The Black Tower

The Black Tower was a mini-series made based off a P.D. James. How closely it hews to the book I've no idea. I voted to watch it while at my father's (it's part of his collection) because it sounded suitably ominous.

The investigator is one Adam Dalgliesh (Roy Marsden) who seems to have lost his fire for police work. Dalgliesh is also a published poet according to my dad, but was experiencing writer's block at the time, so he's sort of lost his way as a whole. Early on, he receives a visit from Father Baddeley (Maurice Denham), who was the local priest when Adam was a boy. He's working at a private care facility called The Grange, and the Father winds up dead just before Adam comes to pay a visit.

There are all sorts of things going on in the story. The Grange doesn't have enough patients to receive sufficient funding to support itself. Someone is sending obscene letters to everyone who lives or works there. One of the maintenance crew has a criminal record. A rich patient goes over a cliff in a wheelchair (before the Father dies), after changing his will so The Grange receives no money. No one seems to like Wilfred (Martin Jarvis), the man who established and runs the Grange.

The distaste towards Wilfred is somewhat understandable. He seems to mean well, but he seems emotionally dead. If anyone insults him (which several characters do frequently), he smiles gently and chides anyone who tells that person off. It gives the appearance of a martyr complex, and combined with the fact his attempts at showing empathy fall flat, it makes him self-absorbed, which he, to a certain point. His concern is keeping the Grange running, somehow, and I guess he figures doing that is a way to show his concern for others. It's brought up he was an orphan, adopted into the family that owned the estate that became The Grange, but I don't feel much is done with that. For the best perhaps.

I wasn't terribly impressed with Dalgliesh as a detective. I had thought the death of his old friend (though he can't be certain it was murder and not just a heart attack) would snap him out of his malaise, but he still doesn't seem all that driven. He might ask some questions, and perhaps a response stirs a thought in him so he rushes off, but I believe it was 240 minutes into a 270-minute mini-series before he solved any mysteries (and the first one was, "Who is sending some - but not all - of the obscene letters?")

The funny thing is I knew who was behind it and why well before he did, and didn't even realize it, because I brushed off what I saw with a joke, thinking it was much too obvious. Turns out it wasn't too obvious. My prediction for the killer was incorrect, as usual, but I wasn't basing it on evidence, but on the fact the character was mostly in the background the first half of the story. He appeared to be a nice fellow, if a little withdrawn, and later was revealed to be under some familial pressures, so I figured, yeah, he snapped and killed people. Not quite, though he was involved in some of the criminal proceedings, and that makes me wonder about the ending.

The staff and residents (those still alive) are off on a trip to Lourdes when Dalgliesh finally puts it all together. The character I had figured for the murderer is on the trip. OK, so he's not a murderer, but he is guilty of some other crimes, but the series ends without any resolution in that regard. Did Dalgliesh cut him some slack, did they send cops after the mini-bus, or wait for everyone to return? Did what Dalgliesh discover alter the decision of what to do with the Grange? Did solving the case snap him out of his funk?

I would advise you that many of the characters behave unpleasantly. Some do so constantly, others grow more rude as things grow worse, while at least one character rather abruptly softens after one of the deaths. Other characters have more abrupt mood swings, all of which seemed pretty normal to me. The patients know they're not the best off, that they'll likely die at The Grange, if it isn't shut down first, the staff know the place is dying, nobody likes Wilfred's attitude, and now people are dying at an alarming rate. It's stressful, placed on top of the usual day-to-day stresses. Which isn't to say all the rudeness and biting remarks didn't irritate me after awhile. I started actively rooting for someone to kill Henry, or at least kick his cane out from under him. Was not to be.