The Devil Rides Out (1968)

 "In magic, there is neither good nor evil."

It's been many years since I've seen this film, certainly a decade and a bit. I well remember being impressed with it, and this viewing has cemented its excellence for me. This is, without a doubt, the finest Hammer film I've seen, and the finest performance I’ve ever seen from a compellingly charismatic Christopher Lee. On the strength of this performance is staggering that he wasn’t asked do play more parts as the hero protagonist. He radiates authority and steadfastness as few actors can.

It’s not just the excellence of its leading man that elevates this film to greatness, though. For one thing Richard Matheson’s superb script, full of incident and tension and using up all the best occult tropes such as the chalk circle and sacrifice, adapts Dennis Wheatley’s novel superbly. I’ve never read any Wheatley and may never do so- occult-themed pulp fiction is not really my thing- but it’s clear that he’s a little vague in his definition of Satanism, conflating it with the worship of pagan deities and “magic” as it would presumably be understood by Aleister Crowley or, indeed, Alan Moore, and combining ritual with the kind of orgies that would be a nightmare for we introverts. But it certainly makes for a first class suspense-based horror film. And Charles Gray is a wonderfully urbane baddie.

More than that, though, this is Terence Fisher’s claim to greatness. Everything about the way this film is shot is magnificent- taut, terrifying, and deadly serious. This film shows him- and Hammer- to be capable of far more than the cheesiness for which we know them. A truly outstanding gem of a film.

Doctor Who: Fury from the Deep (Revisited) Episodes Four, Five and Six

 Episode Four

"Why can't we go anywhere normal, where there's no fighting?"

It's nice how the groundwork is already being laid for Victoria's departure- it's all very '60s, very reserved, but there's some top characterisation in Victor Pemberton's script. But what's different about the animated version is the visuals- the scene in which the Weed gets Van Lutyens is, I very much suspect, far more visually impressive than in the now long-wiped original.

The scenes in the pipe with the Doctor and Jamie more closely mirror the surviving clips, but the tension remains, and the narrative continues to be both masterful and bloody terrifying while balancing plot and character. This is how you do a six parter. The arrival of Megan Jones, the big boss, doesn't waste too much time with tiresome suspiction. And, right on cue, the ending raises the stakes.

Episode Five

"It's beginning to give me the willies..."

The Doctor, with Robson having seemingly broken down, is in charge and finally listened to, while Megan tells the distraught Robson to "pull yourself together". attitudes to mental health in 1968 were, shall we say, not quite the same as nowadays, much like management styles.

However, we soon move to kidnappings, helicopters and the sight of a Weed-infested oil rig that, I suspect, looks far more impressive than it did originally. Similarly impressive looking are the possessed characters, led by Robson, who are part-Weed in a way which surely can't have been done originally.

Episode Six

"You don't want to come with us, do you, Victoria?"

It's all wrapped up, rather quickly, as the Doctor conjures up a Macguffin. Yet is doesn't feel like a cop-out, with the sense of desperation persisting to the end and a real sense of a race against time. The use of Victoria's screams is, of course, very meta, but it's all played in such a way as not to refer to the fourth wall. And, animated, it all looks superb.

And yet a huge amount of screen time is left over for Victoria's departure. It's all very stiff-upper-lip, the emotions are repressed, but they're all there, in a slightly Terence Rattigan sort of way. It's nice to see the TARDISeers stay for an evening meal, though, with even Robson being comparatively friendly. So much so that we almost don't stop to question wny the Harrises would adopt a semi-permanent house guest, and extra mouth to feed, without even knowing Victoria that well. 

Overall, though, this is a perfectly crafted animation that confirms Fury from the Deep to be a superbly paced story, utterly terrifying, and with subtly excellent characterisation. It stands revealed as a fascinating artifact, full of anxiety about all this new-fangled North Sea oil, soon to be powering the nation's homes and workplaces and, perhaps, an anxiety about modernity itself.

