Television programmes [2]

There were some other shows that people in the house wanted to watch so was a bonus for me. Agree with the whole subscription thing... have to subscribe to everything these days!!

{{ This is worth a go if your a Jeeves and Wooster fan- its a stage play/musical based on various bits from Jeeves and Wooster.
But mainly its for Martin Jarvis as Jeeves I would recommend it (though all the character acting is spot on to the books characters, though sadly Bertie himsel is weakest, not performnace but hes Amercian and the accent slips more than once), the name might not be familar to some, especially non Brits though he's a familar enough face over the years on Uk tv having been in a lot of stuff, but its as Jeeves Martin Jarvis has really excelled and made his own on stage, audio and radio.
That there has not been a televised or film version made whilst he has been at his 'peak' Jeeves is one of the great tradegies of modern media in my view.
Anyhow a rare chance to enjoy his perfomrance as Jeeves, rather than just as the voice of Jeeves. }}

{{ More lockdown watching- Macbeth from the Globe Theatre. Only watched first 20 mins or so, not bad, if you dont mind half the cast being, um, globally displaced for the time period (meaning amongst others we have a black King of Scotland circa 1040ad married to a white red haired woman. Gven in modern times the black population of Scotland makes up only 0.7% of the population this is, um, unlikely lets say, for the time period. And there also female Thanes and stuff if you need more of your politically correct fill).
But if all that doesnt take you out the setting, time and place too much its not bad, and always interesting to see how they stage things at the Globe. }}

Petty! I am so glad you have posted, I was getting worried.

{{ Thanks Figg, been wee bit iffy but think I'm fine. }}

A wee bit iffy but fine seems like a good general description of middle aged life.

well I really hope you are ok Petty. keep us updated.

Babylon Berlin: nearly last episode of season 2. HOW CAN THEY DO THIS TO US?!!

  you must be a mind reader, I was just wondering how far you had got with Babylon Berlin.

I just finished a great series on Sky called 'Devils' about high finance in London. Lance should recognise the types of people. it is very well made and intriguing.

Mrs Figg wrote:  you must be a mind reader, I was just wondering how far you had got with Babylon Berlin.

she damn well better pull a Gandalf.  It's all very well far Game of Thrones to kill off characters, they've got plenty to spare.  But she was the only one you fell in love with in this show.  A complex mix of strength, fragility, jaded integrity.   Exactly the right actress to pull it all off.

{{ So I was rewatching the tv show The Thick of It after doing some editing with them, I'll come back to that later, and I was struck not just by the quality of it, the inventiveness of the language, but by the quality of the characters. And of course in particular the wonderfully awful but cant help but love him for it character that is Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi. Who from memes and video clips can seem like a singular note, shouty sweary character but is actually so much more than that, revealed in wonderful ways in a mix of performance and occasional small glimpses. And its also an ensemble show, with several well established and performed  central characters.
It was so good I felt it might be worth sharing, so I am uploading the first episode to my google drive to see if anyone else here might be engaged by it and because it might be difficult to acquire overseas.

And whilst this next, probably longish bit is not strictly necessary, it is helpful, as I feel it does need a little context, being made in 2005.
It is set during the time of the Blair government in the UK, but before the Iraq war, but no longer in the basking in election glory period either.
And like Yes, Minister the famous classic political sitcom of the early 80's which was set during the Thatcher years, and which this is very much a spiritual successor to by intention, its set in a rather unimportant department far from the top, a top whose Cabinet members and PM you never see but only hear of. And the actual party names are never mentioned, whilst making it perfectly clear which government it really is at the same time.
Likewise this is not set in the Blair government, but it is set in a world that's exactly like it in policies, ideas, and approach to government. And its clearly the Blair Labour government just as Hackers was clearly Thatchers, but without ever seeing either, both just being, the PM.

