Edward the Seventh

This historical drama series was not made, as you might expect, by the BBC, but by ATV (who also made Sapphire & Steel) for showing on the ITV channel. It was first broadcast in 1975, although the copyright notice at the end of each episode implies it was made in 1973, which puts it either side of the broadcast of the BBC's Fall of Eagles.

While superficially similar series, and certainly there is a great deal of overlap in terms of the time period covered and the characters who appear, Edward the Seventh is generally lighter on dramatic incidents than Fall of Eagles - there is certainly nothing so shocking as the events of Requiem for a Crown Prince to be found here.

Edward the Seventh's strengths are to be found in showing us the functioning of international diplomacy and soft power between countries where the royal families were all related to one another by blood, marriage, or both, and also the influence the senior royals had upon the British governments throughout that period, despite supposedly being "politically neutral." It would therefore be fair to describe this series as interesting rather than thrilling, and it gives the lie to the idea that series made for commercial television are inherently more sensationalist (or lowbrow) than those made for public broadcasters.

The main character is Albert Edward, known as "Bertie" while he is the Prince of Wales (for 10 out of the 13 episodes) and Edward vii once he becomes king, and the series runs from his birth through to his death. As an adult he is played by Timothy West, although the first four parts concentrate on his childhood, where the main character is Prince Albert (Robert Hardy, once again proving that he was the prince consort king of historical dramas). Albert is shown as being an absolute cunt to his young son, and when you're watching this I expect that, like me, you'll think that his early death in 1861 (or at the end of episode four) can't come soon enough.

Queen Victoria (Annette Crosbie, if you can believe it) then dominates the series until she finally kicks the bucket at the end of part 10, and the middle of the series is about how Bertie, the heir to the throne, spends his time while he is being kept away from any real power by his mother.

The acting here is as good as in any other historical drama series I have seen (well... maybe not quite I Claudius levels) and we see various prime ministers of the era being played by distinguished actors, including Andre "Quatermass" Morell as Lord Palmerston, John Gielgud as Disraeli, Michael "Gandalf" Hordern as Gladstone, and Richard "Slartibartfast" Vernon as Lord Salisbury.

Kaiser Wilhelm (Christopher "Skagra" Neame, fresh from Colditz), is both Bertie's nephew and the closest thing the series has to an antagonist, what with the shadow of the first world war looming ever closer. However it is a storyline whose climax we never reach because the series concludes with the death of King Edward in 1910. We must therefore look to Fall of Eagles to see how Wilhelm's story ends (the clue is in the name).

The two series thus complement each other very well, with this showing the British side of some of the same events that Fall of Eagles shows from points of view on the continent. Some characters overlap, but are played with significant differences - most notably the kaiser, who Neame plays as an aloof and overbearing autocrat, because in Edward the Seventh he is an outsider and so we see only his public persona as perceived by the British royals, while Barry Foster's Wilhelm showed us the private manny.

Other characters in both series include Tsar Nicholas, here played by Michael "Paul Foster" Billington (not long after he was in UFO) in a big beard, and the kaiser's parents Fritz (Michael "not Jayston" Byrne) and Vicky (Felicity Kendall), who have a more substantial role here due to Vicky being Bertie's eldest sister.

The best episode of Edward the Seventh is part nine, Scandal, in which two scandals befall Bertie one after the other, neither of which are really his fault except through his poor choice of friends. The first concerns Colonel Gordon-Cumming (Donald "Major Grenlee in Rumours of Death" Douglas), caught cheating at cards while a guest of Bertie's (I guess some days really are better than others, mew), and then the second is Blake himself, Gareth Thomas as Lord Beresford, Bertie's former friend who threatens to beat him up, despite his status as heir apparent, for saying Avon is the best character siding against him in his own marital scandal.

(Also seen here is Peter "Saruman" Howell as Bertie's private secretary Francis Knollys.)

This episode also sees the death of Bertie's eldest son Edward, played by a very young Charles Dance. Edward dies of an illness, like several other main characters over the course of the series (eventually including the title character himself), and these deaths are inevitably accompanied by scenes of the family gathered around their loved one's bedside and waiting for them to get one last bit of acting in as they make a final speech.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Six: Fusion

This episode has the unenviable task of following on from the magnificent ending to Northmoor. It is therefore something of a disappointment that it cheats by skipping forward an unknown amount of time, with us rejoining Ronnie when he is already away from Northmoor, with the precise means of his escape never gone into.

Fusion starts with Pendleton visiting Ronnie in hopistal. He is very sick, but he is able to tell Pendleton everything that happened in the previous episode - a clever way of giving us a recap, although it avoids telling us about Ronnie's escape because, we have to assume, Pendleton already knows about that even if we don't.

After Pendleton has gone, Ronnie sees Emma's ghost, who is for some reason in disguise as a nurse (which is a bit Singing Detective if you ask me). She gives Ronnie a black flower, although she won't explain its significance until later.

Jedburgh is in Scotland, just like he told Ronnie he would be, and is playing golf because he loves golf, although he is also sick. He goes back to the guest house he is staying at where Mrs Girvan calls him "Mr Jedburgh" to rhyme with Edinburgh, lol, which annoys him because he thinks his name rhymes with Pittsburgh.

Jedburgh puts on his colonel's uniform and goes to a conference ("the second NATO conference on directed energy weapons") where he is greeted by Colonel Lawson (David "Gan" Jackson" - only the second actor from Blakes 7 to appear in Edge of Darkness, presumably Paul Darrow was busy being in Timelash when they were making this) as a guest of honour. Bennett is also there, and he telephones Pendleton to tell him where Jedburgh is and ask what he is going to do about it.

