Screenwriter »

• Liam Neeson is a good sport

  October 30, 2011 @ 7:21 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  You may have read a bit about Ricky Gervais recently. The chatty comic got himself in trouble for using a dodgy word — look it up, I’m not going there — repeatedly on some sort of social networking thing. This writer was not alone in basing a facetious column on the controversy. Most pieces were critical. A few were supportive. Some of the sillier ones argued that Gervais has already demonstrated an unacceptable attitude to disability in his work and that his new series, Life’s Too Short, looks set to offer further enormities. This strikes me as utter nonsense. The jokes about wheelchair users in The Office and about people with Down’s Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy in Extras were always directed at the insensitivity of those without such disabilities. We haven’t yet seen Life’s Too Short, which deals with a dwarf in the entertainment industry, but, given that it was devised and co-written by the admirable Warwick Davies, himself a dwarf, it seems unlikely that the gags emerge from ignorance. I’ll certainly be tuning in (what a quaint phrase) when it emerges on the BBC next month.

  Anyway, today’s subject is not Gervais, but the inestimable Mr Liam Neeson. Raised in lovely Ballymena, Liam does not have a reputation as a particularly ebullient interviewee. Now, I must say that I’ve met him twice and found him to be  real charmer. Obviously, being a Northerner,  he doesn’t exactly chatter like Quentin Tarantino. But, if encouraged, he gives good anecdote and is dryly amusing about the complications of growing up as a Catholic in a Protestant-dominated area. Nonetheless, after being interviewed recently by Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo, he was the subject of much good-natured ribbing by that pair. Given any opportunity, they would go into a muttery impersonation of the great Antrim man. Mind your bleeding manners.

  The good news is that he seems to recognise his reputation and is prepared to take the mickey out of himself. I just love his appearance at about 1′ 16” in this (oddly murky) promo for Life’s Too Short. Nobody will ever again say he doesn’t have a sense of humour. Good for you, old man.

• Mark Cousins’s Story of Film

  September 5, 2011 @ 9:32 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t feel the need to point the reliably well-informed readers of this “blog” towards a landmark TV series such as Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: An Odyssey. After all, if you visit this place regularly then you will surely already know about the thing. And yet. The series has been bizarrely under-promoted and, stranger still, is only being broadcast on More 4. (They could at least have stretched to E4.) The good news, however, is that it is available — even to folk in the Republic — on the admirable 4oD playback service.

  Raised in Northern Ireland, but often seen in Scotland, Mark has a most singular way of delivering his lines. Heaving out the Ulster vowels, he speaks in a rich monotone that makes the voice-over on Terrence Davies’s Of Time and the City sound positively conventional. You may remember the timbre from his excellent series Scene by Scene, in which he talked great directors and actors through key scenes from their movies. He’s worth listening to. A great champion of film from less celebrated cinematic cultures — Africa in particular — he has a canny way of isolating significant details over which less careful eyes would thoughtlessly skirt. The first part is particularly good on the way simple editing techniques we now take for granted evolved in early cinema. Somebody had to invent the reverse shot, you know.

  The series is based on a fine book of the same name. You might want to read that. Then again, perhaps, you don’t want to know what happens at the end. I’ll tell you anyway. James Cameron won.

  The series continues on More 4 next Saturday.

• Reports of BBC Four’s demise…

  August 21, 2011 @ 9:53 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Can there be such a thing a cult TV channel? If so, could that beast emerge from an establishment body such as the BBC? One definition of a cult is something that relatively few people pay attention to, but which generates wild, uninhibited enthusiasm from that small band of admirers. BBC Four certainly fits those criteria. The channel achieves a fairly tiny 1.3 per cent share of primetime viewers. But, with 85 per cent, its “audience appreciation” figures are the highest of all the BBC stations. Quite right too. The combination of first-class documentaries, quality comedies and dramas about drunk, sexually repressed 1950s TV personalities offers endless delights for the discerning viewer. Did you watch Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words the other week? It was great. You don’t encounter much rare footage of Marshall McLuhan making a fool of himself on, say, The Good Food Channel. It costs relatively little. It has won awards. The BBC must be delighted with its achievement.

  Maybe  not. It has emerged that, facing cuts of some 20 per cent, the corporation — rather than culling Cash in the Attic or cutting down on programmes featuring Bill Oddie looking at stoats — is to considerably scale back the channel’s operations. The initial news is not so terrible. The biggest money drain is drama and the likes of Hattie or Twenty Twelve could — I said “could” — still emerge on BBC Two. Even with those levels of cuts, we might still, quite reasonably, expect to see talking-head documentaries about post-war poets and the role of the theramin in 1960s pop music. Still, why tinker with something that people (albeit not so many of them) love quite so much? The British license fee exists to allow just this sort of mid- to high-brow indulgence.

  The real worry is, however, that the whole station might ultimately find itself in the firing line. I guess there’s not much we can do about it on this side of the Irish Sea. If you can be arsed, you can sign one of those online petitions that do so much good. But, given that most of you don’t pay the license, Auntie would be within her rights to tell you to sling your foreign hook. Boo! Boo!

• You can’t beat Man V Food

  July 24, 2011 @ 10:39 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  When I wasn’t working, I spent my holiday time cruising the outer Narnia of the television universe. There’s plenty to discover there. Who knew there were so many places to buy things that chop vegetables with such great ease?

  But the greatest pleasure to be found in these isolated regions is surely Man V Food. If you are not aware of this fine show then, from perusing the title alone, you might deduce that it follows an enthusiastic gastronome as he chews his way around the more unhealthy eating places of North America. The man in question is one Adam Richman. Slightly portly at the beginning of the series, he is steadily turning into a small mountain range. The supposed highlight of each episode comes when Mr Richman accepts a terrifying challenge to eat a particularly enormous or particularly spicy pile of food.

  A master of drama, Richman always starts off enthusiastically — “Each bite is a creamy sensation” — before undergoing a traumatic crisis when a few last morsels remain on the plate. “Can I manage one more piece of delicious barbecue?” he exhales. Sometimes he assays various supposedly radical strategies. In one amazing gambit, he ordered French fries while attempting to eat a massive dessert. (The saltiness helped counterbalance the sugar, you see.) But, more often than not, he succeeds. “In tonight’s contest between man and food, man won!” That sort of thing.

  My favourite sections of this fine show are, however, those in which Adam attempts to review the food he is eating. Here’s the thing. Everywhere he goes he encounters grub that is “legendary” or “famous”. Sometimes, restaurants have been around “since 1994″. Occasionally they are even older. Each deli counter is awash with people who say they wouldn’t dream of eating anywhere else. But the food always, always looks disgusting. The methods of preparation are invariably the same. A massive quantity of fat and meat is dumped onto a griddle and then rammed into a portion of bread that, though unimaginably huge, is never big enough for the eatings within. Then a special — often “secret” — sauce, dressing or seasoning is applied to the repulsive concoction. I suspect that the only thing special about, say, Ray’s Famous Seasoning is that it comes from two separate plastic tubes rather than just the one.

  Anyway, Adam’s attempts to come over all Elizabeth David are consistently hilarious. “Oh first you get the saltiness of the bacon. Then that’s balanced by the creaminess of the American cheese. Then you have the spiciness of the premium frank and the softness of the all-beef patty. To crown it off you have the stinging agony of the cardiac arrest and the jarring shakiness of the journey to hospital.” I made the last bit up.

  I am only being partly facetious here. The food may be horrid. The format may be (in more ways than one) very, very cheesy. But Adam is a genuinely engaging character. Bizarrely, he has a masters degree from the jaw-shatteringly prestigious Yale Drama School. No wonder he looks so convincing when he’s eating food as revolting as the French Dip Sandwich.

  I endorse Man V Food. If you are mad enough to want to join in, it can be found on the Good Food channel (sic).

  

• Plan B is in The Sweeney. What TV shows should they really be adapting?

  April 6, 2011 @ 6:55 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Shut it, you slag! Get your kickers on and make us a cup of tea.

  All of which vintage parody is by way of introducing the news that something called Plan B — he’s a British warbler, apparently — has been cast in the Dennis Waterman role for Nick Love’s upcoming film version of The Sweeney. I have no opinions on Mr B beyond an unfounded assumption that he, sir, is no Dennis Waterman. But there is no denying that Mr Love, though rarely mistaken for Ingmar Bergman, is quite well suited to tackling the shouty 1970s cop series.

