Kathryn Morris UK

Murder, She Wrote: A Story To Die For – Saturday ITV

I’ve posted several times over the years about this post-series Murder, She Wrote TV movie getting airings in the UK. Up to now all those screenings have been on the sister ITV3 channel. On Saturday it returns to the big leagues on the main ITV1 channel. You’ll have to get up early (for a Saturday) to catch it though as it’s a 9:30 start.

In January there was big Murder news as it was reported that the US TV network NBC had decided not to go ahead with making a pilot of a remake after they’d had a re-think. Isn’t re-imagining the same as re-thinking? Oscar winner Octavia Spencer (The Help) was signed up as the lead in the re-imagining.

Original Murder, She Wrote star Angela Lansbury was said to be “terribly pleased and relieved” at the news of the project’s cancellation. Fans of the show seemed largely to be against the idea as well. A few weeks prior to that, Angela, who in 2014 celebrates 70 years in the business known as “show”, received the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list for her acting and charity work. She may have lived and worked in the US for much of her life but Angela is British by birth and holds dual citizenship so can use the attached title of Dame. Non-citizens can hold the honorary title and are only allowed put the letters after their name. 20 years ago Dame Angela was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire), which has no title attached, so getting the DBE is a promotion. The equivalent to the DBE for men is the KBE, or Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, which gets you a Sir.

A Story To Die For was the second of four TV movies made in the seven years after the series finished its amazing 12 season run of 264 episodes in 1996. (This post is brought to you by the numbers 2, 4, 7, 12, 264 and 1996, and the letters K, M and U ). As we know, earlier in her career Kathryn had a small role in one of the last episodes of the final season of the TV series. The episode title was What You Don’t Know Can Kill You and KM UK covered it HERE. Hopefully that episode will be broadcast on UK television at some point in the not to distant future.

Kathryn’s role in A Story To Die For is quite significant in its air time and importance to the plot. Details of the broadcast can be found on the Radio Times website.

Screencaps (such as the one above) from the film can be found in the Gallery.

It Was 10 Of Our British Years Ago Today

CC_Titles_16 Today (12 Feb 2014) marks the 10th anniversary of Cold Case‘s first broadcast in the UK.

According to my calendar that date was a Thursday, which surprises me because I have it in mind the show went out on a Monday or Tuesday. That probably explains why I missed the first episode despite knowing it was on and having planned to watch it. I even managed to miss the first half of the second episode, Gleen, too. I was better organised from then on but it was quite a long time before I finally got to see Look Again.

Back then (2004) starting the broadcast of new US TV shows in January or February was common. It was bad from the point of view of having to wait months from the US première of a new season, but it did mean that we had a continuous run through with none of the breaks you get in America. No gaps for Thanksgiving (we don’t do that), Xmas, New Year, and whatever random reason the networks have for taking a show off-air for weeks at a time in the early months of the year.

Since then the gap has reduced between the US and UK showings, in some cases to as little as a day. The rise of the Internet and the free flow of information (and more) about the latest episodes has forced the UK channels to follow the US timing more closely. The finale of Lost was actually simultaneously shown in the UK at some unholy hour during the night, and repeated for normal people at the normal time later that day. Now we get the gaps.

The UK satellite channel Sky One, part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire (think Fox), broadcast all but the last of Cold Case‘s 7 seasons. The Universal Channel took it over and premièred the final season, and has been showing multiple repeat episodes from across all 156 episodes almost daily ever since.

Cold Case – Book Him… Danno?

Speaking of Hawaii Five-O… No, actually that (including in its 2010 revived form) is one of the few recent cop-shows that Jerry Bruckheimer has not had anything to do with.

In late October of last year we saw one of the few public appearances in 2013 by Kathryn. The event was the launch of Jerry Bruckheimer: When Lightning Strikes – Four Decades Of Filmmaking, a book chronicling the life of film and TV producer extraordinaire Jerry Bruckheimer. Jerry and his company JBTV are behind such TV shows as the CSI triumvirate and, of course, Cold Case. The book was on sale from mid-December.

In that previous post I used the word ‘tome’ just as another word for book. However, the more correct usage in referring to large, heavy books was more accurate than I could have thought. The phrase ‘weighty tome’ would be more appropriate. It’s not so much a coffee table book, more of a coffee table. Stick four legs on it and you’ve got a significant piece of furniture. At 41.5 x 28.2 x 3cm (16.3 x 11.1 x 1.2″) it’s a whole lot of book. Roughly A3-sized for those outside the US. And it weighs a fair bit too so you get a lot of book for your money.

I won’t bore you with too much detail but When Lightning Strikes covers Jerry’s whole life as well as his career in film and TV through words as well as hundreds of photos from behind the scenes as well as stills from dozens of projects. Fans of the Pirates Of The Caribbean films (how many of been released? four? with at least two more on the way! that’s films not fans 😉 ) will be particularly interested in a foreword by Johnny Depp and whole section dedicated to the monster franchise.

So what about Cold Case and our Kathryn?

Continue reading »

Ghost Of Xmas Past

The lucky young gentleman you see here (larger version in the Gallery) getting a hug from Kathryn is Ridge Perkett. You may recognise him from the episode of Cold Case called Ghost Of My Child, the finale (episode 18) of season 5. That was the season that had fewer episodes than the normal 22-24 due to a writers strike that hit much of Hollywood during the 2007-2008 production runs.

Spoiler Alert: In a memorable scene at the very end of Ghost Of My Child, Lilly and Scotty take Max (Ridge) back to his biological parents, letting him out of her car and pointing across to them.

Ridge featured many episodes of the very long running soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful as Ridge “RJ” Forrester Jr., the son of Brooke Logan Forrester (played by Katherine Kelly Lang). There can’t be many Ridges in the world and but this boy becomes an actor and managed to land a role with the same name. As is often the case with child actors there have been several RJs over the years. Perkett had the job from 2006 to 2009.

The website Star Kidz is all about ~~kidz~~ kids that… star in daytime and primetime television shows. The last few days they’ve run a series of short interviews with some of their subjects, including Ridge, as a countdown to Xmas 2013. On Friday it was Ridge’s turn and in the piece (“5 Days Til’ Christmas!“*) he was asked:

8. What was it like working with Kathryn Morris on Cold Case?

Kathryn Morris was super nice, she showed me around the set before we started filming and helped me not be afraid and nervous.

Awww.

Happy Xmas Ridge.

* There are no direct links to the article so I’ve used an archive link to reduce it to ones about the character of RJ. You need to scroll down to find the piece. Search the page for ‘ridge’ .

Cold Case Season 2 Promo Photo Embiggening

I can’t carry off the black polo next and blue jeans with quite the confidence of Steve Jobs but can bring a surprise “one more thing” to the KM UK Summer Of HD 2013, which ended last week.

It took me a while to remember why a long-standing reminder to update the Cold Case season 2 promo photos even existed. The images are already in the Gallery and at quite a high resolution too. I had forgotten that KM UK’s old hosting limited the image size. The images had been shrunk to fit. Part of the reason for making the move back in May of 2010 was to accommodate images of any size to bring you the best available.

As we have just finished a retrospective of Cold Case season 2 it makes sense to finally bring you a super-sized upgrade to the promo photos from that year. Number two is a massive 3750×5000 pixels. Plus, we have a new small photo (see above).

5 enlarged promo stills and 1 new addition can now be found in the Gallery.