Harcourt meets with the Minister (Jeremy Child, not to be confused with Bennett's henchmanny Childs), who tells him he knew about the secret goings-on at Northmoor all the time and is on their side, so no prizes for guessing which character in The Green Death he is the equivalent of. The only difference being that in The Green Death the Minister's allegiance is revealed early on, whereas here it is saved for a final episode twist. Pendleton interrupts them to say

"Jedburgh's at Gleneagles, and he's not playing golf."

Grogan arrives at the conference by helicopter and ends up sitting just a couple of seats along from Jedburgh, so they have to pretend to be friendly in front of all the witnesses... for now. Grogan makes a speech to the conference where he announces that he has been allowed to take over IIF, which makes him and Bennett happy, and all the other mannys too it would seem, because they give him a round of applause - although this is the kind of conference where just about anything will get applause, so maybe we can't judge too much from that?

The rest of his speech is about his company developing Fusion Power, which is pretty impressive because that's a level 6 technology in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. He says

"When we have done so we can say, for the first time in the history of the planet, Man will be in charge."

You can tell he is a baddy because obviously cats should stay in charge. Naturally this gets more applause from the audience, because they're all mannys. Only Jedburgh looks unhappy.

Ronnie is following Jedburgh to Scotland, where the action is. He stops for a conversation with Emma.

Ronnie: "I still don't understand."

Emma: "Dad, it's happened before, you know. Millions of years ago, when the Earth was cold it looked as if life on the planet would cease to exist. But black flowers began to grow, multiplying across its face until the entire landscape was covered in blooms. Slowly the blackness of the flowers sucked in the heat of the sun and life began to evolve again. That is the power of Gaia."

Ronnie: "It'll take more than a black flower to save us this time."

Emma: "This time when it comes it will melt the polar ice cap. Millions will die. The planet will protect itself, it's important to realise that. If Man is the enemy it will destroy him."

This dialogue, quietly taking place between father and daughter in the open countryside beside trees and a river, is contrasted against Grogan's grand speech in front of the assembled military mannys. Both have very different visions for the future of "Man."

A mysterious manny has also been following Jedburgh, and he arrives at the conference where he is met by Bennett. Grogan is still making his speech, and is getting still more applause from the mannys - they're really excited and it ends with him getting a standing ovation. This is then contrasted (in a different way) with Jedburgh's speech that follows, which is watched in silence at first and then, when he reveals he has some of the stolen plutonium with him, the audience starts to flee the room. Jedburgh carries on with his speech throughout the scenes of panic:

"Two bars of weapons-grade plutonium. I stole this stuff, on orders, straight out of Jerry's latest acquisition. Plenty of people have died for this stuff... including me. All I have to do is bring these bars together, we'll have a criticality..."

"400 rads, ladies and gentlemen, a lethal dose for anyone within a radius of 10 yards. Get it while it's hot!"

Grogan stands but he doesn't run away, so Jedburgh causes the criticality flash right in front of Grogan's face. Grogan staggers away, and Jedburgh finishes his speech to an empty room.

The scene changes to later on, when the Minister meets with Grogan and Bennett. They say that Jedburgh has used "20 kilos" of plutonium to make a bomb, enough "to dispose of the east coast of Scotland." Oh noes! That's where I live! Where will I keep my Blakes 7 DVDs if it gets blowed up? It seems as though Jedburgh has turned into a baddy (perhaps he is Mike Yates after all?) and they need Ronnie to stop him.

Ronnie investigates Jedburgh's golf club, where he finds a Harrods bag and a box labelled with "Mrs Girvan's Guest House," both clues left by Jedburgh for him to find.

Pendleton and Harcourt spot the mysterious manny. Pendleton recognises him as "Nallers" and says

"He's rumoured to be the state executioner."

Ronnie finds Jedburgh and they have a talk.

Ronnie: "Do you know what Harcourt told me last night? Grogan had reached the conclusion that the inquiry would stop the takeover, so he decided to get the plutonium another way, and he thought of you. Who would walk into a cave full of radiation? You would, given the right scenario. All he had to do was make a call to Washington and make sure they fed you the right orders. They didn't just betray you, they made a fool of you."

Jedburgh: "No shit, Sherlock. Think I didn't figure that out?"

Jedburgh admits to Ronnie that he turned the plutonium into a bomb capable of causing "a nuclear explosion," which we already knew, but he also admits he has decided against setting it off, which we didn't. He claims this is because he doesn't want to blow up the golf courses - finally golf is good for something, mew. He gives the "plutonium bullet" that would set the bomb off to Ronnie, who doesn't want it either.

Ronnie telephones Pendleton to tell him where Jedburgh hid the plutonium, and then he and Jedburgh get drunk and sing The Time of the Preacher together.

Just as when they first discussed it back in part two, they both recognise the parallels between the manny in the song and Ronnie. But since then Ronnie has been on an internal journey as well as the more obvious external one, and has finally made his peace with Emma, and reached acceptance of all that has happened to her, and to him. It was necessary for him to follow her path for him to see her point of view, even though it doomed him just the same. In conversation with Jedburgh, Ronnie tells him (and us) the conclusions he has reached:

"I am no longer seeking vengeance."

They discuss Gaia, and Jedburgh says that

"Man will always win against nature."

"I think you're wrong."

is Ronnie's reply, and he tells Jedburgh about Emma and the black flowers. Jedburgh claims to have seen the black flowers in Afghanistan, but he still doesn't believe they will win against "Man." Ronnie again replies

"I think you're wrong. And if there is a battle between the planet and mankind, the planet will win."

