Murder, They Hope: Terry and Gemma visit a village with weird rituals, dark secrets, dead Santas, former hunks, and Jack Carroll's dick

I haven't reviewed anything on Amazon Prime for awhile, because I'm annoyed by having to wade through two minutes of commercials before they'll let me check to see if it's awful. But a  Christmas-themed murder mystery in July sounds fun, and the title has two allusions: Blood Actually , a Murder They Hope Mystery (Love Actually, Murder She Wrote).

Scene 1: Santa Claus runs through the woods, terrified and bleeding.  We hear a squelch as he is murdered off-camera.  Cut to the opening credits.

An elderly man and his much younger wife or daughter discuss how this will be the best Christmas ever as they approach their Christmas holiday cottage.  The guy with the key popped down to the pub, but that's ok.  They love old-fashioned English pubs full of friendly villagers. 

Scene 2: The Cock Inn.  I'd patronize that.  Carolers are singing "Ding Dong, Merrily On High," which I've never heard before.  Must be distinctly British.

When the Elderly Man and his Wife or Daughter enter, the carolers and pub patrons glare in anger and "cold contempt."  Are they acquainted with the couple, or do they belong to an evil fertility cult?

One of the villagers, Gavin, approaches to apologize: "We don't get too many outsiders here."  He is shushed by the head caroler-- wait, that's Jane Horrocks, the ditzy assistant Bubble on Absolutely Fabulous!  

And Jack Carroll from Coronation Street is one of the glaring patrons (nude photo after the break). 

The Elderly Man, Terry, is played by Johnny Vegas, who starred with Jack in Eaten by Lions. Tour bus driver Terry and guide Gemma (Sian Gibson) have stumbled upon murders in two movies, two tv miniseries, and two tv specials. By this point, they have married and started their own private investigation business, but they're just here for the Christmas holiday.

Creepy David, who owns the holiday cottage they're renting, takes them to get settled.  When they leave, the carolers and patrons glare and fuss; "What are they doing here?  They'll ruin everything!"  Are they planning a Midsommer-style human sacrifice orgy?

Scene 3: Tour of the cottage, with a huge kitchen.  Terry is happy; he can get some creating done here!  He means cooking: he's hoping to do a proper Christmas dinner, to make up for the horrible ones his mum and nan foisted on him.

By the way, Creepy David lives in the granny flat out back, but it has no kitchen, so he'll be popping in to do his own cooking, and he's coming to their Christmas Dinner, of course. 

Left: Creepy David is played by Peter Davidson.  Not the multiple-tattooed Peter Davidson; he was the fifth Doctor Who, appearing 1981-84, and in many movies, tv series, and podcasts thereafter.

When he leaves, Gemma notes a problem: she was busily eating a chocolate mousse, and left the turkey on the kitchen counter back home.  This freaks out Terry: "It's not Christmas, it's Nothing-mas!"

Scene 4: Terry rushes into the village to see if there are any turkeys left.  There are three in a shop with a sign: "All are welcome. Terms and conditions apply."

Uh-oh, the proprietor is Bubble, the most vicious of the carolers.  "We haven't got any turkeys for you.  Those are reserved for members of our community."

Terry notices a poster for the  Santathalon -- prizes for the best Santa Claus!  Anyne in the village is permitted to compete.  Aha, a loophole! If he wins the contest, he'll be accepted as a member of the community, and then she'll have to sell him a turkey. Bubble grudgingly agrees.

Cut to Terry modeling the makeshift Santa Suit that he made from the clothes of Creepy David's dead wife. This causes David to tear up. Heterosexual identity established at Minute 9. 

Scene 5: Terry at the pub with the other Santa contestants, including Martin Kemp of EastEnders (left). Robert (Ed Kear of Nasty Neighbors) brags that he has made runner-up seven times, but his opponent points out that he's lost seven times, plus his wife is cheating.  Heterosexual identity established immediately.    Robert counters that this is not a big deal, because everyone's wife is cheating. 

"You've just made the Naugty List," Eaten By Lions points out.  And you'll be the first victim, I'll bet.

While they are bickering, a muscular Green Man enters (Samuel Anderson of Emmerdale Farm, top phhoto) and announces that he is Centaur Klausenhof, a Scandinavian Santa Claus (no such being).  He insults Terry by calling him Klausenhoff's Empty-Headed Servant, Rupert.

Scene 6: The first challenge: Give a gift to a ceramic child, judged by your kindness and your ho-ho-hos.

Terry suggests using a real child, which causes everyone to glare, stare at the floor, and hug each other in despair. "There are no children in the village," Bubbles says ominously. Have they sacrificed all their kids?

Perpetual runner-up Robert goes first, but is disqualified for using an inhaler.  Next Terry, but when he opens the package, a head in a Santa hat drops out!  

"It's going to be that sort of Christmas," Terry says resignedly.  You're an amateur.  Jessica Fletcher of "Murder, She Wrote" stumbled upon murders 264 times.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Hudson Yang: From "Fresh Off the Boat" to Harvard, cooking, dudes, and the best gay comedy of the year. With Hudson and Xu bedroom stuff

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Carter Ryan: Canadian soap boy likes farm equipment, works out, hugs Jaiven and other hot guys. WIth Carter and Kevin cocks.

The teen idol site has numerous photos of Carter Ryan, aka Carter Ryan Evancic and another guy, visible in the background of this photo, and elsewhere hugging, swimming, working out, hugging, and hugging.  Surely they're boyfriends.  But first, to make sure that Carter is actually an actor, I'm checking out his IMDB biography.

