// Film, TV, Theatre
Elisabeth Sladen
Watching a Doctor Who DVD the other day, the flatmate – who isn’t really a fan – joined and was caught up in a documentary on the late Ian Marter and his writing of the Target novels. In it Elisabeth Sladen was visibly moved by remembering him and Chris was touched by her affection and obvious sense of loss. “Oh bless her,” he said. “She’s so lovely.” And I couldn’t help but agree.
Tuesday night he looked up from Facebook on his iPad. “Sarah something on Doctor Who has died?” he said. “What’s that about?”
I checked my own Facebook and twitter and just froze. “Oh Christ,” I said. “It’s Lis Sladen.”
He sat bolt upright, like a rabbit caught in headlights, and put his hand to his mouth. “No!”
We barely spoke for the next half hour. Such was the shock at hearing of Elisabeth’s death. It was, frankly unthinkable.
I am still stunned by the news even after all this time. And so it seems are much of the country, young and old. Her portrayal of Sarah Jane was a tour de force: it was warm, genuine, heartfelt; a mix of believable terror, bravery and humour.
And from what I saw of her in documentaries and commentaries, Elisabeth also shared those qualities. A view borne out by what I’ve heard from friends who met and worked with her.
Elisabeth Sladen was a true one-off who illuminated so many lives either through her performances or in person, and she will be missed by so many. My thoughts go out to her family and friends and colleagues. And to those children now struggling to understand that the star of their favourite show is no more. Even I, as immune to death as I seem to have become, can’t wrap my head around it.
Still so young, and with so much left to give. Rest in peace Elisabeth, and thank you so much.
Posted on April 21, 2011 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre, In Memoriam | 0 Comments
The Merlin Drinking Game
Now, I have to say, I like the BBC’s Merlin. This year has proven slightly frustrating in some ways (Morgana just suddenly becoming evil and showing no other character, no-one else in Camelot discovering about Merlin, etc) but it’s a likeable enough show with engaging leads and high production values.
So in preparation for the first part of the two part finale The Coming of Arthur (to be followed next week by The Mopping Up of Merlin) I decided to see if I could put together a quick drinking game in its honour.
The rules so far are that you must down a drink for every one of the following:
- A drink for every evil smirk from Morgana
- A drink for every time Arthur is either looking the other way or ends up being unconscious when Merlin magics something
- Two drinks in celebration if Arthur gets his shirt off. You know… Just because
- A drink for every time Arthur and Merlin bicker like a couple who haven’t fucked in days.
- A drink for every time Tom Ellis appears on screen. You know… Just because
- A drink for every time Gwain grins like a loveable Irish rogue
- A drink for every allegedly abandoned place still well lit by candles
- A drink for every time Morgause acts like someone stole her eyeliner and shat in her handbag
- A drink for every time Merlin goes to Gaius for advice and ends up being told they can’t tell Uther or Arthur
I was totally twatted by eight o’clock last night.
It’s that first rule that was the killer: I saw three smirks. THREE! And one was in full view of Gwen. That’s how evil Morgana is now.
Posted on November 28, 2010 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre | 1 Comment
Sordid Lives: The Series
Gay-themed drama (and I do mean drama, not porn) can be faintly painful to sit through as a viewer. The painfully obvious lack of budget, the clunky dialogue, the clumsy plot development, the sub-porn acting talent and not having any money to do any ADR seem almost determined to keep the genre in the ghetto.
That said, even then, sometimes they veer into the so-bad-they’re at least entertaining, if not capable of actually attaining the level of good. (Yes, The Lair, I’m looking at you.)
Recently, though, I was trawling through the darkest reaches of the Sky+ channels when I stumbled across two hot guys about to make out. My interest, naturally, was piqued, and I then found myself staying put as the show in question unravelled before me with a script that actually amused for the right reasons, and managed to stay just the right side of insanity to be compelling and not laughable.
This, as you may have guessed, was Sordid Lives: the Series, a more-or-less prequel to a 2000 film (“a black comedy about white trash”), that somehow has found itself on the ailing Film 24 channel in heavy rotation.
