Tuesday passed uneventfully, apart from a visit to the wound clinic, and another couple of episodes of Professor T watched with great interest, as his own back story of suppressed trauma continues to come out in fits and starts, in between working on crimes in his original way. There's no knowing how it will all end.
Wednesday morning, I celebrated the St Catherine's midweek Eucharist, went for an acupuncture treatment again at the Natural Health Clinic after lunch. It did me a power of good, as I was feeling pretty drained after a few not so good days. In the evening I watched the last two episodes of Professor T - a conclusion, in which the mystery underlying his eccentric behaviour is revealed in full. It's a tragic story which concludes with the death of his mother, after a reconciliation brings closure in his often troubled relationship with her and his senior university colleague. It brings a measure of healing and liberation for him from dark shadows of his unhappy childhood.
Wednesday morning, I celebrated the St Catherine's midweek Eucharist, went for an acupuncture treatment again at the Natural Health Clinic after lunch. It did me a power of good, as I was feeling pretty drained after a few not so good days. In the evening I watched the last two episodes of Professor T - a conclusion, in which the mystery underlying his eccentric behaviour is revealed in full. It's a tragic story which concludes with the death of his mother, after a reconciliation brings closure in his often troubled relationship with her and his senior university colleague. It brings a measure of healing and liberation for him from dark shadows of his unhappy childhood.
The thirty nine episodes of this movie series, like a thick blockbuster novel, portrays a gifted, highly intelligent, learned man going through a colossal mid-life crisis, involving a nervous breakdown, a spell in prison, his trial for murder - in effect, for involuntary manslaughter, given his state of mind, then reconciliation with those closest to him, recovery, and resumption of his professional life as an acclaimed university criminology teacher. A bit far fetched, and whimsical maybe, but the story's credibility rests on his reputation for uncompromising truth telling, even when it comes to the truth about himself. His profound inner pain is in part due to inability to plumb the depths of his own pain. It's quite a breakthrough when he finds he can entrust himself to a gifted therapist.
On top of a moving deathbed scene, there's a remarkable finale, in which his close colleagues and friends gather in a downpour to lay his mother to rest. A new-to-series-three police colleague has brought her newborn with her to the graveside. The sun comes out, and the baby is passed around for all to admire and cherish, even to Professor T, no longer wearing his OCD signature rubber gloves. He is smiling now in a relaxed way, his normal posture throughout having been a straight face, with the nearest to a smile he can mange more like a charmless grimace. It's a transformation. There's fine acting throughout by Koen de Bouw portraying such an odd character so consistently.
Then, spontaneously the mourners begin to dance slowly by the graveside - a dance of death? No, more a dance of life in the face of mortality. It's a coda to the drama, in the same way that a play or an opera has a festive finale plus maybe an epilogue. There was, in fact, an epilogue, delivered by the Professor in a prior scene where he is concluding his annual course of lectures. It summarises his own self-learning journey from fearing he was once a perpetrator to realising he was an unwitting victim of the violence and lies of others.
Homo sapiens, that strange creature born of evolution is still far from perfect.
So imperfect in fact, that a simple rational observation is impossible.
Whoever you thought did it didn't always do it.
And so it's important that future criminologists such as yourselves, realise that this strange creature must be approached from the heart too
So go out into the world, analyse with your mind, but judge with your heart too.
Then, spontaneously the mourners begin to dance slowly by the graveside - a dance of death? No, more a dance of life in the face of mortality. It's a coda to the drama, in the same way that a play or an opera has a festive finale plus maybe an epilogue. There was, in fact, an epilogue, delivered by the Professor in a prior scene where he is concluding his annual course of lectures. It summarises his own self-learning journey from fearing he was once a perpetrator to realising he was an unwitting victim of the violence and lies of others.
Homo sapiens, that strange creature born of evolution is still far from perfect.
So imperfect in fact, that a simple rational observation is impossible.
Whoever you thought did it didn't always do it.
And so it's important that future criminologists such as yourselves, realise that this strange creature must be approached from the heart too
So go out into the world, analyse with your mind, but judge with your heart too.
Recalling that in the story, this goes on in the unconscious mind of a highly successful and learned expert, it's a salutary reminder that great intellects in any age may be driven at least in part by neglected experiences of brokenness in life.
I enjoy crime and spy fiction as their stories address social political and moral concerns of their time and place, giving a context for wrong-doing. Investigations can dig deep in the search to identify the motives of a perpetrator, they can tell the background stories of the investigators, and may show their lives as broken, sacrificed on the altar of solving crime, but rarely do they dig as deeply into their motives as this series does with Professor T in thirty hours of drama. Well worth watching and learning from, I'd say.
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