The Killing

I've just read an article in The Independent  cheering The Hour to the rafters and revelling in it being recommissioned. If you've read any of my blogs on The Hour you'll know I've found it frustrating on many levels. What the article suggests is that the only thing wrong with the series was its length - it wasn't long enough. Hmmm.

There's certainly a comparison to be made between short British series and longer American runs. For me it comes down to one simple question; how much story do you have?

The Hour had six hours to tell its story, it had nice costumes and sets, good actors but to my mind it was muddled and confused and the payoff was a damp squib. I was surprised when I heard it had been recommissioned. Would it have been better as a ten parter, a twelve parter?


The Wire had sixty episodes to tell its story and it made perfect sense. Some of the dialogue was often impenetrable (it was supposed to be) but it made you work hard, it pulled you along, it never tried to push the plot at you. Would it have worked as six hours? No.

I'm currently engrossed in the Danish Thriller 'The Killing' - BBC 4 is showing the twenty part series one part at a time over almost every night. I missed it first time around but boy am I glad I've caught the repeat. There is so much to admire here. Plot points come down to a look, a glance. Nothing is pushed at you, it moves at a slow sure pace. It knows where it is going and how it wants to get there.

Like the Wire the characters are drawn from different spheres - the victim's family, the police, a candidate in the mayoral elections, teachers, friends. At the point at which we meet the main detective, Sarah Lund, she's about to leave Denmark with her son and and set up home in Sweden with her new man. The fact that she's about to go and leave the investigation adds so much tension to the early episodes. Alongside side her drive to find the killer is her desire to join her man. But she's as hooked into finding her man as we are.

But what I Iike is the ripple effect the killing of a young woman has. Waves go out and collide with the wider society. If ever there was an argument to slow the pace of your story this and Mad Men and the Wire shows the way. Each episode can be totally compelling, move the story on - unlike say, Lost - and head towards a series climax befitting of everything that's gone before. As I said before length is determined by how much story you have and the writers behind The Killing have bags.

Twenty episodes will not be enough of this series. 

Politically Incorrect

The BBC has been running a drama called 'The Hour' for the past five weeks, it concludes this week. I wrote about it recently and my view hasn't changed. Having been complicit in selling itself as 'the British Mad Men' it proved to be nothing of the sort. It is a thriller masquerading as a birth of hard hitting TV news drama.

I was so confused by the end of last weeks episode I didn't know where we were, what the show was about or why the considerable smartness of the production team hadn't kept a tighter grip on the story and particularly the way modern sensibilities - and phrases - cropped up so regularly. No woman would keep a tin of Birds Custard next to a pack of Brillo Pads in her cupboard.

I won't rehash my Mad Men v The Hour arguments except to say this; if you are writing historical drama set way in the past you have more latitude to make stuff up than you do if you set something sixty years ago. There are too many folk around who remember life as it was in the fifties and there's far too much evidence, film, TV, novels,magazines and newspapers, of how people spoke and acted and thought in the not so distant past.

To dip into the world of the 1950, 60's and 70's can be illuminating. What passed muster then does pass muster now. But isn't it better to show things as they were - as Mad Men attempts to do - rather than project contemporary attitude backwards.

With that in mind I offer you the following ads that tell us much more about our recent past than a show where characters spout modern day phrases and present twenty-first century ideas as 1950's thoughts.

This is the real past.

Scary, huh. But that's the truth of it. We look at these ads, tut, shake our heads in disbelief and occasionally smile. The point is, we learn by our mistakes. I think The Hour missed that point completely.

Anticipation - The Book Becomes The Movie Of The Book

This week the film of David Nicholls' book, One Day,  is released. The book has sold a gazillion copies. It doesn't speak to a generation it shouts. I don't know why other people identify with it - so much of it is patently about me, why would people be interested in what I got up to during the 80's and 90's. And that's the thing, Nicholls has hit the mother load, men and women of a certain age read it and think it's about them. And they're right. It is.

But it's also about all of us.Universal truths and specific truths have become one.

It is the only novel I have ever read - EVER underlined - that made me gasp. If you've read it you'll know the bit. If you haven't I'd say read the book before you see the film.