And I can’t recommend it highly enough. Olivia Newton-John and Rue McClanahan are the big names in a uniformly great cast and amazingly the whole thing even manages to bear repeated viewing with various subtleties revealing themselves with each visit.
The budget is clearly low (although this is not apparent from the design or the acting, more from some slightly flabby editing early on) but as a whole it really is a genuinely funny and engaging show with real warmth and wit.
There’s arguably a slightly slow start in the first couple of episodes, but the fourth (“Call Waiting”) is probably one of my favourite episodes of television ever – it’s the sort of phone-led story that was Steven Moffat’s stock in trade, pre Doctor Who – and the subsequent episodes fair rattle along from there on in.
Sadly there’s only one series, funding having been pulled after, as it would have been great to see the events of the film brought into and rationalised properly in the series (the continuity of the story in the film doesn’t totally match up).
I genuinely hope they somehow get the chance to do more. It deserves it.
It’d also be nice if the DVDs finally came out on Region 2, because I doubt Film 24 will be with us much longer…
Posted on July 18, 2010 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre | 0 Comments
Were the World Mine
Now, see, I don’t really do gay movies. I’ve even committed the cardinal sin of never seeing either the Wizard of Oz or Beautiful Thing, but the flatmate’s always had a bit of a thing for them. Latter Days, Shelter, Angels in America and so on he’s purchased and devoured.
In keeping with my general outlook on life, though, I stick with the TV. The redeemably awful Dante’s Cove, the irredeemably awful The Lair (I mean dear Christ that’s a bad show, but that’s another post), and the beautiful Christian and Olli storyline in Germany’s Verbotene Liebe are much more my thing – because they’re TV not film (it’s an odd metal block I’ll admit).
I’ve tried, though. I bought 200 American which was a reasonably enjoyable film, hampered by stilted dialog delivered with porn-star like subtlety and – something common to a lot of gay-to-DVD releases – lousy sound recording. And, given that nothing was on TV last night, when Amazon suggested Were the World Mine I took one look at the trailer and decided it looked barking enough to get on special delivery.
And, much to my annoyance, some of the dialogue was unintelligable (I gather it’s some sort of indie-film thing – an attempt at realism I guess) but my God, I think I love this film way too much to be true.
It’s got some thumpingly good tunes (of its own, I mean – although Patrick Wolf’s Magic Position is in there a lot too), the lovestruck Timothy and object of his desire Jonathon are just gorgeous, and if the story were to be summed up in three letters you’d be hard pressed to decide between “WTF” and “LSD”. It is, frankly, insanely good fun. And all loaded with so much from A Midsummer Night’s Dream you feel quite educated watching it.
So I’d recommend it heartily. Go get. Go watch. Go see. And go enjoy.
(And if someone could arrange for Tanner Cohen or Nathaniel David Becker to be delivered to my bedroom soon I’d be very grateful. Ta ever so.)
Posted on May 31, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre | 0 Comments
Stop Messing About
In what has turned out to be an oddly busy week for me culturally, Daniel and I last night popped along to the West End Theatre to see “Stop Messing About“, the sequel show to the popular “Round the Horne… Revisited” I saw a couple of years back.
And much fun it was too. More or less in the same vein as its predecessor, you were effectively transported back to the BBC Radio theatre for two acts, each of which gave you the feel of being at a recording of the actual Stop Messing About radio show. I gather there was a little new material, but most of it was authentic sketches taken from the first series and despite a relatively small audience, it seemed to be appreciated by all concerned.
The only problem is that, much like the radio show itself, the stage presentation suffered on two counts. First it wasn’t by Barry Cryer and Marty Feldman who wrote the first three series of Round the Horne, it was by Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer who wrote the fourth. Received wisdom suggests that somehow they weren’t quite as good at Horne as the first team and for a change it’s recieved wisdom I do agree with. Not bad, certainly, but not as good.
