Once Burnt... - Aug 19 - What's To Watch? - Mike

 

  (Notes for any who are revisiting any of these pieces: First, I apologize for any of the inevitable, broken links. Things get pulled from YouTube all the time. Second, for the most current streaming availability for anything, go to JustWatch and type in the name of the show or movie. Streaming platforms are swapping material all the time these days. That JustWatch link will pop out into its own window. - Mike)

     Late Bonus: Netflix just dropped a surprise double episode addition to their recently-released Sandman series! Two, standalone tales from the source series, an animated version of "A Dream of A

Thousand Cats" (one of my favorite issues from the comics, and reportedly a small treasure trove of voice talent) and a live action one "Calliope." Haven't looked at them yet, but wanted to slip the update in here while we're still in Friday morning.
    A couple, quick items from this past week, which were (then looking forward) things from last Friday's post:
     The Monday series finale for Better Call Saul (AMC/AMC+), continued to set a very high bar for serial entertainment. High marks from beginning to end. Everyone involved with the show was justifiably proud of it. I look forward, in time, to a full series rewatch. All involved in that show can justifiably take pride in being part of it. I'll be very happy to discuss the series with those who are so-inclined, but don't want to spoil details for those who've yet to watch the show.
     Thursday's debut of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law on Disney+ was a pleasant turn, achieving an entertaining tone. Tatiana Maslany works out well as main character Jen Walters, much as was expected given her performances in general. They tidily, competently packed a considerable amount of exposition into a 30 minute main episode and a mid-credits scene. I'm looking forward to the remaining eight episodes.

     On the other hand...
     Few entertainment brands have traced the path that Benioff & Weiss' HBO adaptation of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones did. For nearly its entire eight season run it had a fierce and devoted fan base, up until the final march of episodes in that oddly truncated final season.
     To say it went off the rails doesn't quite suffice. It wasn't even like the simple disappointment experienced by many of the fans of Lost, back in 2010, when the finale failed to deliver, as a great many of us knew it almost had to.

    No, with Game of Thrones, it wasn't even an implosion of fandom. It was more of a broad nullification. Something that so many had been spending so much time talking about, week to week, season to season, for eight years, suddenly went silent. It wasn't even vitriol, with fans' passions redirecting to ire. The show suddenly became something the majority of people who'd been so animated about for so long... didn't want to talk about anymore. It's as if a huge group of children suddenly all stop believing in Santa at the same time. A disappointment thick with embarrassment at having been so excited about it for so long in the first place. By just past mid-May 2019, it became a non-topic.
     Three years and three months later, a new prequel series finally arrives on HBO, set two centuries before the main events of Game of Thrones, it centers on pivotal events in the history of House Targaryen, the House of the Dragon.

     Certainly, to be fair, this is its own production, with a different showrunner, but I suspect there are many of us who won't be rushing to get attached to this.
     I'm sure that at some point I'll take a look, perhaps much sooner than I currently expect. At the moment, days away from it as I write this, there's no strong draw for me.

     While poking around Amazon Prime recently I came across a bit of holiday horror from out of the U.K. back in 2018. Await Further Instructions, an increasingly paranoiac, claustrophobic tale of a particularly awful set of winter holidays; almost oddly prescient, coming well over a year before COVID and pandemic protocols. I was tempted to wait for a more seasonal posting somewhere in the Thanksgiving to Christmas block, but as it's something on Prime I thought it best to mention it now, while it's not behind an additional paywall.
     Nick (Sam Gittins), against all his better instincts, gives in to the pressure of his girlfriend, Annji (Neerja Naik) to take her with him for a holiday visit to his very white, working class, suburban family home. He knows it won't go well, but she prevails.
     There we have his well-intentioned, but almost manically muffled mum, Beth (Abigail Cruttenden), his deeply emotionally repressed, authoritarian father, Tony (Grant Masters) who is an obvious pressure-cooker, his father, "Grandad" (David Bradley), a real, old school concentration of toxic masculity and cultural xenophobia, who quickly makes us realize why Tony is as damaged as he is. Also, in short order, the group's rounded out with Nick's pregnant, mentally-/culturally-limited sister Kate (Holly Weston), and her overly-muscled husband, Scott (Kris Saddler), who we realize has filled the role of approval-seeking, manly man, surrogate son Tony had wished he had instead of Nick.
     We gradually learn that Nick's avoided a holiday visit for several years, and his returning with a girlfriend who's clearly outside the neighborhood gene pool is a thinly-concealed issue for his dad, granddad, and sister. You can tell it's going to be a wonderful Christmas.
     Tensions soon mount, and both Nick and Annji decide that come the morning, they'll make a quiet exit.
     It turns out that waiting wasn't a great idea.
     The morning finds the household trapped inside the suburban home, a mysterious, striated, metallic material blocking every door and window. Phone, Internet, and even the standard tv feed are all gone, though power remains and the tv screen spelling out in green text:  "STAY INDOORS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS."

