David Tennant, eh? Blink and you'd have still seen him. For ages. Even narcolepsy wouldn't have blanked him out. He's been on TV more than John Barrowman for once, which is in itself a miracle. Still, no-one watched his Hamlet on Boxing Day, so the UK yule wasn't an entirely Tennant-based affair. Five hours of Shakespeare was probably not ideal viewing in the family-wrecked aftermath of Christmas.
And there was the little matter of Doctor Who, regenerating from Tennant to Matt Smith on New Years Day after a Christmas Day special. This would have been an unfathomable piece of scheduling for the series in any era other than the Dalek mania of 1964-66, and attests to a transformation in the fortunes of this series, from the cult hit of the seventies to the incongruous mess of the eighties, and then its miraculous mainstream rebirth in 2005. Naturally, Doctor Who fans being what they are, they all love it so much they hate it, but their small-minded whinnying can't diminish the amazing feat this has been and Russell T. Davies's overwhelming success at achieving the impossible: resurrecting a much-loved but dead series, reworking the emphasis so that it worked in a more human and mainstream way (if only his old companions had anywhere near the journey of Rose or Donna I doubt it would have been cancelled in the first place...) and making the most of the budget to create the best visuals they could afford. Anyone who thinks this was easy or that anyone could have done it better are either hopelessly naive or pointlessly cruel. Moffat is, of course, the flavour of the month with the fans (till his series starts, and then all the grumbling begins again) but he's hardly had an illustrious history of TV success behind him, and though he is brilliant and I am terribly excited by his arrival as show-runner, he's lead a lot of series to cancellation down the years.
I have to say, I wasn't mad about the Christmas episode, it felt unstructured and lacked a compulsive narrative. I've not been keen on the fancy-gizmo-on-Earth stories (be it Sontarans, Cybermen or bad CGI Mark Gatiss) and this just felt like another of those. Yet the second episode was tremendous, most particularly for the performances by Bernard Cribbins and Tennant. I loved all the nods to previous regenerations (Davisons's crashing spaceship, Pertwee's radiation sickness, Tom Baker's Watcher, Troughton's trial by Time Lords), the 'fuck it' moment when he resigns himself to dying and goes and breaks the laws of time in small ways to say goodbye to all of his friends, and the lump-in-throat moment when he shut the Tardis door behind him and was all alone. And I got very excited to see Matt Smith, who just looks the part.
Davies has given us five years of brilliantly fun, exciting, entertaining and sometimes extremely moving TV in a format (saturday night family telly) and show everyone thought was dead. It could have missed the point, like the terrible McGann TV Movie, and turned Doctor Who into yet another witless sci-fi series, but instead it's returned with all of the charm, fun and excitement of the old series, and a whole load of new emotional, human stories to ground the entire thing, which it had really needed all along. And now onto Steven Moffat, who might turn out to be the Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes from Tom Baker's gothic, horrifying early years, to Davies's Barry Letts/Terrance Dicks from Jon Pertwee's earth-bound era. Or he might just be Al Gore to Davies's Clinton... I'm hoping the former. I think the next season is going to be really special.
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Showing posts with label bbc1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bbc1. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 January 2010
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Strange Phenomena
It's become depressingly clear that needy, high maintenance Chris Hollins will win Strictly and 'simpering blowjob smile'* Joe will win X-Factor. Proof that you can never be too pathetic for reality TV. Chris just strikes me as a nightmare, the kind of man who would be suffocating to go out with. He'd always be texting or phoning to guilt-trip you into dropping your friends so you could spend all your time with him to distract him from that void of insecurity he projects around himself. And Cheryl Cole's tedious one-trick 'oooh he's like mah little brootha ah loove 'im' bullshit routine about dull Joe has really run its course now. He's like a boring John Barrowman.
Most extraordinary performance of the week didn't come from either of them, it came from Dev on Corrie, whose scat-singing/human beatbox rendition of 'Save All Your Kisses For Me' by the Brotherhood of Man (as some kind of bizarre way to celebrate winning a round of golf) was 1 part Cleo Laine, 1 part Falco and absolutely no parts sane. This TV Burp clip from years back illustrates my point:
How other actors are supposed to continue performing in a naturalistic soap style when he's off freestyling like that is a total mystery. In fact, how he ever ended up as a soap actor is a mystery. The only possible explanation is he's a stray from Twin Peaks.
* (c) Bertie Fox
Most extraordinary performance of the week didn't come from either of them, it came from Dev on Corrie, whose scat-singing/human beatbox rendition of 'Save All Your Kisses For Me' by the Brotherhood of Man (as some kind of bizarre way to celebrate winning a round of golf) was 1 part Cleo Laine, 1 part Falco and absolutely no parts sane. This TV Burp clip from years back illustrates my point:
How other actors are supposed to continue performing in a naturalistic soap style when he's off freestyling like that is a total mystery. In fact, how he ever ended up as a soap actor is a mystery. The only possible explanation is he's a stray from Twin Peaks.
* (c) Bertie Fox
Monday, 16 November 2009
Sunday, 15 November 2009
28 Days Water
The much-trailed penultimate David Tennant/Russell T Davis Doctor Who story, The Waters of Mars, was finally broadcast this evening, and reminded me of all of the reasons I've enjoyed RTD's reboot of the show.
There was a really gripping story, something Davies is repeatedly underestimated for considering his extensive plotting and rewriting of not just his but all the other writers stories bar Moffat's, emotional engagement in the form of Lindsay Duncan, some absolutely horrible monsters and a great psychological twist at the end - this time with the lonely Doctor (last of the Time Lords, travelling alone) going power mad, and prompting a bleak and abrupt suicide. Loved all the Logopolis (Tom Baker's brilliant final story)-style foreshadowing at the end too, with the Cloister Bell and the Ood watcher... One of the things I've liked most about RTD's tenure as chief writer has been his exploration of new angles on existing themes, and this story finally saw the dark underside of the almost religious and magical overtones he's given the Doctor in previous stories, especially The Sound of Drums. He's not seen individual stories as islands but has been happy to explore and review the human (and alien) consequences of moral choices made throughout the series. This was always the weakness of old Who. Much as individual stories were awesome, the resetting between stories was unnecessary and ultimately hindered audience connection with the characters.
Everyone is very excited about Moffat's reinvention of the franchise, but I'm a little worried. What RTD has done is broad brush humour, warmth, adventure and razzle-dazzle. Great as Moffat's stories have been they have been tonally very similar (dark, intense, complicated) and I doubt a whole run of stories like that would keep the audience the current series has gathered to it. I'm not a fan of the 'dark version', that film reboot style so popular with film-makers during the Bush era. I'm more a new Star Trek kinda guy - warm, witty reboots which capture the fun of a franchise and don't try to turn The Muppets into Hamlet. There's a place for the dark version, but not every Saturday teatime there ain't. Doctor Who is best when it's fun and scary, and The Waters of Mars was a great example of that. As soon as it gets a bit Christopher Nolan I'm outta here.
