Marie Antoinette, season one

I was only put onto this when its second season began showing on the BBC. If historical accuracy is what you're after then this series is not for you, but I get the strong impression that it is not trying to be - there are enough details there as if to say 'we could have been more accurate if we had wanted to.'

Set almost entirely among the highest echelons of the French and Austrian courts of the late 18th century, the characters nevertheless speak and interact in a very modern way, with even the supposed extreme formality of the French court at Versailles seeming laughably informal to those of us who have watched, say, Wolf (...pause for 20 seconds while Mark Rylance takes off and then puts back on his hat...) Hall.

The main character throughout is Marie Antoinette (hence the title, but I suppose they couldn't exactly call it Versailles since there was a different series with that name made between 2015 and 2018), played by Emilia Schüle - a sort of female Matt Smith, I could imagine her playing the Doctor much more easily than I could imagine someone like, say, Billie Piper in the part. The series takes us from her marriage to the heir to the throne of France, the future king Louis xvi who famously lost his head, to the birth of their first son which made the marriage secure.

Louis here is an interesting character because he is so obviously being written and played as what we would now recognise as neurodivergent, what with his extreme social awkwardness. This is possibly the main reason why I cannot decide if the modernisation of the characters is something forced upon the makers of the series as a way of making it accessible (more than just the usual things we take for granted in historical dramas, such as the way they all speak 21st century English instead of 18th century French), or if this was a purposeful stylistic choice to make the main protagonists seem like 21st century people forced to live in the past.

The series tries its hardest to make us feel sympathy for Louis and Marie Antoinette by carefully never showing us how the common people of France lived at that time showing us how they were trapped in their roles as heir to the throne, close to power but  essentially powerless, their everyday actions dictated to them by court ritual and etiquette, and surounded by the rest of the French royal family, most of whom hated them.

At the beginning of the series the king of France is Louis xv, magnificently (and scene-stealingly) played by James "Mark Antony" Purefoy (more like Purrfoy) as an old letch. His mistress, Madame du Barry, is the main antagonist to Marie Antoinette for the first half of the season, who is eventually defeated by means of the old king dying. The second half of the series then shifts to being about Louis and Marie Antoinette adapting to their new roles as king and queen.

Louis now has power but his wife still has almost none, unless and until she can give birth to a male heir (the French never allowed women to be monarchs so a daughter wasn't good enough), and she remains surrounded by enemies since anyone at the court who wants to end the French alliance with Austria wants to get rid of the king's Austrian wife. Marie Antoinette doesn't do herself any favours here since her behaviour, rebelling against the constraints placed upon her and spending lavishly on her favourites, gives her enemies plenty of ammunition to use against her. And foreshadows her eventual fate.

Filming at the actual palace of Versailles makes the series look fantastic, so the authentic appearance of the locations (and interior sets and costumes, to be fair, although this is par for the course when it comes to costume dramas) contrasts with the purposefully anachronistic characters inhabiting them to create a distictive take on the story of the period.

At the time of writing this I haven't watched the second season yet (it is all up on the BBC iPlayer already, though it won't finish being broadcast until near the end of June) so I don't know how far that will take us towards the revolution. It will be interesting to see how long the series can maintain viewer sympathy in Marie Antoinette, or if it even tries to.

Robin... The Hooded Manny

Robin of Sherwood, season one

Robin Hood and the Sorcerer (Part 1)

Eight years after the legendary outlaw met his end (and two years after a certain band of space outlaws were gunned down) on BBC1, HTV launched their take on the legend of Robin Hood.

I may be watching this on a modern DVD but even taking that into account you can immediately see that this is a much higher quality product than the BBC was producing in the '70s - no more studio sets on videotape, this is 100% filmed and 100% on location.

Like its BBC predecessor, this begins with a pre-titles sequence showing the young Robin and his father, though with quite different circumstances - this Robin is no noblemanny. But very much unlike the BBC series,  as soon as the story properly starts it's in a hurry to get to the good bits - it wastes no time in introducing Guy of Gisburne, who arrests Robin and his foster-brother Much for poaching, taking them back to Nottingham Castle where they are imprisoned along with several other potential Merry Mannys, not least of whom is Will Scarlet, already a convicted killer of Normans.

They stage an escape, but get separated in the process and each gets to show a little bit of their individual characters as they escape in different ways (Much being established as the useless one already). Robin hides in a part of the castle where he has his first meeting with Lady Marion. This Marion may not have the classical beauty of Diane Keen, but she makes up for this by having immediate chemistry with Praed's Robin, something The Legend of Robin Hood never quite got right... although that might have been because it was far more interested in setting up the homoerotic subtext between Robin and King Richard, lol.

The supernatural element is present from the start, though kept reasonably low-key for now, with both the evil sorcerer (of the episode title) Baron Simon de Belleme and the good mystic Herne being met by us viewers. The most overt display of magic in this first episode is that Belleme has seemingly mind-controlled Little John into being his loyal henchmanny - he sends him to kill Robin but after the traditional fight over a river (really well done and with some decent stunts - which I reckon were done by the actors themselves, not stuntmannys) Robin frees him from the Baron's spell by rubbing the mark of the pentagram off his chest. I'm not sure how Robin knew to do this, but on the other hand it's not hard to guess that wiping away such a blatantly evil-looking mark was probably a good idea.

Sir Guy murders Much's father (and Robin's foster-father) when he refuses to tell him where they are, thus establishing their mutual hatred as being personal. The role that the Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy play in this is very similar to their respective roles in The Legend of Robin Hood, with the Sheriff as the brains and Guy as the muscle. Where we get a little bit of difference is that instead of a succession of corrupt priests across the series, these are all replaced by the Sheriff's brother Hugo, an evil abbot who thinks of nothing but acquiring land - especially that belonging to Marion's family.

The Merry Mannys ambush Sir Guy and his soldiers, rescuing Marion from them and sending Guy back as the last survivor to tell the Sheriff about "Robin in the Hood" and how Sherwood belongs to him. It ends with Avon Will Scarlet saying that they should have just killed him. This means that as well as introducing almost all of the main, regular characters in this episode, it has still found time for enough plot to get to the same stage of the story that The Legend of Robin Hood got to after almost three full parts.

