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The haunting melancholy of Bergerac - a study of loss through nostalgia

Started by BlodwynPig, November 11, 2017, 04:45:05 PM

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BlodwynPig

Can't agree, Dudgeon and his sidekick really made me interested in MM - the overwhelming nostalgia and emotion I get from Bergerac trickled into Dudgeon's Midsomer. More of a 90s nostalgia vibe though. Razor sharp and keening.

BlodwynPig


monkfromhavana


BlodwynPig


mothman

Perhaps if you write him and ask nicely. Or does the restraining order forbid that, too?

BlodwynPig

Quote from: mothman on February 10, 2019, 07:16:47 PM
Perhaps if you write him and ask nicely. Or does the restraining order forbid that, too?

I dont fancy him. In fact i reckon Nettles was the only poor thing in Bergerac - for the most part - the score, scripts, cameos and most of the recurring cast were phenomenal in comparison.

The show could have been called "Bergerac...getting in the way of joyous tears"

biggytitbo


BlodwynPig

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 10, 2019, 10:25:55 PM
What would they call Bergerac is there was no Bergerac? " "?

Charlie's Engels.

Debbie Does Fliquet.

Susan's Homes Under the Hammer.

biggytitbo

It'd be good though without Jim, stuff would just happen and probably end up getting sorted out one way or another anyway.




BlodwynPig

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 10, 2019, 10:57:20 PM
It'd be good though without Jim, stuff would just happen and probably end up getting sorted out one way or another anyway.

I reckon, life on the island would be pretty calm, dodgy international criminals getting on with their business, petty local criminals turning up dead but. assumed misadventure, ghosts haunting empty places, no grief for Charlie, no frustration for Debs or Susan, Francine rising to prominence at the local tourist board.

A gap that. could be filled by Cluefarter? The chief will through in a private yacht for accommodation.

mothman


monkfromhavana

Quote from: mothman on February 10, 2019, 07:16:47 PM
Perhaps if you write him and ask nicely. Or does the restraining order forbid that, too?

Yep, my girlfriend did it as a joke (I think) for my birthday. I have to maintain a jokey relationship with it, even though I'm secretly a bit chuffed.

BlodwynPig

What!? Thats yours!? Youve ... had contact!

Going to email him

mothman


BlodwynPig


vandiss

Nice to find somewhere with like-minded individuals!

I've been on a Bergerac binge myself for the last few weeks. Started off as a random selection from the second series - the Imrie era. Got sucked in and ended up watching every episode from that year before going back to the first and then forward again.

Now on series four, so still a while away from the chintzy theme tune transition.

For me part of the reason I love the series is the nostalgic setting, the ferry scenes bring back memories family holidays from the early '80s. The occasional blast of pop music helps, too.

Last episode I've watched is the one with a young Michelle Collins where Jim proves he's not the brightest cop in the land (if not island) by pretty much forcing two middle-aged crime victims into vigilantism by blatantly ignoring their evidence. He really can be fist-chewingly stupid at times...

It's amazing in an age before mobile phones that the secretary is able to track Jim down and place a landline call to wherever he is at a certain time, be it a hospital or a country house!

Passing through the seasons, it's a pleasure to spot a past or present star and be able to easily check them out on IMDB or whatever.

One such person was Alan Lake, who struck me as being someone with a presence about him, so I wondered why he'd disappeared off our screens. Turns out in reality he was the husband of Diana Dors and killed himself the next year a few months after Dors had died of cancer. He did have quite a melancholic expression, even at the time of filming...



Norton Canes


gilbertharding

Quote from: vandiss on June 10, 2019, 11:23:55 AM
It's amazing in an age before mobile phones that the secretary is able to track Jim down and place a landline call to wherever he is at a certain time, be it a hospital or a country house!

That, for me, will become the unspoken mystery at the heart of most drama set in the 20th Century.

BlodwynPig

Excellent post Vandiss. We should hold a Bergerac "conference", although I suspect the Island will hold none of the nostalgia nowadays, with its internet (mind you, the computer episode was one of my favourites) and Greggs on every corner.

I too enjoyed reading up on the supporting cast after every episode and Alan Lake was a particularly tragic tale.

