Senior citizens, Sensitive treatement of emotions, Small British village, Yorkshire Accents

Last Tango in Halifax (2013)

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From Netflix:

Two widowed childhood sweethearts fall for each other all over again when they are reunited over the Internet after nearly 60 years.

Several sources (Netflix, Amazon) let you stream seasons one and two of this off-beat British TV series set in Yorkshire. We inadvertently started with season two and after getting acquainted with the many characters it really did not matter that we skipped season one.

Expect to find a celebration of multi-family dysfunctionality. Because the circumstances and relationships are so abnormal, you have to call this series a comedy. Of course, it you are willing to take any of it seriously, then you could say there are also sad or serious parts.

Just to give you a sample of the nuttiness:

  • Celia (Anne Reid) and Alan (the wonderful Derek Jacobi) marry in their seventies.
  • Celia’s daughter Caroline (Sarah Lancashire, who was wonderful in “Happy Valley”) is divorcing the loser John and taking up with Kate (Nina Sosanya who was Lucy Freeman in “W1A”).
  • Alan’s daughter Kate (Nicola Walker who was Ruth Evershed in “MI-5” or the remarkable Helen Bartlett in “Scott & Bailey”) is an impetuous unpredictable sheep farmer who has a complicated relation with Robbie (Dean Andrews who as Pete Lewis in “Being Eileen”) which is not at all helped by the fact that she slept with loser John.

Derek Jacobi’s Yorkshire speech pattern is wonderful to hear.

Because of its unrelenting sexual references, this series is probably not for children. But it does offer a pleasant and funny alternative to serial killers and rape victims.

1996, Abduction, Based on true facts, Bicycles, Book Review, British, Complicated, Conspiracy, Cynical, Daniel Silva, Ethical struggles, Flirting, Gangs, Gay theme, Gritty, International thriler, Love Story, Physical child abuse, Political Suspense, Sea Rescue, Sex Scenes, Small British village, Spy Theme, Suspense, Thriller, Violent, War, WWII

The Unlikely Spy (1996) [Book Review]

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Book Description:

In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable-a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent: Catherine Blake, a beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer-and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler to uncover the Allied plans for D-Day…

Daniel Silva was a journalist and TV producer before he began his first novel “The Unlikely Spy” in 1994. This book was such a success that Silva left CNN in 1997 to pursue writing full-time. One of his more known series of books are those featuring the character Gabriel Allon.

Although Silva was born and raised in the U.S.A. (he was raised Catholic and converted to Judaism as an adult), in reading this novel you would swear he was British. We had just returned from visiting our daughter in London and it was an extra pleasure recognizing all the London streets, parks, and subway stops that figure in the plot.

Once you get used to the 20 or so characters that stay continually in the plot you may find this WW II spy novel a real page-turner. Besides the usual cloak and dagger details, the novel is saved from dryness by romances, personal ruminations, political one-upmanship, historical tidbits, and an essential focal point: an effort to prevent Berlin from knowing exactly where the allied invasion will be, i.e. Normandy.

Finally I stayed up late reading for three hours just to see how the final great chase after the clever Nazi spies ended.