Rumpole of the Bailey, Season Seven (1992)

It seems strange to think that as many episodes of Rumpole of the Bailey were broadcast in the 1990s as in the 1970s. It doesn't feel like a 1990s TV programme at all, largely thanks to the lead character, who feels ever more out of place as the passing of time leaves the '70s further and further behind, and it is increasingly implausible that Horace Rumpole was "called to the bar" before the outbreak of the Second World War yet is still practising in the ever-advancing present.

Rumpole's attitude is ever to resist the modernisation of his life, whether by Hilda at home or by his colleagues in his barristers' chambers, and to hearken back to an idyllic past that may never have existed. The early 1990s is just about the last period when a computer could have remained believably missing from his world. It seems to me that this must have reflected the beliefs of the series writer, John Mortimer, since this is one area in which Rumpole was never shown to be mistaken.

Not that this stopped Mortimer from writing about topical stories of the day. The final season kicked off with Rumpole and the Children of the Devil, based on the then-recent Orkney child abuse scandal in the most thinly veiled way possible. Less comedic in tone than most of the later Rumpole stories (save for a subplot in which Ballard and Erskine-Brown, the most religious-minded of Rumpole's colleagues, are alarmed by Rumpole's defence of supposed "devil worshipers"), the author's opinion of the social worker responsible for bringing the charges against Rumpole's client is plain for all to see - she is portrayed as being prejudiced (in the sense of having pre-judged the case) and ready to willfully misinterpret everything in the worst possible way to make the defendants look guilty. I think it is safe to say that Mortimer is not a fan.

A new member of the regular cast is introduced at the start of the season - Dot Clapton (played by Camille Coduri, not long after she was Faith in Nuns on the Run), Henry's new assistant. Dot fills the gap in the cast left by the absence of both Dianne (Henry's previous assistant) and Uncle Tom. Of these, Uncle Tom is by far the most missed - he never had a large role in any given episode, but he often had the funniest lines out of any of the supporting cast. Alas, it seems that his actor, Richard Murdoch, died in between the filming of seasons six and seven.

Rumpole and the Miscarriage of Justice sees Rumpole in the unusual position of defending a police officer accused of corruption, rather than being the one accusing them of it. What makes this even more interesting is that this officer, Detective Superintendent Gannon, was played by Tony Doyle, who was at the same time as this was broadcast appearing over on the BBC in Between the Lines as Chief Superintendent John Deakin, one of the greatest corrupt police officer characters ever seen in a TV detective series.

This rooftop location scene in Rumpole and the Eternal Triangle has the BT Tower visible in the distance. The existence of this tower was still an official secret at this time, not that this stopped it from frequently appearing in London-set TV programmes, from Doctor Who to The Goodies.

In Rumpole and the Reform of Joby Jonson, Rumpole defends the titular Joby Jonson, who was played by a before-he-was-famous John "State of Play" Simm. Simm isn't even the most impressive guest actor in this episode, as not only does it feature Julian Fellowes as an MP, but also Julian "Scaroth" Glover as the outwardly benevolent but secretly up-to-no-good Sir Sebastian Pilgrim. Well, as the closest Rumpole ever came to meeting a diabolical mastermind, who better to play him than a former Bond villain?

Along with Julian Curry as series regular Claude Erskine-Brown, they could have called this one The Three Julians. Speaking of Claude Erskine-Brown, this episode concludes the long-running subplot whereby he has been trying to become a QC. Unable to do so without the support of Ballard, the head of chambers, Phyllida Erskine-Brown (Patricia Hodge making her once-a-season appearance) tricks Ballard into giving it. This leads to Judge Graves commenting upon the news:

"Claude Erskine-Brown? They must be giving away silk gowns with pounds of tea nowadays."

The problem with this is that the series presents Phyllida Erskine-Brown as some sort of irresistible siren, able to effortlessly seduce Ballard until he is putty in her hands. Quite aside from this being utterly out of character for the happily married Ballard to fall for this, Mrs Erskine-Brown is completely unbelievable as someone who could pull off this kind of temptation.

The traditional once-a-season episode away from London comes in the form of Rumpole and the Family Pride (a more conventional variant of the format-breaker than last season's Rumpole at Sea), which once again involves a member of Hilda's family in need of the services of Rumpole - this time one who married into the aristocracy, giving the Rumpoles an experience of the upper crust. Patrick "Captain Duff" Ryecart plays Lord Richard Sackbut, and the episode also features appearances by John "Sir Arnold" Nettleton and Donald "Eyesen" Pickering - both familiar faces from Yes Minister, of course, but also both had already been in Rumpole of the Bailey in earlier seasons as different characters.

And so we come to the very last episode of all, Rumpole on Trial, in which the tables are turned and it is Rumpole who finds himself... er, on trial. With his QC status going to his head, Claude Erskine-Brown accuses Rumpole of talking to a client after Judge Olliphant had instructed him not to, on top of Rumpole having been rude to that same judge in court - Rumpole lost his temper while suffering from toothache.

