McCallum

Thanks to the Shazam app, I was finally able to identify the gorgeous intro & closing music to McCallum. It's a song called Country Memories by Guy Fletcher & Rod Williams. I've spent hours trying to ID this instrumental & finally I found it.

The first couple of episodes were pretty good, but things went down hill from there. McCallum's personal life became the focus rather than being a background element. I wonder if they didn't change writers: the plots became implausible. The pacing was slow. They appear to have tried to stretch material that suited a one hr. show into 1.5 hrs. Midway through the second season we abandoned the show. My wife and I wouldn't recommend it. There is no way that this show deserves the high rating that it has on IMDB.

I love this series, my only complaint being the brevity of it. I would have liked to see more episodes with this fine ensemble cast, led by John Hannah. The opening credits with the beautiful aerial views of London are stunning. I was prompted to write this to correct what is misleading in the Trivia paragraph about this show. It most definitely is set in London and not my beloved Edinburgh.

The series is centered on Forensic Pathologist Dr Iain McCallum (John Hannah) who is a Scot working in London. He works on a team that is suitably quirky and dysfunctional but is also a very tight knit group. He drives a motorcycle, tangles with authority and has a somewhat tumultuous relationship life with his live-in girlfriend Joanna (Suzanna Hamilton). The stories are centered on criminal cases investigated by the Forensics and Pathology team working with the police.

The strengths of the series include a solid cast and some very interesting characters, of particular note is John Hannah probably best known for playing Jonathan in The Mummy and its sequels. The series also make very good use of the London locations, focusing mostly on the more rundown and disreputable areas. The morgue/forensics laboratory is appropriately dark and dingy, far removed from the hi-tech antiseptic look of most American procedurals.

The weaknesses as I see them seem to have to do with focus or direction of the series; it seems at times to want to concentrate on the cases and at other times on the character development and unfortunately for the most part it doesn't adequately service either. For me the cases also rely far too heavily on coincidence to connect McCallum closely with them. Less of a problem are the more typical complaints seen in procedurals, McCallum is involved in a great many criminal investigations and the police with whom he works seem to be constantly one step behind our hero.

One minor quibble in that some of the incidental music does not appear to be original, some of it sounds distinctly like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The series ran for nine episodes over two seasons

I love this (all too short) series. I also enjoyed John Hannah in the few episodes he did of the 'Rebus' series. He was a probably a bit too young for that role ( I expected an older heavier kind of presence, one with more 'rough gravitas'). No matter, I really enjoy all his work, and that universally admired Scots accent is a big contributing factor. It's interesting that this is a role that has as the main characters a Scot(John Hannah) and and Irish lady (Zara Turner),with the whole show set in London! I suspect that the accents add a great of appeal to the show (and probably prompt a good deal of rewinding of some scenes to catch the meaning for many North Americans). This note is actually a query,because the opening theme music is a lovely guitar sequence, but I can't find out any more than that except that the music appears to be written by 'Daemion Barry'. Yes, but who played the theme tune? It's very evocative of an Eric Clapton style, but I'd love to find the actual recording of this tune. Any info welcome.