Which brings me to the main important point, and again Yes, Minister is useful. In the opening episode of Yes, Minister newly elected MP Hacker arrives at his new Department as the Minister for Administrative Affairs, the least important government department with a vague and woolly premise and job description, on his first day accompanied by Mr Wizal his Special Advisor. They are greeted by his Civil Servants who whilst whisking Hacker along a corridor in a flurry of complex talk, whisk MR Wizal off to a side waiting room, where he is told that the Minister will call for him if needed. Wizal protests he is the Minister's Special Advisor, and the Civil Servant retorts that the Minister now has a whole Department to advise him.
All of course, Civil Servants.
It speaks to the power and reach of the civil service at that time, and just how little Special Advisors were let in, and how low they were held in esteem by the civil service.

In the Blair years one of the biggest changes he made to UK politics, which has endured to present time, was in bringing in Special Advisor's over Senior Civil Servants. The Civil Service got superseded, Sir Humphrey got ousted, by Special Advisors, nicknamed SPADS, for a political media, internet world.
Where the civil service in Yes Minister claimed the right to really run the country on the premise they planned for the next hundred years, ministers planned only till the next photo-op, in Blair's government image was all, and so the long term view was replaced by the political, and above all by feeding the press the right stuff, and exerting control over it where necessary, entertaining, flattering and threatening it at equal turns and making sure all Ministers knew the party lines.

Enter the ultimate Special Advisor created by Blair, co-existing but effectively replacing in-practice the role of the country's most Senior Civil Servant the Cabinet Secretary who had the ear of the PM, with the Director of Communications, Alastair Campbell, who very much had the ear of Tony Blair. He was the architect of such things as the 'dodgy dossier', but The Thick of It's version, Malcolm Tucker, a fellow Scot, is only Alastair to a degree, in that it is more truly based off how people thought of him and how he was portrayed in popular media and tabloid Tory press, as opposed to how he really was, and of course exaggerated and then layered for drama and character by pure invention.

So that is your political landscape for the setting. Its 2005 and its basically Blair's Labour government about 2-3 years into its first term. Media obsessed and motived, crashing into power on the crest of a tidal wave that's starting to  collide into actually trying to run a country.

So enjoy the episode, and the excellent performances and scripting.

Extra info you dont need to know to watch!
The editing, when they shot these, especially the first series, they were the normal BBC 2 comedy/drama 60 mins formula, for which the BBC had already given them the money to make just one, one hour, one off most likely pilot episode, but they'd shot enough material for closer to two one hour episodes on the budget they'd been given. And they realised they could get more episodes and more weeks on air to build an audience for the same money, which they had after-all already spent on the shooting, if they broke it into three half hour episodes.. And even that would need trimmed down still from what they had in footage, so they presented an edit of a three episodes series instead and got the green light.
The result was stuff, not just scenes, or lines of dialogue but sometimes entire subplots to episodes ended up on the cutting room floor for no other reason than the new length. So where they could be I have restored them from the DVD extras back to their places in the episodes.

And incidentally there are only 3 episodes in series 1, 3 in series 2, at which point the BBC realised they had something here, but there were very unfortunate things going on behind the scenes regarding the lead actor and he was rightly fired.
The BBC had a hit, but no lead, so we got 2 specials focusing on a change over of PM all seen through the eyes of the other main cast members, following the real world change from Blair to Brown, his Deputy.
These both filled the original brief in that they are 1 hour long.

Following this the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship got a new Minister, Nicola Murray and the BBC switched it to BBC1 and actually advertised it, series 3 got 8 episodes.

Series 4 is the final series, and is set after the end of the Labour government and the rocky days of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government, under David Cameron as PM.
Same Department but now different owners and policies, and strife. It also follows the now Opposition Party and Nicola Murray and her Special Advisors, and Malcolm still as the opposition party's top Advisor, with the format being to alternate government and opposition each episode. Of which there are seven.

Finally there is the slightly odd spin-off film, parodying the build up to the Iraq war, In the Loop, it uses the same format and overall style, and some people are playing exactly the same characters, such as Capaldi as Malcolm, and in the same role, but other characters now play either entirely different people, or even stranger very, very similar ones but with a different name and working for someone else.  Making it a bit odd to watch and adjust to.

And not finally, but off to the side in fact, there is Veep, set in the US Vice Presidents office, which they wrote after they did this and had picked themselves up from under all the awards they had won over the years before being flattened by a pile more for Veep.

So go get Tuckered! Its only half an hour long. And let me know what you think, especially if you were previously a fan of Yes, Minister, to which this is certainly kin.  }}

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1woR0l2E-2lZmkv_us8Reyu0rmxlFFLYg/view?usp=sharing

If only we had Campbell in charge these days. he was seen as a shark then, but now he seems like a bastion of morality.

{{ One of my all time great acting moments, Sherlock Holmes, the end of the Six Napoleons, and Lestrade's exchange with Holmes. Jeremy Bret plays it to absolute perfection. Gets me every time.
From 49.00 minutes }}

We all have our favourites but, I did love Jeremey Brett. Eccentric & flambouyant & he looked so good in a frock coat. Towards the later episodes he did look so ill, sadly. Shame hes gone.

Petty: Just reread the description of In the Thick of It, wherein is mentioned that you had done some editing for the BBC? Did I interpret that correctly?

{{ Ha no, I wish the BBC would hire me. No I just took a lot of scenes that were deleted for time reasons and after the format change and put them back into the proper episodes.
But they are highly recommended in any form. Great characters, great writing, good political insights. A modern Yes, Minister, but with a lot more swearing.
If there was any interest I was going to replace each episode with the next one as they got watched for folk - but um not much interest!

Incidentally there is a scene in this first epiosde, when they are in the car trying to think up apolicy, and all the ones they propose are meant to be ridiculous- pet passports, making everyone carry a plastic bag, a tax on spare rooms.

Well that last one, the Tories actually did. Its collequially known as the Bedroom Tax, and if you have a privately rented or council rented house and you have a bedroom that you do not use (forget you might be keeping it for family when they visit, or for strorage or whatever) you have to pay the government a tax for the room.
Its still law. In Scotland as its not a devolved issue and they cant changeor revoke it, the Scottish government uses a chunk of the block grant we get from Westminister to pay off the tax on behalf of the nation, as it obviously hits most directly the poorest who are renting, or private renters where there may simply be a lack of 1 bedroom properties to rent forcing you to take a larger than needed property, then getting hit with a tax for it!

But proves that there is nothing you can invent or think sounds too ridiculous to be real that a government won't try to make real and turn into law! }}

An excellent vehicle for Milly Bobby Brown. And perfect choice of Helena Bonham Carter as her mother.

Oooo, that wetted my whistle

Ah yes, yet another brave protagonist pushing back against the crushing expectations of society. Taking one's place in society? Embroidery? Wearing gloves? The horror!

I was immediately reminded of the Enola Gay.

Could be fun though, especially if they don't spend the whole movie on that feminist-in-a-historical-setting dick.

Yeah, I wouldn't be looking for any depth in that, though MBB is quite capable of it.  I think the old schtick of girl busting out of Victorian bondage wouldn't work so well if not for what she brings to her performance.

Yeah it's a kid's movie.

(And the fact that the breaking-from-bondage theme is old-hat by now just goes to show how bloody long film-makers have been pushing this shtick!)

Watching a TV series called Strike based on JK Rowlings alter ego Robert Galbraith. I liked the first two series. Going for the third tonight on BBC 1. Murder mystery and cop with 'issues', still, it is well made and likable characters.

Just watched Max and Paddy. Peter Kay is always funny.

We saw the first and the start of the second episode of Cursed on Netflix. The one with Mary Su... Sorry, Nimue, Arthur and Excalibur.
This one is safe to skip. It is beyond bad. I can't find the words to describe it.