Judge Graves returns to preside over Rumpole's hearing. Ballard is, as usual, against Rumpole - that is until Hilda intimidates him into representing Rumpole as his head of chambers - a far more believable form of persuasion than that used by Mrs Erskine-Brown in the earlier episode. Seeing as Ballard is completely useless as an advocate (his days as a worthy courtroom opponent for Rumpole are several seasons behind him by now), the defence really falls to Rumpole's former pupil, Liz Probert (Abigail McKern). With Rumpole standing firm as a matter of principle, even if it ends his career, it is up to her to get him off in spite of his best efforts to be found guilty - a situation all too familiar to us viewers as it was so often the relationship between Rumpole and his clients. This symmetry is very pleasing, and makes this a worthy finale to the series.

As well as treating us with two recurring judges, this episode also features appearances by Peter Sallis (who had already started voicing Wallace & Gromit by the time this was made) as the client Rumpole was accused of talking to but didn't really, and Richard "Slartibartfast" Vernon as Rumpole's dentist, whom he really was talking to.

A highlight of the episode to watch out for is Rumpole's stubborn refusal gesture, when an apology is demanded of him as the price of acquittal, looking a lot like a similar stubborn gesture made by McKern's Number Two, when a prisoner in Fall Out.

So why did the series end when it did? The two essential ingredients to the show - Leo McKern to play Rumpole and John Mortimer to write it - could have carried on for several more years, perhaps even throughout the 1990s (McKern's last acting role was 1999). There was no signs of slowing down the production of the series as it entered the 1990s - indeed the shortest gap between seasons came between the sixth and seventh, only 10 months.

So it seems likely the demise of the series was tied up with the demise of the Thames Television franchise that made it. This came to an end in December 1992, the same month as Rumpole on Trial was broadcast.

Rumpole of the Bailey, Season Six (1991)

The sixth season of Rumpole of the Bailey sticks closely to the by now well-established formula used in the previous couple of seasons, so you know pretty much what you're going to get served up over the course of the season: at least one murder where Rumpole acts for the defence and gets his client off by discovering the real killer; a topical one; one where Rumpole loses his case; one with Peter Bowles as Judge Featherstone; one with Patricia Hodge as Phyllida Erskine-Brown QC; a format-breaking episode away from London chambers; and a final episode that looks like it is going to do something different before the status quo is restored by the end.

That's not to say the episodes aren't still fun, far from it - the quality this season is every bit as high as it was in seasons four or five. And there is still room for some variation in the format, as we shall see.

The first episode, Rumpole à la Carte, centres around an arrogant, aggressive celebrity chef Jean Pierre O'Higgins (very much in the style of a Marco Pierre White or a Gordon Ramsay, but I don't know if this is supposed to be a satire on one chef in specific) played by T P "Ex-President Sarkoff (formerly of NASA)" McKenna, who hires Rumpole to defend him because Rumpole is the only customer who has dared defy him in his restaurant. This creates a fun dynamic between Rumpole and O'Higgins that makes this a good season opener. Also appearing is James "King Henry VII" Maxwell, although he is wasted as another of Hilda's distant relatives, in a mere retread of a subplot we have seen done before in season five.

The Peter Bowles episode, Rumpole and the Summer of Discontent, is also this season's topical episode. Clearly inspired by a number of high-profile strike actions in the UK in the mid-to-late 1980s, in this episode it seems as though everyone is on strike, from Hilda refusing to cook and clean the Rumpoles' flat through to the Old Bailey judges - we see the latter from the perspective of Judge Featherstone, who puts his foot in it (as usual) with both his wife Marigold and the Lord Chancellor, both of whom mock him by comparing him to a trade union shop steward.

Rumpole and the Right to Silence is a fairly typical example of a murder where Rumpole acts for the defence and gets his client off by discovering the real killer, noteworthy partly for featuring a thinly-veiled version of the freemasons (here called the "ostlers"), but mainly for some of the guest actors - Maurice "Stotzy" Roëves is the accused, Christopher "Henry Gordon Jago" Benjamin a witness.

This is also the first appearance of a new recurring judge, Mr Justice Ollie Oliphant, played by James "Barliman Butterbur" Grout. Possibly the most caricatured of all the Rumpole of the Bailey judges, he is obsessed with "common sense" and brings it up virtually every time he speaks. We shall see him twice this season, and twice more in the following season.

Speaking of recurring judges, that leads me to Rumpole at Sea, arguably the most format-breaking of all the format-breaking episodes, because it is the only episode of Rumpole not based around Rumpole's involvement in a current case-of-the-week. Instead it is a character piece centred on Judge Graves (Robin Bailey, in his fifth appearance), as he and the Rumpoles find themselves in the contrived situation of having coincidentally gone on holiday on the same cruise ship.

There they meet up with mystery writer Howard Swainton (Julian "Sarge" Holloway) who is convinced that one of the other couples on board is acting suspiciously. With Swainton for the prosecution, Graves and Rumpole soon fall into their natural positions as judge and defence counsel respectively, showing that they cannot escape these roles even on holiday.