There's a superb cast here from the very beginning - Michael Praed stepping out of the early-80s zeitgeist looking like a New Romantic, Ray Winstone ready to fuck up Normans as Will Scarlet, John Abineri (who was of course in The Legend of Robin Hood as Marion's uncle) suitably mysterious as Herne, Robert "fish and a chip emporium" Addie is instantly loathsome and easily hateable as Sir Guy, Philip "Inspector Japp" Jackson as the abbot Hugo. Clive Mantle spends most of the episode as a mute slave to the evil Baron so we don't see much of the 'real' Little John, but he certainly looks the part and the fight scene proves he has the physicality.

The real tough act to follow from The Legend of Robin Hood was, of course, Paul Darrow's turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Much as I love him, I have to admit that this series has his Sheriff beaten, because they found an actor capable of being even more hammy than him - Nickolas "I can't believe it's not Tim Curry" Grace. We don't see him go fully over the top in this initial episode, but I know for a fact that later on in the series he will go stratospheric at times.

Last but not least is the guest-star - Baron de Belleme is played by (to give him his full name) The Superb Anthony Valentine. To be honest he doesn't do a huge amount in this part, but that's because it's just setting him up to be the main antagonist of part two...

Robin Hood and the Sorcerer (Part 2)

This episode contains the classic Robin Hood tale of the archery contest where Robin splits the arrow, though here it is skilfully intertwined into the main plot with the satanist sorcerer Baron de Belleme, since in this case there are three ace archers rather than the usual two: in addition to the disguised Robin (where did he get such a realistic fake beard in the 12th century?) and the Sheriff's manny, the Baron enters his mind-controlled assassin Nasir, who is the one whose arrow Robin has to split in order to win.

Thus we are introduced to the one of the missing regulars we didn't properly meet in part one. Nasir is a new introduction to the legend, and in this we see he is almost Robin's equal with both bow and sword (and may be his superior in the latter because he is a dual-wielding badass). After Robin wins the contest his identity is revealed and there is a big fight, which includes some of stunt arranger (and former Doctor Who) Terry Walsh's trademark falling-off-high-places-after-being-shot stunts.

After this the Baron's plot really kicks in as he wants to sacrifice Marion to the (or possibly a) devil (token protests against this by the abbot are soon overcome when Belleme says he doesn't want her lands). The Sheriff is happy to go along with this when the Baron says that Robin is bound to attempt a rescue so this is a good opportunity to trap and kill him.

The last significant regular to be introduced is Friar Tuck, who was present in part one but only really in the background. He tries to rescue Marion but after Belleme's mannys capture her anyway all he can do is warn the Merry Mannys, and after that he is basically one of the gang.

The scenes in the Baron's gothic-style castle as Robin attempts to rescue Marion in the nick of time are superbly atmospheric, and the Baron's comeuppance suitably satisfying. And all credit to The Superb Anthony Valentine for making this potentially camp role into a sinister and threatening antagonist.

This is followed by Robin's fight with Nasir, which is pretty good although we don't really see that actual moment when Nasir is freed from the Baron's service the way we did with Little John - this might be due to it being a last minute change of plan to have Nasir survive and become a main character instead of just a one-off henchmanny, but either way I think this turn could have been shown to the audience better.

There's a third climax to the episode as there's then a big fight between Guy of Gisburne's soldiers and the Merry Mannys. Some of the Merry Mannys are killed in this fight, including a couple of named characters who we might have expected to become regulars - a rare subversion of the law of conservation of narrative details.

A significant divergence between this version of the Robin Hood legend and many others comes at the end of the episode as Robin and Marion marry in a pagan ceremony, with Herne officiating. So no need to refer to her as 'Maid' Marion for this series, mew.

This is a great two-part introduction to the series and really sets out its stall from the start, letting you know there will be all the usual tropes of Robin Hood, but also quite a bit more besides those to help set this version apart from the rest. Combine that with the high production values and it is no surprise that this is a well-remembered series.

Another significant factor in making the series as memorable as it undoubtedly is is the music by Clannad, which is so distinctive that this doesn't sound anything like any other version of Robin Hood. To me it feels inseperable from the series, with the haunting sounds going with the mystical atmosphere of the forest setting like a head in a hood.

The Witch of Elsdon

This episode, while it has its good points, is a big step down in quality from the opening two-parter. It begins with the abbot conducting a witchcraft trial, which is anachronistic by over 300 years. I have to conclude that Robin of Sherwood is set in an alternative reality, in which the existence of genuine supernatural forces has influenced the legal system of England and caused such laws to be introduced much earlier than in our history.

The problem with the episode is that its fundamental storyline is based on a major cliché - Sheriff forces somebody to help him catch Robin Hood if they don't want their relative executed, but the Merry Mannys turn the tables on him and manage to free both the manny W-wording for the Sheriff as well as their relative. I'm not going to criticise it for the lack of any familiar faces in the guest cast, but neither can it earn any bonus points from these when there aren't any.

Where it has points in its favour are found in some of the details - we see a lot more of the story from the Sheriff's point of view which allows him some character development (which is good coming this early in the series since he had to take something of a back seat to Simon de Belleme in episodes one and two), and there's also a bigger role for Marion when it is her actions that save the Merry Mannys from the Sheriff's trap.

Then there's a couple of well-executed set piece scenes - the first of these wrong-foots the audience into thinking the Merry Mannys are at Guy of Gisburne's mercy when in actual fact it is they who are about to ambush Gisburne, and the second sees the first swordfight between Robin and the Sheriff. Most of these enjoyable little touches (save the Sheriff's increased screentime) come towards the end of the episode, so it is the first half of the episode that weighs it down.

Guy of Gisburne gets defeated and humiliated by having his clothes stolen again, giving him an even worse success rate than Space Commander Travis (who is clearly his direct counterpart in Blakes 7) at this stage of their respective careers.

