Category: TV Page 6 of 14

Swiping From The Thieves, Perhaps?

On 29/07/2009

In Film, Fish In A Barrel, India, Pictures, TV, Twins, Uncategorized

Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for longer than is recommended under HM Government health guidelines may vaguely recall this post, in which I (rather clumsily, now I re-read it) suggested that the scams of the TV Series Hustle appeared to extend to the meta-theft of the tagline from the film Bowfinger.

Well now, take a look at this film poster which I saw repeatedly whilst in India last week:

From the USA to the UK and now on to India, this phrase seems to be making its way round the globe in an easterly direction … if you spot a version of it from Japan, do let me know.

At Least One Of You Is Demonstrably, Provably, Better Than Me. Come On, Admit It. I Can Take It.

By John

On 28/07/2009

In BBC, Link, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

I have to admit I’m kind of surprised how few people I’ve seen blogging (or otherwise writing online) about having made it through to the Workshop stage of the CBBC Writing Competition.

Can it be that nobody with an online presence has made it into the final numbers ? I should be fairly surprised if that’s the case, but then again, maybe the winners spend less time online and more time on writing… hmm, there may be some kind of notion there. Ah, I’m sure it’s nothing.

Anyway, if you – or anyone you know – has been invited to the workshop (which, I suddenly realise, is taking place this very day), do let me know, I’d be keen to know how it went.

And finally on this topic, if you haven’t already seen it, there’s a post on the BBC Writersroom blog which gives more information about the judging process for the competition, how many entries there were, and the like, which I think is worth a look (including the comments – the original poster, Paul Ashton, returned to reply to comments from entrants).

On The Other Hand, I May Just Be Relieved That The Oft-Suggested Mel Gibson Version Didn’t Materialise

By John

On 27/07/2009

In Link, TV, Uncategorized, Video, Writing

It’s been a bit of a frenzied few days in terms of pop culture news, what with the San Diego Comic-Con taking place, but I think one of the more interesting items that’s floated out has been the trailer for the AMC/ITV remake of The Prisoner, starring Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel.

Here, have a look:

It appears more obviously action-oriented than the original version, but it looks as if they’ve genuinely tried just not to lean on the goodwill people might have towards the McGoohan version, but instead to come up with a story in its own right. I mean, I’m far from certain there’s any kind of burning need to redo the show in the first place, but at least there seems to be have been some effort put into this one (yes, The Avengers film, I’m looking at you).

Actually, thinking about it, there was an interview with Bill Gallagher, the writer of the new version in the Writers’ Guild GB magazine, UK Writer, a couple of months ago – and lo and behold, it’s online here. It does seem to show he took it seriously, which is reassuring.

Anyway, it could be awful, but for the moment, I’m cautiously optimistic. Given ITV’s current financial troubles, lord only knows when it’ll air here in the UK (it’s a USA-UK co-production), but on the basis of the trailer, I’ll probably give it a go.

A tip of the hat to Dan Owen, whose excellent blog Dan’s Media Digest was where I found this video. His original posting of it can be seen here – and while you’re there, have a look around. He’s a very good writer, and there are many things there to enjoy.

An Open Letter To All British TV Channels

By John

On 23/07/2009

In Fish In A Barrel, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized

Dear Television

How are you? I know I haven’t been watching you so much recently, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish you well. Lord knows we’ve had some good times, you and I, and there’s loads of credit in the bank, so don’t worry too much.

Anyway, this is just a quick note to make a request – quite a specific one, and nothing too onerous; certainly not as major as, say, asking you not to constantly provide me with ‘coming up’ and recap sections within half-hour programmes, or even asking you to stop the chaps on Celebrity Masterchef from shouting all the time. So, as it’s a wee thing, I was wondering if you could do it for me.

Is it possible for you to stop the continuity announcers from thinking that they’re part of the programme? I understand it must be a bit dull for them being sat there all day or night with a copy of the TV schedule and a microphone, but a lot of them seem to think that the closing titles of a programme are in some way improved by them saying “Oh, looks like he’s in trouble now!’ or “I don’t know how he’ll get out of that!” after a tense ending to a programme. And oddly enough, I don’t need to be told what’s just happened in the programme, as I’ve got eyes and ears, and I was, well, watching the programme.

It’s just a minor thing, and shouldn’t be too difficult to do – if it’s something you’ve started to do to indulge the announcers, maybe you could turn their mic off and let them think their comments are going out? I don’t want to hurt their feelings or anything, but if they think their words are the main attraction, maybe radio would be the appropriate medium for them? Just a notion.