For such a farcical scenario, the resolution ends up being one of the most seriously emotional we have seen in the series for quite some time, as it turns out that the couples' strange behaviour is explained by their recognition of Judge Graves as the one who prosecuted them many years before. For those of us who enjoy the serious side of Rumpole as much as, if not more than, the comic, this denouement turns this into the best episode of the season.

The return of Phyllida Erskine-Brown QC in Rumpole and the Quacks brings to a head the rather tedious ongoing subplot about the Erskine-Browns' failing marriage, with Phyllida constantly suspecting her husband Claude (Julian Curry, an underrated supporting player throughout the series) of infidelity. The fact that Claude does try (unsuccessfully) to have extra-marital affairs, and is just as unsuccessful in his attempts at hiding this fact from his wife, doesn't stop her from being a hypocrite, since we have seen her plan affairs of her own, and on at least one occasion (in Rumpole's Return) it is implied that Phyllida actually went through with it.

Anyway, the best thing about Rumpole and the Quacks is a brief appearance by Graham "Soldeed" Crowden as the head of a medical tribunal.

The season-ending subversion of the usual format is self-evident from the title: Rumpole for the Prosecution. Tempted by the money on offer, Rumpole agrees to act for the private prosecution of a murder, with "Soapy" Sam Ballard QC acting for the defence - the complete reversal of their usual situations giving rise to many comic moments, and even the judge (Ollie Oliphant again) can't believe they're the right way round.

The twist isn't at all difficult to guess - Rumpole just can't help himself, and proves a more successful defender than the defence team. This is one of the better episodes of the season, balancing the comedy and the drama more successfully than most of the others managed, allowing the season to end on a positive.

On a final, sadder note, this is the first season that didn't begin every episode with the iconic Thames Television ident, since that was not used by programmes made after 1989. You miss it when it's gone.

Rumpole of the Bailey, Season Five (1988)

There's little doubt by this point that the comedy of Rumpole of the Bailey was growing ever broader as time passed. Clear evidence of this is to be found in the first episode of the season, Rumpole and the Bubble Reputation, when the private detective character of "Fig" Newton returns. Previously played straight by Jim "Bishop Brennan" Norton in his first appearance back in season three, he is now recast as a sitcom caricature of a private detective, played by Frank Mills with a big mackintosh, a big hat, and the red nose of someone with a permanent cold.

In this first episode Rumpole has a go at defending in a defamation case alongside Charles "Pendleton" Kay as a posh barrister, more used to the lucrative law of libel and slander than Rumpole's criminal practice. As a result he makes the mistake of looking down his nose at Rumpole, and is more concerned with trying to settle on favourable terms than actually prove his client innocent. No surprises then when it is Rumpole's methods that solve the case in the end.

Rumpole and the Barrow Boy is the topical episode of this season, being as it is centred around insider trading in the city of London's financial district, the, er, City of London. This was topical at the time because of the "Big Bang," an absurdly self-important phrase used to describe the deregulation of the UK's financial market in 1986, the after-effects of which were still unfolding at the time this was made.

The episode itself is probably most notable for an appearance by Elizabeth Hurley as the girlfriend of the accused, one of her earliest television roles.

Rumpole and the Age of Miracles is arguably the most farcical episode of the series, certainly up to this point. It is the one episode of the season set away from London, as is traditional, but this time Rumpole is not alone in his travels, since he is accompanied by both Claude Erskine-Brown and Sam Ballard QC from his chambers, the former to prosecute the case, the latter to act as judge in the ecclesiastical court.

She Who Must Be Obeyed also accompanies Rumpole, and the farce unfolds in their hotel as Rumpole tries to fool the gullible Ballard into thinking Hilda is the ghost of an earlier miscarriage of justice, warning him not to repeat the error in their current case.

Martin Jarvis makes a guest appearance as the accused, a vicar suspected of adultery, but who happens to be the nephew of Horace and Hilda Rumpole. Last season it was old school friends of Erskine-Brown who kept turning up, this time it is relatives of the Rumpoles.

Just as broadly comical is Rumpole and the Tap End, which is the obligatory one episode of the season to guest-star Peter "A" Bowles. This follows a similar format to season four's Rumpole and the Judge's Elbow, with Judge Featherstone first making a gaffe in court, then his increasingly desperate measures to correct the situation only end up making things worse for him. Once again the experienced sitcom actor Bowles carries the majority of the episode himself, with Rumpole seeming more like the guest-star in his own show.

Several themes for the season come together in Rumpole and Portia, which gives us the only episode of the season to focus on former regular Phyllida Erskine-Brown QC (Patricia Hodge). Just as we saw Ballard become a part-time ecclesiastical judge earlier in the season, here Phyllida is made a recorder (another kind of part-time judge), and her first case naturally involves Rumpole acting for the defence.

The most notable one-off guest appearance here is Leslie "ding dong" Phillips, who is frankly wasted in his role as another of Hilda's distant relatives, a second cousin with whom she had a youthful infatuation. This subplot, unusually for Rumpole, isn't connected with the main plot, and seems to just be there to give Hilda something to do this week.

