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Cranmer's Replies
- if you wear a pink rubber bracelet, an assassin will immediately assume your wife died from cancer.
- if you are a wanted man being hunted by the FBI, and you wish to deliver a message to the head of the team chasing you, rather than doing it via telephone, be sure to do it IN PERSON in a cafe while 'disguised' with a pair of sunglasses.
- if you are a government agent and the man you are looking for comes into a cafe to give you a message, don't try to arrest him or call for help, just meekly let him walk out.
- Telephones in remote rural cabins only work during the summer season
- If you are being pursued by hitmen across a moraine, make sure you waste lots of time and energy by pushing over a wooden footpath. They definitely won't be able to follow you by just climbing over the rocks
- Gay men wearing camp neckerchieves are keen to have lots of sex with attractive women
- Stockbrokers can lose their licence to practise, if they damage government property
6. Furriers with thousands of pounds worth of expensive stock keep it secured behind a wooden door with one Yale lock.
7. There is always a useful bit of metal lying around to enable you to break open the door of a shop at night.
8. Police constables investigating unlocked premises spend an awful lot of time feeling fur coats for no apparent reason.
9. Burglar alarms can be switched off immediately by simply pressing an 'off' button.
10. Riding a motorcycle at high speed during the British winter does not require any protective clothing apart from gloves and goggles.
11. London drivers leave their cars parked with the keys in the ignition.
12. If a strange elderly gentleman offers a young handsome man an amazing experience if he comes home with him, at no point will the young man assume such a thing as homosexuality exists.
13. 1960s dolly birds sit around their bedsits all day just waiting to give themselves sexually to any ex-boyfriend who rocks up at the door unannounced.
14. Cars burst into flames the moment they crash (actually that's true for most films, not just this one).
15. In 1960s London nobody knew what an alternative meaning for 'glory hole' was (although maybe they did...)
Spoilers: My understanding was that when Ambar put the two brothers on the sacrificial altar and the snake/demon/monster/child thing sucked their heads off, she took on the powers that Becker previously had. Had she just run out of the house and left them, this would not have happened. I did, however, assume there would be an epilogue marked 'TWO MONTHS LATER' or some such where Ambar has taken over the rooming house and is welcoming her new 'guests' for the cellar.
What I meant by 'balanced view' was that both Germans and British were equally fleshed out as characters; in some war films the Germans are just stereotypical 'evil Nazis'.
My thoughts too. 'Er...excuse me sir, but you appear to have some kind of sex dungeon in your basement with news cuttings about a missing person...mind telling us about that?'
My sister was up at Cambridge when the series was made. It was a little bit exaggerated as I don't recall seeing quite as many undergraduates in tweed jackets, corduroy trousers, ties etc back then. There were some, but not the majority. Most dressed like Carrington and his assistant, eg, flashy 1980s leisurewear.
I first watched the series 25 years ago, and rewatched it a few days ago - it was just as good as I remembered!
Agreed. I kept expecting Jeeves the Butler to appear whenever Roper was in a scene.
'What ho, Piltchie old bean!'
OK two years on but here goes. In some ways 'The Hour' is accurate, in others it's not. In terms of race relations it gets it about right; young progressive liberal/left media types that would work in the BBC would certainly do things like visit nightclubs frequented by black people and date black men. There was no colour-bar as such in Britain and although some frowned on interracial relationships etc they certainly did happen. 'International Clubs' where people of different races and nationalities mingled, often run by churches, were common in London at that time - my own father ran one from 1956 until 1968.
In terms of sex relations, it's a little bit unrealistic. There were some female producers but the first female newsreader did not appear until 1960. Indeed in the programme Miss Rowley's boss says he employed her because a woman would be more malleable. Also, it's highly unlikely that in 1957 a prostitute would be allowed to talk about her work that openly on prime-time TV - this kind of thing did not happen until the Profumo scandal in 1963.
In fact in several ways The Hour is about 5-10 years in advance of what was happening in Britain at the time. Of course, like most period TV dramas it suffers from the 'modern people pretending to live in the past' syndrome where modern attitudes, speech patterns and mannerisms etc creep in, but The Hour is not too bad in this respect and gets most things about right.