Secondly was that Kenneth Horne wasn’t it it – but again this was what prevented Stop Messing About from working so well as its parent show. Indeed much of SMA was apparently supposed to have been the fifth series of Horne, but Kenneth’s death rather prevented that happening and his duties were therefore – rather obviously – split between the announcer Douglas Smith and Kenneth Williams. And neither of them quite managed to be the avuncular solid authority figure around whom the other cast could spin wildly out of control. Both were excellent performers for their parts, of course, but their parts by necessity couldn’t anchor the show in the same way and SMA was therefore ultimately cancelled.
So in some respects the stage show’s strength and weakness was in its accuracy. But nonetheless the second half seemed more confident and acerbic and the audience and cast had warmed up nicely and I would heartily recommend seeing it if you can. Robin Sebastian puts in another scarily accurate turn as Kenneth Williams, and Nigel Harrison and Charles Armstrong similarly put in highly commendable comic turns as Hugh Paddick and Douglas Smith.
My surprise of the night though was Emma Atkins as Joan Sims. Personally I’m not convinced she was as much of a fit for the part of Sims as the others were for their roles (visually or vocally) but by God she showed an amazing range and extremely deft comic timing which showcased her perfectly. I was, therefore, incredibly surprised in my (admittedly) snobbish anti-soap way to find that she’s best known as Charity Dingle from Emmerdale.
All in all, it’s about time that more of these types of shows were put on. There’s something charming and immediate about them unlike radio recordings of today and, at its best, the material just shines.
Posted on May 14, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre | 0 Comments
The Frontline
Last time I went into the Globe Theatre it was still being built. All very fascinating and there was a certain amount of “I’ve been there” when Doctor Who visited for the Shakespeare Code the other year, but I always vaguely regretted not having seen a production there.
But last night I accompanied the flatmate and a few of his Credit Suisse colleagues to a production of The Frontline in order, more than anything else, to put this right.
It was a shame, in many respects, that the weather took the decision to plunge itself rapidly towards zero over the course of the evening, but I have to say it was a rather enjoyable event. The Globe is beautiful, and a quite mesmerising performance space – albeit considerably smaller than it looked on telly and certainly smaller than I remember (although it was, naturally, when I was a mere child last time).
That said, I would advise anyone going to shell out a quid for cushion hire. I wasn’t, it must be said at all comfy without a seatback (my poor back!) but without a cushion I really wouldn’t have made it to the second act.
Which would have been a shame. I wasn’t entirely sold on the production from the website, and had misgivings having heard some reviews, but found myself leaving with a satisfied appetite for theatre, and a reasonable sense of bewilderment.
It’s a shocking and violent piece at times, full of profanity, and drugs, and sexuality, but it’s also very funny and as philosophical and heart-warming as it is harrowing. The parallel-running of various sub-plots on the stage was cannily managed so that you were able to follow two or three things happening at once with little difficulty.
There were a few niggles in that the songs I didn’t feel were universally strong, and a couple of the plot threads seemed to be left dangling somewhat, but given the overall standard of acting (and a wonderful monologue on the wonders of Marmite) it seems churlish to complain. I was left reeling and can heartily recommend it.
(And amazingly, I had no idea that the God-botherer with the beard and the guitar was the staggeringly beautiful Jonathan Kerrigan who I’ve had a crush on for years. But then that’s probably just as well. I’d probably have yanked him off the stage if I’d known.)
Posted on May 12, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre | 0 Comments
Demons – Episode Six
Well, that’s that then. Demons has finally ended on an episode which at last added some much needed ambiguity, but still totally failed to stop me shouting at the screen.
It was arguably the worst “where the fuck did that come from” resolution of any science-fiction/fantasy drama ever, too.
I did wonder at some points during the run whether this series was being made to make Primeval and Robin Hood look good, you know. Even if that wasn’t the intent it’s certainly been the side-effect anyway.
It’s one of those things where you look back at Doctor Who and think how damned lucky we were.
I doubt even Christian Cooke getting his top off more would have saved it to be honest.
(And please, dear boy, if you will insist on wearing muscle tops, hit the gym more. They look daft without a bit of tone on the arm.)
Posted on February 8, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre | 0 Comments
Das War Selstam!