As I say, it’s a small thing, but I’d appreciate it. I’ll see you soon, I’m sure, but until them, stay well, and love to the family!

Best regards

John

It Has Been… Oh, Nearly Three Decades Since I Should Have Made This Confession

By John

On 15/07/2009

In Link, Personal, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized

Back in 1981, I was a contestant on the children’s TV quiz show Runaround. That’s right, m’dears, at the tender age of 10, I first saw the heady heights of fame… or, at least, was on a networked TV programme.

For those of you who don’t remember Runaround, it was essentially a multiple-choice quiz; a question was asked, with the possible answers shown on the wall at the far side of the studio. When the host – Mike ‘Frank Butcher off EastEnders‘ Reid shouted “G-g-g-g-g-g-g-go!”, the contestants would run across the studio and stand in front of the answer they thought was correct. After a few seconds in which you could change your mind, the answer was revealed by a light being shone on the contestants who’d got it right. If you got it wrong, you went into the ‘Sin Bin’, and were out of the game until… er, I forget, but if you got it right, you picked up a coloured ball. The contestant with the most balls at the end of the show was the winner.

Look, I know it sounds basic, but it was a simpler time, all right? We didn’t have crack cocaine and Nintendo iPlaypods, we had to make do with simpler pleasures.

Anyway, this was all filmed at the Southampton studios of now-defunct regional broadcasters Southern Television. To get contestants, they’d come to nearby schools and ask a number of questions – I, strangely enough, got in because I was able to show I had a name beginning with a certain letter of the alphabet, and also had a particular number of pets at home. I didn’t lie about either of these things, but I probably could have. Still, they weren’t looking for Mastermind contestants, I guess, just kids who could read and run, so the entry requirements weren’t too stringent. Eventually, they had enough contestants from the school (four or five, I think), and a date was set.

The day itself was pretty exciting – we were given a bit of a tour of the building (peeping into a room where they were recording something for How), and taken down to the studio where we’d be filming that afternoon. It was a pretty big studio, and so they filled it was coachloads of schoolkids from the surrounding area, including the schools the contestants were drawn from. Then there was a bit of hanging around, and we changed into our specially-personalised Runaround t-shirts and went down for the filming. To say I was excited was an understatement.

At the start of the show, the contestants (the four or five from my school, plus an opposing team from another school, though it was more about trying to win for yourself than any kind of team effort) would run out through a tunnel-shaped opening, and so as the filming began, we were lined up in the tunnel. And this is the point where I make my torrid confession, here on the interweb, to you. Have you ever been in a TV studio, maybe to watch the filming of a show? Well, if you have, you may have seen a lot of the cameras have small spiral-bound pads clipped to them, giving the camera operators a rundown of the places to focus on, etc. In the tunnel before the show started, there was a camera, and on the running order there I could see that for the first question (about how many days there are in July, I think) answer B was circled.

Yes, I’m not proud of it, but I went for B on the first question, and it was indeed correct. I cheated. Not a good thing…

… but there was pretty much instant karma, as I quickly got the next question wrong and spent a lot of time in the Sin Bin, and didn’t come anywhere near winning, so verily cheats did not prosper that day. And rightly so. Who knows how different it might have been if I’d got the first question wrong?

Anyway, whilst I didn’t win the top prize – a portable TV – when it came to the tiebreaker between two boys from the other school, I did have my first insight into the wanton trickery of the televisual medium; the tiebreak question was “What is the fourth month of the year?” and it took them about seven guesses to get it right, but when the show was broadcast, the boy who won appeared to have replied pretty much instantaneously. Oh, television editing, you are misleading.

My prize, for those of you who are interested, was a then-top-of-the-line digital watch; which meant that it told the time, date, and – brace yourself – seconds. About five years later, it was pretty much the sort of watch they’d give you free if you bought £5 worth of petrol, but that’s the march of progress for you.

So, having learned a salutary lesson about cheating, I made my way home, with my watch, Mike Reid’s autograph on the back of one of the question cards (we moved house several months later, and it was lost in the move), and of course my personalised Runaround t-shirt.

Speaking of which, writing about the experience has inspired me to dig out the t-shirt and put it on for old times’ sake. Of course, I was a lot smaller then, but let’s see if I can still get into it…

…Oh.

Looks like I’ve grown a bit in the last 28 years, then.

New BBC Roadshow Date – And Why One Shouldn’t Send Messages In Anger

By John

On 14/07/2009

In BBC, Link, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

In case you hadn’t seen the post by Piers on the BBC Writersroom site, there’s a new Writersroom roadshow being held – this time in Birmingham, on the evening of Tuesday 18 August. Full details can be read here – if you live in Brum (or close by), you might want to see about going along.