Dramatic incidental music starts as mannys descend upon the house, led by Nallers. Ronnie and Jedburgh hear them running about, and both know what they're here for. Jedburgh wants to fight back so he takes his gun and turns off the lights. This has the effect of making the ensuing fight scene a lot more atmospheric and dramatic, because we only catch glimpses of the action, and this forces our imagination to fill in the blanks.

Jedburgh shoots several of the baddys even though he is sick, before Nallers shoots him and he goes

It is pretty obvious that Jedburgh let Nallers shoot him because it was a quicker way to die than from the radiation sickness. Ronnie also wants them to shoot him, but they won't because, as Nallers tells him,

"You're on our side."

Ronnie is left alone, and he defiantly shouts out

"I am not on your side!"

The final scene shows Harcourt and Pendleton watching Grogan recovering the plutonium (now his plutonium) from the loch where Jedburgh hid it. It might look as though Grogan has won in the end, but we see signs that he is sick, thanks to Jedburgh's actions at the conference, and therefore is as doomed as Ronnie and Jedburgh.

Craven is also there, watching from a distance, and remains behind when all the others depart. He shouts

"Emma!"

and the camera jump-cuts away from him, like the ending of Blake in reverse or, given that Charles Kay played such a major role in this series, like the final scene of the Tsar in Fall of Eagles.

That would appear to be the end, except... we see a shot of the cold mountainside, where the black flowers are growing after all.

What's so good about Edge of Darkness?

Edge of Darkness begins in the style of a simple whodunnit, before blooming into an epic tale about good versus evil in which, unusually, mannys are portrayed as being on the side of evil. There are multiple layers to the storytelling - a murder-mystery, a spy drama, a political thriller, an environmental warning, and one manny's voyage of self-discovery - all of which succeed on their own terms.

There is nothing else quite like Edge of Darkness. Not even its own film remake, which is nowhere near as subtle, or as layered, or as good.

The nearest equivalent that I know of is the Doctor Who story The Green Death, which has several points of comparison with Edge of Darkness. Most obviously they both contain villainous corporations (Global Chemicals and International Irradiated Fuels - quite similar names when you think about it) whose toxic product is being stored secretly in a supposedly secure location, but which nevertheless causes the deaths of curious mannys, prompting an investigation by the protagonists.

This gives both stories a strong environmental theme, since the proximate cause of both plots is the companies putting their manny-made pollutants before the safety of the environment and other mannys, all for the sake of profit.

Another theme they share is that of the protagonist having to cope with losing a daughter. Edge of Darkness is, at its core, about Ronnie's journey to accepting that he has lost Emma - both because she has been killed and also, on a more allegorical level, because she has grown up and is no longer the kitten that his memory still wants her to be.

The Green Death likewise, being Jo Grant's final story, is about the Doctor having to come to terms with his surrogate daughter leaving him because she has outgrown (figuratively) her need of him. He struggles against this for a while - such as when he tries to sabotage her romance with Professor Jones - but in the end, like Ronnie, he reaches the point of acceptance.

This is a natural process, handled very well by both stories (ironically it is handled more naturalistically by the sci-fi series where the main character is an alien who travels in time and space), and ideally all Companion departures should be presented in this way - something the new series of Doctor Who has struggled with, perhaps because the writers never outgrew their own need for the Doctor?

This makes both Edge of Darkness and The Green Death 'coming-of-age' stories, but told from the father's point of view. The main difference between the Doctor and Ronnie Craven is that the Doctor doesn't die of radiation sickness.

Well, not in The Green Death he doesn't...

Edge of Darkness (2010)

The 2010 film starts in a similar way to the 1985 TV series, before going in a very different direction that is much less interesting and not nearly so good as the TV series. The turning point is probably when Craven* finds his daughter's gun - in the original series this instantly added layers of intrigue to what had preceded it, but here, with the swapping of the UK setting for the USA, it's a case of 'so what?' This is America - possession of a firearm is absolutely not surprising.

There are no equivalent characters to Pendleton and Harcourt (or rather, there are supposed to be equivalents, but since they never interact with Craven they might as well not be), there is no equivalent to the tense computer hacking scene (I was looking forward to seeing how Hollywood would update this most dated of all the '80s elements, expecting them to balls it up or drown it in cliché, and I ended up disappointed that they didn't even try), and, most damningly of all, no infiltration of Northmoor by Craven and Jedburgh, by far the best section of the TV series - but by this point of the film it was telling a different story completely.

Gibson is no Bob Peck, but he's not a terrible actor either. The scenes where he struggle with grief for his daughter are done well, and if I didn't have the original to compare them to I might even have been somewhat impressed. But by the second half of the film he's in a more familiar 'out for revenge' mode like this is a Death Wish film, and I was reminded of Gibson's similar roles in Ransom (1996) and Payback (1999), which make this something of a familiar archetype for him.

Ray Winstone is Jedburgh, who has to be the token Brit just as the original Jedburgh was the token Yank. He may as well not be, his character has so little in common with the original. The way in which he is killed off at the end seems to be just because that was the fate of the original Jedburgh - but this one didn't even get irradiated (or even reach Northmoor, for that matter) so it was completely unnecessary except to get one more tick on the Edge of Darkness checklist.

The same is true of the Emma-as-ghost scenes, which in the TV series are crucial from a thematic point of view, tying the spiritual and environmental sides of the production together with the gritty police thriller. Here they are just because the TV series did it, and the (absolutely vital, IMO) environmental aspect of the story is completely absent. What remains is just the Craven-out-for-justice plotline, which robs this story of everything that made Edge of Darkness unique in the first place. 

* Here needlessly renamed to 'Tom' - do they not have any Ronnies in America unless they are the president?

