TV Series Review: Silent Witness

It hardly seems like any time since I was writing my last series review for Silent Witness. That was the series which ended with Leo being unexpectedly killed off. This series is presumably picking up less than eleven months after this event because he’s still not been replaced (until the first episode) and so a good chunk of time is spent with Nikki’s reaction to the new guy.

I have to admit, as much as I enjoy Silent Witness, it’s not quite the same as it used to be. I like my crime procedurals, as anyone who looks at my DVD collection will be able to tell you, but part of the fun of Silent Witness, like Bones, is the interaction between the main characters. There are some TV series where you’re watching for the cases, and others for the cast, Silent Witness always used to be one of those shows that I watched for the combination of cast and storylines, though now it’s kind of veering towards the cases alone and that makes me a little sad.

Before I go into that though, I knew this series was going to be different right from the start. How did I figure that out? Because the opening titles don’t use Verdana anymore! Did that happen last year as well? I couldn’t help but notice this year and it was really glaringly obvious to me, particularly at the bit where the episode title shows up. It’s really silly that something like that should bother me, but I always used to have Verdana set as my default font for everything and it used to make me smile.

Of course, times are changing and I’ve moved on to being more of a Trebuchet MS kind of girl now so I suppose I shouldn’t really complain.

This series consisted of five stories in their usual format of two episodes per story, one airing on a Thursday and one on a Friday. Because I rely on my in-laws’ internet connection and BBC iPlayer I was a little behind in my viewing, usually not getting to see the episodes until the following Sunday or even later in the week.

The actual cases were pretty good this series. Part of the fun of watching these sorts of programmes, like reading crime books, is trying to solve the crime alongside the experts on screen. This was a good series for trying to figure things out and I was happily satisfied when I managed to crack bits of the crime before the police and pathologists did. It’s always entertaining when you can do that.

I particularly enjoyed the second episode of the series which had a guy released from prison based on evidence which Nikki had helped to overturn, after being convicted of killing both his boyfriend and another gay man. Upon being released from prison the murders immediately started again and so there was the question of who the actual murderer was. Mr Click and I agreed that it was too easy to have the murderer be the one everyone thought it was but there was a good twist in the story. We kind of figured out how it was going to end, but it still felt like a satisfying ending.

The first and penultimate episodes were also pretty good as well. The third was set in Scotland which I enjoyed. It dealt with old suspicions and grudges in a small Scottish community. I’m happy to watch any programmes visiting Scotland, even if they were on the east coast instead of the west like us. It reminded me of the Ian Rankin stories with the bleak sort of landscape and rundown town.

There are little things that you always expect from a series of Silent Witness, one of this is the travel episode where they all visit some exotic location in connection with a death or murder. I’m guessing that the BBC is lowering their budget for these Silent Witness travel episodes; in the past they’ve been to Eastern Europe and Africa, this year they went up the M1!

Other things you can count on are Nikki being bopped on the head/kidnapped/held hostage/generally put in moral peril (check: episode two) and a suspicious police detective who is involved in the case. This series had the corrupt/involved members of law enforcement in spades! Episodes three and four both had police detectives involved in covering up crimes, plus bonus points for a lawyer’s involvement in episode two and Jack’s brother being involved in the final episode of the series. It was definitely the series of good guys being bad guys, even the first episode had a detective who was determined that they knew who the killer was and didn’t want to look any further, as well as Mossad!

And what about the characters?

It’s probably telling that I couldn’t actually remember the name of the new guy without looking him up; for the record, it’s Thomas. He’s not really that memorable and didn’t seem to be as involved as Leo was in the series. He had very few of his own scenes until the final episode and even then it was because he’d brought in an old school friend to replace Jack and he was usually talking to her. He’s basically a replacement Leo, right down to the separation from his wife and daughter (though this is separation, not a car crashing into a cafe).

I’m still not really that concerned about Jack either. His attack in the final episode didn’t have me feeling the way that I felt when they faked Harry’s death a few years ago. I’d not read any spoilers and I was really worried about Harry not making it. This time I wasn’t really concerned and I actually quite liked the old friend Thomas had brought in to take his place. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d killed Jack off and kept her instead.

Although I’ve not warmed to the character of Thomas yet, I think there’s potential with him. I wish they had given him a completely different storyline to Leo, there’s so much they could’ve done with him; single-father, happily married father of seven, gay, whatever. It makes it seem like killing Leo off was unplanned and they created a new character to be Leo 2.0. Jack, on the other hand, just isn’t that likeable. He comes across as immature and aggressive and I could’ve even feel that concerned about his relationship with his brother in the last episode.