Doctor Who: Fury from the Deep (Revisited) Episodes One, Two and Three

 I am, of course, quite blatantly blogging it because the lovely Mrs Llamastrangler (with the equally lovely Little Miss Llamastrangler) bought it for me as a Christmas present. So it’s a somewhat out-of-sequence reminder that this blog originally existed so that I (alongside a bunch of other people on Gallifrey Base) could marathon ALL of Doctor Who, which we (and I) did. If you look at the Doctor Who index on this blog, it’s all there. 

However, whenever missing episodes are discovered (hooray) or animated (necessarily much smaller but nevertheless heartfelt cheer), I’ll blog them as I see them. This is a particularly exciting example.

Episode One

"Aye, and it’s always England...”

It’s a facile comment for me to always make in such circumstances, perhaps, but seeing a story animated, and with subtitles, makes it easier to follow, by orders of magnitude, than any recon could possibly be. That makes a huge difference to how I’m following the plot.

There’s another difference, though- this time I’m not watching this story in its chronological place, so I’m not watching my fourth (out of five) base under siege stories, with Robson as the latest (and most unreasonable) unstable base commander. I’m less frustrated this time round that the TARDIS crew so quickly come under suspicion and get locked up immediately, probably because I’m less cynical about seeing this thing all the bloody time. 

Also, the opening scene on the beach is far more fun with moving pictures, a bit of light relief to start off a story without much light in it. And the plot moves rather quickly. Robson is, indeed, unreasonable, but he’s not too far removed from a type of work colleague we’ve all met who insists that his experience is far more valuable than any of the fancy theories of the university educated young. It’s odd to see this type of person in charge, of course.

It’s also odd to see the sonic screwdriver in its first ever use- to unscrew some screws, with absolutely no indication that it does any more than that.

Episode Two

"It’s down there. In the darkness. In the pipeline. Waiting.”

In some ways the animation doesn’t really change things. Robson is perhaps a little more nuanced, but it’s the same story- and Victoria resolving the cliffhanger by screaming can’t just not be metatextual, certainly not in her last story.

But what’s very different is just how like a horror film this is when you have visuals. We can’t say, without the actual footage, whether it was directed that way, to unnerve and frighten us, but the terrifying surviving clip of Oak and Quill with Maggie is certainly like this. And so is the animation, simply suited by the pacing and the weird electronic music. In short, this is the episode where Fury from the Deep starts to get bloody terrifying. The scenes with Maggie, with quite a lot of screen time, have pretty much no other purpose. 

Episode Three 

"I don’t really like being scared out of my wits every second.”

This is an episode where the animation makes it much easier to follow the plot- it’s much easier what happens with Maggie and Robson at the end, for one thing. And all the stuff about Robson’s state of mind and the discontent among his senior staff is much easier to follow. Robson, again, somehow feels much more nuanced. We don’t see anyone other than a ranting, chippy sourpuss who seems frankly unprofessional- but we aren’t seeing him in a “normal” context.

The experiments in the TARDIS are, as I suspected last time round, much better with visuals. And following the plot much more firmly makes it clear how well written this is- a six larger with strong characterisation and that feels pacy, where every scene is justified for reason of either character or plot. And this episode, like the last one, is wonderfully effective at building up the scares.

Life on Mars: Season 2, Episode 5

"Is it Gene Hunt? Is he kicking in a nonce?"

Oh my. This episode is devilishly clever, and may be my favourite yet, not only using the format to do fun things with the fourth wall (irresistible in a series with a premise like this), but to do creative things with structure too, and with unreliable narrators (and, in the case of Graham Bathurst's arrest, unreliable camera angles) all over the place. There's even a structural nod to Rashomon. I love it. And bloody hell, it's only by Matthew Graham, by whom I'd been rather unimpressed until now.

