People We Like - continued ... some British actors

Douglas Hodge, and as Grimes in the current DECLINE AND FALL. (He was a terrific Zaza in LE CAGE AUX FOLLES a few years back).

Rory Kinnear, and as the Frankenstein monster in PENNY DREADFUL.  (also recently in THE IMITATION GAME, SKYFALL, SPECTRE, and theatre including another HAMLET and THE THREEPENNY OPERA). 

Patrick Baladi may have started off playing Nancy in a school production of OLIVER! but is kept busy now, in the current LINE OF DUTY among others - we like him in  the STELLA series with Ruth Jones, where he looked good wearing leathers, and he marries a man in Tom Hollander's REV.

Hugh Bonneville, now that he has left the Earl of Grantham behind at DOWNTON ABBEY, seems to be having fun, amusingly dragging up in PADDINGTON (right), and being hilarious in DAVID WALLIAMS & FRIEND, as well as BBC series W1A, and that surprise turn in DA VINCI'S DEMONS. Looking forward to PADDINGTON 2. 

Daniel Boys, actor and singer, recently seen in the BOYS IN THE BAND revival.

Then of course there's Tom Hollander, and Aidan Turner (POLDARK and handsome! - see Poldark label.)

Two Bosie's ....

Interesting for us theatre folk to see two actors who have played Lord Alfred Douglas in David Hare's THE JUDAS KISS, together in a new revival of Tom Stoppard's TRAVESTIES, currently a sell-out at London's Menier Chocolate Factory, hopefully it will get a west end transfer. The witty play features wordplay on Oscar Wilde and dialogue from his THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. 

Tom Hollander was Bosie in the 1998 original production, with Liam Neeson, as Oscar, which I enjoyed back then, Tom was a very petulant Bosie, as was Freddie Fox in the Rupert Everett version a couple of years ago, which was brilliant too (more on that at Oscar, Rupert labels). They must have had a lot to talk about the part ... Busy year for young Fox - that recent CUCUMBER and PRIDE, and also Romeo this summer in that recent ROMEO AND JULIET, reviewed recently (Shakespeare label). Tom of course also also been very busy with THE NIGHT MANGER and DR THORNE,

The Tom boys

This glut of new Toms on the acting scene makes one think any young actor starting out should change his name to Tom. Early Toms were Tom Courtenay and singer Tom Jones and Tom Wilkinson. Then we had that run of posh actors (Benedict, Eddie, Damian), while Tom Hardy was on the rise, getting his kit off a lot and getting covered in tattoos as he essayed various hard men, culminating in the two Krays last year (LEGEND) and taking on the MAD MAX mantle as well as leaving Leonardo in the wilderness in THE REVENANT .... no doubt he has more of the same lined up this year. 

Meanwhile, Tom Daley dived, Toms Hanks and Cruise became veterans, Tom Hollander kept being busy, being DOCTOR THORNE and joining Tom Of The Year, Hiddleston in THE NIGHT MANAGER. Hiddles also had HIGH RISE, a film on Hank Williams and currently back in superhero mode (THOR) after his summer romance with Taylor Swift. 

Now there is Tom Hughes - Albert in the new hit British series VICTORIA, we have not quite got used to him yet; Tom Sturridge is getting the breaks too (THE HOLLOW CROWN, Sgt Troy in the recent FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD), and Tom Riley seems the latest Tom on the block (DA VINCI'S DEMONS, THE COLLECTION). 
Tom Colley was also eye-catching as the Italian fisherman in the recent revival of THE JUDAS KISS. 
Then there's playwright Tom Stoppard, and singer Tom Chaplin from Keane back in the limelight. Meanwhile, Tom Bradby reads the London ITV news, and more Tom actors are Tom Ellis and the busy Tom Goodman-Hill.
Meanwhile Tom Ford has a highly-praised new film NOCTURNAL ANIMALS coming up at the LFF and opening here shortly. Thats about 20 Toms ....

The night manager's pass, 2016

Should one rave about a new BBC serial after just one episode? I feel like doing so after catching the first episode of new Sunday night 6-part thriller THE NIGHT MANAGER, an updated version of a 1993 John Le Carre novel. Event television: great cast, great story, brilliantly directed and one can hear and understand every word - unlike in that other BBC highly regarded series HAPPY VALLEY * where the actors mumbling on location cannot have been recorded properly? 

A night manager of a European hotel is recruited by intelligence agents to infiltrate an international arms dealer's network.