Seven Poor Knights From Acre

This is a superb episode with some well-choreographed, tense and dynamic fight scenes. The introduction of a third faction - the seven Knights Templar of the title - who are enemies of Robin without being allies of the Sheriff, makes for a great setup. The Sheriff thinks he can manipulate one group to wipe out the other, while Robin is just happy to see off the knights and restore the status quo by the end credits.

This makes for a packed episode and the knights, while there are only seven of them, constantly feel like way more of a credible threat to the Merry Mannys than Guy of Gisburne and any number of Nottingham soldiers because of the early encounter where they show how dangerous they can be as disciplined, veteran fighting mannys. These scenes also sometimes portray the knights like they are POV monsters, with us seeing through their letterbox helmets, and this somehow makes them even more threatening.

We also get an appearance by Simon "Hindle" Rouse as the thief Siward (no relation) who sets the plot in motion and is then instrumental in its resolution. He only has one eye, and after the Sheriff captures him he threatens to put out his other one. Somebody should tell him that... you know...

This is just a generally all-round great episode and truly a highlight of the season.

Alan A Dale

Nickolas Grace had obviously been taking lessons from Paul Darrow's Sheriff of Notingham since in this episode he totally steals the show. He is such an obnoxious, bullying baddy to everyone in this, including Guy of Gisburne, that he almost manages to make you feel sory for poor, put-upon Sir Guy, save for the fact that we learn early on that Guy has recently had a whole village whipped for the crime of helping to hide Little John.

The main plot is that the Sheriff is about to get married - for the dowry money, obviously, he has no interest in women for any other reason, mew. Alan A Dale (clang!) is in love with the bride-to-be and teams up with the Merry Mannys to try and liberate both her and the dowry. Here we see the episode's main weak point as Alan, despite being the title character, is useless and whiny and incapable of accomplishing anything without help from Robin and co. We see no indication as to why the lady should love him back, save only that he is less of a baddy than the Sheriff.

The Merry Mannys' plan involves ambushing the Sheriff, Guy and the Nottingham soldiers with two hives of bees, which they shoot the top off to unleash the bees upon the bad guys. Unfortunately, the SFX used for the bees is only marginally more convincing than what was used in Delta and the Bannermannys, and is a real low point of the episode.

The Sheriff actually comes out ahead at the end of the tale, since although the bride successfully runs off with Alan, he successfully holds on to the dowry money while at the same time convincing his would-be father-in-law that Robin Hood stole it, so as far as he is concerned he got all of the advantages and none of the downsides to the marriage. This helps give the villains of the series a little bit of their credibility back, since it means that they have not lost to the Merry Mannys in every episode.

The series takes influence from The Legend of Robin Hood with homoerotic undertones in several scenes - firstly when we see the Sheriff in his bath, from which he berates Sir Guy about his incompetence and then demands Guy towel him off, then later when Robin and Sir Guy have a fight on a muddy riverbank that soon descends into slow-motion mudwrestling, and then finally at the end the Sheriff has another bath, this time with Guy actually in there with him, lol!

This is a bit of a step down in quality from the superb preceding episode, but there's still a lot to enjoy here, mainly thanks to Nickolas Grace finally being allowed to take it up a notch or two. But if you think he's over the top now, just wait until the later seasons, when we will see what he's really capable of...

The King's Fool

When King Richard turns up, played by John "Macro" Rhys-Davies, and pardons Robin and the Merry Mannys, you could be forgiven for thinking this'll be the end of the series. After all, at six 50-minute parts we've had an equivalent amount of screen time to The Legend of Robin Hood, so why not?

Of course this isn't the end of the series, only the end of the first season. King Richard turns out to be a wrong'un, which would have surprised me more if I hadn't seen Maid Marian and Her Merry Mannys long before I ever saw this episode - that series, while made afterwards (1989), also ended its first season with the 'twist' of King Richard being villainous and his return to England not being the solution to the Merry Mannys' problems.

Will Scarlet is at his most Avonish in this episode, since he is the first to sense that the king's pardon is a trap and so stays behind while the rest of them go to Nottingham. Nasir, Little John and Martin* also leave before the trap is sprung, so that only Marion, Tuck and Much are with Robin when Guy of Gisburne comes in to try and kill them.

This leads into a pretty good fight scene as our heroes have to escape from a fire as well as fight off Gisburne and his soldiers, and it ends with Gisburne and Marion shooting each other with crossbows. Sir Guy is last seen collapsing (and a bit on fire), so we might have presumed him killed if they had ended the series here.

With the Merry Mannys disbanded and Marion injured, the episode, and season, ends in a distinctly mythic way, with Robin taking Marion to the stone circle "Rhiannon's Wheel" where, unbeknownst to him, the Sheriff killed his father in the pre-titles sequence to the first episode. Herne appears and saves Marion (or possibly gives Robin the power to save her, or it could be he tells Robin that the power to save her was in him all along) and then the Merry Mannys reunite with Robin and Marion in time for the end credits.

This was actually the first time Herne appeared in the series since The Witch of Elsdon, so we had basically had the two episodes before this one with nothing supernatural in them at all, meaning the series didn't fell it had to include some magical or mystical element every time. Possibly that was for the best, but I can't help feel that John Abineri's mysterious Herne is an integral part of the show's success and distinctiveness as an adaptation of the Robin Hood mythos.

While the opening two-parter is superb, and Seven Poor Knights From Acre is the standout single episode of the season, I think the whole comes to be greater than the sum of its parts. The quality of the casting and the high production values shines through each instalment so that, while some episodes are weaker than others, none are truly bad and all of them are enjoyable.

* You know... Martin... the famous Merry Manny Martin... No? Oh well, don't worry, this is the last time we'll see him in the series. Mew.

Eurovision 2025

The Eurovision Singing Competition Caturday is always a highlight of the cat calendar every year (except for the year the mannys forgot to do it). Even as it increasingly becomes serious business for the mannys who sing the songs, we cats watch it for the lols so will always prefurr the colourful, fun, entertaining songs over the heartfelt ballads.