Of course, the Camberwick Green sequence is awesome and rightly adored, but it says a lot for the episode as a whole that it's not overshadowed by this. Sam has had an overdose in 2006 / spiked drink in 1973, and we have a trippiness to the whole episode, where things are not what they seem. Yet, on the other hand, the episode functions as a wonderfully structured and dramatic double whodunit that doesn’t cheat and is full of satisfying twists. 

These two sides of the episode are brought nicely together by Sam coming into the case late, with an outsider’s perspective, and how everything hinges on another case from last year. This allows Sam to interview his colleagues and examine various angles on the case alongside us, the viewers. 

Last episode gave us an aspect of the 70s- swinging- as theme; this episode gives us structural cleverness. Taken together, they’re exactly what Life on Mars should be doing. Superb telly.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 7- The Hereditary Principle

 "Idiocy and imbecility..."

Another strong episode here, and the first Margaret episode for ages (will there be many more?) as she hits her mid-life crisis with the realisation that her life has been unhappy and there isn't much time left to put things right, certainly not if the lung operation she's just had is an indicator.

There is, of course, a wider theme here of mental health and stigma, as Margaret discovers a family secret in the treatment of some insttutionalised members of the Queen Mum's family- and the first scenes of Katherine and Nerissa give us some juxtapositions characteristic of The Crown as they watch the Royal Variety Performance on telly (is this the one where Tommy Cooper died?) in their institution, and Katherine's birthday is contrasted with that of Prince Edward.

We hear the reasoning, and the voice of a royal generation, from the Queen Mum; when the Abdication propelled the Bowes-Lyons from minor Scottish aristocrats to toyalty by marriage, those within the family seen as suggesting a bloodline that as not "pure" needed to be hidden away. It was, as Margaret says, cruel, inhuman and reprehensible. Genetically, it seems, the royal family cannot have inherited the gene- but that has no bearing on the matter. If the hereditary principle depends on this sort of thing, the hereditary principle must go.

But the episode is also about Margaret, doomed to a life of heartache, emptiness and self-conscious usefulness, where potential lovers turn out to be "friends of Dorothy" and she feels threatened by Diana. I'm not sure she needs the Queen to give her purpose- she's rich and famous; there are plenty of things she could do to make the world a better place. But she is a paradox- a terrible snob who rails against her position as a "spare" whose proximity to the crown grows further apart with each royal birth and, as Gore Vidal said, far too intelligent for her station. And yet, especially as played by Helena Bonham Carter, she's a perversely likeable bitch. 

Life on Mars: Season 2, Episode 4

 "So he pushed a bird out of a car. Don't make him a bad bloke."

It’s barely worth commenting on how inevitable it was that Life on Mars would do a swinging episode: what could be more 1973? What’s slightly more of a surprise is that an episode based around swingers could be so bloody good. And I’m not just saying that because of the magnificently done scenes of the greatest ‘70s soirée since Abigail’s Party or, indeed, the scene with the whip. A whip and handcuffs, after all, add a certain something to a house party that Blue Nun and vol-au-vents just can't provide.

There’s very little arc stuff here, other than Annie being rather standoffish, just an excellent hour of drama with a nice twist at the end as to the identity of the killers and a very ‘70s, very Reggie Perrin look at how bohemian ideals were starting to infiltrate the world of suburban middle class ennui. There’s also a lot of nice culture clash stuff, whether it’s Gene and Sam disagreeing on surveillance or the heavy explored sexism and, indeed, rather rapey attitudes of men like Ray, who continues to be a total arse. More subtle is the scene where Gene passionately exhorts his team to find the killer of these dead women, but not yet as it's "beer 'o' clock".

It's a solid whodunit, full of character, that exploits the format superbly, with Sam and Annie going  undercover as "Tony and Cherie Blair", which dates this as much as anything 1973. Let's hope the episodes to come will keep up this standard.

Black Mirror: White Christmas

 “It's just a state change...

Ok, I haven't blogged any Black Mirror since 2017. This is literally because I happen to be at this particular episode, I feel it has to be blogged at Christmas and, er, I happen to have forgotten to blog it for three Christmases in a row.

