Dear Royles,
No more please. Stop spoiling it.
Thanks.
Christmas Day 2012 has given us a new Royle Family Christmas Special: Barbara's Old Ring. I wasn't impressed, and neither were those around me who have loved this series for years. If material of this quality is all that Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash can write these days, and if the regular actors involved can't be sufficiently bothered, then why should the viewing public be presented with any more of these?
It's a shame, because The Royle Family used to be a well-observed, amusing and, at times, bitter-sweet sitcom about 'real' people. But the actual series are long since past and it's now stuck in that 'Christmas Special' world, where special is rarely an apposite description. Given characters I've previously believed in, and whom the writers, actors and directors have developed as realistically as possible, it's very annoying do find them doing stupid or silly unrealistic things purely for the sake of a laugh in the script: the upshot is these moments are rarely funny because they break that fourth wall, and turn a realistic show into Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.
The Royle Family, on the whole, managed to avoid any of that all the way through three excellent series and the first 'special' The Queen of Sheba. That would have been a great place to end it all, to quit on a high - but because it went well and was popular the producers obviously thought (and still think?) there's further mileage in more Christmas editions. So next up in 2008 we had The New Sofa where we find that Denise & Dave's two young kids have been conveniently packed off somewhere (social services would be best, alas) and the couple have lost all grasp of reality in trying to prepare the Christmas lunch they're hosting. It's a pretty awful episode, frankly, and impossible to believe in.
The Golden Egg Cup followed in 2009. This time we're expected to believe that Jim and Barbara have been married for 50 years. 50?! So what were they, twelve when they got married? Sue Johnston and Ricky Tomlinson just didn't look old enough to have been married that long, and nothing about the Royles suggests they'd be the sort of couple who'd have waited ten years or so to start a family (neither of them being career people). Denise may be 40ish but she's not 50ish. So, we can assume the producers had an idea and made the characters fit around it. Great.
2010 and by now a 'special' has become an annual event. This episode, Joe's Crackers, was something of a return to form, but possibly only because it focused a lot more on neighbour Joe and his inability to come to terms with the death of his wife Mary. Could it be that the Royle's themselves have lost their charm? I think it was probably worth considering.
2011, if the Internet is to be believed, was missed because Aherne & Cash couldn't finish the script in time. If 2012 has given us the script they couldn't finish last year maybe they should have held back another year, or scrapped it completely and tried again?
Barbara's Old Ring. Is this a crude joke? Or is it just offered up in case anyone wants to make it a crude joke? It's unnecessary either way, and unfortunately sets the tone for the episode as a whole. With Geoffrey Hughes having passed away earlier this year we're given a replacement for Twiggy in 'Cadging' Carol from next door - a ferocious and appalling woman played brilliantly by Lorraine Bruce. She is the only source of energy in the whole thing, and one of only two actors who look like they really want to be there (the other is Joe, the other neighbour, played by Peter Martin.)
Other than introducing Carol we're presented this time with a collection of disparate half-baked ideas that fade in and out as their time comes and goes but don't go anywhere or work cohesively as a whole: Dave's got erectile problems - ho ho ho - cue what seemed like hours of appalling cheap gags at his expense and a brief reprise towards the end with a pair of puddings that look too much like breasts to be actual Christmas puddings. Dave also has a terrible Dragon's Den idea which is wheeled in, delivered and then features no more. It has a vague connection to Barbara's lost wedding ring, which is mentioned from time to time but doesn't appear to be causing her or anyone else much in the way of concern. Then Jim wins £100 on an old scratch card which was found down the back of the sofa with some random comedy items that could have been there for up to 30 years. We have to assume the scratch card isn't that old, since it would have expired long ago. Jim then keeps his winnings down his Y-fronts for nothing more than comedy horror value. On top of all this Joe next door decides he wants to put an entry in a local lonely hearts column.
All through this collection of 'sketches' Tomlinson, Johnston, Cash and Aherne sit there like they're about to fall asleep through boredom, giving the emptiest, soulless, laziest performances you're likely to see on TV this Christmas. There's no sense of connection or affection between the characters any more; they're no longer a family, just a group of people talking to each other. They're running purely on auto-pilot, that's all, and with Aherne directing from in front of the camera there's no one to remind the actors that they do still need to work to connect as characters on screen. It's an insult to those faithful fans and viewers who still want to see more of this family that they should be given material this poor as a reward.
Things perk up a bit when - surprise surprise - Joe pops in from next door and tells us about his search for a new partner via a lonely hearts advert. Some of this was really very funny, but a poor pay-off for what had gone before and nowhere near enough to lift the episode above dreadful.
Basically the show has lost the grip on authenticity which was the root of its original charm: Jim sits there in his Y-fronts while his trousers are washed for nothing more than shock value - yes, he only has one pair of trousers (except the smart trousers he wears later on). It's gross but it's not funny. Barbara was always someone with a bit more of a grip on normal life than the others, even if she did very easily put up with her 'lot', but she's now lost that: she doesn't comment on Jim sitting around with no trousers on when they have company, she talks to Joe's dates about Jim's drying Y-fronts and their skid marks: shock comedy, minus the comedy. What would have been funnier is if Joe's date had found the underpants discarded on her chair, and Barbara had to rescue them and explain. Denise's self-centred concept of life has now spread so that even the grandparents don't ask where her kids are anymore - either that or Cash and Aherne have forgotten they're supposed to have them. That kind of fatuous 'family chat' they did so well in front of the TV years ago lends itself to enquiries after kids and work and general health, so there's no exuse for leaving the kids out and we can only assume the writers couldn't think of what to say about them.
Denise, Dave, Jim and Barbara have now become a bog standard 'comedy quartet' instead of being real people. You might as well have them running Rene's cafe in Allo Allo. They do and say whatever the episode needs them to; they've lost any consistency. The sequences with them dressed as waiting staff, helping Joe with his various dates and holding up conversation cue cards is like something out of Are You Being Served? It's funny, but it's forced and it's not in keeping with the originality and believability that the programme built its legacy on.
The biggest shame that springs from this comes at the end, when Barbara finally confronts Jim about his scratch card winnings at the Christmas dinner table, in front of the neighbours and Denise & Dave (their kids? Pfff! No...) only to find that he'd bought her a new ring with (some of) the winnings and hidden it in her slice of figgy pud. It should be a real 'ahhh' tear-jerker moment, but the episode has been so uneven and lacklustre, there's been no emotional connection for the audience with anyone, or apparently between anyone in the show either, that the climax trips the audience rather than sweeping them off their feet and frankly you just don't believe it.
Speaking of climaxes, would a middle-aged couple so obviously leave the Christmas dinner table mid-meal to go upstairs in their parents house and have sex? Obviously Denise and Dave would, but only for the disappointment of coming back straight away thanks to Dave's 'hilarious' erectile disfunction. Ho ho ho...
If the BBC are going to insist on giving us more of these, please take it back to character-led observational comedy, not situation-led where the characters are forced to fit in.
Friday, 28 December 2012
Sunday, 25 November 2012
A Doctor Who season in print: 7 - a brave new world!
I haven't done one of these in a while, but recently I've been munching my way through some old Target Doctor Who novelisations before I have to get rid of them (due to space restrictions) and as Season 7 is short on stories (but not on episodes) I thought it was worth another Blog article.
So, this time around we get two of the earliest Target books:
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1974, 156 pages - with illustrations!)
