Who does this sleuthing monk take after? Elementary, my dear Watson!
Aprimitive pair of spectacles instead of the violin and pipe, a tonsured topknot in place of the famous deerstalker, but still it is plain that The Name Of The Rose (BBC2) is really the Adventures Of St Sherlock.
Umberto eco’s literary detective story, set in an Alpine abbey during the 14th century and starring John turturro as a Franciscan monk with an instinct for solving crime, owes everything to Conan Doyle’s original. even the name of the hero is a homage to Holmes: William of Baskerville.
the novel has been filmed before, in 1986, with Sean Connery playing the erudite monk with gruff Scottish menace, like taggart in a cassock.
that movie was forgettable, except for the dark twist at the end. But knowing the solution to the mystery, which begins with the death of a young manuscript copyist, does not spoil the sense of intrigue. this television adaptation is so much more complex than the Hollywood version.
Because this is an international production, made for U.S. and european networks that pad out each hour with adverts, each episode is barely more than 45 minutes. A lot of introductions had to be crammed into the first part, as we met all the suspects at the abbey, as well as rupert everett as a saturnine inquisitor.
tcheky Karyo, best known to British viewers as the limping detective Julien Baptiste, plays megalomaniac pope John XXii, a pontiff so thoroughly wicked that the world had to wait more than 700 years before the vatican dared to have a pope John XXiii.
the story is seen through the eyes of a novice, Adso (Damian Hardung). He’s in awe of his master, whose gift for deduction is so precise he is able to guess the name of a runaway horse simply from its hoof prints and a tuft of tail hairs snagged on a bush.
Despite his intellectual brilliance, Father William is pious and humble, the type of godly fellow who spends the morning hugging lepers before giving away his lunch to a starving villager. that is an added touch of character: i do not remember Sherlock Holmes ever being especially kind.
With its moralising and its crisscrossing references to medieval history and religious philosophy, the Name Of the rose would love you to believe it is even cleverer than it actually is. But that is true of all great detectives.
Lovable old thesps peter Davison and Christopher timothy were not trying to fool anybody as they trundled over the Yorkshire Dales in an opentop morgan sports car on Great British Car Journeys (C4).
the duo were revisiting the backdrop for their much-loved BBC series All Creatures Great And Small, and they were at pains to tell us that its widespread success was sheer luck.
Neither of them had a clue about being a vet, and most of their anecdotes involved riotous high jinks after the cameras stopped turning. even the opening shot of the titles, which had Chris and co-star robert Hardy roaring with laughter as their Austin Seven zipped down a country lane, came about by accident — Hardy had just told a particularly fruity joke.
the charm with which the duo recalled all this more than made up for the episodic nature of their car show, which saw them visiting one enthusiast after another, asking a few questions about their vintage motors and pootling onwards.
peter in particular is an old smoothie. ‘A very beautiful collection of cars and ladies,’ he murmured at one classic rally. Never mind top Gear, this was terribly Genteel Gear.