A FRIEND OF MINE lent me the four Don Strachey detective movies as a distraction while I was ill, I didn't get round to watching them till this week.
Movies mostly make me wish I hadn't watched them and made for TV movies more than most but I'm glad to say that I liked them very much. All four of them.
Chad Allen who I'd never seen before and who, I read, has retired from acting to become a clinical psychologist was very good. He was entirely more convincing as Don Strachey than I ever found Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, or, for that matter, most of the other actors who became well known for playing such roles as well. I don't find Hollywood acting of that vintage interesting to watch, anymore. Even more so hearing the writing. Especially the gratuitous anti-gay stereotyping of Hammett and, more ironically, Chandler. And of their copiers. I am sick to death of it.
In the movies, Sebastian Spence as his husband Tim Callahan was really good, too. I've seen him in other things and always liked his acting which is quite varied according to character. I like that the movies give them a sex life that is believable while not centering either of their lives entirely around that. The best thing about that is that they are faithful to each other.
The relationship between them in the movies left me wishing I was 40 again.
Various other Canadian actors such as Daryl Shuttleworth whose work I'm familiar with from TV shows etc. were good in it too. It was fun to try to remember who had played in what and trying to remember what their names are. I generally like Canadian actors better than either Brits or Americans.
The writing was good, based on the books by Richard Stevenson, the directing was good and, for once, the music was good and added to instead of distracted from the experience. I didn't wish they'd fired the composer once in all four movies. That's rare.
It's natural to wish they'd made more of them but maybe stopping at four avoided running down the quality, something that generally happens when they do too many in a series. It's hard to keep up high quality over a long run. It's rare enough to make a single movie that isn't shit.
I've only read one of the novels the characters come from, I might try to get hold of the rest of them to read. I really do like the idea of having a detective series in an underused town like Albany New York and having a well done series about gay men in a faithful marriage is especially welcomed. If I thought I had the ability maybe I'd write a detective and his husband who were faithful and didn't drink, trying hard not to copy what's been done better, already. Though the drinking in the movies was believable, not like the absurd quantities that would kill anyone in Raymond Chandler's junk. A totally sober detective. Now, wouldn't that be a novelty. I loathe Chandler's writing.
The only extensive experience I'd had before with gay detective fiction are reading some of the Dave Brandstetter series by the late, under-rated writer Joseph Hansen whose centenary is next year. Which is kind of shocking though not if you consider the first of those came out more than fifty years ago and the difficulty he had getting gay fiction published before then. I might read more of those, maybe it's time to try the genre again. I have to say that I enjoy reading about LGBTQ characters in ways I don't generally get in books about straight people any more. Considering easily 499 out of 500 fiction works I've read have no LGBTQ characters in them or if they do presenting us in negative stereotypes, maybe I'm just tired of stories made up about straight,white, men. I suspect that's one of the reasons I'm not especially interested in fiction right now. Maybe I should read more LGBTQ fiction and see if it interests me.
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