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke (pub. 1974, 158 pages - with illustrations!)
And then two more from when they were fully established:
The Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1987, 144 pages)
Inferno, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1984, 126 pages)
This is generally considered to be one of the best seasons of Classic Doctor Who - gritty, consistent, shocking and challenging, before a kind of cosy 'comfort' set in to the Pertwee era. Is this matched by the books?
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion was televised as Spearhead From Space. Target felt it needed a punchier, more dramatic title. The same with (Doctor Who and) The Silurians which became Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters in print. there are several early examples of this title changing tendency (mainly Malcolm Hulke books, admittedly) and it does give some of them a certain frisson but the idea was quickly dropped. The other claim to fame that these two books have is that they are the first two authentic Target novelisations and really set the bar for what was to follow. 1973 saw Target re-printing the three 1960s novelisations of David Whittaker's The Daleks and The Crusaders and Bill Strutton's The Zarbi. Fuelled by enthusiasm for the opportunity Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke then produced some of the most readable prose 'adaptations' of any of the TV stories.
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion is a lovingly expanded adaptation of Spearhead From Space. It's like Dicks has revisited Robert Holmes' story and Derek Martinus' direction and thought 'how can I build on this to flesh it out a bit and give it more of an over all coherency?' We get a prologue from the end of The War Games (which I'm surprised the DVDs haven't offered as an extra), we get thoughtful character backgrounds, explanations (like why Madame Tussauds would have a dull exhibition of senior civil servants and military men, for example!) and expansions on what was televised - particularly building the episode one cliff hanger and developing the 'octopus' at the end - and it's all so simply yet well-written it just picks you up and carries you along. Liz Shaw doesn't get much more of a look in than she does on TV, unfortunately, but it's possible that Dicks struggled with this anyway, knowing his preference for heroine-tied-to-the-railway-lines type companions. You can't help but feel a tad short-changed at some of the 110 page 4th & 5th Doctor books that Dicks would later come out with when he was churning them out month on month and clearly didn't have the time or the creative energy to apply the same level of care and thought. But here he was very much writing what he knew directly, and it's a great place to start the range.
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters is a slightly different kettle of fish, yet just as brilliant in its own way. Hulke has clearly picked and chosen what he wanted from his TV scripts, or thought specifically about what would work best in print and what was needed from the televised story. The 'Silurians' here are Reptile Men instead, and they have names and characters beyond the Young Silurian / Old Silurian ciphers on TV. You'd be hard pushed to find more powerful moments of pathos and character than 'Old' Okdel's tears and his willing acceptance of his own death at the hand of 'Young' Morka. The story is essentially the same as on TV, but some of the details are different. What we may lose in detail, though, is made up for through creative narrative and point of view story-telling. Doctor Quinn and Miss Dawson are having a terribly protracted innocent courtship, and they benefit from further development in print - as does Doctor Meredith. Doctor Lawrence, on the other hand, is nowhere near as objectionable on the page as he is on screen and this is perhaps a shame - as is his altered demise. There doesn't appear to be any benefit to making Hawkins a sergeant rather than a captain in the book, or for changing Major Baker to Major Barker (being more familiar with the TV version I gave up trying to auto-correct myself after a while). Whereas The Auton Invasion built the story up, The Cave Monsters had seven episodes to fit in so it's down to strategic cutting to make it fit into a length that would sufficiently appeal to children without being too stodgy. It's major achievement, though, is in humanising the monsters, giving them clearly defined and individual characters in a way that the TV programme hadn't really achieved up to that point.
The Ambassadors of Death comes much later in the run of books. The illustrations are long gone, so this is all text. By this point we'd been through a severe page limitation and were emerging out the other side. Terrance Dicks' output had diminished considerably since in many cases the original TV scriptwriters were choosing to adapt their own work, so Dicks and Nigel Robinson between them were mopping up any earlier gaps. This was one such gap.
Overall Terrance was probably the best person to write this novel. Many have regretted Malcolm Hulke passing away and never having got his teeth into this script, which was largely written by him and script assistant Trevor Ray although credited to David Whittaker. But Hulke was probably too close to such a troubled script. Dicks, as script editor, gave the final polish to all of it and evened out the various contributors' work.
This book is pretty standard fare. It's not quite a simple script-to-page effort with the occasional token descriptive passage, but it displays little of the adaptive energy and enthusiasm of The Auton Invasion from 13 years earlier. It still succeeds because it's a cracking story with some great characters, concepts and action sequences. Simply reflecting these on the page is enough to give this book appeal. Some might have felt this was a good opportunity to give the story proper 'closure' at the end, but it's faithful to the abrupt televised version and we leave it half way down a page as the Doctor leaves Liz and the others to negotiate the safe return of the alien ambassadors. The middle episodes don't feel like they lose much from the story being curtailed to 144 pages and Dicks is very economical in places where action sequences which take several minutes on screen can be dealt with in a brief paragraph on the page, without the reader feeling that they're being rushed or missing out on anything.
My favourite part of the book is a typo on page 40:
'The guard fell, and the same brown-gloved hand took his eyes and opened the door of the cell.' Ouch! Very King Lear. I assume 'eyes' should have been 'keys', since there's no indication it was a retinal scan lock!
Inferno is another similar adaptation, but from three years earlier when 128 pages was the maximum length. How do you get seven of the best TV episodes ever into 128 pages and do them justice? Answer: make it 126 pages of very small type. Inferno, like Ambassadors of Death, is a great read almost simply because it's such a good story, but Season 7 gives us a useful comparison between the early years of the Target range and it's established adolescent period. All four books are great reads, but all four treat their source material in a slightly different way. Inferno's quirk of adaptation comes when The Doctor is in the parallel universe. On TV we get occasional reminders of what our friends are up to in the 'real world', and this may have been felt a necessity by the production team in case of any chance first time viewers not understanding what was going on. In the book we get one 'cut back' early on and then that's it, we keep with the fascist world and see that adventure through to the end. The 'missing' sequences are briefly referenced after the Doctor returns to 'our' universe but not gone into in any detail - nor do they need to be either; the Doctor is having an adventure on a parallel Earth, that's what we're interested in and that's what the author is focusing on. It also serves as a self-editing technique for the story, since some detail still has to be compromised to ensure it fits comfortably into it's limited page numbers - but at least it's done in a thoughtful, creative way that benefits the narrative. If it had been a shorter story it possible that Dicks may have been tempted to write a farewell scene for Liz Shaw at the end, or offer some hints that she would be returning to Cambridge. Considering what's been done since - particularly Gary Russell's Virgin MA The Scales of Injustice - I think it's good that he followed the TV version faithfully and ends Liz Shaw's adventures with her smiling away at the departing backs of the Doctor and the Brigadier.
My only query is why Dicks shied away from called the mutants Primords. The name isn't used on TV but it's what the creatures are credited as at the ends of the episodes. Dicks' just called the creatures 'mutations'. I guess if you call them Primords you're identifying them as a specific individual species, whereas Dicks' view is very much that these are mutations of mankind, not a different species altogether.
All these stories are excellent and are challenging works of telefantasy / sci-fi which have much to offer the reader as an alternative to watching them on TV. They highlight many of the considerable strengths of the Target range, as well as some of it's occasionally more frustrating limitations. I would recommend reading all these books, although at the moment only The Auton Invasion and The Cave Monsters are readily available as they've been re-published in recent BBC Books editions.
