Killer cliff-hangers, excellent acting, absorbing stories inspired at times by headlines, and the occasional “offing” of one of the main protagonists. Did I meantion the excellent writing? An excerpt:

Well, I DIDN’T. If I’d been looking for a survival guide to the Z-Apocalypse this doesn’t look to be it. To the point: yes I’ve only watched the first four episodes. However, in this short span, we’re introduced to  Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), who wakes up from a coma in a dilapidated Georgia hospital after having been shot. He finds the world turned upside down as hordes of cannibalistic living dead have overrun society.

But stop. How did he get shot? Well…

In flashback, we are introduced to Rick and his partner Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal), making small talk in their squad car. Rick is the quiet, decent and sensitive guy while Shane’s the more mercurial single guy, a good ole’ boy and bit of a party animal.

Shane likes to pepper his girlfriend stories with the word “bitch” before asking Rick how things are with his wife. No, really: he did. The dialogue sounds like some nerdy teenager’s interpretation of what jocks talk like in locker rooms, and false notes pile up from there, like a horrid multiple car crash in the mist. Shane and Rick get a call to intercept a couple guys who stole a car and committed an assault with deadly weapon.

They peel rubber, hook up on a country road with other deputies from the neighboring county and set up a road block. Soon enough, the stolen car appears, chased by two more cop cars. Stolen car hits the nail strip and flips numerous times. This is where things go, once again, pear shaped. Bad guy number one gets out of the wreck and fires several shots at the (count them) EIGHT deputies before getting gunned down.

Bad guy number two even manages to fire some rounds, hitting Rick in his vest, knocking the wind out of him. After an inordinate amount of ammo puts him down, bad guy number three crawls out and nails Rick in the back where his vest wasn’t covering him. Why? Apparently because the Keystone deputies weren’t paying enough attention and can’t shoot accurately.

Rick wakes up in a hospital which by then is just a husk littered with broken glass and ripped out wiring. First thing anyone with any lick of sense would do in that situation is look for clothes, and shoes… So what does he do? He simply stumbles out barefoot across all of that, into sunlight, without looking like hamburger meat.

Eventually, Rick sets out on the road wearing his deputy’s uniform complete with hat. If a sense of practicality is what defines who would survive in a zombie apocalypse, Rick’s a goner. I got a sense that his character is given some room to evolve into a more hardened type as the series progresses, but there he goes by the grace of God, rather than skill, surviving all these encounters by sheer and unbelievable miracle.

I’ll just stop there… The list of fails is only longer and the column of wins only has a few “meh” items. I did want to like this, but damn…

“FEED ME NOMS I LOIKES. Wet and smelly stuff that gets on yer sleepy, uncoordinated fingers and make you wince when you touch your face in a half-sleep… Know this: what’s good fer us iz good fer you.”

Damned dictators the lot of them. Here are photos of the criminals. I have to go back and try, just TRY to get some sleep. Kee-rist on a stick…

"Look into my eyes, not around the eyes. Look into my eyes..."

"Leave my dinner there. Then you may go"

"Well that's all right..."

Burp...

Tito’s gut. We thought it was a growth at first…

The dainty pose

Oooh sexy

But he’s also taken to calling himself “Mazza”, Italian for “Mace”, thinking it more catchy. How do we know? He has… Peed his new moniker a few times in the litter box, promptly scratched over by Miss Jenny who doesn’t cotton to such things.

"The penis mightier than the sword, no?" in Ricardo Montalban's voice

Oskar was born blind. His buddy Klaus lost a chunk of his ear. Both of these kitties were rescues and now they have a wonderful forever home.

Here are Oskar and Klaus having an epic door battle.

Here are Oskar and Klaus going for their daily walk.

Klaus isn’t in this video, but Oskar is having a lot of funny with the hair dryer.

Moi?

Sure, sure, the other two are so much fun to romp and wrestle with, and so… Nommable.

In here with us

Sure, Maz steals food and likes to plant his arse and naughty bits in our faces when we sleep (I found an egg roll on the kitchen floor this very morning), while Jenny attacks anything that moves or she thinks is moving, farting up a storm as I lean to pet her.

Chicka chicka bow wow

Tito started by playing alone behind the drapes, as he likes to do. once in a while stopping to see if the others were enticed to come and check him out. This took some time, as Maz was busy looking for something to steal, or “liberate” as he calls it, in the kitchen and Jenny herself was stalking him, fascinated as she is by his spectacular nakedness ( she often looks back at us with a WTF is that look on her face).

