Shoestring budget

The last time Shoestring was repeated on TV, a few years ago now, it was screened in the Diagnosis: Murder slot on BBC1 weekday afternoons. If you're an anorak, you may be thinking that, hang on, Diagnosis: Murder is a US series so its hour probably only runs 42 minutes or something, but Shoestring was BBC 1979, it's a full fifty minutes and change.

You're perfectly correct and, may I say, remarkably well informed. Plainly, 50 into 42 doesn't go all that well, but the BBC wasted no time thinking about it, they just chopped eight minutes or so out of Shoestring. That's what, 16 percent? You can argue all you like about how that would be vandalism if they'd done it to someone else's show, it's astounding to do it to your own, but you wouldn't argue that it really made a difference to the series.

You wouldn't argue it at all because it there's no counter-argument: take nearly a fifth out of your story and it isn't going to survive. And, yes, the episodes that aired then were incoherent messes; I watched the first couple and walked away.

But BBC4's just been celebrating Shoestring with a repeat of one episode and a half-hour documentary. In between the last screening and this I've interviewed Trevor Eve and don't ever wish to do that again, so maybe my old fondness for the show had been a little bit scorched. I still expected to like it more than I did.

I did like the feel, I did like the characters, and I liked how it reminded me of so long ago in my life. (Just as an aside, I vividly remember listening to the last-ever episode of Shoestring. Listening. Not watching. The tube had blown in our TV set. Do you even remember tubes? And why did "the Tube" become a nickname for television in the States but not the UK? Was YouTube's name a mystery before you read this?)

But the actual mystery in this detective episode wasn't much cop. Trevor Eve was good, I'll give him that, and the steps, the process, the characters along the way, it all worked well. Only, you knew who the baddie was right from the start.

I dug out an ancient VHS copy I've got of the first episode, Private Ear by Robert Banks Stewart, and it was actually much the same. I'd like to have written it, there was a lot going on, but you were also just waiting for Eddie Shoestring to join enough dots that he could leap to the baddie we'd spotted at the top of the hour.

Is it inevitable on a TV budget? You've got your regular characters, the victims of whatever the crime is, the villain and - if you're lucky - enough money left over for a red herring, but that's it. If you believe plot is all that matters then you and I part company here, but I'm back with you if you're arguing that an hour of watching characters do nothing is enough to make you watch The Bill. I'm almost with you, anyway.

I never try to figure out the crime. I rarely need to guess the baddie. The tale is in the telling, and I don't know how it's done.

Sure, there's Columbo: the open book mystery is immensely refreshing both because that show was really about pitting two great characters at each other's throats for 90 minutes, and because it also meant the series completely erased the whole problem of hiding the baddie. And then there's Homicide, the wonderful Homicide: Life on the Street. That worked because the show was usually not about the murder being investigated and it was invariably never about the psychology of why someone murdered someone. Seriously: it was in the format, otherwise known as David Simon's original book. Forget the why, find out how and you find out who, case closed.

But in a straight police procedural, a precinct drama, how do they successfully juggle a mystery with a budget that's incapable of hiding the guest star baddie?

I can think of ways, I can think of misdirection, but they're not ways that seem to get used - and they're not ideas that could work week after week.

I'm looking at my shelves where without turning my head very far I can see DVDs of Campion, Magnum PI, The Rockford Files. I'd like to say that I'm seriously analysing a tremendously popular and often fantastically rewarding genre of television drama, but maybe all I'm really saying is that I fancy a Remington Steele marathon.

Wadday say? Want to join me?

William

Blog off

There's no easy way to tell you this, but I've been blogging with someone else.

I'm sorry. It didn't mean anything.

And it's over, it's all over, I promise.

Well... when I say over... For the past little while I've been blogging merrily away on a secret, closed site. I've been a bit more newsy than in our chats, I've been considerably more regular and organised. And I think you'd even enjoy some of the blogs, but that's a shame because you'll never see them. I imagine the project will go further ahead but even if it does, when it goes public it will need new blogs, not ones tied to the events of the last week or two.

Not sure yet whether I'll be continuing with it; I enjoyed doing the writing, but this has been a period of feeling each other out and it all depends fairly equally on what they think of my writing and what I think of the various future plans.

Whether I do it or not, though, it won't take me away again quite so completely. After all, where else do I talk to you? And what newsy blog would let me brag that I've just today had a great response from BBC writersroom about a script of mine?

Feeling very good, trust you are too,
William

Strictly go dancing

On a Saturday evening some years ago, my wife Angela mentioned that she really liked watching Strictly Come Dancing with me.

"Pardon?" I said, looking up from a book.

I felt beholden to at least try watching it instead of just being in the room and, as perhaps with most things bar football and Babylon 5, once you start watching, you do get into it. I now really like the show; I think its companion series It Takes Two is particularly well done; and I've a friend who's obsessed with it to a point that might even be frightening if she weren't also so funny about it. So that's grand; I'm sure you know the show, perhaps you like it, perhaps you don't. But just today, I've taken a Life Lesson from it.

Well, a Scriptwriting Life Lesson anyway.

If you're a writer, you'll understand me when I say that beginners think adaptation is easy. If you're not a writer, let me offer you my congratulations and say that, really, that's what they think. It's right up there with "I've got this great idea, this guy, right, he meets a woman, it's fantastic, and it really happened, I just need someone to write it up into a film".

I'm not exactly immune to this: I would like to adapt Margery Allingham's books for radio some day. But I know I'll never do that without some strong original material under my belt and on my CV first; nor do I remotely think it's easy. I never have, actually; it's like travel writing: everybody expects it to be a doddle but I've never tried it, never thought I could. I'm having a go right now pitching to write for a children's magazine and that's a tough market too. That's partly why I want to try it.

But still, Strictly, Scriptwriting Lessons, adaptation, today. I've just come back from the NEC Arena in Birmingham after seeing Strictly Come Dancing – the Live Tour. And it was fascinating to see how it was adapted for stage.

Follow. I'm sure you know the show but just in case and to point up the key elements I want to use, Strictly goes thisaway: celebrities pair up with professional ballroom dancers, over 12 weeks or more, they learn to dance, there's a phone vote, there are judges. It's a toss up whether the show is known best for its dances or for its judges: they veer from unbelievable to pretty unpleasant. And the judges are the same.

Now, all that is transferred to the live show along with the best dancers from all the years of Strictly Come Dancing.

Of course it is. What else would you expect? But while it's so inevitable as to be inconceivable that the stage show wouldn't be like the TV one and it's unimaginable that anyone would produce a stage version without the best dancers, those same factors are a huge problem. They're difficulties that whoever adapted this for stage had to fight against.

For instance, these celebrity dancers are the ones who've done really well: if they didn't win their year, they came close. So they are going to continue to do well, aren't they? When the first two couples came off and got great praise and the same near-perfect scores from the judges, I thought the entire show was going to be like that. It wasn't, though, primarily because the show was cast very well. You know that the TV series is cast in much the same way any drama is; BBC looks for people to fulfill certain types of roles such as the older-but-game sort (Jimmy Tarbuck, Gloria Hunniford), the young-hopeful type (Louisa Lytton). It's aiming to appeal across demographics, it's aiming to fashion the best potential for drama. Every reality show does precisely the same, you wouldn't do it any differently.

And while the stage show has a more limited range, it does allow for one single bad dancer: Christopher Parker from the first series of Strictly is in it. I didn't see that series, I was still doing silent reading in the corner, but everybody else in the auditorium had and they loved groaning at the sight of him. It seemed to me that everything he was apparently famous for getting wrong was repeated here quite deliberately and it was lapped up. He got a scalding from the judges: we got to see them give their famous torrent of insults.

You can argue that he's a very good sport for coming back to Strictly and reliving this torture each night, but I don't think that's it at all: I think he's playing his part exactly as he was hired to do. So are the judges.

And those judges... Len Goodman, Arlene Phillips and Craig Revel Horwood review every dance after its done. Is there any other musical stage show that criticises itself along the way? It feels so post-modern.

I'm sounding like I didn't enjoy the show and that's wrong, I did, but when the judges praised these top dancers I couldn't help but think that of course they would. And when dancers got mild criticism, I felt they had no reason to care: the performance I saw was the 34th live show they'd all done and each is its own whole competition. Where the show takes three months to build to a conclusion and you can lose your place at any week, here you're back for tomorrow's matinee no matter what.

I've realised that what I like about the TV show is the sense of learning, of progress. People who dance poorly or not at all at the start of a series, can become strong by the end. It's why I don't watch The X Factor: so you sing each week, so what?

Here on stage, the celebrity dancers were no different from the start when they walked onto the dancefloor to the end when one of them lifted today's trophy. It's not a competition, it's a story. It's a musical where the judges provide the dramatic dialogue scenes in between the numbers.

The judges are superb at appearing to adlib. Arlene always appears over-studied on TV but she's consistent and seems the same here. Len appears to be genial, Craig appears to be churlish. They're all what we expect them to be, in fact what we've paid to see them be. But I did look up a review of an earlier show in this run and the same adlibs were praised in Glasgow as were laughed at here in Birmingham today. Never believe an adlib is an adlib, not in any show.

As with the TV show, once the judges have done their judging, the audience gets to vote. Right there in the auditorium, you're encouraged to vote by phone. That feels a little sticky: this is not a BBC show but you forget that it isn't so a call to spend more money seems wrong. It's also much more expensive than on TV: in the television show the cost is 25p (or perhaps more depending on your service provider) of which 12.5p goes to Children in Need. Here Pudsey gets the same amount but the call charge is between 50p and 75p.

When that's all done, and we've had some show dances - Flavia Cacacea and Vincent Simone's Argentine tango stops the world turning - then the stage show recreates the Moment of Truth. On TV, that's where some dancers are saved to come back next week and two risk going home forever. There's no next week here, and there's no going home either, so this is inevitably tension-lite. Not tension free, but no breaths are held.

And then it's all over.

I am sure the winner is different each night - I really was sure but I checked anyway! - and I've no doubt that the judges are fair, I'm certain the phone vote is too. What I don't think is that this is Strictly Come Dancing: it's like it's really the Strictly Come Dancing Experience. See the Judges in their natural habitat. See the dancers, the dances, the frocks. Hear the very good live band.

Every thing you like about Strictly on TV is in Strictly on stage. It's like dramatising books for film: I believe it's precisely like that, that this isn't metaphor, it's straight description.

But adaptation, dramatisation, it's difficult. The recent Sally Lockhart dramatisations on BBC1 failed, I felt, because they hit all the plot points from the novel and didn't let the characters breath. And then when Alan Plater dramatised Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War, he created a new work of art. Recognisably Manning's, unmistakeably his own. It had to be. Television and novels, film and stage, they're all extremely different and it'd be boring if they weren't. Plus, I believe completely that if you want a perfect, faithful version of a novel, buy the paperback.

For anything else, any dramatisation, you have to keep the original's heartbeat but you can't forget that you're making something new. Strictly Come Dancing - The Live Tour is more like Sally Lockhart than Alan Plater so it's not satisfying. It isn't a show that stands on its own; if you didn't watch the TV show, you probably wouldn't enjoy the stage one.

Yet, if every single Strictly thing has become a box to be ticked or filled, the stage show does tick 'em and it does fill 'em. I am thinking about going to next year's tour, but it will depend on who's dancing.

How's this for proof that Strictly Live is adaptation by the numbers instead of a new animal, a new stage drama? The show's programme is a quite beautifully printed book - an expensive one, a tenner a copy - and it comes with large score numbers, 1 to 10, for you to vote with.

And you never get to.

They're just never used, not once.

I saw a matinee performance, by the way, and all the time I've been writing this to you, the 35th show has been underway. I know there's no question but that you think I'm critical of the stage show, but I'd like to see the dancing again. And maybe that's enough. The dancing would not carry a show on its own (no offense to dancers or dancing; I mean sixteen 90-second dances don't make a show) so the framework of the faux competition is crucial, it's a frame that both supports some gorgeous dancing and weakens the show. It's a necessary, contrived evil but the dancing does soar through. That's part of the heartbeat of Strictly Come Dancing, a huge part, and that has successfully transferred to stage.

William

The Day Before...

Have you seen this? A Cape Town newspaper has been running a series of ads on the theme of how much the world can change in a single day. This one is of September 10, 2001.

Click on my stolen copy to see a bigger stolen one or go to this site to see all four and read about them in more detail.

And FYI, I found this via Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider blog.

William

Word don't come easy

There's no reason you should know this, but I used to be an expert on word processors. Every writer thinks they are, after all this is the machine they spend the best part of their day not using to write on. But I was paid for it: it was part of my patch when I worked on computer magazines.

And you know how it is, there are some jobs you can never quite shake so last year I had a really, really anorakful time following all of Microsoft's blogs about the new Word 2007. It was groundshaking, I thought, the work they were doing, the effort they were putting into the work. The way they were risking everything to get a better word processor / changing everything pointlessly to get everyone to upgrade when they didn't need to* (*delete as applicable), it was impressive.

As a writer, I particularly applauded how the core aim was to get out of your way. Having to go through five menus and a dialogue box to print something out crunches at me the same way heavy exposition does.

But in Word 2007, if you wanted something, it was to be there. No messing, no searching, absolutely and resolutely no confusion. Just writing? Off you go. Adding a chart? Wallop, every chart option is brought to your fingertips. Bit of the old page layout? Kaboom, Word 2007 is a page layout program. Sort of. Enough.

This went on for a year: inch by inch, detail by detail. I'm a Mac user, but I was still following all the Windows threads on this topic.

Until.

One day came the ta-daa, the final reveal when all this work came together in a finalised appearance. Microsoft put up screenshots for all us warmly-dressed people to admire. No messing, no searching, absolutely and resolutely no confusion.

But I stared and stared at that screenshot, utterly unable to see how to open a document.

Or start a new one.

Or save anything I did manage to open.

The reason is because all that kind of nonsense is now hidden behind a large and ugly Microsoft Office logo in the top corner. It looks like a tedious logo, it is actually a button.

That ended it for me. All that great work, totally wiped out because of last one per cent.

And I'm reminded of this today in part because I'm polishing a script but also because I'm working in an office where the staff have just had training to move over to Word 2007. And the first sentence I heard when I walked in came from a woman halfway down a hall, begging f'ing Microsoft Word to let her open a s'ing document.

And then a chorus of voices saying "It's under the c'ing Office logo".

The last one per cent is stopping people seeing the 99 per cent excellence underneath.

William.

PS. While I'm geeking out, Word 2007 is for PCs, Macs now have Word 2008. It lacks a lot of the new whizzy features of the PC side, it adds a tonne of utterly worthless pretty pictures, but it flies far faster than the last version. So now I've no excuse at all for writing slowly.

The History of Television

So Aaron Sorkin writes the history of TV and it goes to Broadway. I write it and it goes... nowhere.

Back in November 2006, I was commissioned to write a Radio Times article to go alongside BBC2's Imagine... series which was doing a special on TV's anniversary. That show got bumped around the schedules, my article had to be transformed into about 70 words and that was that. I hadn't actually thought about it since about December 2006 but just now, searching for something totally unrelated, I found that document on my hard disk.

I can't see any reason why I shouldn't show it to you, and I think you might like it too. So here it is: as not published in RT.

Hope you like it,
William

RT/RT AND TV HISTORY/GALLAGHER

Radio Times has behind the scenes access to television - and it always has. As BBC1's Imagine... goes back 70 years to the start of television, RT reveals how its coverage goes back even further to when John Logie Baird was young and anxious to show his new invention to us.


Summer, 1923: no TV, no Radio Times. But they were both a heartbeat away. John Logie Baird was talking up his new invention and Lord Reith was having it out with newspaper publishers who wanted money for printing BBC radio listings. By July, Baird had got a patent for television and by September, newspapers had seen their circulation rise because of listings, but Reith wasn't listening: he published his own paper, The Radio Times.

The 1920s were fast-moving: on April 4, 1924, the BBC's Organiser of Programmes, CA Lewis, wrote in RT: "Television is a long way off, and, as far as I can hear, the various inventions in regard to 'talking' films are not achieving success."

Yet before the end of the month, on April 25, RT's cover said: "Television - a Fact!". Baird had demonstrated his flickering, faltering system to RT writer William Le Queuex who enthused madly: "A Maltese cross was first transmitted, and was clearly visible. My fingers, moving up and down in front of the transmitting lens, were clearly seen moving up and down on the receiving disc. It remains now to transmit detailed images and a machine to do this has already been designed."

Sure. There's no question Baird was first but he was never good enough and though the BBC experimented with both his kit and a rival system from EMI/Marconi, by the end of 1936 everyone found it easy to see which was going to win. They just found it harder to say. So the official decision to drop Baird was delayed until February 1937 - three months after a Crystal Palace fire destroyed all his equipment.

So RT's very first behind-the-scenes feature of TV as we know it was in The Radio Times Televison Number (2d), published October 23, 1936. The first behind-the-scenes photo was of "The Baird control room" but the second was of the Marconi-EMI studio with "The Three Admirals rehearsing" at the first television studios at Alexandra Palace.

And it was a detailed yet so innocent time as RT took us around Ally Pally, mentioning: "The walls attract your attention. You touch them. An asbestos compound, of course. Just the stuff for absorbing sound."