     Things spiral downward from there, soon becoming obvious to the audience that this is some sort of twisted social experiment. The psychological test underpinnings are hinted at by the screenwriter via the choice of family name, Milgram, referring to a series of psych experiments conducted at Yale concerning obedience to authority, even when doing so is to act against one's best interests, while the family home is on Stanford Street, bringing to mind the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison experiment.
     The late-film reveal, as it takes a sudden turn regarding the actual threat, went over less well with the average audience member than I'm guessing the filmmakers hoped.
     It's Await Further Instructions (2018 TV-MA 91m)

      Paramount+ has another streaming & simultaneous theatrical release item arriving today. It's a prequel to the 2009 horror film Orphan - which is appropriately also available on Paramount+. Here Isabel Fuhrman reprises here role as Esther (which was also the title they used during filming), twelve years later in real time, playing an even younger version of the character than she did in '09. It's Orphan: First Kill

     It seems most likely this was driven simply by the success of the first film, and the ownership of a property that might make more money for them if they hit "repeat." That 2009 film did almost four times its $20 million production budget, so the studio must have been reasonably happy. I enjoyed that earlier film well enough, though it wasn't one that I've felt much of an urge to revisit. My presumption is that there are some distinct fetish itches the premise scratches, and that's often the backbone of a franchise.
     My current interest in it is mostly at a practical level, intrigued that an actress now in her mid-twenties is reprising an even younger version of a character she played when she was less than twelve... albeit of a character who (do I really need to post a spoiler alert for a twelve year-old movie?) turns out to be much, much older. Presumably the audience for this one are fans of the earlier film, so what was a twist in 2009 is now only a twist for the various other characters in the film. The audience knows the real score from the start, and is mostly waiting for the other characters to become aware of it one victim at a time.
    (As an aside on fetishes and formulas: An old friend of mine who was decades ago looking for any market interested in buying original fiction, once told me of some small-run specialty magazine that catered to people who had fantasies of giant women. Specifically of women who suddenly became giants. Would-be contributors were given tips such as including sight and sound descriptions of the clothes stretching beyond their limits, tearing and shredding. That was, to them, a vital element. It's a big, strange world out there.)

     Back to streaming, and sticking to Paramount+, next Thursday, the 25th, the third season of the animated Trek sit-com Star Trek: Lower Decks begins.

     That the series turned out to be both ultimately in-continuity and entertaining were pleasant surprises, so I'm casually looking forward to this new season.
     Oh, fans should note that whenever we get the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, there will be a Jonathan Frakes-directed episode which will involve a crossover by two of the Lower Decks characters, Mariner and Boimler, in a mixed live action & animation format. Given the different time periods of the shows (Strange New Worlds is pre-Kirk Enterprise, while Lower Decks is Next Generation era) it'll have to involve time travel.

     Back in the here and now, one last Paramount+ note: They very recently added five of the six seasons of the WB, then VH1 "reality" series The Surreal Life.

     The core premise is having a disparate group of celebrities (the term became very elastic over the show's various seasons) whose heydays were in the past - but understandably saw themselves as simply being between jobs - are brought together to live in an environment where they're forced to interact and compete in various events. At its best, you had celebrities from vastly different cultural regions getting to know each other as people beyond their reputations, and at worst, well, you had "reality stars" such as Omarosa.
     The show was an odd one for me to have gotten drawn into, but around 2004, via circumstances I don't clearly recall, I ended up watching the show. Unfortunately, presumably due to various legal issues, that 2004 season, the show's second, which was the one that drew me in, is the one missing from this block. That was the season where the house included a post-PTL televangelist "Christian" Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Bakker), and legendary (I'm told) porn star Ron Jeremy. despite knowing how heavily manipulated and deceptively edited "reality" tv shows are, I found the interactions and the arc of their relationship once they got to connect as human beings, interesting.

