Speaker 1: Die far. Hello everyone, and happy New Year twenty twenty five.
I hope you had a lovely Christmas and Festive season.
We still have our tree up. It's artificial, so you know,
it's not that it's a big hassle to get rid of,
but we just like having it there because it adds
a bit of light and color to this otherwise rather
dark and gloomy time of year here in ale And anyway,
I'll take it down soon. I just don't know how
soon soon is. But anyway, enough of that, on with
the show. This episode is just a short one, I'm afraid,
but so what. It's a piece of the puzzle, isn't
it a step on the ladder, A small but integral
scene in the overall drama that is Underwood and Flinch.
This episode takes us back in time to the end
of season five, the penultimate episode, where David spotted Damo
on the street while talking to the journalist Ronnie Bishop
in a pub. There were other characters involved in the scene,
and I'll tell you about those in the recap from
the original Patreon episode, which at Patreon is Underwood and
Flinch Underground Episode thirty six. You know, for anyone who's
keeping track of that sort of thing. Let's rewind. In
episode twenty seven, we saw David chase Daimo into Hoburn's station,
and unknowingly he was pursued by Whitmore of the OCU,
who was in turn unknowingly pursued by Glover of the Sect.
One guy who saw all of this was Ronnie Bishop,
the journalist that David met in the pub on the
opposite side of the street to Oban Station. You may
remember they'd had a little quid pro quo chat about
the London vampire case, what David knew, what Ronnie knew,
and so on, before David spotted Damo on the other
side of the street and ran off after him. You
may also recall that Whitmore, the OCU cop who chased
David into the station, had a partner, one Phil Sloane,
who stayed behind to keep an eye on Ronnie and
call in to the OCU to report what was happening. Well,
that is where we are now. Back there, Damo, David, Whitmore,
and Glover have just run into hobn Ronnie has his
camera out and Sloane is ending a call on his
mobile as you and I re enter Underwood and Flinch
Season six in Tannibius. Written and performed for podcast by
Mike Bennett. This podcast is intended for an adult audience.
Listener discretion is advised. Episode six, Ronnie Bishop watched the
four men chase into Hoburn Station through the viewfinder of
his pocket digital camera, snapping pictures as quickly as the
mechanism would let him. When the last of the four
had disappeared into the station, he'd taken five pictures. At
least one of them would be good enough to attach
to the newspaper story that was already taking shape in
his mind, but there was no time to view them now.
The story was still happening, and he had to get
after it. He pocketed the camera and hurried down to
the pedestrian crossing outside the station. He didn't notice the
man following him, nor indeed had he noticed him all day.
Detective Constable Phil Sloane of the OCU, whose partner, Jeff
whitmore Or, was one of the men Ronnie had just
photographed running into the station, now stepped discreetly into line
a few pedestrians behind Ronnie, his eyes flicking between the
journalist the station entrance and the status of the traffic lights.
Sloane had just got off the phone to Guy Valentine,
recounting to him as briefly as he could how Bishop
had met with a man called Dave, with whom he'd
had a conversation that mentioned both Coleridge and the Malleus,
before Dave had suddenly broken off to go in pursuit
of a fleeing man he'd addressed only as Damo. Not
wanting to lose this new lead, Whitmore had gone in
pursuit of Dave and Damo, leaving Sloane alone to maintain
surveillance of Bishop. Valentine had told him to stay on
Bishop and to keep him updated. Sloane was keeping his
phone in his hand for as the lights changed, Bishops
set off straight for the station entrance. He had a
feeling he'd be kneading it again very soon. Ronnie knew
that whoever Dave was, whoever this demo was that he
was chasing, and whoever the men were that were chasing them,
they were heading for some kind of rucus, and when
it happened, he meant to be there. He entered the
station amid the swarming people inside. He looked for signs
of chaos, for indicators that might point to which way
the men had gone. Beyond the ticket barrier, he could
hear shouts. Three Transport Police officers were running in the
direction of the escalators. As Ronnie waited impatiently in line
to pass through the ticket barrier, he listened to snatches
of chatter from the staff. Nutjob got up between the
escalators and try to slide down It could have broken
his bloody neck, then to laughter to a scene Nate.
Ronnie reached the barrier, slapped his Oyster card onto the scanner,
and passed quickly through. As he boarded the escalator and
began to descend, he saw ahead the cops were now
at the bottom and running in the direction of the
Piccadilly Line. Ronnie stepped to the left of the escalator
and began to hurry down as fast as he could.
As he went, he noticed scuff marks, as if from
slipping feet, on the sheet metal surface of the divide
between the escalators. Were these the tracks of the nut
job the staff had been talking about, and if so,
had it been Dave Daimo or one of their pursuers.
When Ronnie got to the bottom, he ran around to
the escalators that led deeper down to the Piccadilly Line.
Here the crowds were thinner and he was able to
hurry down faster. But as he rounded the corner into
the tunnel for the platforms, he saw a crowd was
forming at the entrance to the eastbound platform four. Ronnie
pushed through to the front of the throng, where he
came up against the chest high metal barrier that had
been placed across the width of the tunnel. The blue
uniformed staff who were manning the barrier were already busy
fielding the questions and demands of the passengers, and now
one of them was raising his hands to draw the
attention of the whole crowd. I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen,
but there's been an incident on the platform. All eastbound
services are temporarily suspended. The replies were loud and numerous.
What kind of accident? Well, I've got a beard on
this is bloody typical. For how long is there a
bus service? Obviously Dave and his mates were the incident,
and this was where the cops had gone, But going
by the looks of things, nobody else would be following
them for some time. Ronnie turned around and made his
way out of the now angry mob. When he emerged,
it was into a stream of passengers flowing from his right.
A glance at the signage told him they were coming
from the exit passage to the same platform, so that
route had to be wide open. Pressing himself to the wall,
he made his way against the flow of people, many
of whom were talking excitedly. But when he reached the
exit passage, he found a second barrier, manned by staff
intent on letting only departing passengers through. Still, since these
guys weren't fending off an angry mob, they might be
more inclined to share a few details, Ay, Ronnie said,
interrupting a conversation between two of the staff. What's going on?
Lines closed, Sir, said one, you'll need to take an
alternative route, yep. But why what's the story Sam Looney's
run into the tunnel, said his colleague. No train's going
nowhere till they've got in. Is that the same bloke?
What ran down between the escalators? The two men glanced
at each other, silently, acknowledging that Ronnie might be someone
they shouldn't be talking to Then the first guy said,
we couldn't comment on that, sir. You'll have to go
back now. Ow. Come on, fellers, said Ronnie. Give a
bloke a break on press free lance. This is my
bread and bad. This is sorry, mate, can't help you.
Talk to the TfL press office. You know the number
year downad. Just thanks for bleeding bunch. With this hour expression,
Ronnie turned away and joined the now thinning flow of
passengers from the platform, who, it immediately occurred to him,
had all seen something of the incident beyond the barrier.
Excuse me, he said, pulling out his dictaphone and latching
himself onto a young couple in animated conversation. I'm with
the press. Can you tell me what's going on down there?
As they continued to walk, the man balked slightly at
the recorder that Ronnie thrust out into his face, but replied, er, Yeah,
A couple of guys lying on the platform, not sure
if they were dead or unconscious. There were guns, too,
added the woman lying on the ground neath them. Guns,
said Ronnie. What kind of guns? The woman looked flummoxed,
Oh god, I don't know, But what kind were they? Jack?
I don't know, weird looking things, weren't they? Ronnie tried
to narrow it down a bit. Pistols submachine guns? Oh no,
said Jack, suddenly confident. No, they weren't machine guns. More
like pistols. Yeah, like pistols, said Ronnie, frowning. What do
you mean, well, they look kind of plastic that they
had loads of wires coming out of them tasers, thought Ronnie.
Were there any wires sticking out of blokes lying on
a platform? U? He? The man and woman chimed in
harmony from their bodies, maybe their torsos or their legs.
What you mean like a robot? Said the woman with
the guffore. Ronnie suppressed an eye roll. No, I mean,
he realized there was a little point in trying to explain. Instead,
he switched Tack. Was there any blood, no, said Jack,
not that I could see. Okay, And how many are
these guns? I saw, too? Said Jack. He looked at
his companion questioningly. Lizzie, yeah two, she confirmed. What paper
you with? Whoever pays the most, said Ronnie. Was there
anyone in custody? What do you mean? Anyone in handcuffs?
Oh no, just people showing us out. Will it be
in the mail, maybe, said Ronnie. What about the blokes
on the platform, can you describe them? Young? Old, fat? Thin? Blimey?