Strangely, there were no actual television programmes in this special issue of RT. There was a radio play (October 29) dramatising how "from the first ideas of the early pioneers there has gradually developed the high definition television service which is to be opened from Alexandra Palace on Monday next."

And there were ads for HD TV sets, though HD then meant 405-line images on a narrow screen: today it means 1080 lines widescreen, not to mention colour. But some things don't change: the 1930s HD TVs were expensive. RT advertised a GEC High Definition Television Receiver (Cat. No. BT3701) for 95 guineas or over £800 in today's money.

"If you can afford a television set," wrote RT in this issue, "and you if you live near enough to Alexandra Palace, the next few months will be full of interest. You will be watching the beginnings of a new art. How does this affect people outside the London area? Wait and see."

It was quite a wait. In 1936 you had to live within 25 miles of Alexandra Palace in Muswell Hill, London, and only a couple of hundred people watched the first months. By February 1939 the price of TV was dropping radically but the BBC was still saying 25 miles and RT interviewed farmhand George Boar who lived twice that distance away. "He did not even trouble to see a demonstration. With astounding pluck he invested his whole fortune (and £126 is certainly a fortune to a farm-hand) in his set," said RT. Boar invited Radio Times to join him and his neighbours one night. "Reception is amazingly clear, causing the majority of the audience to express their wonder in strange Suffolkese."

Boar himself knew he'd spent wisely, telling RT: "Television's far more entertaining and much less trouble than a wife would be." The revealing word there is probably "would" but six months later his TV went dark: the BBC Television Service was suspended on Friday, September 1, 1939 at the start of the Second World War. By then, around 20,000 TV sets had been sold and its power was spreading in every sense: for the May 1937 Coronation of King George VI, 50,000 people had crowded around what sets there were and the signal now reached up to 63 miles from Ally Pally.

"Television Again" said the cover of RT for June 2-8, 1946 as we saw the Reopening of the BBC Television Service - in London. In 1948 Londoners saw the Olympics but coverage was also extending to the Midlands which it reached in 1949, then South Wales and Scotland in 1952. In 1953, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was seen by over 20m viewers and for the first time more people watched than listened on the radio.

By then Baird was dead but others were pressing ahead with the next big thing: colour. Unofficial tests ran even in the 1950s but it was July 1, 1967 when David Attenborough, then Controller of BBC2, could write in RT: "This week we launch colour. All BBC2's coverage of the Centre Court at Wimbledon will be transmitted in colour. So will The Virginian on Monday and Late Night Line-Up every night. Many viewers are no doubt waiting to make up their minds about colour until they see it with their own eyes. We offer the launching programmes, with confidence and excitement, as evidence."

BBC2 offered five hours of colour every week until December 2, 1967 when it officially began its full colour service and then BBC1 followed on November 13, 1969. But there was still a difference between the BBC broadcasting colour and our receiving it: James Redmond, BBC Director of Engineering, responded to RT readers by explaining: "Because about 500 transmitters are needed to cover the country, it will take right through the seventies to complete the project."

So you might have had to wait a bit, but you had colour television - and two weeks after BBC1 moved to colour, Radio Times looked at what could come next. The November 22-28, 1969 issue peered into the far, far distant future... of 2000 and "interplanetary man, as he could be."

Some predictions were startlingly good - "one paper-thin TV set on the wall will offer him news, information and entertainment" - and some weren't. "He sits on a column of air, his control panel gives him robot service on 5, a problem-solver on 11." Channels 1 to 3 were expected to be for Earth, Moon and Mars.

"The year 2000, you recall, is just thirty-one years away."

William Gallagher

ENDS

Shssh... Misterioso

I was going to ask if you were around tomorrow, whether I could call you and pitch an idea.

I'm still up for a lunch if you are about, but something's come up and I now I do have someone to pitch to in the morning. It was getting urgent because do you know what tomorrow is? It's the end of January, horrible January. I'd forgotten this because I've delivered Radio Times's On This Day feature up to February 22 so my head's really getting toward March. Plus, for the first time in my life, I've booked a holiday way in advance: December. Unthinkable.

But anyway, January 31. Last year I had some success with doing a pitch per day for a month so - you're ahead of me now, aren't you? - I figured I'd do a pitch a day for every month in 2008.

I need to qualify that. Previously it's been every day, really every day, Saturdays and Sundays included. This time, Pitch 2008 is every working day: it seemed to me that if I didn't give myself weekends and bank holidays and whatever else off, I'd run out of material to pitch. So while I pitch every working day, I also write for at least one hour every single day.

Tomorrow's the end of January, I've hit both targets.

And it's working. The pitching is for all sorts of things, all the different types of work I do, and I've got extra Radio Times feature out of it already.

Still, a pitch per day. Any chance you're around on Friday?

William

I'm happy / hope you're happy too

I was weighing up whether to claim this was a message from the action man. Or to find a pun on Major Tom, funky funk, you get the idea.

The new issue of Radio Times magazine, on sale today, comes with a set of four covers. Choose wisely. They're all about Ashes to Ashes, though, and I was at the photo shoot. You can see a sliver of that above but the behind-the-scenes video I shot is here.

Actually, that's a thought: the link takes you to the video clip on the Radio Times "Ashes to Ashes" Programme Guide. I forgot: I wrote that guide too.

William

This isn't true

But it's close enough that it makes me happy.

A few months ago I read a draft script of an ITV1 drama that's coming up at the end of February or start of March. (Can't say what it is, sorry.) Foolishly, the writer asked me what I thought.

Well, he's not dumb, he knew it was top class, but he did ask... and my plotting brain engaged before my politeness did. I asked some questions, I made a fairly substantial suggestion. And a couple of weeks later, he sent me the next draft. Yep, the suggestion was in. What's more, I've just tonight seen a preview DVD of the final, finished show and I was right, the suggestion was important to the piece, the piece is even better with it.

Now, this is a trivial thing. One suggestion atop a really fine piece of writing, and if he hadn't seen the suggestion from me, I'll bet good money he'd have seen it himself. So I'm not claiming brilliance, I'm not claiming anything really, but most new scripts I read don't seem to get made so it's easy to comment on them. Now ITV1's spent untold vast sums filming this one, and I feel I was right.

And right now, for just this minute, I feel like I know what I'm talking about. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

William

Garage banned

My car failed its MOT the other day; nothing serious, no big surprise: the driver's side mirror is broken. (Mine and another car were waiting at traffic lights. They were on red and it was a two-lane road but a third car drove between us, smashing my mirror and careering on up the road.)

The garage didn't have a replacement mirror so I've taken my car home and they were supposed to be ringing round to get me one.

I just phoned to see what was happening:

GARAGE: Ah, yes, he's just fitting it now.
ME: Unlikely. The car's here.
GARAGE: Oh.

William

Lark Rise to Candleford

You won't believe how many people have pointed out to me that the new BBC1 period drama Lark Rise to Candleford was dramatised by Bill Gallagher. (No relation.) You may believe more that every ten years or so, I get some documentation meant for him. This week it was a taxable benefits claim for some hospitality he'd given someone. If your name is Susan Hogg, let me assure you that BBC payroll is sorting it all out.

And, yes, he writes multi-part BBC1 dramas but I occasionally go to the photo shoot. Here's the current cover of Radio Times magazine and, next to it, a shot from my iPhone from the day.

Two reasons to show you this. The first is just that I think it's a great cover. How many other magazines would have spent an afternoon setting that up and shooting it with a period, antique camera? The image has been coloured by hand, too.

And the second is that I was there filming the filming, so to speak, for RadioTimes.com and the video of the Lark Rise shoot is now online. I need to tell you that I didn't edit it; RT's Matylda Dymek did a very good job on the footage and I can't take credit, although I long to. I have a habit, I've found, of ignoring the fact that someone else is going to cut the film: I shoot what I would want to edit with, I don't give her enough coverage to let her create much else. I'll try to be better. And perhaps it's not a great surprise, then, that the key moments in the video are precisely the ones I wanted, but they are good.

Can't wait to see what she does with my Ashes to Ashes footage.

William

A few thrilling moments

DEBBIE: That's it?
MARTIN: Yeah.
DEBBIE: That's ten years?
MARTIN: Yeah.
DEBBIE: I would hope for a great abduction story or something.
MARTIN: Well, I've had a few thrilling moments, here and there.
(Grosse Pointe Blank)

You've seen enough "What I Did in my 2007" blog entries, I wasn't going to burden you with another. Except, I like how Jason has done his. No fuss, no messin', just a list of the good and the bad. Not 100% sure I can remain concise, but.

So even if this solely for me to read in, oh, a year's time, here's my 2007. No clue what the order is, other than good followed by bad.