However long it’s been, though, it’s always magnificent to be exposed to the dark, twisted, dystopian imagination of Charlie Brooker, and this is a particularly good episode. Starting with two men seemingly in an Arctic outpost on Christmas Day, this delivers thought-provoking shocks and twists within a clever and highly satisfying narrative that draws four different stories into one.

As well as the script, the cast is superb, headed by the excellent Jon Hamm. There’s some impressive directing, too, particularly during Greta’s mind-bendingly trippy operation. But it’s all about the ideas, mostly revolving around the consequences of “z-eyes” which add various apps to our eyes. Hence you can “block” people in real life, or invite pick-up artists to remotely advise you as you gatecrash an office Christmas party. There is, really, a simple premise behind all the evil twists here, but the twists themselves are devastating- especially the first and last ones.

There’s much ruminating on the ethics of things like privacy, child custody, crime and punishment, and the ethics of how we should treat artificial intelligence, but it’s all done as subtext to stories about very real and sympathetic characters. This is genius telly, and the most twisted Christmas ever. I’ll never again listen to Wizzard in the same way.

(This week has been hectic, so fewer blog posts and I’ve had to blog short things where I could. Fear not, things are proceeding as ever- I’m alternating Life on Mars and The Crown, squeezing in a bit of Sex Education, The Mandalorian and Once Upon a Time when Mrs Llamastrangler and I watch them, and films on weekends. The Christmas period may be weird though. And I’ll be doing more Black Mirror early in the New Year

(Review)

(Summary of what I’m blogging)

Sex Education: Season 2, Episode 7

 "You don't have a vagina, Sir..."

Yes, it's been a while. That's because it's nearing the end and Mrs Llamastrangler can't bear it to be over, Hence the, er, three months' delay since the previous episode. I look forward to probably blogging the finale in March, when we're all celebrating the first anniversary of this lovely plague.

This is, of course, a superbly crafted bit of telly, a penultimate episode which both points forwards to the finale and is the hangover after the party in the episode before, where there was much drama, and Otis was a total dick. Some characters receive a kind of closure to their arc at this point. Jackson has an hoest and open chat about swimming and much more with his mum, who is insecure about not being his biological mother, in a lovely scene. Aimee gets a kind of closure as all the girls in detention (Incidentally, said detention is collective punishment- making a load of suspects stay in detention until the miscreant confesses. This may be more trivial than, say, Israel's blockade of Gaza, but the moral principle is the same) help her with her trauma following the sexual assault through female friendship and solidarity. This also brings a lot of the main female characters together, and Lily finally decides to accept Ola as her girlfriend, which is cute. Thse are all elegantly completed arcs.

But the other characters have much to resolve in the finale. Groff's cowardly revelation of Jean's notes causes all kinds of suffering, and he cynically arranges to fire Jean. The massively hungover Otis, it seems, had sex with the untouchable, icy Ruby at the party, and there is much ensuing hilarity over the morning after pill and the absurd bureaucracy around obtaining it. Yet Otis begins to make amends from being a dick by being considerate, and hey connect. Ruby, it seems, has her own problems, with her dad's MS.

Then there's Eric and Rahim, with Rahim casually and matter-of-factly mentioning his atheism in church, not something I'd be comfortable doing. We also learn that his parents had to flee an unnamed country because of their atheism- and the two of them declare their love. Yet Eric's mum is right; there's no spark, and Rahim is not the One. I think we, the viewers, know who is.

But the ending is a cliffhanger that's been building since the very beginning as Jean confronts Otis about his sex clinics. This is top stuff, and I can't wait until the finale.

But I'll have to...

Catweazle: Series 1, Episode 1- The Sun in a Bottle

 "I'll feed thee anon, bizzlegut!"

Fear not; I'm stil blogging the usual stuff, I just needed something short to fill limited time. So this isn't, at least for now, the start of me blogging all of Catweazle, not least because Britbox only has this episode.

