Episodes

Last night saw the seventh and final episode of Episodes, and it was a very strange experience watching it all the way through each of the seven weeks.

It was the tale of Bev and Sean, a husband and wife writing team invited to Hollywood to script an American version of their hit UK comedy series. The star in their pilot episode is Matt LeBlanc, playing himself. Bev was played by Tamsin Greig, of Black Books and Green Wing and Stephen Mangan, of Green Wing and Dirk Gently played Sean.

The series constantly teetered on the brink of smugness, with Tamsin Greig massively overplaying her middle class 'what is happening to me?' persona. Her habit of stretching every other sentence to emphasise seemingly uncalled for exasperation became annoying after episode one. At one point last night she even did a bizarre female version of the Frank Spencer oohhh what have I done Betty body twist and face pull. Very odd.

Stephen Mangan became equally annoying very early on with his constant expression of little boy lost in a great big world he doesn't really understand or belong in. How does somebody so disconnected from the real world manage to write anything with any credibility?

Matt le Blanc saved the day in just about every episode with an understated parody of himself as a Hollywood star, looking for his first vehicle after the hit series Friends. His performance was warm and highly amusing, not to say ironic.

As ever the writers seem to be to blame. It was a typical bland Islington tale of two middle class writers going to the States to find highly caricatured actors and studio executives. The humour was juvenile in the extreme, including jokes about the size of Matt LeBlanc's private parts. If the writers thought it was risque it wasn't, it brought an unnecessary element of sleaze in reality.

It was so caricatured and lazily stereotypical that if it had been set in Bolly rather than Hollywood it would have been condemned as racist. The writers have apparently never seen witty and intelligent US sitcoms such as Frazier, Rosanne or Cheers to name but three, and instead chose to lazily portray US TV as aimed at the educationally subnormal.

It was actually quite enjoyable you might be surprised to hear. A bit like a Chinese meal, the anticipation was there, it was quite pleasant during, then afterwards you wondered why? Typically smug BBC television I suppose.

The end showed the dumbed down pilot episode a great success, leaving the door open for another series, which I think I'll be giving a miss.

Common Cold: Poetry by Ogden Nash

It's that time of year when many people are suffering from sniffles and colds. So here's a particularly relevant poem by American poet Ogden Nash:

Common Cold

Go hang yourself, you old M.D,!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
In not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

Film Review: The Lives Of Others

This is primarily my blog about books and writing, but occasionally a film pops up that deserves a mention. After all, literature and film aren't a million miles apart. The Lives of Others is such a film.

Written and directed by Floran Henckel von Donnersmarck this film is a must for anybody with the remotest interest in European history and politics, especially the history of the Cold War era. It is set in the 1980s, just before Gorbachev came to power and started the process that would lead to the liberation of Eastern Europe.

If you are planning to visit Berlin I would urge you to visit the Stasi Museum. That museum and this film, chillingly illustrate the terrifying consequnces for the populace when the state takes control of every aspect of peoples' lives. Both should be compulsory for anybody who takes personal freedom for granted.

The Lives of Others tells the story of Stasi officer Wiesel who is tasked with eavesdropping on the daily life of writer Dreyman, thought by the authorities to be loyal to the DDR. Wiesler's experience mirrors the dawning realisation of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s, that maybe something is lacking in their Workers Utopia.

The film is chilling in the extreme and the last line, uttered by Wiesler, has to be one of the simplest but most pignant last lines in any film I've ever seen. You will be heartened, appalled and sickened at various times during it, but you really must see this film.

Book Review: The Understudy by David Nicholls

Ok it's official, David Nicholls is brilliant and I will brook no contradiction. If you dare to contradict me I will have to give you a metaphorical slap. I was enjoying this book so much I missed most of last night's Shameless I was so engrossed, and what I saw of Shameless was superb. That's how good David Nicholls is.

I love the Scandinavian crime writers but, as I blogged below, I 've found Camilla Lackberg a bit of a struggle. In fact so much of a struggle that I needed a break, and have put her Ice Princess on ice. Yes, I know. Instead I turned for some light relief to David Nicholls' The Understudy. Brilliant, go out and buy it, now!

Stephen McQueen, with a P.H., is a struggling actor desperate for his big break and trying to get closer to his daughter following his divorce. He is currently playing understudy to the World's 12th Sexiest Man, actor Josh Harper.

Stuck in his tiny dressing room at the top of the West End theatre life seems tough and depressing to Stephen. Then Josh invites him to his birthday party. The party is in Josh's home, full of beautiful people, the trinkets associated with world stardom and lots of coke and other chemicals. A limpse of the world that Stephen aspires to.

But the party, and Stephen's presence there isn't quite what he expected, neither is the outcome. Stephen goes into chemical and alcohol overdrive and ends up falling in love with Norah, wife of Josh. What ensues is classic modern comedy of which David Nicholls is the true master. Virtually every page has a laugh-out-loud moment and the charcters, even the vain Josh, are warm and become aquaintances of the reader if not friends.

Superb.

Go here to read an excerpt.

The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg

On top of trying to establish a new business, not easy in the current climate, and studying for a business related exam, reading has been somewhat on the back burner. Of course, Christmas has been a very busy time too, if extremely enjoyable.

So a quick update. I have been struggling to find time to really sit down and get stuck into a good book. I am currently reading The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg. I'm not going to say much at this stage except that I am a quarter of the way through and feel I am still in the introduction. It doesn't have that dark, brooding Scandinavian atmosphere of Mankell or Nesbo but maybe I need to put time aside to just get cracking on it.

Once done I intend to do a full review.

Hope you're having a happy Christmas and as I probably won't blog again this year, wish you and yours a happy and prosperous New Year.

Blog Recommendation: The Blog of the Cosmic Griffin

If you are into science fiction, old time radio, cult TV and fantasy I can suggest a visit to The Blog of the Cosmic Griffin.

I'm into cult TV and radio and this blog looks like being a good one. It's new, begun this month, but looks good and has great content. The current post is a review of the 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca. In fact I'm off to buy the film, the review has tempted me!

Book Review: The Budapest Protocol by Adam LeBor

It sounded promising. The Nazis lost the war, but what if they had put in place the economic and business tools to later revive their fortunes and create the Fourth Reich decades later?

One for the conspiracy theorists, who I fear may take it literally, as the European Union is the vehicle used to implement their dastardly plan. Hungary and the other Eastern European members of the EU are at the heart of the conspiracy with plots to wipe out the Romany population and frequent mention of the Jewish situation.

Of course the book requires a hero to save the day. Step forward Alex, a journalist dealing with the stress of his harrowing experience as a war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia. Alex is part Hungarian, part Jewish, part English, and the the link to the past, when the Nazis met in Budapest to plot their post-WW II rise to power, is his grandfather who just happened to be a waiter in the hotel where the meeting took place. The way Alex stumbles across his grandfather's notes, that lead to his attempt to save Europe is as unconvincing as the characters, the plot and the whole course of events portrayed in the book.

It's as if a 10 year old has been let loose on a word processor, a not very imaginative 10 year old at that. After ploughing on through the book I still have no sympathy for Alex, Natasha or any of the other characters portrayed in it. Any breakthroughs in trying to break the conspiracy seem to happen by accident, as they would in the imagination of a 10 year old. The discovery of a 'smart drug' that only sterilises Romany women, no others, stretches credibility that bit too far and typifies the simplistic writing that ruins a good idea.

When one of the minor characters manages to get hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets, with an armoured tractor and the means to overthrow the corrupt government by making a few mobile phone calls, you know that the proportion of your life spent reading this book has been wasted.