So, this time around we get two of the earliest Target books:
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1974, 156 pages - with illustrations!)
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke (pub. 1974, 158 pages - with illustrations!)
And then two more from when they were fully established:
The Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1987, 144 pages)
Inferno, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1984, 126 pages)
This is generally considered to be one of the best seasons of Classic Doctor Who - gritty, consistent, shocking and challenging, before a kind of cosy 'comfort' set in to the Pertwee era. Is this matched by the books?
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion was televised as Spearhead From Space. Target felt it needed a punchier, more dramatic title. The same with (Doctor Who and) The Silurians which became Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters in print. there are several early examples of this title changing tendency (mainly Malcolm Hulke books, admittedly) and it does give some of them a certain frisson but the idea was quickly dropped. The other claim to fame that these two books have is that they are the first two authentic Target novelisations and really set the bar for what was to follow. 1973 saw Target re-printing the three 1960s novelisations of David Whittaker's The Daleks and The Crusaders and Bill Strutton's The Zarbi. Fuelled by enthusiasm for the opportunity Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke then produced some of the most readable prose 'adaptations' of any of the TV stories.
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion is a lovingly expanded adaptation of Spearhead From Space. It's like Dicks has revisited Robert Holmes' story and Derek Martinus' direction and thought 'how can I build on this to flesh it out a bit and give it more of an over all coherency?' We get a prologue from the end of The War Games (which I'm surprised the DVDs haven't offered as an extra), we get thoughtful character backgrounds, explanations (like why Madame Tussauds would have a dull exhibition of senior civil servants and military men, for example!) and expansions on what was televised - particularly building the episode one cliff hanger and developing the 'octopus' at the end - and it's all so simply yet well-written it just picks you up and carries you along. Liz Shaw doesn't get much more of a look in than she does on TV, unfortunately, but it's possible that Dicks struggled with this anyway, knowing his preference for heroine-tied-to-the-railway-lines type companions. You can't help but feel a tad short-changed at some of the 110 page 4th & 5th Doctor books that Dicks would later come out with when he was churning them out month on month and clearly didn't have the time or the creative energy to apply the same level of care and thought. But here he was very much writing what he knew directly, and it's a great place to start the range.
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters is a slightly different kettle of fish, yet just as brilliant in its own way. Hulke has clearly picked and chosen what he wanted from his TV scripts, or thought specifically about what would work best in print and what was needed from the televised story. The 'Silurians' here are Reptile Men instead, and they have names and characters beyond the Young Silurian / Old Silurian ciphers on TV. You'd be hard pushed to find more powerful moments of pathos and character than 'Old' Okdel's tears and his willing acceptance of his own death at the hand of 'Young' Morka. The story is essentially the same as on TV, but some of the details are different. What we may lose in detail, though, is made up for through creative narrative and point of view story-telling. Doctor Quinn and Miss Dawson are having a terribly protracted innocent courtship, and they benefit from further development in print - as does Doctor Meredith. Doctor Lawrence, on the other hand, is nowhere near as objectionable on the page as he is on screen and this is perhaps a shame - as is his altered demise. There doesn't appear to be any benefit to making Hawkins a sergeant rather than a captain in the book, or for changing Major Baker to Major Barker (being more familiar with the TV version I gave up trying to auto-correct myself after a while). Whereas The Auton Invasion built the story up, The Cave Monsters had seven episodes to fit in so it's down to strategic cutting to make it fit into a length that would sufficiently appeal to children without being too stodgy. It's major achievement, though, is in humanising the monsters, giving them clearly defined and individual characters in a way that the TV programme hadn't really achieved up to that point.
The Ambassadors of Death comes much later in the run of books. The illustrations are long gone, so this is all text. By this point we'd been through a severe page limitation and were emerging out the other side. Terrance Dicks' output had diminished considerably since in many cases the original TV scriptwriters were choosing to adapt their own work, so Dicks and Nigel Robinson between them were mopping up any earlier gaps. This was one such gap.
Overall Terrance was probably the best person to write this novel. Many have regretted Malcolm Hulke passing away and never having got his teeth into this script, which was largely written by him and script assistant Trevor Ray although credited to David Whittaker. But Hulke was probably too close to such a troubled script. Dicks, as script editor, gave the final polish to all of it and evened out the various contributors' work.
This book is pretty standard fare. It's not quite a simple script-to-page effort with the occasional token descriptive passage, but it displays little of the adaptive energy and enthusiasm of The Auton Invasion from 13 years earlier. It still succeeds because it's a cracking story with some great characters, concepts and action sequences. Simply reflecting these on the page is enough to give this book appeal. Some might have felt this was a good opportunity to give the story proper 'closure' at the end, but it's faithful to the abrupt televised version and we leave it half way down a page as the Doctor leaves Liz and the others to negotiate the safe return of the alien ambassadors. The middle episodes don't feel like they lose much from the story being curtailed to 144 pages and Dicks is very economical in places where action sequences which take several minutes on screen can be dealt with in a brief paragraph on the page, without the reader feeling that they're being rushed or missing out on anything.
My favourite part of the book is a typo on page 40:
'The guard fell, and the same brown-gloved hand took his eyes and opened the door of the cell.' Ouch! Very King Lear. I assume 'eyes' should have been 'keys', since there's no indication it was a retinal scan lock!
Inferno is another similar adaptation, but from three years earlier when 128 pages was the maximum length. How do you get seven of the best TV episodes ever into 128 pages and do them justice? Answer: make it 126 pages of very small type. Inferno, like Ambassadors of Death, is a great read almost simply because it's such a good story, but Season 7 gives us a useful comparison between the early years of the Target range and it's established adolescent period. All four books are great reads, but all four treat their source material in a slightly different way. Inferno's quirk of adaptation comes when The Doctor is in the parallel universe. On TV we get occasional reminders of what our friends are up to in the 'real world', and this may have been felt a necessity by the production team in case of any chance first time viewers not understanding what was going on. In the book we get one 'cut back' early on and then that's it, we keep with the fascist world and see that adventure through to the end. The 'missing' sequences are briefly referenced after the Doctor returns to 'our' universe but not gone into in any detail - nor do they need to be either; the Doctor is having an adventure on a parallel Earth, that's what we're interested in and that's what the author is focusing on. It also serves as a self-editing technique for the story, since some detail still has to be compromised to ensure it fits comfortably into it's limited page numbers - but at least it's done in a thoughtful, creative way that benefits the narrative. If it had been a shorter story it possible that Dicks may have been tempted to write a farewell scene for Liz Shaw at the end, or offer some hints that she would be returning to Cambridge. Considering what's been done since - particularly Gary Russell's Virgin MA The Scales of Injustice - I think it's good that he followed the TV version faithfully and ends Liz Shaw's adventures with her smiling away at the departing backs of the Doctor and the Brigadier.
My only query is why Dicks shied away from called the mutants Primords. The name isn't used on TV but it's what the creatures are credited as at the ends of the episodes. Dicks' just called the creatures 'mutations'. I guess if you call them Primords you're identifying them as a specific individual species, whereas Dicks' view is very much that these are mutations of mankind, not a different species altogether.
All these stories are excellent and are challenging works of telefantasy / sci-fi which have much to offer the reader as an alternative to watching them on TV. They highlight many of the considerable strengths of the Target range, as well as some of it's occasionally more frustrating limitations. I would recommend reading all these books, although at the moment only The Auton Invasion and The Cave Monsters are readily available as they've been re-published in recent BBC Books editions.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Red Dwarf X: The Beginning
'I challenge you to a duel across time and space!'
