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The Belgian Original |
Let's talk TV. Not long ago I finished watching a series. Then I watched it again, but different.
(Old philosophical question: Can you step into the same TV series twice?) But Professor T is sort of a set of non-identical twins.
The first iteration of Professor T was a Belgian series (2015-2018) starring Koen De Bouw as a highly eccentric but brilliant professor of criminolgy at the University of Antwerp. He assists the police there while struggling with his considerable assortment of neuroses, especially a germ phobia. He also has an unfortunate addiction to telling the truth, no matter who it hurts.
Professor Teerlinck is an example of the Holmes school of annoying genius detectives. Fun to watch but hell on the people who work with them. One of the entertaining aspects of the show is that we see the Professor's active fantasy life acted out before our eyes. So the police officers will suddenly start dancing, or a rival professor might explode...
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The British Version |
I have been watching the show on PBS and now you can also go there to see its relative, the BBC version. In this one Professor T is Jasper Tempest, a Cambridge scholar played by Ben Miller (the original star of Murder in Paradise.) All of the plots are borrowed from Belgian episodes, with significant differences, of course, and those changes are what fascinates me. For example, in an episode called "The Perfect Picture" the plot is mostly the same but the motive and murderer change. It feels very much like the authors of the British episode had a grudge against a certain profession and modified the plot accordingly.
The biggest change, though, is the story that ends Season Two in both series. It feels like the English team wimped out on this one, although to be fair, this may relate to a difference in the laws in the two countries.
On the whole I liked the Belgian version better, largely because of the main actors. Miller plays the professor with only two expressions: Man With Toothache, and Man Pretending Not To Have Toothache. De Boew on the other hand, has mostly one expression: supercilious superiority, which fits the character better. (To be fair, he has one more facial tic: terror when he is around his mother.)
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British Fantasy Scene |
And that brings up one area where the British version wins: Frances de la Tour plays Mom and if you don't love Frances, fie on you. Another place where the Brits prove superior is the surreal scenes from Prof T's imagination, although they seem to have forgotten to include them in the last few episodes.
You might want to compare our own Janice Law's take on the Belgian version. Oh, apparently there are German and French versions too, but they haven't shown up on my screen so far.
Now I would like to talk about the new reboot of Matlock. There are spoilers ahead so if you plan to watch the show please stop reading now or jump down below the picture of my cat.
Okay? Everybody gone?
The new Matlock is a Trojan horse. It cheerfully promotes itself as a reboot of the old show but it is nothing of the kind. All the two series have in common is a senior citizen lawyer with a Southern accent (very occasionally in the latter version).
Kathy Bates plays a lawyer pretending to bear the name of the old TV show (which is fictional in her universe) but she is carrying out a convoluted scheme and a lot of what she says turns out to be lies.
The series this reboot resembles more closely is Mission: Impossible. At the beginning of each episode of that old spy show we learned a little about the team's cunning plan. But at some point (usually just before a commercial break) something would appear to go disastrously wrong. Only after the ad for corn flakes or whatever would we learn whether the disaster was 1) part of the plan, 2) not part of it but a contingency that had been prepared for, or 3) uh oh, we're in deep doodoo.
The same thing happens frequently in the reboot. For example, Matlock gets caught in someone's office. Is she in big trouble, or was this part of her scheme all along? Cool stuff.
As other viewers have said this plot feels like it can't run for years. I hope it is intended for a limited run. Also the underlying story lacks the grim realism of, say, a Scooby-Doo cartoon.
But I keep watching it, largely because of Kathy Bates, who each week offers a master class in physical acting. When she is silent her face reveals more than the other actors do when they are speaking.
Okay, as promised, here are my cats.Quickies on two more crime shows I have been enjoying:
A Man on the Inside (Netflix). Ted Danson plays a widowed professor who is hired by a private eye to move into a senior complex and find a jewelry thief. He isn't very good at it but the show is warm and funny and the elder actors (including Sally Struthers) are having a great time.
Where's Wanda? (Apple+) is in German with subtitles. When the Klatt family's teenage daughter disappears the parents decide to plant spy cameras in every house in their lovely suburban neighborhood. They soon find that almost everyone has secrets, including members of the family. The show is funny and sad and intriguing. But I have to say: I was almost at the end of the series when characters began behaving in such offensively stupid ways to keep the plot going that I gave up on the show.
Wishing you better luck.