Chaos

 

Let's be careful out there......

 

The recipient of 26 Emmy awards, actually nominated 29 times and between 1981 and 1984 it had four consecutive wins of Best TV Series. It received all the critical acclaim, yet mostly had dismal ratings in its home country, AND RATINGS-WISE didn’t perform any better in non-domestic markets. It would remain niche for the totality of its run.

Yet, it remains one of the most influential TV series ever and invented small screen-COP SHOW grammar. Without it there would have been no Sopranos, The Wire, Homicide Life on the Streets. No The Shield, Law and Order, ER or NYPD Blue.

Every modern ensemble drama owes it a debt

When it first aired it was unlike any other TV cop drama - didn’t focus on the procedural elements like ALL THE OTHERS, but CONCENTRATED on the characters and their every day lives in a tough, dirty, insane city that was filled with crime and despair. What was remarkable was the Steven Bocho created a cop show that was about characters rather than police work, that focused on the human condition rather than procedural matters. It didn’t so much elevate the police drama genre but more invented a whole new genre.

When it was renewed for a second season it struck a record – as the lowest ever rated drama to secure a second season. It fact at the time it was the lowest rated TV drama in the history of the idiot box.

NBC knew it had low audience figures but they were forced to renew because of its huge critical acclaim, which appealed to high end advertisers. Those advertisers were willing to pay a high scale for a show that attracted a demographic of urban, affluent, and highly educated viewers.

Automotive Brands: Luxury car manufacturers frequently bought slots to reach the show's high-income professional audience.

• Corporate Branding: Large corporations used the show’s "intelligent" reputation to air prestige branding commercials rather than just simple product pitches.

• Consumer Goods: Despite the gritty content, the show was a pioneer in proving that "mature" drama could still sell everyday consumer products if the audience profile was right. 

When the show first aired on UK screens – Thursday 22 January 1981, at 9pm on ITV - I was around fifteen years of age, and I didn’t know what the fuck I had just watched. This wasn’t Starsky and Hutch, and it certainly wasn’t Columbo. It was unlike anything we had ever seen. It had no square jawed heroes to lead the cast, no central characters that dominated. It broke all of the rules of 1980’s television – True it was bewildering, but it was above all exhilarating . And remains so today.

Fluorescent lighting, cluttered desks, visual fatigue

It CONTINUES TO BE an important show and over 7 seasons, 143 episodes it changed the police procedural genre in ways that are still being felt today. The case of the week format was over, and instead we had gritty realistic drama with characters that felt real, that lived and breathed, and one or two of them may have even had lice.

Even now Hill Street Blues remains one of the finest police dramas to ever grace the small screen, and deserves a spot in any ranking of the best crime/cop dramas. It’s available on DVD the entire run on one big box set, or individual series box sets and is also available on many streaming services. At the time of writing UK viewers can stream on More4, but it often pops up in Hulu and Peacock and episodes can be bought in Prime Video.

Let’s be careful out there.

Writing those glorious two words, THE END

 I've recently completed work on a new crime novel  - well, the initial draft in any case. The book, hopefully the start of a series, is entitled What Remains Hidden and is set in my native South Wales. It's a  contemporary novel but the plot ties back to a fictional coal mining disaster that occurred in 1980.

I've had the initial reader's reports back, and they're pretty positive. Here are a few of the remarks from my early readers.

Pacing: You’ve been patient. The investigation unfolds in layers, with pressure accumulating instead of spiking randomly. By the time you hit the late 40s chapters, the story has earned its violence and chaos.

Tone: Gritty but restrained. The violence is sharp and purposeful, never indulgent. When things go bad, they feel real—messy, frightening, and consequential.

Character work: Carver’s decision-making is rooted in instinct rather than coincidence, and Powell’s behaviour—especially in the lead-up to the climax—adds unease without tipping its hand too early.

I've got to go through the hoops of securing an agent or directly approaching a publisher. I've sketched out a quick blub, which you can read below:

Detective Carver has learned to trust facts, not instincts. But when a routine investigation exposes a detail that won’t sit right, he finds himself chasing a hunch no one else believes in—and a man who has spent years hiding in plain sight.