It's a fun little kids' show, though; the fashions and, especially, the cartoon opening titles, reveal this to be a fifty year old television programme, but it's a wonder to behold. I can't begin to imagine anything like this being made today, party because it's very noticeably an all-male cast (did nobody notice?), but because fun, intelligent, whimsical, live action telly for children is a thing of the past.

This is an entertaining and successful introductory episode in that it introduces Catweazle- a wizard from 11th century England, shortly after the Conquest, who finds himself in a spot of bother with a bunch of Normans speaking a suspiciously modern, Parisian French and then, via some kind of magic, a barn somewhere in the West Country in the age of Harold Wilson and Jimi Hendrix. It's quite a culture shock, and we have some fun with tractors end electric lights while establishing his friendship with young Carrot, and that he's to be kept a secret.I think we probably ought to gloss over the fact that modern English and old English are certainly not mutually intelligible.

But there are two things which are truly wonderful. One is Gorffrey Bayldon's extraordinary charismatic performance, bonkers yet mesmerising from the first scene as a character who nicely taps into that contemporary counterculture fascination with a pagan past- never mind that pre-conquest England was nothing of the sort. And the other, despite the historical nonsense of having Catweazle speak a kind of cod-Shakespearan early modern English from much closer to our time than his, is the poetic richness of the dialogue.

One day, I hope, I shall see more.

The Asphyx (1972)

 "I've failed!"

This film was, apparently, not a success on its original release, a serious horror film not dependent on spectacle was not wanted by the public in 1972. There's a lot to like about the film though, despite its flaws.

The concept is, in theory, interesting; a Victorian gentleman scientist discovers the secret of immortality, but discovers it has a terrible price. The immortality in question comes from capturing a supernatural "asphyx" (my subtitles said "ass fix"...), a tortured soul which looks quite terrifying) via a type of oh-so-Victorian pseudo-science. I love how very steampunk it is that reality obligingly behaves just as these Victorian "scientists" expect it to.

There's a strong cast, headed by Robert Stephens, but the characterisation very much takes second place to the ideas. And it feels weird that a film like this, based on a very horror concept and which requires an atmosphere of increasing foreboding to be at its most effecive, should not be shot like a horror film at all but just like a costume drama, with no attempt made to use the camera to create unease.

The cast is impressive on paper, but Robert Powell is fairly stiff and Jane Lapotaire (more recently seen as Prince Philip's mum in The Crown) doesn't have much of a character, The whole thing looks plush and expensive, but there are embarrassing moments: when Sir Hugo films his son's death, the resulting footage looks identical to the scene on the film, right down to the close-up.

Ultimately the film, a parable about the curse of immortality, is not quite so profound nor so deep as it thinks it is, and it would have been both much more enjoyable and, frankly, better, if it had been shot more like a Hammer-style high camp horror film by someone like Freddie Francis. This isn't a bad film, but there are reasons why it remains fairly obscure.

Radiohead- Kid A (2000)

This album caused quite a stir when it was released. Suddenly Radiohead, that interesting yet still radio friendly band who had become ubiquitous throughout much of the ‘90s- no bad thing- had released a difficult, experimental, jazzy album full of weird time signatures and general oddness. The general reaction was, well, stunned. I liked it at the time, a lot, but in context it was hard just to listen to on its own terms.

Interestingly, this album represents a real and permanent stylistic shift for the band, pointing vaguely forward to their future work. And today, twenty years later, it’s REALLY good, an album with depth and weirdness that never becomes boring as it always goes over your head. It sounds like late Portishead, Tristram Cary, Krautrock, David Bowie’s last album, Captain Beefheart, various tunes I’ve heard on Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, and no doubt a load of avant-garde artists I’ve never heard of. 

More importantly, though, it’s just a transcendently brilliant album. Only twenty years later, as the shock has dissipated, is it clear just what an extraordinary soundscape this is.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

 "You'll never get away with this, you Martian!"

