The Long Goodbye

Weighing in at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, our latest pinched loaf of pure Rogertainment is Bullseye!, a 1990 comedy starring Roger Moore and Michael Caine as two petty criminals pursuing a nuclear physicist and his patron, played by Michael Caine and Roger Moore. Hilarity ensues, probably.

A skeleton flies a plane into a Scottish forest, and in that plane Rodge and Tony find a secret formula that will make all fossil fuels obsolete! Soon people are throwing punches, girls and million-dollar contracts at them both, but with the mystery of the skeletal aviator still unsolved, they have no alternative but to wait for the fabulous Nicola Pagett to sort it all out for them.

And we’re back at last — a fresh slab of Rogertainment, with a couple of ripper Aussie sheilas along for the ride. When organised crime boss Robert Verrier’s butler is unexpectedly exploded, he becomes convinced that Simon Templar is the killer. Hilarity ensues, of course, and Simon has no choice but to impersonate the assassin to uncover the real culprit.

This month: New York! With a horribly miscast Roger Moore as Sherlock Holmes and a horribly misjudged John Watson in Patrick Macnee, Sherlock Holmes in New York is the story of a ruddy-cheeked and thoroughgoingly heterosexual consulting detective, his toffy-nosed dimwit sidekick, and their inexplicably beautiful girlfriend (Charlotte Derampling), who all harbour a dark secret, in the form of an appalling American moppet called Scott. Plus, all of the world’s gold has been stolen, or at least shifted to a nearby floor. Which is why, dear listener, it took us two attempts to work up the courage to even watch this.

This month, Steed and Mrs Peel are joined by John Le Mesurier, while we are joined again by Steven B, ably assisting us as we investigate various military bigwigs with improbable facial hair, who appear to be leaking valuable secrets to our enemies. Meanwhile, Diana Rigg’s Spotlight photo is getting one hell of a workout. Which is impossible to object to, really.

This month, we’re joined by Steven B from New to Who to investigate the theft by some puppets of the blueprints for a new atomic weapon. Inevitably, Lady Penelope gets tied to a bomb or something, and we have mere moments to locate her before she is completely exploded. The sets are lavish, the hardware is impressive and the eyebrow lifts are the most expensive and time-consuming eyebrow lifts until Rodge takes over as Bond. Thunderbirds are go, in The Man from MI.5.

After a disastrous attempt to record a commentary on No Time to Die results in several cinemagoers calling the police, we decide to regroup, get some drinks in, and hold a roundtable discussion of Daniel Craig’s last film in the role. So: when SPECTRE holds a Christmas drinks thing despite Covid restrictions and everyone ends up feeling quite unwell, James Bond, Felix Leiter and 007 (it’s complicated) team up (sort of) to find the renegade scientist responsible. A whole bunch of things happen, and a generation of Bond fans are scarred for life as a result.

This month, advertising account executive Gary Fenn (Roger Moore) and fiery underwear model Marla Kougash (Claudie Lange) find themselves on the run as they try to foil a violent fascist takeover of Great Britain. Meanwhile Richard (Martha Hyer), James (Dudley Sutton), Brendan (Mark Ruffalo) and Nathan (an extremely rosaceous Sir Bernard Lee) take copious liquid advantage of the recent lifting of Sydney’s lockdown by slurring their way through the long-forgotten quota quickie Crossplot.

This month, James finds himself drugged, sweaty and trapped in a prison cell with a wastepaper basket and no visible means of escape, while Richard insistently questions him about the identity of the mysterious Renfield or something. Meanwhile, Brendan and Nathan flap about uselessly outside. It sounds like a job for The Champions.

Holy Peripheral Relevance, Batman! This month, the Dynamic — er — Four have pursued patron-saint-of-the-podcast Joan Collins to Gotham City, where she makes a surprising guest appearance in an episode of Batman as the mesmeric Lorelei Circe, whose voice has an uncanny power over heterosexual men. (Fortunately we’re all very neatly tucked and wearing the Bat-Earplugs for this one.)