Golden Globes - Only The Brits Won!

I was in America during the '92 Olympics. It was a surreal experience for a sports fan. In Britain we get to see pretty much all the coverage going. Doesn't matter if a final is made up of a Swiss, a Nigerian, a Japanese, a Pole, a Luxembourger, a Venetian and a Finn we'd still get to see it.

In America the coverage was a little different. Only events that included Americans were televised. No Americans in the event - the event doesn't exist.

I mention this because yesterday morning I woke up to the news on BBC 5Live. When they got to the item about who'd won what at the Golden Globe I turned up the radio. I heard that Idris Elba had won for Luther, Kate Winslett - slumming on TV in a magnificent adaptation of Mildred Pierce - had got the top prize in her category, that this Brit had won this and that Brit had won that and well done to Downton Abbey. And that was it.

Idris Elba, Golden Globe winner for Luther

According to BBC radio If it wasn't British it wasn't worth including. Well, hello! Some of us were interested in the rest of the winners.

Thank God for the internet.

When I logged on and tracked down the information the BBC didn't want to give me I discovered that George Clooney won best actor for his role in The Descendants, which also won Best Drama. That

French black-and-white silent film, The Artist, - fabulous, fabulous, fabulous, really if you haven't seen it you must - picked up three awards - Best Comedy or Musical Film, Best Original Score and Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical Film, for its star, Jean Dujardin.

Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier who appears in the mostly silent film, almost upstaged the acceptance speech by performing several tricks on stage at the Beverley Hilton Hotel, including playing dead. 

On a night that also saw Morgan Freeman honored with the Cecil B. Demille Award for his outstanding contribution to film, it was again the host of the show British comic Ricky Gervais who was causing controversy. Watching the show later I wish Ricky Gervais had played dead - that 'I'm a smug bastard and the funniest man in the world act' is wearing horribly thin. 

Meryl Streep won Best Actress in a Drama for her portrayal of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady and therefore got a mention on the BBC. But I'm not sure I heard them say congratulations to Michelle Williams, who won Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn.

Even the fact that Martin Scorcese received a standing ovation from his peers after he won Best Director for Hugo didn't warrant a mention.  

In the television awards, Modern Family won Best Musical or Comedy, Homeland won Best Drama, and Downton Abbey won Best Mini-Series.Claire Danes won Best Actress in a Drama for her role as Carrie in Homeland, Matt LeBlanc won Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for Episodes - where he plays a fictional version of himself. LeBlanc paid tribute to the show's writers, saying they "write a Matt LeBlanc who is way more interesting and fun. I wish I was him." Jessica Lange won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Constance in horror-drama American Horror Story, Laura Dern won Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her role as whistleblower Amy in Enlightened.

Kelsey Grammer, who earlier today announced his wife Kayte Walsh Grammer was pregnant with their first child, won Best Actor in a Drama for his portrayal of Tom Kane in Boss, Peter Dinklage won Best Supporting Actor for character Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones (hooray).

Wow all those other ‘non- British’ people won things.

On to the Oscars, the best bit of which is the opening twenty minutes. You can be assured it'll knock your socks off - it's always the best bit and always the bit the BBC chop off so they can show us 'the highlights' of who won what. That's like showing us Match of the Day but editing out the goals. 

I was going to write about the final episode of Sherlock - but I'm still trying to work out the ending. There's lots of clues you just need to be Sherlock Holmes to put them all together.

Jack Benny Broke Up My Partner and I

A writing partnership is a wonderful thing - when it works. I know there are many men and women who climb that hill alone, I've done it often enough myself, but to have someone else alongside is heaven sent. I worked with a partner for nearly ten years.

The most important thing about a partnership - and there are many important things - but the MOST important thing is that you laugh at the same time at the same things. Okay, maybe one has a darker take on things than the other, or likes puns or appreciates physical comedy a little bit more, doesn't matter, what matters is that you share a sense of humour.

If you think of comedy as being like a structure made of fine crystal, whilst one of you is building it the other is throwing rocks at it.

For most of our partnership we shared a sense of humour. He was more intellectual than me, likes to strip it down, find out the root cause of why something was funny, I was more the instinct man but happy enough to peel back the layers and see if there was something we could learn and repeat.

He had a facility with lyrics, I could construct a joke. We laughed a lot, talked for hours and produced some decent scripts. Sometimes we worked in the same room together - though that was sometimes like pulling teeth, most times we brought our separate bits to the table and then put them together.

But for most of our partnership it was a long distance relationship. He moved to the opposite side of the country. We constructed our comedy on the phone. If the Internet had been around at the time it would've made things easy, doing it now with someone else is like writing in the next room. But me and my first partner were writing in the 80, and early 90's. We were only just getting to grips with computers. We'd bash things out on the phone and then write up the scribbled notes.

But if you write in a partnership you must both contribute equally. I'm not talking about every other line, very often who came up with what gets lost as one comes up with something and that something gets honed and changed and thrown out and brought back in a different form until 'who wrote what' is irrelevant. But you must both contribute, both bring the funny. Our partnership got out of kilter. One was doing a lot more work than the other and obviously so. Like a marriage where neither wants to face or confront the inevitable we had no future.

One day the movie To Be or Not To Be came up in conversation. A wonderful Jack Benny comedy from 1942, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co starring Carole Lombard in her last role. It tells the tale of a polish theatre company during the early years of the second world war. Occupied by the Germans the players have to resort to a boring Hamlet rather than the zesty satirical stuff they'd been producing. In it the hammy actor played by Jack Benny adopts the identity of a Professor in order to discover if he is a spy - if you haven't seen it, find it, it's wonderful. Another member of the troupe impersonates Hitler.

My then partner insisted that Benny played Hitler. I said no, he played the Professor. No, he played  Hitler!

For the first time in our relationship things got nasty. He insisting that Benny played Hitler, I said no  he didn't. A real nasty argument ensued. And we never really made up after that.

Benny centre, 'Hitler' to his left.

It was a stupid argument. What did it matter who Benny played?  But he went his way I went mine. Whilst the Jack Benny argument wasn't the cause of the break up, like I said we'd been heading that way for some time, it's the moment I look back on and remember as the first time we really didn't agree and couldn't find a funny way out. It was the no way back moment. We didn't trust each other any more.

On such small things our stories often turn. It's not the BIG moments that reveal the most about characters. It's often the small inconsequential things that bring everything to a head.

Bob Holness - Gentleman

Alan Coren, Bob Holness, Sandi Toksvig.

Bob Holness, the broadcaster, actor, presenter and one of the nicest people you could ever meet has died.

He was the long-time host of ITV's Blockbusters, a game that required contestants to chose a letter and then get a question associated with it. The phrase "can I have a P please, Bob" became a national catchphrase. After three pints in the pub grown men would slam down an empty glass and announce "can I have a pee please, Bob" then troll off to the gents. As the game was played by teenagers they also latched onto, what could be construed as a drugs reference, the phrase ' can I have an E please, Bob'

Bob and I shared another phrase, "less is more".

In 1996 the BBC asked me to revive the panel game, Call My Bluff. It had been a staple of the BBC2 schedule for years with erudite, witty folk explaining the meaning of obscure words. I had always loved it. The revival saw the game transfer to a lunchtime slot on BBC 1. I knew immediately that I wanted Alan Coren to captain one team, and the series producer of the show suggested Sandi Toksvig. We were set. But who was going to host it. Actually, host is the wrong word and if I write about a show that was all about words I should use the correct one, who was to Referee it. Robert Robinson had been the referee for much of its TV life but he was considered wrong for the resurrection.

A hundred names were thrown into the pot. The first was Bob Holness. Whoever was mentioned after Bob could never compete in terms of experience. Bob had enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a broadcaster. His biggest claim to fame, aside from Blockbusters, was that he'd been the first actor to play James Bond. I see today that many sources are saying he was the second actor. I dispute this. The only actor to play the spy before Bob was an American who played a spy called Jimmy Bond. I therefore stand by the fact that Bob was the first to play James.