Why not watch this silly bit of seasonal low camp silliness, I thought. Just how bad can it be?

Well... very bad. Very bad indeed. Come back, Teenagers from Outer Space; all is forgiven. In fact, bah humbug. This is a film in which Martians kidnap Santa Claus by using a silly '50s robot that may actually be made from cardboard boxes. This is a film where two children, dressed normally yet just feeling a bit cold, are menaced in the North Pole by a polar bear that is obviously a main in a suit on all fours- and this isn't even a low point.

This is, indeed, a film centred around the concept that Martian kids are a bit subdued and in need of cheering up, so the Martiand kidnap Santa. Yes, really. Also, the music is horrible, athough intentionally funny in places. But the film, overall, struggles to meet even the basic requirements of low camp fun, dragging despire its short length and being much better to read about than to watch. John Case is actually a pretty good Santa but the rest of the cast, quite wisely, phone it in. I'd recommend this to the connoisseur of awful cinema, but this film should not under any circumstances be approached without alcohol.

What's extraordinary, though, is that it all seems to be done with a straight face. Someone made, financed and promoted this film, presumably believing on some level that it was, if not good, at least not an unforgivable crime against culture. I suppose, for that reason, if no other, it ofers us some much-needed mindless optimism during this plague-ridden Christmas as our equally mindless prime minister threatens to hurl us into economic hell out of sheer xenophobic stupidity. Ho ho ho.

The Tractate Middoth

 "The other day I was forced to open a hotel door of my own volition!"

Don't worry; this is just a one-off diversion from Life on Mars and The Crown, but Christmas is coming; it would be remiss of me not to watch and blog this splendid adaptation by Mark Gatiss, who also directs, of one of M.R. James' most well-known stories.

And the whole thing is simply a triumph. The direction is magnificent, evoking horror with suspense, and the appearance of the ghost (That skull! Those spiders!) is as impressive as the way it's carefully shot. The cast is similarly magnificent, with a young Sacha Dhawan deeply effective as a leading man, and a strong cast of British character actors from Louise Jamson to Roy Barraclough to Burbage's very own Una Stubbs as a wonderfu comic grotesque. John Castle is, as ever, a splendidly hissible villain. And there's much actor-spotting fun as the Master chats to his mate, a pipe-smoking Nathan Barley.

What holds it all together, of course, is the story, puzzlingly not adapted since 1966. But this adaptation was made with a real love of the source material, and it shows.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 6- Terra Nullius

 “Some countries are too important to send out the understudy...”

This is another clever episode, examining the serious fault lines in Charles and Di’s marriage, and making it clear how appallingly Diana was treated, against a series of breathtaking Australian locations. Yet it’s also the episode that makes it clear, I think, that while we can’t assume Peter Morgan is a republican it’s clear he is unsentimental about that peculiar institution. 

The press are, as I write, full of royalists moaning about The Crown making bits up, and this is an episode where such concerns will loom large.  I’ve addressed this before so let me simply make the point that this is drama, not documentary. That it is fictionalised is implicit in the format, and that should be obvious.

That facts, and memory, are unreliable is even lampshades early on as Elizabeth and Philip describe their 1954 tour of Australia in very different terms to what we saw on screen two seasons ago, claiming that it brought them together. But memory is not all that separates the generations. Elizabeth and Philip thought nothing of leaving their children in the UK for four months; Diana has quite sanely insisted on taking baby William. Yet she’s still expected to leave him alone for two weeks at the start of the tour, something that only she seems to realise would be utterly insane.

And that’s the thing; the royals are not just “tough”, as the Queen mentions at the family conference at the end just after her shocking failure to provide any support or understanding to a desperate Diana: they are a symptom of an elite culture that raises children to be emotionally stunted, damaged individuals. 

Charles, on one level, is the villain here- he shows no chemistry or real affection for his wife, yet he rings Camilla every day. Yet he himself is a victim of his upbringing, and did not meaningfully consent to the marriage any more than Diana.