There was a really gripping story, something Davies is repeatedly underestimated for considering his extensive plotting and rewriting of not just his but all the other writers stories bar Moffat's, emotional engagement in the form of Lindsay Duncan, some absolutely horrible monsters and a great psychological twist at the end - this time with the lonely Doctor (last of the Time Lords, travelling alone) going power mad, and prompting a bleak and abrupt suicide. Loved all the Logopolis (Tom Baker's brilliant final story)-style foreshadowing at the end too, with the Cloister Bell and the Ood watcher... One of the things I've liked most about RTD's tenure as chief writer has been his exploration of new angles on existing themes, and this story finally saw the dark underside of the almost religious and magical overtones he's given the Doctor in previous stories, especially The Sound of Drums. He's not seen individual stories as islands but has been happy to explore and review the human (and alien) consequences of moral choices made throughout the series. This was always the weakness of old Who. Much as individual stories were awesome, the resetting between stories was unnecessary and ultimately hindered audience connection with the characters.
Everyone is very excited about Moffat's reinvention of the franchise, but I'm a little worried. What RTD has done is broad brush humour, warmth, adventure and razzle-dazzle. Great as Moffat's stories have been they have been tonally very similar (dark, intense, complicated) and I doubt a whole run of stories like that would keep the audience the current series has gathered to it. I'm not a fan of the 'dark version', that film reboot style so popular with film-makers during the Bush era. I'm more a new Star Trek kinda guy - warm, witty reboots which capture the fun of a franchise and don't try to turn The Muppets into Hamlet. There's a place for the dark version, but not every Saturday teatime there ain't. Doctor Who is best when it's fun and scary, and The Waters of Mars was a great example of that. As soon as it gets a bit Christopher Nolan I'm outta here.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Four Times Knightly
I was a bit surprised they were stringing out Emma over four episodes. Unlike the rumbustious plot of Pride and Prejudice the story of Emma is so slight. But the adaptation was wonderfully written, and has opened up the book rather than simplifying it as the terrible film version with Gwynnie did, which turned this nasty black comedy into a sunny bonnets and punnets romp.
Romola Garai was utterly beguiling as Emma Woodhouse, and brought a new interpretation to the role, making her motivation much more complex than I'd considered before – we see how lonely she is once her best friend is married off, and that means that her subsequent busy-bodying behaviour (which she transfers on to poor chattering self-confessed dullster Miss Bates, heartbreakingly performed by Tamsin Greig, especially in the famous picnic scene) all makes rather more sense. The production had a more melancholy undertone than previous ones. All to the good.
Some of it worked less well, though. Mr Elton wasn't anywhere near as much of a creep as required. And Mr Knightly, as portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller, was unrecognisable from the novel. Gone was the mysterious, shadowy, emotionally remote figure, barely described until Emma realises he is the object of her affection at the close of novel. Instead we have a wet weekend: a cuddly, ineffectual wimp whining and simpering around Emma like a fool. And this is a shame, as it unbalanced the adaptation, meaning that all of the feelings were blatant right from the off, which spoils the fun.
Clueless remains my favourite adaptation of Emma, coming closest to the outrageous spirit of the novel, but this has been a lovely, cosy Sunday night drama and I'll miss it now it's over, acting as it does as a perfect detox for the excesses of the X-Factor. Of course, I cried at the end (Michael Gambon having much the same effect on me as Bernard Cribbins had in Doctor Who), but then these days I well up if someone holds a door open for me.
Romola Garai was utterly beguiling as Emma Woodhouse, and brought a new interpretation to the role, making her motivation much more complex than I'd considered before – we see how lonely she is once her best friend is married off, and that means that her subsequent busy-bodying behaviour (which she transfers on to poor chattering self-confessed dullster Miss Bates, heartbreakingly performed by Tamsin Greig, especially in the famous picnic scene) all makes rather more sense. The production had a more melancholy undertone than previous ones. All to the good.
Some of it worked less well, though. Mr Elton wasn't anywhere near as much of a creep as required. And Mr Knightly, as portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller, was unrecognisable from the novel. Gone was the mysterious, shadowy, emotionally remote figure, barely described until Emma realises he is the object of her affection at the close of novel. Instead we have a wet weekend: a cuddly, ineffectual wimp whining and simpering around Emma like a fool. And this is a shame, as it unbalanced the adaptation, meaning that all of the feelings were blatant right from the off, which spoils the fun.
Clueless remains my favourite adaptation of Emma, coming closest to the outrageous spirit of the novel, but this has been a lovely, cosy Sunday night drama and I'll miss it now it's over, acting as it does as a perfect detox for the excesses of the X-Factor. Of course, I cried at the end (Michael Gambon having much the same effect on me as Bernard Cribbins had in Doctor Who), but then these days I well up if someone holds a door open for me.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
The Crying Game
The X-Factor isn't really my cup of tea. I'm more of a Strictly man, mainly because SCD reminds me of celebs lumping around the Morecambe and Wise set and XF has all of the amateur charmlessness of Opportunity Knocks. I hate 'human interest' – I don't want to see 17 year olds weeping because Simon Cowell has said they aren't Celine Dion.
This series of XF is a two horse race (and I'm not talking about creepy John and Edward, and their incest-tastic version of Britney's Oops, I Did It Again) - Jamie, the cute guy with the highly rufflable afro and super-flexible voice, and Stacie, who is Catherine Tate doing an exaggerated impression of Peggy from Hi-De-Hi! when she talks, and is Jennifer Rush when she sings. The others are a bunch of feeble-voiced twits we have to slowly eliminate week on week, and patiently sit through them butchering Sinatra and ABBA. Poor Rachel, in the sing-off for the last two weeks isn't the weakest singer by any stretch, but she looks odd. uncomfortable up there – last week dressed as post-assault Rhianna, this week as Denise from Five Star.
It has completely put me off Cheryl Cole. Last series made her career as the woman that middle-class ladies the country over could claim was their 'girl crush' (a fucking annoying sentiment that inevitably leads to the let's-treat-gays-as-exotic-tourism of Katy Perry's truly appalling I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It). This series has undone it at a stroke. The papers might be out for Minogue after her Danyl that-came-out-wrong moment, but Cole's waterworks have been as tedious and stage-managed as Brendan Cole's insincere attempt at indignation on Strictly for his ancing partner Jo Wood being rightly criticised as shit.
Last week Robbie shouted his way through his new single and did his Freddie Starr dance. This week the newly-scary Whitney spent most of her song doing her dress back up and not singing. I've not properly adjusted from seeing her as the dull Cliff Richard of R&B, but these days she looks like a woman who could do anything, apart from behave well...
This series of XF is a two horse race (and I'm not talking about creepy John and Edward, and their incest-tastic version of Britney's Oops, I Did It Again) - Jamie, the cute guy with the highly rufflable afro and super-flexible voice, and Stacie, who is Catherine Tate doing an exaggerated impression of Peggy from Hi-De-Hi! when she talks, and is Jennifer Rush when she sings. The others are a bunch of feeble-voiced twits we have to slowly eliminate week on week, and patiently sit through them butchering Sinatra and ABBA. Poor Rachel, in the sing-off for the last two weeks isn't the weakest singer by any stretch, but she looks odd. uncomfortable up there – last week dressed as post-assault Rhianna, this week as Denise from Five Star.
It has completely put me off Cheryl Cole. Last series made her career as the woman that middle-class ladies the country over could claim was their 'girl crush' (a fucking annoying sentiment that inevitably leads to the let's-treat-gays-as-exotic-tourism of Katy Perry's truly appalling I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It). This series has undone it at a stroke. The papers might be out for Minogue after her Danyl that-came-out-wrong moment, but Cole's waterworks have been as tedious and stage-managed as Brendan Cole's insincere attempt at indignation on Strictly for his ancing partner Jo Wood being rightly criticised as shit.
