(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . TV review: Scott & Bailey take no guff [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-08 Here's a show that would be perfect for Start TV if it wasn’t too British and too TV-MA: Scott & Bailey, a buddy cop drama about two women detectives on the Major Incident Team of the Manchester Metropolitan Police. Though Start TV already has two buddy cop shows on its line-up: Cagney & Lacey and Rizzoli & Isles. Well, the latter’s still on the Start TV lineup, I’m not sure when the former was bumped off the schedule, maybe it was to make room for Murder, She Wrote. Start TV is one of those 480P “extra” channels that reruns old TV shows. Usually the TV shows such a channel reruns have something in common. In the case of Start TV, the shows on the schedule all feature women protagonists. There are more of these shows than Start TV can run, but not too many more, unfortunately. Wonder Woman is over on Start TV’s “brother channel” Heroes & Icons (H & I), as is Star Trek: Voyager, which makes more sense on H & I’s “All Star Trek” line-up than it would on Start TV. And geez, I completely forgot about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a show which maybe started out as a pitch for a show about the Virgin Mary. There’s also Relic Hunter, in which Tia Carrere stars as the titular relic hunter, but now H & I airs that show in the graveyard shift. Vanessa Lachey could star in a Relic Hunter reboot if that NCIS: Hawai’i show doesn’t work out. One thing that immediately stood out to me about Scott & Bailey from the DVD box is that one of the women is noticeably older than the other. Lesley Sharp plays Detective Constable Janet Scott, who is old enough to be a detective chief inspector, and Suranne Jones plays Detective Constable Rachel Bailey, who hasn’t taken the sergeant’s exam yet (as of the show’s first couple of seasons). Sharp’s earliest acting credit on IMDb dates back to 1983, and Scott & Bailey doesn’t even crack the top four productions that she’s known for. Jones’s earliest acting credit, on the other hand, dates back to 1998, and Scott & Bailey is listed as one of the four shows she’s best known for, with Coronation Street being one of the other three (one episode of Scott & Bailey very slyly mentions Coronation Street as a possible alibi for a suspect). Detective Chief Inspector Gill Murray is played by Amelia Bullmore, who also wrote a Season 1 episode and became a more important writer on the show as her own character also gained in importance. By Season 4 (or Series 4, as they say in England), Murray had become important enough to appear on the DVD box. The criminal cases on this show are not all that interesting, to be perfectly honest. As has been said on the show a few times, most criminals are not criminal masterminds. Some of the perpetrators have eluded capture for decades simply because they’re hiding in plain sight, and they make no special effort to stay ahead of the police. “It’s okay now, bairn...” Those criminals are sent off to the crown prosecutors not because Scott or Bailey discovered some crucial but seemingly insignificant clue, but because they patiently interrogate the suspects and get those suspects to incriminate themselves. The way these women are written feels realistic, and their friendship feels genuine. It certainly helps that the show was created by Sally Wainwright based on an idea from Jones. I’m reminded of Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) and Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Those two women are friends only because they’re the only two women among the senior officers (the core cast minus Armin Shimerman, who’s a man anyway). In one episode of Scott & Bailey, Scott does question whether her friendship with Bailey is genuine or just a generally good professional relationship mistaken for actual friendship. The answer is they really are friends, but like any real friends, they’re bound to have the occasional row. In regard to diversity, the mostly white cast can be excused on the grounds that England is not as diverse as America. However, it is a bit odd that most of the few black characters on the show are mostly silent most of the time. Even in the fourth season, with Bailey hooking up with a black man high up on the food chain, he has almost nothing to say of importance. And at the end of the season, he provides, with just a couple of lines, a convenient deus ex machina for Murray to get herself out of the pickle she’s in. And I think that from the first season there’s this black guy who’s supposed to be on the same team as Scott and Bailey, also subordinate to Murray, but after watching four seasons of this show, I have no idea what his name is, I’d have to look on IMDB. Like I said earlier, the show is too British. You might have to toorn those soobtitles on to understand what they be saying. Though if you do watch more than one season of this show, you’ll get used to hearing about hoosbands and blud and abdooctions and foolloowing proocedure and such. On the other hand, I’m not getting used to seeing steering wheels on the right hand sides of cars. Also, the theme music might be more appropriate for a show about modern cowboys. Though then again, The Prisoner (the one with Patrick McGoohan), also has theme music that seems to be somewhat at odds with the mood of the show. But overall, this is a show worth watching. I give it ★★★★☆. I watched on DVDs I checked out from the library. The show’s available on BritBox, and also on Apple TV and Prime Video. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/8/2190844/-TV-review-Scott-amp-Bailey-take-no-guff?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/