GOOD
"Time and the Conway Twitty Appreciation Society": my first produced stage play. And all the attendant goodness, from the writing of it to the offer to work on a showcase, most definitely also the rehearsals. From my noggin' to a professional company at the Birmingham Hippodrome.

Meeting Verity Lambert. Hard to see this as entirely, or solely, good, because it made her death seem all the more shocking. But she's been one of the drama people I've most admired, despite my not being fussed that she did Doctor Who. And another good side: she liked my scriptwriting. Gave me some notes, precisely as perceptive as you'd expect, but genuinely liked the piece. The only thing that makes me happier is that in the same week she emailed me, a producer I had zero respect for, working on a TV show I think is a joke but a very good joke to get on your CV, also emailed me about the same script. She was rejecting me for several key reasons, every one of which was something Verity had singled out as being good.

I'll try to be shorter. Cardiff. (You know who you are.)

UK DVD Review podcast reached its 100th episode. You can't tell this when you listen, but it's highly scripted - and that was one of the points of starting the project. I am, as I hoped, a better writer for having to write a ten-minute script every week. Just before Christmas, one listener set up a Facebook group about the show: last time I looked, it had over 20 members. Wonderful.

Facebook. It was the yawn of the afternoon sometime early in the year, but it became great: although I'd joined, looked around, got bored and left, an old colleague came looking for me over it a few months later. So suddenly I'm talking with people from my career before last and it's tremendous; they're all the people I would've liked to keep in touch with but didn't. Almost all of them are. He most entirely definitely is, in case he's wondering.

Blogger. Similarly, an old hospital radio colleague found me because of this blog. I like doing this, I like talking to you, it was a tremendous bonus to talk to this friend I'd often thought of. But you can't believe the stories she's got.

Joking Apart. Sat in on an audio commentary session for this, with the entire cast wondering who the scruffy man was, and later wrote the booklet that'll be appearing in the series 2 DVD: find out more right here.

Filming for Radio Times. All these years of studying drama paid off: I can frame footage, I can film for sequences. Like any other filming, it's a lot of hurry up and wait, but RT's art staff is great and each time I've got strong shots from unusual and precarious angles. I'm happy. Learnt some smart Photoshop tips from people on the shoots, too.

Lots of things for Radio Times magazine and website: some I can't talk about yet, but don't mistake brevity for my not realising how lucky I am in this line.

RT's On This Day television history piece crossed a milestone: I delivered my 150th week of copy during the summer. Long may it continue. I think I passed a milestone on the magazine's TV Stats too, but there I'm just hoping I can continue to enjoy those yet not keep waking up in a cold sweat.

Working with Martin Jarvis and Rosalind Ayres on Radio 4 proposals. This is still in progress and in fact you're hearing this before they do: I've completed a script we were developing and I'm not only pleased with it, but it's made me write in ways that really stretched me. Currently the script is in a drawer while I try to step back from it, ready to rewrite, but whether I've actually pulled off what I think I have, the thing is that I think I have and that's a pretty glorious feeling. We'll see where it all goes, though.

Speaking of going, I got a new car. Well, not new. Well, I only got it because my last one was a write-off. But, still. It's got a nice radio.

And speaking of going, I'd promised my mother for years that I'd take her to New York City and I finally did in early summer. Whether it makes any sense or not, just stepping out onto Manhattan's sidewalks makes me bloom. And she said it was the greatest thing that had ever happened in her life. She did say that in the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, but I suspect she meant NYC. Doesn't that beat everything?

Speaking of Apple, I got an iPhone. Everything good that you've heard about iPhones is true. If anything, everything good you've heard is a just pale outline of the truth. It's been a life-changer and I honestly am not kidding.

Netvibes.com, Photoshop CS3, and Rogue Amoeba's Radioshift (like a Sky+ for radio) haven't changed my life but I rely on them, and increasingly enjoy relying on them, every day.

Veronica Mars was cancelled upsettingly early but I'll keep it on the good side of the ledger because its final season was as strong as ever. Rafi, a listener to my podcast, said on air that he felt empty now the show was over: I envy him that line.

Dar Williams finally released a DVD. It wasn't very good, but she's so spectacularly talented that it'd have to be a DVD by someone else before I'd allow it onto the bad side.

And, if only because Dar didn't release any album this year, the song of 2007 for me was Born to Hum by Erin McKeown. She recorded in 2003, I've just this second found out, but I only discovered it this year. Mind you, I've been listening to a lot more music this year than lately; a standout is Suzanne Vega's Beauty and Crime album. You know how you get a tune stuck in your head? At times I have the entire album in there. Mary Chapin Carpenter's The Calling was the soundtrack to my New York trip, though I don't think my mother knows that.


BAD
My wife Angela was diagnosed with breast cancer. And that one sentence outweighs all the above, doesn't it?

Prognosis is good, though, and she's now in chemotherapy. And for all the bad, there has been good, too: we've shook with gallows-humour laughter at points. And people have been tremendous, most especially folks at Radio Times. Funny: people I'd have expected to be good, haven't been so much yet others I wouldn't have thought would even know have turned out to be exceptional.

A friend's got prostrate cancer. I'm trying to be exceptional, yet also not be in the way.

Radio Times competitions. I never want to hear about these again, and that's entirely my fault.

Cornwall. (You know who you are.)

That's it, I think. Let me know about your 2007, would you?

Thanks,
William

Guest Blogger: Ian Smith

And now for someone else who can write up a good DVD vote: Ian Smith.

William

To: wg@williamgallagher.com
From: Ian Smith

Oh this is tough!

Was very tempted to vote for Kubrick's "2001" on HD-DVD (and also Blu-Ray) because the picture is absolutely stunning for a film that's so long in the tooth. One doubts that even those who saw the film on its original theatrical release got to see something as stunning as this. "Reference quality" doesn't even begin to cover how sumptuous this new transfer is.

And then there's "Pan's Labyrinth". On DVD this is far better looking than it was at the NFT screening I saw with the director giving a Q&A, and the film is haunting and powerful. And yet, when I caught up with the director's "The Devils Backbone" I found I slightly preferred that. So "The Guillermo Del Toro Collection" would definitely get the vote, released earlier this year, if not for the fact it included a truly dreadful transfer of "Cronos" and only included the single disc, not the double-disc version of "Pan's Labyrinth".

So I was all set to mention "Days of Glory" (on Blu-Ray disc in a stunning transfer), a moving film that was nominated in the same category as "Pan's Labyrinth" for "Best Foreign Language Film" and a film which actually caused the law in France to be changed (how many films can say that? More info in my review here) and then I remembered "Heroes" on HD-DVD and realised it HAD to get my vote for shiny disc(set) of the year.

"Heroes" is so addictive I wasted two hard-won weekends back in England (I'd been away working in Ireland) watching it. Not since "24" or "Lost" in their first years has a series been so addictive, or delivered such consistently high quality throughout. At last - a "superhero" movie that comic book fans can be proud of and which their non-comic book friends can get equally addicted to. The twists were plentiful but thematically consistent and clearly planned from the start. OK so the ending was a bit of a "we may want to bring the lead villain back if things turn really bad in future seasons" cop-out, but how many shows with 23 episodes don't have the occasional weak moment?

For TV to deliver 23 episodes of such high quality throughout, without recourse to "filler" episodes is unprecedented, even from the likes of the superb "Battlestar Galactica". The cast of unknowns were brilliant, and with guest appearances from Christopher Eccleston and Malcolm McDowell for us Brits what's not to like? Given that "Heroes" is flavour of the month at the moment (it's taken the crown from "Lost" it would seem) it would have been easy for the shiny discs to be a flimsy cash-in affair. But no, the makers gave us the series in a beautifully packaged region-free HD-DVD set packed full of extras. More TV show DVD sets should be like this! A truly outstanding set that delivers on high definition promises, with brilliant writing, superb casting and week after week of cliff-hanger endings which make one grateful that one chose to watch the show on shiny disc instead of terrestrial TV. Warning: Only start watching this DVD set if you have 23 hours free in one go!

Ian

Guest Blogger: Steve Fitzpatrick

Just so you know, each year on the podcast UK DVD Review I do a poll whose format is a chart countdown but whose sole purpose is to get you ten great DVD recommendations. I ask for votes and it's all tabulated away merrily in Excel, but I am fully blatant about how I'm more interested in passion for a DVD than I am for just weight of numbers. So each year I ask for a vote - and a reason why you're voting for this or that particular title.

But for the 2007 poll, I got more tremendously considered reasons than ever before. I felt bad that I was going to reduce people's fine work to a two-liner, so I said I'd stop hoarding these great emails. Over the next little while, I'm going to show you what people showed me: the best reasons for loving the best DVDs.

