Cold Lazarus – Film 96 – tape 2178

Before the first episode, a trailer for QED and for Cardiac Arrest.

Then, Cold Lazarus episode one. We’ve already seen the last episode, so this is catching up with the rest of the plot.

It’s the far future, and a mega corporation has got the frozen head of Albert Finney in the companion piece, Karaoke. It’s reviving its memories for some vague reasons, like ‘wouldn’t it be great to have a VR experience of what it’s like to live in the past’. But if your subject is an old writer, the VR experience would involve a lot of staring at typewriters or screens, long boozy lunches, and lots of frustrating meetings with stupid TV people.

Frances de la Tour is the head of the project, having to recite a lot of technobabble dialogue about neuropeptides.

Some of the SF gimmicks don’t make a lick of sense, like the display listing what the memory is they are watching, big letters rotating around a cylinder rather than, I don’t know, a flat piece of text.

The designs for the militia have a very Blake’s 7 feel to them.

All the people who work in de la Tour’s workplace have these mobile chairs that look like they’ve been designed based on the spiky shell of conkers.

Diane Ladd plays Martina Masdon, the head of the corporation that’s funding their research.

You can tell she’s decadent because she has a nearly naked man practically as a pet. I wonder if Potter put this in and thought ‘This’ll show them I’m not a misogynist.’

Henry Goodman plays the head of a big entertainment corporation.

I’m not sure their VR helmets would catch on.

Looks like the price of looking something up on Wikipedia has gone up a bit.

There’s a brief interruption in transmission – only a few seconds, but it’s definitely a transmission glitch, not a recording glitch.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 27th May 1996 – 22:20

Episode two is recorded from Channel 4. It sees the obligatory traumatic memory from childhood, in this case the young Finney is attacked by a tramp in the woods,

de la Tour is asked for a meeting by Goodman, so she Skypes him, and he’s such a dick he takes the call during a sex massage.

As Ciaran Hinds accompanies de la Tour to her meeting with Goodman (Siltz) she tells him she’ll be quite safe. “Siltz will not rape me. Alas.” she says. Stay classy, Dennis.

Back to BBC 1 and the end of Panorama with a report on the Russian elections. Then a trailer for QED and Film 96.

Then, Cold Lazarus episode 3. Potter is basically doing his old hits now, as Finney, in another of the memories, sings Pennies from Heaven in Karaoke.

There’s a weirdly incongruous clip of Charles and Diana in amongst the memories.

Diane Ladd has got herself another young friend. And most of his dialogue consists of him saying “Yesm” in a way that feels frankly racist.

Game of Thrones’ Donald Sumpter plays a doctor who’s “particular interested in sexual arousal and erectile tissue”.

Then the episode ends with a staged attack on the lab, as the team contrive to steal the head so they can use it for Henry Goodman’s purposes, not Diane Ladd’s. They make it look like a terrorist attack.

I still stand by my verdict from episode four, that this is a typical example of someone with no feel or even interest in the Science Fiction genre thinking he can do it just as long as there’s some technobabble and stupid costumes. It is, if you’ll forgive me, Science Fiction Karaoke, by someone who doesn’t really know the song.

But, the production looks expensive, and it’s fairly colourful, something many productions of the time definitely weren’t. And the music, by Christopher Gunning, is actually very good.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 10th June 1996 – 22:40

After this episode, a trailer for Inside Story Special about Nick Leeson and Barings Bank.

Then, as a treat after Cold Lazarus, an episode of Film 96 featuring a bumper crop of Barry Norman’s reviews because it’s the lead up to summer when the show isn’t on.

• How to Make an American Quilt
• Beautiful Thing
• The Grotesque
• The Rock
• Mission: Impossible
• Twister
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• The Juror

It’s interesting to note Mission: Impossible there, with the sixth installment having only just been released, still going strong.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 10th June 1996 – 23:40

After this, there’s trailers for Men Behaving Badly, and Steven Poliakoff’s Century.

Then the tape runs out during a film, …and Millions Will Die! It features Leslie Neilsen in his pre-Airplane days.

Adverts: