Van der Valk season 1, 1972

Van der Valk was a British cop show from Thames Television that for three seasons from 1972 to 1977 and was then briefly revived in the early 90s.

While the episodes are original stories the inspiration was Nicolas Freeling’s van der Valk detective novels. And the series captures the offbeat approach and the distinctive character of the detective hero remarkably well. This is a very quirky TV series.

Commissaris van der Valk is a Dutch cop in Amsterdam. He’s a bit of a rough diamond. He’s a bit vulgar. He has a slightly crude sense of humour. He likes a drink or six. He has a definite cynical side. On the other hand he also displays an amused tolerance and a good deal of compassion and while he can be tough he can also be a vey amiable kind of fellow. Barry Foster was born to play Commissaris van der Valk. He nails the part perfectly.

Neither the novels nor the series really explain the Dutch police ranks. Watching the series one assumes that van der Valk holds a rank roughly equivalent to a Chief Inspector in the UK but in fact a Commissaris is a much more senior officer, more closely equivalent to a Chief Superintendent. And while his offsider Inspecteur Johnny Kroon seems to fulfil the duties of a detective sergeant his rank really is equivalent to a British police inspector. All of which explains why van der Valk and Kroon often find themselves on cases involving very important people.

It’s clear that the intention behind this series was to avoid doing a by-the-numbers cop show. The emphasis is on very clever writing that misleads us into thinking we’re going to get straightforward detective stories and then throws in odd genuinely unexpected twists, and unexpected tonal shifts.

The first season is very much in the “shot on videotape in the studio” mould but like the best British TV series of that era (such as Callan and Public Eye) it turns that into a plus rather than a minus. These are stories that just don’t require action sequences or a lot of location shooting. In fact it’s a series that just wouldn’t work if done in the new all-action all-shot-on-location-on-film style that started to dominate British TV in the mid-70s. This is a cop series that is a million miles away in feel from The Sweeney, but it’s every bit as good.

In the first episode, One Herring's Not Enough, a mild-mannered art school teacher confesses to a murder. He found his wife in bed with another man. He killed them both. 

The problem for Commissaris van der Valk and Inspecteur Johnny Kroon is that they cannot find any evidence that a murder was committed.

It’s a clever story and it takes a while for van der Valk to understand the significance of certain odd features of the murderer’s confession.

Destroying Angel begins when a prostitute calls a doctor to the bedside of a dying man. The doctor suspects poisoning. The victim’s identity is a puzzle.

The vital clue is a book of botanical illustrations. A very very rare book indeed. Not what you’d expect to find in the possession of a man living in a seedy boarding house. The whole fingerprint thing is puzzling as well.

Blue Notes begins with death threats (written on blue notepaper) aimed at Jan Servaas, a famed concert violinist. Servaas seems very hostile to the idea of police protection. The threats are so vague that it is difficult to see what exactly the police can do. Van der Valk is not inclined to take them too seriously although Inspecteur Kroon is very uneasy about the matter.

The incident with the violin convinces van der Valk that the threats might be serious. The hotel staff are of course interviewed and they seem curiously evasive.

Elected Silence starts ominously. It appears that the series is going to dabble in politics, always a recipe for tedium. But this really is an unconventional series and this episode does not go where you think it’s going to go. It’s a strictly domestic tragedy. And the very slight hint of politics isn’t developed the way you expect either.

Thicker Than Water starts with a corpse in the canal. The corpse of a very rich well-connected young man, the son of a British Member of Parliament. And a young man who had somewhat exotic tastes when it came to bedroom adventures. The investigation takes Van der Valk and Kroon deep into Amsterdam’s hidden world of sexual exoticism but that’s not the real focus of the story. Another episode that doesn’t develop in quite the way you might expect.

The Adventurer is a fine example of the kind of narrative misdirection that is so characteristic of this series. It seems that someone is out to murder a quiet inoffensive German stonecutter named Gebhart. Gebhart has a secret, a secret from the past, but Michael Chapman’s script does not follow the obvious direction. Not only is Gebhart not what he seejs to be, his secret is not what we suspect it to be. Great guest performance by Paul Eddington.

Van der Valk is unconventional enough to be really interesting but manages to be a fine entertaining engrossing cop series. 

And Commissaris van der Valk is a wonderful character - very likeable in a slightly off-kilter occasionally prickly way but charismatic and fascinating.

The complete series was released on DVD by Network and the boxed set is still available. It’s worth grabbing while it’s still fairly easy to find. 

Van Der Valk is top-notch 70s British television. Highly recommended.

Gunbuster (1988-89 OVA)

Gunbuster is a 1988-89 anime OVA. For those new to the world of anime an OVA (original video animation) was a bit like a mini-series but intended for the home video market rather than television broadcast. They were straight-to-video and later straight-to-DVD releases. It was an incredibly useful and flexible format and since they were not broadcast on TV they could deal more openly and easily with grown-up subject matter.

This is from the golden age of anime and like so many of the products of that age it turns out to be not at all what it first seemed to be.

Gunbuster is the story of Noriko Takaya, a high school girl whose dream it is to become a space pilot. Her dad was a space pilot. He was a hero, killed in action in the first great battle against the space monsters. Part of Noriko’s motivation is to honour the memory of her much-loved father. But Noriko doesn’t go to a normal high school. She attends a special high school for girls destined to become space pilots.

Noriko looks up to Kazumi Amano, a slightly older girl and the school’s star pupil. Noriko thinks of her as Big Sis.

The chief instructor is Koichiro Ohta, always referred to as Coach. He was one of the few survivors of the battle in which Noriko’s father was killed. This provides a link between Noriko and Ohta which will be important later.

When the space monsters attack again the girls are rushed into battle. Nobody thinks Noriko is ready. She’s just not a very promising space pilot but for some reason Coach Ohta insists that she will make it.

A series of epic space battles follow, in which we will find out if Noriko has the Right Stuff or not.

The whole “mecha” or giant robot thing is, let’s face it, kind of silly and goofy. But when you have giant robots that are also space fighters hurtling through space you’re reaching a whole new level of silliness. So you figure this will probably be just a fun kids’ space opera science fiction adventure series. And then suddenly it starts throwing science fiction Big Ideas at you. Like the concept of humanity as a bacteria.

And they have invented a whole new theory of physics for this OVA, a theory which supposedly superseded Einstein’s theories at the end of the 20th century. This new theory has an amusing steampunk touch since it posits the existence of the mysterious aether, a popular concept in 19th century physics. Space isn’t a vacuum. It is filled with the aether.

It’s also a series which actually takes account of the relativity effects on time. At the beginning of the the episode Noriko is still teenaged girl but her birth certificate says she is 27. Girls she went to high school with are married with kids. This sense of being displaced in time adds to Noroko’s sense of disconnectedness. She spends more time in space than her old friends so her friendships have to be rebuilt on a new basis. Those relatively effects will later become very very important, not as mere plot elements but for their immense emotional impacts.

Getting back to the goofiness which at first seems likely to be the predominant characteristic of this OVA we discover that, of course, the most suitable candidates for training as space combat pilots are hot babes. With big boobs. And the bottom half of their uniform consists of not much more than a thong. So we figure this will a sexy babes in space romp. Until we discover that the characters have a great deal of depth to them, that Noriko is a very complex young woman struggling with unresolved grief, a sense of emptiness and a sense of unworthiness. The death in combat of her father is not just a minor backstory element to explain why she’s a space pilot. It’s a tragedy that dominates her whole life and she will never become truly a grown woman until she learns to resolve this issue.

At first we think Coach Ohta will be a stereotypical tough drill sergeant type but he has lots of issues to deal with as well. Issues connected with that disastrous space battle in which Noriko’s father was killed. Perhaps he has a desire for revenge. Perhaps there is guilt. He may be searching for redemption. Why does he insist that Noriko is ready for combat when everyone (including Noriko) knows she’s a washout? This is a series that also deals very much with honour. This dominates Coach Ohta’s life. It’s not that he was in any way guilty of cowardice, but he survived that first battle when a warrior’s honour would have demanded that he die in battle.

And while we may have initially thought this was going to be an anime aimed at kids it soon becomes apparent that that is not the case. It’s not just the very adult concepts. There’s also the nudity, including quite a bit of frontal nudity. No, this is not aimed at the kiddies.

There are major themes of love and loss. Both Noriko and Kazumi find love, but each of them (in different ways) has to face the prospect of losing the man she loves.

This is old school animation without any CGI but I like old school anime.

There are three distinct parts to the story, with time gaps between each part but with the time gaps complicated by relativity effects.

Gunbuster does feature giant robots and scantily-clad (and sometimes unclad) babes but it’s an intelligent, subtle and complex science fiction story which deals with tricky concepts such as the nature of time and it’s a sensitive emotional drama.

Gunbuster is superb. Very highly recommended.

Gunbuster is available on a Blu-Ray release which thankfully offers the Japanese language soundtrack with subtitles as well the English dub. No power on this Earth could persuade me to watch anime in an English-dubbed version.