Episode 17 - Sleuth (2007)
This week on Be Gay Solve Crimes, we take a trip down memory lane to the year 2007, only to immediately remember why the hell we ran away from there. It's the toxically theatrical and theatrically toxic Sleuth, a film that no one saw, but we presume everyone who did went on to transition.
Join us as we invent Lancashire Simlish, Nova returns to the Late Noughties with a baseball bat to give it a piece of her mind, and Mia decides to torture Lucy by improvising a TWENTY SECOND LONG SONG knowing full well she won't be able to resist setting it to music.
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Be Gay Solve Crimes are on Bluesky, where you can also find each of the team: November Kelly, Mia Mulder, and your local librarian Lucy, who writes all the music for the show.
Comments (35)
i'd love to see you do An Inspector Calls
God the late 2000s were such an awful time, Nova's right to resent the film for it. Also feel extremely called out as a person who's seen both Kasabian and The Rifles live :P
I think i still have a breton stripe jersey from topman its kinda nice
This really cheered me up during a rough weekend thanks team. I would so love it if you did ira levin’s deathtrap someday, which I always think of in the same breath as this movie (twist-heavy michael-caine-starring play-adapted-for-the-screen making fond fun of crime fiction, with gay stuff). Arguably it “lacks a detective” but only in the same way various other movies you’ve already covered do, so I think it works. Anyway thank you for the lancashire ray blanchard
Seeing the episode photo and wondering what 90s Matthew Lillard was doing in Sleuth.
Abuse goblin mentioned
I just finished the episode and decided to find the trailer and this podcast episode was the 5 search result in YouTube, for Sleuth (2007! Great episode as always!
This episode is brought to you by Top Man(?) Didn't go there much, but this era brings memories of picking out a few bits from Blue Banana.
I think the significant omission from this episode that's already been mentioned might be the April Fool's bit you need for this show. Do a movie, then just leave something out or alter something that makes it a completely different movie. Tell nobody. Confuse everybody.
Re: British foccaccia: pizza was apparently sold as italian rarebit" when introduced to the UK in the 60s; focc. is thus "Italian barebit"? (Put the innuendo down, matron)
I love that Mia tried twice for a Mind Goblin joke and Nova and Lucy DIDN'T NOTICE because they were too deep in the TopMan Egg mines
kind of astonished that Nova didn't immediately place the guy getting ordered around by the rich guy as the default masc firefighter voice from Emergency 4: The Global Fight for Life
Quoting lines from the Branagh Poirots in Detective Black voice now. "Enuff champaaaagne... t'fill the Niiiile."
Thank you BGSC for bringing to mind the 1972 movie. I finally figured out what that memory of a move where a guy dies surrounded by whimsical toys was. It's been years.
Lucy and November pointedly not taking the "Swedish Mind Goblin" bait twice in a row when I immediately thought "what's a Mind Goblin?" in my head is just further proof that podcasting is a skill and these are professionals, lol. This whole thing reminds me of the classic Suzie Izzard bit about American adaptation of British films where they take something from a guy opening a door and saying "oh... I thought... But... Well I suppose I'd better leave" and the other guy saying "yes I think you better had" and the American version is just shouting "Did you fuck my wife?!" *Gunshot* Which is weird because Branagh isn't even American, lol. The way the I-Say-Sir voice is northern this episode is making it get closer to the Nevermind the Buzzcocks bit where every impression Phil Jupitus did was just Bernard Manning, lol. This episode has a lot more Being Gay than Solving Crime, lol. (Not that that's a bad thing, mind)
Zen-caster!
"Our next episode it's gonna be The Snowman" 😳 I was gonna say something like "prepare yourselfs", but, honestly, there's no preparing for it. So... uhh... break a leg?
God all the mentions of Top Man is hitting me with dysphoria flashbacks from being a teenage trans guy with too many curves to be able to be casually androgynous and having a love hate relationship with skinny jeans since they just highlighted my thighs And all the time I spent wishing to be a twink or at least wishing to be mistaken for one
On Branaghlich 'uns; technically the Hamlet that cheesed off Blackadder in "back and forth" is also a murder mystery? Colomboesque solution forward, to be sure, but bardic convergant evolution may be a thing.
This movie sounds miserable. Very "early 90's, well this is as explicit in terms of gay content that you are going to get, regardless of context, so cheerish it"- vibes.
Wait did I fall asleep or did they just forget to recap the end of the film? Cause I feel like I missed something.
oh lmao i think i might’ve accidentally snipped that out of the edit, though we kinda instinctively felt the emotional climax of the film was the cross dressing rather than Wyke Shooting Milo For Real This Time 💀 or at least was the plot point that warranted discussing in the most depth
You gals got to be bisexual?
among family, just about. at school, no
"I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards" -Garth Marenghi
lancashire sydney greenstreet moving smoothly into lancashire simlish is some top tier podcast madness
The Town That Dreaded Sundown has some big BGSC elements, but the scenes with the killer are incredibly harrowing.
The Lancashire Simlish bit was honestly so good I didn't even laugh, I just felt overwhelmed
The pauses in the beginning clip are *painful* to my brain I don't really want to see either of the versions of this for rather obvious reasons. But I am happy there are podcasts like this I can listen to about it and I do kind of want to see the film in his head Pinter was writing toxic yaoi fanfic of Branagh is dead to me for his Poirot nonsense
I think I rented this back when Netflix mailed dvds and it was one of those films that I bounced off so hard I picked up the return envelope within the first twenty minutes. Film so bad it was the postman's problem now.
Damn. Not only did I have no idea they remade this movie (but still with Michael Caine), but I always confuse "Sleuth" with "Deathtrap," also starring Michael Caine. Having a long dark night of the soul over here as to what it means for my gender.
The Detective Black voice made me keep thinking about Price from Modern Warfare.
Desperately wracking my brain to remember that, no, I DID see this film in my first year at uni, and it was so odd and homoerotic I still remember it now, 16 years later. Which means that "we presume everyone who saw it went on to transition" is a perfectly called shot on me, specifically.
Imagine hating women so much you get into a toxic mind games filled gay relationship with the guy you're cucking/being cucked by.
I really hope we'll be hearing more of this fucked accent in future bits along with the Maltese Falcon one.