Connections to other episodes in the season aside, on its own this story is the least cohesive of the season, perhaps trying to do too much in the space of one hour of television. It attempts to draw a parallel between the Erskine-Browns sending their son away to boarding school with the separation of a father and son when the father is in prison, but the twist at the end is that young Tristan Erskine-Brown wants to attend the boarding school because his relationship with his parents is already so distant. The writer seems to have ignored the possibility that Tristan might have had any friends his own age at his previous school whom he would be separated from, but given that virtually all the main characters in this series (and their children, including Rumpole himself and his son Nick) attended boarding school, I have to assume that this is an autobiographical detail.

This is also the now-obligatory one loss for Rumpole per season. However it is not all bad, as for once there is a subplot for Uncle Tom, a regular character who has provided comic relief since the start of the series, but who very rarely gets a significant role. Ballard wants to get rid of Uncle Tom for practicing his golf in the clerk's room, but has his mind changed when told by an American client that this is a "great gimmick" that will be sure to attract other rich Americans like him. As fun as this scene is, it is worth noting that this subplot - just like the one with Leslie Phillips - has no bearing on the main plot, and this one doesn't even involve Rumpole.

Another good point that I feel I have to mention is the brief appearance by a stunt cat, who we see startled by a gunshot at the beginning of the episode. Maybe he was a naughty cat up to no good, lol.

The last episode of the season, Rumpole and the Quality of Life, opens with some gratuitous nudity, as the accused-of-the-week is having her topless portrait painted by her husband, who soon winds up dead.

For a change this finale does not try to misdirect the viewing audience into thinking this might be the very end of the series. Instead of Rumpole being faced with death or (worse!) retirement, the life-changing event here occurs to Ballard.

Rumpole is warned about his health by his doctor (played by Robert "Ven Glynd" James), and spends much of the story complaining about the special diet he has been put on. Meanwhile we see Ballard embracing a healthy lifestyle of exercise. With predictable sitcom logic, it is Ballard who comes a cropper first, knocking himself out with his chest expander. This allows Rumpole to take over from the QC as the lead defence counsel in the murder trial (not that his lack of being a QC has stopped Rumpole from leading on murder trials on numerous occasions in previous seasons), while Ballard is taken into the care of the Old Bailey's matron, "Matey."

With chambers regulars serving as judges in a third of the cases this season, it leaves less room for the guest judges. We do at least get two appearances from Judge Graves (Robin Bailey), including here in the final episode, and can see his increasing exasperation with Rumpole's behaviour.

By the time Rumpole has won the case, Ballard and "Matey" are engaged, and the season closes with their wedding. Claude Erskine-Brown makes a speech over the closing credits, while we see a number of the guests are familiar characters making cameo appearances for this scene only, including Phyllida Erskine-Brown, Marigold Featherstone, and George Frobisher. This would seem to be an attempt at making the extended cast of Rumpole of the Bailey out to be one big happy family. It's all very cosy.

Perhaps too cosy? We're now even further away from the series' origins than when I described season four as being like "a comfortable pair of slippers." Rumpole has always had comedic aspects, true, but these are now completely dominant over the serious parts. If you enjoy the sitcom side of Rumpole then this might be the best season yet, but this comes at the expense of any dramatic elements.

This can most clearly be seen in Rumpole and Portia, simultaneously both the best and worst episode of the season, where the tragic fate of the separated father and son is lost among the overtly comedic subplots. The episode's favouring of these scenes over those of the main plot could easily cause viewers to forget that in the very first scene of the programme we saw for ourselves the evidence of the father's innocence, just as his son did, and therefore that what we then witnessed play out in the courtroom scenes was a miscarriage of justice.

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: The Manny with the Golden Gun

In 1974 Roger Moore returned to star in his second James Bond film. It would turn out to be the most expensive and luxury of his era, because what it lacked in expensive luxury cat masterminds, it made up for by having one of the best, most memorable, most iconic baddys of the whole film series - so iconic, in fact, that the whole film is named after him: The Manny with the Golden Gun.

The pre-titles sequence introduces us to the main baddy of the film, Francisco Scaramanga, as played by Christopher "Scaramanga" Lee, along with his two henchmannys Nick Nack (Hervé "Nick Nack" Villechaize) and Andrea (Maud "Octopussy" Adams). This is all in the first scene, so the film obviously has No Time To Waste. We see that Scaramanga has only three nipples instead of the normal amount, which is his second most distinguishing feature after being Christopher Lee.

A manny comes to try to kill Scaramanga on his private island in his private funhouse. Despite the assassin getting the drop on Scaramanga when he has no gun, Scaramanga uses the layout of the funhouse to confuse and outwit his opponent until he can get to his golden gun and shoot him.

James Bond does not appear until after the titles, but his presence is felt both from the statue of Bond that Scaramanga keeps in his funhouse, as well as a cowboy that looks like Roger Moore in a moustache.

The theme song is famously the most innuendo-laden of all Bond songs, but it can't be denied that it is a banger. So to speak. Mew.

Bond properly enters the story right after the titles to get a briefing from M. Instead of being given a mission, he is taken off his current mission because M thinks Scaramanga is after Bond (not in that way, naughty cats!) but Bond, knowing that Scaramanga is "the man with the golden gun" (clang!) who charges "a million dollars" a kill (he must have been listening to the theme song, lol) asks who would pay that much to have him killed.

