christmas

Christmas comes but once a week for me. Every Friday I am so rooted I can do what I want and no-one can say anything about it because I have carved out my little Friday Christmas space and the world has no comeback. And I am always fine by Saturday.

However, actually I did get a lot done today and in fact returned to an old journal article that was rejected the first time around and yet probably only needs a bit of work to be submittable (I thought the word was submissible? but autocorrect changes it to submersible so I guess not). So the journal article will not be bad, whereas it was previously, because it was connected to a project I was working on before, and the connection was tenuous, but now freed from that connection, it no longer has to be bad. I'm into it.

However, research on that started me watching this tv show from the early 70s called Silent Number (I keep thinking Silent Witness, but I know that's a different show, and by the way even though I think the 'silent witness' of that show is a dead person, and I am not really sure what the title Silent Number means, except it makes me think that maybe 45 years ago the idea of having a silent number e.g. an unlisted/secret telephone number was awfully exciting - ? Either way it makes me think of the 'silent policeman' which ridiculously is what these things are sometimes known as:

So anyway Silent Number is a bit of a hoot, and fairly fast-paced and well-written, at least going by the 1.5 episodes I have watched (there are three on YouTube). Grigor Taylor is the best of two worlds - he is a police! doctor! (Couldn't he have also have been a chef, or a lawyer, or a saxophonist?) and he has a great relationship with his fabulous wife. 

Both episode 32 and 33 involve visits to universities, which I always find interesting. This one, #32, has just a plain old visit to 'the university'. I assume it's UNSW. Love the parking sitch. 

Don't be fooled, by the fact that this is a phone box, into thinking that this has anything to do with silent numbers. Great titles though. The 1.5 episodes I've watched have completely different opening credits/music. The music's excellent but the fact that it's uncredited leads me to suspect that it's just licensed studio music from De Wolfe or something. I'd love to be wrong. 

Someone I admire once said something funny about people getting sentimental about Channel 7, I can't remember who it was, but anyway, I got a semi-twinge of something, I don't know if it was sentimentality, when I saw this, yeah, the 9 logo and the words 'living colour'. I actually recall as a child thinking that fat tubular 9 looked a bit like a grimacing turtle head or something. I also recall thinking that less than a minute ago. 

Don't call it a crush thanks but I do happen to have a bit of an admiration for the excellent and deservedly beloved actor John Hargreaves. This is him playing a dumb idiot called Tom or Tim or Jack or something. Very cool. Not much nuance. The show is so low-budget by the way that they can't even break things, so we see Tomtim jimmying a door - cut away - cut back to the door open. Maybe that's his name, 'Jimmy'.

Here are the closing credits just in case you didn't believe me that it was John Hargreaves. 

 

Not sure I love Grigor Taylor's hair in this show but I do love his way of sitting on a desk with no pants on. (c) Laura Carroll 2020

All of the above pix were from #32 I just wanted to add this still from #33 because it's so rad how they just whipped up some typeset shizzle somewhere and stuck it randomly into a real newspaper to propel their story. I love that. the little bit of paper still sticking up under the S in 'surgeons', probably so they could remove the picture and caption with ease and return the newspaper to the shop and get their 2c back. Great times.

If I watch the rest I'll tell you what happens OK.

Best christmas ever. Except my feet have been cold all day then they got pins and needles. 

Update:

I woke up at 2am from a gruesome dream in which people explained how they had died in car accidents. The one I remember is a man who was parked eating multiple hamburgers when his car was rammed from behind somehow and it ploughed through a wall. He said something like 'of course, I was already dead by then...' Anyway I watched more of the second Silent Number which is about a NZ heart surgeon or doctor or something who is in Sydney for a few days and has his drink spiked by a woman in a bar as part of an organised 'rolling' operation. The production team really did put the newspaper above to good use:

I appreciate the good punctuation from the crooks (Don't, We'll). Also the surgeon, Fred, reveals the meaning behind the title of the show, where he proposes he stays with Stephen (Grigor Taylor's character) because he'll be uncontactable: 'you have a silent number, don't you?... I'll be very difficult to trace.'

The heart surgeon, Fred Cowper, is being blackmailed primarily because he had some letters in his wallet from an Australian air hostess he had an affair with, but the team also have pictures of him naked in bed with a woman, taken while he was drugged. Spoiler after the woman in question is shot he and Stephen operate on her and remove the bullet, and double spoiler one of the weirdest scenes I have seen on television in some time: the bullet held aloft between forceps, cross cut with Cowper's wife landing at the airport. There is precisely no question at any point that Cowper be called to account for his philandering ways, only that it is imperative his wife not find out and his behaviour not revealed to the Australian public (as this would undo all his good work). To be clear, I don't exactly have a moral issue here, mainly because no-one in the show exists, but I find it interesting. 

For people with a silent number though, I have to say they get a lot of phone calls.