There's been so much anticipation for this film, unsurprising given its following. There's also been much whinging about the casting. American actress Anne Hathaway cast as Emma is almost as outrageous as English Vivien Leigh cast as Scarlett O'Hara. Except Leigh's approximation of Scarlett's Southern drawl drew less criticism than Hathaway's tilt at the mother tongue of Geoffrey Boycott and Fred Trueman. Emma is from Yorkshire and Yorkshire folk take no prisoners, especially when it comes to the way they talk.

That aside, I've also heard women say Hathaway is too pretty, too thin and too tall. It's because they've done with Emma what I did with Dexter - we've projected ourselves onto these characters. And that's what novels allow us to do. We use our imagination to create Emma and Dexter in our minds, to create the world in which they live, the rooms and restaurants, holiday apartments and TV studios they inhabit. But when they make the movie it's someone elses ideas we're looking at.

I've met David Nicholls once, there isn't a more handsome, intelligent, funny, thoughtful, clever writer out there - and for that we all hate him. I'm delighted he's had the success he's had because the stories he tells, the scripts he writes are peppered with humour and drama in the way life is. His works breathes because of it. I loathe TV shows that rant at me and create bubbles of comedy from the 'comedy characters'. Likewise comedy that has no dramatic tension can so often fall flat. Nicholls understands we should write in three dimensions.

But to adapt his own successful novel will have been torture. As we know, the two things are not the same. Leave out too much of the book and you'll upset the faithful readership who now go on pilgrimages to Edinburgh to see - to touch -  the places Emma and Dexter inhabited. But to stick to closely to a novel's text can horribly screw a screenplay.

Except...

I doubt there has ever been a novel better structured for transfer to the screen. I'm really looking forward to seeing what he's done with it. How much has stayed, how much has gone, how much he needed to create anew.

But I'm not just going as a writer, I'm going as someone who wants to see the special story brought to life.

The anticipation is building, we don't have long to wait.

Super 8, Cowboys, Apes and Aliens

This summer's slew of comic book capers has come thick and fast. Barely has Thor's Hammer cooled then it's on to Captain America then Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Cowboys and Aliens. I suppose the Apes movie might count itself outside the comic book genre but I don't. All these films have had their moments, there was much about Captain America that I enjoyed, Apes too but mostly the moments I savour come early in the movies, during the set up. The 1930's setting for the first act of Captain America was hugely enjoyable, well thought out and benefited from a terrific turn by Stanley Tucci.

Similarly the Apes tried a dramatic route before getting to the Monkey madness finale. What neither managed to do was sustain the level of character through into the latter parts of the films.

Cowboys and Aliens on the other hand does manage to keep its tone pretty consistent throughout - a bunch of cowboys, aided by some Indians and 13 from House set about rescuing friends and family from a bunch of pesky 'demons' sent here to steal away our gold. What it doesn't do is entertain in quite the way I thought it would. I'm all for the mixing of genres - but it's a bitch to make work just look at the earlier Cowboys versus prehistoric monsters movie 'Valley of the Gwangi'. Okay, CGI kicks the ass of stop motion model animation but that's never enough. Any film where the characterisation is two dimensional to the point where you don't give a fig whether they live or die leaves me cold. And that, sadly is what Cowboys and Aliens left me - cold. It was all okay. Lots of what we've seen before. Surprisingly short of laughs and desperately under cooked on characters. Harrison Ford got to growl - a bit. Sam Rockwell got an amusing line. What a waste. The movie has five credited screenwriters plus credits for original story so this was a movie that's had more paws on it than 101 Dalmatians.

As I wrote just recently, I'm bored with all this comic book stuff because we're being suffocated by it. Where are the other genres? For years Hollywood has targeted teenage boys and the rest of us can go whistle.

But hang on, there is a movie, aimed at this age group, which reaches out to an older audience. Not because it's a new and powerful drama, or a comedy that holds a mirror to the lives of baby boomers but something that is soaked in so much love I couldn't help but like it.

