Dramatic distractions

I know I said I would scrape all the barnacles off but certain distractions are inevitable and some are by choice, like watching The Imitation Game at the cinema.  Having not seen Enigma, it was a fresher experience than it would be for well-versed film critics, though some parts of it were signposted, outside of the parameters of flashing back and forth in time, such as the fate of his schoolboy friend, Christopher.  To make Alan Turing, imitating 1930s/40s/50s society as much as creating a computer to imitate German war signals, the main focus, the only mention of an Enigma machine was an early version smuggled out by Polish intelligence, rather than the crucial breakthrough of a British crew finding an intact later version aboard a captured U-boat.  There was a ridiculous subtext that Turing's homosexuality and his intellectual brilliance were inseparable - another case of the mainstream hijacking gay rights for their own PC purposes but not really understanding it and end up being gauche - the best way to promote gay rights is for homosexuals to be seen as normal. 
Of course, it was the discovery of his homosexuality that laid the foundations for Turing's destruction - at the start of the film, our first introduction to Benedict Cumberbatch's Turing is to see him sweeping up some spilled cyanide, which he would later lace the apple that killed him (the film states he committed suicide but it's still an open verdict whether he actually intended to take his own life).  The acting is good from Cumbersome (as my wife inadvertently called him), Keira Knightley, Charles Dance and Mark Strong, greatly aiding the flow of what could have been a dry story of code-breaking.  The achievement of creating the world's first true computer is illustrated in neat shorthand - instructions need to be entered to get the thing to work its processes, laying the foundations for all computers we use today; something simple hiding in plain sight.
Other divertissements included BBC's Remember Me, a drama yesterday night.  Starring Michael Palin (plus Mark Addy and a small role for Julia Swahala as an alcoholic, depressed widow), I was expecting a serious story about an old man struggling with dementia when a woman mysteriously dies.  Instead, it was a horror tale about a murderous, materialistic wraith.  How disappointing.  Not only that but Remember Me ransacked every horror cliché going - the empty, moving rocking chair from Psycho, water pouring down the stairs in imitation of the blood from The Shining, a red cowled figure attracted to water from Don't Look Now, a corpse crying as we have seen near versions of in Star Trek: the Net Generation  and Doctor Who, flickering corridor lights as seen in innumerable scary sci-fi and candles being blown out from an unheralded breeze as seen in countless gothic fiction.  Hardly fits the boast of the BBC of 'Original [my italics] British drama'.  Admittedly, the bumps were administered effectively but being so well worn as to have no excuse for not being done so.  Another cavil I had was it not being concluded within the hour (the dreaded, dreary 'next time...').  Had I known all this beforehand I probably would have skipped it and waited for Palin to star in a properly serious role.