I don't know, said Lizzie, looking to Jack for corroboration.
Thirties forties, yeah, said Jack, not young, but it that way.
One more a suit the other. I think he had
a jacket and jumper, you know, with a roll neck. Ah,
said Ronnie. So it wasn't Dave or Damo. Sounded like
their pursuers that had some kind of taser shootout. That's great.
Tell me, did you see anyone run into the train
tunnel blindly? No, said Lizzie. Why did someone do that?
Ronnie turned to Jack. You didn't hear nobody saying anything
about anyone running into the tunnel. Jack shook his head. No.
I bet it was the killer, wasn't it, said Lizzie.
He escaped into the tunnel. Well, we don't know if
there was a killer, said Jack. Maybe they aren't dead, Yeah,
because maybe they are a couple of robots, Lizzie laughed.
Ronnie knew he'd got all he was going to get
out of them. Okay, thanks, you've been a big help.
What are your names? After taking their names and assuring them,
he'd credit them. Ronnie spoke to another passenger with whom
he rode back up the escalator. This guy didn't add
anything new, but his descriptions of the men on the
platform confirmed to Ronnie that neither of them were Dave
or Daimo, and as he returned to the ground floor
of the station, he was wondering which of them had
been the one to run into the tunnel. Suddenly he
was roused from his thoughts as the crowd before him
began to part, making way for what he saw was
a team of black clad firearms officers. He pulled out
his camera and managed to get a few shots of
them as they ran past him in the direction of
the escalators going down after the man and the tunnel,
No doubt, he thought, but which one Daimo or Dave.
The order of the chase suggested Damo would have got
down there first he could have caught a train, and
then Dave would have come down to see that train leaving,
and then the other two had run in and shot
each other with tasers. Why it didn't make sense, and
why didn't Dave just exit the platform with the passages
from the newly arrived train. Whatever the reason. Most likely
it was Dave who had run into the tunnel, so
where was he going. Damo would have been long gone
if he'd caught a train, but if he hadn't. If
Damo had also missed the train and had run into
the tunnel, and if Dave had seen him do it
but no one else had, then he would have gone
after him. That made sense. The men lying on the
platform didn't matter for now. What mattered was where Damo
and Dave were going, assuming they hadn't stepped on the
third rail and fried to death, or the cops hadn't
caught up with them. He saw a tube map on
the wall and traced the dark blue Piccadilly Line east
with his finger to Russell's Square. The police could already
be there. Most likely they were, but there was always
a chance that they weren't. Ronnie smiled. A minute later
he was out in the street and hailing a taxi.
Where to, asked the driver, Russell Square Station, and don't
spare the horses. And so Ronnie goes off to Russell
Square Station, hoping to find Damo and David, though as
we know, he won't find them, and as we also know,
David is currently in custody in the station he's leaving behind,
the station that will soon be the scene of the
sect's murderous extraction. Ronnie will kick himself when he learns
he missed it, but we won't because we'll be there
next time. In episode seven of Underwood and Flinch season six,
Well there we have it. Listeners, short but sweet episode
six of season six, and I hope you enjoyed its
small but perfectly formed form. So what New Year's resolutions
do you have. I'm starting the year with a healthy
bout of dry January, not drinking a drop of alcohol
for a month, and I don't know, maybe longer. I mean,
I don't have the social life I did when I
was a youngster. In fact, I rarely go out at
all in the evenings anymore. So there's no peer pressure,
you know, to glug away like a loon hahurrahing with
the rest of those gathered around the drunken pub table
till my wallet's dry and my liver's sodden. No no
call for that at all. So maybe I'll have a
dry twenty twenty five and even longer, who knows, we'll see.
But related to my lack of going out in the evening.
This brings me to what's been on my television lately? Yes,
what's on my TV? What's on my TV? We watched
the second season of Squid Game, which I was really
looking forward to actually, but which was an almighty disappointment
when it first began. Episode one was slow and episode
two was even slower, and both had things happening which
triggered mine, Oh that wouldn't happen, oh meta, which I
can never turn off no matter how hard I try.
We were so bored by the time episode two finished
that we stopped there for a couple of nights, and
we're in two minds about going on with the series
at all. But we did go back, and I'm very
glad that we did, because from episode three the show
was back to its season one form. As a writer myself,
I can appreciate how big of a hurdle it must
have been for the writer to approach this season, like,
you know, you've notched up one of the biggest hits
in Netflix history, and now you've got to try to
follow it. No pressure there then, but what do you do?
