Dalziel and Pascoe (TV Series) Foreign Bodies (2000) User Reviews

More loose ends than a scarf in a blender

[commercials-1 · 2/10 · 25 October 2013]

Of the many episodes of this series I have enjoyed, whether based on Mr Hill's original novels or not, this one has to take the cake for plot inanity. I am really hoping that the version I saw was missing 20 minutes of exposition.

In the version I saw, Dalziel's unlikely holiday squeeze manages to lose three former husbands (one French, one Japanese, one Romanian) in Yorkshire in as many days. Each time Dalziel confronts her with the corpse (how did he figure that out?) she claims not to know the body for the first five minutes, than admits she was married to him.

To paraphrase from the episode (and the brevity of my dialog is about the same as happens in the episode0:

Dalziel: So Florrie, you can't identify the corpse/photo?

Florrie: Of course not. I've never seen him in my life.

Dalziel: Are you sure?

Florrie: Well, I might have met him once. On a cruise.

Dalziel: Maybe you knew him better than that.

Florrie: All right, he was my fourth husband.

And this happens three times. Three times she denies knowing the corpse to Dalziel, and three times she admits within minutes that the corpse was in fact a former husband. Frack me! Naturally, the best Dalziel can do is... have sex with his prime suspect.

WTF? WTF? This is not the doughty detective we have come to know and love. This is a half wit.

The rest of the plot has more holes than a Swiss cheese.

An insult to the intelligence

[jacqueestorozynski · 2/10 · 23 June 2018]

The coincidences were so far fetched as to be totally unbelievable. Supposedly unrelated murders that happened just by chance whilst, ugly mug Dalziel is romancing an old flame with lots of ex husbands. Pascoe walked around with a face like fury and a creepy college lecturer hovered around and turned out to be murderous, there were hints of Dracula when a Rumanian floats into Whitby in a coffin? end came with absolutely no explanation why these people who turned out to be exes were bumped off and and the old flame swanned off on a cruise, having pushed the current husband a toy boy, into the water to be rescued and arrested. Complete and utter rubbish, Malcolm Bradbury should be ashamed to have had a hand in it.

Nice scenery, shame about the plot

[Dukesquay · 2/10 · 13 May 2021]

A two hour episode that seems to have been devised to showcase some very attractive parts of the Yorkshire coast and countryside. The meandering plot makes no sense at all and the behaviour of Dalziel is just not believable. Two stars for the scenery.

Tyke tripe

[xmasdaybaby1966 · 5/10 · 28 July 2021]

I love Isla Blair even if she does seem to find herself in clinches with dogged coppers like Frost and Morse so it is sad for me to admit that this plot was poor with no reasoning given for the deaths of 3 of the bodies and no indication as to why a lovely looking back dog appeared at the start and end of the show. Perhaps he was dogged and knew the answers.

Florence claimed not to know the dead men then was found out yet still she wasn't taken in for questioning.

The big actors of the way episodes seem to have disappeared in favour of roles in Midsomer Murders but still a few that acted in both shows.

Apart from all of that, unlike a few recent stories, this one was quite watchable but not sure it was a good advert for the Yorkshire tourist board despite some breathtaking views.

A real clunker.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 4/10 · 8 March 2024]

The body of a man dressed and embalmed like Count Dracula washes up on a beach in Whitby, and the body of another man is found closer to home. Peter is tasked with protecting a German lecturer, who is set to publish a controversial book.

I'm somewhat surprised that this mystery actually has a relatively decent score, let's be honest, it's a mess. None of it links or makes sense, it's almost as though the events were done to fit the title, the Japanese man on the bus, some Romanian......I just zoned out.

Were they trying to emulate an episode of Morse? It feels like a very tacky effort to recreate a Morse, but a dismal failure.

There are some very capable, talented actors here, the likes of Wolf Kahler, Isla Blair and James Hazeldine, sadly none of them are given anything even remotely decent in terms of script, poor Isla Blair, such a quality actress, is given the most diabolical script, Florry and Andy.....just no.

On the plus side, there is some wonderful location work, and it served as a reminder of how tough mobile phones used to be, before they became super smart.

Endless.

4/10.