Here are my highlights from this year's entries...

Luxembourg set the bar early (they performed second, which by an old rule of Eurovision meant they were not allowed to win) with their strange visuals, including some giant hands (with giant thumbs) to help the singer out as though she were a cat.

Latvia's six singers had eyes painted on their eyelids, which was... not right.

Dragon doesn't normally show much interest in Eurovision, either sleeping through it or else watching Taskmaster repeats over on a different channel. But for some reason he really enjoyed the Poland entry.

The singer from Greece wore big specs, a bit like these late '70s ones worn by Diane Keen when she was in The Sandbaggers.

My favourite entry this year was the song from Malta, which was very colourful and even featured giant CGI cats in the background. My friend Kitkat was watching Eurovision with us for the first time and she also liked the Malteser.

But don't forget Sweden! They chose to do a comedy song this year, which is quite unusual for them. They did quite well and came fourth. Estonia also did a comedy song and came third. Either of these would have been worthy winners in the eyes of the cats of Europe.

But the voting is done and the winner decided by mannys, who - as always - vote in an way incomprehensible to all right-thinking felines. The two songs they gave the most points to were not ones we rated at all highly, but at least the one that won - from Austria - was the more deserving of those two.

I have heard a persistent rumour that mannys don't always vote for the song they like the best, and sometimes they just vote for the country they like the most. Mannys can be incredibly stupid, so I find this a very plausible theory, but I'm sure it can't really be true.

Except for Cyprus always voting for Greece. That is true. Mew.

Who will get the 12 points? It's not exactly keeping us in suspense.

Further Adventures of the Musketeers

Made by the BBC in 1967 and not, as one might expect given the title and the vintage, a series of unconnected episodic adventures about the Four Musketeers taking the characters from the books but not the plots (in a similar vein to The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, among other series of the black & white era of television), but rather this is an adaptation of the middle of the three Musketeers novels - not the most famous one where they save the honour of the queen of France by recovering her necklace (as used for the main plot of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds), nor the final one involving the manny in the iron mask, but the one where they lol about in France and England getting involved in various civil wars.

No? Me neither.

Joss Ackland stars as DogD'Artagnan, with BRIAN BLESSED backing him up (and stealing the show as often as not) as Porthos - superb casting - and the title characters are rounded off with John "Armageddon Factor" Woodvine as Aramis and Jeremy Young (a familiar face, but I'd be hard pressed to say what he's best known for) as Athos.

The most notable in the secondary cast are Edward "As you can see, the INTERNET is extremely complicated" Brayshaw as Rochefort, Nigel "Look Around You" Lambert as Planchet, Vernon Dobtcheff as a minor antagonist Monsignor de Gondy, and - during the episodes where the Musketeers are loling about the England of 1649 (this can be dated precisely due to the actual historical execution of King Charles i being a key plot point) - Geoffrey "Masters" Palmer as Oliver Cromwell, in a surprisingly nuanced (and almost sympathetic) portrayal, even though he is an antagonist to the royalist-supporting Musketeers.

I have no idea if the depiction of Cromwell was lifted from the novel since, although I have read a few of Dumas's novels (English translations, naturally, since translations into Cat are surprisingly hard to come by) including The Count of Monte Cristo and the Marie Antoinette romances, I haven't ever read any of his D'Artagnan stories. This means I can't judge the series' quality as an adaptation either - although you can pretty much tell that it must be an adaptation because the pacing and episode structure feels different to most stories written specifically for the format of a television serial. For example, despite being 16 half-hour parts, it fair flies by with constant twists and turns, but the most dramatic moments don't often line up with the climactic moments of individual episodes.

There's an unusual format point where each episode begins with a recap of the story so far that is delivered in-character by one or more of the main characters (often including D'Artagnan, but not always) addressing the audience directly, but in a conspiratorial fashion, as if letting us in on a secret. This is done in voice-over only, with still images of the characters as the only visuals, so I wonder if this was added after the main filming of the story was complete.

Loads of swashbuckling tropes are included, as you might expect, and a lot of swordplay - plenty of which occurs out on location, so this was no studio-bound production as might have been expected from the BBC in the 1960s. Some of the duels were really well done, inclusing several between our heroes and Brayshaw's villainous Rochefort (he's no Christopher Lee, but still very good in the part), but my favourite fight was between Porthos and Rochefort and didn't involve swords - Porthos used his fists and Rochefort used whatever props and bits of scenery he could get his hands on that BRIAN BLESSED hadn't already been chewing upon.

It was directed by Christopher "First Morbius Doctor" Barry so no wonder this was a polished production for its time. That said, there was still a lot of studio-based action, and at least one scene where a door needs to be broken down and the whole wall wobbles as it is struck, lol. Also a few fluffed lines, and I think I caught one bit where Ackland seemed to forget his line entirely for a moment. None of this detracted from my enjoyment - in fact I would say it added to it, since it is fun to watch these old series warts and all.

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: Moonraker

Recent news about the expensive luxury James Bond films having been bought by the Amazon Corporation of America has reminded us cats that back in 1979 James Bond already fought against a baddy who was a megalomaniac, space-obsessed billionaire with a secret lair in the Amazon.

This was Moonraker, the fourth of the seven expensive luxury James Bond films to star Roger Moore. It had the unenviable task of following on from the iconic Bond outing The Spy Who Loved Me, and it did this by going even more Over The Top than its predecessor - thanks to a little inspiration taken from the late-70s zeitgeist, a.k.a. the post-Star Wars era.

In the first scene some baddys steal a space shuttle off the back of a plane and then the plane blows up. It cuts to M in his office talking on a red (i.e. serious business) telephone asking

"What happened to the Moonraker?"

Clang! Well that didn't take long.

Bond is having kiffs with a lady in a different plane when she pulls a gun on him. Oh noes, she is really a baddy! This is exactly what happened with the lady Bond was having kiffs with at the start of The Spy Who Loved Me, except this one didn't even wait for him to leave before turning out to be a baddy. She has a manny with her for Bond to have a fight with. That manny ends up falling out of the plane, and then Jaws turns up and pushes Bond out too.

