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tigeranneNo, I probably won't review all of them! This is a repost from a private forum.
Episode 1: The Hammer of God.
The opening sequence has a diagram of Father Brown's labyrinthine mind.
The Reverend Wilfred's brother is loathsome and smoaks. He throws his cigarette butt outside Wilfred's church.
The blacksmith husband Simeon Barnes is a Presbyterian religious zealot this time, and he doesn't like.... Popery?
Father Brown is emerging from bus in greyest village in Britain. He visits a pub for a pint because he's not Murdoch.
Even the village greens are morosely grey.
Golf Lady Mrs. Deveraux is MAD because her favourite club has "the faintest" crack, her maid is up the duff, and if she were a man she would KILLLLLL Wilfred's brother for knocking up her maid. And she will be NOT letting the villagers enter her garden during the annual Looking at Neighbours' Gardens Festival. That's good, they kill people at those.
We're informed by village gossip that Simeon barnes likes beating up peeps.
Norman's name is James Boone now, and he's a colonel with moustache and hammer pants.
James lyingly claims he's not sleeping with everyone who has a pulse. Then he says he's a feudal lord and will behave as it suits one. And then he puts on a Samurai helmet. The Blue Lady (his wife, not a ghost) says it doesn't suit him. "Then I shall wear it!" says James cheerfully. Norman was a better name for him.
Simeon is so uncharming that James almost seems like the better boyfriend, and THAT is very bad. His wife wants him to stay home with her, so she doesn't have to get a visit from James, but Simeon needs to go to a meeting where he'll be sitting up all night saving souls from being snapped up by Stan. You can see the whites in his eyes on all sides when he talks.
"REPENT SO YOU DON'T DIIIIEE AS A SINNAR!" - Simeon, grabbing his poor wife.
"AND HIM TOO!" - Simeon, pointing out the window, where you expect to see James, but he actually means Father Brown!
Elizabeth confesses to Father Brown, who tells her she must stop seeing James. She says she can't but she'll try.
James = @ pub, showing off his tinfoil hat. The village idiot laughs at him.
The village tree is very grey.
Next morning James is still waltzing around in his culturally inappropriate helmet. Wilfred asks if he's ever afraid of thunderbolts.
James makes the village idiot try to catch shillings with his mouth, and says he'll skin his back if he uses his hands. I kind of don't LIEK James, for some reason.
Suddenly James ded. There are.... red lumps next to him on the grass. He had brains?
The helmet didn't do much. It looks like someone cut a cake-slice out of it, and it's covered in blood and chunks.
The police guy asks if Elizabeth recognises the hammer. She does, it's Simeon's, but THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is that this hammer is covered in gunk and IS HAIRY. On the way into James' skull, it picked up quite a bit of his scalp. You can see globs of blood and what passed for a brain clinging to the hairs.
Police guy carries murder hammer, covered in chunks of James, into the village pub. A poor soul covers his face. Father Brown asks why Simeon would use that hammer to bludgeon James with, when he had bigger ones. Not that bigger ones were needed, mind you.
Alex the widow faints in the pub. She'll be okay.
Simeon home! "When did that dog die?" he asks, insulting all of dogkind. He's more than happy to be arrested, so he can be found innocent in court. Then he proceeds to exclaim that since he's not a HEATHEN, he'll give the inspector (I think he is) a chance to save his own soul by hearing him out.
Simeon is incredibly self-righteous and annoying. In the re-make he wasn't like this.
The house is very grey.
Mrs. Golf returns and exclaims that "with the Boone of contention removed" she's willing to be part of such glorious garden festival, and it will be the best.
The guys in the pub remark that A: Her Christian charity could fit in a thimble with room to spare, and B: She doesn't even need to be a man to have trashed James, because she's got arms like trees and is strong enough. Her golf balls fly out of the county.
This episode is a lot more fun than that first one I watched.
The doctor says everyone seems very happy that James expired. He also boldly claims that nine times out of ten, the person who hates the wife's lover the most is the wife herself. So.... is he talking from experience? Many vengeful ex-mistresses?
Then the doctor speaks some nonsense about how a bold woman could definitely smite a man with a little hammer, but with a larger one couldn't even crush a beetle. Because.... women are too feeble to be able to lift a bigger hammer? I can see why this guy gets dumped a lot, and possibly hit in the head with medium sized hammers as a kiss of goodbye.
Wilfred tries to frame up Joe, the slow guy. Because he can't be hanged. But Father Brown sinks the theory.
The guy who plays Joe is.... I guess good at playing brain damaged.
And then Father Brown confronts Wilfred on the top of the church tower.
Wilfred has a great mop of hair.
