AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Wile E. Coyote]

One of Wiley's hates is TV episodes that start with a dramatic action sequence, a cliffhanger with our heroine about to be shot, or clutching to the edge of a skyscaper.... and then comes a caption "two days earlier".

Sorry but this has really just become "cover" for a writer that can't invent an interesting way to begin an episode. You now have two ends, one at the start, the other at the end. This has to stop. Now.

Don't miusunderstand me. I am all in favour of circular episodes, everthing goes back to the beginning.... our heroine enters a skyscraper to meet her new boss, the suave, sophisticated Sir Stenton Beachamp, head of Spintech, and then a couple of days later, and after a short romance, Stenton, throws her off the ledge of the 42nd floor as she finallly realises that he was not the inventor of the Super Electric Charged Stillettos on which his fortune is based. The true inventor was her dead cousin. Now that is proper writing.

[Mick Harper]

How can I follow it? The problem is not, as per usual, with the créatif but the hierarchy. What should happen in the Wylie Best of all Possible Worlds World is

1. the scriptwriter sends it in
2. the script editor sends it back "The opening doesn't hold the viewer's attention."
3. scriptwriter rewrites
4. Steps 1 through 3 are repeated until
5. "The opening now holds the viewer's attention."

What actually happens is
1. the scriptwriter sends it in
2. the script editor re-writes it in the noxious "two days earlier" format
3. scriptwriters never learn how to hold the viewer's attention with their intro's.

The Guardian said an unusually wise thing the other day by recommending always starting with Episode Two because the first is always a tediously establishing pilot. Though this only applies to sit-coms et al, not cliff-hangers.

Technically it should apply to one-off policiers like McDonald & Dodds except, without exception, the most interesting episode is the first one where the characters are being established. This is because it was the quirkiness of the relationship that got it commissioned. After that it's ... I will tell you later.

[Mick Harper]

Archive on 4:The Death of The Eccentric (BBC R4X)

This was Will Self (I bet he can) selecting bits and bobs from past radio programmes to illustrate his theme (that he was the only one left, I predicted). Anyway he was just playing a snippet from an Archers episode which, I admit, I thought rather did make his point. It was absolutely amazing.

But it turned out to be the Archers. Will followed straight after.

[Mick Harper]

So where does McDonald & Dodds and all the similar two-hour cop shows go wrong? Well, that's one clue. Two hours means a serial killer, or at any rate multiple homicides, to fill the time. If you watch, as I do avidly, the old one-hour Special Branches, Public Eyes, Van der Valks et al you find a different world of real crimes and real investigations. And real mugginses like me being able to keep up. But it seems

"This looks good, shall we commission it?"
"One hour, once a week? Who do you think we are, network dinosaurs?"

Because I was keeping up very happily with McDonald & Dodds until they suddenly lurched off to a haunted house... more when I've watched more.

[Mick Harper]

So, we're half an hour in and the second body has turned up. It is one of the more interesting characters - an ex-hood who's gone hippy (like my brother only the other way round). I liked 'an ex-London hard man being strangled with no obvious signs of a struggle'. That's interesting -- a first. See, the scriptwriter can do it if he really wants.

What I do mind is that already I can't keep track. So many people are barking, "Ma'am, tyre tracks are a flat back pick up, too many in the Bristol area to trace" and "Ma'am, there are regular payments from his bank account to an anonymous payee in the Cayman Islands" every few minutes, that I don't even know who they are referring to half the time. And, what really is fatal, I don't really care.

In the modern (British) policier something has to be happening every minute or we'll switch over to Netflix. I know I would be at this point if I were not posting this up. Compare and contrast with the equally two-hour Frost...

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Great British Dig.

Difficult to review as I had just drank a bottle of Malbec and whilst flicking, chanced about a prog on the Antonine Wall, presented by the guy from Outnumbered. It looks like a fun reboot of Time Team where they, the archaeos, have to ask folks if they can excavate their back gardens, looking for the odd shard of Roman pottery. In my episode nobody refused, so the only fun was when the householder discovered that the Ancient Roman wall didn't actually run under his back garden but his neighbour's. So he just really had a big hole in his lawn with nothing to be proud of.

Promising format.

[Mick Harper]

I forsee people roaming around in full archaeologist garb.

"Yes, it looks as if it goes straight through your house. Why not give us the keys and go and spend the weekend at the in-laws, we're likely to make a fearful mess."
"You will clear up after you, won't you?"
"Your house will look like the day you moved in, madam."

[Mick Harper]

Murder in Provence ITV1

This looks very promising (after twenty minutes). Why? Two reasons:

(1) the lead investigator is white, male, middle aged and happily married just like lead investigators everywhere except in British Tele-land.
(2) everyone is French but the director has eschewed Clousauvian accents to remind us of the fact, and to the permanent spoliation of the acting talent on show.

This had one brief bad moment when Mr Lead Investigator said, "She always brought something called Marmite with her," and Mrs Lead Investigator replied, "What's Marmite?" We did not know they were French at the time though I have my doubts that an educated French couple would have such a conversation.

Academics being murdered is generally a good thing too. It will be interesting to see the role of the investigating judge. A very rum concept to British eyes but shaping up well here.

[Mick Harper]

The Undeclared War (Channel 4)

This extremely so-so sort-of-spy drama suddenly took off this week when things switched to Russia. I cannot say whether the characters/ settings were authentically Russian but they seemed to be which is all I ask. Unlike the scenes set in Cheltenham and Harrogate which I didn't believe in for a moment.

My only reservation was the torturous way Russian good guys have to be shown to be anti-system. But then again the British good guys (guys are mostly women, you understand) have to be anti-establishment too. It is confusing in a spy drama when all the heroes are traitors, if you see what I mean.

[Mick Harper]

Murder in Provence ITV1 (parte deux)

Things have taken several turns for the worse in the next twenty minutes:

1. The victim, it transpires, was known to the Chief Investigator's mother-in-law for thirty years. "She hated him." A personal stake in the investigation is always a bad sign, it's sheer laziness on the part of the writer. In fiction it's a trope, in real life it never happens. And the CI would excuse himself if it ever did.

2. Mrs Chief Investigator is becoming an independent character. This is always a bad sign. It cannot be for backstory reasons, it cannot be for red herring reasons, so it means she is implicated.

3. "How very Agatha Christie-ish." It is always an error to cross-reference in this way since the viewer is reminded they are only watching something Agatha Christie-ish, rather than (as it were) real life. And would French people drop the English dame's name so readily anyway? Not many Brits say, "How very Maigret-ish."

4. Someone with a stage Italian accent has turned up though admittedly this is tricky to handle when he must be identifiably foreign to people speaking RADA (see above).

5. The Chief Investigator (I now realise) is Endeavour Morse's old boss, DCI Thursday. This is uncomfortable not because Endeavour is set in the sixties but because Thursday was having to be retired on grounds of old age in the last series he was so decrepit, and that was made years ago! All I can say is he must have a good agent.

[Mick Harper]

Well I got to the end which is more than I can say for Macdonald & Wimpey. The characters were engaging and Provence beats anything Vera has to offer. If only Gauguin had been born in Middlesborough. The denouement was rubbish and I still don't know who killed the secretary in the hit-and-run but that is maybe because I had to fast forward the Vertigo stuff on the rooftop.

I will watch one more to find out whether Chief Investigator pushed his wife off the ferry. I was wrong about (common law) wife no 2 being involved but that was because she was being set up as Cagney to his Lacey for the series as a whole. Good grief, I didn't even know it was going to be a series.

[Mick Harper]

This weather! It's absolutely draining having to sit through all the footage of people sweltering.

[Grant]

Interesting that all the temperature records are set in areas in which the population has increased since they started keeping genuine records.

Even Ireland hasn’t beaten its record from 1887. Too much grass I expect.

Heathrow will probably hit 40 today, but it’s a genuine record. The weather gauge is at least 50 metres from any building. Forget those big flying things and the millions of tons of concrete

[Mick Harper]

On the other hand, Grant, they were all there when the last record was set so it's good to hear you've been converted to global warming. Heathrow will not have died in vain.

[Mick Harper]

Since discovering -- after a hiatus of forty years -- the joys of the radio (it was called the wireless when I knew it) I have been introduced to a welter of comedy turns. Most are rubbish but The Hudson and Pepperdine Show definitely isn't.

I had never heard of either Mel Hudson or Viki Pepperdine but I am anxious to hear more, such is their brilliance. Unfortunately R4X is already onto their fourth series and there seems no way of accessing the first three. But anyway I recommend looking out for them. Listening out for them. The 'radio' comes without pictures. Hard to believe in this day and age, but true.