02. Winston's Lost Night

[Lucy]

After a veteran of a brutal North African battle is slain by a sword, Detective Murdoch's prime suspect is the victim's fellow soldier, who is none other than Winston Churchill.

[shangas]

Churchill was a lot more than two-time P.M. of Great Britain. He was also a newspaper-columnist, a biographer, a writer, a painter, soldier, and First Lord of the Admiralty, twice. He took active roles in both the Second Boer War, and in the Great War, not to mention of course, WWII.

His full name was Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill.

For a fat old geezer who smoked nonstop, drank at least one bottle of champagne EVERY day and who was notorious for staying up at all hours of the night, he survived a damn long time. He didn't die until he was 90 years old!...Although by then, he'd suffered two strokes and at least one heart-attack.

Churchill was famous for loving cats, and had several pet cats throughout his life. His last one was called Jock. During the War, he had one named Nelson.

He claimed that EVERYONE in his household was doing something for the war-effort. Even Nelson. Nelson would sleep in bed with Churchill, keeping him warm. Therefore, he helped save heating-coal, which could be used for more important wartime applications.

Churchill loved playing the card-game Bezique, with his wife, Clementine.

Churchill was not a very discreet person, and he was famous for appearing COMPLETELY NAKED at the most random moments. It wasn't unknown for him to wander around his estate at Chartwell without a stitch of clothing on.

Usually, this was due to his mind thinking of other things.

Churchill's nudity wasn't confined to the household. He once appeared naked in front of President Frank Roosevelt. Realising the embarrassing situation, he quickly quipped: "As you can see, I have nothing to hide from the President of the United States!"

Although in Churchill's defence, he was taking a bath at the time.

[CosmicCavalcade]

OMG! Lol! Thanks for that shangas. Now I won't be able to watch the next ep without picturing him naked.

[shangas]

Churchill was a fascinating sort of chap, wasn't he?

[randomkiwibirds]

I sense this will be an amusing episode :3

[hannikan]

I'm really looking forward to seeing Thomas Howes as Winston Churchill.

[shangas]

I JUST finished watching it.

WOW.

...Just...WOW.

A wonderful, stellar episode. There are a few spoilers, which I shan't mention, but otherwise...wow.

Thomas Howes as a young Churchill was very, very convincing in my opinion. He captured the voice very well, the mannerisms, his personality, all very well. Not an easy person to portray on screen, but I think he did a marvellous job.

The voice to me, was the thing that must've been tricky. No recordings exist of Churchill's voice as a young man. But in listening to it in this episode, with a tweak of imagination, you can hear the same voice saying: "we shall never surrender!"

Compare Howes' vocal impersonation, to Churchill's actual voice...



...and you can see how similar sounding they are.

There were lots of little Churchillisms in there. The drinking (I told you he was a HEAVY drinker), the insults (Churchill was famous for his insults), even the servants. They managed to get TINY details amazingly accurate. Even the way Churchill wears his pocketwatch is the same as in all his photographs taken during the War.

Churchill never wore a proper double-albert pocketwatch chain. He always wore a single extra-long chain which ran through his waistcoat buttonhole. And you can see that detail in Howes' costume. A tiny thing that anybody could miss...but there it is.

Despite appearances, Churchill was never very rich, although he did insist on having servants for everything. During the 1930s he was almost broke. Between looking after his family, Chartwell, losing his money on the Stock Market in 1929, and paying for a full staff of domestic servants, he barely managed to keep his head above the tide of debt.

The case itself was very interesting; at first I thought it too simplistic, but it's not that bad.

This is Churchill as he appeared in 1900:



...the photograph was taken while he was touring the North American continent on a lecture-tour, just as he was in the episode.

That's about all I can say, without giving away major plot-elements.

[CosmicCavalcade]

Thanks for all these details shangas, they were really interesting! And I only pictured him naked once. So good on me. ;D

I too really liked this ep. It was well put together and focused on Churchill, which was the point. Mostly I just liked listening to Howes talk. His voice was very intriguing sounding and captivating. It's no wonder Churchill went on to great things. Didn't know who the killer was till near the end, so the case itself wasn't glaringly obvious. It was cool getting to see Duke and the comment made was hysterical! It was also nice to see Higgins again but I'm not sure how I feel about the mutton chops.

Finally the Jilliam stuff. While I liked the ending, I'm kind of torn with this one. Julia's been asking him to change an awful lot about himself lately, while she's basically just staying the same. I mean, it's rather strange to me that she was the one who wussed out in the end! Didn't she know she'd have to swear under oath? Why the random change of heart? And then getting all huffy with Murdoch cuz she screwed up! I dunno, she's gonna have to give him about ten kids to make up for all his sacrifices.

