basl

This t.v. show was one of the best. (The casting was excellent, with Margaret Whitten as the wise cracking New Yorker, Christopher Cazenove as the quiet Cambridge history professor, Ernie Sabella as the self aggrandizing producer, Dinah Lenny as the good natured girl Friday, and Kevin Moore as the sweet though simple British writer) This show never actually cannibalized, although some may have accused them of doing so. The original pilot was filmed with Anthony Andrews playing Michael Trent. He could not do the part when it was signed on as a weekly show. (This pilot was never shown in the U.S.) But when they signed on Christopher Cazenove to play Michael (a happy circumstance), they re-filmed the original pilot, nearly word for word, using Paris instead of Rome as the background city. For everyone in the U.S., this was the first show to be aired, and no one even knew about the Anthony Andrews part. Those in Europe probably did see both, but it was more a necessity to re-film the pilot with all the players than an attempt to cannibalize it. This television show was like a mini-movie every week, beautifully filmed on location, (2 in France, 2 in Ireland, 2 in Malta, 2 in Budapest, 2 in England, 2 in the U.S., and the original pilot in Rome made 13 episodes) with puns and quotes from old movies abounding. Louisa always seemed to be in the middle of a predicament, and often she had no idea how she got into it. Michael usually had to rescue her. There always seemed to be several story lines going on at once, and at the end of the show they would all converge-accompanied by classical pieces such as the "Flight of the Bumblebee" or the "William Tell Overture" playing gaily as the characters were running around trying to sort out whatever problem was going on. This show made me laugh, even when I was watching my video tapes for the tenth or twelfth time. I looked forward to it every week. When it was canceled I was devastated. It was funny, intelligent, and entertaining, although towards the end the story lines did lose some of their edge. Still, it remained professional to the end.