I actually enjoyed the character of Clarissa more in this series. I think because she didn’t seem to spend as much time with Jack as in the last series. Their verbal sparring didn’t always ring true last year but it seemed more natural this year, mainly because a lot of the time her sarcasm was being directed at Nikki, Not!Leo or the police detective of the week.

Nikki is still Nikki, but somehow without Harry and Leo she’s kind of missing something. I miss the old dynamic with the joking and flirting with Harry. She spent all of last series being sad about Harry going, and this series being sad about Leo, so the sense of fun isn’t really there. I realise that it’s a show which often involves a lot of time with death bodies, so it’s never really going to be all fun and games, but it was still nice to have a touch of humour there.

I know that they’re not going to be able to return to the old dynamic because these are new characters and they won’t bring the old ones back (not going to lie, totally looking out for fan fiction where Harry comes back to be the new head of the Lyell Centre instead of Thomas), but I’d like to see a return to the style of a few years ago. I can’t help but wonder whether perhaps it needs more of a reshuffle in the cast, like when Amanda Burton left. That could’ve been the end of the show and they used a strong cast to reinvent it; I think that if it returns for another series (and let’s face it, it’s popular so it probably will) they need to either give more weight to Nikki to make her into a stronger character without her old team, or dare I say it, replace her with a new character to reflect the changing dynamic of the team.

Whatever happens, I’ll still be watching it. I just might have to hurry up and buy the old series on DVD to remind myself how it used to be!

Can you feel the love tonight?

Happy Valentine's Day guys!

I know you don't need a special day to show your loved ones you care. But all the same, it certainly makes for a good excuse for a Chinese takeaway!

Day Zero Project: Reorganise the music on my mp3 player

I like music. I have quite a big music collection. So big in fact that I have to be quite choosey about what I have on my mp3 player at any one time. Christmas music, for example, is put on at the end of November, but then if I want to listen to other stuff the rest of the year I have to take it off otherwise I’m at risk of running out of space on it.

My mp3 player is a (slightly ancient) 30Gb Creative Zen Vision:M. I don’t even think that Creative make those sorts of mp3 players any more which is a shame because I’ve only ever had two mp3 players, both Creative Zens and I’ve loved them both (not least because it saves me the hassle of having to use iTunes to organise my music). It’s kind of slowly dying and I’m hanging onto it for as long as I can, even if it does occasionally randomly delete my music or refuse to turn off.

Part of my problem is that whenever I get a CD, or more recently buy an mp3, I stick it on my Zen. New film soundtrack? On it goes. Free download from Amazon? On it goes. Those free CDs you get with the paper? On it goes. It’s resulted in quite a bit of junk on my Zen that I don’t actually listen to, it’s just there because, hey, you never know when you’re going to feel in the mood for Top Kids Party Songs 3!

My music collection is becoming even more complicated with the arrival of my iPhone and Kindle. Because my music collection is in desperate need of reorganising on my Zen I’ve got into the habit of not adding to the problem, but obviously, I want to be able to listen to my music on the go. So onto my iPhone it goes. My iPhone which has even less free space on it than my Zen. This means I have to do the music rotation thing on it; do I want a country music CD on there or The Hobbit soundtrack? I like to rock to Taylor Swift in the shower, do I leave that on or try something else?

And now I’ve got my Kindle I’ve got yet another device storing my music. And it’s so easy to put stuff on there that it just makes things even worse! Like last week, I ordered myself the soundtrack for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, as soon as I paid for it there was a little link to download the mp3 version, so I had it on my Kindle two days before the actual hard copy arrived.

That coupled with some things being backed up to my external hard drive, some back up to the cloud, some backed up onto DVDs and some stored on my computer (which are probably backed up in one of those other places, but which I can’t be bothered to check at any one time, so get rebacked up somewhere else) means that my music collection is in a bit of a mess.

What I really want to do is make some nice playlists for my mp3 player, Kindle and phone so that I have things that match my mood. A few years ago I made an awesome (but sadly now lost) Summer playlist. It was the perfect music for relaxing in the garden on a hot summer day, or driving through the countryside during warm sunny weather. I started making a Winter one as well which I never finished. I like having music that suits my mood, music which tells a story, music that reminds me of particular things, places or people. I really need to get my act together and do that.

The problem is, unless I ban myself from buying any more music (and we all know that’s never going to happen) I’m just going to have to suck it up and try to organise things. Part of me thinks it might be easier to just wipe everything, dig out the CDs and rerip everything. Although considering I’ve had an mp3 player since I was 19, that could take even longer to do than just going through things a bit at a time and tidying them up.

