There was a right to-do over this week's Downton Abbey episode when it screened in Britain - and it wasn't over Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's turn as Dame Nellie Melba. This was, depending on your tolerance for dames playing dames, perhaps, either an inspired piece of casting or a load
Michele Hewitson: From Downton to downturn
Subscribe to listen
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in Downton Abbey.
As somebody pointed out, Fellowes has "used" other shocking events to fuel his soap, most notably a little thing called World War I. It is a drama; dramatic and nasty things do happen. Even, sometimes, almost believably nasty things, on Downton. Occasionally.
There was a slighter to-do over Dame Kiri's appearance. She wasn't enough like Dame Nellie, apparently, although you'd have to be about as old as the Dowager Countess to know this. She (Nellie, not Maggie Smith who will still be playing the DC when she is 112) died in 1931.
I'm not qualified to say whether Dame Kiri's singing was akin, as the fiendish footman said, to "a grand woman screeching like a cat in a bonfire", but it provided a welcome laugh.
Do you think they might have a part for Tem Morrison on Downton? It's not beyond the realms of possibility. Morrison can't do accents but if Kiri's cat-strangled-and-thrown-on-a-bonfire attempt at an Australian one was anything to go by, neither can she.
He can sing. He's famous. Or he was. Now there is The Life and Times of Temuera Morrison (TV One, Wednesdays, 8pm), in which he is filmed as he tries to resurrect his career. He says he was once on the speed-dial of every Hollywood agent.
It was: 'Get me Temuera Morrison'. Then it was: "I want someone like Temuera Morrison". Now, after a few years, it's "Who the f*** is Temuera Morrison?" says Temuera Morrison, adapting an old Hollywood joke. "This is a story about me."
He plays it for laughs a lot of the time, but this might be his best role yet. There is real vulnerability, and some regret. He puts his young daughter on a plane to go back home to her mum. "Unaccompanied minor. There's a few of us that know about that lifestyle."
He goes back to Hollywood with his beautiful 21-year-old son. Perhaps his son might be discovered and buy his old man a flash car. He falls for a text scam. He might have won a million quid! Or a really big role! Why not? I suppose the spoiler is that we'd have heard if he had, but who cares? I like this show. It's really rather sweet, despite the bravado. A bit like the fella it's about, then.
Follow @nzherald_ent on Twitter for all the latest entertainment news.
- TimeOut