First up, Steve Fitzpatrick. I'd tell you what he voted for but his email was one that worked through his arguments nicely and I'm just going to shut up.

William

---

From: Steve Fitzpatrick
To: wg@williamgallagher.com

Worthy.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, sadly in our household, not so much. If a film or programme is branded as worthy it means it is usually beautifully filmed and themes and ideas are fully explored in all their minutiae, characters developed extensively (preferably in flash-back or flash-forward) dialogue is crafted so carefully each word carries a thousand meanings. Usually when you get to the end you discover there has been no plot, and what you have watched has left you mystified and confused as to what has happened. The phrase pretentious billooks (got to be careful of the profanity check) never entered my head.

Steven Poliakoff is usually worthy - yes, I have just watched Capturing Mary - did it show?

That's why with eager anticipation I sat down to watch Die Hard 4.0. and instantly put it to the top of my list of DVD's this year. While it has no plot either it contains the necessary essentials to while away a winters evening. Chases, one liners, explosions, a bit of gun play, more one liners and even more explosions. What more do you need? It even has Bruce looking moody, bruised and torn. No character development, no plot, but at least at the end you know where you have been. I don't think I'll be giving away too much to tell you that the baddy gets it.

An unworthy, shallow, film then; and definitely my DVD of the year.

I haven't had the chance to watch Oceans 13 yet but, fun caper it undoubtedly will be, it doesn't have the Bruce factor.

Except.

In a chance conversation I remembered Pierrepoint, recently re released, about the career of Albert Pierrepoint Britain's most "successful" hangman. This is a film I saw at the cinema, it had a limited release and needed extensive research to find where it was playing. It left a huge mark on me, I talked about it endlessly for weeks after and clamoured for its DVD release. It is rare for me to revisit a DVD more than a couple of times, but this was a film I would play to anyone given the merest excuse, and watched over and over. I can't say "enjoyed" it, the subject matter doesn't lend itself to enjoyment, but I was captivated by it. Each viewing giving a different nuance, a different feeling, about the subject matter and still left me tense and shocked by what I saw.

It is, however beautifully acted, and the characters well explored. Timothy Spall is exceptional in the lead role as the film follows Pierepoint's career, from applying for the job of hangman to his resignation, after some 600 executions, in the late 1950's.

It shows a man, dedicated to his work, and applying the job dignity and compassion to the prisoner sentenced to death, yet a man totally dedicated to being the best at his job.

It shows the effect the work had on him. Albert Pierrepoint kept his government job to himself, and no-one knew what he did, not even his wife until the newspapers revealed his identity as a "hero" following the executions of the Nazi hierarchy at Nuremburg to his vilification as the country increasingly turned against capital punishment.

The one thing this film doesn't do is comment. It is neither pro nor anti capital punishment. It does not glorify or vilify. It presents just the facts (taken from Pierrepoint's autobiography) and leaves the viewer to make up their own minds. It does however provoke debate, and I have seen people's attitude to capital punishment both re-inforced or reversed after viewing.

The subject matter does not make for an enjoyable film. It is however compelling and thought provoking. In other words, worthy. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

I wholehearted commend this worthy film as my DVD of the year.

S

Over-examining one line

It's fashionable for actors to say they chose a role because of the script.  But they only say that in pre-release promo interviews; when it comes to getting an award, they will still thank the director for creating such a great role.

And I can understand that. To be callous, the director is more likely to get the actor work than the writer is. But also the actor and director will have worked together much more closely than writer and actor, writer and director, writer and stationery supplier. 

I'm considerably more troubled when an actor says the script is the thing and then you see it really isn't. It can be that his or her specific role was good, that it was something that truly stretched them, and that it was something that looked great on the showreel. And it can all be bollocks: saying you made your choice because of the script makes you sound good. You've got options, it says. You're a team player because you're thinking of the whole project. You're smart. You didn't just say yes because you needed the money.

Saying that one thing means all these others, and that'd be fine but it can mean it without you actually having to have read the script at all. It's definitely applied now almost regardless of whether the script is good or not, so while there are times I believe it's true, I really think this is a case where specific praise from a star can actually devalue writing. When an ordinary, average script gets Harrison Ford praising it, what does that tell new writers to aim for? And when the script editor knows solely the ten key points from Robert McKee's point of view - and believes there actually are rules to writing - then we are ultimately losing out.

Follow. My mother gets genuinely annoyed when she can't instantly follow something in a drama. Why are they lying? What does he want? Who does she mean? When we first saw Martha Jones in Doctor Who, the Doctor appeared out of nowhere in a plot point neither we nor Martha fully got until the end. My mom would've been spitting for an hour. And I think it's because the majority of her TV drama watching is soap. Nothing wrong with soap but when it's your only diet and when the TV industry believes soap is the exclusive route for new writers, then there's a lot wrong. And a symptom is this inability to lie. Soap characters lie constantly, just not to us: they can smile at their enemy but they must immediately gurn Airplane-like to us so we know.

I prefer it when we don't know. Or at least, I can prefer it. If it's done well, not-knowing something is as good as knowing it. Recently Battlestar Galactica showed us various scenes that we'd previously only ever heard about in reported speech; somehow, contrary to all expectations, the telling proved to have been more powerful than the showing.

And I like it when there's an agreement between the writer and the viewer about what's important. Doctor Who always has this and has it with exuberance - except for a tiny part toward the end of this year's Christmas special:

DOCTOR: They've cut the brake line!

Astrid was driving a forklift truck (which, incidentally, if you don't happen to know already, is really quite difficult to do; difficult enough that you need a special licence to prove you're able to do it). She's aiming to drive Max and his chamber off the edge of the platform. But they're deadlocked and one of Max's robot Hosts frizbees a metal halo at Astrid, pranging it off the truck.

And I keep thinking about Russell T Davies's choices at this point. Logic suggests the Host should've hit Astrid but that would be too violent an end. And it would be the end: the plot would've stopped because she died and Max survived. So he must have the Hosts miss, for both reasons.

DOCTOR: They've cut the brake line!

With those words, the Doctor is back in the game, he's effectively told us what's going to happen, and he's made sure Astrid knows the stakes. Our main character is deep in the action instead of solely being held off to one side. That's got to be good, hasn't it? There are British television series that tell their writers the show is really about the guest characters, not the regulars. (This accounts for why their regulars are so dull. Unfortunately the guests are no more memorable.) But here, the Doctor is key and even as Astrid sacrifices herself to save everything, it's the Doctor we're with. His reactions. So I can't fault that line.

But I do. It tipped me out of the story. I'd accepted the existence of the truck, I'd accepted that Astrid could drive it, I didn't accept that the Hosts had cut the brake line. I've not the remotest idea where such a thing is, but I couldn't take either the coincidence of a lucky shot or the idea that it was a deliberate action. Coincidence is too much, I feel you only ever get away with coincidence at the start of a story or when it is the story. I have a piece that relies upon almost endless coincidence but I believe it works because almost none of it really is coincidence, you just think it is. And you even see coincidences that aren't actually there, so I'm happy with that.  And I'm not happy with the idea of a deliberate choice to cut this bleedin' brake line because that really isn't a sensible alternative to killing Astrid. 

How bad would it have been to drop this line? Pretty bad, actually. Not only would the Doctor's part in it be reduced but Astrid's would've been changed: where she knew what she was doing and what it meant, she would instead have a nasty shock when the brakes failed. So the Doctor would be out of it and she'd be Frank Spencer: I can see why Russell T Davies went the way he did.

Only, I think there was a third way. I can't solve the issue with the Doctor even though I've thought about this a lot. Nonetheless, if you took out that line of dialogue about the brakes, you could've still had Astrid driving up to the edge of the chasm. She's pushing Max, he's pushing her, they're right on that ragged edge, I think you could have Astrid realising what the consequences of an extra shove would be and her deciding to do it anyway.

The trouble is that not only is the Doctor sidelined, he's sidelined for a long time, for the whole end of this sequence. It'd only be seconds, but I think it would feel too long. And I just can't solve that.

But given the choices, given how the dialogue took me out at a crucial moment, I think on balance I'd have cut the brake line.

William

Joking Apart

Finally, I can tell you this: I've written a companion booklet for the Joking Apart series 2 DVD.

The DVD is being released on March 17 next year but as of today you can preorder it from official website.

The main feature of the booklet is about both series, it's the whole story of how Steven Moffat's comedy came to be. It's really about how the show went right and then went so wrong: how something so great simply wasn't seen by many people. And how the sitcom's vibrant mix of sex and verve, sheer farce and stunning rage, is now so obviously where Moffat's hit Coupling started.

