I’d pretty much ditched the other Van der Valk episodes for one reason or another, esp. the one YT keeps pushing and pushing in “recommended” and in the sidebar … if I avoided it and clicked on a different one … there, slap bang in the sidebar, was that unwanted episode I’d just refused to watch.

However, this one below I kept because the actress, Jane Merrow, had a certain something in her portrayal of a slapper once attached to a crime boss and the crime boss has just been released … plus VderV must have a regulation flirtation at some stage of the series, just as Morse had.

Their sort of character is so Two-Tier Woodenhead, romance wise, that it’s almost embarrassing … esp. as he has the stunning Joanna Dunham back home, as pure as the driven snow. Anyway, that’s the upside.

The downside is threefold … one is the copy itself, the visuals, the second is some toerag’s decision to blur the music, then remove small sections of dialogue, quite deliberately, somehow thinking that that complies with copyright. Not sure it’s the uploader as two separate uploads do the same thing.

The third irritating thing is VderV playing a piano bar piano at the start … it’s awful. And this despite his RL bio saying he was a dab hand at the ivories.

Were these things enough to walk away from in disgust? Well imho only … no … Jane Merrow’s not too bad and their dialogue, their repartee, is better than expected. Anyway, this is my last VderV for quite awhile.