Last night BBC4 showed an excellent episode of the rather wonderful Timeshift, covering political thrillers on TV throughout the ages.
There were some that I’d seen and many I hadn’t covered, although the programme asserted that there have been fewer true political thrillers than one would have though. Particular attention was given to Edge of Darkness, a programme I fell in love with when I saw the swift repeat on BBC1 after a friend extolled its virtues following its initial BBC2 showing.
BBC4 are showing Edge of Darkness again next weekend – of course having just got ahold of the new DVD this isn’t strictly necessary viewing for me. I must find time to sit down and watch it. I did spend about an hour in the loft last week hunting through old cassettes looking for my rare cassette of Eric Clapton and Nick Kamen’s soundtrack to Edge of Darkness. Now I need to work out the best way of getting it back onto CD.
Essentially this programme was really a filler before the final episode of State of Play is aired next Sunday. So as not to spoil the ending, the BBC don’t show the final episode a week ahead on BBC4 like all the other episodes. I guess that this is fair enough. I don’t know whether or not I’m pleased that they’ve recommissioned the series, as these things should surely only be one-offs.
Other programmes mentioned in last night’s doc included a Very British Coup which I have on video (recorded off-air), and must watch once again. Then there were programmes that I feel I should have seen but didn’t like Natural Lies, also starring Bob Peck. They had gave a reasonable amount of coverage to House of Cards, but I really feel that this was a series of its time which is only really revered to such an extent since the first series aired around the time of Thatcher leaving office. The following series got progressively sillier.