#stephen lime

@eddiebinge reviews: Quite Ugly One Morning (2004) TV

Eddie plays: Stephen Lime (IMDb link)

Based on the book by Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning opens with journalist Jack Parlabane (James Nesbitt) accidentally stumbling into the aftermath of his neighbour’s murder. After the police find and arrest Parlabane, hungover and scantily-clad at the crime scene, a female investigator inexplicably falls in love with him and they begin to solve the case together. With hints of dark comedy, the TV special has its bizarre moments: a human turd is found on a mantelpiece, a Jack Russell terrier is crushed under a hotel bed, a fingerless hitman fails his missions miserably etc. Despite the cast including some of our favourite faces, Quite Ugly One Morning’s abundance of toilet humour and weak female characters bored us pretty early on. 

However, this show has such a good amount of Eddie we can forgive its sins (almost). After finally tracking down a copy of the special, we thoroughly enjoyed watching him get up to mischief. Eddie’s character, Stephen Lime, is the head of a trust wishing to expand the local hospital. His link with Parlabane is through his neighbour, whom Lime paid to have killed. With the help of a nurse who’s madly in love with him, Lime’s ulterior motives for the hospital expansion are so dark, it’s unsurprising the adaptation added heaps of so-called humour to balance things out. That’s all you need to know really. The plot is ludicrous, the characters two-dimensional and the script laughably bad -- probably why the special disappeared into obscurity not long after airing. If IMDb’s handful of reviews are anything to go by, the book was better too.

If you love Eddie as much as we do, we’d reccommend getting yourself a copy of Quite Ugly One Morning because he gets lots of screen time and quite literally makes the show watchable. Otherwise, leave it to gather dust in ITV’s archives.

Favourite moment:

No further comment needed.

Cuteometer rating: [7]

Despite the comedy element of his character, his garish braces and occasional comically oversized shirt, Eddie’s character is despicable. He employs a hitman to kill his rivals, convinces a nurse to murder her patients and is purely motivated by money. He’s horrid and well deserving of a seven.

Bingo score: [4/9]

☑ The finger ☑ Cops & Robbers ☑ A nice cuppa ☑ Salivation

*pulls party popper* 

It’s THE FINGER!

🎉🎉🎉

(The things we did to get our hands on a copy of this...)

Our rating:  ★ ★

It would have been one star but the amount of lovely rare Eddie our eyes beheld doubles the score instantly.