But there's also a piece in the booklet by DVD producer Craig Robins on how the second series was remastered from the 1990s original master tapes and why they had to be painstakingly worked on, how the show looks better now than it did on transmission. It's an informative story and Craig is adding to it on his revamped Replay DVD website. Starting today and over the next couple of months until the DVD is out, he's recounting some of the behind the scenes stories. He thought it was just a DVD project, but your hand will be in your mouth when you hear what it took to get this made.

In case you don't already know, Craig Robins wasn't a DVD producer until he found out the BBC was never going to release Joking Apart. Never. He checked. It was official. So he put up ouchfuls of his own money, negotiated and bought the rights to release the first series it himself.

Plainly it's worked out well because now he's back with the second.

Fantastic, isn't it?

William

Call sheet: Ashes to Ashes

You know how things come along at once? I'd never seen a call sheet until last week and now I've had two. Last Monday I was filming behind the scenes at a Radio Times photo shoot for the new BBC1 period drama, Lark Rise to Candleford. Julia Sawalha, Dawn French and Olivia Hallinan were photographed in period costume - by a photographer in tails and with a truly Jules Verne-like wooden and brass camera.

Also a top-of-the-range modern digital tethered to a MacBook, but.

And it must've gone well because this Monday, I've just been booked on the RT shoot for Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life on Mars. Presumably I can't tell you anything about the shoot but there is word that a car will be there.

Looking forward to this,
William

Your UK DVD Review poll of the year

You voted, I counted, we talked: have a listen to this week's UK DVD Review show, a half-hour special podcast counting down your top ten DVDs of 2007.

I promised on that edition that in exchange for my not taking ten of the thirty minutes to read out the prices, I'd do it here. So, ta-daa: here's your countdown - and I've done it as a series of links to Amazon so you can just zoom through.

The whole point of the countdown was not to have a countdown; as fun as it was to see what made number 1, the whole list, the whole ten were ones you picked because you loved them so much, you couldn't stop talking about them. And shortly I'll be putting up some of your best emails about why you picked what you did; they'll be guest blogs over the next few days.

Last, I've also appended my own top ten from the week before's UK DVD Review.

Thanks for voting. The show will return on 6 January 2008. See you then.

William


Your Top Ten DVDs of 2007


1. Doctor Who: The Complete Third Season

2. Veronica Mars: Season 3 (US import)

3. The Bourne Ultimatum

4. Heroes

5. Stranger Than Fiction

6. The Prisoner

7. Pan's Labyrinth

8. Pierrepoint

9. My So-Called Life (US import)

10. Mad About You (US import)


And now My Top Ten DVDs of 2007

I should explain that it's a revised list, ever since listener Ian Smith told me about the DVD that really should come top for me.

0. Battlestar Galactica (HD season 1, US import)

1. Doctor Who: The Complete Third Season

2. Veronica Mars: Season 3 (US import)

3. The Bourne Ultimatum

4. Stranger Than Fiction

5. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

6. My So-Called Life (US import)

7. The Prestige

8. Casino Royale

9. Dar Williams: Live at the Bearsville Theatre (US import)- but buy Dar's albums first

10. Alias Smith and Jones

When Leopards go "Boo!"

I am supposed to be busy, but...

Couldn't resist. I just recorded some dialogue here in my office, popped it over to the PowerBook in the living room and hit play on it from here.

True, I couldn't hear the playback, but I heard the bump as my sister-in-law jumped through the roof.

Ah, technology.

William

When Leopards Go Bad

I should've seen this coming, shouldn't I?

I've got a Mac and a PowerBook; since the Leopard release of OS X I've been using a feature called Back to My Mac: I sit in the living room and, whenever I fancy, I can look at the screen of the Mac in my office. You're thinking this is stupid and I can't 100% disagree with you, but the PowerBook's a writing machine that I've reluctantly stripped down to prevent me piddling about in Photoshop when I should be working. And the office Mac is the big bugger; if anything's going to take some heavy lifting, I leave my Mac doing it.

And then check its screen from down here.

Only... I had to go do it in reverse, didn't I? Very fine, very useful, but can you see where this is going? By accident and thickness, I used my PowerBook to show me the screen of my office Mac... which was showing me the screen of my PowerBook.

This is what happens.

I'm working on it, honest

This week's UK DVD Review has nearly 100 clips in it: rather than then take an hour reading the prices out, let me give you the list of clips I used here. Shortly I'll be adding links out from this to Amazon, so as to more formally fulfill my contractual needs to plug the prices.

If you don't listen to the show regularly, have a look at it now.

And if you do listen, please also vote: email me at wg@williamgallagher.com before December 1, telling me your one pick of the year - and why you like it so.

Here's that list, just a reminder of some of the DVDs we've seen this year.

Deep breath,
William

1. Doctor Who Blink
2. Ace of Wands
3. Zoo Gang
4. Camberwick Green
5. Life on Mars
6. Arrested Development
7. The Rockford Files
8. Mad About You
9. The Rockford Files
10. Wild Hogs

11. Die Hard 4
12. WKRP in Cincinatti
13. Alias Smith and Jones
14. Airwolf
15. M*A*S*H
16. Green Wing
17. Alias Smith and Jones
18. Torchwood
19. Mr Bean's Holiday
20. Desperate Housewives

21. Jekyll
22. Little Miss Sunshine
23. Hoodwinked
24. Flushed Away
25. Veronica Mars
26. Atonement
26. Sandbaggers
28. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
29. Children of Men
30. Northern Exposure

31. Father Ted Speed 3
32. In the Night Garden
33. Becoming Jane
34. Babylon 5 captain's log
35. Cardiac Arrest
36. Follyfoot
37. Dirty Dancing
38. The Prisoner
39. Battlestar Galactica
40. For Your Consideration

41. Stranger Than Fiction
42. Notes on a Scandal
43. Ocean's Thirteen
44. Doctor Who Arc of Infinity
45. Ugly Betty
46. The Holiday
47. Frasier
48. Night at the Museum
49. Nancy Drew open
50 Doctor Who Blink

51. Fracture
52. Last King
53. Columbo
54. Casino Royale
55. The Prestige
56. Friends and Crocodiles
57. Peep Show
58. My So-Called Life
59. Hot Fuzz
60. Music and Lyrics

61. Heroes
62 The Queen
63. World of Pub
64. This is England
65. Blades of Glory
66. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
67. Happy Feet
68. Rolling Stones
69. Shooter
70. Forbidden Planet

71. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
72. Zombie Diaries
73. 28 Weeks Later
74. Pursuit
75. Perfect Stranger
76. Arthur
77. Thank You for Smoking
78. The Libertine
79. Zodiac
80. Fantasic Four

81. Amazing Grace
82. Premonition
83. Inland Empire
84. Sunshine
85. Miss Potter
86. The Illusionist
87. Snakes on a Plane
88. World Trade Center
89. Perfume
90. Primeval

91. Serenity
92. Cheers
93. Because I Said So
94. Open Season
95. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
96. The Bourne Ultimatum

-

Graphite by example

Presumably you're on the side of the writers in the US strike: if not, hello, it's funny you should stop by here just when I'm talking about you and the other five people backing the producers.

But if you are one of those, do please look away now and don't spoil the surprise: I've just sent you a gift. Like socks at Christmas, it's a nice gift that you're going to get sick of.

Writers across the world are being asked to show support for the US strike by sending a box of pencils to the heads of the studios holding out. Being writers, these pencils are imbued with symbolism and you want to chip in, don't you? It'll cost a dollar: click here to do the deed.

Ta to Piers for blogging about it even as he should be giving me notes on a script.

William

All is well

There are birds in the trees. I'm writing again. My Oscar is in the post. I don't want to make too big a deal out of this, but on my way over here, I healed some people.

Yes, I have an iPhone.

William

Rackfay

Some writing competitions require you to enter entirely under a pseudonym. So the other day Maxine Desk, who inexplicably lives at my address yet doesn't contribute a penny to the food bill, got a letter from a theatre company saying how sorry they were she'd been rejected, how they knew this was a blow.

I couldn't even remember entering the contest, I don't know what I sent, I don't know who these people are. If there's a real Maxine Desk out there waiting for news on her script, let me know. No need to hurry.

This utter blankness over a contest I've entered is unusual, yes. But I'm minded of it because the reverse has happened today: a contest I've said before would be the best TV writing competition in the world, ever, if they had only thought to beef up the prize. Really, they were so close: a guaranteed TV commission, a guaranteed TV agent, some cash and the opportunity to work with Tony Jordan plus a good stab at getting your winning script filmed. Would it have hurt them to add a bacon sandwich and an iPhone?

I haven't made the cut.

This time, though, even more than remembering who I emailed my entry to, I also know the names of the judging panel and they are all people I rate very highly: Stephen Fry, Julie Gardner, it goes on, you count them, I can't face it. So instead of a faceless producer, there's a panel of people whose writing I admire and who do not admire my writing. To be practical here, they might have loved and cherished every syllable, but I didn't make the cut and a miss is as good as a mile.

