Belgian Chess History

If you read this blog, there is a good chance you like dissecting chess positions that occur in movies or television series. But maybe you don’t like spending watching movies. Well, then I have the episode for you! Just a couple of minutes in, the credits are barely over, before a single person has died, we see a game of chess being played. As it turns out, the people in the picture below are participants in a clinical trial for a new anti-depressive drug.

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The untouchables were originally a special team of incorruptible agents tasked with fighting organised crime in Chicago. It then became the title of an autobiographically book by one of them, which in turn was made into a massively popular television series. In the third episode of the fourth season, Eliot Ness, who usually takes on Al Capone and gangsters of that ilk, fights Ira Bauer, one of the most hardened criminals in the city, one of the greatest threats to not just to Chicago but to all of the United States: someone who sells champagne. Yeah, prohibition was pretty stupid.

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Peep show is a critically acclaimed sitcom that cemented David Mitchell and Robert Webb as one of the great comedic duos in British television. It is about Mark, a miserable man eking out a miserable existence working a miserable job for a miserable boss. The worst part of his life is his room mate. A good example of why this is, is provided by the third episode of the third season: Shrooming. Jez — that’s the room mate¹ — decides tries to get a desperately sick Mark to go on a business trip so that he can do magic mushrooms in their apartment with his love interest and some punk who has previously destroyed the door to their toilet.

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Today, we will talk about a group of weirdos with strange customs, largely shunned by society but quite happy on their own. No, not chess players, the Addams family. We will talk about the very last episodes from the first season of the original series. The plot starts when uncle Fester reads some ridiculous report by a psychologist¹ in a newspaper stating that couples that fight are really the happy ones. This worries him, because Gomez and Morticia Addams never fight and always seem to delight in each other’s company. At some point, they are even playing chess:

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After well over four years of weekly blog posts, it’s becoming harder and harder to come with real novelties. But today, I have found it. Today I have a conception that will shock the world of art. I will talk about the same show two weeks in a row! So get ready for some never before seen entertainment! Yes, we’re revisiting inspector Lewis. This episode features Alan Davies,¹ paradoxically in the role of a quiz master. He organises a quiz weekend in Oxford for teams of two. One of the participants turns up murdered, so Lewis appears on the scene, his assistant in tow.

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The last time we met Lewis, he was assisting inspector Morse in his final days. It turns out that he afterwards became an inspector himself and took his former’s boss place. It also turns out that it is a small treasure trove of chess scenes. The first one we will dissect comes from the third episode of the second season. A student shoots himself after threatening a reverend that later turns up brutally murdered. Less than twenty minutes in the episode — the reverend isn’t officially dead yet — the camera finds Lewis’s assistant Hathaway:

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