This series has ended on a real high, the kind of high that makes you hope that Dave commissions Red Dwarf XI immediately. Thankfully episode 6, The Beginning, was just as strong, funny and consistent as the previous week's Dear Dave.
OK, so we're back in Blade Runner territory, dealing with rogue simulants, but like last week's mail pod this is an acceptable recurrence: we know they occupy the area of space Red Dwarf is travelling through - so the series set itself up a long time ago for repeat confrontations. Here the rogue simulants are humorously a bit crap and camp, and less psychotic - which adds interest to them. We'd get bored if they were the same each time, after all. My only criticism (and this is probably just personal taste) was that I felt Gary Cady's Dominator Zlurth was slightly under-played and he could have cranked and camped it up a notch.
I loved the Star Wars homages - they weren't the 'nod to camera' heavy-handed references like you get in The Simpsons or Family Guy (not including their Star Wars Specials, of course!), they were there if you wanted them and they didn't make or break any scenes. I doubt you can do a spaceship hiding in an asteroid or a hologrammatic personal message these days without a large section of the audience thinking of Star Wars, so it's best to just embrace it. But it was difficult to tell if the laughter accompanying the line 'I'm not your father' was more for the sentiment or for the inversion of the Star Wars quote.
Possibly the best aspect of the episode, though, was Hogey the Roguey. What a guy, and what a performance from Richard O'Callaghan - miles away from Bertram Muffet, his clumsy romantic lead in Carry On Loving years ago.
In many ways Hogey is such an obvious comedy sci-fi character that it's amazing he's not appeared here before. And the gags worked so much better with us not being privy to the back story (unlike, I feel, the poker game with the BEGGs in Entangled). A crap, annoying, Hispanic cyborg with a ridiculous comb-over who is desperate to ease the boredom of his existence with honourable challenges is the perfect accompaniment to the Red Dwarf crew. Now we've met him, of course, and he's worked really well I fully expect him to appear again - only hopefully not as much as the over-used Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley crowd-pleasers of earlier series.
Will Rimmer's parentage situation change him in the future if the series returns? I doubt it. Nor should it. The dynamic is settled and works as it is. Was the Cat's psychoanalysis of Rimmer shoe-horned in? Possibly, but he occasionally shows moments of insight anyway, so it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination here. Plus he was playing the string on a stick game at the same time and that was a nice moment of Cat charm.
On the whole there's been little to compromise the visual impact of the series. I thought the BEGGs looked awful and Red Dwarf's drive room is a bit cramped, but otherwise everything's been fine. Maybe too much of the budget had to go on the space battle here, because the crew descending through the floor with Hogey's molecular destabiliser gun and the missiles passing through Blue Midget's bridge were less than convincing, which was a shame. Blue Midget's bridge was very similar to the Dwarf's drive room (same set redressed? Would make sense!) so again you had the crew tapping away on small keyboards at an awkward angle (they'd never be DDA compliant!) - seemingly for the Cat so that he didn't mask the camera's view of the rear of the cockpit. Bit of bad design planning there, methinks...
Overall, though, I think what marked out this episode, like last week's, was that there was just enough going on for it to have pace and energy throughout, but not so much that it had to compromise itself or cut corners. It had time for poignancy, humour and character. It could develop the villains sufficiently and most importantly there were some great gags along the way.
I'm also filled with hope for a further series because they didn't end on a cliff hanger where they could, if need be, end the series. If it did end here you'd know that they were just going to carry on as they have been, with wacky adventures. I hope, though, that we get to join them on those.
I was unsure before the series started. Back To Earth in 2009 was not an auspicious continuation of the original series, and if that was the template for things to come then I would struggle to remain a fan of the show. Also Dave (and the other UK Gold-type channels) tend to over-hype their own programmes and I get worried I've already heard all the best gags in something when I've seen the same trailer umpteen times. I think Red Dwarf X has overcome all this and it's been a solid series on the whole - not perfect by any means, but enjoyable and with some classic moments along the way. Personally I don't think we should demand any more than that. Get the basics right and anything extra special is a bonus in my view.
P.S. all the way through this series I've avoided the question of Rimmer's continuity. Is he the same Rimmer that went off to be Ace Rimmer in Series VII? He seems to be the same. In Series VIII he was human again. I know all the crew had died again at the end of that series though. I think it's best not to ponder on that. Red Dwarf, like many TV sitcoms, is not a series that rewards scrutiny of continuity. I'm happy to just watch it and love it for what it is...
This series has ended on a real high, the kind of high that makes you hope that Dave commissions Red Dwarf XI immediately. Thankfully episode 6, The Beginning, was just as strong, funny and consistent as the previous week's Dear Dave.
OK, so we're back in Blade Runner territory, dealing with rogue simulants, but like last week's mail pod this is an acceptable recurrence: we know they occupy the area of space Red Dwarf is travelling through - so the series set itself up a long time ago for repeat confrontations. Here the rogue simulants are humorously a bit crap and camp, and less psychotic - which adds interest to them. We'd get bored if they were the same each time, after all. My only criticism (and this is probably just personal taste) was that I felt Gary Cady's Dominator Zlurth was slightly under-played and he could have cranked and camped it up a notch.
I loved the Star Wars homages - they weren't the 'nod to camera' heavy-handed references like you get in The Simpsons or Family Guy (not including their Star Wars Specials, of course!), they were there if you wanted them and they didn't make or break any scenes. I doubt you can do a spaceship hiding in an asteroid or a hologrammatic personal message these days without a large section of the audience thinking of Star Wars, so it's best to just embrace it. But it was difficult to tell if the laughter accompanying the line 'I'm not your father' was more for the sentiment or for the inversion of the Star Wars quote.
Possibly the best aspect of the episode, though, was Hogey the Roguey. What a guy, and what a performance from Richard O'Callaghan - miles away from Bertram Muffet, his clumsy romantic lead in Carry On Loving years ago.
In many ways Hogey is such an obvious comedy sci-fi character that it's amazing he's not appeared here before. And the gags worked so much better with us not being privy to the back story (unlike, I feel, the poker game with the BEGGs in Entangled). A crap, annoying, Hispanic cyborg with a ridiculous comb-over who is desperate to ease the boredom of his existence with honourable challenges is the perfect accompaniment to the Red Dwarf crew. Now we've met him, of course, and he's worked really well I fully expect him to appear again - only hopefully not as much as the over-used Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley crowd-pleasers of earlier series.
Will Rimmer's parentage situation change him in the future if the series returns? I doubt it. Nor should it. The dynamic is settled and works as it is. Was the Cat's psychoanalysis of Rimmer shoe-horned in? Possibly, but he occasionally shows moments of insight anyway, so it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination here. Plus he was playing the string on a stick game at the same time and that was a nice moment of Cat charm.
On the whole there's been little to compromise the visual impact of the series. I thought the BEGGs looked awful and Red Dwarf's drive room is a bit cramped, but otherwise everything's been fine. Maybe too much of the budget had to go on the space battle here, because the crew descending through the floor with Hogey's molecular destabiliser gun and the missiles passing through Blue Midget's bridge were less than convincing, which was a shame. Blue Midget's bridge was very similar to the Dwarf's drive room (same set redressed? Would make sense!) so again you had the crew tapping away on small keyboards at an awkward angle (they'd never be DDA compliant!) - seemingly for the Cat so that he didn't mask the camera's view of the rear of the cockpit. Bit of bad design planning there, methinks...
Overall, though, I think what marked out this episode, like last week's, was that there was just enough going on for it to have pace and energy throughout, but not so much that it had to compromise itself or cut corners. It had time for poignancy, humour and character. It could develop the villains sufficiently and most importantly there were some great gags along the way.
I'm also filled with hope for a further series because they didn't end on a cliff hanger where they could, if need be, end the series. If it did end here you'd know that they were just going to carry on as they have been, with wacky adventures. I hope, though, that we get to join them on those.
I was unsure before the series started. Back To Earth in 2009 was not an auspicious continuation of the original series, and if that was the template for things to come then I would struggle to remain a fan of the show. Also Dave (and the other UK Gold-type channels) tend to over-hype their own programmes and I get worried I've already heard all the best gags in something when I've seen the same trailer umpteen times. I think Red Dwarf X has overcome all this and it's been a solid series on the whole - not perfect by any means, but enjoyable and with some classic moments along the way. Personally I don't think we should demand any more than that. Get the basics right and anything extra special is a bonus in my view.
P.S. all the way through this series I've avoided the question of Rimmer's continuity. Is he the same Rimmer that went off to be Ace Rimmer in Series VII? He seems to be the same. In Series VIII he was human again. I know all the crew had died again at the end of that series though. I think it's best not to ponder on that. Red Dwarf, like many TV sitcoms, is not a series that rewards scrutiny of continuity. I'm happy to just watch it and love it for what it is...
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Red Dwarf X: Dear Dave
Dear Dave,
Thanks!
Best wishes, Tim.
Hooray! At last we have an episode of Red Dwarf X that's consistently funny and well-crafted throughout, with some classic stand-alone moments. Excellent stuff, easily the best of the series so far.
My recent concerns over the programme ignoring or strategically forgetting that Dave Lister is the last human being alive were answered, and similarly the positive strengths of the previous week's episode continued here, with all the crew doing their own thing and only coming together when necessary.
Admittedly we've had the mail pod before and again we're back in Series I & II territory with Lister feeling sorry for himself but personally I'm happy with that slant. It makes the team (and the show) less smug (more smeg?!) which tended to afflict the later series of the original run. Some aspects of the drudgery of day-to-day life are worth revisiting and the mail pod is one of these.
Key classic moments for me were the note to Rimmer asking him to stop writing his own letters of commendation, Lister 'hitting on' the French vending machine and the Cat's charades message. The final punchline of the episode, whilst in spirit largely predictable, was delivered so perfectly by Craig Charles that it has to stand as another classic moment.
I love the occasional tell-tale signs that sitcoms like this are still recorded in front of a live audience - there's an occasional buzz, a feeling that it may not be perfect, but it's got a special little sparkle. There was one in Lemons earlier in the series where Craig Charles was clearly chuckling away as Lister and Rimmer pointed out smeg to a panicking Kryten in the drive room. This week Chris Barrie was clearly having difficulty not creasing up at the end of the charades sequence. These moments are very charming, and betray the live theatre roots of television that it's all too easy to forget these days - particularly since we've become obsessed with outtakes programmes. It's great to see a director willing to keep these moments in, but also an actor who's going to soldier through and not take the easy option of corpsing safe in the knowledge that it'll be fine because it'll go on a DVD 'Smeg Ups' section and possibly on a TV outtakes programme. Personally I hope that BBC3 have finally killed that genre through it's endless runs of 'hilarious' outtakes from Little Britain and Two Pints of Lager where lines or cues are fudged at every opportunity and greeted with a cast expletive and a roar of audience approval. How easily pleased can we possibly be?
I have a personal 'grudge' with Dear Dave in that I have a radio sci-fi comedy series called Turbo Tina shortly going into production with Sunderland REP for SparkFM (details here: http://sunderlandrep.wordpress.com/productions/current-projects/radio-comedy-drama/)
which involves a character possibly becoming enamoured with a food dispensing machine and now Red Dwarf have pipped me to the post! But it would be churlish of me to take umbrage with this episode over that, I guess. It's clear to all that Lister's not going to re-erect the vending machine while he's lying on top of it, but do we mind? I doubt it!
There is a little niggle though, that's been with me throughout the series so far, regarding the drive room. It's a very small drive room for such a large vessel - in fact at first I assumed it was the Starbug cockpit. But also why have the crew been given such tiny keyboards to type away at while they're sitting there, and what actually are they doing? Craig Charles in particular looks really awkward and uncomfortable and just appears to be typing away because he thinks that's what you're supposed to do there, occasionally looking at the small screen nearby. Is he setting co-ordinates? Writing a novel? Playing speed solitaire? In the grand scheme of things it's not massively important, but the more time Lister and Rimmer spend in there the more I wonder what they're doing and if they've just been directed to look busy...
There's not a great deal more I can say really. That's the trouble with an episode you really enjoy from start to finish! It was very funny, well-paced, well-constructed. The crew all had plenty to do that was individual to themselves and there were some killer gags along the way.
Shame the series ends next week now things have picked up.
Thanks!
Best wishes, Tim.
Hooray! At last we have an episode of Red Dwarf X that's consistently funny and well-crafted throughout, with some classic stand-alone moments. Excellent stuff, easily the best of the series so far.
My recent concerns over the programme ignoring or strategically forgetting that Dave Lister is the last human being alive were answered, and similarly the positive strengths of the previous week's episode continued here, with all the crew doing their own thing and only coming together when necessary.
Admittedly we've had the mail pod before and again we're back in Series I & II territory with Lister feeling sorry for himself but personally I'm happy with that slant. It makes the team (and the show) less smug (more smeg?!) which tended to afflict the later series of the original run. Some aspects of the drudgery of day-to-day life are worth revisiting and the mail pod is one of these.
Key classic moments for me were the note to Rimmer asking him to stop writing his own letters of commendation, Lister 'hitting on' the French vending machine and the Cat's charades message. The final punchline of the episode, whilst in spirit largely predictable, was delivered so perfectly by Craig Charles that it has to stand as another classic moment.
I love the occasional tell-tale signs that sitcoms like this are still recorded in front of a live audience - there's an occasional buzz, a feeling that it may not be perfect, but it's got a special little sparkle. There was one in Lemons earlier in the series where Craig Charles was clearly chuckling away as Lister and Rimmer pointed out smeg to a panicking Kryten in the drive room. This week Chris Barrie was clearly having difficulty not creasing up at the end of the charades sequence. These moments are very charming, and betray the live theatre roots of television that it's all too easy to forget these days - particularly since we've become obsessed with outtakes programmes. It's great to see a director willing to keep these moments in, but also an actor who's going to soldier through and not take the easy option of corpsing safe in the knowledge that it'll be fine because it'll go on a DVD 'Smeg Ups' section and possibly on a TV outtakes programme. Personally I hope that BBC3 have finally killed that genre through it's endless runs of 'hilarious' outtakes from Little Britain and Two Pints of Lager where lines or cues are fudged at every opportunity and greeted with a cast expletive and a roar of audience approval. How easily pleased can we possibly be?