     Still, as each season is its own, separate grouping, it's not as if a missing one busts up a narrative.
     Each of the five seasons here on the streamer have their potential points of faded pop-cultural interest, drawing from diverse pools - tv, music, sports, modeling, and, worst by far: other reality shows - such that I would think it was the rare audience member who didn't have at least a couple of "Who?!" reaction moments as each cast was introduced, the light of recognition flickering or blazing with others. At its best, the show presented opportunities to see something more in people who'd otherwise been long ago dismissively labeled, boxed and shelved, as they tried to be more than cliches and old jokes, and find a new lease on public life.
     I've yet to start revisiting these, but I expect the earliest ones - seasons one, three and four - to overall be the best revisits. Season five I recall being archly staged and deeply toxic, primarily because of Bronson Pinchot, Janice Dickinson and Omarosa Manigault, with the latter two (especially Omarosa) obviously gaming the show, knowing that playing the diva was how one would "win" by scoring the most screen time; for her that was the complete aim, relentlessly playing a character. As best I recall, season six simply lacked chemistry.
    I expect that each of the times I try to revisit these part of my brain is going to be rebelling, warning me much as it might were I to sit down to open and eat full "party size" bags of the most heavily-processed snacks. Letting others know they're there is as much as I wanted to accomplish here. Only you can decide whether or not this holds any appeal.

    Rolling through the back half of the month, TCM's Summer Under the Stars celebration continues. (That link is to an interactive page, listing all of the films.) Here are the actor spotlights from today through next Friday:
     Friday Aug 19:    Toshiro Mifune
     Saturday Aug 20:    Joan Crawford
     Sunday Aug 21:     Clint Eastwood
     Monday Aug 22:    Constance Bennett
     Tuesday Aug 23:    Mickey Rooney
     Wednesday Aug 24:    Jacqueline Bisset
     Thursday Aug 25:    Gilbert Roland
     Friday Aug 26:    Vivien Leigh

     As ever, entirely too many to attempt to curate here, all the more so given how many of them I've never seen. Oh, to have the financial security and time to be able to just give more of them a try. There are, as you'd expect, many of the films one associates with each of these actors, though those are often not the strongest draws for me. Hopping to the end of the list, to one week from now and the Vivien Leigh films, I've virtually no interest in rewatching Gone With the Wind again anytime soon - and that one dominates that Friday night, with a very long 1988 documentary on the making of it, preceding a showing of the film. No, my peak film of interest on that day would be mid-afternoon's Ship of Fools (1965).

     I'll try to remember to update this a little later, if I find that they've added this to either the TCM Watch online assortment (which would just be for a limited time) or if it ends up added as part of the TCM Hub that's a sub-section of HBO Max.

     Ending with a free-to-view item of dubious worth, it's a werewolf movie centering on a multi-millionaire who is also a world-traveling hunter. He's set his sights on an elusive, exotic creature: a werewolf. Having collected evidence of attacks matching key elements, then compiling a list of suspects (including his own wife) who happened to be at or near every one of these killings in various countries, he invites all of the suspects to his secluded estate for a weekend. There he informs them of the facts, his conclusion that one of them is a werewolf, and that with that weekend coinciding with the full moon, he intends to out and kill the creature. The estate is heavily covered by CCTV cameras, microphones and sensors.
     The film opens with a message to the audience that this is a detective story, in which they are to play the detective. Before the final scenes, there will be a 30-second "werewolf break" during which audience members can declare who they believe to be the werewolf. The device was added at the insistence of one of the producers, Milton Subotsky, who I suppose saw it as a marketing flourish akin to something William Castle might have come up with. Director Paul Arnett hated the gimmick, feeling that it was unnecessary and "stopped the film cold dead," though there were some who liked it, including critic Leonard Maltin.
     Based on a 1950 short story by James Blish ("There Shall Be No Darkness") it's The Beast Must Die! (1974  PG  1h 32m) (Not to be confused with a 1952 film with the same title, about a mystery writer who goes in search of the guilty party after his child is hit by a car.)
     Here's the trailer, and the full film is available to all over on Tubi.

