What I've been watching: April, 2026

Shows I've Watched:

War and Peace

The Ellery Queen Mysteries

Danger Man

I mentioned, one of the last times that this feature appeared, that we hadn't introduced very many new shows into our viewing lineup, and that trend has continued through early spring. It's going to change, though, and in the next few months, you can expect to see new, and more, titles popping up: shows like The Gallant Men, The Time Tunnel, Cade's County, Car 54, and even The Monkees. Until then, you—and us—continue to work our ways through the last few episodes of some shows that have been on the schedule for awhile.

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All right, I admit it; I'm a cretin. The 1972 British version of War and Peace is considered one of the finest miniseries of all time. And how could it not be? Consisting of 20 episodes, running for a total of 15 hours, epic in scope, daring to plumb the depths of human emotion, based on one of the great books in all literature and boasting a cast headed by Anthony Hopkins, this ought to be a must for anyone who, like me, consistently beats the drum for finer television. My friend Paul Mavis wrote that "It positively luxuriates in its expansive format, giving the viewer a remarkable chance to fully experience the various nuances of character and the myriad permutations of shifting relationships," and gave it four stars.

And yet I was bored stiff through most of it. I found it dragging to the point that I asked my wife, who's read the book, if this was supposed to be the Thousand Years' War. So it's got to be me, and I'm fine with that. There are some genres that just don't appeal to me, and this apparently is one of them. Perhaps it's the portrayal of the Russian upper class that grated on me; I've never been able to understand or appreciate the dynamics of the aristocracy in British costume dramas, and at least War and Peace confirmed that my dislike isn't confined to Anglos. I'm about as anti-communist as they come, and yet, even though it would have been a historical anachronism, I kept hoping against hope that the Bolsheviks would show up and put them out of our misery. (It does give me a finer appreciation of the nuances of the Russian Revolution, however, but that's another story.) 

I consider myself an honorable man, for the most part, but the mores and manners of the upper crust aristocracy is as impenetrable to me as the most obscure foreign language. For some reason, I kept coming back to that Monty Python skit about the about the Upper Class Twit of the Year competition. Let me tell you, most of these characters would have been high in the standings. And you think there's drama in social media? That's nothing compared to the "everything's a disaster and my life is in total ruins!" whining that accompanies virtually everything that happens here. No wonder Anna Karenina threw herself under a train.

It didn't help that it took me a half dozen episodes to keep track of who's who. All those Russian names, the Nicolais and Andreis and Vasilis, are hard enough to keep straight in the best of times, but I had to keep asking my wife, "Now, which one is he?" until I finally skipped to the Wikipedia synopsis of the book and read the whole story. Even though I knew how the story ended, I can't say I was sorry that I did it. (At least Hopkins's character is named Pierre; it only took me two episodes to remember that.) It also doesn't work to the show's advantage that all the women sounded like shrill, privileged fishwives, especially the insufferable Morag Hood, who as Natasha is supposed to be a beguiler of men, but I kept wanting to shout at the screen, "Shut up, you stupid cow!" I have, at least, been confirmed in my suspicions that her casting was considered the weak link in the whole series.

Maybe part of the problem stems from the "war" part of War and Peace. Frankly, I was never sure who I should be rooting for. Maybe it's that British penchant for not having actors attempt to simulate foreign accents (which usually works quite well), but if it weren't for the generals and aides repeatedly calling some short guy "Napoleon," I'm not sure I would have been able to tell the French from the Russians in the first place. Still, I was puzzled; I mean, I'm no Francophile, I have a fairly strong contempt for the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. And yet was I supposed to be hoping that they would win, or were the Russians the ones I should be casting my lot with? And doesn't siding with Russia mean that I'm actively hoping for the defeat of Ukraine? Whoops, wrong war. Well, you can forgive me; it only seems as if that war lasted this long.  

What I can say about War and Peace is that, amidst a cast of largely unlikable characters, Anthony Hopkins is magnificent. Every time he appeared on screen, he made me put down whatever I was doing and watch. He projects a gravitas that is totally appropriate to the source material, and if someone, back in 1972, were to have told me that he'd someday win two Academy Awards, I'd have had no trouble believing it. The only other character with whom I could really identify was Rupert Davies as Count Rostov, who sounds from the name as if he should be working with Boris Badenov, but in reality was someone's husband and someone else's father, I'm not quite sure whose. I loved Davies as the French police detective Maigret, so I was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here; still, he did seem to be one of the few characters who projected a natural humanity and warmth that I could identify with.