  

  Gawd ‘elp us. Sergeant Lewis has let himself go.

  As greybeards will be aware, the show, which ran from 1975 until 1978, followed Jack Regan and George Carter (John Thaw and Waterman), two hard-nosed London coppers, as they ran along gravel and threw various ne’er do wells against chain-mail fences. Love is an interesting creature. The director of footie hooligan entertainments such as The Football Factory and The Firm, he has managed the near-unique feat of forging a career directing British films almost solely for a British audience. He is the prince of Geezers. One can easily imagine him remaining aggressively unphased as Jack Regan dangles him from a grubby overpass.

  If you want some sense of Nick’s moods and attitudes have a listen to this absolutely priceless, unbelievably sweary director’s commentary for his film Outlaw. The other voice is the extraordinary Danny Dyer — who is to Love as John Wayne is to John Ford. It’s a masterpiece in the vein of Derek and Clive. I don’t take offense at being categorised as a 130-year-old know-nothing. Love you to death, Nick. Love you to death.

  Anyway, the imminent arrival of The Sweeney sets me to pondering which vintage British TV series might inspire a halfway decent film. We’ll almost certainly get a Dr Who movie at some point. The only question is which Doctor will be on duty when it is eventually made. I’d quite like to see somebody tackle Department S or its close cousin Jason King. The only challenge would be finding a contemporary actor who can grow a properly fantastic 1970s Zapata moustache. A smart individual could probably make something of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. What about Secret Army?

  Then again, there’s Dad’s Army. Making a film of that series is a terrible idea, of course. But it is fun pondering the casting. Britain still produces a fine range of eccentric character actors. I can see Anthony Hopkins as a frustrated Captain Mainwaring and Tom Wilkinson as a laid-back Sergeant Wilson. The aforementioned Danny Dyer is just crying out to play the ducking-and-diving Walker. Hmm? Yeah, it really isn’t a good idea. Is it? Still, the speculation makes for a fine parlour game.

  Hang on. What’s that you say? Who’s playing Regan in Love’s The Sweeney. It’s Winstone of course, you bleeding numpty. You got sh*t for brains or what? Bleeding muppet.

  

• Has Disney sunk Yellow Submarine? Thoughts on Twenty Twelve.

  March 15, 2011 @ 9:21 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Here’s an interesting rumour. The Hollywood Reporter is, erm, reporting that Walt Disney has backed out of plans to develop a remake of Yellow Submarine. The picture was to have been directed by Robert Zemeckis, the man behind Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, and was expected to feature David Tennant as a Blue Meanie. It never sounded like an altogether delicious idea. Zemeckis’s weird efforts at motion-capture animation — the horrible Polar Express, the creepy Beowulf, the useless A Christmas Carol — made money, but they appalled as many people as they delighted. Moreover, the original film could not be more rooted in its time. I mean really rooted.  It seemed very fresh when it was released in July 1968, but probably seemed a bit dated by September. Pop culture moved quickly in those spacey times.

  Anyway, what makes this more intriguing is that the culling seems to have been inspired by the comparative failure of Disney’s Mars Needs Moms in the US. It’s quite hard to lose money on a family animation, but Moms, produced by Zemeckis, may have managed that unhappy achievement. The picture made just $6.9 million on its opening weekend. To put that in perspective, the largely useless Battle: Los Angeles clocked up a stonking $35 million in a similar number of screens.

  Having said all this, I wouldn’t be so sure we’ve seen the back of Yellow Submarine. Robert Zemeckis is a very powerful man. He’s made a staggering amount of money over the years and any young exec who says no to him probably deserves a kick in the behind. We’ll see. But expect a denial of the rumour any minute now.

  On an entirely unrelated issue, did anybody else watch the first episode of  Twenty Twelve on BBC4 yesterday? Following an imaginary group of hapless bureaucrats and PR wonks as they seek to organise the 2012 London Olympics, it might be the best new British comedy in five years. (I know it’s only the first episode. But I did say “might be”.) Jessica Hynes captured the essence of spare PR tool and the depiction of a pompous Young British Artist — finding every inquiry about his work, however reasonable, impossibly stupid — was so on the money I stood up and applauded within my empty flat.