"Jealous husbands; outraged chefs; humiliated tailors. The list is endless."

quips M. Bond and M agree that to stop Scaramanga from killing Bond, Bond will have to find and kill Scaramanga first.

Bond goes to the last place Scaramanga was thought to be, Beiruit, to look for a clue. He finds a squashed up golden bullet (Scaramanga's trademark) in the belly of a belly dancer, and then he accidentally noms it when some mannys come to have a fight with him for no readily apparent reason other than Bond hasn't been in a fight yet.

Q and his friend Colthorpe (James Cossins, who was Count Hoyos in Fall of Eagles the same year as this film was made) analyse the bullet (once Bond has pooed it out again, lol) to find out where it came from, sending Bond off to look for the next clue in Macau.

There Bond meets the manny who made the bullet, Lazar. He is pleased to meet Bond, at least until Bond starts asking him pointed questions about Scaramanga. This leads Bond to Andrea, collecting the next lot of gold bullets for Scaramanga, so he follows her to Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong he meets Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) who is assigned to be his komedy sidekick for the rest of the film. She shows some early signs of competence by tracing Andrea to her hotel, but is mostly here to be clumsy and get in Bond's way.

Bond goes into the hotel and twists Andrea's arm to get some information from her - literally. While not out of character for Bond to do this, it seems strange to see Roger Moore's version do it since he normally downplayed that side of the role. This makes it feel gratuitously aggressive and out of character for him, even though it isn't really.

With Andrea's information Bond goes looking for Scaramanga, but misses him. He sees Nick Nack instead, but doesn't recognise his importance since he is only looking for Scaramanga. Meanwhile Scaramanga doesn't miss when he shoots a manny. Bond pulls his gun out when he hears the shot but this only gets him arrested. Bond gets suspicious that the policemanny isn't a real policemanny, but don't worry - it isn't an Auton, it's just another example of Bond getting captured by somebody who then turns out to be on his side.

He is taken to meet M and Q on board a sunken ship that is really a base for British Intelligence, who have finally decided to get in on having their own secret lair - why should the baddys have all the fun, mew? The fake policemanny is really Lieutenant Hip, who along with M and Q give Bond the exposition about what has been going on in another plot that has now coincided with Bond's plot - the manny Scaramanga shot was W-wording for a multi-millionaire called Hai Fat, but had planned to sell his "solex agitator" (a solar energy device) to the British.

Bond suspects Hai Fat is responsible, so goes to his house disguised as Scaramanga. This disguise consists of putting on a fake third nipple and then taking his top off at the earliest possible opportunity in order to show it off. As soon as Hai Fat counts Bond's nipples he knows this is somebody pretending to be Scaramanga and so he goes along with it, and invites Bond back for dinner later like a good Bond villain should. While Bond thinks this plan was a complete success, we see the real Scaramanga watching him leave from Hai Fat's house.

When Bond returns for dinner he walks straight into a trap. Not a great trap, though, consisting as it does of two sumo wrestlers to distract him while Nick Nack hits him on the hed with a trident, but it is enough to capture Bond, who was probably anticipating something more elaborate involving sharks.

Nick Nack is about to stab Bond when Hai Fat stops him, realising this is no way for a Bond villain to behave - he needs to put Bond in an overly elaborate situation from which he can escape. So he arranges for Bond to be put in one of the most blatant examples of this trope ever to appear in an actual Bond film and not a Bond parody.

Bond wakes up at a martial arts "school" for no real reason other than martial arts films were quite popular at this point in the 1970s. He watches two mannys fight to the death for no reason (or, at best, this is to show that this is serious business), then is made to fight a manny who likes bowing a lot. Bond defeats him easily by kicking him in the face while he is doing a bow, so the baddys send in a henchmanny dressed in black so that we know he is even more serious business than the last one was.

After a bit of fighting this henchmanny, Bond runs away. He gets rescued by Lieutenant Hip and his two nieces, who just happen to be driving past at exactly that moment. They have a martial arts fight with some of the baddys, then run away when the henchmanny arrives with some reinforcements. Hip drives himself and his nieces away, leaving Bond to have a boat chase instead of a car chase. This is a bit like the long speedboat chase in Live and Let Die, but at least this one doesn't have Sheriff J. W. Pepper in it...

Oh noes. Still, at least his presence (here on holiday) is little more than a cameo and a bit of light comic relief, it's not like he's right in the middle of one of the film's main action set pieces and shitting it up with his unfunny buffoonery. Mew.

Bond escapes, so Hai Fat is worried about his plan being jeopardised by Bond's investigation. Scaramanga shoots him and takes over as the main baddy, coolly saying

"Mr Fat has just resigned. I'm the new chairman of the board."

Bond is about to get up to some naughtiness with Goodnight when Andrea comes in to swap sides. She thinks Bond is the only one who can defeat Scaramanga and save her. Bond wants her to get the solex from Scaramanga, which she does, but then Scaramanga kills her while she is waiting to paw it over to him.

