The Zookeeper’s Wife from director Niki Caro (Whale Rider) is the latest in a long line of films about the holocaust. Although not as compelling as either Schindler’s List or The Pianist, two other films about the Nazi invasion of Poland and the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, it is nevertheless worth seeing.

Jessica Chastain, eerily emulating Meryl Streep’s accent in Sophie’s Choice, plays the title character, a young veterinarian who along with her zoologist husband (Johan Heldenbergh), has built the city’s zoo into a world-renown showplace. After the Nazis invade, Hitler sends his own zoologist (Daniel Bruhl) to move the most valuable animals to Germany with the empty promise that they will be returned to Warsaw after the war. The remaining animals are shot and used to feed the Nazi troops.

Heldenbergh comes up with a plan that is approved by Bruhl, in which the now empty zoo will be used to raise pigs for the German soldiers’ consumption. Food for the pigs will come from the scraps in the Jewish ghetto. Heldenbergh uses the scrap gathering to hide Jewish refugees in his truck, who are then hidden by Chastain in the zoo’s basement until it is safe for them to leave. In all, they will save 300 Jews from extinction during the Nazi occupation.

The film is excellently acted, especially by Chastain, Heldenbergh, Bruhl, and the two young actors playing Chastain and Heldenbergh’s impressionable son, Timothy Radford and Val Maloku.

Based on a true story, the Zabinskas, the characters played by Chastain and Heledenbergh, would restore the zoo to its former greatness after the war. Blu-ray and DVD extras include an interview with the couple’s still living son and daughter.

Kino Lorber has newly released five of Bob Hope’s films on Blu-ray. They are My Favorite Brunette with Dorothy Lamour, Road to Rio with Bing Crosby and Lamour, The Lemon Drop Kid with Marilyn Maxwell, Road to Bali with Crosby and Lamour, and Son of Paleface with Jane Russell. The Lemon Drop Kid is the only one I’ve watched on Blu-ray.

While the film, based on a Damon Runyon story, doesn’t really hold up, it does have its moments. The best of those moments is a very funny set piece with Hope trying not to be seen while undressing a female mannequin in a store window. He will later wear the mannequin’s vintage clothes to impersonate an old lady to try and fool a bunch of dimwitted crooks. Marilyn Maxwell, Lloyd Nolan, and Jane Darwell share star billing, but none of them have very much to do. Hope and Maxwell do, however, get to introduce an elaborately staged “Silver Bells,” which became an immediate hit and ultimately a Christmas perennial.

Debuting in the U.K. in March 1997, Midsomer Murders, based on the Inspector Barnaby series of novels by Caroline Graham, is a seemingly non-ending series of cleverly written mysteries now in its twenty-second year.
At the time the series began, Graham, born in July 1931, had written five Inspector Barnaby novels which became the first five episodes of Midsomer Murders. She has since written two more Inspector Barnaby novels, while the series has so far produced 114 episodes. The original stars of the series were John Nettles as Barnaby, Jane Wymark as his wife, and Daniel Casey as his detective assistant. Casey was replaced in 2004 by John Hopkins who was replaced a year later by Jason Hughes. Nettles and Wymark left the series in 2011 and were conveniently replaced by Neil Dudgeon as Nettles’ cousin, also named Barnaby, and his wife, Fiona Dolman. Hughes remained with the series until 2013 when he was replaced by Gwilym Lee who in turn was replaced in 2016 by Nick Hendrix.

Midsomer Murders remains a fan favorite because of its deft blend of gruesome murders, strong characterizations, and light comedy. The latest release on Blu-ray and standard DVD is called Midsomer Murders: Set 19, Part 1.

While Midsomer Murders is the longest running British mystery series, the current series with the longest lasting character is Endeavour, which features Shaun Evans as the young Endeavour Morse, the same Inspector Morse who delighted audiences from 1987 through 2002 in his twilight years in the person of the late John Thaw. Between the two series, Morse’s detective assistant, Inspector Lewis in the person of Kevin Whately had his own series from 2006-2015. All are available on DVD, some on Blu-ray as well.

The first of the modern British mystery series with strong plots, unforgettable lead characters, and strong characterizations throughout was a collection of incisive mini-series by P.D. James featuring Commander Adam Dagliesh that ran from 1983-1998 with Roy Marsden and returned briefly in 2003 and 2004 with Martin Shaw. The first nine are contained in P.D. James: The Essential Collection. The last Marsden entry, A Certain Justice, and the two Shaw entries, Death in Holy Orders and The Murder Room, are available separately on DVD. A similar series comprised entirely of mini-series is Prime Suspect, which ran off and on from 1991 through 2006 with Helen Mirren earning six Emmy nominations and two wins along the way as DCI, and later Superintendent, Jane Tennison.

Others of note include A Touch of Frost, Foyle’s War, George Gently, and Vera.

A Touch of Frost, which ran from 1982 through 2010, starred David Jason as the acerbic DI Jack Frost, an unconventional policeman with sympathy for the underdog and a strong sense of moral justice. Foyle’s War had a surprisingly long run for a series originally set in the British home front during World War II. Michael Kitchen was DCS Foyle, Honeysuckle Weeks his driver, Anthony Howell his most frequent detective assistant, and Julian Ovenden his flyer son. After the war, the retired detective becomes an MI5 agent involved in the cold war. This series has the strongest production values of any British mystery series.

George Gently or Inspector George Gently as it is known in the U.K., began in 2007 and is still running. Set in the 1960s, this is a fascinating series with a brilliant star turn by Martin Shaw, ably assisted by Lee Ingleby. Beginning in 2011, Vera, which stars two-time Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn as caustic DCI Vera Stanhope, is set against the breathtaking Northumberland landscape, in which the murders are usually more heartbreaking than not, but quite often end on a note of reconciliation and hope. A case in point is the season seven closer in which an adolescent boy makes Vera a present of eggs from the hens he is raising in recognition of her solving the murder of his sister. The episode ends with her making a meal of the eggs and toast.

This week’s new releases include The Lost City of Z and the Blu-ray restoration of Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy.