Jan 12, 2020
Wilde Alliance: A Question Of Research (1.1, Yorkshire Television, 1978)
"There ought to be a law which allows literary agents to murder authors. Very slowly."
#Wilde alliance#classic tv#1978#John stride#Julia Foster#John Lee#patrick newell#Jerome Willis#Donald Burton#Raymond Adamson#Judy Buxton#William humbert#Robert blythe#Sebastian abineri#Robin parkinson#Paul Williamson#Derek Bennett#ian mackintosh#I've been meaning to get hold of this for a while; as the series that Stride made for Yorkshire after The Main Chance finished and as a#Brainchild of Ian Mackintosh it seemed like an irresistible show. I'm only one episode in of course so I don't want to call it prematurely#But I may have rather over excited myself for this. A curiously atypical Mackintosh product it seems to be eschewing the hard drama and#Intricate plots with a dash of humour of his earlier Warship and subsequent masterpiece Sandbaggers in favour of something..#Well humour is much more to the fore (and rather more obvious) whilst those strong plots have melted into the background. Again I'm only#On the first one so I should chill out I guess. Mackintosh had worked with Lee and Burton on Warship and would go on to work with Willis in#Sandbaggers; as in all his work the casting is excellent throughout. The late Stride is irascible but mischievous and makes his thriller#Writer adventurer strangely likeable (strangely because he unfortunately demonstrates a very 1970s attitude to domesticity and sharing the#Work load in a marriage: i hope further episodes will ease back on this because its pretty off putting tbh). Foster is much more#Straight forwardly loveable and will be a big boon to this series I think. The rest of the cast is rounded out with some decidedly oddball#Characters (huggable old Pat Newell playing of all things an amateur pornographer... Smh). We will see where this goes....