We cats love Jaws, he makes any Bond film he is in (all two of them) even more expensive and luxury than they would have been without him.

Bond doesn't have a parachute, and unlike cats he cannot expect to land on his feet, so he sends his stuntmanny to have another fight with the manny over the one parachute between them. Jaws arrives to have a mid-air fight with Bond, but Bond uses the parachute to escape from him. Jaws then lands on a circus tent for some reason.

This leads in to the title sequence. The theme song for Moonraker is rubbish, and would be much better if they had just reused the Goldfinger song but replaced the word "Goldfinger" with the word "Moonraker." The lyrics wouldn't make sense, since the baddy is called Drax and not "Mr Moonraker," but when has lyrics not making sense ever stopped them?

The titles are followed by the traditional Bond briefing scene. Bond gets sent to look for the missing Moonraker space shuttle (what do mannys want to rake the moon for, anyway? Silly mannys, always making W-word for themselves for no reason) and he also gets given a gadget by Q - a watch that can fire darts that will either explode or be poisonous. We can look forward to both of these types coming in useful for him, in accordance with the law of conservation of narrative detail.

Bond goes to visit Hugo Drax at his French chateau in California. A bit like Columbo, Bond has immediately identified the main baddy as being the richest, most obnoxious manny in the film in order to save time. Drax, the ultimate snob, is played by Michael "Grigoriev" Lonsdale, still three years from his role of a lifetime when this was made - and I'm presuming he got that part because they were practically rounding up former Bond Villains to be in Smiley's People.

Bond and Drax have a superficially friendly first meeting but, as soon as Bond leaves, Drax says to his henchmanny

"Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him."

Lol, this is a classic Bond Villain line.

Bond goes to meet Dr Goodhead, who turns out to be

"A woman!"

This bit would have been... how shall we put it... old-fashioned (to be rather more polite than it deserves) in a '60s Bond film, never mind one made in 1979. However the film quickly makes it clear that it is Bond who is being sexist, not the film itself, since Dr Goodhead soon gets her own back by patronising him for his lack of knowledge about her. She claims to be a trained astronaut

"On loan from NASA... the Space Administration."

Her explaining things to Bond as though he is thick as shit, and then Bond trying to salvage some dignity by showing off about the few things he does know about, is actually quite a clever way of getting exposition to casual viewers who may not be as knowledgeable about space as Monkeys With Badges us cats.

Dr Goodhead dares Bond to have a go in a machine that spins mannys round and round really fast. Presumably for the lols. Once it has started the henchmanny sabotages it so that it won't stop when Bond presses the stop button.

Bond makes a face to let us know he is in trouble, then uses his gadget to shoot the machine with an explosive dart - breaking the machine's main rivet, I presume, and therefore stopping it.

Bond decides to kiff some information out of Corinne Dufour, whom he met when he first arrived, on the grounds that as a named character she must have a clue for him. The henchmanny sees them, but he doesn't do anything about Bond yet.

In the next scene we see Drax and some henchmannys hunting and shooting at some birdys for no reason, just in case we hadn't realised that they were the baddys yet. Drax invites Bond to have a go, but instead of shooting a birdy he shoots a henchmanny that was about to shoot him.

Drax: "You missed, Mr Bond."

Bond: "Did I?"

After Bond has left, Drax sacks Corinne for helping Bond. He the sends his two doggys to chase her. The incidental music for this bit is very dramatic, verging on sinister, although I'm quite sure the doggys are well-behaved doggys who only want to play. The last we see of Corinne is when the doggys catch up with her to give her friendly cuddles and licks. Maybe Hugo Drax isn't so bad after all?

The scene changes to Venice, where Bond is here following up the clue he got from Corinne. He sees Dr Goodhead is also there and decides to follow her through the streets of Venice. That doesn't take long so then he decides to talk to her about why she's here. Each of them thinks the other might be a baddy, so they don't trust one another.

Bond is sitting in a gondola minding his own business when a manny hiding in a coffin starts throwing knives at him. Bond throws one back and kills the manny - the punchline to this bit being that the manny is already in his coffin when he goes

A speedboat starts to chase Bond, and it turns out that his gondola is really a speedgondola. We know by now that Roger Moore's Bond loves a chase scene almost as much as Jon Pertwee's Doctor, so this is a good bit which successfully blends the exciting peril with a number of komedy moments.

Bond escapes the speedboat by turning his speedgondola into a hovergondola and taking it across the land. This provokes a number of amusing reaction shots from the bystanders, including Double-Take Manny (returning from The Spy Who Loved Me to make his second appearance in the film series), and even one of Venice's world-famous double taking pigeons.

At night Bond stealths into Drax's base where he discovers a secret room that you can only get into by playing the music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I wonder if Drax has other rooms that use different late-70s sci-fi themes as their keycodes? I expect there must be at least some, because if you only had one then Blakes 7 would obviously be your first choice.

This secret room is a laboratory where some mannys are doing experiments on mouses... or possibly the mouses are doing experiments on the mannys - Double-Take Manny does look an awful lot like Douglas Adams, after all. Thanks to Bond's meddling, the mannys get poisoned when they release some gas, but the mouses are unharmed by it.

Bond is trying to get away when he gets attacked by Drax's main henchmanny, leading to a big fight. They quickly take the fight into a glass museum, where they do their best to ensure that everything that could be smashed gets smashed. In the midst of the fight, Bond finds a clue - a lot of boxes addressed to Rio de Janeiro.

After winning the fight by throwing the henchmanny through a big clockface into a piano, Bond visits Dr Goodhead. He finds she has gadgets because she is also a secret agent, although hers are concealed inside lady things like perfume and a pawbag instead of a manly thing like a wristwatch. Dr Goodhead W-words for the American CIA, and now they team up in a reversal of the UK-USSR team-up of the previous film, only with even less trust on both sides.