So what happened this time was: James not gay and offensive to phobic bro, James only nasty. Wilfred saw him bully Joe with the shillings, and grabbed a hammer to whack him with. Then he realised that he was about to kill his brother, and he ran up into the church tower to pray. But he saw James pass by on the ground below, and suddenly he just.... "oops," dropped the hammer on his head. James was so darn killable, after all.
This Wilfred is a lot more ethically and morally sound. He doesn't try to convince Father Brown that it was God who made him drop the hammer and steered it onto James' head. Instead he quietly says goodbye to the church where he's been vicar, and gives himself up to the police.
Father Bown catches the bus to another town, where they may have colours.
The End. (But not.)
Episode 2: The Oracle of the Dog.
Will Father Brown have a goodboi for a sidekick? I have no idea! Let's me find out!
Adapted by Peter Wildeblood. That sounds great!
Someone's driving home so drunk he can barely walk and sing at the same time. Actually, there's no evidence that he can sing when he's sober either. We've only just met him.
Dad comes down in his dressing gown to let him in. He's not impressed.
"I've been out behaving absolutely disgracefully!" exclaims Donald Drunk.
Oh, guess who's visiting the haus? It's Father Brown! He's there to look at the dude who owns the house's library, for books on Indian history.
Donald informs Father Brown that his dad has erotica too. "Oh deer."
Awwww here's the good doggo. He's friendly to Father Brown, but the Colonel's secretary is scared of him.
The Colonel wishes to make changes to his will. I consider him well and truly murdered.
The secretary is a very disturbing presence in Father Brown's studies, phoning and whistling. Oh, and he kind of looks a little like Captain Kronos. BTW, he's American.
"He was a man of quite outstanding stature."
"He was five-foot-one."
Janet is the daughter. She wants to marry a Frog.
Donald is very bad at playing one-finger piano.
Cousin Harry dresses in that stereotypical safari suit with a red scarf. He's there because A: He thinks the Col may have changed the will in his favour, since the bio kids are very disappoint, and B: He got fired from his job in India for being cop much bad @ investigate.
The dog is called Nox. Secretary Floyd (who looks like CK) informs Father Brown that it means "night" in Latin. I think he might be a mansplainer. Nox is black and white, and looks like the kind of dog the British call "Lurcher." He's shaggy and cute is basically the description.
The Frog is Doctor Valentine. Father Brown knows him. He's not to be confused with Inspecteur Valentin without the E.
Floyd freaks out and tells Colonel Druce that his will is invalid, because Doc Valentine signed under a false name. I think this is a plot point, else I wouldn't have bothered to mention it.
Cousin Harry takes Nox and Donald for a walk to the river. Will they find ded peeps?
Floyd overhears Janet and Dr Frog talking about bumping someone off. The lawyer, Mr Traill, looks like he's from Dickens, or an undertaker, or an undertaker from Dickens. He'll be staying for tea. Floyd pretends to be trimming the hedges, so he can evesdrop.
SUDDENLY JANET IS SCREEEEEM.
Colonel Druce is murdered. He's got a small red patch on his back. That's where he was stuck with a thin blade of presumably metal. Maybe the production team felt they overdid it with the sfx with that hammer, and want to be more family friendly.
Poor Nox howls as his master dies.
Everyone has alibi, except Doc Frog (and Father Brown). The person Floyd heard Janet talking Doc out of killing was himself, for saying that Doc was a fraud.
"Monsieur de Villain!"
"Doctor, could the small, thin stabby-poke that pierced Colonel Druce's heart have been these huge hedge shears that Floyd was cutting the bushes with as the victim was murdered?"
"Yes, I believe so."
Father Brown does not think that Nox has psychic insight into who killed his master.
The dad left everything to Janet, but she's marrying a French aristocrat (who's republican), so she's going to give it to Donald, who their father thought was too irresponsible to handle money.
"They've dug up the garden," laments Janet, looking out at a pristine, green lawn.
Floyd takes bus away from murder haus.
Colonel Druce collected walking canes, and there's a dead lion in a glass box.
Harry the Great White Hunter brings a shotgun for a walk in the garden, because he wants to "pot something."
Father Brown deduces that the victim was stabbed by someone who saw him sitting in a wicker chair, through a hole in the hedge. Donald says that he must have been dead earlier than first thought. So now everyone doesn't have alibies for the time of the crime, LOL it rhymed! LOL it rhymed again!
Harry loads the shotgun.
"I think you did it," says Father Brown, in rather a few more words.
Father Brown tries to recreate the scene at the river. He throws the late Col Druce's ebony walking stick into the water. Nox jumps in to retrieve, but he returns without it. The cane sank because ebony is very heavy. Then Nox sits down on the bank and howls sadly.
The other stick, which Harry threw into the water, also sunk because it was like the one Yaeger has, with a blade inside it. Nox was just upset he couldn't find the stick.
Janet recreates the part where she SCREEEEAAAAMed.