Bob was our man; smart, articulate, warm, avuncular Bob Holness. But it soon became obvious that in this game of words the referee's role is best kept brief. The duties were : the introduction of the teams and then the summing up, in just a few words, what the panellist had taken a lot of words to describe. Bob's easy way with words led him to use too many in his summaries. In fact they were going on and on. I had a word, "On this show, Bob, less is more". This worried him, he thought that by contributing less he wasn't really doing his job, shortchanging us.  I assured him less is more. It took quite a few shows to get there - and every time we met I'd say 'less is more' but he cut back and cut back and soon it was just right. It seems a silly little thing but every show needs a kind of internal balance. When we got there we knew we had it.

Bob was a gent. I enjoyed our many conversations, I enjoyed his company and his stories. He wasn't funny as such but had a lightness of touch and warmth of personality that drew you to him. It was always a delight to be in his company.

The writer and broadcaster Stuart Marconie stared a rumour that Bob had played the saxophone solo on Gerry Rafterty's Bakers Street. Gullible jocks picked up the ball and ran with it. Soon a hefty wodge of credulous folk embraced it as a truth. I don't know what Raphael Ravenscroft, the true saxophonist on the record, thought. I do know Bob thought it was hilarious. 

Whenever we bumped into each other after that he'd say "I know, I know, less is more'. Then flash that fabulous smile and do that thing that came so easy to him - laugh. 

Last Word on Festive TV.

A lot of money is spent on Christmas/New Years Television. Having caught up with everything I recorded over Christmas, here are some thoughts .

Great Expectation - The BBC's big festive drama. Really enjoyed it. However, in my mind Miss Havisham has never looked like Gillian Anderson - which was a really good reason to cast her. It made sense that this younger, beautiful woman should seek to wreak revenge on men, having been left at the alter and condemned to a life as a ghost at her own decaying wedding feast. Pip, however, was far too beautiful, what is it with leading men these days, this guy looks like Kiera Knightly and was prettier than Estella who should have been an amazing beauty but wasn't. Choices were made for this new adaptation and unfortunately Joe Gargery didn't get the really happy ending he does in the book - just a man-hug from pretty-boy Pip. Ray Winstone shone as Magwitch and David Suchet just commands the screen whenever he's on.

Treasure Island - Sky TV's big festive drama. Two hours of adventure squeezed into four. Whose idea was it to make a pirate story look like an episode of NYPD Blue? Great cast, though Eddie Izzard did occasionally start to do that slurry thing he does as he goes off on an improvisation. I like Philip  Glenister, I really do but he should NEVER attempt accents. His Captain Smollett had bits of Cockney, Lancashire and Welsh.

The Royal Bodyguard - The BBC's big Christmas comedy. The trailers for this got it absolutely right. It's horrible. Not since Micawber has David Jason looked so out of place. I hear the reason he said yes was because he had always wanted to play Inspector Clouseau. The Pink Panther films, even at their broadest, never got as broad as this, or as downright stupid. The sainted Jason has two great comic performances in his locker - Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses and Granville in Open All Hours - so there's still a lot of goodwill in the comedy bank. The kindest thing the BBC could do with this is play the rest of the series out on BBC 4 before seven pm. When the station is not on air.

Three Men In A Boat - Dara O'Briain, Rory McGrath and Griff Rhys Jones were back for another aquatic two-parter. There's something very watchable about the three of them as they go off on these comic documentary adventure. Though comic is probably the wrong word, good-natured or amusing would be better. There's a competitiveness between the three which explains why, what started with three men rowing the Thames, following in the oar strokes of Jerome K Jerome, has worked so well over so many different journeys. Three Men go to New England was their seventh outing, this time they journeyed along the New England coast, eventually joining the birthday party flotilla celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. Great fun.

 
Dr Who - BBC's big festive sci-fi drama.  Starring Matt Smith as the doctor - I wasn't sure I was going to like him but after five minutes of his first outing as the Time Lord I understood why he's been cast. He makes a terrific alien. The Christmas day show featured Claire Skinner - the Mum in Outnumbered, a comedy still churning out laughs.But seeing her as Mum on Christmas Eve and then as a wartime housewife on Christmas day did leave me wondering about the small pool of talent producers pick from these days. This Dr Who Christmas episode had all kinds of echoes of Narnia. If like me you'd just watched the film of The Chronicles of Narnia you could be forgiven for feeling like you'd eaten two Christmas puddings.

Downton Abbey - If you regularly read this blog you know I don't watch it - but those close to me do and the sound of purring would seem to suggest it was good Christmas fair.

The Borrowers - A former Dr Who, and an actor of great range, Christopher Eccleston could not be more unlike Pod from the Borrowers books and yet here he was wonderful as one of the teeney tiny people who live under the floorboards. Aisling Loftus gave us a more grown up Arrietty than we've seen, or read, before. Stephen Fry made a splendid cartoonishly mad scientist baddie and Victoria Wood was the worried Gran who kept thinking she saw small people scurrying about her lounge. Perfect family entertainment.

Absolutely Fabulous - The return of the BBC's comedy warhorse. Felt more like the return of a carthorse. Sure the studio audience 'laughed' uproariously at everything - there was a shot of a door that got a belly laugh the like of which any comic would die for. The Killing's Sarah Lund turned up for a cameo that struggled to work. I know this show has a very loyal following - hell, there was a time in the 90's when I would not have missed an episode - but now? The scene/montage where Eddie and Patsy go on a retail frenzy just pissed me off. Against the austere background of 2011 it just didn't make sense and was frankly offensive. But then, compared to The Royal Bodygurad this was comedy gold.

Of course the absolute hghlight was Sherlock, about which I've already written. 

Now, what has 2012 got in store for us?

The Man Who Wrote Arthur

Over the holidays I was in the kitchen making a lasagna - my lasagna is legend, I have the recipe for those who wish to impress. I turned on the TV, flicked around and discovered that "Arthur" was about to start.

Arthur is just about the best film comedy ever written. I mean ever. In the history of film comedies almost nothing comes close.

Here's the way most film comedies work - all the gags are in a seven minute trailer, there's no need to go see the film.

Here's the way Arthur works - the entire film is packed with some of the greatest lines you'll ever hear. All the way through, from beginning to end there are great gags. Not vomit gags - though the guy is a drunk, not idiot jokes, not gross-out puerile infantile attempts at jokes. Real copper-bottom proper gags that make you laugh out loud - and move the story forward - and stay true to character.


If you are thinking about writing any kind of screen comedy it's worth viewing this gem from 1981. Gosh, Grandpa did they even have jokes back then? Yes, they did, son and many of them can be found recycled in films today.

For years I carried around lines like

"Will the more attractive of you please step forward."

"Susan you're an asshole".
"I'll alert the media."
Princess Gloria from a place so small that "Rhode Island could beat the crap out of it.They recently had the entire country carpeted."
"You're a hooker?!! I just thought I was doing great with you."

Not laughing? Here's the thing - context. With the exception of that last line almost none of the others make any comedic sense without what goes around them - and yet they are big laughs in the movie.

Situation plus character plus line equals laugh. There, the perfect formula for comedy gold. Easy, now we can all go away and write our Oscar winning comedy.

The tragedy is that Steve Gordon has only one other screenwriting credit to his name, the Henry Winkler wrestling comedy The One and Only - and if you think (as I did before I saw it) that the Fonz in a wrestling picture is not going to get your wings flapping you are, like I was, wrong. Like Arthur it is packed with zingers.

The reason Steve Gordon has only one other credit is because after Arthur he died. A sudden massive heart attack. With him went 'the project he'd always wanted to do' . I've never been able to find an unproduced screenplay by him but whatever it was you can be sure it would have been funny.
So, the next time Arthur - the 1981 film not the Russell Brand remake - is on the TV, head for the kitchen, make a lasagna and laugh and laugh and laugh.