Super 8 is a story of young teenagers making a movie on Super 8 film - thus instantly setting it before the age of video tape. Hell, we're back in the seventies. JJ Abrams grew up watching Spielberg, on screen and up close, and every frame of Super 8 is a love letter to his hero. It has the suburban setting, the warmth and humour, the coming of age touches and an Alien, though the message here is Go Home rather than Phone Home. Whilst it seems as if we're watching an old Spielberg they forgot to release, there is no denying there's a craft and understanding at work here that delivers three dimensional characters. It's been my favourite popcorn movie of the summer.


But what I'm really waiting for is the new working of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

At last something grown up to look forward to.

The Show That Never Was

Untransmitted pilots litter the cupboards of TV channels like galaxies in the heavens. Commissioned on the basis of a half-decent script or a pitch or a star name they are televisions research and development. Sometimes a hunch that something will work is enough. Sometimes all the data, research and planning that goes into a show counts for nothing. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time but it turned out to be a pile of shit. And there's a mountain of that in TV.

I'm a firm believer that pilots help a good show and help weed out the potentially bad - but not always.

This is the story of a show that was never piloted, went straight to series and has never, ever been seen except by a handful of execs who had to watch it through their fingers.

It was the mid nineties and Entertainment television was populated by quiz shows and games shows and parlour games. "Reality" TV was a long way off.

I was series producing two Noel Edmonds' shows simultaneously. The other side of the corridor, my boss, John King, was cooking up an idea for a show I didn't get to hear about until it was commissioned. By that time it was already too late.

The genesis wasn't an idea but a chance meeting. He was staying at a hotel when the fire alarm sounded in the middle of the night. He grabbed what he could and made his was down to the assembly point. It was there in the car park, as disgruntled guests waited for the all-clear,  that he bumped into someone else with ruffled hair in a bathrobe, the comedian Jim Davidson. John engaged him in conversation - as he did with everyone - and told him he had the perfect format for Jim's talents. At the time Davidson was fronting a snooker based gameshow that had proved extremely popular on the BBC - remember this is the mid-nineties. Davidson was flattered and John promised to send him an outline. But John was doing what he always did, he'd tried to catch the fish before he's bought a rod.

There was no format.

Quickly he cast around, and came up with something he called 'Jim's Treasure Islands' - a brand new kind of show where couples would compete on a desert island to find a treasure chest. But as with all things John touched he was good at broadstrokes, terrible at fine detail. I don't know who did the format but it certainly wasn't anyone in the BBC Ents department and I doubt anyone who'd ever been near a gameshow. But John had enough, armed with sketches of smiling water ski-ing contestants and a bankable BBC 1 name he took the show to the front office where it was greenlit.

This was when I first heard about it. I had enough on my plate but he showed me some sketches and then told me he'd found an island off Australia that was perfect.

"Australia? "
"Yes"
"What about the contestants?"
"We're taking them with us"
"You're flying ordinary folk from England to Oz to take part in a game show?"
"It'll be great"


This was going to be some production. I wondered why we couldn't find somewhere closer to home but he was insistent. Australia had everything he needed to make his show. Except John didn't really make shows. He clever assembled people who knew what they were doing and he stood back and took an overview - or as we called it interferred with bloody ridiculous suggestions. On this one he was in charge.

That was my last involvement until some months later when they were down under making the show and word came back that all was not well.

On arrival they discovered that their idyll was not quite what they'd expected. As props and games started to be built the local authorities stepped in. What the hell did they think they were doing? A new kind of gameshow they replied. Not here mate, this is a protected bird sanctuary, you don't get to make your tv show here, sport. Piss off!

Now they're in the shit.
All their plans have been blown out of the water before the contestant have even got into the water.
Calls were made, a beach was found. Not exactly a Treasure Island but at least there was sand.

They relocate. A storm hits, flattens the sets and blows the props away. They scrabble to make do with what's left.

And all this time the contestants from England are sitting around wondering what the hell is going on but then again, they'r on an all expenses paid trip to OZ. Whey-hey!

The sun comes out and they start filming. At last. Except Davidson had very pale skin and instantly burnt. They now had a host who looked like a lobster. They covered him with cream, that made thing worse. He was now the ghost of a lobster.  What's more he wasn't a very funny lobster. To keep costs down they had decoded they didn't need a writer. WHAT? Yep, they had enough money to take all those people to the other side of the world to make a gameshow but there wasn't enough money for a writer.