We are left to ruminate on the irony of man-child Charles and arch-republican Bob Hawke connecting over the fact that both of them, for very different reasons, have their purposes thwarted by Diana. Yet all three of them can be seen as victims of what is, I think, very much presented as a toxic institution.

Life on Mars: Season 2, Episode 3

 "Why don't we bring in that well-known terrorist, Dana...?"

A stronger episode this time, as the inevitable happens and Life on Mars does an episode based around the Troubles. Sort of.

Inevitaby, given the sensibilities of 2007, in the wake of a Northern Ireland Peace Process not yet imperilled by Brexiteering insanity, as opposed to those of 1973, the twist is going to be that the bomber has nothing to do with the Irish. This leads to a rather good whodunit which is cleverly done and just about manages to hide the fact that, if we assume the bomber isn't Irish, there's only one possible suspect.

What the episode does, thogh, is shed a light on the discrimination and bigotry faced by Irish immigrant labourers at the time, through the eyes of Patrick O'Brien as example. Not only do we see police brutality and stereotyping (Gene Hunt, of course), but discrimination in terms of employment and housing. O'Brien may well have several chips on his shoulder, but those chips are well-fried.

There's also a nice culture clash as Ray returns to work too soon after having been caught in a bomb blast, with counselling for his PTSD being eschewed in favour of a round of drinks.

The meta-stuff about Sam's coma is really there to add suspense and drama rather than develop any kind of arc, as usual, but for the first time in a while we see the Test Card Girl, subtly recast but no less creepy. 

The overall effect is impressive. This is rather good and, I note, not written by one of the showrunners.

A Study in Terror (1965)

 "Mr Holmes is usually right..."

This is quite the obvious concept- Sherlock Holmes does Jack the Ripper- and one which, I suppose, succeeds or fails on the realisation.

There is, of course, something uneasy about the use of Jack the Ripper- of the brutal and sexualised murder of women- as entertainment, particularly in a film where men (and one woman, presented as the one "whore" not driven to the work by poverty). The male gaze, the Bechdel test, the sheer unthinking misogyny of it all- it can't go unacknowledged, much as we accept that such reactions were not common currency in 1965.

That said, though, this is a frustrating film. The script is, I think, first class- a superbly constructed whodunit, albeit cheating just a little with the final reveal of the killer not being earned, despite the neat cleverness of the other complex yet clear threads; good characterisation; a great deal of wit; lots of Sherlockian allusions in the script with frequent uses of Conan Doyle's dialogue. It's also a nice touch that the character of Dr Murray is a likely nod either to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself- a charitable man- or his mentor Dr Bell, or both.

And yet this excellent script is quite poorly realised. John Neville and Donald Houston are a pedestrian, superficial Holmes and Watson, failing to play their parts as actual characters rather than cyphers, wasting the nuanced lines they are given. The direction may be interesting in places- we get a rather odd shot of the final murder from the Ripper's POV, a disturbing riff on the male gaze- but the costuming (all the prostitutes wear symbolic red!) and sets are a little disappointing.

It's a shame that we end up with a film that's merely quite good; the script is better than that.

Tom Baker 1981 Interview

"I'm an enthusisastic drinker..." 

As we Doctor Who fans know very well, Tom Baker can, when the mood strikes him. Here we see him at his delightfully boggle-eyed, eccentric best. It's 1981, he's just finished Doctor Who and is playing Long John Silver on stage. He's still married to Lalla Ward but comes across very much as being in his hard-drinking, hard-reading Coach & Horses stage, very much the man about Soho.

He's on very good form here, gleefuly philosophical on money, adoration and the joys of drink, while casually pausing to deconstruct Treasure Island in a way that makes it clear what a fascinating individual he is, at the peak of his career, a man who hides his fierce and well-read intelligence under an eccentric facade so as not to intimidate people. You can tell the interviewer falling under this man who really should be scary and forbodding but, somehow, just isn't. Who wouldn't want a few pints with this man?