How do you guys keep track of what you’ve got and where?

Wordless Wednesday: Together

Book 51 of 2013: Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

I like to alternate between reading book-books and Kindle books, so whenever I finish reading a book-book I like to follow it up with something from my Kindle. At least, that’s the theory. Since I’ve spent the last two years studying literature a lot of my reading time is taken up reading books for my courses which have to take priority over anything that I actually want to read. Way back in September last year though my course hadn’t quite started yet and I so I was still enjoying the tail end of the summer where I had complete freedom over my reading choices.

I was still kind of being influenced by what I’d being studying though, travel writing being one of the things covered in my previous OU course, so when it came to picking something to read from my Kindle I decided I wanted something which would be a kind of bridge between my old course and my new one. Oh, and my next course was going to start within a couple of weeks so I wanted something that wouldn’t take me too long to read. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne filled that gap.

Image of first edition from Wikipedia.

It tells the story of Phileas Fogg, who lives a fairly boring and regular man who winds up making an unexpected bet that he can circumnavigate the world in just 80 days, dragging his new valet, Passepartout along with him for the trip. Meanwhile a Scotland Yard detective, Fix, has been sent out in search of a man wanted for bank robbery, and he decides that Fogg is his man so sets out to delay him. Along with way Fogg and Passepartout manage to rescue a young woman, Aouda, who joins their group as well as overcome barriers set up by Fix as they attempt to get back to London within the time scale to allow them to receive their reward.

I really, really enjoyed this and it’s one that I’m definitely going to read again. A good sign of how much I enjoy a book on my Kindle is whether I think it’s worth buying in hard copy, and I think if I see a nice edition of of Around the World in 80 Days I’ll definitely pick it up.

Considering it was written in 1873 I wasn’t expecting to find it so funny in places, but it really was. Fogg is quite a funny character with his particular ways of doing things (his shaving water must be ready at a particular time and at a particular temperature each day); Passepartout often has moments of pure comedy and Fix’s determination to catch Fogg and prove that he is the criminal he’s after is also really funny in places. I don’t know why I always find it strange when humour is so evident in older books, I guess I always expect them to be more serious. I was kind of expecting it to be a bit dry, but didn’t mind too much if it was because I thought ‘at least it’s short’ so the humour was a pleasant surprise.

As I said above, I was looking for some reading material to tide me over until my course started. I decided I wanted something classic, so did a little bit of searching on my Kindle and one of the reasons I selected this, aside from the links between my old course and the new, was because it was just 150 pages. It made for a lovely little quick read.

It was interesting to see links between this and the travel writing that I looked at on my course last year. I think I probably would’ve enjoyed it just as much without that knowledge, but it made it interesting to read the descriptions of the people, places and the methods of transport that were used. It would’ve been interesting to study if this had been one of the books in A230, I think I definitely could’ve found enough to say to write an essay on it.

I spent the whole time reading it being reminded of a cartoon that I used to watch as a child. I’ve probably not thought of that in years, or at least not since going to see the Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan film version in the cinema! Since reading the book I’ve looked up the cartoon, all I could remember about it was that all the characters were animals and Aouda was cat-shaped. I managed to find it (through the power of Google) and it’s actually called Around the World with Willy Fog and was a Spanish series originally, made around the same time as Dogtanian and the Three Musketeers. I must’ve been about five when I watched that, it’s funny how something can give you a blast from the past that you’ve not thought about in years!

 

I enjoyed this so much that I’m going to have to look at other books by Jules Verne, I’m fairly certain that I’ve got both Journey to the Centre of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on my Kindle. I also think it’s something that Mr Click might enjoy, so I’ll probably keep my eye out for book-book versions of those too.

Magic Knitting

Please excuse the badly-lit iPhone photos. I was sitting in bed when I took these just moments after I finished this clever little piece of knitting and I had to share it with someone right away. So I took a couple of quick snaps and posted them to Facebook. Then the next day I took it to work and I've had it on my desk ever since so haven't been able to get any better photos.

Do you see it?

How about now?
This is done using a particularly clever technique known as illusion knitting. I stumbled across it in a forum on Ravelry the other week and became fascinated looking at some of the clever, not to mention artistic, things that people had knitted this way.

I decided that I wanted to try it myself, but not wanting to commit to a big or expensive pattern I chose a little free chart to see how it worked out. And it was incredible. I got it finished within a couple of days and decided against making it any longer so that I could pin it to my desk at work. It makes me smile whenever I move around the room and look back at it because like a hologram I can see the image appearing and disappearing.