There won't be feedback on this one (Red Planet's judges must've read at least 20,000 pages of script, they'd never be able to comment usefully on my 10) which usually means you have to shrug and move on. The scale and weight of this one means that's harder to do, and it's much easier to re-examine the material and try to guess where I got it wrong. So I'll obviously be doing a bit of that.

But otherwise, you know what needs to be done next, don't you? Every sane person in this world would tell you that that thing to do is to keep writing and, if you were even halfway clever you would already have other things out there. I have other things out there.

But still, I'm tired of being a rebel. I am stopping writing now, it's all over. I've been eating my own bacon sandwich while I've talked to you and soon I'm going out to buy my own iPhone.

William

PS. Rackfay is pig latin, if you hadn't guessed.

Okay, I'll play

Take three blog entries into the shower?

Not sure if this is a busy day or not, but it's definitely not my usual Tuesday news shift at RadioTimes.com so I admit it, I am intrigued: Piers Beckley just tagged me to copy what he's done and list five things about myself that "other people might think lame, but which make me who I am". He's preceded in this by Helen Smith. (Hello, Helen Smith.) Who's next depends on you.

But in no especial order, here you go: me in five lame point.

1) Just so stories
When a piece of writing is just so, just exactly right, it can and regularly does move me to real tears. Can't define what's right but I know it when I get that tingle. Dar Williams's songwriting does it to me repeatedly; Christina Rosetti; Alan Plater plays. It's almost endless.

2) I'm scared of paper
Strange, but true: I have papyrophobia which is strictly speaking a fear of paper. I know you think I'm joking, being a writer and all, but while I think fear is a strong word, it's about right. Small pieces of paper, especially, can make me shake. Consequently the BBC's habit of using post-it notes a lot does give me problems, most particularly because I regularly hotdesk there and can be using other people's computers instead of my own paper-free one.

3) I'm a nut for cartography
'Course, I gave that away about an hour ago, but still. Mapping, GIS, all this stuff, arrests me. I am in no small way excited by the Maps application on iPhones.

4) Pilgrimage
When I went to Los Angeles, I made a pilgrimage to Pershing Square where the exterior of the Los Angeles Tribune newspaper offices were in Lou Grant.

5) I like typing
More than writing, sometimes. The feel of the keys under your fingers; I'm a self-taught touch-typist, once clocked at around 120 wpm, and writing is a tactile thing for me; I like the sense of kneading words together with my fingers. I think a lot about how we can think of keyboards in different ways; right now, for instance, I'm not looking at mine and all it means to me is the next letter, the next word, yet in a word processor I can in the very next second be using those same keys to save, to print, to email. I also think a great deal about word processors; I used to write about them. A friend recently complained that it was ridiculous that Microsoft charges hundreds of pounds for Word, "it's only a word processor", and by God she regretted it - or she would have done if she hadn't glazed over a few seconds into my "Ah, but you say that..." speech.

Am I allowed a sixth? You're the only person I can think of to send this to and suggest you do one yourself. No telling me that you have already. This is primarily because every bleedin' writer on the planet has already done this business. I am late to the table, again.

William

Unnamed lands

No reason you should know this, but I'm a nut for cartography. If you have a look at the About me page on my website, you'll see me with my nose in a book: it's a beautiful volume called Mapping Boston.

But being a writer, a particular fascination for me about mapping is the naming of places and features. If you don't already know this, you may be startled by just how much rage is stirred up by toponyms: there are several places in America called "Squaw Tits", for example, and somewhere in the States there's a "Nigger Point". My first reaction is to change them, but if you erase them, aren't you sanitising history? And if you don't, aren't you perpetuating the offense? That's my ideal drama: two opposing sides, both deeply felt and both rousing anger, but both sides right and both wrong.

I've learnt today about an almost opposite thing: a place that has no name. It doesn't sound possible, does it? You think of the world as having been thoroughly and completely explored, named, practically settled. (Incidentally, the UK is the most-mapped region of the globe, seriously. And of course it was started for military reasons; why don't we twig the reason it's called Ordnance Survey?).

But imagine a place with no name. You'd want to name it, wouldn't you? And pretty quick. So, yep, one of the current issues being debated by the US Board on Geographic Names is what to call a stream in Washington state. I'd tell you where it is but I can't find it, it doesn't have a name.

It will. I just can't decide whether this is good silly or bad silly: it's likely to be called Lambee Creek - "in honour of a nearby resident's 12-year-old cat, Lambee".

Quote from USA Today.

William

Here's that cover

Previously on this blog... I told you I'd seen a draft of a Radio Times cover that I wanted to tell you all about - and realised halfway through the sentence that I was simply not allowed to. If you don't already know, covers are extraordinarily important. When I was on PC Direct magazine we'd have covers meetings and you'd see that, all else being equal, the cover affected sales by 10 per cent or more.

Anyway, now read on. Or rather look on. The issue is on sale as of this morning and the cover has been released: Outpost Gallifrey has the largest image of it I could see and that's here.

I told you I'd watched the image be really painstakingly arranged on the page (Peter Davison and David Tennant were shot in front of a green screen; the TARDIS behind them is a separate image). This isn't the cover I saw, it's a different shot of the men, but it still makes me think what I did at the time. That it's weird.

Good weird, but still. Much as I liked Peter Davison's Doctor at the time, he looks so jarring now. Hard to believe this is the same show that it was, don't you think?

William

A period film, full stop

Christine Patton, whose blog I would link to if link-based technology were working, has written about how she's completed her period film script, the latest in a series of scriptwriting challenges that I'm also part of. (Hang on, would you put up with an old-fashioned, crude and frankly passe URL? She's on http://mycatlikeselvis.blogspot.com/.)

Stuart Perry (http://stuartperryuk.blogspot.com/) was also doing said period challenge but has only gone and got himself a proper script writing job. (How do I do green text?)

The period idea was mine, and I thought of it partly because I like certain period films but also because it seemed difficult to do. The primary reason for the challenges is to make you get down on your arse and write, rather than think, but it's good to have a goal that's going to be tough beyond just having to reach a certain page count. So I suggested period films and Piers Beckley (http://pavementandstars.blogspot.com/) who has run these things ever since I said "'ere, what if we did challenges?" determined that the definition of a period film was anything prior to 1989.

I could've objected. And I did. But I could've objected more, I could've pointed out that he wasn't even doing this one. But instead, like the Englishman I am, I nodded politely and mentioned later that I was ignoring him.

My period film is set in 2010.

Also 2000.

And 1991.

1980.

1975

1820.

I was a heartbeat away from saying to you that this makes it a periods film when I realised that sounded medical.

I had a point when I started telling you this but I've lost it now. What was I getting at? That I feel good another script is written? That's happy for me.

Trust you're well,
William

For your consideration

Universal has just released six screenplays online right here. They're the ones the studio is hoping will get a Oscar nominations - well, presumably they're hoping for an Oscar win but steady on - so they're arguably the pick of the bunch.

They're all the shooting scripts so none of the rubbishy tarted-up transcripts you so often see published and they're all in PDF format. A personal favourite is there, The Bourne Ultimatum, which I'm planning to read as soon as I've stopped talking to you. But there's also American Gangster, Breach, Elizabeth - The Golden Age, The Kingdom and Knocked Up.

I didn't know this but Paramount Vantage, kind of the arthouse end of Paramount if there is such a thing, has already done much the same. If you haven't seen it, here's Paramount Vantage's collection of scripts.

You will notice that Jason Arnopp's screenplay, Look at Me, is not yet available online anywhere but this will surely be remedied soon.

William

Alan Coren

There are certain books I read when I'm bored. Not because that's the only time I can face 'em, or because I've been keeping them ready for boredom-emergencies, but because there's something about them that bears re-reading and they've somehow become handy.

It's not always obvious why: when I was a boy it was the Piccolo Book of Codes and Ciphers. What I don't know about wrapping a strip of paper around a stick before you write a very short message on it is simply not worth knowing. I can say that with authority because nothing about wrapping a strip of paper around a stick is worth knowing.

For many years, though, my grab book has been an anthology of Alan Coren's writing. You certainly know him from television and radio, you probably know he's Victoria Coren's dad, and you've probably heard that his death was announced today. I can't find the book. I could quote you whole chapters, though I wouldn't do them justice. But I can't find it to read again.

I wasn't always 100% sure I agreed with his perspectives but the sixty-odd pieces in that book, all two- and three-pagers, made me shake so I couldn't hold the page still. I'd fight the page to keep it steady and let me read, and I'd lose. You can't go back, nothing can ever be as funny the second time, but the more I'd read it, the more the writer in me would kick in and I'd appreciate the casually artful construction, the very offhand punch he had.