As the case deepens, the line between coincidence and intent begins to blur. Every answer uncovers another omission. Every witness leaves something unsaid. And the closer Carver gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that the past isn’t finished with any of them.

When surveillance turns into pursuit and suspicion erupts into violence, Carver must decide how far he’s willing to go for the truth—and what it will cost him if he’s wrong.

Dark, tense, and relentlessly grounded, What Remains Hidden is a gripping crime novel about obsession, intuition, and the dangerous things people leave behind. 

And here is a cover mock up, created with image editing software and AI

Wish me luck.

Kiss of Death - let's toss an old lady down the stairs

WHY I LOVE STREAMING

 You know, I consider myself something of a film buff - I'm a life long film fan and my leanings tend to go more towards classic movies.

 

Westerns, - love those.

Film Noir - Bring them on.

 I've got a large DVD, Bluray and 4K collection - I've been buying DVD's since day one, and over the years have moved to Bluray. I also pick up a 4K issue from time to time - Mind you, my 4K collection is a lot smaller than my DVD or Blurays, but then I don't consider 4K to be that much of a jump from Bluray, in terms of picture and audio quality, but that's an argument for another post. 

 

It's streaming I want to talk about and why I think, as a physical media collector it is the best thing to happen since those cranky old VHS tapes were replaced by the shiny discs. 

You see, I do stream shows - I've binged the new remastered Beatles Anthology on Disney this past week, and I do enjoy Prime's Bosch. Netflix too, has some gems amongst a lot of crud.

 

When I settle down of an evening - a glass of whisky, feet up then it's an old movie I reach for - Last night I watched the new 4K restoration of John Ford's Quiet Man. Blown away is an understatement! 

That was physical media, of course since finding a classic movie, that something you fancy, on the various streaming platforms is....well, good luck with that. 

And when you do find something you fancy they are never broadcast in the same quality as a good physical disc. Bandwidth, you see. 

And of course titles can be removed from streaming platforms at the drop of a hat, but my discs are always on my shelves.

 So why love streaming?

 All I've done above is illustrate how inferior streaming is compared to owning the film physically.

I've highlighted how owning titles physically is the only option for the true cinephile. 

 

Still I love streaming.

Why? 

 Well you see, since streaming became mainstream the bottom of the market as fallen out of the physical market, which means you can now pick up blurays for next to nothing. This week I trawled the charity shops and got ten blurays, one of these was a 4k Apocalypse Now, for ten quid.

 

That's thanks to streaming. 

I love streaming! 

 

THE LAST JEDI...THE BEST STAR WARS MOVIE SINCE THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

I'm not what you'd call a rabid Star Wars fan - I can take it or leave it, though there was a time.....

A long long time ago...

I was 11 when Star Wars first hit cinemas and I was immediately captivated. We'd never seen anything like it - it was like the way those Saturday morning Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials they used to show on TV played in the young mind. On the screen those shows were black and white, with ropey special effects too basic even for Doctor Who, but when filtered through a young imagination they looked amazing and that was 1977's Star Wars - It looked absolutely amazing straight out of the box.

It had it all - adventure, a touch of light mysticism provided by the jedi knights and square jawed heroes like Luke Skywalker. It also had the lovable anti-hero in Han Solo and cute comedic robots. But it seemed so real, so vital - it even took the studio by surprise - shooting went millions over budget, so much so that 20th Century Fox even gave George Lucus the merchandising rights if he took a cut in his directors fee, it initially only had a limited release - it was huge, though and alongside the previous year's, Jaws heralded the age of the Blockbuster.

Back then I was a rabid fan - I had the lunch box, I bought the comics and the spin-off paperback novels and I had a few of the action figures. I loved it and my love continued through The Empire Strikes Back and to some extent the far too childish, toy spin-off centric, Return of the Jedi.

Years went by - we all got older and I saw the prequel movies - though only on DVD. I didn't go to the cinema - my Star Wars fixation was part of my childhood. The prequels left me cold - especially the first one which looked like a cinematic computer game, but the other two were entertaining enough.

