One of Stephen Poliakoff’s first original pieces for television, Caught On A Train follows an Englishman on a nightmarish train journey across Europe. It would be seven years before Poliakoff would earn his first director credit for his feature film Close My Eyes and, instead, Caught On A Train is directed by prolific television director Peter Duffell. Peter (Michael Kitchen) boards a train at Ostend, striking up a conversation with a beautiful American woman, Lorraine (Wendy Raebeck). At first Peter seems the perfect gentleman and the epitome of politeness, carrying and lifting her luggage, but his intentions are given away as Duffell subtly signals Peter’s attraction with quick close ups of exposed flesh and stealthy glances. When an old Austrian woman, Frau Messner (Peggy…
Posts from the “Television” Category
You know your getting older when it takes three days to recover from a 4am late-nighter. So was staying up for the Golden Globes worth my reduced capacity to function this week? The two hours of red carpet were every bit the frivolous celebrity fest I expected and making it through to 1am was a breeze. But this was followed by E! blasting a tirade of Kardashian adverts over Ricky Gervais’ highly anticipated welcome and I began to feel my frustration growing. The fear that Gervais would say something inappropriate blighted not only the opener but also the first two awards. On watching the re-run of Gervais’ jokes, it became clear that this interruption was completely unnecessary. Reactions to Gervais have been mixed. He…
Last year, after months of dreaming about it, I finally signed up to Sky. This turned out to be a well timed decision as my installation date gloriously coincided with the launch of Sky’s new channel, Sky Atlantic. This opened me up to the delights of plentiful new series, such as Game of Thrones, Bored to Death and The Borgias, and also to re-runs of classics, like ER and The Sopranos, which I had missed the first time around. By far the most wonderful discovery was Boardwalk Empire. The series is set in Atlantic City during the prohibition era and focuses on the personal and private life of corrupt County Treasurer Nucky Thompson (based on real life Enoch Johnson). The show was set to be a success from the beginning, being produced by Martin…
