Father Brown "The Shadow of the Scaffold" (spoilers)

[Adam H. Kerman]

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I didn't see Johnston's write up on this one, so I'm starting a thread.
My local PBS station took them off the air for several weeks for yet
another pledge drive.

Father Brown helps get a woman off death row who is hours from being
hung; she delays the execution with a fake pregnancy scare. She'd been
boinking one of the guards. Somehow, this doesn't get the guard fired,
let alone brought up on charges. She claims she loves him and wants
to marry him.

She was convicted of killing her husband. She misleads Father Brown
repeatedly on the evidence, first implying that one man who has disappeared
was the murdered, but later telling Brown that he may be another victim.
Even though every movie tells you that the prisoner about to be executed
gets to have a priest, at no point did Brown have any extensive discussion
with her that might have drawn out the story properly.

She and her husband lived with his mother on a pig farm and she was her
mother-in-law's personal slave and a battered wife to her husband. His
mother was faking being an invalid. She claims to have seen her
daughter-in-law with blood on her hands and was the main witness against
her. Her testimony was obviously false, but only because she was faking
being an invalid. She actually saw the blood.

But she had killed a lot of other people on the farm (all, it seems, to
cover up being a fake invalid) so they free her from death row.

Except: The mother refuses to confess to murdering her own son, and
Brown finally realizes that she was a murderer after all.

Again, we see Brown not seeking justice, just saving souls. He gets her
to confess, the only resolution Brown cares about. The mother-in-law
trapped him with pigs and spit on him, so he fails to try to save her
soul; he is upset that she'll be executed.

In the end, she chooses not to tell the prison guard that she's a murderer,
refuses to marry him, and takes her vows instead.

Wow. Truly weird episode. Badly written and absurdly plotted, but I
just couldn't stop watching.

[David Barnett]

In article <lo8rbo$a8f$6...@news.albasani.net>,
a...@chinet.com says...

<big snip>

I thought I had seen all of this show, nut now I find I
have only seen Season 1, and not Season 2.

I'm sure our non-commercial Channel will eventually
screen it.

Usually we see the UK shows before the US does.

--
David Barnett

[RichA]

Cadfael it ain't.

[Adam H. Kerman]

RichA <rande...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Cadfael it ain't.

The real mystery is why Derek Jacoby is doing sentimental mediocre television
like Last Tango in Halifax.

[RichA]

Money?