Suddenly the noises from the window became a racket and we both turned to see that Tito had climbed up the drapes all the way to the ceiling, his head rotating almost 180 degrees, “exorcist” like. This was a first… The climbing, I mean. I’ve seen him do the head thing before when he’s tripping on catnip.

Sigh… Little Tito wants to fly…

Evil, never forget, is ever watchful.

So as I’ve done in the past, I will do a sort of trifecta, in which I will use two other films which content helps gain an appreciation for the first one. These are Takeshi Kitano’s Yakuza movie “outrage” and Britain’s “Brighton Rock“, adapted from Graham Greene’s novel.

All three are terrific dramas well worth checking out. In the mean time, we hope you might enjoy a sampling of music we love. The first by French duo June and Lula: “I’m not going”.

Then from Brittany, Nolwenn Leroy’s “Tri Martolod”.

And from 1980′s Belgium, Front 242′s “welcome to paradise”…

I found this video.

The above video immediately reminded me of my favorite Ab Fab bit that I just had to share.

Funny story. Two Irish guys, both named William, go to Edinburgh circa 1827 and… Well, “Burke and Hare” tells of William Burke (Simon Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis), scraping by in a city experiencing a sort of Renaissance in scientific studies, particularly medicine. As it happens, two rival surgeons, Doctors Robert Knox (Tom Wilkinson) and Alexander Monro (Tim Curry), are in stiff competition for fresh human meat to dissect.

Burke (left) and Hare (right)

Watch the trailer here:

Unfortunately, people just don’t die in large enough numbers to satisfy both, and Monro’s semi-legal manoeuvering gives him direct access to whoever Angus the hangman (Bill Bailey) drops through his gallows.

Gabrielle Downey as Mad Maggie

This leaves only rotting corpses for Knox to work with, creating something of a business opportunity…

Once one of Mrs. Hare’s  (Jessica Hynes) elderly renters suddenly gives up the ghost, William Hare sees an opportunity: a fresh corpse to sell for doctor Knox’s dissection classes. Their pockets heavier with the 5 ₤ they just “earned”, Hare convinces Burke of launching into a profitable enterprise of purveying Knox with the fresh bodies his research and teachings require.

“Burke and Hare” is another adaptation of the well-known and much filmed accounts of real-life murders committed by the titular characters. A while ago, I reviewed another such adaptation, Glenn McQuaid’s “I sell the dead“, in which the main protagonists were renamed Willie Grimes and Arthur Blake. While “I sell the dead” had a cameo by Angus Scrimm (“Phantasm“), “Burke and Hare” boasts Sir Christopher Lee as a victim, Ronnie Corbett as the militia Captain McLintock and many other familiar faces from British film and television.

The tagline for “I sell the dead” (never trust a corpse) is echoed here by a hilarious line of dialogue spoken by Burke (Pegg) in response to Hare (Sirkis) urging him to go on with their scheme and have faith: “I had faith in a fart once and I shat all over myself!” So yes, it’s that kind of movie: almost anything for a laugh, and there are many.

Watching for cameos can be fun here, with appearances by Jenny Agutter, Ray Harryhausen, Michael Winner and so many others.

Tim Curry as Dr. Alexander Monro

Some scenes stand out as individual little sketches showcasing these talents: Monro and his fetish for (amputated) feet, sawing into a screaming patient’s leg with a goofy smile on his face, then averting his eyes as he leans to the side, avoiding the squirt of arterial blood. He looks like one of those dignified war widows employed to restock restrooms with soap and towels decades ago, known in France as madame Pipi, looking away as a gentleman does his “business”…

Tom Wilkinson as Dr. Robert Knox

And Tom Wilkinson as Dr. Knox, suggesting to his assistant to pray for some disaster to strike Edinburgh, a mass calamity which would solve his supply difficulties. While many comedies rely on just two or three funny, typically gross-out gags, “Burke and Hare” is a bit of a throwback: it is consistently funny throughout with many laugh out loud moments. It also taught me a bit of trivia I didn’t know, that “burking” is a word, used to describe the method of smothering a victim, as with a pillow, while compressing the chest.

Come to think of it, isn’t that what cats do..?

“Burke and Hare” gets five beans.