istara

This is a beautifully acted series following an unlikely pair of friends in the later years of their lives.

Billy (Michael Williams) is a washed up, alcoholic comedian making a new start, from a Northern working class background. Ted (Russ Abbot) is a more educated, professional man, a teacher, who has spent the past decade caring for his ill wife. When she dies, he sets off on a whim with Billy - a man he knows from the local pub - for Blackpool, where Billy has a new gig as a nightclub compere.

Each series has a different setting. The first is the grimy strip club of Blackpool, where Billy has to finally confront his lifestyle and health issues, and Ted falls in love and has to suffer heartbreak again.

The second series is set in Greece, with some lovely location shoots, where the men's friendship continues to develop and Ted reconnects with an old flame.

The third series takes us to the British seaside once again, and has more the flavour and plot of the first series. Billy has a job at a pier theatre and finally reconnects with his estranged family. Ted becomes increasingly involved with the theatre world and finds himself a new life and sense of purpose. It's reminiscent of The Good Companions but with a more open ending: the two men, their solid friendship, and a sense of hope in their September years.

Definitely give this a watch if you're able to find it.

This is a great premise - particularly the puzzle solving aspect - but it's a pretty dark thriller of a show, scarcely lightened by a few black comedy elements.

Most of the deaths/murders are tragic and certainly not played for laughs. Much of it is quite bleak - the scene with Paul Chahidi (the vicar from This Country) confessing is particularly harrowing. I was reminded of the darker moments of the Joan Hickson Marple series in terms of tone.

The best aspect is David Mitchell's character playing a sort of geek-Poirot role and solving various murders through logic puzzle techniques. Some reviewers have compared his character/performance to Mark in Peep Show but he's more like Mark's beardy bachelor uncle. Anna Maxwell Martin is also great as his sister-in-law.

To say that this is not a faithful adaptation of They Came to Baghdad would be the understatement of the century.

It has most of the characters and some of the plot. The problem is the framing of it all. You can see how the producers would struggle to fit a novel like They Came to Baghdad into under an hour.

The problem is that all the charm and fun of They Came to Baghdad is lost. There's no mystery regarding who is the hero, who is the villain - a key aspect of the book. Victoria Jones' character is very much changed. The exotic settings aren't there.

It does get better - the first scene with Anna Scheele buying tartan cloth is confusing and awful. Once we're in Baghdad things are more familiar.

I don't know if anyone will ever bring a faithful adaptation of They Came to Baghdad to the screen. It might be too difficult to adapt script-wise, it might not be commercially viable. But it's something that would be fascinating to see. Maybe GenAI will make it a possibility one day.

For now, we have this. And thankfully, we still have the wonderful book it's loosely based on.