I have a personal 'grudge' with Dear Dave in that I have a radio sci-fi comedy series called Turbo Tina shortly going into production with Sunderland REP for SparkFM (details here: http://sunderlandrep.wordpress.com/productions/current-projects/radio-comedy-drama/)
which involves a character possibly becoming enamoured with a food dispensing machine and now Red Dwarf have pipped me to the post! But it would be churlish of me to take umbrage with this episode over that, I guess. It's clear to all that Lister's not going to re-erect the vending machine while he's lying on top of it, but do we mind? I doubt it!
There is a little niggle though, that's been with me throughout the series so far, regarding the drive room. It's a very small drive room for such a large vessel - in fact at first I assumed it was the Starbug cockpit. But also why have the crew been given such tiny keyboards to type away at while they're sitting there, and what actually are they doing? Craig Charles in particular looks really awkward and uncomfortable and just appears to be typing away because he thinks that's what you're supposed to do there, occasionally looking at the small screen nearby. Is he setting co-ordinates? Writing a novel? Playing speed solitaire? In the grand scheme of things it's not massively important, but the more time Lister and Rimmer spend in there the more I wonder what they're doing and if they've just been directed to look busy...
There's not a great deal more I can say really. That's the trouble with an episode you really enjoy from start to finish! It was very funny, well-paced, well-constructed. The crew all had plenty to do that was individual to themselves and there were some killer gags along the way.
Shame the series ends next week now things have picked up.
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Red Dwarf X: Entangled
So, this week we got Entangled - or maybe Doug Naylor did? I'm wondering if the episode was called this because it's what the writer scribbled at the top of his rough draft in frustration.
This was an episode that felt misplaced in the run by about seven series. It was also an episode that featured some really strong material and ideas but either needed a second part or more tidying up at the scripting stage.
There was a lot I really liked about it: it had some great ideas, some great gags, and (possibly since I work in that kind of environment) I thought the aspect of Health & Safety paperwork and audit trails was wonderful. But the BEGGs bits were rushed and there was no proper lead up to the Cat and his space weevil or Kryten and his crystals - and this left me completely wrong-footed when they started to do their (exceptionally well-played) synchronicity act. You could tune in at the start of this episode and think 'damn, I need to watch last week's first to get what's going on' - which of course wouldn't really help you at all.
What I liked about this episode, and what I liked about the early series, was that each of the crew is doing their own thing. It's a big ship, after all, so they wouldn't be under each other's feet all the time. Lister is being irresponsible, drinking and having a massive kebab in the (tiny!) drive room, Rimmer is being officious as only he can, Cat is hunting like a cat (it's good to be reminded that he is actually a cat now and again) and Kryten is getting on with what he has to do. The episode wouldn't work so well if any one of them wasn't there. Then they all come together for the important scenes.
But there's actually too much going on this week - or possibly too much going on off screen. Having tried it several times in the last few series I don't see why they didn't boost this one out to a two-parter. Then we could have had a proper introduction to where the weevil and crystals came from, we could have seen Lister meet the BEGGS and at least start the poker game (without spoiling the later gags), we could have had an amusing lead into Rimmer's anorak-wearing, wibbling breakdown on the BEGG moon and more could have been done on the ERRA space station (what a fabulous comedy concept that was). As it was it all felt too rushed, with too much trying to be crammed in to one half hour. This means the episode becomes off-balanced by some of the longer (and funnier) scenes such as Rimmer and Lister discussing H&S and the death of the rest of the original crew towards the beginning. You couldn't lose any of the individual plot-strands without compromising the conclusion, so I can't help but feel Doug Naylor wrote himself into a bit of a hole here.
Professor Edgington, with her glasses on upside down. Bless! Sydney Stevenson played her exceptionally well for what amounted to a potentially hammy cameo, but boy would the character have become annoying if she'd stayed. She'd already pushed her luck with my patience by the end of this episode, but she made up for it with a wonderful clumsy death through the airlock - perfect!
The BEGGs scene was set (possibly as a deliberate nod) just like the GELF scene in the episode Emohawk - Polymorph 2 (Series VI), including a return for actor Steven Wickham who'd played Lister's GELF bride. So far Series X of Red Dwarf has had an expensive, glossy look and feel to it, with excellent production values all round. Why, then, did the BEGGs have alien monster costumes that would have been derided in Doctor Who forty years ago? This was a real disappointment - but they could have got away with it if they'd drawn attention to it as a feature of them being genetically engineered! There was a ready-made get out clause for them and they didn't take it - or maybe the production team thought they looked great and not like £15 Planet of The Apes party costumes.
I also have to ask how Lister managed to communicate with them effectively during the previous poker game without Kryten to translate. The universal language of alcohol maybe? But I shouldn't be searching for my own answers! Sloppy...
This could easily have been the best episode of the series so far, or the best two episodes. It's a real shame that it wasn't either.
This was an episode that felt misplaced in the run by about seven series. It was also an episode that featured some really strong material and ideas but either needed a second part or more tidying up at the scripting stage.
There was a lot I really liked about it: it had some great ideas, some great gags, and (possibly since I work in that kind of environment) I thought the aspect of Health & Safety paperwork and audit trails was wonderful. But the BEGGs bits were rushed and there was no proper lead up to the Cat and his space weevil or Kryten and his crystals - and this left me completely wrong-footed when they started to do their (exceptionally well-played) synchronicity act. You could tune in at the start of this episode and think 'damn, I need to watch last week's first to get what's going on' - which of course wouldn't really help you at all.
What I liked about this episode, and what I liked about the early series, was that each of the crew is doing their own thing. It's a big ship, after all, so they wouldn't be under each other's feet all the time. Lister is being irresponsible, drinking and having a massive kebab in the (tiny!) drive room, Rimmer is being officious as only he can, Cat is hunting like a cat (it's good to be reminded that he is actually a cat now and again) and Kryten is getting on with what he has to do. The episode wouldn't work so well if any one of them wasn't there. Then they all come together for the important scenes.
But there's actually too much going on this week - or possibly too much going on off screen. Having tried it several times in the last few series I don't see why they didn't boost this one out to a two-parter. Then we could have had a proper introduction to where the weevil and crystals came from, we could have seen Lister meet the BEGGS and at least start the poker game (without spoiling the later gags), we could have had an amusing lead into Rimmer's anorak-wearing, wibbling breakdown on the BEGG moon and more could have been done on the ERRA space station (what a fabulous comedy concept that was). As it was it all felt too rushed, with too much trying to be crammed in to one half hour. This means the episode becomes off-balanced by some of the longer (and funnier) scenes such as Rimmer and Lister discussing H&S and the death of the rest of the original crew towards the beginning. You couldn't lose any of the individual plot-strands without compromising the conclusion, so I can't help but feel Doug Naylor wrote himself into a bit of a hole here.
Professor Edgington, with her glasses on upside down. Bless! Sydney Stevenson played her exceptionally well for what amounted to a potentially hammy cameo, but boy would the character have become annoying if she'd stayed. She'd already pushed her luck with my patience by the end of this episode, but she made up for it with a wonderful clumsy death through the airlock - perfect!
The BEGGs scene was set (possibly as a deliberate nod) just like the GELF scene in the episode Emohawk - Polymorph 2 (Series VI), including a return for actor Steven Wickham who'd played Lister's GELF bride. So far Series X of Red Dwarf has had an expensive, glossy look and feel to it, with excellent production values all round. Why, then, did the BEGGs have alien monster costumes that would have been derided in Doctor Who forty years ago? This was a real disappointment - but they could have got away with it if they'd drawn attention to it as a feature of them being genetically engineered! There was a ready-made get out clause for them and they didn't take it - or maybe the production team thought they looked great and not like £15 Planet of The Apes party costumes.