  You might argue that, adopting the same verite style as The Office and The Thick of It, it looked and felt a little overfamiliar. Remember, however, that John Morton, creator of the series, also wrote the brilliant and somewhat overlooked People Like Us, which perfected the form well over a decade ago. If you didn’t see it then check out an excellent episode, featuring (it’s that man again) a younger David Tennant, at the bottom of this post.

  We will keep our eye on Twenty Twelve to see if it manages to build on its super opening.

  

• What’s wrong with 10 O’clock Live?

  March 8, 2011 @ 3:56 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  When Channel 4′s attempt at a satirical news show was launched, more than a few commentators urged caution before condemning it outright. After all, comedy takes a while to settle in. It is well known that the initial reviews of Fawlty Towers were appalling. One of the most famous notices in British entertainment history related to Morecambe and Wise’s first appearance on TV.  ”Definition of the week: TV set – the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise,” a wiseacre remarked.

  There was, surely, every chance that, as the weeks passed, the comics would find their feet and the show would take off. It hasn’t really happened. David Mitchell tries very, very hard, but, though he raises the odd titter, a faint sense of desperation hangs around his segments. Charlie Brooker isn’t doing badly, but, with only one or two monologues a week, you couldn’t say he was working his bum off. Jimmy Carr’s skits are unspeakable (though his straight-to-camera pieces are okay). And… Well, we’ll come to that in a moment.

  There are, it seems to me, two main problems. The first would be an easy one to solve if they hadn’t saddled themselves with that title. Why does it have to be live? Tension can be useful in TV, but, stuck in a busy, complex format, the presenters always appear to have one eye on that floor manager whirling his index finger. The main objective appears to involve getting through the material as quickly as possible. One can live with the fluffs, but the shoddy, hurried delivery is less easy to excuse. Shows such as Have I Got News For You have remained topical without going out live. Please, allow these guys some space.

  The other problem is more tricky. Why is Lauren Laverne on the show? One approaches this topic with some cautiousness. A streak of misogyny still permeates the world of comedy and, by singling out the sole woman, it could look as if we were entertaining absurd notions about the unfunniness of women. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are dozens of funny British — and Irish — female comics who could do the job superbly well. Sarah Millican, Natalie Haynes, Carrie Quinlan, Susan Calman and Josie Long all jump out as obvious candidates. If the producers allowed themselves to (shock horror!) employ an older person they might consider Jo Brand or Sandi Toksvig.

  Lauren seems like a nice person. But here’s the thing. To this point, I wasn’t aware she was even supposed to be funny. She’s an arts presenter, musician and DJ. Why not hire Margaret Beckett or A S Byatt? They seem equally qualified. It’s all very puzzling.

  Anyway, I will keep watching. It can only get better. Can’t it?

• Does Claudia Winkleman deserve an apology?

  January 19, 2011 @ 6:18 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Well, no. Last year, after climbing upon my high horse, I questioned the BBC’s decision to name Ms Winkleman as Jonathan Ross’s successor on the “Film” programme. It remains the case that she seems somewhat under-qualified. Whatever you think of Mark Kermode, to that point the favourite, you can’t deny that he knows his stuff and has put in the hours. In film terms, Claudia’s most prominent role was making a total mess of Sky’s Oscar coverage. Nothing she’s done or said since suggests she is likely to be appointed Professor of Film at the University of Snootbridge.

  

  None more black.

  But here’s the thing. Film 2011 really isn’t that bad. I understand that I am nearly alone in thinking this. The show has got pretty awful notices from cinephiles since it debuted a few months ago. Yes, Claudia is a bit giddy. Yes, it seems a bit weird that the programme — featuring contributions from Danny Leigh, Pete Bradshaw and Xan Brooks — sometimes comes across like the televisual wing of the Guardian’s film pages. True, they pay too much attention to stupid “tweets”. But it is a vast improvement on the Ross incarnation. For years, Jonathan, apparently welded to his seat, read the dreary copy with all the animation of a speak-your-weight machine. The exchanges between Winkleman and Leigh have some energy to them and the occasional discussions of classic cinema — Howard Hawks last week — offer a rare break from youth-mania on mainstream cultural telly.

