GOOD TV FOR FREE! DIGITAL CONVERTER BOX!

GOOD NEWS! The poor folks WHO HAVE DIGITAL CONVERTER BOXES are NOT locked out of supremely FINE Television viewing. In fact, we have it better than just ABC, NBC (Though there's hardly better than CBS.) . No tsunami of old stinky yukkie movies on costly cable channels which the RICH people are forced to watch. Not for the lucky POOR PERSON.

We have European Cop Procedural shows, Italian (Montealbano set in the 80s in Italy and Comissario De Luca, which is set in the time of Il Duce, fabulous stories by the FRAZZI BROTHERS, Andrea and Antonio.) At the time of this writing we got Don Matteo, the priest who solves crimes. (German actor was once king of spaghetti westerns in Italy, Terence Hill.) Then  French crime shows "MAIGRET" by Simenon, Swedish series... wonderful mystery and thriller shows and all without paying for costly cable. You get a used digital converter box and ariel on Craigs list as the middle class thinks CABLE is better and is always dumping them. Or put out your own ad there, saying 'need digital converter box, will trade... fifty thriller novels or something? I trade baby fruit trees, myself.

Google them up. Maybe you still will be able to enjoy the stunning new SWEDISH COP PROCEDURAL TV SERIES with English sub titles that MHZ NETWORK offers. Detective MONTEALBANO, worth seeing which channel still has this fabulous show. Then search out MAIGRET. FRENCH, and find FRENCH VILLAGE (WWII, NAZIS)  One show in particular has me hypnotized.  (ANNO 1790 is on our local PBS Los Angeles Station which GAVE MHZ one of its four separate channels! AT ONE TIME, not sure if it still does.  1790 refers to a year after the French Rev & show has a most dramatic lead character. He's PRO REVOLUTION but works as a cop. He's like the CIA/ FBI for the KING OF SWEDEN! Actor's a total GOD APOLLO, a HUNK, a gorgeous star, like a Young Gerard Depardieu or Daniel Craig. And the writing, the plots, even handsomer! Like DICKENS on STEROIDS. I'm a senior and I've seen everything but ANNO 1790 absolutely BLOWS ME AWAY! I am the type of suspense thriller junkie who liked 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR, FREDERIC FORSYTH (Day of the Jackyl) novels/ films, Ken Follet, DANIEL SILVA novels, ( http://www.masterjules.net/thriller.htm ) and this show ANNO 1790 is UP THERE WITH those TITANS.

PBS gives us MHZ, and a new INTERNATIONAL MYSTERY SHOW every single night, 9pm and midnight. 3 swedish cop shows, 4 italian cops and 1 Italian LAWYER, 1 German show about a German speaking ITALIAN cop who lives in VENICE, Brunetti, from the DONNA LEON novels which are very HENRY JAMES CLASSY. (GERMANS ARE IN LOVE with Venetian scenery so I imagine when they watch this show in Munich, they buy that all these German speaking people are really ITALIAN.) Another favorite  a pair of superb FRENCH series, (Maigret series by Georges Simenon, who wrote the 200 detective Maigret novels with adorable giant Bruno Cremer.) And ENGRENAGES about Paris prosecutors, judges, cops. It is translated to SPIRAL in the two TV GUIDES online, free, TITANTV and ZAP2IT ...Newspapers don't cover these channels nor does TV GUIDE MAGazine, nature's way of saying you have too much money. With this bounty, WHO needs Cable?

Pity the ENGLISH:  Anyone who has a TV in G.Britain has to pay an annual TV licence, which goes to the BBC to pay for all their programs. Two other channels are free, ITV and Channel 4 are private commercial TV channels, which get their money from advertisers. ALL TV is free for those over 72 or 73.

We in the USA can enjoy a big menu on a digital converter box for free. The channel or syndicate that you want to make sure you can access is MHZ MYSTERY INTERNATIONAL and they feature SVENSK FILMS tv shows like ANNO 1790 but also VanVeeteren, AND the FINNISH Private Eye "VARES"  He's a lanky sexy, Saturnine hunk, somewhat Bogartish, or Dash Hammetty, living in TURKU a city in Finland that reminds me of TORTILLA FLAT, in that it's full of a lot of drunken bums, wall to wall slightly warped character -- Not a single classy FINN in it. They are all PIGS, women, girls men, even the hero. You've got to see VARES, the series. You will BLINK.

Back to ANNO which has such a dramatic elegant lead hero. Peter Eggars in Stockholm the year they first got wind of Robespierre. What a concept! A year after the French REVOLUTION! A simple compassionate, beautiful DOCTOR has become a cop and he lives in this country with a massively STUPID topheavy violent, vain GOVERNMENT led by A real Norse, King ERIK and this cop has to bow to the ULTIMATE SICKO BOURGEOIS PHONY RIGHTWINGER IDIOT BOSS (the vain Commissar of police who treats his gorgeous wife like a poupee. There's no word for it in English. A cossetted stupid doll..) Our cop is in love with her and she with him. She's not at all stupid, either so HOW can she let that husband of hers near her?? COP HERO has sympathy for the trapped wife, but he's always a moral hero in a super-Religious Calvinist society. Likewise he has sympathy with the poor rebels who are getting caught and hung... even as he is forced to jail and torture them for names. This is a violent, Kafkaesque world, echoing current times in a spooky Brazil 1984 way.