How do you do it? The fans are going to
want more of the same, but paradoxically, no one wants
to see a repeat of season one, so we had
to do the same but different, which is true of
any long running fiction series really, but it's especially hard,
I think in the case of Squid Game, because he's
got such narrow parameters to work within, hasn't he. So
with that in mind, I suppose we can see why
we got those first rather dull first two episodes. You know,
he's trying to make things different in season two. You know,
I knew that at the time when I was watching
these episodes, but still they bored me nevertheless. But yes, anyway,
once the squid Game itself began, as I say, it
was back to its old form and the same but
different challenges were met by providing us with new games
and new cast of contestants. Obviously, because all the previous
contestants you know, dead and same but different. Many of
the new contestants, though not the same characters as those
in the first season, are the same archetypes. You've got
the gang of bullies that you absolutely hate, the unlikable,
unpleasant woman that no one wants on their team, the
older person you know, the singular person, and then there's
also the infiltrator who's secretly part of the squid game
management for lack of a better word. But I didn't
mind that at all, because you know, I wanted more
of the same but different, and that's exactly what I got.
I hated the characters I was supposed to hate, and
I rooted for the characters I was supposed to root for,
especially the trans woman who used to be a soldier.
I thought she was a great character. And then there's
the season ending, Isn't There, which wasn't an ending in
the traditional sense, but more of a cliffhanger, the sort
of finale that I might write from my season endings,
only this didn't come at the end of a story arc.
You know, I kind of complete a story arc when
I have my cliffhanger to get you interested in the
next season. But this, the arc of this season isn't complete.
It's just kind of just stops, you know, That's it
the end. My guess here is that Netflix probably had
a deadline of when they wanted the show in the
can and the production company ran out of time, so
they gave them what they had called it season two,
and the remainder of the season, which will be released
later this year will be called season three, and the
short wait for it also suggests to me that, you know,
they've got a lot of it kind of shot and whatnot,
but it's just not ready yet. But hey, you know,
I don't care. It was a great cliffhanger, and I
look forward to the completion of the story later in
the year, whether it's Season two, Part two, which it
probably should be called, or season three. Who cares. It's
the same story, right, and it's a story I like.
So there you go, Squid Game season two. I enjoyed it.
What else on Disney we watched Say Nothing, the story
of a woman who was a volunteer for the IRA
in Northern Ireland in the seventies and eighties, and that
was completely brilliant, really gripping drama and great performances from
everybody involved, especially I thought the actress who played the
younger version of the protagonist. And from a historical perspective,
there was a lot of stuff in there that I
didn't know about at all. Though, saying that some characters
no spoilers here, dispute the depiction of events and the
way they as people are portrayed. Because it's a true story,
at least according to the writer, and one of the
people who's not happy with the way they are portrayed
is suing Disney actually in the process as we speak,
of suing Disney. So we'll have to see how that
turns out, won't we. If you're in the US, say,
nothing is on Hulu, but everywhere else it's on Disney Plus.
So what about you then? What's on your TV? This
is the one thing we all have in common these days,
isn't it. We're all watching the same shows worldwide. Not
that long ago, over on this side of the Atlantic,
we'd have been watching our homegrown shows with the odd
American show thrown into the mix along with the odd
Australian soap opera and everywhere else doing much the same
sort of thing. But now we're all on the same
page wherever we are. So what have you seen that
you can recommend? You know, to me and to the
other listeners here. I would like to know because I
need recommendations, as we all do. Let me know in
the comments at Spotify or alternatively to my Blue Sky
page where you can find me at Mike Bennett dot
bsky dot Social I'm to be honest with you, I'm
not expecting a delugev responses to that place, but you
know I'm putting it out there and I will share
your recommendations on a later edition of this podcast. Huzzah. Yes.
So that brings me to the end of this show.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have enjoyed it. Thank
you for listening. As you know, the music on the
podcast was amad Ama by Faried far Jard courtesy of
Taranay Records and our good friend Fahwah's Al Maloud. You
can stream it on Spotify and all the other music
streaming apps there. It's from the album and Rusa volume four,
so give that a listen. Listen to the whole album,
why don't you. But anyway, enough from me for now.
Then until the moon rises again over Underwood and Flinch,
my friends, take care and farewell.