The Perfect Return of Sherlock

A Happy New Year.

'Sherlock' returned to BBC 1 last night, picking up where it had left off - in a swimming pool. Faced by his nemesis, Moriarty, Holmes - and Watson - were in a tough spot, dappled with a dazzling display of red spots from sniper rifles how could Holmes get out of this predicament alive? And then suddenly a blast of the Bee Gees 'Stayin' Alive' filled the air - Moriarty's ring tone. By the end of his conversation, he'd decided to spare Sherlock and Watson, for now.

And so we were plunged into a montage of people bringing cases too boring, too simple, too ordinary to the great man's attention, only to be swatted away like troublesome summer flies. The economy of the device is hardly new, but the laughs Steven Moffat's script generates breathes instant life into the episode. We're up and running - and at such a pace.

The Moffat/Gatiss re-imagining of Sherlock as a contemporary consulting detective and know-all is just a delight. Barely a scene goes by without a guffaw, or two, whilst all the time twisting and turning, giving flight to their take on stories that date back to the 1880's.

'A Scandal in Belgravia' reminds us of Watson's blog and long-suffering Mrs Hudson's trials every time she opens a cupboard in the detective's flat - or in this case the fridge. The smell wasn't coming from rancid cheese but a bag of thumbs Holmes had nestled in the vegetable tray.

I'm not going to go through the plot but point out the economy and invention that lies at the heart of this show. So much is achieved it leaves most other drama's floundering.  There, I've used the word drama, and why wouldn't I? Well, if Holmes didn't exist and you were pitching this show would you call it a drama - or a comedy drama? If ever there was a show that teaches us that labels are useless this is it.

Sherlock delivers moments of high tension, of intrigue; it plays with our emotions and the emotions of the characters but its quip quotient is up there with the best of our comedies. No other 'serious' Holmes adaptation (there have been lots of comic takes) has attempted to marry drama and comedy in quite this way. And the quips and comic situations never feel forced, never feel out of place or disrespectful to the master detective.

Added to which 'A Scandal in Belgravia' introduced something new to the mix - sex in the form of Irene Adler. Here she is a high class dominatrix offering recreational scolding to men - and women - in high places. But it turned out that her greatest turn on was intellect. 'Brainy is the new sexy'. Despite entering Sherlock's life stark naked, Miss Adler, found it tough to seduce him. But by the end seduced he was, not physically but mentally. And he proved he would go to any lengths to help her.

Much as I enjoyed Guy Richie's latest Sherlock Holmes film, there were holes in the plot you could drive a coach and four through. Not so 'Sherlock', not one loose end remained at the end of this tale. If you missed it go scurrying for the BBC iPlayer and catch up before the next episode - the most famous story of them all.

By the way, the plan is for this blog to now appear twice a week. It's not a resolution but I'll try and stick to it.

Surprises of 2011

I've been tardy with my blog of late but I plead mitigating circumstances. I've been working on two scripts and painting 'original fakes' for friends and relatives for Christmas.

I've decided that this blog will follow a more organised pattern in 2012 (this sounds horribly like a resolution but it isn't), it will appear twice a week from the first week of January.

As it's awards time I thought I'd mark those things I've found most enjoyable on the big and small screen these past twelve months. So, here are the completely random nominations for those things that made me laugh, cry, gasp and kept me coming back for more.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a surprise. I'd heard good things but you can read a hundred critics - even those you trusty - and still come out with a different opinion. This reboot of the POTA franchise was thoughtful and felt more like a drama. Thoroughly enjoyed it, much more than the 2001 Tim Burton remake. I look forward to the next slice and hope and pray they stay on this track and not just go for a popcorn actioner next time out of the traps.

Bridesmaids was the female Hangover according to many. I hate it when they do that, a lazy way to describe a film, comparing it to another, especially if it's a hit. I found it funny, well played and way too long. In Kristen Wiig (who was also the best thing in the Simon Pegg misfire Paul) the movie had a believable female lead who wasn't twelve and someone who displayed considerable comic understanding. She also wrote it so four cheers for Kirsten. But looking back the thing I'm remembering most about the film is the actress, Melissa McCarthy. She bears an astonishing resemblance to Ricky Gervais, she could be his sister. As I was watching the movie all I could think about during her scenes was what kind of project could put the two of them together - brother and sister, yes...what about a bodyswap where he becomes a woman - or she becomes a man?