There's an obit on BBC News Online.

w

Meany

You know I want to tell you. You know.

But I can't.

I saw a draft cover of a future Radio Times issue this afternoon - and maybe I'm extremely warmly-dressed but covers are fascinating to me, both from how important they are and from seeing them made with care. The thing I can't tell you is what's actually on the cover but standing in a conversation, I couldn't stop watching RT's art editor Paul Smith making the tiniest, tiniest adjustments. Nudging elements of the cover a pixel here or there.

I've seen this before, the time and the talent spent getting an image just right, but I'll tell you that this cover was surprising.

When's Comic Relief? At the moment, this particular image is planned for the RT issue of that week and if I did tell you what was on, you might shrug and say everybody knows about this particular thing. I think I did, I think I did. But seeing the image in the flesh, so to speak, is different and I'd like to talk to you about that.

But of course I can't, so I'll shut up. And apologise for being mean. Let me tell you what I meant - when the cover's on sale.

William

The myth of mythology

I need a hand, are you up for this? I want to know what I've got against mythology.

Let me say, first of all, that this is a very specific thing I'm talking about here: I mean mythology in a script, a drama. There's this fella - I'd call him Piers but then he'd know I think about what he says and I'm just after pretending I don't - who plainly loves mythology. I'm still not clear, am I? Maybe this is why I'm confused. In a nutshell, think about something like Babylon 5: it's got mythology up the wazoo. In smaller scale dramas you'd call it the backstory, in epics and most especially science fiction ones, it's the mythology.

I loathe it.

Let's say I've got two people in a room and they are verbally clawing at each other: does it matter that his ancestors run the bar on Altair IV and were there during Copyright Clearance Riots? Or that her ancestry goes back to the Knights Templar? It might - but I'd better bloody care about the people right in front of me first.

It'd be easy to say Babylon 5 is unbearable for this very reason. So let's. Babylon 5 is unbearable for this very reason. I'm not being fair, I realise that, and I'm not really trying to deny that the characters are appalling, the dialogue reeks and the stories don't exactly raise the bar. But people who love the show tell me they love the rich tapestry of its tales, the very mythology of what's going on in it. 

Only... I caught some of Deep Space Nine on the telly tonight. (Incidentally, did you notice that every single Star Trek series, bar the animated one, is currently airing in the UK? Paramount's doing well for itself.)  It happens that I'm watching the seventh DS9 season on DVD but what I caught on the TV was an early first-season one, Babel by Michael McGreevey and Naren Shankar, an episode I'm pretty sure I watched in the 1990s. And it was better than I remembered.

But you tell me, is that because the episode itself is stronger than I thought, is it that I'm going soft on the early seasons, or it is that I cannot watch it now without knowing everything that is to come? I know the mythology of the show and I can't undo that knowledge.  In much the same way, when I saw Atonement the other night I couldn't undo the novel in my head and as good as the film is there was a part of me waiting and wondering how it would pull off the novel's big punch at the end. I think it did it very well, as it happens; I left the cinema thinking I could never write a screenplay as well as Christopher Hampton. Mark you, there were several trailers before the film for movies like Lions for Lambs and I could've written that. You could've written it in the time it's taken you to read this far.

Am I benefitting, is the series benefitting in my eyes because of this known and shared mythology? That Piers bloke once told me to watch three specific episodes of Babylon 5 and I'd be a convert, so can you actually come to like any show? In a way, is there no such thing as quality and instead only longevity and familiarity?

No. 

I watched those B5 episodes, I moved on. Though I recently watched all of Brothers & Sisters and Dirt for work and if you ask me if they're any good, I'll say no but if you ask me if I like them, I'll say yes.

Unless you can straighten this out for me, I'm going to go with that bit about caring for the people in front of you first. And I want to give you an example. It's Deep Space Nine again, which is fitting and yet also probably the tipping point after which you'll forever just label me as a Trekkie. I said I've been watching the seventh season; the episode I've seen most recently is It's Only a Paper Moon by Ronald D Moore. It was arresting, absorbing, quite uplifting and at times upsetting but above all else it had me in the story throughout. That is all I want from life.

And here's the thing. This episode may be just one of 176 Deep Space Nines so of course I still know the settings, the characters -  but it's about two recurring characters. They're not the regulars, they're effectively one up from guest stars. The regulars in this one only make token appearances.

Now, this is Bad Writing(TM). A series is about your regular characters, which we could argue about another time but you know I'm right and it's basically because I'm right. Even the actors playing these guest parts agree with me. Aron Eisenberg says in an interview I've read that he was terribly excited to get this unexpected chance and his co-star, a very laid-back James Darren, just laughed and told the producers they were very brave to do it.

I'm pretty sure you'd never see this on Spooks.  I like Spooks, but it wouldn't. Hotel Babylon has guests staying and they ignite the story, but it's really always about our main characters. I like that, I agree with it.

But it worked here marvellously and I don't know: is that a validation of the storytelling about people in front of me or is it that the mythology of DS9 is so complete that minor characters can legitimately carry a whole episode?

What I do know is that the producers didn't plan to do this. They had other stories going on, the one with these two fellas was just meant to be a linking spine, almost an excuse or a framework for all the others. But in the end it was this one that mattered, so that's the only one they told. And I admire them for it enormously.

And they had about seven years' worth of Deep Space Nine mythology plus, er, what, thirty years and 600 episodes of Star Trek lore to lean on, and they didn't. Didn't do it, didn't need it. That's Tremendous Writing(TM).

William

Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

One of the main acquisitions for Virgin 1, the new TV channel starting tonight, is Star Trek. Virgin's press office says they've bought it all, every last drop, and other people are noting that the original Trek is still running merrily on Sci-Fi. But whether or not they've got everything, they've got most of it and Virgin 1 has decided to start the lot off with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

You'd think they'd do The Next Generation, because that was the most successful, or Voyager because nobody watched that and so it still feels new.

But they've gone for DS9 and while you can bet it's a dollars-and-cents decision, somehow, it'd be nice to think that it's an editorial one. Because Deep Space Nine is the finest of the Trek outings and I have not always thought so.

Flashback: 1993. DS9 is about to start on UK television and I write about the pilot episode for The Independent newspaper. I actually slag it off a bit, saying the acting is poor and some of the dialogue creaky. And I say it because I mean it, and because I mean it, I don't continue with the show. Must've caught the odd episode, but nothing consistent.

Until about 1999 or 2000 when I pick up a cheap copy of both The Next Generation and DS9 Companion CD-ROMS: two discs full of who cares? But alongside that, almost like padding, each CD contained every script for its series. Every TNG, every DS9 script. I'm a script writer, there's nothing like reading scripts to learn, and if you're arguing that Trek isn't The West Wing, well, yes, but the ability to see an entire show's writing from pilot to finale was irresistible.

I tell you now, in case you ever decide to do this too, the scripts to The Next Generation are a chore to read. I don't know why. But somehow they don't feel like stories, they're more like puzzles and the solutions are usually to do with realigning the EM transmitters or something. I read them all, 178 of them, and learnt nothing very much.

You're ahead of me again, aren't you? Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's scripts, all 176 of them, are vastly better. Some are dreadful, some are brilliant, but the whole seven years read like a novel, I was utterly absorbed in them, couldn't put them down. I became a fan because of the scripts. And because I watch in the UK, even though the show was finished in the States and this complete colllection really did have all the scripts, by the time I happened to read them, BBC2 still had about ten episodes to go.

I held off reading those scripts and instead DS9 became my evening break at BBC Ceefax: Wednesday nights, around 6:00pm, often just me in the ents newsroom, it was great.

So great that I bought the DVDs. All of them.

And gingerly started playing that pilot episode, that film I'd called creaky and with bad acting.

And guess what?

It was rubbish. The acting was extremely poor, the situations and some of the dialogue banal and strangely up itself. If I watched it tomorrow on Virgin 1, I would not go buy the scripts or the DVDs. But I would be missing out.

Can't tell you when it gets good; I have a great fondness for that pilot now because of all that happens to do with it over the seven years. And it's hugely better than the Next Generation pilot.

So if you haven't seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I hope you love it. And if you want those scripts, you'll have to search but it's worth it. Look up "Star Trek Deep Space Nine companion" on Amazon or wherever; there is a book of that title which is exceptional, and the scripts are on the CD-ROM of that name. Amazon insists the CD-ROM is only for Windows but it worked fine on my Macs.

William

PS. The subject heading of this translates as "In time of war, the law goes silent". It's an episode title, and a theme, from DS9. Can't see Captain Kirk dealing with political shades of grey, can you?