  Put it this way. Every time I’ve sat down to watch the thing, I’ve got through the 40 minutes without shouting at the television. Okay, that’s not quite true. The internet fetus who turns up to include Kick-Ass on every one of the inevitable Top Fives makes my blood boil. But the show does, I think, just about work. Just about.

  I’m not apologising though.

• Christmas time, mistletoe and wine (and seasonal TV)

  December 24, 2010 @ 6:48 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Children singing christ-i-an rhymes. You’d think that Cliff, as a tambourine waving, bible-thumper of eight centuries standing, would know were the stresses should lie in the word “christian”. Oh well. It’s just one more mystery to ponder while attempting to stave off depression during the long gap between the soul-destroying afternoon circus and the Likely Lads Christmas Special. “Oh Lord,” our readership sighs. “Not another stream of cultural references from the 1970s.”

  Well, as Private Eye magazine noted this week, the TV wonks, when dreaming up their  Christmas  schedules, appear determined to propel the viewer back to 1972 (or so). Dr Who? Ronnie Corbett? Upstairs Downstairs? After a week of this stuff we’ll all go back to wearing loons and eating Findus Crispy Pancakes.

  To be fair, the decision to bring back Upstairs Downstairs is an interesting one. It is hard to exaggerate quite what an impact the original series had. Running from 1971 to 1975, at a time of much unrest in the UK, the ITV show — juxtaposing stories involving servants and their “masters” — was often depicted as a cynical exercise in mass distraction. Never mind the three-day week. Here’s some pretty people frolicking in Eaton Place.

  It is true that Eileen Atkins and Jean Marsh, the show’s creators, originally imagined something a tad grittier. And the staff’s toadying (even when safely below stairs) to the poshies now looks a bit creepy. But a glance at the old show — available in very nicely appointed boxed sets — confirms that the stories were often saltier than TV legend pretends. I Dies for Love, an early episode, depicted a doomed below-stairs obsession with real sensitivity. The episode on the general strike ended in an impressively down-beat-moment. Those DVDs really are worth digging out.

  No sane person over a certain age will want to miss Marsh, still Rose, the honest family-retainer, returning to the old house on St Stephen’s Day. Can it work? Well, they managed such a reinvention with Dr Who? Now, isn’t it about time they disinterred The Rockford Files.

• Screenwriter celebrates the royal wedding

  November 16, 2010 @ 5:55 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  The November chill dissipated a little with the news that Prince William of England, balding son to the FA Cup-eared Windsor dauphin, and Kate Middleton, heiress to a liquid manure dynasty (I think), have finally announced that they are to get married. It’s none of our business. But this “blog” always rejoices when two beautiful young people curl up together in nuptial bliss. It brings back memories of 1981. Echo and the Bunnymen’s Heaven Up Here was on the turntable. Ronald Reagan had just sat himself behind the Oval Office desk. And the beginnings of a fairy tale marriage played out on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. As Genesis P-Orridge  put it: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven.”

  Oh we’re so cynical.

  Anyway, If you wanted a good laugh this lunchtime, the place to go was Sky News. Kestrel-faced Kay Burley practically exploded with excitement as she tried to inveigle a bunch of dubious “experts” into expressing opinions on a subject about which they knew absolutely nothing. Private Eye runs an amusing column called Going Live, which details totally pointless bulletins from broadcasters standing — interviewless and forelorn — outside the site of recent news stories. A classic example in Sky’s coverage found our own Enda Brady lurking somewhere near the Middleton family business. Clouds gathered behind him. Cars pottered past. Story was there none.

  Back in the studio, Kay was trying to get guests annoyed about the supposed fact — derived from precedent rather than any recent information — that Mrs Obama, as opposed to the chief himself, might represent the US at the event. Dickie Botherton-Dotherton of Horseface’s Peerage, Clarissa Squid-Brassley of Grovel Magazine and Bert Redface, royal photographer from The Sun, all did a splendid job of clarifying that they had no information to impart about the increasingly weighty wad of groundless speculation.

  The best moment came when one expert, stretching his chinless chin to the heavens, wondered why nobody had suggested some chapel at Windsor as the venue. Kay then revealed that just about the only fact they did know was that the nuptials were to be in London. The expert retired hurt.

  Why was I watching this drivel? Well, you need some sort of diversion when you’re scoffing your soup. I’ve stopped now.

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