Last week Robbie shouted his way through his new single and did his Freddie Starr dance. This week the newly-scary Whitney spent most of her song doing her dress back up and not singing. I've not properly adjusted from seeing her as the dull Cliff Richard of R&B, but these days she looks like a woman who could do anything, apart from behave well...
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Modern love
EastEnders is on a roll at the moment in its ongoing project to make every conceivable disastrous permutation of modern love as unattractive as the next.
Being the fiancee of a single parent is tough. But when innuendos start flying amongst your own kids that you have killed your husband's ex-wife, that's just not going to help. Especially when he was the (acciental) killer all along.
And new relationships are tough. Your family seem jealous because you've found the perfect man, but then you have a big secret (your secret daughter was mowed down by the Square's resident angel of death a few months ago) that you can't bring yourself to tell him, but which they might blurt out to your perfect/dodgy fella at any moment.
And being the comedy support character having a mystery baby is tough. Especially because the whole storyline is a bizarre homage to Michelle's predicament when the show first started.
And being a gay muslim who's engaged to a woman while secretly being in love with the local stud is tough. But then what do you fucking expect?
Stacey's got the hardest acting job in the world at the moment, and she's managing her mental breakdown a whole lot more convincingly than Claire did on Corrie. I am, of course, totally in love with Syed, but then who wouldn't be with the mixed-up muppet. And the whole thing is still worth watching for Nina Wadia, who brings the kind of inspired comic timing to the show that it so often lacks with its reliance on medodrama.
Being the fiancee of a single parent is tough. But when innuendos start flying amongst your own kids that you have killed your husband's ex-wife, that's just not going to help. Especially when he was the (acciental) killer all along.
And new relationships are tough. Your family seem jealous because you've found the perfect man, but then you have a big secret (your secret daughter was mowed down by the Square's resident angel of death a few months ago) that you can't bring yourself to tell him, but which they might blurt out to your perfect/dodgy fella at any moment.
And being the comedy support character having a mystery baby is tough. Especially because the whole storyline is a bizarre homage to Michelle's predicament when the show first started.
And being a gay muslim who's engaged to a woman while secretly being in love with the local stud is tough. But then what do you fucking expect?
Stacey's got the hardest acting job in the world at the moment, and she's managing her mental breakdown a whole lot more convincingly than Claire did on Corrie. I am, of course, totally in love with Syed, but then who wouldn't be with the mixed-up muppet. And the whole thing is still worth watching for Nina Wadia, who brings the kind of inspired comic timing to the show that it so often lacks with its reliance on medodrama.
Friday, 25 September 2009
It's yesterday once more
I love a good bit of glitzy light entertainment. It's so odd how it died in about 1981 and then took decades to recover. Like the Mini, Doctor Who and rampant global recession the return of this kind of cheesy Summertime Special type nonsense harks back to a comforting pre-home computer age where incongruous celebrities dance like it's the heyday of Morecambe and Wise.
Very odd that people are always saying Brucie's past it. He's over twice Tess Daly's age, but has twice her talent. Her attempts to be funny are truly shocking, like watching someone defecate on screen. Brucie has always been rather bumbling, it's been part of his stage persona since his Palladium days. But when he does great old-school jokes, like the hoary old complicated explanation of cricket, or calling Anton his love child, it brings back lovely memories of ham-fisted attempts at throwing pots or country dancing on the Generation Game.
Alesha, rather less ineffectual this week, gave quite an eye-opening insight into the celebrities' state pre-dancing: 'their hearts will be beating...' One would hope so. It is the very least we could expect. Natalie Cassidy was, as I'd hoped, was utterly gorgeous. 'If Vincent falls in love with me then that's something we'll have to face at the time', she said, before plunging into a particularly vampish tango by the end of which, never mind shouting at the telly, I was positively whooping.
The duffsters were queueing up to stumble round the dance floor like James Caan in Misery, not least terrible, bland Richard Dunwoody and the odious Phil Tufnell, who will more than likely win the show. 'People most remember me for being married to Ronnie Wood' said Jo Wood. I don't. In fact, I have absolutely no idea who she is. I can barely remember the names of the Rolling Stones, so far removed are they from my life, let alone their ex-wives. I also had no idea who Ricky Whittle was, though I suspect I may remember now. Laila is tremendous fun, camply competitive and utterly beautiful all togged up like a lovely Spanish lady. Anton even got to dance with his celebrity partner for once, rather than hauling them about like a Henry hoover into hard to reach corners. And he's so old-school, surely to be revealed as a BBC experiment locked in the Blue Peter time capsule in the Italian Sunken Garden since 1976 while teaching the Brotherhood of Man their winning dance for Save All Your Kisses For Me. Ask him about tamagotchis, Thatcher or Britpop and the poor bewildered mite will have no idea.
Very odd that people are always saying Brucie's past it. He's over twice Tess Daly's age, but has twice her talent. Her attempts to be funny are truly shocking, like watching someone defecate on screen. Brucie has always been rather bumbling, it's been part of his stage persona since his Palladium days. But when he does great old-school jokes, like the hoary old complicated explanation of cricket, or calling Anton his love child, it brings back lovely memories of ham-fisted attempts at throwing pots or country dancing on the Generation Game.
Alesha, rather less ineffectual this week, gave quite an eye-opening insight into the celebrities' state pre-dancing: 'their hearts will be beating...' One would hope so. It is the very least we could expect. Natalie Cassidy was, as I'd hoped, was utterly gorgeous. 'If Vincent falls in love with me then that's something we'll have to face at the time', she said, before plunging into a particularly vampish tango by the end of which, never mind shouting at the telly, I was positively whooping.
The duffsters were queueing up to stumble round the dance floor like James Caan in Misery, not least terrible, bland Richard Dunwoody and the odious Phil Tufnell, who will more than likely win the show. 'People most remember me for being married to Ronnie Wood' said Jo Wood. I don't. In fact, I have absolutely no idea who she is. I can barely remember the names of the Rolling Stones, so far removed are they from my life, let alone their ex-wives. I also had no idea who Ricky Whittle was, though I suspect I may remember now. Laila is tremendous fun, camply competitive and utterly beautiful all togged up like a lovely Spanish lady. Anton even got to dance with his celebrity partner for once, rather than hauling them about like a Henry hoover into hard to reach corners. And he's so old-school, surely to be revealed as a BBC experiment locked in the Blue Peter time capsule in the Italian Sunken Garden since 1976 while teaching the Brotherhood of Man their winning dance for Save All Your Kisses For Me. Ask him about tamagotchis, Thatcher or Britpop and the poor bewildered mite will have no idea.
Friday, 18 September 2009
Strict Machine
Alesha told Rav that he gave the tango his hole, Tess Daly quoted T. S. Eliot, Bruce got everything wrong about It Takes Two, to an increasingly startled Claudia Winkleman. Yes, Strictly is back, and apart from the unwelcome loss of bossy dance legend Arlene Phillips it is a lot of fun.
Hilarious, brilliant Sonia from EastEnders, one of the best ever soap actresses, has already won it for me before the series had started. There's Joe Calzaghe, preposterously sexy beast, terrible dancer (poor Kristina...), to keep that bit of my brain and trousers occupied. And Lynda Bellingham, who's always been great value, even back in the soft porn films she made in the seventies, and was a total bloody treat this evening dancing her bonkers zombie tango.
There's reality TV slut Phil Tufnell, who we're all supposed to love because he's hilariously off his tits all the livelong day. I hate him, the drooling cretin. And there's also a whole load of people I have never heard of and will not remember when it's over: some sports presenter who looks like Ricky Gervais, and half the people who did the group dance, who could have been anybody.