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Five: Northmoor

Northmoor isn't just the best episode of Edge of Darkness, it is one of the best episodes of any television drama evar, up there with the likes of Fall Out, Requiem for a Crown Prince, and even Powerplay. If you have never seen this episode then do yourself a favour and go and watch it before you read on, because this review is going to get in the ball game and spoil the ball.

As befits one of the most tense, exciting, and all-round riveting TV dramas of all time, it starts with Jedburgh having sleeps. He is at Ronnie's house along with Godbolt, and some time has clearly passed since the end of part four.

They are planning their route into Northmoor. Every previous episode has dedicated time towards establishing how dangerous this is, so the building up of the tension has started even before they set off.

As the three of them leave Ronnie's house, it cuts to a scene of Grogan warning Bennett that they are on their way, and he knows from his "contact in Washington" exactly who the three of them are. Bennett says

"They may get in, but they'll never get out."

as it cuts to show all his henchmannys in their jeeps, driving around Northmoor, already alert and on the lookout for intruders. Long scenes of Ronnie, Jedburgh and Godbolt wandering around the countryside are thus rendered incredibly tense by the knowledge of who and what they are up against.

The chief of the security henchmannys, Connors, is played by Brian "Travis" Croucher, so we know that things just got even more serious because they're bringing in the big guns now. He has been sent by Servalan Bennett to kill Ronnie, so naturally he gets to Northmoor first. 

Connors, together with Bennett's other henchmanny Childs, is setting a trap for our heroes using the water from their reactor - presumably a similar, if not exactly the same, trap as they used on the Gaia team. Ronnie, Jedburgh and Godbolt get into the old mines, where Godbolt says ominously

"Right, this is where it begins."

(A line that would be pure trailer-bait if this were a film.)

Pendleton confronts Bennett at the House of Commons, where Bennett smugly hints to him that he knows about the raid already. He then goes before the committee where he brazenly admits to deliberately drowning the Gaia team, but claims that it was the only way to prevent them from stealing his plutonium.

Tension is maintained by frequently cutting back and forth between the committee and the scenes of our heroes making their way through the mines and caves, with the former, being dialogue heavy, contrasting strongly against the latter, being almost free of dialogue but containing plenty of ambient sound effects. What dialogue there is is strong, character-building stuff - Ronnie is thinking about Emma* (who went through all of this herself on the first raid), while Jedburgh and Godbolt are conflicting personalities who don't get on with one another.

They reach a point where Godbolt turns back, leaving Ronnie and Jedburgh to go on without him. Godbolt's final words to Ronnie are to warn him about Jedburgh:

"Craven - watch that big lad."

It is not long before Ronnie and Jedburgh walk into Connors's first trap, gas, but they came prepared with gas masks. Then they get hit by the water - enough to soak them, but not enough to drown them.

We see Connors wants to pour more water in there, but Childs argues with him that it is too dangerous because "it will expose the rods" (meaning it will expose them to radiation too). This buys Ronnie and Jedburgh enough time to get out of the water, and they find themselves outside a mysterious underground building.

They go inside and discover it is a secret nuclear bunker. Jedburgh describes it as "the doomsday equivalent of Harrods," so they stay to have noms and listen to some music - a relatively quiet section of the episode, but the tension isn't lost completely because we know this can only be a temporary respite.

Jedburgh admits to Ronnie that he is here to steal the plutonium for his "superiors" in the CIA. He also has a personal reason for doing so, in that he doesn't want Grogan to get his paws on it.

Jedburgh: "He's part of the dark forces that would rule this planet."

Ronnie: "You believe in all that stuff?"

Jedburgh: "Yeah, sure. Why not? Look at yourself - you think of yourself as an English provincial detective whose daughter died in tragic circumstances, yeah? Yet where she fell, a well sprang. Flowers grow. Now what kind of power is that?"

This is the first explicit acknowledgement in the story of the supernatural "forces" and "power" that is in play here, the full significance of which will only become clear to us in the next (and final) episode.

Ronnie insists that they carry on, and soon they find the bodies of the missing members of the Gaia team. This suggests they are close to what they are looking for, and the next thing they encounter confirms this - their geiger counter suddenly starts screaming at them, which makes for a truly stunning moment of drama.

They look into the next cave and see the "hot cell" within.

"There's been a hell of an accident here. Gaia - they must have blown the whole cell."

says Jedburgh. There are ded bodies lying around, and everything and everyone is radioactive.

"I want to go on." 

says Ronnie, even though that will mean his certain death from radiation.

"You're crazy."

replies Jedburgh - but with a smile, because he too is going to go on, and with the same consequence for himself. Childs and Connors see them enter the hot cell from their security cameras, and Childs says they can only survive in there for "20 minutes."

The constantly sounding alarm inside the cell reminds me of the final scenes of Blake, and the atmosphere here is just as apocalyptic, with similar odds against our heroes. Jedburgh steals the plutonium, while Ronnie waits for Connors and his mannys to arrive, having realised they must be on their way. They are.

Connors demands Ronnie "give up before it's too late," but Ronnie didn't come all this way just to not shoot Travis Connors, so a gunfight breaks out even though he is surrounded and hugely outnumbered. Once Jedburgh has all the plutonium stashed into his Harrods bag (a small but very nice detail), they run away and escape in a lift.

Another moment that reminds me of Blake comes when Jedburgh pulls his gun on Ronnie, because Ronnie wants to know what he plans to do with the plutonium, but Jedburgh can't (or won't) tell him, and this is enough that they are no longer on the same side. Jedburgh forces Ronnie out of the lift to provide a distraction so that he can escape. By going into Northmoor with Ronnie I thought Jedburgh was the Mike Yates of this story, but he is so much cooler than that - he's the Avon.

They may no longer be partners, but that doesn't mean all traces of friendship are gone:

Jedburgh: "Craven, if we make it, I'll see you in Scotland."

Ronnie: "Where?"

Jedburgh: "You're the detective - find me."

Jedburgh smiles as the door closes between them, and that's the last we see of him in this episode. Purr.

Connors catches up with Ronnie, who pretends to give in, so it seems as though Connors has won, but then Ronnie runs away again. Lost, he finds his way to a room with lots of telephones in it. Childs tells Connors there is only one exit from that room, so they think Ronnie is trapped.

Ronnie tries all the telephones until he finds one that still rings, while Connors tries to gas him. We see a manny going to answer the telephone, but doing it really slowly for maximum dramatic effect. When she finally answers it (even answering the wrong telephone first as a fake-out), Ronnie shouts

"Get me Pendleton!"

And that is one of the greatest cliffhangers evar.

* Northmoor is such a strong episode that it is easy to forget that Emma doesn't appear at all in it, yet her presence can still be felt by the viewer because of the way his memory of her drives every action Ronnie takes.

Profit (1996)

Profit is a short-lived, somewhat trashy drama series from the heart of the 1990s, as is made clear when you watch it by the unmistaikable look and feel of American TV from that era - the lighting, the music, the clothes and the hairstyles; you couldn't be anywhen else.

In basic premise it resembles House of Cards (the original British version preceded it by six years) in having at their cores a charismatic lead character who plots and schemes to advance themselves, committing many heinous crimes along the way and, crucially, conspiring with the audience as they do so. In this they are of course both following in the crooked footsteps of Shakespeare's Richard iii.

The twist in this series then comes in the setting - not politics as such, but big business. Specifically the Corporate America of the 1990s, with main character Jim Profit (played by Adrian Pasdar) manipulating his way up the ranks of "Gracen & Gracen," a multinational company that does... business things. It is never made clear exactly what kind of corporation it is, just that it is very big, very successful, and very corrupt.

Each episode sees Profit trying to advance his own agenda (which might be to make money, secure promotion, eliminate rivals, or some combination of the three) while simultaneously having to avoid threats to his position, or even having his past crimes exposed by the more honest characters. He always ends up coming out on top, although the formula has a bit of flexibility in it - in that sometimes Profit gets rid of obstacles (and mannys) in his way permanently, while at other times the status quo is merely restored by the time the end credits roll.

Jim Profit is a character completely without scruples or any kind of morality, and from his rather too on-the-nose surname we can tell that he is an allegory for the capitalist system and its relentless pursuit of, yes, profit, no matter the cost. However, most of his one-off guest victims are shown to be morally worse even than him - they are murderous Russian gangsters, or rapists, or even (in the final episode) a predatory paedophile. This aids in allowing us to side with Profit and root for him, even as the show makes it clear he is not going up against these people out of any sense of altruism, but purely for his own gain.

Possibly the most interesting feature of the series is that it was one of the first to present the internets not as a futuristic, sci-fi concept, but as simply part of the characters' everyday lives, even if the SFX used to portray the internets looks hilariously far-fetched and unrealistic to modern eyes. In this way the show was ahead of its time, as it would be the better part of a decade later before the internets became an established feature of mainstream drama, rather than something extremely niche or exotic.

Another way in which Profit was ahead of its time was in having a villain protagonist, which was apparently not popular with viewers when it was first broadcast, leading to low ratings and the show being cancelled after only eight episodes. Since the turn of the century there have been several very successful series that contain elements of what Profit was trying to do - Dexter, Mad Men, Hannibal, to name only a few.

But a swift cancellation was most certainly the best thing that could have happened under the circumstances, since it allowed the series to gain the reputation of having been killed too soon 'before its time' rather than having been run into the ground over far more episodes than the formula could really sustain or justify. I'm sure I could name more than a few TV shows that fall into that category too.

The whole series, as well as a documentary about the making of the series, is currently available if you search in the Yousual places. In the meantime, here's a documentary clip about the writers' followup project:

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Four: Breakthrough

Ronnie waits in his house for McCroon to come to try to kill him. He comes right into the house and points his shotgun at Ronnie, but Ronnie is more concerned with solving the mystery of Emma's murder than with his own safety so, instead of being scared, Ronnie gets angry and challenges McCroon to explain himself. When that doesn't get McCroon to open up (er, with the explanations, I mean, not with the gun) he tries saying

"Please, I want to know."

Then McCroon gets shot by a policemanny sent by Ross.

Ross, meanwhile, meets Pendleton when the police find the body of one of the Gaia team that was drowned at Northmoor. Pendleton uses a geiger counter to discover the body is radioactive, like Emma's hair was. This scares all the policemannys but Pendleton remains calm - an effective way of conveying both the seriousness of the radiation as well as Pendleton's character.

Being radioactive is a little bit more subtle than being bright green and ded, but this makes the Gaia team the equivalent of the miner characters from The Green Death, while Pendleton must be the Brigadier - he even has the moustache, which is a bit of a giveaway now that I think about it, mew.

So far Emma's ghost has been the only paranormal element to this story, and that could still - if you were so inclined - be dismissed as being all in Ronnie's mind. But when he returns home again he sees that a water spring has, er, sprung up in the place where Emma died. Which, in case you were wondering, is not the sort of thing you would expect to see happen in a normal thriller.

Ronnie hears young Emma's ghost singing

"All I want is ratatouille, 

Ratatouille, ratatouille.

All I want is ratatouille, 

Rat-a-touille."

which is an annoyingly catchy jingle, bordering on the (rata)twee, but it leads him to a recipe book where Emma hid a clue for him - a page with a list of street and road names on it.

"I've been trying to tell you about this for ages,"

says Emma.