It looks like it is really complicated to do but it's actually really simple, relying on contrasting colours, and knit rows with purled stitches to make the raised areas of the image. When it's looked at from head on you just see the stripes, then when it's laid down flat and you look at it from the right angle the image appears.

The one thing I would change if I did this again is that I misinterpreted the chart's directions for main colour and contrast colour. I think it would've looked a little better if the paw print was in dark blue and the background in yellow, just to make it pop out a bit more. But at least now I know how this works I can definitely justify investing the time and money in making an actual wall-hanging.

Weekly Rundown

This week wound up being a nice short week for me, as I had the day off and the house to myself on Friday. It’s always nice to have a bit of time to yourself. I used to hate being home alone, but I’m beginning to find that I enjoy it more, the one thing I really hate is being in a big double bed all by myself when Mr Click’s not there. The benefit of having a nice long lie-in the next day is always cancelled out by the hours I spend tossing and turning trying to drift off the night before.

I’ve mentioned letting myself get a little bit behind with my OU and being more than a little bit lax about getting organised for my latest assignment. Wednesday I set that to rights and printed out a copy of the assignment brief and decided that I was definitely going to do Option 2.

I’ve gone for Option 2 for all three of the previous assignments so I kind of felt like I had a reputation to uphold. I’m being predictable! Actually, I think part of the reason for always going for Option 2 is that the two options usually cover two halves of each block, each block being covered in roughly a month; Option 1 deals with stuff from the first half of the block and Option 2 with stuff from the second. The Option 2 stuff is always freshest in my mind, so that’s what I tend to go to, because as soon as I read it, I’m able to think of what I want to say. I guess I’m being lazy because it’s just what’s easiest for me.

Once I knew which Option I was going for I was able to start looking through for references I could use and then on Thursday night I stuck on The Fellowship of the Ring and set to work writing. I’d planned on making a start that night and then working on it more on Friday morning, but by 9:30pm I’d actually managed to write about 1800 words, including a good attempt at a conclusion. So I sat and knitted while I watched The Two Towers and finally crawled into bed at 2am!

Actually, I’d felt really sleepy when I finished my assignment draft, but when the time came to go to bed all I really wanted to do was sit up and watch The Return of the King. I waited until the following morning in the end.

This week we’ve also started watching The Good Life, which I’m enjoying. We’re not watching it quite as quickly as I’d like. We were watching four episodes of Friends an evening, whereas we’ve dropped down to watching two episodes of The Good Life while we eat our tea, then watching two episodes of ER in bed. It’s probably better that we do it that way really as there’s only four series and we’d be finished within a couple of weeks if we weren’t careful. Plus we’re getting through ER more quickly now so we’ll soon be watching something new, like maybe Criminal Minds which I got for Christmas.

I’ve been getting through my reading material a lot more quickly this week than I have since the beginning of the year. Tom’s Midnight Garden was a nice quick read and I’ve been reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Call which is going quickly too. I managed to read about 100 pages of that within the first day of starting it and only slowed down because I had to write an assignment (luckily not on it).

I’ll have to look at which books I’ll be needing to read next for my course and get those ordered soon so that I don’t end up have to read them in such a rush for my next assignment. I finally finished it this morning and since then have been downloading as many free books on Amazon as I can find. I want something that wasn't written for children, isn't set in the past and which is as different from the last three books as possible. Roll of Thunder was a bit of a depressing book (rightly so given the subject matter) so now I want something really light-hearted to contrast with it.

And knitting, well, I kind of broke my plans there. After I knitted up Oscar Octopus’s hat I had to take a break because we put all the cardboard out for recycling so I had nothing to use to make the pom-pom for the top of it. I get itchy hands when I’ve not got anything on my needles, so despite using my random number generator to pick my next pattern (a clown) I just didn’t feel like knitting that.

So I printed off a free chart pattern from Ravelry to make a little thingy to pin on my muffle-board at work. I’ll share more about that tomorrow because it’s so awesome that it deserves a post all of its own! And it only took two days to make, and I needed something to reward myself for actually thinking about doing my assignment, I decided to cast on for something new.

I mentioned last week that the wool Mr Click bought me from Cardwell Garden Centre looked like it wanted to be a dragon, well, the pattern book I won from Simply Knitting has a cute little dragon pattern in it. It’s really complicated though so although I’m getting on with the body, I’m preparing to frog it or change it at every row. It’s interesting watching it come together though and I wonder if I’ll actually get it finished to my satisfaction to share here.