But all the attention was on the judges. Alesha is a pointless, waffling addition as she has no expertise. Why didn't they ditch stupid Bruno if they wanted to bring in a new judge? No-one likes him and his shouting you are a beautiful swan at any woman who even steps on the floor. Oh, and Tess Daly, fuck off you talentless, witless stick insect. I cringe every time you attempt a joke, and even walking and smiling seems to test you to the very limits of your being.
That's my Saturdays (and the odd Friday) solved for the rest of the year. Cosy nights in with a packet of biscuits, licking the screen every time Joe pops up (don't get voted off you idiot). Lovely.
Hilarious, brilliant Sonia from EastEnders, one of the best ever soap actresses, has already won it for me before the series had started. There's Joe Calzaghe, preposterously sexy beast, terrible dancer (poor Kristina...), to keep that bit of my brain and trousers occupied. And Lynda Bellingham, who's always been great value, even back in the soft porn films she made in the seventies, and was a total bloody treat this evening dancing her bonkers zombie tango.
There's reality TV slut Phil Tufnell, who we're all supposed to love because he's hilariously off his tits all the livelong day. I hate him, the drooling cretin. And there's also a whole load of people I have never heard of and will not remember when it's over: some sports presenter who looks like Ricky Gervais, and half the people who did the group dance, who could have been anybody.
But all the attention was on the judges. Alesha is a pointless, waffling addition as she has no expertise. Why didn't they ditch stupid Bruno if they wanted to bring in a new judge? No-one likes him and his shouting you are a beautiful swan at any woman who even steps on the floor. Oh, and Tess Daly, fuck off you talentless, witless stick insect. I cringe every time you attempt a joke, and even walking and smiling seems to test you to the very limits of your being.
That's my Saturdays (and the odd Friday) solved for the rest of the year. Cosy nights in with a packet of biscuits, licking the screen every time Joe pops up (don't get voted off you idiot). Lovely.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Wood Torched
I stopped watching Torchwood at the end of the first season, after my toes couldn't take the curling any more. Their stupid, kid's TV set base, their sudden showy bouts of alien sex for no reason, the archly constructed set of characters, and more than anything, the terrible stories – especially the fucking cyberwoman in her fucking cyberbra – took away so much from the newly revived and wonderful Doctor Who that it was better to pretend it wasn't there than engage with it and have it undermine the fun of my favourite TV show. Instead I discovered the joys of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which instead of attempting to make Buffy in Holby was a really great homage to old Doctor Who - quirky, shambolic and occasionally bloody scary, with the odd classic story to warm the cockles.
So, I didn't watch series two of Torchwood or their recent BBC1 mini-series Children of Earth. But it was only when people started to say the magic word Quatermass that I began to get interested in CoE. BBC3 have just repeated the five episodes, and I thought I'd give it a go. And I have to take my hat off to them, never have I seen a programme so improved. The story was brilliant – paedophile junkie aliens demand a tenth of the kids from the planet to incubate chemicals that feel good as the Barry White alien creature gasps orgasmically, and the government weasles its way from spin to Nazism over the curse of the tale (even with the wonderful Peter Capaldi doing a Goebbles and killing his own kids). All the moral dilemma stuff was pushed way beyond the usual TV or movie plots, with Jack topping and tailing the story by handing over a trial run of the kids in the sixties, and then blowing his own grandson up to stop them. The morality was quite revolting and brilliantly explored.
And along the way they've ditched the things that have held this series back. With boring Tosh and sleazy Owen already dispatched, this time it was the turn of Ianto, the man who put the wood into Torchwood, to cop it, and not before time. And they've blown their base up too. In fact, the series ends with the terrific Gwen Cooper beig the only surviving member of Torchwood left on Earth, after Jack understandably jets off for a bit of R&R among the stars.
Jack, of course, remains the weak link. A totally charming character when sweeping Rose Tyler off her feet in 1940s London, renegade Time Agent Jack Harkness has outstayed his welcome on an epic scale - across six series of two TV shows this character has roamed, getting progressively less interesting and sympathetic as each year passes. His costume is as irritating as Colin Baker's terrible outfit, and there's a heartbreaking moment in CoE when Jack has lost his clothes and is finally in civvies, and then stupid fucking Ianto goes and buys him another set of RAF surplus, which was the final nail in the Welshman's coffin for me. Throw the baby out with the bathwater, please!
Russell T. Davies has taken a stupid amount of stick from wanky 'fans' (ie, people who hate Doctor Who but know all about it) who don't seem to appreciate what he's done in bringing back a totally moribund format and making it viable and more popular than ever before. For me, Torchwood has been his big misfire, and The Sarah Jane Adventures his secret triumph. But CoE finally showed what this odd adult sci-fi show could be - not a slash porn version of Doctor Who but a show that takes the legacy of British sci-fi legends John Wyndham and Nigel Kneale and brings it up to date, as he had done in The Second Coming, which was probably the closest thing to CoE he has written thus far.
I didn't want to like it, but there we go, we can't always get what we want. Yes, it's still saddled with the ham, but at least the dead wood had gone, and it thoroughly deserved to be the massive ratings hit it was. I do hope they make some more in this vein, and wave goodbye to the gimmicks which had sat on the series and slowly killed it before our eyes.
So, I didn't watch series two of Torchwood or their recent BBC1 mini-series Children of Earth. But it was only when people started to say the magic word Quatermass that I began to get interested in CoE. BBC3 have just repeated the five episodes, and I thought I'd give it a go. And I have to take my hat off to them, never have I seen a programme so improved. The story was brilliant – paedophile junkie aliens demand a tenth of the kids from the planet to incubate chemicals that feel good as the Barry White alien creature gasps orgasmically, and the government weasles its way from spin to Nazism over the curse of the tale (even with the wonderful Peter Capaldi doing a Goebbles and killing his own kids). All the moral dilemma stuff was pushed way beyond the usual TV or movie plots, with Jack topping and tailing the story by handing over a trial run of the kids in the sixties, and then blowing his own grandson up to stop them. The morality was quite revolting and brilliantly explored.
And along the way they've ditched the things that have held this series back. With boring Tosh and sleazy Owen already dispatched, this time it was the turn of Ianto, the man who put the wood into Torchwood, to cop it, and not before time. And they've blown their base up too. In fact, the series ends with the terrific Gwen Cooper beig the only surviving member of Torchwood left on Earth, after Jack understandably jets off for a bit of R&R among the stars.
Jack, of course, remains the weak link. A totally charming character when sweeping Rose Tyler off her feet in 1940s London, renegade Time Agent Jack Harkness has outstayed his welcome on an epic scale - across six series of two TV shows this character has roamed, getting progressively less interesting and sympathetic as each year passes. His costume is as irritating as Colin Baker's terrible outfit, and there's a heartbreaking moment in CoE when Jack has lost his clothes and is finally in civvies, and then stupid fucking Ianto goes and buys him another set of RAF surplus, which was the final nail in the Welshman's coffin for me. Throw the baby out with the bathwater, please!
Russell T. Davies has taken a stupid amount of stick from wanky 'fans' (ie, people who hate Doctor Who but know all about it) who don't seem to appreciate what he's done in bringing back a totally moribund format and making it viable and more popular than ever before. For me, Torchwood has been his big misfire, and The Sarah Jane Adventures his secret triumph. But CoE finally showed what this odd adult sci-fi show could be - not a slash porn version of Doctor Who but a show that takes the legacy of British sci-fi legends John Wyndham and Nigel Kneale and brings it up to date, as he had done in The Second Coming, which was probably the closest thing to CoE he has written thus far.
