Touch Of Frost and Reduced Sugar Frosties

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PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK

TV Review : A Touch Of Frost (Sunday 12/10/08)
Frost is back. In an age where only the young are supposed to succeed, it is good to see all the actors and characters enjoying a splendid longevity in this show. One wonders if the show has been demographically 'engineered' for this age group.

It is also a nice contrast with an episode of Gideon's Way (an early sixties cop show I've been watching) where a sub-plot concerned a Deputy Police Commissioner who was under great pressure for allegedly having been promoted too young. The young actor portraying him was Gerald Harper, who has enjoyed a long and distinguished career of his own since that episode. What I wouldn't give to be able to listen to him disc jockey as he did for Capital Radio many moons ago. But I digress.

Rather than being retired Frost was set not one, but two challenges, as a managing director of a motivation course company was found dead, and the bones of a girl killed 20 years ago were discovered.

The girl's father was played by the wonderful John Castle, who did a superb job in an episode of The Prisoner called The General, as well as the film Robocop 3. Despite not having seen him in a regular starring role of his own he always gives excellent value with captivating performances.

Another survivor of sixties TV is John Lyons who plays Frost's sidekick D S Toolan. Lyons was a security post guard in UFO, and cropped up as a bent copper's sidekick in The Sweeney. Records officer Ernie Trigg who regularly finds just what's needed despite his lack of trust in computerised systems is played by Arthur White, who was one of two 'genies' in the seventies ITV kids comedy 'Pardon My Genie'. The other was Hugh Paddick of 'Round The Horne' fame. Denton Police force might be saving a fortune in pensions keeping this lot in regular work.

The themes of the show could also have been demographically engineered, as the new school motivation guys were baddies responsible for everything from unhappy divorcees to steroid abuse in athletics. With their second theme - child murder - there was a hint of social lecturing as the alleged murderer is completely vilified by the local community only for evidence to be found that casts suspicion over his conviction.

I love David Jason (Detective Inspector Frost) dearly, but I'm afraid his complete conviction that Jason Cohu (Ariyon Bakare) was guilty and his conversion to his possible innocence were totally unconvincing. Still it seemed unusual to have him making a major mistake rather than sneering at others for theirs.

Equally unusual was Superintendent Mullett showing a human face at the end of the episode. Bruce Alexander who portrays him gave a less robust delivery than usual hinting that he may have been suffering some real life illness. There was also some topical bleating about the amount of paperwork the police get to do.

All in all a fairly mixed bag of content, but still delivering the re-assuring 2-hour package that makes an empty Sunday night seem a more friendly place.

Retail Watch : Reduced Sugar Frosties
I remember my Mum telling me of the first time she ate cornflakes. It was just after the war and she said they seemed to be the most delicious thing she had ever tasted in her life.

Since I got back from Japan I had the odd hankering for certain items that I wasn't eating while I was there. One such was a longing for sugar frosted cornflake breakfast cereal Frosties, bathed in cold semi-skimmed milk.

At first I tried to find the 'single portion' option (with attached milk), because I confess I didn't really mean to eat a whole box of this high sugar item. In fact recently I'd begun to wonder if they had increased the sugar content as they seemed more sugary than ever.

Anyway I had no luck finding the single portion so resigned myself to buying a packet. At this point I discovered I had an option of a larger 'reduced sugar' packet. The box said they were just the same but with a third less sugar. I surprised myself because I really noticed the difference and wondered if I shouldn't have just tried 'no sugar' cornflakes.

Since that I've decided to stick with them, because I used to feel the same about semi-skimmed milk and now I can't drink the full fat variety. I'm hopeful that my palette will successfully adapt to the reduced sugar.

I'm successfully off of sugary fizzy drinks and now genuinely enjoy drinking water. Fruit juices seemed like a good alternative until I found out you should only be drinking 1 or 2 of them a day and not the 4 or 5 I seemed to be able to wolf down with no difficulty. They also get blamed by our dentists for a lot of new tooth decay.

All this is part of a generally small scale effort to give myself a chance of avoiding the diabetes that is allegedly afflicting the nation's health these days.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]