I also have to ask how Lister managed to communicate with them effectively during the previous poker game without Kryten to translate. The universal language of alcohol maybe? But I shouldn't be searching for my own answers! Sloppy...
This could easily have been the best episode of the series so far, or the best two episodes. It's a real shame that it wasn't either.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Round The Hornung: Raffles - The Amateur Cracksman
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman, by E.W. Hornung.
Penguin Classics edition, 2003, edited with an introduction by Richard Lancelyn Green.
First published 1899.
Richard Lancelyn Green walks a familiar (or easy) path in his introduction to this edition, drawing attention to the oft-cited connection between E.W. Hornung and Arthur Conan Doyle (Hornung married Doyle's sister and Doyle 'possibly' encouraged Hornung to write these stories even though the pair may not have got on that well). This immediately drags the reader into the comparison of these short stories with the Sherlock Holmes short stories. I fear this does Conan Doyle no favours and probably brings more readers to Raffles than it deserves.
Raffles is 'the' amateur cracksman - a gentleman burglar. Holmes is 'the' amateur sleuth. Both have tales and exploits told by their close companions. But Raffles isn't an anti-Holmes; we all know who that is and Raffles is no Moriarty. Holmes is an attractive character to most readers; you don't necessarily love him but you tend to tolerate his enigmatic eccentricities and admire his skill. Similarly Watson is a very sympathetic character in most instances and it is difficult not to like him; indeed our fondness for Holmes is Watson's fondness for Holmes to all intents and purposes.
Raffles has no such eccentricities or quirks as Holmes; there is little to find to like or despise about him (to a 21st Century reader, at least), and little in the way of hints about what he does when he's not out on his occasional expeditions. Apparently he plays a lot of cricket, but there's not an awful lot of cricket played in these stories. Then there's Bunny. Poor Bunny. He's our Watson - except he's not, because again we have no reason to like him or hate him and he gives us no particular reason to like Raffles either as he regales us with their exploits. That sums up my views rather well actually: pure apathy.
What these stories need is a considerate editor who will draw the unavoidable comparison with Conan Doyle and then scream at the reader to forget it and approach the stories with a fresh mind. One positive that this volume has over the Holmes short story collections is that these stories are presented as a chronological sequence with almost a through narrative. It's pretty much a novel where the chapters are the individual stories. A lot of short story anthologies I've read aren't like that, so this was refreshing. I won't give too much away in case any of my readers decide they want to pick up the stories themselves, but it's basically a sequence of failed or successful thefts. Raffles is generally nowhere near as good a 'cracksman' as he (or Bunny) thinks he is, and if he'd stop wasting money on maintaining his thief's trappings he'd probably have enough to live a comfortable life anyway.
Bunny arrives at the beginning in a heightened emotional state. They are old public school friends (Bunny was Raffles' fag - stop sniggering at the back) and Bunny is down on hard times following a gambling problem. Raffles rescues him from his funk and takes him under his wing. Bunny is often an unwilling accomplice and is the typical occasional hero / foil / hindrance to Raffles' plans. Maybe we are supposed to sympathise with Bunny from the start? Maybe we are supposed to be intrigued by and attracted to Raffles, this naughty man of the leisured class? I felt neither.
There's one massive cultural hurdle when approaching this text: men aren't presented as having this kind of intimate loving friendship in fond terms anymore without being gay. Also 'Bunny' is a decidedly effeminate pet name. This is a shame, I feel, but I don't see things changing in the near future. The first few pages of the book are incredibly homo-erotic in our post-Wildean eyes. Green's introduction hints strongly at Hornung's acceptance of and closeness to homosexual friends but there is nothing to suggest that his writing is expressing anything more than the kind of close fondness men of that class could seemingly innocently exhibit before society dug deeper and made a public pariah of Oscar Wilde.
Many readers these days may also be put off by the strong sense of social class and distinction which the book exudes. Raffles wouldn't bother himself with the lower classes or petty housebreaking and pick-pocketting; he's only interested in doing over persons of wealth or rank, or bettering others at the same game. In fact it's all a social game to him, as much as a source of income. Can we love an upper class rogue who's only interested in stealing to maintain his leisured status? I would want to undertake a straw poll on that...
The stories are relatively short and on the whole not massively interesting. There'll always be one of two outcomes: either the robbery succeeds or it doesn't, and our 'heroes' don't get arrested or caught by the authorities either way. There's no danger of them killing anyone or committing any other dastardly deeds as this is not what they're about. As a result I didn't find the stories exciting or engaging, and quite frankly the characters aren't either. If P.G. Wodehouse had written Raffles and Bunny they'd be hilarious - as it is they often strain against the obvious potential for humour. If Conan Doyle had written these stories for Holmes then he wouldn't have, because he'd have thrown them out in favour of better stories. I want to be given good reasons to like or hate Bunny and Raffles, and Bunny's eventual desertion over time does nothing to assist.
This volume is now out of print, but there are plenty of second hand copies out there (mine was such and will probably go to charity now) and there are plenty of editions bringing together this and the other Raffles short story collections. Based on this experience I won't be tracking those down.
Penguin Classics edition, 2003, edited with an introduction by Richard Lancelyn Green.
First published 1899.
Richard Lancelyn Green walks a familiar (or easy) path in his introduction to this edition, drawing attention to the oft-cited connection between E.W. Hornung and Arthur Conan Doyle (Hornung married Doyle's sister and Doyle 'possibly' encouraged Hornung to write these stories even though the pair may not have got on that well). This immediately drags the reader into the comparison of these short stories with the Sherlock Holmes short stories. I fear this does Conan Doyle no favours and probably brings more readers to Raffles than it deserves.
Raffles is 'the' amateur cracksman - a gentleman burglar. Holmes is 'the' amateur sleuth. Both have tales and exploits told by their close companions. But Raffles isn't an anti-Holmes; we all know who that is and Raffles is no Moriarty. Holmes is an attractive character to most readers; you don't necessarily love him but you tend to tolerate his enigmatic eccentricities and admire his skill. Similarly Watson is a very sympathetic character in most instances and it is difficult not to like him; indeed our fondness for Holmes is Watson's fondness for Holmes to all intents and purposes.
Raffles has no such eccentricities or quirks as Holmes; there is little to find to like or despise about him (to a 21st Century reader, at least), and little in the way of hints about what he does when he's not out on his occasional expeditions. Apparently he plays a lot of cricket, but there's not an awful lot of cricket played in these stories. Then there's Bunny. Poor Bunny. He's our Watson - except he's not, because again we have no reason to like him or hate him and he gives us no particular reason to like Raffles either as he regales us with their exploits. That sums up my views rather well actually: pure apathy.
What these stories need is a considerate editor who will draw the unavoidable comparison with Conan Doyle and then scream at the reader to forget it and approach the stories with a fresh mind. One positive that this volume has over the Holmes short story collections is that these stories are presented as a chronological sequence with almost a through narrative. It's pretty much a novel where the chapters are the individual stories. A lot of short story anthologies I've read aren't like that, so this was refreshing. I won't give too much away in case any of my readers decide they want to pick up the stories themselves, but it's basically a sequence of failed or successful thefts. Raffles is generally nowhere near as good a 'cracksman' as he (or Bunny) thinks he is, and if he'd stop wasting money on maintaining his thief's trappings he'd probably have enough to live a comfortable life anyway.
