National Treasure (Channel 4, Tuesdays 9pm)

[Dr Rock]

I think it will be like that Harrison Ford film, and it will turn out the wife did it.

I want to double my bet on this - he's not like Savile, the pair of them are like Fred & Rose West.

[Malcy]

Julie Walters is a great actress but her accent is all over the place in this. She can't seem to decide on Scottish, Northern Irish or English.

[Dr Rock]

Julie Walters is a great actress but her accent is all over the place in this. She can't seem to decide on Scottish, Northern Irish or English.

I was just thinking that too.

[Dr Rock]

The real villain is their colour-blind interior designer.

[Dr Rock]

That was bloody awful. From the horrible vivid chroma-colouring to the acting to the padding. I envy the dead daughter now.

[Rev]

It's a rum bugger this, because it's opaque to the extent that you can't really speculate about anything.  What was any of that about?  There were maybe two or three scenes that advanced the story, but the rest were clearly meant to be understood later.  A bit of mystery is fine, but they've got their portions wrong.

[Jockice]

I know what you mean, but the casting of Coltrane works in its favour. Everyone loves him, so you instinctively want to believe his character is innocent. It's akin to when we first heard the news about Rolf Harris. What? No! Not cuddly Rolf!

I half-watched the first episode of this then totally forgot it was on, Is it worth catching up with? I'm a bit puzzled about the 'everybody loves Coltrane bit' though. I thought he was generally considered a fine actor but otherwise a right pain in the arse and very unpleasant to his fans.

[Shaky]

I think it will be like that Harrison Ford film, and it will turn out the wife did it they're all Amish.

[KennyMonster]

I think it will be like that Harrison Ford film, and it will turn out the wife did it.

That'd explain Julie Walters' accent being all over the place, she's obviously playing the Chewbacca character.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

That was bloody awful. From the horrible vivid chroma-colouring to the acting to the padding. I envy the dead daughter now.

Andrea Riseborough is giving it far too much of the "I'M MAD, DO YOU SEE?!" theatrics, but apart from her I don't see what's wrong with the acting in this. Coltrane and Walters are excellent.

I was perturbed by Walters' accent at first - is she Scottish, is she Irish? - but I now appreciate that she's deliberately doing a mixture of both. Her character is of Irish stock, but she's spent most of her adult life in Scotland.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I half-watched the first episode of this then totally forgot it was on, Is it worth catching up with? I'm a bit puzzled about the 'everybody loves Coltrane bit' though. I thought he was generally considered a fine actor but otherwise a right pain in the arse and very unpleasant to his fans.

"Everybody" loves Coltrane as an actor, but I don't think anyone has ever made any claims about him being a charming cove in real life.

[daf]

[Norton Canes]

Why was the shot of the car crashing into the living room shown in reverse during the credits? Did they not think it was enough just to roll the titles over a freeze-frame? Was it a little treat for us, for having sat through the previous 57½  minutes?

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I kept waiting for the woman who lived in the house to come in and shake her fist, Beano-style. They missed a trick there.

[Icehaven]

No idea if the daughter is actually dead or not but seeing as she's had ''ALLTHIS SHIT WITH MY DAD WILL DRIVE ME TO SUICIDE, OR AT LEAST AN ATTEMPT'' stamped on her head since the first minute of her first scene, any attempted shock value of yesterday's ending was nonexistent.

[Dr Rock]

She shouldn't be dead because I find it hard to believe she could have made more than 30 miles an hour and the airbag should've gone off too. George Michael would have shrugged it off.

[studpuppet]

I've been round the houses and come up with Lennie Bennett and Jerry Stevens. Not old guard, not alternative, and Lennie made the jump to Punchlines and Lucky Ladders. Boom - discussion over.

[studpuppet]

I have to say that the best thing about this is that my wife and I have different ideas about whether he's going to end up being guilty or not[nb]Mind you, we also have different ideas about whether the babysitter's house is a monstrosity, or a glorious seventies Tracy Island-style architectural tour de force...[/nb] (maybe down to our genders, maybe not), which proves that the writing is treading the tightrope very well.

[Dr Rock]

The over-acting copper at the end suggests that Finchley is innocent of some accusations because his wife would've had the car, right? So she is in on it, like I said.

[Serge]

Andrea Riseborough is giving it far too much of the "I'M MAD, DO YOU SEE?!" theatrics, but apart from her I don't see what's wrong with the acting in this. Coltrane and Walters are excellent.