Bond takes M and the Minister of Defence to see the secret laboratory (presumably this is meant to be the next day, although it is unclear how much time has passed - clearly it must have been enough to allow M and the Minister to travel from London to Venice, but we don't know if they did that as soon as Bond said "come and see this secret laboratory what I have found"), but Drax has already replaced the entire room with more chateau-type stuff. The Minister orders M to take Bond off the case, and so Bond says he is going on holiday to Rio.

Drax needs a replacement for his main henchmanny, so he telephones an unseen manny to arrange it. This cuts to a scene where we see Jaws getting on a plane to Rio. It is not often that we see the process of henchmannys getting employed and sent on missions - normally they just turn up and attack Bond - so this is a nice little peek behind the curtain.

Obviously there's a carnival going on in Rio when Bond gets there and starts looking for clues. There's a superbly sinister scene as his MI7 contact Manuela is waiting for Bond in a dark alley with carnival going on around her. A manny in a giant clown mask approaches her, then takes off his mask to reveal it is Jaws.

This scene helps to re-establish Jaws as looking like a credible threat after his last few appearances have all been unsuccessful attempts to kill Bond - particularly the pre-titles sequence which was mostly played for lols. Jaws is about to nom Manuela when Bond sees them and jumps on Jaws for a fight. The carnival then carries them apart, delaying their eagerly-awaited rematch.

Bond meets Dr Goodhead again. They are in a cable car when Jaws stops it and noms his way through the cable to make sure it stays stopped.

This is an iconic scene for Jaws, and is followed by a great fight sequence as he goes out to try and kill Bond on the roof of the cable car. Bond and Dr Goodhead escape as Jaws gives chase, his henchmanny (henchhenchmanny?) controlling another cable car and sending it after Bond. As Bond and Dr Goodhead get out of the way in time, Jaws crashes into the building below.

Jaws is rescued from the wreckage by Dolly and, as the incidental music informs us, they fall instantly in love.

Some mannys arrive to capture Bond and Dr Goodhead, and take them away in a fake ambulance. Bond escapes, but falls out of the back of the ambulance before he can rescue Dr Goodhead, so she is taken away still a prisoner.

The next scene sees Bond arrive at a monastery dressed as a cowboy. Bond is dressed as a cowboy, I mean, not the monastery. Mew. Sorry, but this is a very silly bit. Bond sees Miss Moneypenny and Q. Q is testing some experimental gadgets, which is not too unusual for him (save that he doesn't normally do it in a monastery), but one of them is a pewpewpew gun - foreshadowing all the mannys having pewpewpew guns later on. Q has found out that the poison gas Bond found in Venice was made from a rare orchid found in the Amazon jungle, so now Bond's task is to go there to look for his next clue.

Bond is travelling along the river in a boat when he gets attacked - yes, that looks like a clue to me! Several other boats chase him, one of which has Jaws aboard. They shoot at Bond's boat, but naturally it has gadgets on board which Bond uses to fight them with - mines, torpedoes, and one simply labelled as "roof." Obviously Bond uses each of them in turn, and the last of them releases a hang-glider that he uses to glide away and thus escape from a waterfall. Jaws isn't so lucky and his boat goes over the edge - he makes a great "oh noes!" face as it does so.

In a scene that would make Barry Letts proud, Bond hang-glides about for a bit in front of a greenscreen, until he crashes in the jungle. He then follows a scantily-clad lady who leads him to Drax's secret base. There he sees so many scantily-clad ladies that his eyebrow can hardly cope.

Bond has been in too many SECTRE lairs to fall for the old bridge-turning-into-a-trapdoor-while-you're-walking-over-it ploy, but he is then caught out by the unassuming-rock-tips-you-into-the-water trap and gets wet. Oh noes! The baddys send a snake to try and nom Bond, but he escapes and is instead captured by Jaws.

Drax comes in and explains why he - and by extension most if not all of his fellow evil masterminds - always tries to kill Bond in overly elaborate ways:

"Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you."

Bond is taken from the ancient temple part of the secret lair to the futuristic space part. He sees Drax launch multiple "Moonraker" shuttles into space, and learns that the Moonraker that was stolen at the start of the film was needed by Drax to replace one of his secret shuttles that had become borked.

Bond is put into a room where he meets Dr Goodhead again. This turns out to be directly underneath the next Moonraker that will be launched - Drax's plan being that when the shuttle takes off, they will be killed by the fire. This bit is lifted from the original Moonraker novel, which is good because it prevents The Girl Who Was Death from otherwise being an inarguably better adaptation of the book than this film is.

Bond uses his gadget to explode open a door and so they escape. After stealthing around the base for a bit, they steal some henchmanny costumes and use them to get on board the next Moonraker scheduled for lift off. Bond has disguised himself as a spacemanny before, and it didn't go so well for him then, but there's no Number One here to spot him this time.

Bond and Dr Goodhead launch into space and fly after the shuttle with Drax and Jaws aboard - an exceptionally elaborate way of chasing after the baddy, even by Bond's standards. Luckily for him, Dr Goodhead knows what all the space buttons do - Bond is like a cat, getting her to do all the W-word.

A bit like this, really:

They fly towards 

"An entire city in space."

(thanks Dr Exposition Goodhead) and dock with it.

Now that they're in space, all the actors get to do lots of pretend slow-motion weightless acting, which is the closest thing this film has in it to padding. 

Drax makes a pretentious speech to his assembled henchmannys which lays plain his megalomania:

"First there was a dream. Now there is reality. Here, in the untainted cradle of the heavens, will be created a new super-race. A race of perfect physical specimens."

Does he not know that cats already exist? Oh, wait, he's talking about mannys, isn't he? As if they could ever be as perfect as cats, mew. He goes on:

"You have been selected as its progenitors. Like gods, your offspring will return to Earth and shape it in their image. You have all served in other capacities in my terrestrial empire. Your seed, like yourselves, will pay deference to the ultimate dynasty which I alone have created. From their first day on Earth they will be able to look up and know that there is law and order in the heavens."

He thinks he can be Ceiling Cat!