One of my goals for this year has been to learn German again. I did a bit of it at school because we were pretty much forced to learn a language of sorts, but I was never very good at it and had other things on my mind anyway.
But I’ve been to Berlin twice and loved it. And the more I get to know about Germany and its citizens the more I like them. They’re a very forward-looking people, and very tolerant – although this tolerance apparently doesn’t extend to Scientology, which is banned (so frankly I love them all the more).
I’ve even gone as far as watching extracts of Verbotene Liebe, the Das Erste version of Sons and Daughters. It’s gained a certain amount of international attention of late due to the gay couple Christian and Olli being amongst the hottest, sweetest and above all best acted gay couple on primetime telly. (And for a change, they get some. They’re not neutered and sexless like most TV gays.)
Admitedly it’s a good job someone’s been doing some fairly free translations for the subtitles, but I’ve been drawn into the story like you wouldn’t believe. Even to the point I want to watch whole episodes of the show from now on if I could just find them!
So I’ve been digging out the language aids. Getting some tuition podcasts, ripping Chris’ NLP German course to iTunes and flicking through my Lonely Planet phrasebook – a little book with a huge amount of humour to be had.
It contains, for example, German translations of the following phrases in its romance section:
- I’d rather not.
- Your ego is out of control
- That was weird
And my absolute favourite:
- Before this goes any further, I must be upfront. I’m an accountant.
Either the compiler of this volume has a very dry sense of humour, or they had a lousy time in Germany last time they were there…
Posted on January 25, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre, My So-Called Life, The World we Live In | 3 Comments
Oh for Fuck’s Sake…
I’m so tired of the whole SachsGate thing.
Now Andrew Sach’s daughter has seen fit to blab to that ever present spectre at the feast, the DailyHateMail, about Ross returning to the screen:
“Ross is reacting to the public hype rather than to my family. He’s ridiculing people’s reaction to the radio broadcast and the BBC for its censorship of him.”
Well, frankly I can’t blame him. The public hype was by far the most embarrassing thing about the whole affair and should rightly be lampooned.
Although it probably suits neither Kate Sachs nor the HateMail to remember this, Ross apologised to Sachs before the whole affair went as overboard as it did.
The only person who has come out of it at all well has been Sachs himself – even though the sudden appearance of his family in the press (as a result of Ross’ return) smacks of a distinct lack of dignity.
Dear Lord. Fame-Vultures to a man (or woman).
Posted on January 24, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre, The World we Live In | 0 Comments
Chalk
Now some of you may know that Steven Moffat, now Doctor Who supremo extraoirdinaire, is not only the author of some of the best episodes of the revived series, but is also an acclaimed writer in other fields too. (Some of you may not know this, but consider yourselves educated at last.)
His previous credits include the creation and writing duties on Press Gang, a series I must confess I never quite got into (possible ITV snobbery there), but also three acutely observed, painfully funny and intricately plotted farce-led comedy series: Joking Apart, Chalk and Coupling.
The latter of course is a deservedly huge success known to many, the former a bit of a cult hit but certainly fondly remembered, but “Chalk” is an oddity in that not only was it panned horribly at the time by the critics and died a huge death, but also that Moffat himself won’t even acknowledge its existence.
Why? Well, who knows. Only Moffat would be able to tell, but I suspect the mauling he got for it cut deep. But in any case he is as wrong to disown it as the critics were to pan it because it’s as brilliant (arguably more so) than the other two works.
And you can now judge for yourself because the first series has been put out on DVD by independent company ReplayDVD. And I urge you to support them and buy a copy so that they make enough to put series two out.
A second series? Even with the reaction it got? Oh yes… The second series was commissioned before the first had aired based purely on the reaction of the studio audience who lapped it up. It seems that it was the BBC’s idiotic decision to compare it to Fawlty Towers that angered the critics to the point they turned the audience against it before it had even been seen.
Now in the cold light of day you can see it for the magic it really is.
Buy it. You won’t regret it. It may have been a critical and ratings failure but the fact of the matter remains that anyone who sees it loves it.
Posted on January 10, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre | 0 Comments