ANNO's writers are GENIUSES. This show, like another that I watch on PBS, British show, "M15", called SPOOKS in Britain which .is about 'our day, today LONDON... and is daring and 'edgy.' And like DOWNTON ABBEY, the PBS current PBS darling, has great writing, characters, drama, suspense and is a joy to watch. Make a big bowl of popcorn and let the suspense and butter combine to give you high blood pressure.

BACK TO ANNO 1790 and the Plot I just saw. Starving children's bodies, wearing posh clothing thrown in manure pile. After you ask why the next question is WHERE. Where do you go when you want to find Starving kids? ORPHANAGE. The hero suspects the woman running it probably did as soon as he sees all these starving children's BODIES deep in a manure pile.  But the woman is so religious and charitable. (Straight out of Dickens' BLEAK HOUSE,) http://www.masterjules.net/bleakhouse.htm where Mrs. Jellyby runs African charities and ignores her own children.)

The PLOT doesn't tell the audience right away how they get in a manure pile. We see the King's man hand pick them and assume that he is a pedophile. And our cop hero interviews the guy! The story follows him to a register which mentions a disappeared child, Cop  goes to a farm, the mother says her 5 yr old disappeared a decade ago. Not the victims he found. OVER course of the show, Cop figures it out, and at the end, runs thru the town in snow, throws himself into the bitch spider lady's office and pulls the orphan girl's head out of a bucket of water (Spider is HAND- DROWNING HER.) revives her just before she ends up another body like several other children.) Standing by helping KILL her is a runaway  TEEN BOY who works for the orphan-selling spider lady . As hero leaves the bitch manacled, the runaway teen helper --standing there -- says:  'don't tell my mother I'm still alive.' We know that the cop won't. At  finale, he takes the lovely girl orphan to the farmer's widow/ mother who we met early in show (her son's disappearance was registered ) and gives her to the woman as a gift. GEEZ How do they think these things UP? DICKENS ON STEROIDS.

I used to like American  JUSTICE shows (see great shows cancelled URL below)  or crime procedurals, THE GOOD WIFE,  CBS has reruns at 1am weekends, (BRAIN DEAD by same crew is QUITE GOOD, Disses Washington DC BIGTIME. Very clever. ) LAW & ORDER, PERSON OF INTEREST, PRIME SUSPECT, The MENTALIST but if you think THEY were good, Swedish crime shows are ten times better! Henning Mankell did a lot of novels which became a Swedish TV SHOW. Half british production, starring that Shakespearian actor who was married to good ole Emma Thompson, Ken Branaugh.

So I'm sitting pretty without cable.  Now, I enjoy all American COP / LEGAL SYSTEM shows, LAW AND ORDER, THE GOOD WIFE.: Procedurals and Mysteries. Italian (from RAI)  British and even AMERICAN crime shows.  ( see GREAT SHOWS CANCELLED ) And new ones seem to appear all the time.

But lately I'm especially watching the Swedish cop shows and they're not all on CABLE, they're on digital TV PBS stations. Which us poor folks watch. Martin Beck, Maria Wern, and WALLANDER which went 4 shows with ONE actor, fatty Rolf Somebody playing lead, then switched leads to another SWEDE, then Ken Branaugh starred in the BBC Yellowbird (Swedish) Co production a THIRD Wallander series, but the most interesting thing about WALLANDER is this: There was a 'first' wallander. Rolf somebody. Tonight watched FIREWALL episode of Wallander with this ROLF guy. THIS novel by Henning Mankell, became a tv series out of Svensk Film..this is the lst of three wallander stars meaning 3 diff guys played detective over a decade. Henning wrote it in l997 got novel pub in l998. OK this is what was wild; in it, a pixie, elfin girl hacker, very counter culture, in fact, an ex CON put away for almost a yr for hacking Pentagon ... well SHE is the choice of Detective Wallander to go thru this criminal gang's intensely complicated, mysterious computer set up. The cops don't turn them off, don't move them, they just have HER go into the criminal's apartment. She of course bravely solves the crime and gets kidnapped by the bad guys. BUT watching her (ROBIN)  was like watching the "GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO" same hacker girl. LISBETH SALANDER..... Which was written 7 yrs later by the guy who REALLY cashed in on her, another Swede Stieg Larsson who DOUBTLESSLY READ the Mankell book and noted the unusually gravitational character of the girl hacker. He was an expose journalist but actually had time to watch the TV VERSION.. and somehow, he cribbed the best selling heroine since Scarlet O'Hara. NOTHING is original UNDER THE SUN. THEY ALL steal from one another cuz hey, they write CRIME NOVELS!

So start watching the best. And I'm waiting for the RUMANIAN private eye or cop who will outdo FINNISH Vares in a riveting national tone that is SUB TORTILLA FLATS. I really hope they do it.  Then a Swiss Cop who wears Armani.....who can hack the banks....

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