Bond and Dr Goodhead disable the city's radar jammer so that the mannys still on Earth can spot it. We get a fleeting appearance by General Gogol as the Soviets and Americans communicate with each other to find out that neither of them is responsible for making the city in space, so therefore it must have been a Bond Villain! The Americans launch a shuttle of their own to investigate and, if necessary, have a big space battle for the climax.

Meanwhile Drax starts launching his poison gas bombs at the Earth.

Jaws captures Bond and Dr Goodhead and takes them to see Drax, who says

"James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season."

Great though this line is (and delivered in such a deadpan way by Lonsdale), I have to wonder which season he's talking about? It can't be any of Blakes 7's four seasons, that's for sure. Drax is such a snob he's probably taking about Doctor Who's 24th season, even though it is actually much better than its reputation.

Another great bit is how Bond escapes from his predicament - pointing out how Drax will kill anyone "not measuring up" to Drax's "standards of physical perfection" within earshot of Jaws and Dolly. Jaws realises this means Dolly, because she is too tiny. He refuses to kill Bond when Drax orders him to, and Drax has a classic moment of realising his previously loyal henchmanny has turned against him:

"Jaws! You obey me!"

Bond pushes a button that turns off the gravity, and all the mannys start floating around. 

Drax's spacemannys and the American spacemannys start having a pewpewpew fight in space. Anyone who tells you that "in space, no one can hear you scream" obviously hasn't watched this bit, since here the mannys clearly scream whenever they get pewed.

The Americans get on board the city and team up with Bond, Dr Goodhead and Jaws. Bond chases after Drax when he tries to run away from the fighting, but then Drax gets his paws on a pewpewpew gun and aims it at Bond.

"At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery."

he quips. But then Bond shoots Drax with a poison dart from his gadget watch. Bond puts Drax in an airlock and outquips him with

"Take a giant step for mankind."

Dr Goodhead asks Bond

"Where's Drax?"

"Oh he had to fly."

With Drax ded it can be safely assumed that his henchmannys will be defeated offscreen by the Americans. However Drax had already launched three poison gas bombs at the Earth that will "kill millions" (thanks again Dr Exposition). Also because Drax is ded his space city starts to suffer from a lack of ontological inertia, so Bond and Dr Goodhead have to dodge explosions and the set falling down around them.

They escape in one of the Moonrakers, while Jaws and Dolly search for each other in the wreckage. As the last two mannys on board, they sit and drink a toast. We hear Jaws's only line of dialogue in either of the films he's in:

"Well, here's to us."

Bond tells Dr Goodhead (and the viewers at home)

"Don't worry, they'll make it. It's only 100 miles to Earth."

While I can understand them not wanting audiences to think Jaws is ded because he is such a great character that they might want to bring him back in later Bond films (although they didn't, mew), surely he is the one character who can be safely assumed to somehow survive offscreen, like he has done multiple times already? This line of Bond's smells to me of a late addition to the film, perhaps after test audiences were too sad at Jaws's final scene.

Dr Goodhead flies the shuttle and Bond pews the three bombs. For the last one the targeting computer can't hit the bomb, so Bond has to use the Force pew it manually. While one could see this as re-establishing the superiority of mannys over machines, really it is just ripping off the ending to Star Wars.

On Earth, the NASA mannys hack into the shuttle's on-board cameras to see Bond and Dr Goodhead having kiffs and getting up to naughtiness with no clothes or gravity on. M, Q and the Minister are also there, and M just says

"Double-Oh Seven!"

in a disappointed tone of voice that makes Bond's code number sound like a rude word. And then we end on an absolutely stone-cold classic James Bond double entendre moment as the Minister asks

"My god, what's Bond doing?"

Even though this was presumably a rhetorical question, Q replies

"I think he's attempting re-entry, sir."

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Luxury

Moonraker!

Ridiculous or Ridiculously Awesome moments from Mahabharat: The Wilderness Years

1. Bhim's wife and son turn out to be Monkeyesque baddys [Episode 53]

At one point during the Pandavas' 13 years of exile, Bhim is wandering alone when he sees a giant menacing a family and demanding that one of them come with him to be a human sacrifice - this has a strong resemblance to a typical plot you might expect to see in an episode of Monkey, even down to every member of the family offering up reasons why they should be the one to self-sacrifice. Bhim steps in and demands that he be taken, and the giant agrees to this since he is obviously a much finer specimen of a manny and so more suitable for sacrifice than any of the family would have been.

The giant takes Bhim home to where his mother lives, and it turns out that the giant's mother is Hidimbi, a demoness who Bhim married the last time he was in exile, after the incident with the House of Wax. This means that the giant is actually Bhim's son, called Ghatotkacha, and as a half-manny-half-demon he has many magical powers.

Upon seeing that her son has brought her husband and his own father for sacrifice, Hidimbi immediately sees the error of her ways and decides not to sacrifice any more mannys. Ghatotkacha pays his respects to Bhim and receives his blessing, in the traditional way for characters in this series, and then they embrace as father and son.

2. Arjun goes to heaven and gets more than he came for [Episodes 53-54]

Arjun goes to heaven, which looks all cloud-like in a very similar way to the Western Heaven we saw in Monkey. I'm not saying they reused the same sets, but they may as well have done. There he obtains divine weapons from the gods, and is then ordered by Indra, king of the gods (and also sort of Arjun's father by way of Kunti's magic spell), to learn music and dance from Indra's own musician. This was because Indra knew that such skills would be useful to Arjun in the future.

The goddess Urvashi decides to seduce Arjun, but he rejects her by comparing her to a mother - a dire insult, judging by her reaction. Urvashi responds to this rejection by cursing Arjun with impotence, or possibly (the subtitled translation seems unable to make up its mind which) to become a eunuch.

Indra is unhappy about this, and not just because of his paternal fondness for Arjun - he rules that this was not a justifiable use for divine cursing. But it is too late for Urvashi to take back the curse completely (that seems to be completely against the rules), so instead Indra makes her modify it so that Arjun is only a eunuch for one year, and at a time of Arjun's choosing. Once again Indra has peered into the future and seen that this will aid Arjun at a time when he needs it the most - a blessing disguised as a curse.