      That's as much time as I have for this week, and almost certainly more time than you have to spare. Thanks for reading, I hope something here caught your attention, and that we all make it back here next Friday. - Mike

Bada Binge! Where the time goes, and where it may go next - Oct 15 - Friday Video Distractions

 

      Somehow, suddenly -- mid-October! Paradoxically sunny and set to top out at 81° hereabouts Friday, but also set to suddenly change over the course of a rainy Saturday, ushering in much cooler weather next week. Probably a good time to be thinking of things that need doing out in the day, saving the video hermit's life for colder, darker days... but that's not why I'm here. Come! Grow fat, indolent, sleep-deprived and eye-strained with me!

     Such notes as I'd put together for this week are primarily for things coming out next week, and there are so many items I've mentioned in previous posts - including all of the various new items mentioned last week - that I haven't gotten around to watching.
     I've been plowing through my first ever rewatch of The Sopranos, all the way through the still-controversial finale, and finished that up overnight Wednesday. The aim is to get in a rewatch of series prequel film The Many Saints of Newark, which I'd talked about several weeks ago. While, yes, it is a prequel to the series, much of what drives it for the audience is what will happen to the many characters decades later as seen in the series. I don't see it as a film that would draw someone into the series; it works best as a supplement. That'll be available on HBO Max neatly through the month of October, and I'll want to give it at least that one additional viewing now that I've refreshed myself on the full series.
     Beyond that, my most recent viewing's included a couple of season wraps.
     Evil (Paramount+) closed its second, 13-episode season with some character milestones and growing complications. It's fair to say the characters have been tied - tied themselves - into a knot of Gordian complexity. It's likely to take more than a single slice of a sword to resolve the complications. Leads Kristen (Katja Herbers) and David (Mike Colter) get to a particularly sticky turn in the closing frames of the season, and her character's moral polish has taken almost as much damage as her mother's (played by Christine Lahti). I'm curious to see what redemptive arcs, if any, are to come.
     The cast is a joy to follow, so much so that I continue to be reluctant to single anyone out, as even the supporting players often shine.

     Season two brought us a new recurring character with comedic actress Andrea Martin (who most of us have known since her SCTV days) as Sister Andrea. She rises in prominence over the course of the season, as an ally and mentor, managing to bring a coiled intensity to her character that soon draws our attention whenever she's in a scene. I don't know how much of this is unique to those of us who were in a Catholic school setting, where holy sisters (colloquially "nuns", but as one of them pointed out to us many, many years ago, they're "sisters", because nuns are cloistered, not out in the world) were often intimidating figures, but she does a wonderful job of channeling the threat, authority, and a sense that she knows just what you're up to, young man, through a tiny frame beneath that black and white habit. Her best scenes have been as adversary/foil to Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson), who is the series' #1 agent of evil, and her relationship with series lead David. Knowing moments between Leland and David have made for sudden, comedic highlights during this second season, too.
     Checking, I see that season one has disappeared from Netflix, where they'd cannily placed it to help fish for viewers (a move that worked -- that was where I watched it) and even from CBS.com, despite the first season being broadcast on the network. Paramount+ is the sole place to watch both seasons of the series. Exclusive content is all part of building a streaming service, I suppose.
     Currently, my primary reasons to go to Paramount + are Evil, and the still-ongoing Star Trek animated action comedy series Star Trek: Lower Decks. A fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery will begin next month.
     I should note that third season of Evil was approved back in July, so that's off for us somewhere in 2022.
     As I'm on the subject of Paramount+, I'll mention a new series that's just launched there this week. Starring Kate Beckinsale as a disgraced reporter who is looking for a way back for herself, making for potential moral and ethical complications as she latches onto the story about a woman who may have been falsely convicted of murder, it's Guilty Party.

     If you've watched the trailer then you know almost as much about it as I did about the show fifteen minutes ago.
     It's being promoted as a dark comedy, and I think that's near the root of the show's likely conceptual problems. The danger of setting something up for humor is that often that's used as a cover for poor plotting, as it's in service of a joke.
     This was one of those items that I wasn't aware of until it landed on my doorstep. The first two episodes of the series are available on Paramount+. As best I can tell it's set up as a 10-episode series, though I'd be more encouraged if it was being pitched clearly as a limited series -- so we'd know the aim is to give us a complete story rather than to get a nod for a second season and make those mortgage payments.
     The initial critical response on the whole is a wait and see call, as few to none seem to be convinced the show has a real direction or can even justify its foundations -- the main character has a reputation as a star journalist we're told to just accept how good she is despite seeing no signs of it in her approach to anything, and she ends up working for a clickbait celebrity and fashion site... why? Just because it's frustrating to her? None of it can't be overcome, but the most positive calls to come out of the early episodes are that newcomer Jules Latimer, playing Toni Plimpton, a woman convicted of killing her husband the previous year, is the one to watch.
     With episodes roughly half an hour long, it likely would have been a better call to either drop the entire series before the audience at once, or at least give more than the first two episodes. Give people a little more chance to get some traction.