"Don't lose it - it's important."

Jedburgh is watching Come Dancing, his "favorite TV program" (although I have to assume he means his favourite TV programme that was on in 1985, seeing as Blakes 7 ended in 1981), when Ronnie arrives at the CIA house to ask him about Gaia. Jedburgh helped found it in 1977 at the order of his president, but the president then changed his mind and Jedburgh was ordered to "dismantle" it - but by then it was already too late for him to stop.

Ronnie tells Jedburgh he is thinking of going in to Northmoor, and Jedburgh offers to go with him, but only if Ronnie can get a "proper" map for them.

"That's what I hoped you'd say."

says Ronnie, by which he means 

Mac puts Ronnie in touch with a pair of mannys to help him get access to the MI5 computer. This is a very unusual form of computer hacking, unlike any hacking I've ever seen portrayed elsewhere in films or TV. They go to a new building where the computers have only recently been installed and connected to MI5's network, and use one of those.

Pendleton and Harcourt are almost immediately aware of what is happening. Pendleton tries to delay MI5 from sending the police after Ronnie, but they don't go along with him. Police cars arrive with flashing lights and a bunch of policemannys rush in. The mannys helping Ronnie run away but he keeps his cool - like when he faced McCroon earlier, his safety is only of secondary concern to Ronnie when he is this close to the truth.

Ronnie gets the map of Northmoor from the file after searching for the street names from Emma's list, and then he prints it out on an old fashioned dot matrix printer - the closest to The Matrix this computer hacking ever gets, lol.

Finally Ronnie runs away with the police very close behind him, making for a tense and exciting chase sequence. Ronnie eventually loses the police in a crowd at the Barbican Theatre, where he meets up with Clemmy.

"Good evening, Mr Craven, what a pleasant surprise."

Clemmy may claim this, but the suspicion has to be that she was waiting there for him, so she meant the "surprise" was only on his side. They go into the theatre to hide and watch a play.

Ronnie: "What's it about?"

Clemmy: "Incest."

I have seen it claimed that this line is actually a meta-reference to Edge of Darkness itself, hinting at a subtext of incest between Ronnie and Emma. Which just goes to show that you can read anything into anything should you so choose, mew. Ronnie and Clemmy end up going back to his room together, where they have kiffs.

The next day Pendleton summons Ronnie back to the Houses of Parliament to give evidence to the committee. There he meets Godbolt, who admits that he W-worded for Bennett at Northmoor. He goes further, and tells Ronnie that when Emma was murdered it was Ronnie that McCroon was really after, sent by IIF, because they thought that Ronnie had been the one who showed the Gaia team the way into Northmoor.

Ronnie: "They got it wrong!"

Godbolt: "Like they always do. It were me."

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Three: Burden of Proof

Part three begins by briefly switching the POV character to Lowe as the police raid his flat to arrest him. Although we also see the policemannys getting ready and taking up their positions, which builds the tension because it means we know something is about to happen, rather than it being a surprise, which it is for Lowe.

It cuts away just as the police burst in through Lowe's door, so we don't see exactly how Lowe ends up defenestrated and badly hurt. Ronnie and Jedburgh only arrive on the scene after it has happened, and Ronnie's friend says

"The bastard jumped."

though since Ronnie's friend is a policemanny we have to suspect that the suspect was "jumped" out of the window by the police.

DCS Ross tells Ronnie to go to the hopistal to ask Lowe who the murderer was. Before he sees Lowe, there is a long atmospheric scene as the place reminds Ronnie of when his wife was in the hopistal.

While Ronnie is talking to Lowe, we are being introduced to the baddys of the series, Jerry Grogan and Robert Bennett (Hugh "Hastings" Fraser, not normally cast in this type of role but so good at it that it's a wonder he didn't end up typecast after this). Bennett owns IIF, which makes him the equivalent of Stevens, while Grogan is the manny who wants to take it over, which I suppose makes him the BOSS. They are the only ones who know everything that happened in Northmoor, because not even Jedburgh, Harcourt and Pendleton know everything yet.

Lowe names McCroon as the murderer, who Ronnie once arrested when he was in Northern Ireland. Ronnie falls out with Ross because he thinks Lowe and McCroon were just henchmannys for somebody else who gave them the gun and told them where to find him, while Ross thinks they could have managed that on their own and that Ronnie is "cracking up" in seeing a larger conspiracy behind it.

Emma's ghost is also worried about Ronnie, appearing to tell him

"You've got to be strong like a tree, don't break."

This is the first time we hear Ronnie get compared to a tree, and it was supposedly foreshadowing for the original ending of the series that was planned* before they changed it, so in the end this doesn't really foreshadow anything.

Ronnie goes to see another old friend, Mac from Northern Ireland. When Ronnie tells Mac that McCroon murdered Emma, Mac immediately sees further than Ross did and asks

"What's in it for McCroon, why would he do it?"

Ronnie asks Mac to help him get access to the MI5 computer, which Carlisle couldn't (or wouldn't) do for him back in part two.

Jedburgh and Pendleton go to visit Terry Shields, and find that both he and the manny who was supposed to be keeping him under surveillance have been killed. This is a superbly tense scene, as Jedburgh looks through the house for Terry and the camera follows closely behind him. It reminds me in a way of the scene in Smiley's People where Smiley finds Otto Leipzig, in that the killing is long over and the danger has passed, but Smiley/Jedburgh/we don't know that.

The Houses of Parliament is the appropriately grand setting for the first meeting of all the main characters, when Ronnie attends a parliamentary inquiry into Grogan's IIF takeover at the request of Harcourt and Pendleton. He sees Bennett and Grogan across the room and his eyes meet Bennett's. We don't need the incidental music to tell us this is significant, the acting is more than sufficient.