I didn't want to like it, but there we go, we can't always get what we want. Yes, it's still saddled with the ham, but at least the dead wood had gone, and it thoroughly deserved to be the massive ratings hit it was. I do hope they make some more in this vein, and wave goodbye to the gimmicks which had sat on the series and slowly killed it before our eyes.
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Maximum Power!
Last weekend I was cat-sitting for my middle brother and discovered he had three series of Blake's 7 hidden on his bookshelf. I had seen series 1 and 2 in the last five years, but hadn't seen series 3 since it was last repeated in the eighties, so I gave that a go. And I have to say, I still bloody loved it.
I wasn't so much of a fan of the original line-up. Flicky Jenna, boring Gan and vain thesp Blake were better off dead in my book. And one big criticism of series 3 by fans is that it had lost its sense of quest: Blake was always trying to ferment revolution in the first two, and Avon had gone Blake crazy by the 4th, but in the third our anti-heroes seemed happy to potter about playing board games and get tricked into handing the Liberator over to the federation every other story. The thing is, I always thought the quest was a bit boring. I prefered them when they were just arsing about being sneered at by Avon (Paul Darrow doing a similar trick to his peer Tom Baker of delivering his lines quickly and in a monotone so that you always felt you were watching someone a bit other-worldly).
The big treat this season was the arrival of Someone Who Could Really Act. Josette Simon's many glittering post-Blake credits attest to her versatility, but I'm glad the BBC got to her first. Dayna, introduced in the first story of the season, hiding out with her medallion-man dad on a rough old planet covered in horse-riding barbarians, is a deadly weapons expert. Well, she was in this and about two other of the stories this season when they remembered it. But no matter what she was given, Josette was as dignifed as it was possible to be when playing a harp in a dream sequence, arguing with Servalan about who looks best in an assymetric toga or snogging both Avon and Tarrant. Both Dayna and Josette's talents were squandered, but even so it was great having her being sarky and stunningly beautiful on the Liberator – especially when intelligent, strong black women characters were virtually unknown on British telly.
But the next story introduces us to Tarrant, Somone With A Silly Voice. That was Stephen Pacey's big problem, really. Introduced as an alpha-male Blake-a-like, seemingly a Federation trooper till revealed as a naughty bandit, Tarrant spoke like someone taking the piss out of macho men on television. But, unlike Dayna, he gets loads to do. He's always teleporting down and shooting stuff, or arguing with Avon. But he never does anything remotely interesting. Even when, in the penultimate episode of this season, he turns up in a wig as his own brother engaged in a duel to the death with an android, you end up caring more about the brother than you do about Tarrant.
Cally gets tons to do. Like Tarrant, haunted Jan Leeming-lookalike and telepath Cally gets to play her own sibling in a particularly dull story, and then gets possessed in a totally bonkers episode where she ends up dolled up like Florence and the Machine and gets the rest of the crew to do magic tricks and sing. And she also snogs Avon, who is doing rather well out of the ladies this series considering he looks like Blackadder II. Cally also seems to teleport down everywhere despite the fact she's rubbish while trained warrior Dayna is left behind to push buttons and invent bombs she hides in her own mouth (bizarrely).
Vila. Now there was a man after my own heart. Coward, joker, dreamer and utter failure, Vila didn't get to do much ths series other than moan at Orac and Zen, drink green liquid and - oh yes - become leader of the world in one of the best ever stories, City at the Edge of the World. That was the things about series 3 - there wasn't much point, but some of the stories were fantastic. It's tremendously good fun. Well, apart from Volcano, which makes absolutely no sense and has an overuse of terrible stock footage, and Moloch, which has such a spectacularly bad ending that you almost feel dirty for having watched it.
But Avon and Servalan really dominate the season. Avon is rather passive, considering the weakness of the Federation at the start of the season following the intergalactic war, so Servalan does all of the chasing. And she crops up in almost every story, slinking about in her ugly dead baby crocodile spaceship and trying to get her hands on the Liberator. And you can see why - it's bloody cool. Zen is up there with K9 for me as most lamented childhood loss. Considering she's so powerful, Servalan shows she's a very hands-on kinda manager. She's always hiding behind the next door or chained to the wall round the corner. But you get some sense of her importance in the brilliant Rumours of Death, set in a stately home on earth she's had reconstructed, where hoards of guards are protecting her from the rebels. Avon is understandably annoyed that the one woman he ever loved - Anna Grant - turned out to be the Federation's best agent. Still, they get to snog, and he also snogs Servalan twice, turning him into the unlikeliest sex object in the universe. Amazing what a bit of black leather will do.
The finale, Terminal, is bloody brilliant. Very subdued and atmospheric. Avon off on a mysterious mission, thinks he's found Blake, oops, no, it's Servalan again, natch. The Liberator takes a bath in some corrosive fungi which basically covers the whole ship with snot and kills it. And when Servalan finally gets her manicured nails on it the whole thing immediately blows up around her. What an ending! And what a fun series. I haven't even got round to the giant brain or the fetuses. This was made at the same time as Tom Baker was having a high old time with his Mrs, Lalla Ward, on the budget and strike-hit fag end of his residency in the Tardis, and it shows - there's the same degree of shambolic production values and plotting-by-numbers going on by both Douglas Adams at Doctor Who and Chris Boucher at Blake's 7. But in the end, both of them turned out some glorious stuff, hugely entertaining successes and failures that lit up my childhood and made me the nerdy telly addict I am today. Thank god my brother had the boxed set. Now I want season 4!
I wasn't so much of a fan of the original line-up. Flicky Jenna, boring Gan and vain thesp Blake were better off dead in my book. And one big criticism of series 3 by fans is that it had lost its sense of quest: Blake was always trying to ferment revolution in the first two, and Avon had gone Blake crazy by the 4th, but in the third our anti-heroes seemed happy to potter about playing board games and get tricked into handing the Liberator over to the federation every other story. The thing is, I always thought the quest was a bit boring. I prefered them when they were just arsing about being sneered at by Avon (Paul Darrow doing a similar trick to his peer Tom Baker of delivering his lines quickly and in a monotone so that you always felt you were watching someone a bit other-worldly).
The big treat this season was the arrival of Someone Who Could Really Act. Josette Simon's many glittering post-Blake credits attest to her versatility, but I'm glad the BBC got to her first. Dayna, introduced in the first story of the season, hiding out with her medallion-man dad on a rough old planet covered in horse-riding barbarians, is a deadly weapons expert. Well, she was in this and about two other of the stories this season when they remembered it. But no matter what she was given, Josette was as dignifed as it was possible to be when playing a harp in a dream sequence, arguing with Servalan about who looks best in an assymetric toga or snogging both Avon and Tarrant. Both Dayna and Josette's talents were squandered, but even so it was great having her being sarky and stunningly beautiful on the Liberator – especially when intelligent, strong black women characters were virtually unknown on British telly.
But the next story introduces us to Tarrant, Somone With A Silly Voice. That was Stephen Pacey's big problem, really. Introduced as an alpha-male Blake-a-like, seemingly a Federation trooper till revealed as a naughty bandit, Tarrant spoke like someone taking the piss out of macho men on television. But, unlike Dayna, he gets loads to do. He's always teleporting down and shooting stuff, or arguing with Avon. But he never does anything remotely interesting. Even when, in the penultimate episode of this season, he turns up in a wig as his own brother engaged in a duel to the death with an android, you end up caring more about the brother than you do about Tarrant.
