BEYOND PARADISE - SERIES 1, EPISODE 1 (BBC ONE)

[Favourite of the Month] Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman, formerly posted in the Carribean and in London, settle on the Devon coast with his fiancee Martha Lloyd in the enjoyable premiere of the spin-off from Death in Paradise.

Death in Paradise, the much loved BBC One detective drama filmed in Guadeloupe, was launched in 2011. Created by Robert Thorogood and produced by Red Planet Pictures, the series was sold in more than 230 territories. Since its start, five lead detectives of the Honoré police station have investigated all sorts of murders on the beautiful (but fictional) island of Saint Marie: DI Richard Poole (played by Ben Miller in the first couple of series), DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall, series 3 to 6), DI Jake Mooney (Ardal O'Hanlon, series 6 to 9)  and DI Neville Parker (Ralf Little, from series 9).

The bumbling (and fan favourite) Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman left the island in 2017 with his love interest Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton, Not Going Out). Now both return in Beyond Paradise, a 6 x one-hour spin-off series of Death in Paradise created by Robert Thorogood and Tony Jordan. Freshly arrived with Martha in her hometown of Shipton Abbott in Devon, Humphrey gets stuck in a tree before introducing himself to his new colleagues. After conducting the interview of a shoplifter in his unorthodox style, DI Goodman goes to the hospital with DS Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi). They interrogate a woman who claims she was attacked in her house by a 17th century witch named Old Mother Wheaten.

Humphrey Goodman is back and it's nice to watch Kris Marshall and Sally Bretton in their roles again. In this episode, the likeable detective arrives in a picturesque environment similar to the small coastal town of Doc Martin to bring some lightness in a 60-minute Midsomer Murders. Beyond Paradise takes the Martha/Humphrey couple in an interesting new direction and we meet Martha's mother Anne Lloyd (Barbara Flynn). The rest of the Shipton Abbott police station is composed of Office support Margo Martins (Felicity Montagu, Alan Partridge) and Police Constable Kelby Hartford (Dylan Llewellyn, Derry Girls). 

 

The guest cast of the first episode includes Yasmine Akram (Carol Meadows), Peter de Jersey (Patrick Wiley), Davood Gadami (Ben Tyler), Chris Jenks (Josh Woods), Montserrat Lombard (Gwen Tyler), Dan Mersh (Peter Meadows), Samantha Spiro (Yvonne Wiley), etc. Produced by Red Planet Pictures (an Asacha Company) for Britbox and the BBC.  Belinda Campbell, Alex Jones and Kris Marshall exec produce with Tony Jordan and Tim Key. Tommy Bulfin exec produce for the BBC. Stephen Nye and Diederick Santer exec produce for Britbox. Cat Fox is the Head of Production. Mike O'Regan is the line producer. Music by Magnus Fiennes. Closing title music by Bellowhead. Cinematography by Simon Walton. Editing by John Blackwell.

Shipton Abbott is as fictional as Saint Marie. Beyond Paradise was actually mostly filmed in Looe, Cornwall. Death in Paradise was recently renewed for two further series. It remains the most watched foreign drama in France. Episode 1 written by Tony Jordan and directed by Sandy Johnson. Beyond Paradise is distributed by BBC Studios.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jg5h

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/beyond-paradise-filming-locations-bbc/

OSS 117 TUE LE TAON (ORTF, 1971)

Secret agent OSS 117 and a female colleague are on a mission in Belgium.

OSS 117 tue le taon ("OSS 117 kills the gadfly") (1) is a black and white 75-minute French film for television aired by the Première chaîne of ORTF (Office de radiodiffusion-télévision française) on November 13, 1971. It is based on the book of the same title published in 1957 in the long-running OSS 117 series of spy novels (1949-1992) by Jean Bruce (2), Josette Bruce and François & Martine Bruce. CIA agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath a.k.a OSS 117, the hero of these literary adventures, first drew the attention of the cinema.

From 1957 to 1970, the character was played on the big screen by Ivan Desny, Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad), Frederick Stafford, John Gavin (Psycho) and the future star of the Poliziottesco genre (3) (later co-star of Châteauvallon) Luc Merenda. At some point Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath was one of the numerous movie competitors of James Bond (4) but there were no more OSS 117 films for almost 40 years until Jean Dujardin became the secret agent in three comedies between 2006 and 2021. Directed by André Leroux and produced by ORTF through its regional station of Lille, OSS 117 tue le taon is actually a pilot for a never-made 13-episode series. The beginning of the TV movie was shot in December 1970 at the Mont Noir (in the north of France).

 

Thanks to a fake car accident and the announcement of a plastic surgery operation to the press, OSS 117 goes to Antwerp as the famous zoologist Professor Hermann Beck. Assisted by fellow agent Muriel Highball, posing as the sister of Beck, he investigates the kidnapping of the professor's wife and son. Mathieu Weber, a journalist and former intelligence operative, puts them on the trail of a mysterious man nicknamed "The Fly". OSS 117 tue le taon was adapted by Marcel Jullian (Le Cerveau, Docteur Caraïbes), Josette Bruce and André Leroux. Alan Scott (Le gendarme à New York, Lola) plays Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (5). The charming Aude Loring, whose resume includes Two for the Road (1967), Le chirurgien de Saint-Chad (1976) or Le dernier métro (1980), is agent Muriel Highball.

Yves Geffray, the producer of OSS 117 tue le taon, was the head of the ORTF Lille production unit which contributed to the success of L'homme du Picardie (1968). Before that, the technicians of ORTF Lille worked on Alerte à Jonzac (1967), Meurtre dans la cathédrale (1967) or La grande crevasse (1966). Yves Geffray also produced Adieu mes quinze ans (1971) and La malle de Hambourg (1972). In spite of the compulsory stunts and fights, the TV version of OSS 117 is a failure. Though his performance is rather honourable, Alan Scott is not a patch on his predecessors and the glasses he wears (most of the time) makes him look like Gotlib drawn by the comics artist himself. Right from the start, OSS 117 tue le taon sounds like a 1950s French crime movie because of the black and white (the films were in colour since 1964) and the music of Georges Delerue.

Hubert's mission is basically a P.I. job and the villain is underwhelming. At least the cast list is interesting: Vania Vilers as Lieutenant de Waels, German actor Reinhard Kolldehoff (here credited René Kolldehoff) as Mathieu Weber. The inspector is played by Joss Morgane, who was in OSS 117 prend des vacances (1970). Charles Millot (Les Barbouzes) plays a Russian agent. Jacky Davin, who plays the newsreader, was a journalist from ORTF Lille. Also with Arch Taylor (Mr. Smith, Hubert's boss), Jean-Paul Frankeur (Claus), Serge Spira (2nd Russian agent), Claude Carvin (Professor Beck), etc. Jean Galtat is the stunt coordinator. Fernand Clarisse is the set decorator.
 

Cinematography by Marc Fossard (Le trompette de la Bérésina). Editing by Nicole Mahé. Main title design and animation by Jean-Pierre Sornin & Michèle Chantebout. In  1974, ORTF co-produced À vous de jouer Milord, a TV series with a secret agent named Hubert... Hubert de Pomarec, played by Henri Piégay.

(1) "Le taon" is pronounced like "le temps".
(2) Pseudonym of Jean Brochet.
(3) Italian crime/action films of the 1970s to the 1980s.
(4) For more about the OSS 117 character, the books and the movies pre-Jean Dujardin, read the excellent OSS 117 - Les dossiers secrets by Philippe Lombard (Gaumont Vidéo, 2005).
(5) Some sources say that Alan Scott was American but others say he was British or even Australian.

https://mediaclip.ina.fr/fr/r21075860-tournage-du-telefilm-oss-117-tue-le-taon.html

LE TROMPETTE DE LA BÉRÉSINA (ELEPHANT FILMS)

Le trompette de la Bérésina, a 1966 French period drama, is now available on region 2 DVD in the collection Les joyaux de la télévision from Elephant Films.

 

This is an excellent occasion to rediscover this gripping story of love, injustice, war, bravery and betrayal whose main protagonist is portrayed by the talented Dominique Paturel.

