C. B. Strike: Season 4: "Troubled Blood" episode 4 - 2023

It's been over a year since I posted the last entry??? How is this possible???

I've been a fan of this show since the beginning, it's on HBOmax here in the U.S. and it is so interesting. So I was happy to see Robin was going to have a guest starring role in an episode of the latest season, "Troubled Blood"! Too bad I had to wait until the 4th and final episode to see him, though.

As this is a murdery mystery show, investigators C.B. Strike and Robin Ellacot are hired by a woman to find her mother, Dr. Margot Bamborough, who is presumed dead after having disappeared in 1974 when the woman was still a child. After lots of twists and turns that will keep you guessing, we are finally led to Robin's character of Steve Douthwaite, aka Steve Jacks, aka Steve Diamond. He had been a patient of Margot's when he was seeing her for some weird stomach ailments he had been experiencing. Since then, all his aliases and moving around and switching jobs led the detectives to suspect he had something to do with her disappearance and try to track him down, finally finding him running a hotel in a small town with his wife, who knows nothing about his past.

I found it amusing as a Robin fan that one of the jobs he had in the past was a worker at a Holiday Camp!

There were lots of flashbacks of Steve as a young man in the '70s, but the guy who played him did not look like Robin at all and I feel they could have done a lot better choosing someone with similar hair and features.

Robin played the role very earnestly and sympathetically. A departure from his usually jokey demeanor and he did a good job at it.

Anyway, I won't give anything away, since I think the identity of the killer was very unpredictable and you will enjoy finding out for yourself how they wrapped up the case!

Madame Blanc Mysteries: Episode 6 - 2021

For some insane reason, Robin is not in episodes 4 or 5! So....skipping my commentary of those here and going right to the finale of the season. I do hope there'll be a season 2!

Jean White has sold her house in the village and is ready to leave for England. To make it all the more upsetting, the slight hint of romance between her and Dom has been squashed because his wife, who had left him two years prior, is back and appears to want to pick up where she left off. Robin-as-Jeremy is shown at the bar with his wife, happily planning Jean's going-away party.

The loose ends of the season get wrapped up by the end...who killed her husband and why...and now is Jean's life in danger? ...and why is Dom's wife REALLY back? You'll have to watch to find out!

Good job, Robin! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for another season of you in this!

Madame Blanc Mysteries: Episode 3 - 2021

Episode 3 finds Jeremy and Judith holding an 80s-themed 35th anniversary party! Complete with a poster of their wedding day showing a younger Robin, which I thought was a cute touch:

But, wouldn't you know, there's a murder at the celebration - I won't say who - and thankfully Jean White is soon on the case!

Robin steals every scene he's in, he's adorable in this episode, playing so very oblivious, and the looks his wife gives him are just priceless!

Madame Blanc Mysteries: Episode 2 - 2021

I'm really getting into this show! Fun and simple to follow. This episode finds Jean White helping a woman in town track down information about her birth family, who were separated during WW2, leaving her with just a few antique items to trace. One clue leads her to the grounds of Jeremy (Robin)'s place. His story is revealed more in this episode. His family had been the owners of a large chateau since his grandfather's day, and he and his wife live there now and are quite wealthy. He happily allows Jean and Dom (Steve Edge) to search the grounds, where they find something quite startling (hehe).

Side story is a TV show producer interviewing couples in the village for a new reality show and everyone, including Jeremy and wife, are excited about being the couple chosen. Sue Holderness plays wife Judith and is pretty funny with her over-the-top behavior and Robin does great playing her amiable husband. Some of his expressions are hilarious!

Last Train to Christmas - 2021

Can you believe my luck lately? Another new Robin movie! Shown in the UK this Christmas season, but by Christmas Eve I found it on YouTube here in the US! Truly is a Christmas miracle! 😄

Looked low-budget, but Husband and I actually really enjoyed it. I'm always a fan of time travel movies, and this was a clever one...kept the characters on a train, but each car would take the main character back and forth through his life by a span of 10 years. All the way back to 1945, and then up to what I guess was 2015 at the end. Telling his story and him trying to figure out how to make the change that will fix the problem that gets revealed. So good! Robin played the director of an ad the main character was making on the train in 1985, and played his role with his usual exuberance.

Look it up before it gets taken off! And enjoy!

Madame Blanc Mysteries: Episode 1 - 2021

Oddly enough, right after I posted a few days ago, I watched yet another new thing Robin is in! I saw that the Acorn streaming channel was offering a 99 cent a month deal for 3 months subscription with the code "HappyHoliday". And they carry "The Madame Blanc Mysteries" which I've been reading about on Twitter. (Updated update: just found out today that DailyMotion also has it, but for free. Oh well, I wanted to check out Acorn anyway...)

I watched the first episode last night. It's okay, an interesting enough British murder mystery. There's this British antique dealer woman, Jean White, whose husband is killed in a car accident while buying antiques in France (filmed in Gozo, though!) She goes to the village to investigate and gets involved with the locals while doing so. Steve Edge plays the local British handyman who helps her out. I recognized him from a few other things he's been in that I've watched lately, including a really interesting series called "Starlings" which unfortunately only lasted a couple seasons. I like him. Robin really only (so far) has a small role as another British local, "Jeremy Lloyd James" who makes a couple of appearances with his...wife? I think. Sorry, too lazy to go back and re-watch to see how they are first introduced.

After watching it I was thinking to myself, "I wonder why they call it the 'Madame Blanc Mysteries'? Who is Madame Blanc?" I was assuming beforehand she was going to be a French investigator who went around solving crimes. Then I put two and two together and realized Mrs. White in French would be Madame Blanc, ha ha. Takes me awhile! But she only had her own mystery to solve. Looking forward to seeing if she's going to give up antique dealing for mystery solving!

Conjuring: The Book of the Dead - 2019

Well, hello! It's been awhile, hasn't it? I know I've been neglecting this blog terribly, but it's been a busy couple years for me. I do see that Robin's been in a few things lately and hopefully I can get to see those soon.

One thing I just watched is "Conjuring: The Book of the Dead" from 2019.... and unfortunately part of the "Evil Calls: The Raven" series that I reviewed HERE a LONG time ago.

It is currently on the free Tubi Channel, the home of tons of bad low-budget films. If you want to go watch it for yourself, go on over now because - WARNING! - this review will have major spoilers.

Robin again has a very small part in it, again plays Vincent Carney, brother of George Carney, whose wife he was having an affair with.

George Carney is the star of this one. In "Evil Calls" he had descended into madness after learning of the affair and (I think) killed his family? Can't fully remember. But now he's a writer who is writing a screenplay about the event (So...does this mean the events in the first movie didn't happen?)

BUT weird things are going to happen to him in this one as well anyway. His editor sends him off to New Orleans to find out info about a rare book she had just bought which was supposedly a secret book Aleister Crowley had written just before his death. There he meets occultists in a strip club/whorehouse type place who explain things and take advantage of him so as to suit their own agenda. Which turns out to be (here's the spoiler alert!) that he is actually the grandson of Aleister Crowley himself and everyone is in on the plot (even Robin!) to get him to conceive a child with one of the occultists. One amusing fact that comes out is that he shares a birthday with his grandfather -- which is October 12....which if you're a Robin fan you know that it is also HIS birthday. Now, I never knew that! Pretty funny!

Happy 70th Birthday!

Time again to celebrate our favorite actor! Here's a little birthday surprise!

666: Salem Calling

I recently signed up for a subscription to Amazon Prime Video. Of course, I looked up Robin movies, see if there was anything new I'd never seen. I almost got excited to see something called "666: Salem Calling", supposedly from 2017! Had Robin done another movie recently?? Why hadn't I heard about it? Unfortunately, it turned out to be just another re-title of "Evil Calls: The Raven" from 2007 that I had reviewed here back in 2011. Sigh. So funny how this rather bad movie keeps resurfacing under different titles. But anyway, since now it is no longer hard to find, this is your chance to watch it. They also have "Horror Hospital", "Queen Kong", "Four Dimensions of Greta" and "Bartleby".

Pointless Celebrities - S11E27 - 09 Feb 2019

Finally! Something new!

Actually, I first heard about this after it aired, looked it up on YouTube, and made a mental note to come back to it. Time flies by so quickly these days that by the time I remembered it again, it was over 6 months later, ha ha.

Never heard of this British game show before. I've been watching a lot of weird British game shows lately, as I've ventured down another path, having become a little infatuated with yet another interesting British guy named Noel Fielding. And he's on a LOT of game shows. And what I've found is that they ALL seem to be pointless. Scoring never makes sense, no one ever seems to win anything huge, but then no one takes them very seriously either. Using them more as a vehicle for doing comedy, which is fun.

This one also has a very confusing scoring system which I was trying to comprehend as I went along. The goal was to score the lowest points while answering trivia questions. But not just answering, trying to answer as a bunch of polled people did not answer. Or something like that.

Well, anyway. Robin looked great. It was wonderful to see his happy face! The only other contestant I recognized was Les McKeown of the Bay City Rollers! The band I was embarrassingly a huge fan of when I was about 8-11.

Spoiler alert ahead!!!!



Les and partner were eliminated pretty early on. Robin and partner WON! Robin really is very smart about knowing what's what, that's for sure. Only there was a weird twist at the end where they didn't win the full prize for their charities because on the last question they didn't guess the answer which no one had not guessed. That's a lot of negatives for one sentence, so I'm sure I didn't say it correctly.

Anyway, it was a fun watch. He should do more of the game show / panel show type programs! There's so many of them and he is a likeable personality that would fit right in on any of them.