Directed by Susanne Bier, this grabs one from the first moment. Tom Hiddleston is Jonathan Pine, the ex-army man now working as the night manager of a classy Cairo hotel, when he has his first encounter with the world of mega-rich Roper (Hugh Laurie), who is an arms dealer on the side ..... Tom Hollander plays his nasty henchman, Olivia Colman is the M16 operative on their trail, Russell Tovey pops up as an embassy man reluctant to get involved, and the large cast includes Douglas Hodge, Katharine Kelly, Neil Morrisey, David Harewood and more. After event get out of hand in Cairo and the death of the woman Pine was trying to help (after copying those documents which incriminate Roper) the action suddenly shifts to Switzerland 4 years later Pine is now the new night manager, and Roper and his cohorts arrive by helicopter and Pine has to provide the service they expect ..... We will be looking forward to more of this.

* Speaking of HAPPY VALLEY - sometimes an actor can astound one. We hardly noticed Kevin Doyle in DOWNTON ABBEY as mousey Mr Molesley, but he is riveting here as the Police detective who murders his difficult mistress - fabulous Amelia Bullmore, another Sally Wainwright regular. Doyle was also fantastic in SCOTT & BAILEY as that serial killer, over several episodes. Wainwright creates great moments for actors, like Joe Duttine (CORONATION STREET's resident window-cleaner) who has a great scene in SCOTT & BAILEY when he is revealed as a paedophile killer, and those great episodes with equally marvellous Nicola Walker. Of course Walker and HAPPY VALLEY's Sarah Lancashire were both stalwarts of Wainwright's terrific series LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX..). 

Busy boy Russell Tovey also stars in THE PASS, which he played on the stage here a year or two ago, and is now the opening night film of the new LGBT film festival at the BFI here next month. This should be an intriguing drama too .... mixing in the world of gays and football and sportsmen keeping secrets ....  Directed by Ben A. Williams and scripted by John Donnelly.

Nineteen-year-old Jason and Ade have been in the Academy of a famous London football club since they were eight years old. It's the night before their first-ever game for the first team - a Champions League match - and they're in a hotel room in Romania. They should be sleeping, but they're over-excited. They skip, fight, mock each other, prepare their kit, watch a teammate's sex tape. And then, out of nowhere, one of them kisses the other. The impact of this 'pass' reverberates through the next ten years of their lives - a decade of fame and failure, secrets and lies, in a sporting world where image is everything.

Indie romcom time: Martha meets the boys ...

MARTHA, MEET FRANK, DANIEL & LAURENCE (1998)  (with thanks to Colin for this one).
 Laurence recounts to his neighbour how his life long friendship with Frank and Daniel has been overturned in just three days by their each independently meeting, and falling for, Martha, who has no idea of their connection. Slowly the tale unfolds, the narrative moving backwards and forwards gradually filling in the gaps until we see the whole picture. Or, as the blurb says:

Meet Martha. She's single, sexy and sick of her life. With her last $99 she buys a plane ticket to London - one way! Meet Daniel. He's single, successful and thinks he's sexy. When he bumps into Martha at the airport in America, its love at first sight - well at least Daniel thinks so!  Meet Frank and Laurence, Daniel's best friends, although it doesn't always look that way. Frank is constantly engaged in a game of one-upmanship with Daniel, while Laurence always appears to be stuck in the middle. They have not met Martha yet but they will - and when they do you'll discover that two is company, three is a crowd and four is definitely a catastrophe!

Ok then, a clunky title for an amusing romcom - its a quirky, off the wall one where zany people do quirky, off the wall things like hop on a plane to London with their last $99, as you do - they would not be allowed into the UK with no money for a start! and Martha and Laurence would not be in the same queue at the airport either! 
And where you spend $5,000 to get a total stranger you just suddenly fall in love with, put in the first class next plane seat to you - though she is booked on a different flight! and set her up in a good hotel. (She at least sells the ticket on for $2,0000). But we must not carp about things like that. Its a quite sweet little comedy with all the comings and goings of the cast, as Laurence narrates his version to neighbour psychiatrist Ray Winstone (very subdued here). Its a nice look at London too back then, at the end of the nineties, before it became the crowded, expensive city it is now, as we take in nice hotel rooms and Laurence's ideal flat, and art galleries and restaurants. The various strands eventually come together as all three guys eventually confront Martha - though why these 3 smart London guys fall for this very ordinary American girl is never satisfactorily understandable. 