John had chosen a vintage director who'd spent his life making motoring programmes. Why? No idea. This meant he didn't have a feel for entertainment formats. It was a mess. What was shot on the beach looked like a wet Wednesday in Weston Super Mare, what was shot on the water was worse. He decided to put his camera on the deck of a motor cruiser as Davidson explained to the contestants what was expected of them in the following game. But the sea was hevier than they'd expected and the horizon went up and down in the background. Watching the footage made you feel sea-sick.

The games were frankly pathetic. There was no sense of scale or reason why the show should have travelled all those miles. The games on the water were shot too wide to have any impact, the games on the beach resembled a televised Easter Egg hunt.  When I saw the footage I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I felt sorry for the contestant who'd gone all that way and obviously thought they were part of something special and were putting real effort into games that made you want to cringe with embarrassment.

By the time John and his crew got back from Oz the word was already out. This was a turkey of epic proportions. But John didn't see it like that. He didn't like our nagative reaction to the footage.

They went away to cut it. They barely managed to pull together one show. Meetings were called, gloom descended.

He co-opted one of my best directors to recut it but there just wasn't enough usable material to make anything work. It was a disaster. John was now looking for other poeple to blame and moved on, distancing himself from the show.

It cost millions. It has never been seen.

They should have made a pilot. In Weston Super Mare.

On Writing and Rioting

First a grovelling apology.

There is nothing worse than a blogger who doesn't blog. Disease, poverty, rioting in the streets none of those come close. This blogger set up a contract with his readers to writer things that might be a) of mild interest b) occasionally humorous c) regular. For the past two weeks this keyboard has been silent but I site extenuating circumstances. The sudden and inexplicable demand for this blogger to present radio shows - the majority of which have led me to a late night slot at BBC Bristol. So for the past week and a half I've been turning up at the studios at nine thirty at night and not getting away until after one in the morning.

How do those late night guys do it on a regular basis?

After two days I was knackered. My body clock was all over the place. It was like every day was the day after I'd stepped off a long-haul flight. And then I discovered daytime sleep. Not so much a power nap, more a case of nodding off after an early dinner. Forty five minutes of early evening slumber translates into the ability to stay awake at night and function during the day.

But that's not all that's kept me from the keyboard.

Life got in the way, in a way that I'd always been able to manage. But with the kids on holiday and a house full of people suddenly I was reminded I didn't own the place for the seven hours it usually goes quiet after everyone has gone.

There's just been so much to do. All those jobs I've been quietly procrastinating over have slapped me full in the face.

So, here we are, mid August, I'm 'sitting in' for the late night jock on the West Of England BBC service and presenting a new Sunday show on BBC Bristol. Hell, it's like having a 'proper job' again. One where you have to leave the house.

But it's not really a proper job is it.

Radio presenters aren't out there researching a cure for cancer or helping the world stay this side of rack and ruin. What do we - notice how I've suddenly become 'we' - do that makes our job proper in any sense at all?

Simply put it's this - radio, more than television - is still a big part of people's lives. It is a personal connection to a voice in a studio somewhere who might be articulating what you're thinking, might be making you smile and in the past week here in England, is keeping you up to date with news about the the blight of rioting that's hit so many of our big cities.

Whilst I've been sitting there playing music and engaging in some backwards and forwards on any number of amusing subjects I've also read the news - never good at any time but in this past week its been baffling to understand what's been going on.

I have no answer to why people have done what they did. I deplore their actions and applaud those who have brought rioters and looters to justice.

No matter how bad your situation nothing gives you the right to smash in shop fronts and loot good or set fires that burn business premises with flats above where people are living. This is supposed to be a civilised  country - and of course, for the most part, it is. But go off the high streets and main roads and you'll discover that England is not all a green and pleasant land. There is so much we must come to grips with, parenting, schools, lack of work and ambition. Angry young people have been demanding 'Respec' without the slightest idea of what respect is. We can argue about whose fault it is or we can draw a line, set a plan to start again, accept that there is an underclass that no longer plays by the rules and try to put it right.

How you go about that I have no idea but I wish those who will try to mend our broken society the very best of luck.

And I promise to get back to a regularly writing here.