Bunny arrives at the beginning in a heightened emotional state. They are old public school friends (Bunny was Raffles' fag - stop sniggering at the back) and Bunny is down on hard times following a gambling problem. Raffles rescues him from his funk and takes him under his wing. Bunny is often an unwilling accomplice and is the typical occasional hero / foil / hindrance to Raffles' plans. Maybe we are supposed to sympathise with Bunny from the start? Maybe we are supposed to be intrigued by and attracted to Raffles, this naughty man of the leisured class? I felt neither.
There's one massive cultural hurdle when approaching this text: men aren't presented as having this kind of intimate loving friendship in fond terms anymore without being gay. Also 'Bunny' is a decidedly effeminate pet name. This is a shame, I feel, but I don't see things changing in the near future. The first few pages of the book are incredibly homo-erotic in our post-Wildean eyes. Green's introduction hints strongly at Hornung's acceptance of and closeness to homosexual friends but there is nothing to suggest that his writing is expressing anything more than the kind of close fondness men of that class could seemingly innocently exhibit before society dug deeper and made a public pariah of Oscar Wilde.
Many readers these days may also be put off by the strong sense of social class and distinction which the book exudes. Raffles wouldn't bother himself with the lower classes or petty housebreaking and pick-pocketting; he's only interested in doing over persons of wealth or rank, or bettering others at the same game. In fact it's all a social game to him, as much as a source of income. Can we love an upper class rogue who's only interested in stealing to maintain his leisured status? I would want to undertake a straw poll on that...
The stories are relatively short and on the whole not massively interesting. There'll always be one of two outcomes: either the robbery succeeds or it doesn't, and our 'heroes' don't get arrested or caught by the authorities either way. There's no danger of them killing anyone or committing any other dastardly deeds as this is not what they're about. As a result I didn't find the stories exciting or engaging, and quite frankly the characters aren't either. If P.G. Wodehouse had written Raffles and Bunny they'd be hilarious - as it is they often strain against the obvious potential for humour. If Conan Doyle had written these stories for Holmes then he wouldn't have, because he'd have thrown them out in favour of better stories. I want to be given good reasons to like or hate Bunny and Raffles, and Bunny's eventual desertion over time does nothing to assist.
This volume is now out of print, but there are plenty of second hand copies out there (mine was such and will probably go to charity now) and there are plenty of editions bringing together this and the other Raffles short story collections. Based on this experience I won't be tracking those down.
Red Dwarf X: Lemons
So, we've now entered the middle section of the series with Lemons. Three more weeks and it'll all be over. I wonder when Dave will reveal if they're going to make any more?
I have a basic problem with this third episode: as a general rule in Red Dwarf there is a certain scientific logic to most occurrences, or at least they don't require massive leaps of faith. In Time Slides, for example, the mutated developing fluid meant the photos could be interacted with, and the Holly Hop Drive that was used a few times at least worked on explained principles. Lemons breaks this. The rejuvenation shower is a nice idea, and yes there is much fun to be had from the crew constructing a device from flat pack, but it doesn't follow by any stretch of the imagination that it should become a time & space travel transmat when it's incorrectly put together and aligned. That's too random. It's from a different strand of comedy (Goons, Python, Hitchhiker, Boosh). More specifically it smacks of lazy writing: 'I've got a nice idea about the crew meeting a Jesus in 23AD, but how do I get them there? Oh, I'll have them create an accidental IKEA time machine, that'll do...' This is particularly disappointing after last week's well-constructed episode with some great concepts.
The episode was fun and there were some good laughs in places (I loved the pay-off with the meat cutlets Lister was grilling at the beginning), but I felt on the whole that it was patchy. This was a double shame as my old mate Nick Richards played Jesus's 'speeching' uncle and it's always great to see a friend on TV!
I'm also concerned that Kryten and Rimmer only seem to be a mechanoid and a hologram when it suits the situation: the crew used to be worried about people's reactions to Kryten's appearance, but no longer it seems. It was an amusing concept to have to create a basic battery to return to the ship and the scene with the lemon seller was a killer, but presumably Kryten's systems or Rimmer's light bee run on less volts than were required to power the remote device? The previous week Rimmer had referred to himself dying if Pree drove Red Dwarf into the sun. Is Doug Naylor slipping up?
I know that in one way or another Lister has returned to Earth several times now, and he always goes back to the ship afterwards. The series has stopped talking about him as the last human being alive now, but I wonder if they should be drawing attention to the fact that he chooses not to stay on Earth when he can on these occasions, in favour of his life on the Dwarf? Does the series still need a clear purpose, or is it fine to just be about four ageing types wandering the galaxy randomly and having occasional adventures?
This was an even-handed group episode in terms of the crew, with no strong main or sub-plot favouring any of the four, but I felt the situation was forced and ideas weren't thought through fully enough. Having said all that, I'm still enjoying the series and wouldn't consider not watching it - which is a real positive. I will be keeping an eye out, though, to see if the rejuvenation shower appears again...
I have a basic problem with this third episode: as a general rule in Red Dwarf there is a certain scientific logic to most occurrences, or at least they don't require massive leaps of faith. In Time Slides, for example, the mutated developing fluid meant the photos could be interacted with, and the Holly Hop Drive that was used a few times at least worked on explained principles. Lemons breaks this. The rejuvenation shower is a nice idea, and yes there is much fun to be had from the crew constructing a device from flat pack, but it doesn't follow by any stretch of the imagination that it should become a time & space travel transmat when it's incorrectly put together and aligned. That's too random. It's from a different strand of comedy (Goons, Python, Hitchhiker, Boosh). More specifically it smacks of lazy writing: 'I've got a nice idea about the crew meeting a Jesus in 23AD, but how do I get them there? Oh, I'll have them create an accidental IKEA time machine, that'll do...' This is particularly disappointing after last week's well-constructed episode with some great concepts.
The episode was fun and there were some good laughs in places (I loved the pay-off with the meat cutlets Lister was grilling at the beginning), but I felt on the whole that it was patchy. This was a double shame as my old mate Nick Richards played Jesus's 'speeching' uncle and it's always great to see a friend on TV!
I'm also concerned that Kryten and Rimmer only seem to be a mechanoid and a hologram when it suits the situation: the crew used to be worried about people's reactions to Kryten's appearance, but no longer it seems. It was an amusing concept to have to create a basic battery to return to the ship and the scene with the lemon seller was a killer, but presumably Kryten's systems or Rimmer's light bee run on less volts than were required to power the remote device? The previous week Rimmer had referred to himself dying if Pree drove Red Dwarf into the sun. Is Doug Naylor slipping up?
I know that in one way or another Lister has returned to Earth several times now, and he always goes back to the ship afterwards. The series has stopped talking about him as the last human being alive now, but I wonder if they should be drawing attention to the fact that he chooses not to stay on Earth when he can on these occasions, in favour of his life on the Dwarf? Does the series still need a clear purpose, or is it fine to just be about four ageing types wandering the galaxy randomly and having occasional adventures?
This was an even-handed group episode in terms of the crew, with no strong main or sub-plot favouring any of the four, but I felt the situation was forced and ideas weren't thought through fully enough. Having said all that, I'm still enjoying the series and wouldn't consider not watching it - which is a real positive. I will be keeping an eye out, though, to see if the rejuvenation shower appears again...
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