Cally gets tons to do. Like Tarrant, haunted Jan Leeming-lookalike and telepath Cally gets to play her own sibling in a particularly dull story, and then gets possessed in a totally bonkers episode where she ends up dolled up like Florence and the Machine and gets the rest of the crew to do magic tricks and sing. And she also snogs Avon, who is doing rather well out of the ladies this series considering he looks like Blackadder II. Cally also seems to teleport down everywhere despite the fact she's rubbish while trained warrior Dayna is left behind to push buttons and invent bombs she hides in her own mouth (bizarrely).
Vila. Now there was a man after my own heart. Coward, joker, dreamer and utter failure, Vila didn't get to do much ths series other than moan at Orac and Zen, drink green liquid and - oh yes - become leader of the world in one of the best ever stories, City at the Edge of the World. That was the things about series 3 - there wasn't much point, but some of the stories were fantastic. It's tremendously good fun. Well, apart from Volcano, which makes absolutely no sense and has an overuse of terrible stock footage, and Moloch, which has such a spectacularly bad ending that you almost feel dirty for having watched it.
But Avon and Servalan really dominate the season. Avon is rather passive, considering the weakness of the Federation at the start of the season following the intergalactic war, so Servalan does all of the chasing. And she crops up in almost every story, slinking about in her ugly dead baby crocodile spaceship and trying to get her hands on the Liberator. And you can see why - it's bloody cool. Zen is up there with K9 for me as most lamented childhood loss. Considering she's so powerful, Servalan shows she's a very hands-on kinda manager. She's always hiding behind the next door or chained to the wall round the corner. But you get some sense of her importance in the brilliant Rumours of Death, set in a stately home on earth she's had reconstructed, where hoards of guards are protecting her from the rebels. Avon is understandably annoyed that the one woman he ever loved - Anna Grant - turned out to be the Federation's best agent. Still, they get to snog, and he also snogs Servalan twice, turning him into the unlikeliest sex object in the universe. Amazing what a bit of black leather will do.
The finale, Terminal, is bloody brilliant. Very subdued and atmospheric. Avon off on a mysterious mission, thinks he's found Blake, oops, no, it's Servalan again, natch. The Liberator takes a bath in some corrosive fungi which basically covers the whole ship with snot and kills it. And when Servalan finally gets her manicured nails on it the whole thing immediately blows up around her. What an ending! And what a fun series. I haven't even got round to the giant brain or the fetuses. This was made at the same time as Tom Baker was having a high old time with his Mrs, Lalla Ward, on the budget and strike-hit fag end of his residency in the Tardis, and it shows - there's the same degree of shambolic production values and plotting-by-numbers going on by both Douglas Adams at Doctor Who and Chris Boucher at Blake's 7. But in the end, both of them turned out some glorious stuff, hugely entertaining successes and failures that lit up my childhood and made me the nerdy telly addict I am today. Thank god my brother had the boxed set. Now I want season 4!
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Balls on Sunday
BBC1 on a Sunday. Hope Springs followed by Casualty 1909. One is a hilarious and far-fetched comedy drama with some of the funniest performances on television, and the other is a disturbing look into the primitive dilemmas of an almost unrecognisable age. Sadly they're not the way round the makers would have wanted.
Hope Springs thinks it's an outrageously funny and twisty-turny contemporary comedy thriller, but is in fact a pointless mess wasting the talents of a great cast playing characters who are utterly unlike real people. I really wanted to like it, because the idea of a prime-time comedy thriller in the tradition of Hamish Macbeth starring Jamie from The Thick of It really appealed, but there's no tension and none of it is remotely believable. It's like a League of Gentlemen side project remade by Hollyoaks.
Casualty 1909 returns the serve of ITVs The Royal Today, only to watch it fly screaming over the heads of the crowd due to the hilarious histrionics of the actors and the clunking schools television issues and lessons of the ridiculous script. Every effort has been made to represent 1909 as exactly the same as 2009 but with cholera and pillbox hats. The female characters are so absurdly modern that you can't imagine suffrage or feminism were ever necessary, so equal are they to the men in the hospital. Mr Dean, the coke-addled evil head doctor, is just absurd: he's part Johnny Depp in From Hell, part Paul Whitehouse in the Fast Show saying 'me, in a hospital full of nurses, with my reputation?'. This week the coked up young ham manages to turn a simple testicular operation into a gangrenous amputation thanks to the use of a now-banned anaesthetic called stovane. Good subject for drama, but sadly in context of this show the lesson felt as easy to take as the dangerous anesthetic. How We Used To Live, the brilliant schools history programme that ran for over decade, was much creakier – I cannot fault the production values of Casualty 1909, which go a long way to hide its many faults – but then HWYTL was made at a fraction of the cost and the cynicism.
Hope Springs thinks it's an outrageously funny and twisty-turny contemporary comedy thriller, but is in fact a pointless mess wasting the talents of a great cast playing characters who are utterly unlike real people. I really wanted to like it, because the idea of a prime-time comedy thriller in the tradition of Hamish Macbeth starring Jamie from The Thick of It really appealed, but there's no tension and none of it is remotely believable. It's like a League of Gentlemen side project remade by Hollyoaks.
Casualty 1909 returns the serve of ITVs The Royal Today, only to watch it fly screaming over the heads of the crowd due to the hilarious histrionics of the actors and the clunking schools television issues and lessons of the ridiculous script. Every effort has been made to represent 1909 as exactly the same as 2009 but with cholera and pillbox hats. The female characters are so absurdly modern that you can't imagine suffrage or feminism were ever necessary, so equal are they to the men in the hospital. Mr Dean, the coke-addled evil head doctor, is just absurd: he's part Johnny Depp in From Hell, part Paul Whitehouse in the Fast Show saying 'me, in a hospital full of nurses, with my reputation?'. This week the coked up young ham manages to turn a simple testicular operation into a gangrenous amputation thanks to the use of a now-banned anaesthetic called stovane. Good subject for drama, but sadly in context of this show the lesson felt as easy to take as the dangerous anesthetic. How We Used To Live, the brilliant schools history programme that ran for over decade, was much creakier – I cannot fault the production values of Casualty 1909, which go a long way to hide its many faults – but then HWYTL was made at a fraction of the cost and the cynicism.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Nooooo!!!
Margaret can't quit! She just can't!
Oh, she has.
Off to study ancient papyrus. Obviously. Maybe I'll hang about in the British Museum in the hope I bump into her in the Egyptian room.
Oh, she has.
Off to study ancient papyrus. Obviously. Maybe I'll hang about in the British Museum in the hope I bump into her in the Egyptian room.
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Masonic handshakes
They were at it in Ashes to Ashes the other week. And now in Inspector George Gently, George's trusty young assistant John Bacchus has signed up for the Freemasons. I work pretty close to Mason HQ in Great Queen Street in Holborn, ugly great thing it is, always full of short fat old men in blazers going in and out. Shiny brass buttons, you get the idea. It's like a Rotary Club version of Angels and Demons. In Ashes, Gene Hunt faces Alex Drake's withering scorn when she assumes (along with the audience) that he's gone over to the junior Illuminati, only to reveal how he'd played the system to get a result.