Whew, it's long and overblown with superlatives.  The greatest actor of our generation was born in 2006 to Dorlyn and Carol Evancic.  Don't get excited -- Dorlyn is just a guy with a girl's name.   His older sister inspired him to start acting at the age of eight months.  Really? 

At the age of eight, Carter booked the Lead in a Feature Film (Mom's capitalization, not mine), playing the son of "supermodel/actress Rachel Hunt" in Her Infidelity (2015).

Wait -- is Rachel the extremely famous actress, or the character?

She's the actress.  In Her Infidelity (2015), Rachel plays a bored housewife who has an affair with a hunky teacher (Grayson Chitty), but he turns out to be a psycho.  Presumably Carter plays her son.

 

Getting through the descriptions of Carter's wonderfulness is quite a slog. Here's another photo of Carter and his boyfriend to combat the boredom.  

After Her Infidelity, the great actor (according to his Mom) appeared in:

An episode of Impastor (2015) as Young Buddy.  The grown-up Buddy, on the run from a loan shark, steals a man's identity and takes over as the new gay pastor of a small-town church.  This may be a problem, since he's not really qualified to be a leader in the local gay community. Besides, he's got a tattoo of a naked lady on his hand. 

An episode of Travelers (2016), with Will and Grace star Eric McCormack playing a straight guy who sends his consciousness back in time.  Carter's character is not mentioned in the plot synopsis.

Two episodes of The Man in the High Castle (2015-16), a dystopian series where Germany won World War II. Carter plays the son of a lady dating American resistance fighter Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank).

Left: Rupert Everett as resistance fighter Frank Frink.

But Carter is best known as Cody Stanton in the Canadian soap When Calls the Heart (2015-19) and the spin-off When Hope Calls (2021).

The Hoping Heart or The Calling Hope or whatever is set in a small town in Alberta in the 1910s.  Cody is homeless and hungry until he is adopted by Abigal Stanton, who runs the local cafe. His plotlines involve dealing with his sister's illness, dealing with his own illness, having trouble at school, and gay-subtext buddy-bonding with Robert Wolfe (Jaiven Natt).

Hey, Jaiven is the boyfriend! 

Off-camera, Carter buddy-bonded with several male cast members.  Here he wishes happy birthday to Daniel Issing, whom I assumed was a father figure on the show. But the actor is Kevin McGarry, who plays town constable Nathan Grant, with no particular connection to Cody.  Apparently Carter just likes hunky guys.

And who the heck is Daniel Issing?    

More after the break

Leonard Berstein, Aaron the Rabbi's Son, and a poem about masks on the verge of coming out

 

Sorry for two autobiographical stories in a row, but I'm trying to build up my Fiction/Travel Index

When I was a kid, my church had no problem with classical music, but my parents hated "that longhair stuff," so there was none in the house.  My first exposure to Bach, Berlioz, Beethoven, and Mozart came through a series of Young People's Concerts  which appeared occasionally on Sunday afternoons, hosted by famous composer Leonard Bernstein.

Later, when I joined the school orchestra, I learned more about Leonard Bernstein.

I saw his gay symbolism-heavy musicals, On the Town (1949), starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, and West Side Story (1961), starring gay actor George Chakiris and assorted high-stepping hunks.

And his Symphony #3, Kaddish, named after the Jewish prayer for the dead.

He appeared on tv, conducting Gershwin, Mahler, and Beethoven.

No one ever mentioned that he was gay, off course, and his works revealed nothing, except maybe the Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp, and Percussion, after Plato's Symposium (1954).  The Symposium contains Plato's famous defense of same-sex love.

In the spring of my senior year, Aaron, the rabbi's son who was gay (but didn't know it yet), invited me to a performance of Bernstein's Mass, a musical theater piece based on the Latin Mass.  

"Wait -- isn't Bernstein Jewish?"

He nodded.  "That's what makes it interesting."

Nazarenes weren't supposed to associate with Catholics, or have anything to do with Catholic music, so of course I wanted to go.

 There are three acts.

Act 1: Devotion and Celebration.  The celebrant invites the congregants to worship.  They begin authentically, but then doubt creeps in.  Nazarenes were told that it was a sin to doubt the existence of God, the inerrancy of the Bible, or the fundamental beliefs like the Virgin Birth: the Devil's primary temptation was not to do bad things, but to doubt. But here it is celebrated as part of the worship experience.  How can God be with us when there is so much suffering in the world?

Originally the congregants mentioned war, but in more recent versions, they mention racism and homophobia.

Act 2:  Crisis and Collapse: The anxieties and doubts of the congregants take their toll on the celebrant, who has a spiritual collapse, breaks the sacred objects, and screams in rage against God.

What  I say -- I don't feel.
What I feel -- I can't show.
What I show -- isn't real.
What is real?  Oh Lord, I don't know.

Suddenly I realized that he was mirroring the interrogation that I received constantly from parents, friends, teachers, my brother, the preacher at church,  "What girl do you like?  What girl?  What girl?  What girl?" 

Every boy has discovered girls at your age.  Every boy has experienced True Love, that fills "the hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame."  If you haven't, you must pretend.  Smile, grin, flirt, talk about how much you long for feminine smiles, every day, every hour, for the rest of your life.

In the third act, Resolution, a boy emerges from the congregation and sings "I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help," offering hope in the midst of despair.  The celebrant is restored, and the Mass continues.

But I wasn't paying attention.

More after the break