And Harry shoots himself?
The End. (Nah.)
Episode 1: The Hammer of God.
The opening sequence has a diagram of Father Brown's labyrinthine mind.
The Reverend Wilfred's brother is loathsome and smoaks. He throws his cigarette butt outside Wilfred's church.
The blacksmith husband Simeon Barnes is a Presbyterian religious zealot this time, and he doesn't like.... Popery?
Father Brown is emerging from bus in greyest village in Britain. He visits a pub for a pint because he's not Murdoch.
Even the village greens are morosely grey.
Golf Lady Mrs. Deveraux is MAD because her favourite club has "the faintest" crack, her maid is up the duff, and if she were a man she would KILLLLLL Wilfred's brother for knocking up her maid. And she will be NOT letting the villagers enter her garden during the annual Looking at Neighbours' Gardens Festival. That's good, they kill people at those.
We're informed by village gossip that Simeon barnes likes beating up peeps.
Norman's name is James Boone now, and he's a colonel with moustache and hammer pants.
James lyingly claims he's not sleeping with everyone who has a pulse. Then he says he's a feudal lord and will behave as it suits one. And then he puts on a Samurai helmet. The Blue Lady (his wife, not a ghost) says it doesn't suit him. "Then I shall wear it!" says James cheerfully. Norman was a better name for him.
Simeon is so uncharming that James almost seems like the better boyfriend, and THAT is very bad. His wife wants him to stay home with her, so she doesn't have to get a visit from James, but Simeon needs to go to a meeting where he'll be sitting up all night saving souls from being snapped up by Stan. You can see the whites in his eyes on all sides when he talks.
"REPENT SO YOU DON'T DIIIIEE AS A SINNAR!" - Simeon, grabbing his poor wife.
"AND HIM TOO!" - Simeon, pointing out the window, where you expect to see James, but he actually means Father Brown!
Elizabeth confesses to Father Brown, who tells her she must stop seeing James. She says she can't but she'll try.
James = @ pub, showing off his tinfoil hat. The village idiot laughs at him.
The village tree is very grey.
Next morning James is still waltzing around in his culturally inappropriate helmet. Wilfred asks if he's ever afraid of thunderbolts.
James makes the village idiot try to catch shillings with his mouth, and says he'll skin his back if he uses his hands. I kind of don't LIEK James, for some reason.
Suddenly James ded. There are.... red lumps next to him on the grass. He had brains?
The helmet didn't do much. It looks like someone cut a cake-slice out of it, and it's covered in blood and chunks.
The police guy asks if Elizabeth recognises the hammer. She does, it's Simeon's, but THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is that this hammer is covered in gunk and IS HAIRY. On the way into James' skull, it picked up quite a bit of his scalp. You can see globs of blood and what passed for a brain clinging to the hairs.
Police guy carries murder hammer, covered in chunks of James, into the village pub. A poor soul covers his face. Father Brown asks why Simeon would use that hammer to bludgeon James with, when he had bigger ones. Not that bigger ones were needed, mind you.
Alex the widow faints in the pub. She'll be okay.
Simeon home! "When did that dog die?" he asks, insulting all of dogkind. He's more than happy to be arrested, so he can be found innocent in court. Then he proceeds to exclaim that since he's not a HEATHEN, he'll give the inspector (I think he is) a chance to save his own soul by hearing him out.
Simeon is incredibly self-righteous and annoying. In the re-make he wasn't like this.
The house is very grey.
Mrs. Golf returns and exclaims that "with the Boone of contention removed" she's willing to be part of such glorious garden festival, and it will be the best.
The guys in the pub remark that A: Her Christian charity could fit in a thimble with room to spare, and B: She doesn't even need to be a man to have trashed James, because she's got arms like trees and is strong enough. Her golf balls fly out of the county.
This episode is a lot more fun than that first one I watched.
The doctor says everyone seems very happy that James expired. He also boldly claims that nine times out of ten, the person who hates the wife's lover the most is the wife herself. So.... is he talking from experience? Many vengeful ex-mistresses?
Then the doctor speaks some nonsense about how a bold woman could definitely smite a man with a little hammer, but with a larger one couldn't even crush a beetle. Because.... women are too feeble to be able to lift a bigger hammer? I can see why this guy gets dumped a lot, and possibly hit in the head with medium sized hammers as a kiss of goodbye.
Wilfred tries to frame up Joe, the slow guy. Because he can't be hanged. But Father Brown sinks the theory.
The guy who plays Joe is.... I guess good at playing brain damaged.
And then Father Brown confronts Wilfred on the top of the church tower.
Wilfred has a great mop of hair.
So what happened this time was: James not gay and offensive to phobic bro, James only nasty. Wilfred saw him bully Joe with the shillings, and grabbed a hammer to whack him with. Then he realised that he was about to kill his brother, and he ran up into the church tower to pray. But he saw James pass by on the ground below, and suddenly he just.... "oops," dropped the hammer on his head. James was so darn killable, after all.