And then came the new movies, The Force Awakens (2015)  -  I went to the cinema for that one since it was billed as a genuine sequel to the original trilogy and brought back beloved characters. Yeah, I was disappointed.

And so it was only yesterday that I sat down to watch the second sequel, 2022's The Last Jedi - presented in a lovely looking 4k Blu-ray.

 I was once again sucked into the world I'd first witnessed back in 1977.  I know the rabid fans dislike this one - because it dares to be different, much in the way Empire Strikes Back did.

 This time Luke is an aged, washed up Jedi who had lost his belief in the force. He has become Obi Wan Kenobi - well, if Obi Wan was a hopeless loser. He spends his days drinking milk directly from the teats of some strange looking creatures and living within his own mind while he awaits his inevitable demise. Cue  role reversal and it is a young lady, Ray (Daisy Ridley) who is the young Jedi, the person whom Luke once was, seeking guidance from the reluctant master.

While all that is going on we have the usual spectacular space battles to cut to when the sight of a pouting aged Jedi slows the story too much, and it all leads to a great ending that is, for once, not totally positive. Much in the way the ending of Empire Strikes Back was not totally positive.

I really enjoyed that - An intelligent, complex fantasy movie and that's not something one can say about most of the Star Wars output.

In Memorium

 

Recently, my Uncle Johnny passed away. It came after he’d been ill for some time, so it was not completely unexpected—but it still hit hard. Sad times indeed, and coming so soon after I lost another beloved uncle makes it doubly so. I’ve seen a lot of highs in 2025, but the lows have been among the very lowest.

I’m sitting here now, sipping a whisky—likely I’ve had too many tonight—but whenever I feel like this, sad and reflective, I do what I always do. I reach for my mental pen, caress the keyboard. I write. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. It’s how I channel my feelings.

I recently visited my Auntie Marion, Johnny’s wife, because she wondered if I wanted to go through Johnny’s books—of course I did. I was touched to find he’d kept all my own books, each containing some signed message to him: some frivolous, some gratuitous, more often than not just a private joke only he and I could understand. Each book showed signs of reading but was still in near-pristine condition. He’d carefully stored and kept them all; they clearly meant something to him. And now I’ve got them back—they sit on my vanity shelf, alongside my own unread editions.

We always had a shared history of reading. When I was younger he lived on a farm and mostly every Sunday I’d walk the Rhiw Road, to the farmhouse. It was a lovely walk – picturesque. Most of the journey was made beneath the shadow of towering Oaks, downy Birch, shady Ash and spindly Rowan. Crab-apple, Hazel and Alder.

Boots had to be stout, waterproof because the road was not always the best. In summer it was lush, green, yellow and red with birdsong providing the score. In winter not so much with skeletal shadows cast by naked branches and icy howling winds, unimpeded by unclothed trees, stinging the face. I’d mostly be carrying a stack of books I’d read, often westerns since we both loved the genre. Cheap little paperbacks of the kind you could buy anywhere. I do miss those days.

I’d give those books, alongside a few recommendations (Edge 21 is excellent. Great shoot out at the end and I really enjoyed the Louis L’ amour. The Sackett stories are the best.) and in return he’d give me a stack of his own freshly-read books, often with recommendations of his own. I loved those weekly visits – we’d talk for hours about books, films, even music – our tastes were remarkably similar.

In later years when I became a published writer myself I’d look forward to the reviews of my books, but I always gave Johnny a copy and I was eager to visit a few weeks later and get his thoughts of the book. He was often blunt, he didn’t hold back – I admired that about him, but he was always complimentary. Perhaps the greatest feeling I ever got was when he told me he was pissed off that the main character in The Ballad of Delta Rose died at the end. But he had to, I pointed out. That was the story. Johnny nodded, aware of that but still pissed off. The character had connected with him, stepped from the printed page and become real in the landscape of the imagination. Job done, I thought.

Hey, I’m a writer.

I’ll always cherish that particular conversation.

There are so many memories to cherish, though and when my new book comes out next year it’ll be bittersweet. It’s always nice to see your work in print, but I’ll be painfully aware that I’ve lost my harshest critic, my greatest support.

Rest in peace Uncle Johnny – truly a giant of a man