Ma'am and copper are both used in the USA also.
OK five years on, but it's not quite correct to say Sheba was the 'highest of class.' In British terms she's middle or upper middle class, she's not from the aristocracy or landed gentry which would traditionally be regarded as the 'top'. But I agree she is at the top of the social strata one would expect to find teaching in a state school.
Could it be they are trying to appeal to a type of man who would never, ever, watch internet porn, in case his pastor found out or something, but who wouldn't mind watching some boobs if they just happened to appear on his TV screen. 'Nothin' I could do about it reverend, them tig ol' bitties just appeared on mah screen for ah had time to turn her off!'
70s/80s movies also seemed to show a lot of random casual heterosexual encounters that didn't add anything to the plot. The most blatant one was in 'The Fog' where Jamie Lee Curtis shags some random truck driver for no apparent reason. Either there was a lot of random sex going on back then, or the writers put it in because that's how they thought life SHOULD be.
Most of Stephen King's stuff is good. It's not 'great literature' but it's good popular fiction.
Unfortunately in some of his novels he relies on a successful formula and once you're familiar with it you know pretty much how things will turn out. 'The Outsider' is one of those formulaic ones. An 'original' would be The Shining or Misery.
The King formula is basically disparate group of people finds monster lurking on the edge of town = death and chaos in town, finally put to rights by a group of people banding together to defeat the monster.
Thanks. You say Missouri isn't southern. What's the actual definition of southern? Is it a former Confederate state, or one that's south of the Mason-Dixon line? If it's the latter that would include states like NM and AZ which definitely don't seem 'southern' in the way states like LA and MI do.
This comment was made 13 years ago, but was oddly prescient. Now in 2021 we have an out-of-control government which has put its population under the strictest peacetime controls ever, ostensibly for the 'war on Covid'. It pumps out propaganda 24/7 and encourages neighbour to inform on neighbour. Sadly, we don't have any 'partisans' invading from the west to end this madness.
It's more a thing of the past I think. For example in the episode where Mountbatten retires, his co-workers all sing both verses of Auld Lang Syne - in a typical London office nowadays, people would be unlikely to know even the first verse, let alone two.
That said, Brits still do know a few songs for various occasions, but it's less common now. Part of it is to do with multiculturalism but also the fragmentation of popular culture so that people only know the latest pop song rather than timeless songs.
I've got some story ideas for them...
A rabid dog attacks Will's mum's Pinto car.
A second hand shop opens on Main Street, which sells antiques which can grant your every desire.
Hopper becomes caretaker of an old creepy hotel in the Indiana Mountains.
A creepy clown starts killing off the Hawkins children.
The gang hear that Mike has been run over by a train outside town, so they decide to hike out there to find his body.
An old red 1950s car in the town starts having a mind of its own
I'm pretty sure no writer has ever come up with these ideas before.
I was around in '85 and you did occasionally see that no-sideburns look, but it wasn't that common. It seemed to be popular with Dutch and German people from what I recall.
Will's haircut was called a 'bowlhead' when I was at school. Any boy that sported that after the age of 12 or so was bullied mercilessly as it was considered a real nerd's style except on little kids. I started training my hair back when I was about 10, and lost the bowlhead completely by age 11.
One explanation could be that the secret base is NOT underneath the Hawkins mall.
It could be that the lift (elevator) shaft is some sort of portal itself. Remember how it seemed to travel at a terrific speed? The annoying black kid (forget her name) calculated it would take weeks to climb back up, or something.
The Russians have somehow managed to create some sort of teleportation system instead, which allows them to come and go freely in the USA. They have the technology to open the interdimensional gate to the Upside Down, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they have some sort of technology that can transport between Russia and the USA as well.
This way, they can build the underground base in Russia without suspicion. The Mind Flayer is somehow not constrained by the location of the portal, and can appear in Hawkins (rather than Russia) if so directed by the scientists.
I think it's almost inevitable that there will be gayness in S4. Trans might be a little way out for Indiana in the 1980s, but they managed to get it into 'Billy Elliot' so who knows...?