The three actors are caught nicely here early in their careers, all are still busy now. Fiennes (just before ELIZABETH and SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE)  seems the main guy, Hollander is a delight as usual and is pretty as a picture here, before his indie hits like LAWLESS HEART or BEDROOMS AND HALLWAYS - he was actually on television here last night, bulked up by two stone, to play Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in A POET IN NEW YORK, a new BBC drama (which I have yet to watch)  following his very successful REV comedy series (1998 would have been the year I saw him on stage as the petulant Bosie to Liam Neeson's Oscar Wilde in the first production of THE JUDAS KISS). Rufus scored as that very sharp Italian detective ZEN - well his suits were sharp at any rate! and he was in a recent production of Pinter's OLD TIMES - as well as that Dublin bus driver that Albert Finney fell for in A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE in 1994 (gay interest label). The unknown quantity here for me is Monica Potter, I do not know her at all - she has been busy too, recently with PARENTHOOD tv series. Scripted by Peter Morgan (THE QUEEN, FROST/NIXON etc) and directed by Nick Hamm.  Its a pleasing romcom and time capsule to those heady late '90s.  

Actors want to act

A pleasant surprise watching the latest episde (5th of 6) of the superior BBC comedy series REV, this week, when a surprise guest star turned up - Liam Neeson, as God, no less (its already been transmitted, so hardly a spoiler) - to comfort our troubled vicar Adam when everything is going wrong for him, as this third series gets more sombre. 
I hope there will be an uplifting climax next week. Olivia Colman is also superlative of course, again playing Adam's wife who now has a busy career of her own and in fact we see less of her this time around .... It was good to see Liam and Tom together again - they were the original Oscar and Bosie in that play THE JUDAS KISS which was a successful revival last year, with Rupert Everett, as per my posts at the time - theatre label. Joseph Fiennes (right) too is effective in REV as the bishop. [I have been corrected, thanks Mark - its of course Ralph Fiennes!].

It all reminded me of how much actors want to act (Tom Hollander has just finished playing Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in a new drama) and of course Liam is now an action star, his last one set on the airplane seems a must see when on dvd. I was thinking about how even legendary actors like Jack Lemmon (post below), James Stewart, Henry Fonda et al kept working into old age, when they really didn't need to any more, on the stage as well as film. At least they didn't do too much material of lesser value to damage their reputations - unlike say Ray Milland or Joseph Cotten who ended up in all kinds of dreck, and we won't even mention Joan and TROG !  Right: the 1998 JUDAS KISS with Neeson and Hollander which I saw in London before it went to New York.

I am of the opinion that most fortunate actors who come along at the right time get "ten good years" (that delicious song Nancy Wilson sang in her live cabaret act), certainly the likes of Stephen Boyd and Laurence Harvey did - mid-'50s to mid-'60s, or Michael York (mid-'60s to mid-70s), York being one of the fortunate ones who was able to continue in lesser supporting roles, whereas Harvey's and Boyd's careers had died before they did. Fortunate indeed are the likes of Dirk Bogarde or Alain Delon or Jean Sorel who can go on for decades, whereas in the theatre actors like Jeremy Brett or John Stride can transcend their good looks as they get older. Is there the curse of the very good looking actor who starts out well but then fizzles out ? (Whatever did happen to Jeremy Spenser, Leonard Whiting, Graham Faulkner, Martin Potter et al...?). Left: the kind of period movie actors must like appearing in: Michael Redgrave, Richard Warwick, Martin Potter, Tom Baker in NICHOLAS & ALEXANDRA, 1971.

Sometimes one sees an actor who started out well and seems reduced to nothing parts some years later, like John Philip Law - so promising in the mid-60s as the angel in BARBARELLA, in HURRY SUNDOWN, DANGER DIABOLIK etc, having literally nothing to do in the all star CASSANDRA CROSSING in 1976, as an aide to Burt Lancaster, right, with Ingrid Thulin. Well I dare say JPL (who died aged 70 in 2008) had that 10 good years.

Ditto Barry Coe, left, who was a promising 20th Century Fox contract player in the '50s and early '60s - Rodney Harrington in the 1957 PEYTON PLACE, the hero in 300 SPARTANS (looking fetching in a mini toga) etc. 
but in 1966 he is an un-named "communications aide" repeating commands in FANTASTIC VOYAGE - an amusing watch last week. He was also Carroll Baker's boyfriend in the 1959 comedy BUT NOT FOR ME with Clark Gable and Lilli Palmer. Coe went into television in shows like GENERAL HOSPITAL and continued acting to 1978. Other tv actors like George Maharis or Gardner McKay fared less well in the movies.