Maybe he should write something for the two of them rather than another series of Life's Too Short. Both Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have been very defencive in the face of criticism about LTS.  I heard one interview where Stephen Merchant suggested the bad press was more about wanting to 'get' Ricky because he'd got too big for his boots. I felt uncomfortable with many of the gags in LTS, many involved laughing at the diminutive Warwick Davies - but the uncomfortable feeling extended beyond this. I think it had more to do with it being a mockumentary where everyone is playing a version of themselves rather than characters. Warwick Davies seemed to be playing a version of Ricky Gervais that we've seen before- all the familiar Gervais ticks are their in the performance. It's been recommissioned so Gervais, Merchant and Davies can stick two fingers up at those of us who think it's not the best thing they've done.

I loved Justified. An American series that seemed to owe more to those old Westerns I grew up with than latter day cop shows. Here was a man in a Stetson, walking around, quipping and shooting bad guys; there were echos here of the Clint Eastwood movie Coogan's Bluff.
But it was so much more. The bad guys were three dimensional, they weren't all bad all the time. In fact some of them were good. The surprises came thick and fast, like the snappy eloquent dialogue.
This year I watched two series on Box Set, not just me - the whole family. Night after night we had to get our fix of Raylan Givens. Absolutely loved it.

I felt the same way about a very different show: Game of Thrones. The trailers had done little to whet my appetite, did I really want to watch what looked like a dungeons and dragons show? But within minutes of the first episode I knew I was going to enjoy it. One of the best of 2011.

Boardwalk Empire came back for a second slice of Depression-era drama. Terence Winter has created something that is up there with The Sopranos and, even though the second series has just ended, I'm already looking forward to the next.

One of the best things to happen to British television this year is the entry into home-grown comedy of Sky. They launched a number of well received comedies and comedy dramas; Trollied, Spy and The Cafe all hit the ground running, felt confident - and here's the thing - had laugh out loud moments, warm identifiable characters and look certain to find an audience as they've all be recommissioned. It feels like Sky is now the place to go with a comedy. I look forward to seeing how they fare with an audience sit-com.

On the BBC, Silk had lots going for it. Great writing, characters we cared about. Though it was set in the heart of the British establishment it felt as though it had benefited from learning the best tricks of American series with plots playing out over a number of episodes and minor characters that cropped up again when most British series discard them after one episode. 

I thought the animated feature Rango was excellent - you don't see that many existential animated comedies. Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy was a masterclass in slow burn cinema. Source Code showed that Duncan Jones is no one hit wonder, he's a director to be watched. George Clooney continues to make interesting films big and small - though why someone with all that talent has to be that good looking as well...c'mon God, share it around.

True Blood was a delight for Friday nights, Danish drama The Killing was magnificent, as was the sequel and if you missed  Romanzo Criminale track it down. This gangster story, set in 1970's Rome, was gripping from start to finish.

As the David Fincher version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo hits the multiplexes those of us who've seen the Swedish adaptation made in 2009 will tread warily towards it. In the Swedish version Noomi Rapace (who you can see in the new - excellent - Sherlock Holmes Movie) is brilliant as Lisabeth Salander. If you buy the box set the three Swedish films are split into six, extended, parts. The films stays faithful to the books without going off down many of the alleyways that author Stieg Larson spent time exploring, especially in his introduction of new characters (something you can do in a novel that you absolutely cannot do in a movie adaptation). That the American remake comes so closely on the heels of the well received Swedish original is surprising but the material - dark, disturbing, violent - deserves a wider audience.

There's so much I could mention here but these are the shows and films that come instantly to mind.

From January I'll be here with a blog twice a week until then, a happy new year to all readers, please come back and join me next year.