In Gently, Bacchus is more conflicted, going all the way with the trouser-rolling, while still trying to do his job as a copper, which leads his long-suffering wife to suspect he's getting his leg over on the side. It's a beautifully made series, very low key period detail unlike the Rock and Roll Years soundtracks of Ashes to Ashes or Heartbeat. But it has one very central flaw: Martin Shaw, doing the sort of stupid forced gravelly voice rivalled only by whinging primadonna Christian Bale as Batman.
I can't get beyond Martin Shaw being the unsexy one from The Professionals, an uppity genre telly ac-TOR in the mould of Leonard Nimoy, and a new age religious nut to rival Sting. And his absurd performance as George Gently isn't helping, frankly. A perfectly good detective series spoiled by this over-strained old ham. The seeming popularity of Shaw and his telly peer Robert Lindsay are mysteries to me. Surely people can't seriously enjoy watching them parade their questionable egos all over the BBC? You only have to watch Philip Glenister, effortlessly splendid even in the terrible Demons, to know that some actors deserve to feel confident about their skill. But Martin Shaw? I don't get it. And I even watched Rhodes. You can't say I haven't given him a chance.
In Gently, Bacchus is more conflicted, going all the way with the trouser-rolling, while still trying to do his job as a copper, which leads his long-suffering wife to suspect he's getting his leg over on the side. It's a beautifully made series, very low key period detail unlike the Rock and Roll Years soundtracks of Ashes to Ashes or Heartbeat. But it has one very central flaw: Martin Shaw, doing the sort of stupid forced gravelly voice rivalled only by whinging primadonna Christian Bale as Batman.
I can't get beyond Martin Shaw being the unsexy one from The Professionals, an uppity genre telly ac-TOR in the mould of Leonard Nimoy, and a new age religious nut to rival Sting. And his absurd performance as George Gently isn't helping, frankly. A perfectly good detective series spoiled by this over-strained old ham. The seeming popularity of Shaw and his telly peer Robert Lindsay are mysteries to me. Surely people can't seriously enjoy watching them parade their questionable egos all over the BBC? You only have to watch Philip Glenister, effortlessly splendid even in the terrible Demons, to know that some actors deserve to feel confident about their skill. But Martin Shaw? I don't get it. And I even watched Rhodes. You can't say I haven't given him a chance.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
A talent for understatement
I've finally got round to watching Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for the first time. Why on earth it has taken me for so long I have no idea – it was always going to be something I was going to love. I have an obsession with twentieth century history, and I recently read a wonderful account of le Carré's work in Dominic Sandbrook's postwar British history sequence, Never Had It So Good and White Heat. Sandbrook saw le Carré's writing as a reaction against the increasing glamourisation of spies in Cold War fiction, typified by James Bond's lavish lifestyle and gaudy exploits. Colour in le Carré's work, like fuss, is kept to a minimum. In the 1979 BBC dramatisation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the most colourful things are Beryl Reid's force of nature performance as former head of research Connie, Warren Clarke's bizarre queeny cameo as doorman Alwyn and Bernard Hepton's shirts. Hepton was one of my Mum's many unlikely crushes, alongside Alice Cooper, David Bowie and BBC legal correspondent Joshua Rosenberg.
The series starts and ends with two of the most terrifyingly tense sequences I've ever seen – Ian Bannen's journey into Communist Brno and his inevitable ambush, and the interception and unmasking of the top-level Soviet spy by George Smiley, played with detatched amusement and controlled rage by Alec Guinness. But outside of those two moments of thrilling action it's the greyness of this world that is most fascinating – the drab files, nondescript offices, unremarkable public schoolboys in senior positions, petty politics and anonymous meeting points. It shares with Yes, Minister a thoroughly believable depiction of the upper echelons of British power in the 1970s, devoid of any of those cliched signifiers of the age, be they disco or glam, hippies or punks, studs or bitches. The skill here is the lack of ostentation, both in the operations of the world it represents and in the plotting and characterisation. Here you see a world that the British could really excel in – an industry of undemonstrative irony and banality. The public school subplot makes clear that they believed the Cold War would be won on the playing fields of Eton. A whole echelon of society is sketched out here.
The characters are studies in emotional unintelligence. And that is what makes the ending so shocking: not the unmasking of the traitor, but the revelatory performance of Sian Phillips as Smiley's oft-mentioned wife Ann, who hears of all of the regime-shattering revelations from her husband with the sort of amused tolerance of a mother listening as her child relates stories of his boarding-school adventures. George, this all-knowing collossus of British Intelligence, is left blinking in the sunlight as his wife mocks his uncomprehending response to her thoughts on love: 'poor George'. Here it is, the real face of what the British ruling classes deemed intelligence: a man so wedded to the subtle intricacies of the politics of his work that he can no longer understand his estranged wife's direct emotional response. Clever, subtle, beautiful stuff. And I stil have Smiley's People to go!
EDIT: Almost forgot to mention the names. Smiley, of course, is anything but. Toby Esterhase is a name that will buzz about in my head forever, it being so wonderful to say. But it is Control that captivates. Control. An actual character called Control, amidst all the banality of the Bill Haydens and Roy Blands. Is the name an indication of a more mysterious and professional past to the Intelligence Service? Is it a courtesy? A joke? Did he turn up at work one day and tell everyone, 'I want you to stop calling me Dennis Jones, from now on I want you to call me Control.'
'Is that Dennis Control or Control Jones?'
'No, just Control.'
'Well, that's going to mess up the phone list.'
Best of all, they don't call him 'Control'. They call him 'Controle'. Rhymes with Mole.
The series starts and ends with two of the most terrifyingly tense sequences I've ever seen – Ian Bannen's journey into Communist Brno and his inevitable ambush, and the interception and unmasking of the top-level Soviet spy by George Smiley, played with detatched amusement and controlled rage by Alec Guinness. But outside of those two moments of thrilling action it's the greyness of this world that is most fascinating – the drab files, nondescript offices, unremarkable public schoolboys in senior positions, petty politics and anonymous meeting points. It shares with Yes, Minister a thoroughly believable depiction of the upper echelons of British power in the 1970s, devoid of any of those cliched signifiers of the age, be they disco or glam, hippies or punks, studs or bitches. The skill here is the lack of ostentation, both in the operations of the world it represents and in the plotting and characterisation. Here you see a world that the British could really excel in – an industry of undemonstrative irony and banality. The public school subplot makes clear that they believed the Cold War would be won on the playing fields of Eton. A whole echelon of society is sketched out here.
The characters are studies in emotional unintelligence. And that is what makes the ending so shocking: not the unmasking of the traitor, but the revelatory performance of Sian Phillips as Smiley's oft-mentioned wife Ann, who hears of all of the regime-shattering revelations from her husband with the sort of amused tolerance of a mother listening as her child relates stories of his boarding-school adventures. George, this all-knowing collossus of British Intelligence, is left blinking in the sunlight as his wife mocks his uncomprehending response to her thoughts on love: 'poor George'. Here it is, the real face of what the British ruling classes deemed intelligence: a man so wedded to the subtle intricacies of the politics of his work that he can no longer understand his estranged wife's direct emotional response. Clever, subtle, beautiful stuff. And I stil have Smiley's People to go!