Barry, centre, in FANTASTIC VOYAGE

Brett Halsey (left) was another of the Fox pretty boys (RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING etc) as was future producer/tycoon Robert Evans (one of the cads in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING), though Robert Wagner and Jeff Hunter were the main Fox contract players, Joanne Woodward and Stuart Whitman too of course. Ditto Fabian - see HOUND DOG MAN post below.
A Fox film like NO DOWN PAYMENT (Jeff Hunter label) is stuffed with their contract players. Jeff Hunter unfortunately died too young too, in 1969, but found his imperishable role as Martin Pawley in THE SEARCHERS, which is always on view somewhere (as it was here yesterday). Robert Wagner was the most successful of all, with some good movies in Europe (THE PINK PANTHER) and successful in television. The Universal-International pretty boys like Rock and Tony Curtis worked hard through supporting parts to build careers and achieve A-list movie status, as before them did Guy Madison and Jeff Chandler and ...while Warners had those blondes Troy and Tab, and Tony Perkins (Tab and Tony tried singing too with some success - see labels), and Kerwin Matthews over at Columbia ... 

One has to feel sorry though for Richard Davalos, over at Warner Bros: the role of Aaron, the other brother in Kazan's EAST OF EDEN must have been a plum role, but with James Dean as Cal, Davalos was completely over-shadowed. At least the DVD contains those screen tests with Dean and Davalos and young Paul Newman who also tested, and was soon doing Dean roles. Davalos's other credit that year (apart from a bit part in a Jack Palance film) was a small part in Warners THE SEA CHASE, a John Wayne-Lana Turner starrer, where sailors Davalos and Tab Hunter go for a swim in shark-infested waters - guess which one the shark heads for.... ?  He contined acting until 2008 with small parts in films like Newman's COOL HAND LUKE, and lots of television. Right: Davalos, Dean & Julie Harris in EAST OF EDEN.

Heavyweight stuff coming up: Finney in Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO, Frears' PRETTY DIRTY THINGS with this year's best actor nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, LOVE IS THE DEVIL with Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon and Daniel Craig as his criminal lover .... more impersonations with the Liberace film BEHIND THE CANDELABRA and Helena Bonham-Carter a surprisingly effective Elizabeth Taylor in BURTON AND TAYLOR ....  
Left: Jeffrey Hunter / right: Jean Sorel.

Wilde at heart

• Oscar goes touring: As per the report below, the Wilde play is now going on tour after its sell-out run in London. It should prove popular in Oscar's hometown Dublin, at the Gaiety Theatre for a week in October, followed by a week each at Bath, Brighton, Cambridge, Richmond - pity its not heading north - a friend in Liverpool would have liked to have caught it.... 

To the perfectly situated and sized Hampstead Theatre at Swiss Cottage, in London, for the new production of David Hare's play about Oscar Wilde THE JUDAS KISS - a matinee performance for this sold-out revival. Going to the theatre in the afternoon is rather nice, particularly when the modern theatre has cafe and bar facilities and pleasant outdoor seating areas, and is not so big that one is way back in the stalls - plus one is home by teatime without having to give up an evening and getting back late! Ideal. 

I was intrigued to see this production as I also saw the original 1998 one with Liam Neeson as Oscar and Tom Hollander as Lord Alfred Douglas, or Bosie - ably played here by Freddie Fox, actor son of Edward. Rupert Everett commands the stage as Oscar and captures that florid quality perfectly from the moment he sweeps in in Act One to spending most of Act Two sitting in a chair. The rest of the cast are perfect too, and are kept quite busy on stage as well as dressing and undressing - in fact Tom Colley (below, left) as Bosie's Italian friend is naked practically throughout.

Ben Hardy, that other young actor (now in EASTENDERS) is also naked at the start, as the young waiter, which certainly makes the audience sit up! Rupert, so amusing the other week in a re-run of MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING captures Wilde at these 2 key moments dealt with in the play. We first see him holed up at the Cadogan Hotel in 1895 before being arrested, as everyone tries to persuase him to flee to Europe, and the thoroughly unpleasant Bosie goes into drama queen mode.  Act 2 is 2 years later in Italy in 1897 as the ruined - both his health and financially, after 2 years hard labour in jail - Wilde contemplates his downfall and realises how Bosie has betrayed him, as he will not give up his family allowance and prepares to leave Wilde once again. Oscar achieves pure pathos here. Below: Freddie as Bosie with Tom Colley as the Italian.