Glebe

This thread has inspired one of my posts in the trivial comedy observations thread, which I'll quote here:

QuoteThe Bergerac thread has jogged my memory about something... I've had to do a bit of Wiki/IMDb searching to find his name (and the titles of some of the TV episodes he was in), but the actor John Bennett, who appears as a nazi hunter in the episode 'The Sin of Forgiveness' (which I just caught again on the Drama channel or summit recently), plays the doctor in that classic Porridge scene with the urine sample gag from 'New Faces, Old Hands' ("Can you fill that up for me?" "What, from here?") that Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais reused when they did some script work on Never Say Never Again, apparently.  I also recall him from Blake's 7 episode 'Weapon', in which his character wears a big, silly Ming the Merciless-like collar. And according to Wiki, he later appeared in Spielberg's Minority Report!

monkfromhavana

Quote from: monkfromhavana on December 01, 2017, 07:29:56 AM
Episode 10-  Poor Jim, Francine getting uppity because Jim won't hold her hand whilst he accompanies a prisoner so she plays away with some fat bloke. "He is being a peasant".

Jim still takes her back, but inside he knows it's over.


Have some self-recocking-spect, Jim.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: monkfromhavana on August 20, 2020, 10:27:06 PM
Have some self-recocking-spect, Jim.

what spurred you to post this?

ps. this thread has now embedded itself in the pantheon of Blodwyn Melancholy. So... so... long ago. Time drips through my fingers like the burning tears of my mortality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-fXyCSSAas

monkfromhavana

Quote from: BlodwynPig on August 21, 2020, 09:02:38 AM
what spurred you to post this?

ps. this thread has now embedded itself in the pantheon of Blodwyn Melancholy. So... so... long ago. Time drips through my fingers like the burning tears of my mortality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-fXyCSSAas

Been a bit bored during the long, long, lockdown evenings and have decided to power through them (having only got a couple of episodes into series two last year). Thought I'd post a quick message  up, like a flare rocketing up through the thick Jersey night air, to let fellow travellers know that someone, somewhere, is keeping Jim company through the eternal heartbreaks.

BlodwynPig

Oh, it might be a good time then to join you...but I'll be back to S1E1. Can't go cherry picking episodes.

monkfromhavana

Quote from: BlodwynPig on August 21, 2020, 01:20:41 PM
Oh, it might be a good time then to join you...but I'll be back to S1E1. Can't go cherry picking episodes.

I don't mind raking over the earlier episodes again, Jim in his pomp.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: monkfromhavana on August 21, 2020, 01:55:42 PM
I don't mind raking over the earlier episodes again, Jim in his pomp.

Any stand out episodes, moments or guest appearances? I think there is really no dip across all series, but certainly a change in tone in the latter years that Jimheads may find distasteful. Are you a Jimhead or a Crozierhead? I think Jim really is often a bit part player and the female leads nearly always steal the show.

monkfromhavana

Quote from: BlodwynPig on August 21, 2020, 02:00:11 PM
Any stand out episodes, moments or guest appearances? I think there is really no dip across all series, but certainly a change in tone in the latter years that Jimheads may find distasteful. Are you a Jimhead or a Crozierhead? I think Jim really is often a bit part player and the female leads nearly always steal the show.

I want to join Crozier's model aeroplane club and sit in his lounge staring at the pictures of planes Blu Tacked to the walls that are clearly cut out from FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL magazine and drinking his brandy from glasses that haven't been rinsed properly and still have a slight Fairy Liquid tang. The eternal teenage boy.

Series one has very few duffers, maybe the Warren Clarke episode where the twist was evident about 3 seconds after the opening credits had finished.

Everything after series two is going to be fresh for me, as I think I've only seen bits and bobs.

BlodwynPig

Well I'm kind of willing you on to reach Bergerac Nirvana. I hope you reach that place, a place of melancholic beauty so irresistible you will never come down again.

Some highlights to whet the appetite: The Christmas horror specials - culminating in the classic "Fires in the Fall"

The one where Jim goes to London and descends into A-grade Cinema Noir. Deborah is particularly magnetic in this one.

The one about the computers. Oddly ahead of its time and doesn't dumb down this "new technology" for the pleb audience.

The one with Norman Wisdom. A stone cold classic. Wisdom in his best role, playing it largely straight with a few gags thrown in that drop like morbid lead balloons. It's a heart wrenching episode that plays almost like a stand-alone teleplay of yore with Wisdom the desolate focus.


Norton Canes

And as if that wasn't enough, the flurry of Bergerac-based interest continues with a TV Cream retrospective in their latest mailout