     The other season-ender I got to this past week was the season 12 close of the animated action comedy Archer. The 8-episode season wrapped with a story that gave a graceful exit for character Malory Archer, the hard-bitten, hard-drinking matriarch of the show, and more pointedly to the late Jessica Walter who was her voice. They combed through the show's archives to select lines for her (and for another, departed, character) to provide an appropriate bow.
     New seasons of Archer run on FXX, and all are available on Hulu. Season 13 was approved for production by late September.
     Today (October 15th), Amazon Prime sees the launch of a slasher style series based on horror film franchise, which was itself based on a 1973 novel of the same name. It's I Know What You Did Last Summer.

    I haven't watched any of it yet, and based on what I've seen and read of it I'm thinking I'm not part of the target audience, though it seems there's some confusion as to who the target audience is supposed to be. It may be fun (for me) to watch it and then revisit the three reviews I skimmed, as much to take note of what things are touchier subjects (no pun intended) for particular reviewers, as nudity seems to be pushing some reviewer's buttons more than violence and death. Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter even used the phrase "...unsightly and unexpected penises..."  It could be fun to turn this experience into a psychological profile tool for some of these reviewers. The general nudity, including full frontal, seems to be rattling a few cages.
     They opted to drop the first four episodes (each around 48 minutes, give or take) on this premier Friday, with one episode each Friday thereafter. That's half of the eight-episode limited series. I know that the hook of the show is reportedly revealed near the end of the first episode, and to expect attempts at shock value to be more prized than reason by the filmmakers. As with any of the items I mention in these pieces, if I get around to watching them I'll come back to this piece and add comments in green.
     Sticking with that seasonal theme and primary target demographic, coming to Netflix October 20th: College student Benny, working part time as a chauffeur picks up two women, Blaire and Zoe, for a night of club-hopping across Los Angeles. Before long, Benny discovers there's something dangerously different about these two women, and that the night's dangerous in ways he'd never expected. It's Night Teeth (2021  1h 48m)

     Yes, it's not the smoothest of titles. It's almost like something an A.I. would have come up with if told to come up with a two-word title that hadn't been used before, that had two, key elements from the movie.
     It seems to be a teen/young adult-focused item, and - again - so far I only have the trailer to go on. Hopefully it'll be at least fun, but for the moment I only have the trailer, and I'm not getting my hopes up.
     The same day (also on Netflix) a comedy from France takes us back to the early peak of fearful excitement for the COVID-19 pandemic, as strangers living in the same building get to know each other during a three-month lockdown. Perhaps a tad too quirky, I found myself wondering if this is a film Jerry Lewis might have made. (I know, that's a dusty, cheap, lazy shot at the French. Still, it seemed at least a little warranted by some of the antics in the trailer.) I'm not familiar with Dany Boon, who co-wrote, directed and stars in Stuck Together (2021   1h 5m) That's the U.S. title they decided to go with, rather than the direct translation of 8 Humanity Street.

     Might it be genuinely funny? Anything's possible. Might it be interesting even just as a view of how others have been reacting to the pandemic, lockdown and general safety measures, and dealing with people? Sure, it could be.
     I expect this will be available with the usual range of Netflix options, including dubbed into English, or French with English captions.
   Arriving on Netflix next Friday, the 22nd, is the long-awaited second season of Locke & Key. I almost held off and made it part of next week's post, but wanted to mention it ahead of time in case, harking back to season one (we were still in the Consortium's first year, and it's odd to look back to when one of these Friday posts was on a single show), the week's lead time might find some either wanting to refresh themselves with a partial or full re-watch, or simply try it out if they hadn't already. The season two trailer is already starting to bring many of the details back.