Wilde of course lived on to November 1900 when he died aged 46 - his major works (apart from "De Profundis" were completed by the time he was 40). Bosie lived on to be 74 and died in 1945 - a bitter Narcissus indeed. If only Oscar too could have lived to his seventies, he would have been a star of radio and film and been rehabilitated as the wit and commentator he was and he would have been earning royalties again. His great tomb with its "Modernist Angel” sculpture (right) by Jacob Epstein has been cleaned and restored to its former glory at Pere Lechaise cemetry in Paris (I have been to it twice) and is that famous cemetry's most visited resting place, along with Jim Morrison's... 

Liam & Tom in 1998

The roles of Wilde and Douglas here are hugh with lots of dialogue - I felt for the actors having to do it all again that evening ... it is an engrossing thought-provoking play. Oscar was so much more than the grandiloquent poseur he is often remembered as. His ideas and philosophy resonate today as strongly as they ever did and his work has stood the test of time, living on as so much more than mere entertainment. Over a century after his death he remains one of the great Irish writers, a playwright of genius as well as a thinker and proponent of ideas who transformed his age. Hare's play shows him as a man in the grip of a passion he could not resist, who could not see the amoral and unworthy wastrel that was his nemesis, and so he brings disaster on himself. One can see too that Oscar could not be discreet as others (Robbie, the hotel staff here including that enterprising young waiter played by Ben Hardy) but had to immolate himself on the alter of his grand passion. Hare's rounded portrait of Wilde captures all this expertly.

The story of his wife Constance too is utterly tragic (as shown in that excellent well-received recent biography on her); she died 2 years before Oscar - I remember reading in one of the Wilde books how he visited her grave (in Genoa) and pondered at the sadness and waste of it all. He was then that haunted impoverished (but hopefully happy) outcast in Paris in 1900 as the new century (which would surely have embraced him) began. Instead he, as the legend goes, turned to the wall of that Paris hotel room with the hideous wall-paper and said "one of us has to go". Of his two sons - he was a devoted father too - one of them died in the First World War. We will always though have the plays, the novel, the fairy tales, the aphorisms, the wit that so entranced his audiences and friends like Lily Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt and the rest. The story of Oscar: the talent, the rise and fall - as per the plethora of books about him and that era [the reckless "feasting with panthers", his indiscretions at London hotels and assignations with youths like Alfonso Conway in Worthing, which didn't go down well in court] will continue to fascinate - and what great actress doesn't want to have a go at Lady Bracknell or Miss Prism or Mrs Cheveley?

Other Wildes: I like Peter Finch's in the 1960 film - which I will be returning to before too long. The Robert Morley one, also 1960, was just not in the same league. The 1997 Stephen Fry one was also screened again recently and was of course more explicit than they could have been in 1960, with Fry rather lightweight I thought, but Jude Law a perfect Bosie and a great supporting cast. Peter Egan was an amusing Oscar too in the '70s series on Lily Langtry. The BBC boxset on Wilde productions is well worth discovering too with perfect 1970s productions of the plays (casts include Gielguld, Margaret Leighton, Jeremy Brett) and a documentary on the man himself. Rupert Everett is a great Oscar too and deserves to be remembered come theatre awards season..

Bedrooms, hallways ...

1999's BEDROOMS AND HALLWAYS is an amusing Indie rom-com about the diversity of human sexuality which particularly pokes fun at New Agers and estate agents and those love-lorn confused 30 year olds. The lead character Leo (Kevin McKidd) is just 30, and rather colourless, but sees himself as gay but has no-one special in his life, as he shares house with flamboyant Darren (Tom Hollander) and air stewardess Julie Graham, who both get plenty. But at Simon Callow's New Age New Man group, while handling "the stone of truth" he decides to declare that he finds fellow man Brendan attractive. Irish cafe owner Brendan (James Purefoy) would seem to be straight and is just out of a long relationship with Jennifer Ehle - who turns out to be an old friend of Leo's. Hugo Weaving (the one with the kid in PRISCILLA) plays a sex-obsessed real estate agent who uses his clients' houses for his trysts with the flaming Darren. Simon Callow (playing straight for once) and wife Harriet Walter both run their own groups (she is the author of a book called "The Obsolete Penis") and observe the foibles of the others .... The film does not attempt to mirror the predominant attitudes toward homosexuality and bisexuality, as most of the characters are quite accepting of each other's sexual diversity.