Scaramanga sits down next to Bond and introduces himself.

"My name is Scaramanga, Francisco Scaramanga."

It's no coincidence that he uses the same 'surname, firstname surname' style that Bond himself uses, since the film is implying that Scaramanga is an evil version of Bond. While Scaramanga monologues about his backstory, Bond slips the solex to Lieutenant Hip under Scaramanga's nose. Hip passes it to Goodnight, but she gets captured by Scaramanga and Nick Nack who drive away in their car.

Bond steals a car to give chase in, but it already has another manny in it...

Oh noes! Even Bond says

"Oh no."

when he recognises Sheriff Pepper. It's a testament to the high quality of the rest of this film, including the phenomenal finale that we still have to look forward to, that The Manny with the Golden Gun manages to be one of the most expensive and luxury of all the James Bond films in spite of the baffling decision to have Sheriff Pepper return from Live and Let Die in order to be really annoying all through the ensuing chase sequence.

Scaramanga and Nick Nack get away when they attach some wings to their car to turn it into a 'plane

although Bond is able to follow them using the homing device on Goodnight. He flies a plane to the secret private island base we saw in the pre-titles sequence, which is the film bringing us full circle back to where it began.

Scaramanga is expecting Bond and sends Nick Nack out to welcome him with a bottle of expensive luxury Dom Pérignon. Scaramanga then shoots the top off the bottle like he is Mrs Peel at the start of an Avengers episode, which is suggestive of the kind of relationship he feels he has - or should have - with Bond.

Scaramanga shows Bond around his lair, where has lots of technology, including a giant pewpewpew gun.

"This is the part I really like."

says Scaramanga, then he pews Bond's 'plane so that it explodes.

Bond and Scaramanga have noms with Goodnight, who is there in a bikini. Scaramanga justifies this by saying

"I like a girl in a bikini - no concealed weapons."

Bond wouldn't need any such excuse, lol. This scene is a classic of the 'Bond having polite noms with the baddy' trope, possibly the best one we have seen since the original in  Dr. No. Scaramanga explains why he hasn't killed Bond before now:

"You see, Mr Bond, like every great artist, I want to create an indisputable masterpiece once in my lifetime - the death of 007, mano a mano, face to face, will be mine."

Bond accepts, leading us in to the final act, the duel between Bond and Scaramanga.

Of course Scaramanga doesn't fight fairly, and slinks off to his private funhouse where he has all the advantages. We have seen this before, when the pre-title sequence carefully foreshadowed this climax, and this fight is full of callbacks to that first duel - and Scaramanga, at least, is hoping it will end the same way too.

Nick Nack tries to get Bond to waste all his bullets on the funhouse tricks and traps, while Scaramanga hunts Bond, but Bond manages to get 'off the grid' to an area where he cannot be seen by Nick Nack on the CCTV.

Even we in the audience lose track of Bond, and for a while we only see Scaramanga and Nick Nack as they search around for him. At the same time the music helps build the suspense, until we see Bond has replaced the funhouse statue of himself with...

...himself. Scaramanga looks really surprised when he gets shot and goes

He expected to beat Bond because he mistaikenly thought Bond would be too honourable to resort to such subterfuge, so that he could have the advantage and so win even if Bond turned out to be better than him in a fair fight. But Bond played the game by Scaramanga's rules and so he won by being better at cheating than Scaramanga.

Goodnight knocks a henchmanny into a vat of liquid helium, which starts a chain reaction to blow up the base. This is a rare case of a base having a fairly good reason to blow up, not just a single self-destruct button or a magical failure of ontological inertia. Bond has to recover the solex in a hurry, and is hindered by Goodnight's clumsy attempts to help him. This scene still manages to be suitably tense, as is the following scene of the two of them escaping from the exploding base.

They get away in Scaramanga's junk (no, you naughty cats, it's a type of ship!) and are getting down to some naughtiness when Nick Nack attacks them. Bond defeats and captures him pretty easily, but the slow deescalation of threats at the end of the film makes it one of the most satisfying - instead of a big climax followed only by a brief (often comedic, especially in the Roger Moore era) coda before the end credits, here we go from main baddy defeated, to exciting escape, to short henchmanny fight, to brief comedic coda with Bond saying "Goodnight" to M over the 'phone, to the end credits.

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Very Luxury

Rumpole of the Bailey, Season Four (1987)

Over three years passed between the third and fourth seasons of Rumpole of the Bailey, the longest gap in the series. This is where the divide falls between the early years of Rumpole when the series still had something of an edge to it and the capacity to be unpredictable, and the latter years when the series, while still containing much to enjoy and many individually well-written and performed episodes (and the occasional surprise), was on the whole a far more safely comedic, formulaic, and the televisual equivalent of a comfortable pair of slippers.

The length of the gap between seasons is one reason why I would place the divide here. The other is that here is where we get the second Hilda Rumpole, from now on played by Marion Mathie. Mathie's version of Hilda is a more overtly sitcommy, 'battleaxe' take than Peggy Thorpe-Bates's Hilda ever was, and it is hard to argue that this is entirely due to the scripts. The first episode of the season is heavy on the new Hilda, perhaps to get audiences used to the change as quickly as possible.