     The same day, arriving both on HBO-Max and in theaters, is Dune (2021  155 m).
     I'll confess, that while I've been peripherally aware of this being in development for the past couple years I have not been following any of the details. So much so that until I started looking for info for this piece, I didn't know whether this was going to be a feature film or a miniseries. Plans for new adaptations of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel have been announced as in the works in various places since shortly after the novel first hit, the majority of times ultimately falling through. I'm not involved in the process, certainly not being paid nor polled as part of a focus group, so I long ago decided to wait to see what runs the gauntlet and makes it to market.
     As it turns out, this one's a feature film, covering roughly half of the 1965 novel. At least that's better than the 1984 attempt, where they aimed to handle the full thing in a single, albeit roughly 3-hour film (then cut to a ridiculous 137 minutes for theatrical release). Part of me is still thrown by the decision to go the route of a feature film again in a world where pay channels and streaming services are flourishing, and epic tales being adapted into series - where more of the characters and plot elements can have a chance to be explored and savored - seem to be doing well. The impression here seems to be that they are hoping to make this work after the fashion of Peter Jackson's adaptations of Tolkien.
     I've only just finally gotten around to watching the trailer, despite being aware of when it debuted, and of the many people who seemed very appreciative of it at the time.

     Amazingly, all that's been reportedly done for the sequel/second half is that writing has begun on the script. This is almost shocking to me, as I'd have expected this to be one of those projects where all of the principal photography for both films would have been done at the same time, allowing additional time for post-production work. I know that Warner's decision to handle this as a simultaneous theatrical release and 31-day HBO-Max streamer greatly disappointed director Denis Villeneuve, for a combination of financial and artistic reasons - the latter including the filming of it for a theatrical showing. The project's vision was for the big screen, and it's upsetting to him to know that so many will be watching it on small ones.
     As of this writing it appears that there hasn't been a formal approval given for the second film -- a fact that manages to surprise me each time it comes up. This just seems like the kind of project where both parts (or at least much of the second part, too) would have been filmed at the same time.
     Shifting gears here at the end, I'm not ending this week's piece with an old horror or sci-fi film. It's not that there's a shortage of them to draw on, but last week I indirectly linked to three of them (if you go to that page, scroll down to the bottom where the links are for the three Vincent Price revenge films spotlighted), and I just wasn't in the mood this time.
     While I was looking around for some other items, I saw that Tubi has the full four-season, 13-episode run of the period sleuth series Cadfael.
     Adapted from The Cadfael Chronicles, a series of novels by Ellis Peters (pen name of linguist and scholar Edith Pargeter), they center on the (fictional) 12th century Benedictine monk Cadfael. He is what is known as a conversus, someone who entered monastic life after having lived a (for the times) long and full life out in the secular world, as a man in his forties. He had been both a sailor and a soldier, including service as a crusader in so-called the Holy Lands. It was there that he became a knowledgeable herbalist, learning it from the Muslims. His worldly experience and knowledge, an analytical turn of mind, and being a keen observer of the human condition, combine to find him becoming a sort of detective, primarily solving murders. Given his status within a religious order, and the complications of the church and crown, he has to take considerable care at times in how he approaches each mystery.
     The source novels were set between the years of 1137 and 1145, a time known broadly as the Anarchy, when a dispute over the crown of England was going on between King Stephen and Empress Maud. Various historical events were woven into the stories, presumably to encourage readers to seek out more information on the period. Along with the political history, elements of then-contemporary culture, custom, and technology play parts in some of the stories. Each episode is a self-contained tale, running about 75 minutes. It's been roughly a quarter century since I saw these, so I can't recall if there were elements that made the order important, but I'd still defer to trying to watch them in order even just to give it the best chance of allowing the revelations to the audience about Cadfael's pre-monastic life to be doled out as intended.
     Starring Derek Jacobi, and with scattered appearances by other faces familiar to various audiences over the years, these shows were produced by ITV between 1994 and '98. Here in the states, I saw them as part of PBS' Mystery! series.
     As mentioned, these are currently on Tubi, and are also on imdb.tv (which can also be accessed through Amazon Prime), and most of them are on YouTube, too - so, all of these essentially free. The YouTube videos I've looked at are clean copies, so that might be the place to start. Otherwise I'd lean in favor of Tubi over imdb.tv, as the latter seems noticeably more aggressive with their commercials, but as all are free you can see which suits you best. Here's the first episode, "One Corpse Too Many"

     Time to make my exit for the week. I hope you found something of interest to look into above, or in one of the previous installments. There's no shortage of things to watch, only of time. Take care, and come back next week. - Mike