grunsel

Having vaguely remembered these from clip shows with smug right-on celebrities tut tutting on 'How terrible we were back then' type thing. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about when they started to be sneaked onto the internet. I have to say I was astonished on how beautiful they looked and how lovely they sounded. These were incredibly slick productions for both even now or then and you can see everyone involved from cast, costume to cameras were giving it 110% to entertain.

Now to address the elephant in the room,it is probably fair to say that many forms of entertainment has its origins in something unpleasant, just as the 'whiteface' of a clown goes back to sick people with the plague..no white person looks like that if they are healthy, just as no black person looks like a minstrel in real life.

The older generation that watched these shows were enjoying a homage to Americana and British vaudeville that they remembered and people like Al Jolson that had given them comfort through very hard times. It was an escapement fantasy and thinking about the mockery of a race never came into it.

The first season came on in the afternoons in England and if you had just got in from an awful day at school it offered some sort of cosy sanctuary to be transported to a remote quiet town in Canada. Too young to have noticed production values you just accepted the images as they came. The pace was slow if I remember correctly but just right for a darkening winter's afternoon, and the caring, concerned, doctors Sam and 'wise old sage' Jack Albertson's characters represented were recognizable from real life of that time, but perhaps not today...Then the second season came and it had moved to the big city and called "Police Surgeon" it was now on steriods with flash,bang wallop titles and Dr. Locke was now some sort of 'Mannix' in a white coat, totally lost me as it was also now on late at night.

I was quite astonished how long ago this premiered, but the rerun was welcome as the mystery always remains. Nicely flowing drama but we must remember it is only a depiction of what might have happened and as a drama it makes you think, so it has done its job. I for one don't understand why he would choose to murder his wife in such a brutal fashion while his beloved children were around. I also don't understand why he had mistaken the nanny for his wife - one of a human's basic survival skills is identifying friend or foe in poor light as well as a woman's perfume etc. Also his wife being a 'lady' would she spend time in a kitchen?