There was far too much Riseborough in last night's episode - and she was out-acted by the kid playing the teenage version of her character. Her performance in the scene where she was being questioned by the cop put me in mind of Martin Freeman's impression of Johnny Rotten in that Comic Relief Blankety Blank sketch with all its mugging and twitching. Coltrane, Walters and McInnerney are all great. I spent the whole episode trying to spot Lucy Speed after seeing her name in the opening credits, only to find she played the young version of Julie Walters' character, so literally in one scene and out of focus!

Call me Mr Dim, but who was the guy that Coltrane started to run after in the street when he fell over?

I love the music, which I was convinced was by Remember Remember or some such similar post rock-inclined bunch, but is actually by some dude called Cristobal Tapia de Veer.

[Dr Rock]

Call me Mr Dim, but who was the guy that Coltrane started to run after in the street when he fell over?

His younger self, apparently.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

I was perturbed by Walters' accent at first - is she Scottish, is she Irish? - but I now appreciate that she's deliberately doing a mixture of both. Her character is of Irish stock, but she's spent most of her adult life in Scotland.

The same being true of Coltrane's character (he states in the first episode that he was born in Ireland, IIRC), how on earth does a Scots-Irishman acquire a surname like Finchley?  I see this as the main issue that needs to be addressed in this programme, and to really up the ante in terms of pedantry on this thread.

Walters' accent is all over the place, though.  Distracting.  The young Finchley did not a bad accent though.  Apparently the actor is a Welsh, so fair play, I'd have taken him for a middle-class western Scot.

[Jockice]

The same being true of Coltrane's character (he states in the first episode that he was born in Ireland, IIRC), how on earth does a Scots-Irishman acquire a surname like Finchley?  I see this as the main issue that needs to be addressed in this programme, and to really up the ante in terms of pedantry on this thread.

Walters' accent is all over the place, though.  Distracting.  The young Finchley did not a bad accent though.  Apparently the actor is a Welsh, so fair play, I'd have taken him for a middle-class western Scot.

Might be a stage name. Although Eric Morecambe was actually from there.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

Good point.  I can see a Mr Finchley being big in the 70s - it's got a whiff of On the Buses or Are You Being Served about it.

However, the wife and daughter are credited as Finchleys too, so this remains a deeply troubling anomaly.  Not sure I'm going to sleep tonight now.  I'm going to have to convince myself it's a stage name somehow.

[Icehaven]

Good point.  I can see a Mr Finchley being big in the 70s - it's got a whiff of On the Buses or Are You Being Served about it.

But he was supposed to have been big in the late 1980s-90s.

[Icehaven]

The over-acting copper at the end suggests that Finchley is innocent of some accusations because his wife would've had the car, right? So she is in on it, like I said.

Wasn't it that either a parking or speeding ticket was issued to her and that car on those dates in the area she'd gone away to?

[Icehaven]

[nb]Mind you, we also have different ideas about whether the babysitter's house is a monstrosity, or a glorious seventies Tracy Island-style architectural tour de force...[/nb] (maybe down to our genders, maybe not), which proves that the writing is treading the tightrope very well.

The Instagrammy over saturation on her house but and almost no other scenes added to the 70's feel to it, and doesn't even make sense if they're trying to invoke the era when he attacked her because it was supposed to have happened in the 90s. I think the programme itself has probably intentionally laid a fair few psychological anachronisms because we all still largely associate showbiz pervs with the 70s, but he'd have to be 20 years older than he is for that to have been his heyday. 

[neardark]

What was that over saturation about? Turned this shite off 19 minutes into the second episode.

[Dr Rock]

Wasn't it that either a parking or speeding ticket was issued to her and that car on those dates in the area she'd gone away to?

I may have misunderstood. But she could still be in on abuse in some way. But I  think this probably isn't going to reveal they are both swingers al al The Krankies-cum-murderers a la Fred & Rose West, because its remit is to reflect YewTree not have a twist in the end like that, which wouldn't tie in to any of the real life cases. But I'll stick with the theory for now, I've imagined a reveal where Julie Waters is a sick pervert all lit in green and blue with all lens flares, and I bet that's better than whatever we get.

[shiftwork2]

The 70s proto-home just had a drive-through wall fixed to the front aspect.  They were all the rage once along with prawn cocktails on hostess trolleys.

I'm enjoying this however it's spoilt by knowing it has to end on an unresolved note.