Saturday, July 17, 2004

all change

I do have a chunk of Simian Smith to write up and I have the perfect week to do it. My wife is a (assistant manager) care worker for people with learning difficulties and is helping a couple of people who've gone on holiday. She left this morning and I'll not see her again for a week. With the house to myself I've got the perfect excuse to get things done.
Thanks to the money draining marvel that is ebay I have the great pleasure of being able to watch Due South for the first time in years. I'm half way through the pilot episode at the moment and plan to buy more of the episodes soon. Due South, for those who don't know, was an excellent programme from the early 90's that the BBC showed in the UK. Set in Chicago it followed the adventures of a Canadian Mountie, his wolf and his regular cop partner. US crime shows are quite different nowadays (but still great, The Shield, Oz and Boomtown are essential viewing) but Due South had a wonderful feel to it not a million miles away from the much missed Northern Exposure. As well as being witty and quirky Due South pressed quite a few buttons for me, I've always been a fan of the innocent abroad kind of story. Also the Mountie himself is cut from some of my favourite character cloth. Decent, good hearted, honest, self reliable and capable, he's very much a Clark Kent/Superman, Captain America kind of guy. If that sounds dull the shows strong sense of the absurdity and the inherent difficulties of such a character made it anything but. As you can see I was a bit of a fan, thankfully it still holds up. Now I'm going to carry on watching it.

1 comment:

paul said...

Yes, it's true. Due South is amazing, it managed to be light hearted without being schmaltzy (mostly) and really funny despite the hackneyed 'buddy cop' formula, and it always had a really good feel to it. Although I was never so keen on the later series when the cop character (Ray?) was changed.

On a similar note have you ever seen Bakersfield PD? That also was in the buddy style with a sense of whimsy, but disappeared after one season. Honestly, the people commissioning these things just have no taste. Check it out at IMDB.