3. A drink of water kills four Pandavas [Episode 55]

Wandering the forest looking for water to drink, Nakul finds a likely looking lake and stops to take a drink. A bodiless voice (which in this series is a sure sign that a god is involved) challenges him to answer its questions before he drinks, but Nakul ignores this and drinks anyway. He promptly falls down ded. His twin brother Sahadev then finds the body but considers it more important to have a drink from the lake before doing anything about this. He too is challenged by the voice to answer questions before drinking, and he too ignores it. He drinks, with the same result as before.

Arjun is sent to look for the twins, and he finds their bodies lying by the lake (only noticing them when they are visible in the same shot as he is). A yaksha spirit with a big moustache appears floating in the air and tells Arjun what has happened, and that the same thing will happen to him if he drinks the water without answering the questions first. Arjun is angry at the death of his brothers and so drinks some water just to defy the spirit, but he then dies in the same way as they did. Next Bhim arrives on the scene, and exactly the same thing happens with him - only with even more overacting as he dies.

Soon Yudhishthir finds the four bodies and, because he is the wisest of them (except when it comes to gambling), he goes along with the spirit's demand that he answer questions before drinking the water. The spirit seems to be trying to trick Yudhishthir by asking nonsensical questions or questions that have no answer, but Yudhishthir is equal to this game and may even be trolling the spirit with his answers. Judge for yourselves:

Q. "What is heavier than Earth?"

A. "Mother"

Q. "What is higher than the sky?"

A. "Father"

Q. "What is faster than the wind?"

A. "The mind"

Q. "What is more in number than twigs?"

A. "Worry"

Q. "Who is the friend of a person close to death?"

A. "Charity"

Q. "Where does religion, success, heaven and happiness reside?"

A. "Religion resides in Awareness. Success in Charity. Heaven in Truth. Happiness in chastity."

Q. "What is a man's soul?"

A. "His son"

Q. "What has covered the Earth?"

A. "Ignorance"

Q. "What is laziness?"

A. "Ignorance of Religion is laziness"

Q. "Who is truly happy?"

A. "The one free of debt"

Q. "What is true cleansing?"

A. "The cleansing of the mind"

Q. "What is darker than eye black?"

A. "Disrepute"

Q. "Which is the best religion?"

A. "Piety!"

Q. "What can prevent mourning?"

A. "Keeping the mind in control"

Q. "What is shame?"

A. "Keeping away from unworthy things"

Q. "What is Piety?"

A. "Wishing happiness for all"

Q. "What kills the nation?"

A. "Slavery"

Q. "What is the true test of Brahminhood? Dynasty, Character, Teaching or Knowledge?"

A. "Dynasty, Teaching or Knowledge do not prove Brahminhood. Character is the true test. A Shudra with Character is better than a born Brahmin who has only Knowledge but no Character"

Q. "Is Religion in Logic?"

A. "No!"

Q. "Is it found in the philosophy of Sages?"

A. "No! Because each Sage differs from the others. None has the complete Truth"

Q. "Where is the complete truth?"

A. "In the heart of the believer"

Q. "What is the greatest wonder?"

A. "The greatest wonder is that each individual knows that Death is the ultimate Truth and yet believes that maybe he is immortal."

For answering all of his questions "correctly" the spirit brings Yudhishthir's brothers back to life. Yudhishthir recognises that this is not really a Yaksha but a god. In fact it is Yama, who is Yudhishthir's divine father in much the same way Indra is to Arjun, and this was all a test to prove Yudhishthir's wisdom and worthiness.

4. Pandavas in disguise [Episodes 56-58]

After 12 years of exile, the final part of the forfeit for losing the dice game with Shakuni was that the Pandavas had to play hide and seek, remaining undiscovered anywhere in the world for a whole year - or else if they were found out in this time then they would have to spend another 12 years in exile. In the independent kingdom of Matsya, not too far from Hastinapur, they hid under a variety of cunning (read: wafer thin, but still surprisingly effective for that) disguises. It was here that Arjun's divine curse came to his assistance - as the most famous and recognisable of the brothers, he was the hardest to disguise, but nobody would think to look for the ace archer and proud warrior among the eunuchs of the women's quarters.

I think Arjun's disguise is so particularly effective because he doesn't have his distinctive moustache.

The king of Matsya's brother-in-law, who is also their army's general, makes improper advances towards Draupadi, so Bhim and Arjun have a big fight with him and kill him - although all Arjun does is play suitable incidental music for the fight scene, and it is Bhim who actually does all the killing, Arjun plays the drum so dramatically that his paws end up covered in his blood.

5. Arjun gives himself away... or does he? [Episodes 59-62]

With the rest of Matsya's army lured away in the wrong direction thanks to a diversionary attack, the young prince Uttar is left to defend the kingdom on his own. Well... not quite on his own, as he takes with him Arjun, still in the guise of the eunuch Brihannala, to act as his charioteer. When faced with all the mighty warriors of Hastinapur, the prince has second thoughts and tries to run away, so Arjun makes him be the charioteer and let Arjun do the fighting in his place.

Arjun may still be in disguise, but he will not fight without first observing the proper ceremonies of the warrior, so he blows his conch horn to announce himself. Duryodhan hears this and believes he has pierced the "veil of anonymity" around the Pandavas, thus meaning they have lost the game of international hide and seek.

Arjun goes on to defeat in turn Karna, Kripa, Drona, Ashwathama, Dushasan, Karna (again), Bhishma and Duryodhan, but does not kill any of them even when they are at his mercy. Duryodhan insists that the Pandavas must forefeit and undertake another 12 years of exile, but the Kuru elders disagree and say that the year of anonymity was over before the invasion of Matsya began.

This ambiguity is necessary in order to drive the conflict in the next part of the story - with both sides believing they are in the right and so unwilling to back down to the other side's counterclaim - but there is one piece of evidence that the year was not yet over that seems to be overlooked: why was Arjun's year-long curse of impotence still in effect, instead of ending at the same time as the year of exile?