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I know Britain's vast pool of TV drama character actors re-appear all the time as different characters in various series, but personally I take the view that if an actor is distinctive and idiosyncratic, they should not appear in episodes of the same series or related ones such as, here, Morse and Lewis as different characters.

In this Lewis episode, Lewis decides to try having an allotment to grow vegetables, and the man he sees about it is Mr Cooper played by David Ryall. There is no connection between the character and the plot. I happen to have watched this episode (january 2011) the same evening, when both were shown one after the other on TV, as the Morse episode Driven To SDistraction, where the same actor appears, and meets Lewis as well as Morse, but there he is playing a totally different character. Given that the two series are based in Oxford. and other characters like Morse's boss reappear but are not in every episode, we should be able to expect that a familiar face is the same person, at least unless they are heavily disguised by makeup and different performances. Ryall was clearly only made up as "himself" and not asked to give anything but his usual performance of an Englishman his age.

Both pof these are the usual interesting episodes, separated by years, and the colourful backgrounds with a city full of people are done well in both with this exception. It is just a shame if even years later a distinctive face recurs like this but as a totally different person.

I began watching this series at season 1 out of curiosity --- and I often like legal mystery dramas. But this is so full of confusion, different parties, the main character (Patty) on the surface a good lawyer fighting for a just cause but underneath devious and manipulative, continually abusing her own juniors and deliberately setting up situations that set them against one another, not even a nice person because she has clearly totally alienated her own son, and not somebody I am interested in.

From the list of seasons and episodes here, given that it is not, unlike (say) Without A Trace, a series with a nice resolution of the mystery each episode, I am not prepared to get any more interested in the plot and, having just listened to 1:7 as I wrote this, am going to give it a miss from now on. So, Hollywood, if you want me to be a regular member of your audience for a TV series, just STOP trying to twist my arm with these perpetual-run series which are clearly designed to FORCE me to keep watching. I quit "Lost" after a couple of episodes after finding out from the web that it kept on going year after year with the mysteries piling up and any explanation of all that had been happening being postponed indefinitely.

Series like this are designed --- contrived --- to be addictive, and I refuse to get hooked.

Apart from that reason to stop watching the thing, when the producers and the writers are focused so much on keeping the mystery going, and adding more and more twists and turns to keep the audience hooked, they cease to be concerned to write credibly and the resulting shows stop being entertaining.

The people who make these should compare their efforts with something like the pinnacle of British drama series entertainment: Doctor Who. Leaving aside the fact that it is essentially SF and "Damages" isn't (though "Lost" and "Heroes" obviously are), that now has a new story in each episode (mostly), plenty of gentle humour along with the thrills and suspense -- something "Damages" "Lost" and "Heroes" totally lack) and is altogether infinitely better as a result.

In short, Damages is too badly damaged by its makers' cynically commercial motives, ends up looking like relentlessly aggressive lawyer-stuffed rubbish, and I shall not watch it any more.

The setting of this movie is the first encounter of the respective parents of an engaged couple; the premise is the expectation --- which is certainly realized --- that both bride and groom will be somewhat embarrassed by their parents' (chiefly their fathers') little ways.

Hoffman and de Niro do their best, I guess; they act their socks off trying to out-gross each other as the ghastly fathers apparently maximizing the embarrassment of their wives, their offspring, and each other. They do what they can with the setup and the screenplay, but this movie can only have been designed as cringe comedy --- there is no visible attempt at other kinds of humour --- and the result is all cringe, but no comedy.

My one note of praise and wonderment is for Bradley and Spencer Pickren who play Little Jack, the de Niro character's grandson, who has not yet learned to talk but who has an extensive language of signing with the hands to communicate with his family --- well, with his grandfather anyway. The performance of these toddlers is marvellous. The rest, including Streisand, do their best with an expensive backers' nightmare, a lead balloon.