Bill's Views on Most Everything

Carol and I watched Amazing Grace last night.  It is one of the best movies I have seen in some time.  It is about William Wilberforce, who campaigned against slavery in the English Parliament for many years in the late 18th century.  A fine period piece, something the Brits do well.

I have trouble with a lot of Hollywood movies these days.  They seem to aim at a mass audience with little respect for the intelligence of the viewer.   The result can be a fun two hours, but I tend to forget them in about two days.

We do watch television, but not the usual fare with the exception of Downton Abbey, which is now popular here.  We watch both Sherlock Holmes series; Sherlock, from the Brits, and Elementary, set in New York.  Both are fun to watch, and have different takes on the original.

There are two mystery series we enjoy, also from the UK, and set in Oxford.  Inspector Morse, set in the early 1990s, and Inspector Lewis, set in the present.  Both are engaging, with fine views of medieval Oxford University.  Both shows depict Oxford academia as somewhat medieval as well.

Morse is an intellectual policeman who did not quite graduate from Oxford, while Lewis is a working class Geordie from Newcastle.  The contrast makes for good character development.  In the older series, Lewis is Chief Inspector Morse’s sergeant in the Morse series. In the Lewis series, Lewis is the Inspector with intellectual Sergeant Hathaway (Cambridge) as his assistant.

What is so good about the two shows is the connection to Oxford cultural life, green England, rain, interesting characters, and good stories.  A strange quirk is that with Morse, almost all the murderers are women.  What is that about?

Some books to mention are the Chet and Bernie mysteries by Spencer Quinn.  Bernie is the detective; Chet is the dog, who tells the stories from his perspective.  Good mysteries and Chet is quite the dog.  Chet is funny, and you will find yourself laughing out loud and often.  The same jokes tend to run from one book to the others, and I laugh every time.

Another book I recommend is Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides, a biography of Kit Carson. It is a well-done book about one of the most interesting Americans of the nineteenth century west.  John Carson, a ranger at Bent’s Old Fort and Kit’s great-grandson, does not like the book, so it is probably pretty accurate.  Kit did everything, went everywhere, and was something of a ruthless killer.  Sides tells the bad of old Kit with the good.