Leo soon finds Brendan is quite receptive to his attentions, to the jealously of the other guys, but does not yet realise old pal Jennifer is Brendan's ex... Are you getting all this? Do try to keep up .... There is also Leo's amusing dream, a send-up of a sexed up Jane Austen type tale where Purefoy in tight britches strides around whipping stable boys ....(several of the cast - Ehle, Purefoy, Walter - had of course appeared in Austen adaptations...).

Much hilarity ensues at the Men's away-weekend out in the woods, as Simon does not bring any food and they have to forage for berries and end up ordering a Chinese take-away... Meanwhile the estate agent handcuffs the up-for-it Darren to the bed at one of the houses he has the keys for, but the owner returns as Hugo flees and Darren has to pretend to be a S&M strippogram! Tom Hollander is deliciously funny here... surprisingly though the owner who returns turns out to be Jennifer.  Things get a bit more complicated but are nicely worked out as Leo discovers his hetero side with Jennifer, while Brendan makes a new conquest at the group ... Its one of those amusing gay-ish comedies rather like LAWLESS HEART (Hollander label), nicely directed by Rose Troche, of GO FISH.
You may not want to leave your house keys with an estate agent in future though ...

TV highlights

Some satisfying moments from this week's tv viewing: the return of REV - we loved the first series of this new BBC comedy with Tom Hollander as the inner-city priest, now we have the second series just starting and it promises to be just as good - particularly with Ralph Fiennes guesting in the first episode as the Bishop of London. Hilarious sauna scene! The series to be seen in then - and next week should be amusing when our put-upon vicar mistakenly takes ecstasy during church service!

And speaking of interesting guest stars: Jane Asher, elegant as ever [left, right] turns up in the otherwise routine school drama WATERLOO ROAD [while Liam Neeson was fun in the new Ricky Gervais series].

Below: Dan Stevens as Matthew Crawley has something to announce in DOWNTON ABBEY, which finished last week, as he has been getting a tingling in his legs and is no longer crippled or indeed impotent ! Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Countess Violet (Maggie Smith) will be pleased, just as the great 'flu epidemic of 1919 strikes ... two things about DOWNTON: the amount of commercial breaks was annoying, so I ended up recording it and then starting watching half an hour later, thus zapping out the adverts - the final episode was 90 minutes of which 67 was the actual programme! Roll on the dvd. Also the timeframe: the first series begins in 1912 with the sinking of the Titanic and ends with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, then series 2 takes us through to the end of the war and to 1919 - nobody looks any older but Matthew and Lady Mary have been mooning over each other for 7 years! Let's see what the two-hour Christmas special brings ...

Over at STICTLY COME DANCING (the UK's DANCING WITH THE STARS, but so much better) the best male celebrity dancer is Harry Judd from pop group McFly, who is sensational paired with Aliona Vilani - Watch out Jason and Kristina, Harry and Aliona's Argentine Tango is the one to beat. Their samba is sensational too! Holly and Artem's take on SWAN LAKE was also a favourite, let's hope he is back soon after his back injury, and one never tires of watching the professional dancers like Flavia and Vincent; looking forward to their Tango show in January! Flavia is a stunning woman - like Sophia she hails from Naples....

Then of course there is the latest from Sir David Attenborough, still going strong in his 80s: FROZEN PLANET is as superlative and jaw-dropping as one would expect. This is what one pays one's license fee for ... more amazing footage of animals in the Artic and Antartic wastes - that footage of the polar bears, and killer whales working in teams, and all those penguins .... nature in the raw indeed - fantastic stuff !

I don't bother much with cop shows, but its interesting catching up with LAW AND ORDER SPECIAL VICTIM UNIT from America, both the latest series and repeats of earlier - this is not mainstream viewing here so Meloni and Mariska [sometimes she looks so like her mother Jayne Mansfield] are not well known here; we have our own version, LAW AND ORDER: UK - the U.S. SVU also has some fascinating guest stars: Franco Nero recently as the diplomat accused of rape, a hilariously over the top Ann-Margret etc.

Bottom: a reminder of Tom Hollander in that hilarious scene from BEDROOMS AND HALLWAYS (1998) where he is blindfolded and tied to the bed as the owners of the house return ....