This Wilfred is a lot more ethically and morally sound. He doesn't try to convince Father Brown that it was God who made him drop the hammer and steered it onto James' head. Instead he quietly says goodbye to the church where he's been vicar, and gives himself up to the police.
Father Bown catches the bus to another town, where they may have colours.
The End. (But not.)
Episode 2: The Oracle of the Dog.
Will Father Brown have a goodboi for a sidekick? I have no idea! Let's me find out!
Adapted by Peter Wildeblood. That sounds great!
Someone's driving home so drunk he can barely walk and sing at the same time. Actually, there's no evidence that he can sing when he's sober either. We've only just met him.
Dad comes down in his dressing gown to let him in. He's not impressed.
"I've been out behaving absolutely disgracefully!" exclaims Donald Drunk.
Oh, guess who's visiting the haus? It's Father Brown! He's there to look at the dude who owns the house's library, for books on Indian history.
Donald informs Father Brown that his dad has erotica too. "Oh deer."
Awwww here's the good doggo. He's friendly to Father Brown, but the Colonel's secretary is scared of him.
The Colonel wishes to make changes to his will. I consider him well and truly murdered.
The secretary is a very disturbing presence in Father Brown's studies, phoning and whistling. Oh, and he kind of looks a little like Captain Kronos. BTW, he's American.
"He was a man of quite outstanding stature."
"He was five-foot-one."
Janet is the daughter. She wants to marry a Frog.
Donald is very bad at playing one-finger piano.
Cousin Harry dresses in that stereotypical safari suit with a red scarf. He's there because A: He thinks the Col may have changed the will in his favour, since the bio kids are very disappoint, and B: He got fired from his job in India for being cop much bad @ investigate.
The dog is called Nox. Secretary Floyd (who looks like CK) informs Father Brown that it means "night" in Latin. I think he might be a mansplainer. Nox is black and white, and looks like the kind of dog the British call "Lurcher." He's shaggy and cute is basically the description.
The Frog is Doctor Valentine. Father Brown knows him. He's not to be confused with Inspecteur Valentin without the E.
Floyd freaks out and tells Colonel Druce that his will is invalid, because Doc Valentine signed under a false name. I think this is a plot point, else I wouldn't have bothered to mention it.
Cousin Harry takes Nox and Donald for a walk to the river. Will they find ded peeps?
Floyd overhears Janet and Dr Frog talking about bumping someone off. The lawyer, Mr Traill, looks like he's from Dickens, or an undertaker, or an undertaker from Dickens. He'll be staying for tea. Floyd pretends to be trimming the hedges, so he can evesdrop.
SUDDENLY JANET IS SCREEEEEM.
Colonel Druce is murdered. He's got a small red patch on his back. That's where he was stuck with a thin blade of presumably metal. Maybe the production team felt they overdid it with the sfx with that hammer, and want to be more family friendly.
Poor Nox howls as his master dies.
Everyone has alibi, except Doc Frog (and Father Brown). The person Floyd heard Janet talking Doc out of killing was himself, for saying that Doc was a fraud.
"Monsieur de Villain!"
"Doctor, could the small, thin stabby-poke that pierced Colonel Druce's heart have been these huge hedge shears that Floyd was cutting the bushes with as the victim was murdered?"
"Yes, I believe so."
Father Brown does not think that Nox has psychic insight into who killed his master.
The dad left everything to Janet, but she's marrying a French aristocrat (who's republican), so she's going to give it to Donald, who their father thought was too irresponsible to handle money.
"They've dug up the garden," laments Janet, looking out at a pristine, green lawn.
Floyd takes bus away from murder haus.
Colonel Druce collected walking canes, and there's a dead lion in a glass box.
Harry the Great White Hunter brings a shotgun for a walk in the garden, because he wants to "pot something."
Father Brown deduces that the victim was stabbed by someone who saw him sitting in a wicker chair, through a hole in the hedge. Donald says that he must have been dead earlier than first thought. So now everyone doesn't have alibies for the time of the crime, LOL it rhymed! LOL it rhymed again!
Harry loads the shotgun.
"I think you did it," says Father Brown, in rather a few more words.
Father Brown tries to recreate the scene at the river. He throws the late Col Druce's ebony walking stick into the water. Nox jumps in to retrieve, but he returns without it. The cane sank because ebony is very heavy. Then Nox sits down on the bank and howls sadly.
The other stick, which Harry threw into the water, also sunk because it was like the one Yaeger has, with a blade inside it. Nox was just upset he couldn't find the stick.
Janet recreates the part where she SCREEEEAAAAMed.
And Harry shoots himself?
The End. (Nah.)