Speaking of writing and using the internet, what’s all this about people hassling writer James Moran online because they don’t like the way the story went in Torchwood? It seems he’s being accused of a homophobic element to the story, which seems a little odd when you consider it was co-plotted with Russell T Davies… but frankly that’s by the by; James has been very open and forthcoming in his online presence, and very enthusiastic about writing generally, and now it seems that people having a go at him is likely to cause him to withdraw somewhat, which I think is a shame.

I mean, I’ve seen TV shows where I haven’t liked the direction the story’s taken, but sending Twitter messages and the like to the writer (or one of them) is obviously excessive, and it’s pretty clear from James’s reaction that he found a lot of them rather insulting.

That’s going too far, and is a desperate waste of the potential for communication offered by developments such as the internet. I’m reminded of the people whose online hectoring led to the cancellation of a writing competition in future years back in 2007; remember, just because you have the means to tell someone (or indeed everyone) your current emotional or mental state, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

Oh, And It Features Music From Black Lace. I Kid You Not.

By John

On 13/07/2009

In BBC, Film, Link, TV, Uncategorized

I know that the TV excitement in the last week has mainly focussed on Torchwood, but I haven’t seen that yet (planning to watch it all in one big chunk), so I can’t comment.

However, one TV show in the past few days which I found rather exciting was the fourth episode of Psychoville, written by and starring two of the League of Gentlemen, and lo and behold this episode features a guest appearance by the other onscreen member (so, not Jeremy Dyson).

If you’ve ever seen the Hitchcock film Rope and marvelled at the long sequences between cuts, then this episode will impress you in the same way; from what I could see, there’s only one cut, at about the 20 minute slot, which is something you really don’t see very often in TV. The episode is very much like Rope in structure and content too, and is quite clearly a homage – in the proper sense of that word, not the cut-and-paste-swipe sense all too often used nowadays. That said, I reckon you could probably watch this episode without having watched those before it.

But John, you may be asking, how can I watch it now? The wonders of the BBC iPlayer, I say in reply, and point you to this link, which should enable you to watch the episode on your computer. Wonderful what they can do nowadays.

I have to say, I think Psychoville is a very solid show so far – the central mystery of it is unravelling well, and the cast of characters are suitably horrifying and/or funny (often both at once). Worth looking at the whole series so far if you’re not already following it, I’d say.

The Results Are In

By John

On 10/07/2009

In Link, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

So, I didn’t make it to the next round of the CBBC Competition. Ah well.

I did, however, get a friendly e-mail from the BBC Writersroom, saying that my script had made it through to the second reading stage, and encouraging me to send stuff to them in future, which was nice.

And, of course, it was good to find out either way, on the appointed day. Well played, BBC, I say.

But enough of me; you’re a bunch of talented sods out there, surely at least one of you has been asked to go along to the masterclass? C’mon, share the good news, that’s what the Comment function is for…

On Showgirls, And Marcus Aurelius, And How They Are Connected

By John

On 09/07/2009

In Film, Link, Personal, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

I referred to the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition Sketch the other day (in this post), and that led me to think about its appearance in the film Sliding Doors. Hey, that’s how my mind works.

For those of you who haven’t seen this film (and I’ve only seen it once, at the time of its cinema release), John Hannah recites lines from the Spanish Inquisition sketch to a table of hysterically impressed friends, including Gwyneth Paltrow – in fact, his Python performance kind of forms part of his wooing of her character in the film. The people around the table are laughing a lot at this bit in the film, including women, which didn’t ring true for me, as I was the kind of spotty indoorsy teenager who’d learn Monty Python sketches off by heart, and as much as women like a laugh and like comedy, very few of them are particularly keen to hear you recite other people’s comedy material. Especially a sketch as reliant on visual aspects and incidental music as that one.

Anyway, as an aspect of the film in which we’re supposed to think Hannah’s character’s funny or likeable, it didn’t work for me. In a similar way, I once found myself watching Showgirls to see if it was as bad as it was said to be (it was), and about twenty minutes in (I think – it was just before the first ad break, and I switched it off then) there was a big song and dance number. The main character, played by Elizabeth Berkeley, watches this show on stage, and is utterly captivated by it. I, on the other hand, thought it was a pretty risible sequence featuring semi-naked people cavorting amidst model volcanoes.