Another example of the sitcomisation of the series is to be found in the increasingly broad characterisation of Claude Erskine-Brown, who is by this point a caricature of himself as he was in the first season. His relationship to Rumpole had previously developed from rival to friendly rival, and by now they are simply friends and colleagues (his original role ceded to Ballard), and the plots of two episodes involve Erskine-Brown's old public school friends being put in touch with Rumpole through him.

The first of these is Rumpole and the Blind Tasting, which is most notable for introducing us to Judge Graves ("Mr Injustice Graves" as Rumpole calls him), played by Robin "of the" Bailey, who will go on to be one of the most frequently reoccurring judges from this point on, and is probably second only to Judge Bullingham in terms of the most memorable of Rumpole's judicial antagonists.

Almost as noteworthy is the appearance of Stephen "Travis" Greif as the first of Erskine-Brown's old school friends, although in this case "friend" turns out to be the wrong word as he cheerfully tells Rumpole about how he used to bully Erskine-Brown - an efficient way of making it clear to viewers that he is the villain of the episode.

In terms of one-off guest appearances, the episode Rumpole and the Official Secret supplies us with several of note. Judy Cornwell is immediately recognisable from Paradise Towels (made the same year as this), although she is probably better known for the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances. Paul "Dr Bellfriar from Killer" Daneman plays the Lord Chief Justice, while Donald Pickering (who was also in Doctor Who that year, as Beyus in Time and the Rani) and Peter Cellier, both familiar faces from their having played senior civil servants in Yes Prime Minister around this time, here play senior civil servants. Cellier's character is even called Sir Frank again!

This is my favourite of this season, where Rumpole defends a lowly civil service secretary who is charged with leaking trivial (but still secret) details of civil service expenditure to the press. Again Rumpole becomes involved when the accused's boss is an old friend of Claude Erskine-Brown, and is put in touch with Rumpole to try and have the charges "laughed out of court." But things then become increasingly serious as more secrets are revealed, and more senior civil servants get involved. The stakes are high when Rumpole finds himself facing the most senior judge in the land, the Lord Chief Justice, and he is not sympathetic to the defence.

The most sitcomish episode of the season coincides with Peter Bowles making his now obligatory one-episode-a-season showing as Judge Featherstone. Unusually for the series, a great deal of the episode is shown from Featherstone's point of view, not Rumpole's. Having visited a massage parlour (for entirely innocent reasons - hence the story title Rumpole and the Judge's Elbow) and paid by credit card, Featherstone finds himself trying a case of a massage parlour used for "immoral purposes." Not remembering the name of the place he visited, and terrified in case it is the same one, he then spends much of the episode being thwarted in his attempts to find out if he is in the clear or if his receipts might be used in the defence's evidence.

Rumpole, who is of course the barrister acting for the defendant, is for once presented to us as though he is the antagonist. While everything turns out all right for the judge in the end, this is a rare case where Rumpole is on the losing side, especially in this latter part of the series. It just goes to show that the series still has the capacity to surprise us, and to test the limits of its increasingly restrictive format.

A much more familiar sort of format-breaker is to be found in Rumpole and the Bright Seraphim, the one-episode-a-season when Rumpole travels outside London for a case. Travelling to West Germany to defend a British soldier accused of murder, the setting may be out of the ordinary, but the plot structure is anything but - Rumpole pokes holes in the prosecution's case, sees through what a supposedly helpful character is trying to make him believe, and identifies the real culprit. The scene of Rumpole cross-examining a too-full-of-himself medical examiner is virtually a repeat of when he did the same thing in season three's Rumpole and the Sporting Life.

By themselves these aren't major problems, and they'd hardly be the first time the writer John Mortimer has reused his plot beats and character tics. Where the story really suffers from is in being poorly edited to fit into a single episode's duration. This has two consequences - firstly that we end up missing any explanation of how Rumpole deduced the real killer. While there is a scene where we viewers see her smile an 'I've-gotten-away-with-it' smile to herself, indicating her guilt to us at home, Rumpole is not privy to this and so his conclusion appears to be based on nothing.

The story's guest characters also suffer. Despite this being Judge George Frobisher's first appearance since Rumpole's Return (and that was only a cameo), hardly anything is made of this and Rumpole doesn't interact with him outside of the courtroom, meaning this might as well have been any random judge-of-the-week, not one of Rumpole's oldest friends. Other guest characters fare just as badly, and the distinctive voice of Peter Jones is wasted in a small part.

Rumpole's Last Case continues the tradition of the final episode of the season trying to convince viewers that this might just be the very last episode of all. This is one of the least successful attempts, being as it is centred on Rumpole trying to win enough money to retire on by betting on a horse race "accumulator," and then when he does win discovering that the prison "screw" who place the bet for him has absconded with the winnings. Except that the end of season two and Rumpole's Return both made it very clear that Rumpole could retire whenever he liked and go to live with his son in America, so this motivation for Rumpole is a clear case of him acting out of character for the sake of the plot.