Harcourt explains (part of) what's going on to Ronnie:

Ronnie: "You want me to be a witness?"

Harcourt: "We'll provide you with all the information necessary to blast Bennett out of the water."

Ronnie: "Why me?"

Harcourt: "Our intelligence is coming from people whose cover we can't afford to blow, but anything coming from you would look as though you picked it up in the course of investigating your daughter's death."

Ronnie is introduced to "Clemmy" (Zoë Wanamaker), who is a friend of Jedburgh and another spy. She is able to tell Ronnie a bit more about Jedburgh's past, which adds some much-needed humour to this episode and prevents it from being pitch-black. Especially when the next scenes include Emma's funeral and another flashback to when Ronnie's wife died.

Ronnie returns to his home, where he and Ross expect that McCroon will try to kill Ronnie again. They would appear to be correct, as we see McCroon watching the house from a distance. That means that this is a cliffhanger!

* An earlier draft of this review explained what the originally planned ending to the series was.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Two: Into the Shadows

There isn't a reprise of the important events of part one. Instead we see the policemannys listening to a tape of Ronnie describing Emma's murder from his point of view, and then Ronnie listening to a radio news programme reporting on the current state of the murder inquiry, which together combine to cleverly recap part one while at the same time presenting it to us in a new way.

The episode kicks off with a little moment of Bondesque action as Ronnie loses the policemanny who has been sent to follow him around, so that he can secretly visit his contact Carlisle. He asks his friend to check out Emma's gun, and also asks if he can use Carlisle's computer to look at MI5 files. We get our first sense of the true seriousness of the plot when Carlisle replies

"That's more than my life's worth."

Is this hyperbole? Probably not, as things will turn out.

Ronnie visits Terry Shields (Tim "Lord Percy Percy" McInnerny), an academic lecturer and Emma's boyfriend, who is the nearest equivalent to Professor Jones in this story. He is heavily involved in "socialist" politics, and he and Ronnie immediately don't get on. When Ronnie asks him what Emma was involved in that might explain the meaning of her last words

"Don't tell..."

Terry writes the word "AZURE" on his mirror as a clue - they may not like one another, but they both want to solve the mystery.

When Ronnie leaves, Emma appears to him in a brilliantly directed shot that makes it appear as if she has just... er, appeared to him. This trick is used several times and each time it is simple but effective. She asks

"What does the word 'azure' mean?" 

"The word 'azure' is a police intelligence term. It means the room is bugged or under some sort of electronic surveillance."

but this scene turns into a flashback of when Ronnie told Emma this once before, so we are led to presume she told Terry in turn, which is how come he knew the word, and how he knew that Ronnie would know the word.

Next Ronnie meets Pendleton who takes him to meet his partner Harcourt (Ian "Harcourt" McNeice). After some preliminary chat, Harcourt comes out and asks Ronnie if he knew that Emma led the Gaia raid on "the nuclear waste planet at Northmoor." Bob Peck underplays Ronnie's response beautifully. He only says

"No."

but you can see him swallow as the implication of this sinks in. They reveal a bit more about how well-connected they are when they produce Emma's gun, given to them by Carlisle, and Ronnie very quickly adjusts to this revelation and realises he has to be more honest with them.

They "are interested in anything that goes on at Northmoor" and Harcourt reiterates what Pendleton told Ronnie at the end of episode one, that they want to know if the murderer was after Ronnie or Emma. Harcourt is quite frank that they "have no intention of putting [Ronnie] in the picture" but they still want Ronnie's help and are prepared to give him some clues.

They reveal that Godbolt, the manny that Ronnie was investigating before the murder happened, was connected to Northmoor, and that "the Northmoor management" might have had a motive for committing the election fraud. So this seemingly unrelated plot strand, that looked as though it was only there to (at best) introduce our main character, or at worst to misdirect us from the real plot, turns out to be relevant after all. A bit like the Doctor's trip to Metebelis 3.

Ronnie goes to the police headquarters at New Scotland Yard (ironically this is in London, not in Scotland, mew), where the policemannys think they know who the murderer's accomplice and getaway driver was - a manny called Lowe, who Ronnie once arrested. They then make Ronnie get interviewed about the murder on TV... on TV.

Ronnie gets another telephone call in his hotel room. This time it is from Darius Jedburgh, who wants to meet Ronnie at a restaurant even though it is late at night and Ronnie wants to have sleeps. But he wants to solve the mystery more, so he goes. 

We quickly get an idea of Jedburgh's humour from his dialogue, such as the following exchange:

"You ever been to Dallas, Craven?"

"No sir."

"It's where we shoot our presidents."

Jedburgh talks about country music and brings up Willie Nelson and The Time of the Preacher, which of course we heard playing in the key scene of episode one. He almost goads Ronnie into singing it by getting the words wrong, and then they sing part of it together.

"You know what 'the time of the preacher' signifies, don't you Craven?"

"Gun."

"Yeah, gun. The time of the preacher is the time of the gun."

What is being strongly implied here, only just stopping short of being stated outright, is that Jedburgh knows that Ronnie listened to that song after Emma's death.

Ronnie deduces that Jedburgh W-words for the CIA, and Jedburgh proudly admits it. They go back to the CIA house where he lets Ronnie see a secret file about Northmoor, IIF (the company that owns Northmoor), Gaia, and Emma.

This prompts another flashback scene to when Emma was still alive that reveals to us, the viewers, that Ronnie did know about Northmoor before, and that he at least knew that Emma was thinking about going in because she told him

"The only way to find out is to go down there."