EDIT: Almost forgot to mention the names. Smiley, of course, is anything but. Toby Esterhase is a name that will buzz about in my head forever, it being so wonderful to say. But it is Control that captivates. Control. An actual character called Control, amidst all the banality of the Bill Haydens and Roy Blands. Is the name an indication of a more mysterious and professional past to the Intelligence Service? Is it a courtesy? A joke? Did he turn up at work one day and tell everyone, 'I want you to stop calling me Dennis Jones, from now on I want you to call me Control.'
'Is that Dennis Control or Control Jones?'
'No, just Control.'
'Well, that's going to mess up the phone list.'
Best of all, they don't call him 'Control'. They call him 'Controle'. Rhymes with Mole.
Friday, 15 May 2009
Hero Corner No.3: Dennis Potter
In honour of Cathode Ray Tube's splendid article on The Singing Detective here's my all-time favourite TV moment...
My mum was obsessed with Dennis Potter, and I think she saw a lot of herself in Marlowe's isolation, aloofness and frustration (as, increasingly, do I). There were uncanny echoes of the long spells she'd spent in hospital over the years and her escape into a fantasy dreamworld of old pop songs. For me, the brilliance of Potter's talent was being able to capture the bewildering complexity of real people in his work. His writing holds more profound truths than the kitchen sink naturalists he'd graduated alongside simply because he approached the way he communicated so differently. He used every facet of the medium to take those characters to their most wonderful or terrifying extremes. It might be a horribly ironic song and dance routine haunting the protagonist, adults playing children at their cruelest or an inversion of conventional morality, such as the devil raping a disabled girl back to health. There's echoes of that daring melding of character and style in Kaufman and Almodóvar films, but I can't think of another writer who managed that so successfully on TV.
My mum was obsessed with Dennis Potter, and I think she saw a lot of herself in Marlowe's isolation, aloofness and frustration (as, increasingly, do I). There were uncanny echoes of the long spells she'd spent in hospital over the years and her escape into a fantasy dreamworld of old pop songs. For me, the brilliance of Potter's talent was being able to capture the bewildering complexity of real people in his work. His writing holds more profound truths than the kitchen sink naturalists he'd graduated alongside simply because he approached the way he communicated so differently. He used every facet of the medium to take those characters to their most wonderful or terrifying extremes. It might be a horribly ironic song and dance routine haunting the protagonist, adults playing children at their cruelest or an inversion of conventional morality, such as the devil raping a disabled girl back to health. There's echoes of that daring melding of character and style in Kaufman and Almodóvar films, but I can't think of another writer who managed that so successfully on TV.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
'I even went to Margate and spoke to a gay person'
This week it's make or break time for me and The Apprentice. Although fun this series hasn't been a patch on the last couple. It does always warm up as it goes on, but there's no splendid Raefs or Badgers left to keep the momentum up.
This week is all about rebranding Margate. Ben's idea of a family holiday is the Seychelles, Mona can barely say the words gay and lesbian without choking, James is worried about suggestive licking, Nick's concerned about the gays looking stiff, Margaret's in fits of laughter watching the munting models strip off. And Lorraine has never seen text over a photo – one presumes she's never bought a book or has seen an advert.
Deborah bullies her team into submission, especially Howard, who tries (and fails) to instill some basic common sense into their poster campaign. Consequently their leaflet remains half-finished. Her team actually work very well together, but she manages to scupper that with a dismissive, aggressive arrogance only she can carry off. I wouldn't have done Howard's job of having to pitch that amateurish shit of a campaign for all the 99 flakes in Margate. In the boardroom Deborah sits there blinking like a big fat shiny clockwork owl, Mona twitters like a tiny sparrow, James puffs up like a nesting booby. Nothing much happens.
Not up to standard. Where's the fun? Sir Alan needs to work harder or this will be The Apprentice going into a deep depression.
This week is all about rebranding Margate. Ben's idea of a family holiday is the Seychelles, Mona can barely say the words gay and lesbian without choking, James is worried about suggestive licking, Nick's concerned about the gays looking stiff, Margaret's in fits of laughter watching the munting models strip off. And Lorraine has never seen text over a photo – one presumes she's never bought a book or has seen an advert.
Deborah bullies her team into submission, especially Howard, who tries (and fails) to instill some basic common sense into their poster campaign. Consequently their leaflet remains half-finished. Her team actually work very well together, but she manages to scupper that with a dismissive, aggressive arrogance only she can carry off. I wouldn't have done Howard's job of having to pitch that amateurish shit of a campaign for all the 99 flakes in Margate. In the boardroom Deborah sits there blinking like a big fat shiny clockwork owl, Mona twitters like a tiny sparrow, James puffs up like a nesting booby. Nothing much happens.
Not up to standard. Where's the fun? Sir Alan needs to work harder or this will be The Apprentice going into a deep depression.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around...
They're all beginning to unravel, which is when the series gets really fun. Unflappable Ben, the champion of explosions and gunfire at Sandhurst ('he didn't actually go there, remember,' said Margaret) got whipped into a panicked froth by the end. 'You were totally spineless and you shat your pants' said James, who I've warmed to over the series. Philip projected his own faults relentlessly onto Lorraine (or, as Margaret rightly called her, Cassandra). She's 'erratic and volatile'; 'everything that comes out of her mouth is bollocks.'
It was all about selling a load of random objects round London against the clocks. The objects themselves caused some consternation. 'Is it in foreign?' asked Nooral, of the David Bailey book. 'You know what book people are like. They want to waste your time,' said Deborah. I can certainly confirm that.
Margaret was unimpressed by her charges. 'They were very lucky,' she said, of the random flogging of a skeleton in a pub. 'This must be one of the most stupid activities they have yet engaged in,' she said as Philip's team tried to flog the rug in an East End street market. 'I'm speechless!' she said at one point, eyes closed and boiling in frustration as only The Mountford can. And the whole audience was left speechless by the random nutter who suddenly bought their rug at the last moment.
And as with all but the most spectacularly disastrous tasks, it was the team who were edited to look the best who ended up in the boardroom. 'I don't know who's going to be fired, but it won't be me,' snapped Deborah, before she started savaging everyone, including Nick. Sadly the mardy cow was right and ghostly Nooral faded away, bones and all.
It was all about selling a load of random objects round London against the clocks. The objects themselves caused some consternation. 'Is it in foreign?' asked Nooral, of the David Bailey book. 'You know what book people are like. They want to waste your time,' said Deborah. I can certainly confirm that.
Margaret was unimpressed by her charges. 'They were very lucky,' she said, of the random flogging of a skeleton in a pub. 'This must be one of the most stupid activities they have yet engaged in,' she said as Philip's team tried to flog the rug in an East End street market. 'I'm speechless!' she said at one point, eyes closed and boiling in frustration as only The Mountford can. And the whole audience was left speechless by the random nutter who suddenly bought their rug at the last moment.
And as with all but the most spectacularly disastrous tasks, it was the team who were edited to look the best who ended up in the boardroom. 'I don't know who's going to be fired, but it won't be me,' snapped Deborah, before she started savaging everyone, including Nick. Sadly the mardy cow was right and ghostly Nooral faded away, bones and all.
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Spongebob Squarepants, John Major and Phil
Well, I didn't think anything on TV would make me squirm this week as much as Nuts in May had, but then there was The Apprentice, almost too shameful to watch.
Margaret, Van Helsing that she is, could see the dark heart of moany, preening Phil. 'I still think he believes this was a good campaign', she said. And that was the really embarrassing thing about it.
Margaret, Van Helsing that she is, could see the dark heart of moany, preening Phil. 'I still think he believes this was a good campaign', she said. And that was the really embarrassing thing about it.
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