I turned off the TV at this point, as it seemed pretty clear that the main character was going to be inspired to want to do this kind of dancing, and I would find myself laughing at it, and that would just be mean. Well, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t have minded a laugh, but as I was sharing a house at the time, I didn’t want anyone to come into the lounge and think I was watching it for the nipples instead of the giggles.

Hmm, those last three paragraphs make it sound as if I’m just having a go at other people to make my point (and I do have one), so let me share a similar confession about my own writing; some years ago, I wrote a novel (unpublished, and with hindsight that’s probably fair) called Fall From Grace. It was essentially a re-telling of the fall of Lucifer, set within a modern-day Evangelical Broadcasting Network – members of staff rebel against the existing regime, get kicked out, seek to take revenge, that sort of thing.

However, in order to make the rebels into underdogs, I needed the evangelical TV station to be successful, and try as I might I just couldn’t write the details of the broadcasts in a way that made this seem likely. Mainly because deep down I couldn’t see a way that, in modern-day England, such a venture would have enormous success – and as a result, the story pretty much asked the reader to take it on trust that, no, really, I promise you, it was very popular. Unfortunately, that creates a situation rather like this:

Reader: These religious broadcasts don’t strike me as that awe-inspiring.
Me: Well, they are. Trust me.
Reader: They wouldn’t convert me.
Me: Well, the people in the book are quite taken with them.
Reader: I don’t know why.
Me: Look, they’re really impressed. Take my word for it.
Reader: I suppose I have to, for the story to make sense.
Me: Yes, you do.
Reader: Hmph.

It doesn’t really matter if a story contains a minor element that doesn’t quite ring true, but if it’s a plot element or a catalyst or a personality trait which actually affects the direction of the story, there’s a more fundamental problem; like watching one of those fight scenes in films where the cuts are just so insanely fast that you can’t tell what’s going on until one person’s left standing and the others are on the ground, you end up just having to accept that it’s happened, even if you don’t know how or why, but of course it introduces a seed of disbelief into your mind, and much of the time stories require that disbelief, like the Brooklyn Bridge, to be well and truly suspended.

Otherwise, you end up just having to take other characters’ word for it; John Hannah’s character is funny, the show in Showgirls really is impressive, and in my personal example, millions of people do tune in every week to watch a religious TV show… and if you don’t believe what the story wants you to believe, or feel the reaction that you’re apparently expected to feel, you’ll be jerked right out of the experience of the story, and that’s never a good thing.

Looking at how this should be done, I watched the first episode of The West Wing again yesterday, and – possible spoilers ahoy – we don’t get to meet the President himself until very near the end of the episode. Instead of the viewer being told for the best part of an hour that he’s quick-witted, supportive of his staff, and articulate, we’re shown it – President Bartlet demonstrates this in a couple of minutes, and at the end of the scene (indeed the episode) you can see why his staff are so loyal to him. That, as Mr Punch would say, is the way to do it.

The Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius once said “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one”, and I think the same applies to aspects of plot or character as detailed above. Is a character meant to be funny? Show them being funny, not other people telling them they’re funny. Is something in a story meant to be amazing or startling, and send people’s lives in a new direction? Then the story needs to show it being amazing or startling.

In his (very good) screenwriting book Save The Cat, Blake Snyder stresses the importance of making the reader/viewer care about the main character as early as possible by having them do something funny, likable or heroic in the early scenes – by having them, as it were, ‘save the cat’ on page one, and I think he’s spot-on about this.

As is so often the case, I won’t pretend that I’m making a devastating insight about a requirement of writing here; however, I was quite pleased when all the above churned around inside my head, and I finally realised that all of the examples which sprang to my mind all point to one fundamental principle of writing: Show, Don’t Tell.

I Really Wish I Could Explain Why I Find This So Amusing, But… Well, See For Yourself

By John

On 07/07/2009

In Pictures, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

(Found in a number of places on the internet.)

Well, it makes me laugh.

And that’s why I shared it – because if there’s one thing this blog is all about, it’s spreading laughter and joy and love and peace and tea and biscuits. Oh, and it’s about writing. But that’s still one thing, if we use the Inquisitional numbering system.

Speaking of matters writerly, it seems that the CBBC Competition had over 700 entries. Crikey.

Still, I’m keeping my fingers crossed… though if I do get through, I won’t hurry to claim it’s a case of the cream rising to the top – after all, the scum also rises, as Hemingway nearly put it.

Still, we’ll see how things go, and of course if I get invited to the next stage (a workshop), I’ll be sure to talk about it in the usual self-hyping fashion here on the blog. Because if there’s one thing this blog is about, it’s… ah, you guessed it.