rayanthony-1 Reviews

Van der Valk (2020–2023)

Good Detective Series

[7/10 · 3 May 2020]

I was very apprehensive when I started to watch this series as series resurrected from a successful past don't always work. It is a well made series with good characters and good cast with great locations plus good plot lines.. Like a lot of modern series the fly on the wall method of sound recording is sometimes difficult to follow but generally it works Speaking of sound the attempt at a theme music is rubbish. Of course the original series had an iconic theme music which was a pop chart success as well but the current one never gets going with a recognisable tune. There are a couple of attempts to shoe in notes from the original theme but they might as well not have bothered, This is probably a naive question but why couldn't they just use the original theme tune 'Eye Level' which would have helped considerably I think. Maybe it was a cost reason ?

Love by Chance (2016 TV Movie)

A Really Good Romcom

[8/10 · 25 October 2016]

I really enjoyed this movie. It definitely counts as one of Hallmark's better efforts. I haven't seen the movie referred to elsewhere - 'Because I Said So' - so this one was refreshingly original for me. The plot for the most part was very believable although I did find it hard to accept how easily Claire gave up on Eric when she found out that her mother had engineered the first meeting. The cast was well chosen and performed excellently. I particularly liked Brenda Strong's character Helen who, as far as I am concerned, was the best one in the movie and Brenda played her superbly. I hope to see more of Brenda's work. It is definitely worth watching again.