 

Le trompette de la Bérésina is a 8 x 15 to 26-minute black and white drama set during the Napoleonic wars and after. Produced by French pubcaster ORTF (Office de radiodiffusion-télévision française) especially for its 1966 Christmas holiday season, it was filmed during the summer of that year and aired daily on the Première chaîne in December 1966. Le trompette de la Bérésina is based on the namesake book, first published in 1865 by French author Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail (1829-1871). Ponson du Terrail's most famous creation, the adventurer Rocambole (1857-1870), was turned into a TV series by ORTF between 1964 and 1965. Directed  by Jean-Paul Carrère, Le trompette de la Beresina was adapted by Michel de Ré (1). Actor, stage director and scriptwriter, he played a secret agent in Commandant X (1962-1965) and an eccentric private eye in Les dossiers de Jérôme Rendax (1965-1966). Both series were helmed by Jean-Paul Carrère.

 

Le trompette de la Bérésina starts in 1812. Anselme, a farm boy from Burgundy, is also a musician nicknamed le Galoubet (2). He doesn't want to be enrolled in Napoléon's army and go to war because Myonnette, the daughter of farmer François le Manchot, is expecting their child. But François would prefer her to marry Marcelin, now an officer. Lieutenant Marcelin makes Anselme arrested by the gendarmes and sent to Russia, where the young man ends up amongst the soldiers building a bridge on the Berezina river. Despised by his men, Marcelin wants to get rid of his rival once for all. He shots Anselme during a mission for the Emperor and decides to betray his country. Anselme le Galoubet is played by Dominique Paturel, an actor who started his career on stage and became popular overnight on television alongside Michel Le Royer in Le chevalier de Maison Rouge (1963). He was in Lagardère (1967), another hit of ORTF, starred in D'Artagnan (1969) and appeared in several Au théâtre ce soir (3) (between 1967 and 1984).

 

The voice of Dominique Paturel made him stay definitively in the heart of the public. He dubbed Michael Caine, Terence Hill, Frank Sinatra, Roy Thinnes, Lee Majors, Larry Hagman, Robert Wagner, George Peppard and many more. Actress Christiane Minazzoli (Myonnette) gives her character a surprising shakespearean touch in the last episode. The impressive resume of André Oumansky (Marcelin) includes films for Henri-Georges Clouzot, René Clément, Robert Parrish or Nikita Mikhalkov and TV productions such as Les cinq dernières minutes, Aux frontières du possible, The Hostage Tower, Champagne Charlie, A Tale of Two Cities or Highlander: The Series. Christiane Minazzoli and André Oumansky played together again in the film La nuit infidèle (1968). Michel de Ré is also the narrator of Le trompette de la Bérésina. ORTF presenter Renée Legrand plays Suzanne and does the announcements in episodes 1 to 7. The scenes near the Berezina were actually shot on the banks of the Loire, with fake ice blocks, carbonic snow and some astute photographic tricks. 

 

The rest of the cast is composed of Olivier Hussenot (François), Nicolas Vogel (General Eblé), Roger Pigaut (Les chevaliers du ciel) as General Wittgenstein, André Reybaz (Napoléon), Robert Bazil (Thierry la Fronde) as Mathurin, Viviane Blassel (Nanette), Anne Rochant (Marceline), Sylvie Vaneck (Rose), Dominique Zardi (the Fantômas movies) as the 2nd gendarme, etc. With the participation of the Garde républicaine. Music composed and conducted by M. Philippe-Gérard. Yann Tardif is the head of production. Cinematography by Marc Fossard. Editing by Guy Fourmond and C. Jouveau du Breuil. The one-disc DVD set of Le trompette de la Bérésina from Elephant Films contains the 8 episodes, an interesting photo gallery and the trailers of other titles from the collection Les joyaux de la télévision, like Émile Zola ou la conscience humaine (1978), La juive du château Trompette (1974) or Les habits noirs (1967).

 

(1) Born Michel Gallieni, he was the grandson of the famous General Gallieni.

(2) A galoubet is a flute from Provence.

(3) Au théâtre ce soir (1966-1986) is a French television programme which showed pre-recorded plays.

 

https://fr.shopping.rakuten.com/offer/buy/9700705606/le-trompette-de-la-beresina.html

http://www.elephantfilms.com/ 

https://danslombredesstudios.blogspot.com/2022/03/deces-de-dominique-paturel-1931-2022.html