As I say, this isn't meant as an indictment of War and Peace. Perhaps if I read the book, or saw the Russian version of the story, I'd feel quite different about it. It didn't work for me, and that's probably my fault. And on balance, television is probably better off having a series like this than not. So sue me.

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There have been a number of attempts to bring Ellery Queen's epynomous mystery writer/sleuth to the small screen, but in my opinion none of them worked quite as well as the 1975-76 edition that starred Jim Hutton as the absent-minded Ellery and David Wayne as his often-exasperated father, Inspector Richard Queen. The series only ran for 22 episodes plus the pilot, which is a real shame; it has, however, been out for quite some time on DVD, which not only is not a shame but gives us the kind of television we could really use right now: thoughtful, intelligent, well-cast, with mysteries that are challenging but not impossible to solve, and stories that won't make your brain hurt after a long and trying day.

The concept of the amateur detective (often called a "cozy" in literary terms) is not one of my favorite tropes, but in the case of the Ellery Queen novels, it's always worked quite well. For one thing, Ellery's not really an amateur; with a shelf full of mysteries to his credit, he knows a thing or two about crime, making him a little more like, say, Jessica Fletcher. But whereas Jessica always and inexplicably seems to be at the right place at the right time (if one wants to become involved in a murder case), Ellery always has a good reason for being where he is: his dad is a high-ranking homicide inspector, who often coaxes his son into accompanying him on the more intriguing cases. (It also helps that the series is set in New York City rather than Cabot Cove, which makes the death toll much more plausible.)

Oftentimes, a series stands or falls on the casting of its main characters, and here Ellery Queen excels. Both Hutton and Wayne are real pros, and the chemistry between the two, as father and son, is both warm and believable. The elder Queen combines both parental affection and perennial exasperation at his son's absent-mindedness (an exaggeration from the Ellery character in the books) in a way that's very easy to buy, and he has a keen appreciation for the way Ellery's mind works. He may occasionally indulge him, but more often he has a real respect for Ellery's abilities, and isn't so stubborn or set in his ways that he won't let Ellery's deductions change his mind. Watching the two of them on screen together is a real pleasure. They're aided by Tom Reese's fine performance as Sergeant Velie, who is presented as a hard-working and dependable detective, not an eccentric sidekick or someone who exists only to serve as the surrogate for the audience when explaining the solution to the crime. It's also fun to see the all-star casts that populate each episode, as was the case in the early days of Murder, She Wrote. Never mind that many of the stars are either B-list actors and actresses, stars who've seen their time come and go, or character actors whose names you can never quite recall. Their presence just adds to the fun.

The early episodes of Ellery Queen were, I thought, overly dependent on a trope that can get tiresome: the dying man's clue. It seems that almost all of these victims were either puzzle aficionados or enjoyers of word play, because their dying clues, meant to point to the identity of their murderer, are often incredibly obscure, frequently too clever by half, and generally require much more of a leap of plausibility than the crimes themselves. I don't know about you, but if I'm about to die, I'm probably either overcome by pain or too focused on pleading for God's mercy to spend my dying breaths concocting a clue in hopes that someone as clever as Ellery Queen will come along to figure it out. 

That's a small quibble, though, and it is more than made up for by Ellery's breaking of the fourth wall in the last moments of each episode to address the viewers directly, asking them if they've figured out who dunnit. It's a conceit taken directly from the early Queen books, and it was an inspired choice to bring the concept to television. As Ellery points out, the clues are all there; nothing has been withheld from the viewers, who know as much about the crime as he does. 

I wonder, though, if there might be room someday for what I'd call a "straight" version of Ellery Queen, without the absent-mindedness and the comic relief, without the fourth wall-breaking, and without the proverbial New York City that always has a parking spot open right in front of the building where everyone goes. Some of the Queen mysteries are quite dark, not to say disturbing, such as one that ends with Ellery handing the suspect a gun with the suggestion that he knows what he needs to do with it, followed by Ellery leaving the room and, a few moments later, hearing a single gunshot. Would that have ever flown in early-Seventies television? Probably not, but it would today, and although Ellery Queen isn't the household name that, say, Perry Mason is, maybe a revival is worth a look.

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The only other series we're finishing up with is a repeat viewing of the hour-long episodes of Danger Man, which will flow right into The Prisoner, and it probably makes sense to cover them at the same time, given that—as we all know—John Drake is Number 6. Right? Right. TV

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