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

 “You realise what you’re implying? That we owe our human condition to the intervention of insects?”

I thought, after all this time, that I'd better get roumd to the last of Hammer's cinematic adaptations of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass serials. This, an adaptation of the best of the three serials, is entirely unlike- and better than- the previous two, both of which were among the earliest Hammer horrors in the early '50s, to the extent that their right to that label may seem somewhat tenuous. But this is 1967, the very height of Hammer Horror...and much more clearly a horror film.

The film does not, of course, match the TV original in quality, necessarily truncated though it is. Much is excused, including Quatermass’ concluding monologue, although the script, by Kneale himself, is a superbly done adaptation. The story is one of mood, theme and character rather than cinematic visuals, but the cinematic medium allows for the building of a feeling of dread towards the end, and a much more visual ending.

Andrew Keir, although good, is no Andre Morell, but both Barbara Shelley and Julian Glover are first rate, and James Donald slowly grew on me. More so than the excellence of the cast, though, the film works superbly well as an old school horror film built on suspense and ideas rather than spectacle, keeping the subtext but moving things in a different direction from the original. And it really, really works.

This, I think, is absolutely one of the finest Hammers.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 5- Fagan

 "The State has gone. She's dismantled it."

Again this season we have an episode that looks like a decent idea on paper but ends up not quite working. The royals take a bit of a back seat here as we look thematically about their contacts with, and inevitably perverted view of, the general public; that episode with Lord Altrincham gets a mention, and we see one of those garden party things, which looks horribly constipated.

But most of the episode focuses on Michael Fagan- unemployed, in a Kafkaesque web of benefits, denied visiting rights with his kids, abandoned in Thatcher's Britain to a life of dingy tower blocks and an actually rather cool "alternative '80s" soundtrack. It doesn't really matter that more is made of his conversation with the Queen after breaking in than real life warrants; it just doesn't really work.

We're supposed to see two opposing sets of values- the slow dismantling of social solidarity by Thatcher, whose chats with the splendidly Butskellite Queen are almost ideological. Yet Fagan's misery is contrasted with the jingoism of the Falklands victory, with its street parties and victory parades- and the opposition doesn't really work. One can be a sensibly Keynsian non-Monetarist who cares about social solidarity and believes in economic policies that lower unemployment while simultaneously believing that British citizens on faraay islands are entitled not to be conquered by fascist dictators. Even Michael Foot supported the Falklands War. The implied contrast here just doesn't work.

There's some good stuff here- it's clear that the Queen and Philip don't see eye to eye over Thatcher, and Gillian Anderson is perfect. But this episode, overall, is a bit of a dud.

Life on Mars: Season 2, Episode 2

 "Have you ever heard of softly softly?"

"Yes, but I prefer Z-Cars..." 

I'm slowly coming round, on this re-watching on Life on Mars, that it's a programme where middling-to-good but not great scripts are saved by a great concept and cast, along with some frequently excellent direction and much fun with nostalgia. And yet occasionally, when a script from someone who isn't a showrunner turns up, the quality rises hugely. Ironically, for me as a Doctor Who fan in 2020, that outsider is usually Chris Chibnall, who so far has been the finest writer on Life on Mars.

This is a superb, character-driven episode which really pays off the appearance last episode of Kevin McNally's Superintendent Harry Woolf, as we gradually uncover the horrible truth that this exemplar of policing, Gene's mentor, has gone dodgy. This is nicely paralleled with Sam meeting his own future mentor in 1973- and finding an unsure young man dealing with racism by keeping his head down ("Why should I have to fight all the battles?" 

It's very much a western in tone, especially in the final Mexican stand-off where Glen hints at the great man he will become and Gene faces what his mentor has become. Philip Glenister is extraordinary. But we also get good character moments for the likes of Chris and Ray, and Annie's first days as a DC, and Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances being tied up.

It's not often I say this of Life on Mars, much as I love it, but this is a superb bit of telly.