TV series recommendation: Professor T

Originally a Belgian series, this UK remake stars Ben Miller as the uptight hero of the UK series: Professor Jasper Tempest. You might know Ben Miller from the first series of TV crime series Death in Paradise. He was Richard Poole, an equally uptight character.

You might also recognise the actor playing his mother: Frances de la Tour, who was Ruth Jones in the classic 70s sitcom Rising Damp and, for younger audiences, Madame Olymp Maxine in the Harry Potter film series.

The poor man has to put up with not-so-bright students and his OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), not to mention his overbearing mother, a drip of a boss, and a secretary who is unusual to say the least. His ex-wife (one wonders how they ever got married in the first place) is a police officer. He is called in by the police to assist with a case and he basically never stops helping. Oh, and there is some mystery about his father's death when he was a child. He keeps having flashbacks and his mother is very anxious about him uncovering the truth...

The episodes are all very scenic as the series is set in Cambridge. If you like McDonald & Dodds, you'll like this.

Bennet Evan Miller and his on-screen mum Frances de la Tour:

TV series recommendation: Harry Wild

This is a crime series set in Dublin and starring Jane Seymour. She is an English literature lecturer who retires from the university right at the start of the first episode. And like Loriot in Papa ante Portas, she finds herself at a loose end.

With the aid of a tearaway but bright young boy and her 14-year-old granddaughter, she solves crimes by referring to works of literature. Her shenanigans annoy the hell out of her son, who happens to be a detective.

All very enjoyable - especially since it combines crime with literature - and I'm watching the first series again.

For more information:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14527610/?ref_=tt_sims_tt_i_4

TV series recommendation: Miss Scarlet and the Duke

If you enjoy cosy historical crime series, this is a series for you.

Set in late Victorian London, a father dies and his daughter, Eliza Scarlet, steps into his shoes as a private investigator. Over three series (with a fourth in the pipeline), we see how she struggles to acquire cases and to be taken seriously as a female private detective.

Obviously, there is a dashing police officer (whose looks put me in mind of a young Clint Eastwood or Hugh Jackman) to assist her, and to be completely annoyed by her insistence on doing things her way. As is also the case with the Murdoch Mysteries, we also have the stock character of the at first clueless and hapless young police officer who has to be taken under the wing of the astute inspector. The loyal housekeeper, with Eliza since her childhood, provides good advice and acts as a haven for our young heroine. And then there is a shady, but kind-hearted, criminal who also assists with the investigations. 

Good sets and costumes, mainly filmed in Dublin and Serbia, it seems. Interesting plots. All highly entertaining. If you like the books by Charles Finch and his hero Charles Lennox (also set in Victorian London), then you should enjoy this TV series.

More information here:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8270592/episodes?season=1

Length isn't everything....

 ...as the actress said to the bishop*.

Over the Easter weekend, I went out with my walking group on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.

The walk on Easter Sunday was 20 km long but flat - in the countryside near the Dutch border. Lakes, fields, a heath and forest. Easy peasy.

The walk on Easter Monday was supposed to be 12 km but hilly. I was more tired after the first 10 minutes (with 124 steps to get out of the valley and on the hillside) than I had been at the end of the previous day's walk. Phew. 

We had some newcomers to the group who thought that 12 km was going to be easier than 20 km, but as I soon told them, you can't go by length. The main criterion as to how knackering a walk is going to be is how hilly the countryside is. 

*In the UK, you can make a double entendre simply by adding the words "as the actress said to the bishop" at the end of any sentence that can be read with a salacious [wollüstig] meaning.

Quo vadis, ChatGPT et al.?

I can understand inventing machines to take the heavy loads off human beings so that they don't get worn out by a lifetime of heavy toil, but what is going to happen when people no longer need to think because those jobs are being done by machines?

I translate for a living and this year, all the translators I speak to (German to English, English to German) have said that work seems to have fallen off a cliff. I've gone from a position of being able to buy what I want (I have modest wants) to not even covering costs.

All the translators I have spoken to say that they believe that clients are using things like DeepL to translate documents. However, they are also waiting for the penny to drop when they realise that those programs are incapable of actually thinking things through.

I tried DeepL out on a price list. The word 'Preise' was above a table of costs. The euro symbol was repeated throughout the table. How did DeepL translate that single word? As 'prizes'. Yes, the German word covers both meanings: prizes and prices.

That's why my colleagues are certain that when the clients get bitten in the arse because they've relied on such a faulty computer-generated translation, they'll be back.

I bloody well hope so.

I just don't understand people - part 2

A couple of Saturdays ago, I walked over to the English library.

Most of the way is along a broad road, which has two lanes in each direction and a tramline in each direction in the middle of the road. The pavements on either side are correspondingly broad, too.

The pavement is broad enough for four people to walk side by side. The bicycle path is almost as broad.

Imagine my surprise when I see a man and his son, possibly around the age of 8 or 9, cycling towards me - on the part for pedestrians. I say to him, "Da ist der Fahrradweg." (The cycle path is over there.)

His reaction? "Aber ich bin mit meinem Sohn unterwegs." (But I'm with my son.) Said in a completely scandalised tone of voice. 

I replied in German, "Then you should be showing your son how to use a bicycle path." He was already past me then, but he stopped and turned back to shout at me, but as I told him, "You don't think I'm going to listen to a man who doesn't know how to use a bicycle path." And, frankly, I really couldn't understand a word. My ears just close up completely when morons like that try to justify their stupidity. I mean.. they were pedalling fast right towards me. 

Now, if the cycle path was right next to a traffic-filled road full of fumes and with vehicles just zipping by, I might have had some understanding of the father's fears. However, between the bicycle lane and the fairly empty road was a broad strip of grass and trees (as broad as the bicycle path). And for part of the way, there are even small metal railings to prevent cars from parking on the grass. But no...the father had to show the son how to cycle towards pedestrians and how to ignore the lovely broad bicycle path reserved just for cyclists. I just don't understand people.

I just don't understand people

During the height of the pandemic, I went on a walk around the park, the park being three times fuller than usual with joggers panting their aerosols in all directions and cyclists whizzing past me at close quarters.

At the furthest end, however, one simply has to walk through the park on quite a broad path. I always walk on the edge of the path, allowing plenty of space for other people to pass by. That day, I saw five people in their thirties walking towards me. All in a row. 

As the men and women approached me, I thought that they must surely see me (especially since all my coats are bright red) and that one of them would walk behind the others to give me space. After all, they seemed educated enough to manage that.

But, no. They continued to walk straight ahead and the man at the end closest to me actually banged into my shoulder as they walked past. Not a word of apology.

Of course, I turned round and asked if it was impossible for him to walk behind someone else because otherwise he would feel like a loser. I genuinely believe that many Germans cannot psychologically tuck themselves in behind someone else because they would otherwise feel "second best" and thus "a loser".

These people couldn't understand the fuss and one man said, "Why are you so het up? It's Sunday." As though that excused bad manners.

Move forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was walking in the nearby countryside. I'm on a rough road that leads to some isolated houses. Wide enough for cars. Ahead of me, I see an older couple walking together. But get this...the woman is in front and the man is directly behind her. All that space by her side and he is walking behind her. 

I don't get it. When there is plenty of space to for people walking in opposite directions to pass by each other, the husband walks behind the wife. When there is no space left for a single person to pass by a group of people, that group of five people simply have to walk side by side and even bump into the single person that they've been able to see coming for at least 100 metres.

I don't get it.