He then warned her off by saying

"Northmoor is a nuclear waste plant. Anyone who breaks in there will be met with ultimate force. It's the most dangerous business in Britain - don't even think of it."

We don't see how Emma responded, but it seems that she thought of it, did it, and just didn't tell Ronnie about it.

Jedburgh's file puts forward the CIA's theory that Emma and her Gaia team were trapped in Northmoor and soaked by radioactive water, although even they don't know if this was done deliberately by IIF to try to murder all the Gaia mannys, or if it was a mistaik. The file also suggests that Terry Shields informed the police about the Gaia raid before it happened, who in turn informed IIF so that they knew they were coming.

Ronnie returns to his hotel room, alone except for Emma's ghost, who tells him that she loved Terry. This only makes Ronnie even more sad, because he knows that Terry betrayed Emma to her death. The episode ends on this downbeat note, with some questions answered by the file, but many more still remaining.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

One: Compassionate Leave

Edge of Darkness is a BBC drama series from 1985, famous for its inclusion of environmental themes long before those became mainstream - although not nearly so early as Doctor Who's 1973 serial The Green Death, which it resembles in enough ways that this could be considered to be an attempt at a gritty reimagining; telling the story of how events might have played out if the Doctor had been a policemanny from Yorkshire instead of a Time Lord.

It starts with policemannys turning on a lot of lights in a very short pretitles sequence. It will be a long time before the significance of this bit becomes fully apparent, but it is already clearly meant to be ironic given the title.

After the titles we are introduced to the main character Ronnie Craven (Bob "clever girl" Peck), a police inspector and part-time presenter of Newsround, when he is already on a case investigating electoral fraud in a trade union, and facing political pressure from union official Godbolt to "delay" his investigation.

The environmental theme is subtly introduced early, when we see a brief clip of newsreader Kenneth Kendall on TV talking about the government courting the "green vote" in its manifesto.

Ronnie collects his daughter Emma from a political meeting to give her a lift home in his car. They are going from the car to their house and casually talking about noms when a manny starts shouting at them. He then shoots Emma with a shotgun and runs away. The violence is over just as suddenly as it started out of nowhere, which adds to its shocking power. This is the first twist in the tale, and kicks off the main plot.

All the other policemannys come to help Ronnie, and the episode becomes an acting masterclass of Bob Peck showing how to do grief while they try to do all the actual investigating around him.

The first sign of anything... unusual... in the series is when Ronnie is on his own and he hears Emma say

"Ratatouille?"

(the noms they were discussing just before she got shot) and he reacts to it, but there is nobody there.

This prompts a flashback to the funeral of Ronnie's wife (and Emma's mother). We can tell it is a flashback because Ronnie has more hair and Emma is smaller and played by a different actress.

Back in the present, Ronnie goes into Emma's room and plays a record. It is Willie Nelson's The Time of the Preacher, and the lyrics thematically parallel the events of this story that are about to unfold. He looks through her things and finds a box labelled "GAIA" which contains, among other things, a geiger counter. This is an intriguing mystery, but is as nothing to when he finds a gun.

In the 2010 film remake of the series, which is set in America, this scene is the point where the plot begins to diverge from the original's, in part because a manny owning a gun is not remotely a shocking twist in the USA as it is in the UK. For the TV series, this is the turning point of the story, when it makes the leap beyond being just a murder mystery.

Ronnie goes to his police station where he is given the "compassionate leave" of the title by Chief Superintendent Ross (John Woodvine), but in the knowledge that he will be investigating Emma's murder anyway:

"Officially you have nothing to do with this inquiry. Unofficially... keep me informed."

While Ronnie goes about collecting Emma's things in case they turn out to have clues in them later (they will), we're introduced to Darius Jedburgh (Joe Don Baker), who is visiting Pendleton (Charles "Tsar Nicholas" Kay) when Pendleton tells Jedburgh that Emma is ded. It is not made clear to us yet who either of them are or why they are interested in Emma.

Now back home, Ronnie hears Emma tell him how to use the Washing Machine. Up until this point we might think it is just his imagination, but in fact Emma is a ghost, which we can tell because the Washing Machine is a terrifying servant of Hoover, so it makes sense that it would take one of the undead to not be frightened of it.

In amongst her clothes he finds an IIF badge with a radiation sign on it, which prompts Ronnie to get the geiger counter and use it to check Emma's things. It buzzes the most when he puts it near a lock of her hair, which increases the level of mystery - what made Emma radioactive?

As he drives to London to hunt the murderer, Emma appears in the car with Ronnie as the little manny from the flashback scene. Emma's ghost is no longer just a voice, but the audience has been prepared by the preceding scenes so that we accept her supernatural presence as a natural plot development.

Ronnie is in London watching Mrs Thatcher on the TV when he gets a telephone call from Pendleton to meet him in the car park. Ronnie puts a gun in his pocket* and the incidental music gets very dramatic (although it is also as 1980s as... well, as watching Mrs Thatcher on the TV) as we follow Ronnie through the hotel to the car park, building the tension. It isn't quite done in one take, but that's the sort of technique that they probably would have done if they could have.

Pendleton is a "cloak and dagger" spy who W-words for "the prime minister's office." He thinks Emma was "some sort of terrorist" and he wants to know if the murderer was really after Ronnie (as all the policemannys think) or if he was after Emma really. He doesn't tell Ronnie much, but does intrigue him enough for another meeting with Pendleton and his "partner."

Here we see the writer trusting that he has, like Pendleton, intrigued us viewers enough that we will come back for a second meeting, because that is where the episode ends - quite abruptly, with Pendleton driving away leaving Ronnie on his own.

*Or maybe he's just pleased to see Pendleton? No, it's definitely a gun. Mew.