Sadly this would turn out to be the Last Case for one of the show's most memorable recurring characters - this is the last of the six appearances by Bill Fraser as arguably Rumpole's greatest adversary, "the Mad Bull" Judge Bullingham. He leaves a big wig to fill.

In terms of overall quality, this is a much more variable season than any of the ones before it. While none of the episodes are outright bad, there are really only two that stand out from the crowd, and for different reasons: Rumpole and the Official Secret for drama, Rumpole and the Judge's Elbow for comedy.

Eurovision 2023

Last night we cats all got overexcited and watched the Eurovision Singing Competition, which was being held in the UK - that's the same country that we live in!

The standard of entries was high this year, with a more diverse selection of styles making it through the semi-finals.

The wacky songs were back in force this time, from the very first song (from Austria) being a bizarre number about Edgar Allan Poe, through to the penultimate song from Croatia which was just as strange in its own way.

The best of these by far was Finland's entry, with a strangely dressed singer dancing like a Gumby - the voting mannys seemed to agree with this, and they came second. On the other paw, Germany's "Blood and Glitter" song was pure bonkers Eurovision rock, and might end up being the most memorable from this year's singing competition. Yet it came last.

Colourful Eurovision performances always go down well with big, gay, long cats, and Poland and Albania were good for this. Then there was Australia who had a car on stage, and a keytar giving them '80s vibes - that's the stuff we like to see.

I suspect Armenia's "future lover" is Captain Kirk, since her costume looked like the sort of thing that would be worn by a female guest star in an episode of Star Trek.

Belgium's entry were only minorly eccentric by the standards of this year, like they didn't quite want to fully commit to it for fear of being stopped by the dreaded semi-finals. They would have stood out more in some recent years, but not this time.

My personal favourite this year was the Italian entry, sung by a handsome manny in a fancy shirt. In the end he came fourth, which is not bad, considering the mannys that do the voting normally make a complete mess of it. Just because they're the ones with the thumbs, mew.

Sweden's system for predicting what will be popular and successful in Eurovision (probably a huge machine covered in flashing lights and switches, like a 1960s supercomputer) and then focusing their entry on it with laser-like precision (so that the voters all have to pounce on it) was back on top of its game this year, and they won with a landslide, obvious from very early on in the voting. Which was strange, because all I noticed about the song was the singer's long claws, like she was about to do a claw-claw attack.

The interval act consisting of songs from Liverpool seemed a bit parochial, as though the host city had forgotten about viewers in the rest of the UK, never mind the rest of Eurovision!

The voting was as rubbish as usual, with the new(ish) system still allocating huge blocks of votes to a pawful of countries in a completely opaque manner. I'm beginning to wonder if the mannys who run Eurovision just make it all up.

Mew, who cares if they do? It's still the most wonderful, fabulous Caturday night of the year!

Moonlighting, Season One (1985)

Today, Moonlighting is probably best known as the TV series that launched Bruce Willis's career, but in its day was a very popular and successful show that, for a time, captured the zeitgeist of America in the mid-1980s.

Nominally starring Cybill Shepherd, who was by far the bigger name of the two leads before the show began, the script gives her co-star Willis every possible opportunity to steal the scene which, with his undoubted charisma on top, he makes look effortless. (That said, his character is a sexist dickhead who these days would have been swiftly cancelled if he tried even a fraction of what he got away with back then.) It is easy to see why Willis, then still possessed of some hair, became a movie star only a few years later.

The premise of the series is that Maddie Hayes (Shepherd) and David Addison (Willis) run a private detective agency together. Neither has any real detective skills worth speaking of, in this first season at least, and consequently they solve most of their cases through dumb luck, helped a little by Hayes possessing the glamour of a former model, and Addison's real skills being those of a fast-talking con artist.

As you might imagine from that description, this is a comedy and not a serious detective drama. In fact the genre would be more accurately described as 'screwball' comedy (like Bringing Up Baby and other films of the 1930s and '40s), and what made this series stand out from the many other US detective shows of the era is based on the successful updating of this genre to the 1980s thanks to the chemistry between the two leads. 

Sadly, the show in a lot of other respect is still a product of its time, and that time is all too obviously the 1980s. The cheesy music has not dated well (except in the sense that with it you could accurately date the show with your eyes closed), and neither has the 'comic' dialogue - some scenes are so broad that they feel like they should have a laugh track over them. Willis has the skills to sell the material (most of the time), but other actors are not so fortunate, and the only thing that separates this from an out-and-out "filmed before a live studio audience" sitcom is the glossy location shooting.

While later seasons would be known for playing more with genre tropes and repeatedly breaking the fourth wall, giving the series another way in which it was unlike (and so stood out from) its peers, there is precious little of this to be seen in the first season. This is more like a straight send up of TV detective shows, and as such is uncomfortably straddling the drama and comedy; the two sides of its nature.

At only six episodes in length (one of which was a double-length pilot), short for an American network TV show, this feels more like a trial run than a full series. It is long enough to prove the success of the Willis/Shepherd dynamic, but I cannot imagine that this on its own would have been enough to sustain a much longer run. In a case of life imitating art, the show was saved as much by luck as its characters so often were.