[Terence's Top Hat]

There was something "off" about this episode that I can't put my finger on. It was a great script. But I felt like I was watching a TV show instead of becoming absorbed in teh show like I usually do. I kind of felt like I was sitting in the audience watching actors act. Sort of seeing them walk onto the set to give their lines--and I can't figure out why, because I beleive I'm the only person who feels this way about the episode. I wish I could figure out why this episode didn't draw me in.

[hannikan]

If you're on the MM FB boards, you will see lots of people didn't like it. But that was mostly due to the William and Julia stuff. I agree that Thomas did a wonderful job portraying Winston Churchill. If you've seen Downton Abbey, he was SOOO different from his role on that, you almost didn't recognize him. Except he looked like him. I liked all the twists and turns in the plot. The details of the motivation for the murder was interesting. Thomas was hilarious in this one; one minute he was a fan boy and the next he wanted to string Churchill up! I liked the William and Julia stuff, too. There really wasn't much of it, but what was there sure packed a punch. I could understand Julia's frustration and I liked William's dilemma. Their saying I love you at the end was great, too. It didn't surprise me that Julia couldn't lie under oath. I know personally that is true and you often think you'll be able to going into it, esp. to gain something you want so much. We know there will still be more struggle but at least they are expressing their feelings about one another more and more.

[shangas]

Sometimes people can be so shallow. It worries me.

[randomkiwibirds]

I found this to be an interesting episode. I enjoyed the layout with the episode. I was a refreshing change from the usual layout.

Thomas Howes was fabulous! I had trouble at first pinpointing where I saw him before and then it hit me, when he held his head a certain way: William! (from Downton Abbey)

Brakenreid was amazing as usual, being all fanboy one minute and wanting to beat him up the next. Note to self: Sign Brakenrieds signature book if offered.

I do enjoy Jillam not being the main focus of the episode. Just little snippets here and there. I was perturbed at Julia for backing out of the oath thing. Does she even realize how much she owes Murdoch? I really shouldn't be complaining though, they are basically together again. I will say one thing though: There better be a wedding between these two at the end of the season!

I wish though they would touch a bit more on the Dr. Grace/George relationship. I feel like that ship is being seriously neglected at the moment-but then again this is only episode 2 they might touch on it a little bit more later on in the season.

[barbarama]

I loved reading everybody's posts, and Shangas, thank you so much for all this information about Churchill, that was really insightful.

I did like this episode (not as much as the first though) but what said Nugget makes sense to me. Even if I enjoyed it, I too was experiencing this episode in a different way than the usual ones. At some point I was like, ok so we will see Churchill the entire episode (although the portrayal done by Thomas Howes was great), it felt also like I was watching the actor doing a famous historical figure rather than be taken by the entire story. Thanks for pointing that out Nugget I felt the a bit the same way.

For W/J that's true that I wasn't found of the scene in the office but after reading other people comments on the FB page it gave me another appreciation of it and I guess what matters is that through the struggle(s) (as I'm sure there will be) they are willing to fight for their relationship and make it work.

Thomas was too funny with his fanbook and I love to see the invention at the beginning of the episode with Higgins saying something like "we have light switch..." and George "Please make it stop sir"

So far these 2 first episodes are way better in terms of writting in comparison to the beginning of last season (in my opinion); and I can't wait to discover the new role of Julia as a profiler that we had a glimpse off in this episode.

[hannikan]

It reminded me a lot of Doyle going around with William on the cases he was working on. The only thing I missed was George being more involved, but I know he will be in the rest of the episodes. I agree that the writing has been better so far than at the beginning of S5. I wanted to mention that I also liked the sing off btwn Churchill/Reginald and the Irish men at the pub. That was an interesting scene and reminded us of those tensions. The flashback sequences reminded me a lot of the earlier seasons, where that was used more.

[barbarama]

I agree with you Hannikan about the flashbacks, I actually like them a lot, if I'm not mistaken in the first seasons they were used almost every episode.

And as for the bar scene I liked it a lot too, totally believable but you have to be a bit of a nutcase to sing "Rule Britannia" in an Irish pub!!.

Indeed, I used to live in Dublin in 2001 and went to Belfast twice and 1 time to Derry (or Londonderry depending who's saying it catholic or protestant) and at the time the cease fire existed only for about 3 years and you could feel the tension throughout the city and in certain neighborhood you saw barbwires, helicopters in the sky etc... I don't know how it is now as I haven't been back since (although I hope to go to Ireland again it is such a beautiful country) but I used to think that it was crazy that a situation like that could still exist at the beginning of the 21st century between 2 countries that are part of the EU.